Your first thought would normally be that it only supports Microsoft technologies like Windows Live Spaces and SharePoint. There you would be wrong. I predominantly use WordPress, but I also use Blogger and in the setup wizard for the software it lists those two, TypePad, and very bravely, “All Others". That’s pretty ambitious, but when I told it my blog was WordPress it just figured everything out and set it up. It even includes a complete array of functions straight out of the web console for WordPress. They just pop up from the bottom of the editing window. In Blogger, those options aren’t there, but that’s because Blogger doesn’t have those options. Very smart.

As for the All Others claim, I can’t say. I imagine that anything which support XML-RPC should work since WordPress and Blogger both do, and I think TypePad does, as well. The great thing is that its free. You don’t need to have a Windows Live account (I think) and you don’t have to install any of the other crap that comes with the Essentials package. There are even plug-ins you can install to enable new features like automatic Twitter posting. I’m actually rather impressed for once, Microsoft. Uh… Good work?

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Now, as to the podcast, I’m running that Chupacabra down ASAP, likely tomorrow. To tide you over, Arlen Specter, Mr. Centrist Republican himself, has ditched the extreme Right to adopt lodgings with the Communist, Stalin-loving Democrats. BTW, I’m a dem.

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The key to the functionality of the Pulse is manifold, but it can be counted down to the infrared camera perched under the nib (I’m old, so look it up), the voice recording capabilities, and the special paper the pens use in order to work their magic. Now don’t go groaning over the fact that you have to buy special paper. Have you seen what a simple notepad costs at Barnes & Noble these days? Shocking to the point where you’ll think that paying $20 for a 200 sheet notebook which enables the power of the Pulse is a steal and a half. Combine that with the fact that the most recent Windows version of the software can print blank pages, and you’re on easy street.

So, how do the camera, recorder, and paper work to together to make this powerful combo I speak of? That’s a more complicated question, but there are answers. I am, however, going to quickly describe the Pulse and what the package comes with. First, there’s the pen, of course. Its a large pen, but not much larger than the big, thick, expensive pens which you can buy that don’t do anything the Pulse does. In the box there is a 200 page starter notebook (8.5″ x 11″, college ruled), a nicely small and portable USB magnetic dock, a pair of stereo headphones with a microphone in each earpiece, a lanyard for the headphones, a set of replacement ink cartridges and a stylus tip (nice touch!), and a crappy faux leather case (What happened!?). Take a gander at the image below:

The pen has a display embedded in the side of it. Nicely, there are several options for how you can use the pen, and one of them is to change the orientation of the screen depending on what hand you use (I’m a lefty… deal). That grill you can see under the screen is a speaker and on the top end of the pen is the headphone/microphone jack. I’ll get to the headphones later. They’re super neat. 

Now, whenever the pen is on and you write on the special paper (check out the image), the pen stores everything you write in its memory. I have the 1GB version, though there’s also a 2GB model. So, as long as the pen is on it records what you write. Now for the voice recording. If you tap on the Record button which are conveniently located on the bottom edge of every page then the Pulse starts to record, just like a standard voice recorder. Here’s where the neat trick comes into play though: as you write, the Pulse keeps track of what you are writing and tags the audio recorded to that writing. 

When you’re done taking notes, you click the Stop button. Here’s the next neato trick: While the Pulse is not recording, you can tap on any of your notes and it will play back the audio recorded for that segment. Pretty slick, eh! The trick I’ve learned already is to just write a keyword as I’m recording instead of trying to keep up and missing stuff. If I have a question, I’ll write down a snippet to remind me of the question and then carry on with my conversation. Fraking brilliant! The other controls on the pages allow you to control volume, speed, jumping forward and backward to tracks, and making bookmarks. 

Using the headphones also sports a neat trick. The jack right into the end of the Pulse so you can listen to the recorded audio in stereo. Why? Sure, the built-in mic only records in mono, but when you jack in those wicked headphones, the Pulse records in stereo. That’s why there is a microphone in each earbud. Trust me when I tell you that this is remarkably helpful. Say, for instance, you’re sitting at a table talking with 4 or 5 people. Wearing the headphones (or wearing them down on your neck using the lanyard) lets the Pulse record your environment the same way you hear. When you play this stereo sound back later, you hear the direction people are speaking from. I find it a fantastic way to recall how the conversation was going since I can visualize the meeting. 

Once you’ve collected stuff on your new pen, its time to get that data onto your desktop. LiveScribe nicely offers both Windows and Mac OS X versions of the desktop client, though the Mac version has some catching up to do. For one thing, with the Windows version you can print your own paper. Not so on the Mac. Shame! Interestingly, the box doesn’t come with a CD in it, but when you do download the client for your operating system at least you’re getting the latest version. Once its installed, all you need to do is plug in the dock and place the pen into it. It connects and moves everything from the pen to the desktop client. Once there, everything which has a voice recording attached to it is highlighted in green. 

Now, if that wasn’t enough, there’s more. Say, for example, that you’ve been taking notes for a few months now and you’ve been asked by a colleague or classmate for a note you made back in some project meeting or lecture. All you need to do is load up LiveScribeDesktop and search for the keywords. The software is so smart that it can actually parse your handwriting and show you which pages any hits are on. No kidding! This thing is so smart that it can tell which notebook you are in and which page you’re turned to. Very, very cool indeed. 

There are some other gee willikers things the Pulse can do, but they really don’t add to the functionality except for the calculator. The nice thing that the developers have allowed for is adding new features through software updates. In fact, for the first month I had this thing I received no less that 10 updates to the pen software. Its pretty amazing that the Pulse sports a 150MHz ARM9 processor and a 300mAh LiIon rechargeable battery and crams ups to 2GB of storage space into such a cool pen. 

Simply put, if you pair the Pulse up with an iPhone, BlackBerry, or one of the new Palm Pre devices, you are set to go laptop free. I’m not kidding. The only thing that LiveScribe is missing is some more options in paper products. They have the big college-ruled notebooks and some largish bound notebooks with lines or no lines, but there are no notebooks or calendar books. I’d love to see a notebook which is as long as the Pulse, 3-4″ wide, unlined, with a barrel on the spine into which you can slide the Pulse while you’re not working with it. That and I’d really like to see an integrated calendar management tool. Maybe even synching it up to Windows or Mac OS X. Now that would rock. 

Now that I’ve turned you all on to the Pulse, I would like to inform you that you can have your own right now. You can head on over to LiveScribe’s web site and order one there or you can swing over to your local Target and get it there. The 1GB model runs for US$150 while the 2GB model runs for US$200. The reality is that this is just one of the single coolest gadgets available on the planet and I can only see it getting better and better.

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The reason this is cool is because it allows you to use Google’s most used features without being online, but what it affords Google is far more comprehensive. Gears technology allows Google to pre-define and work out the kinks on keeping its mess of services synched up correctly with local applications. Sure, for now that’s web browsers and web pages, but there’s no limitation anywhere which states that the sync target isn’t an application instead of a browser. This suggests that its the synching which is more important to Google than the offline usage aspect, though that’s a feature which should not be discounted. It will be some time before everyone is always online, so offline access is critical to Google’s success.

Google’s also got another trick up its sleeve which it hasn’t seen fit to shine a spotlight on. You thought that the Google Phone, T-Mobile’s G1 Android phone, was cool. Wait until you see Grand Central. Grand Central is an access provider which Google bought last year and has not yet publicized significantly. In fact, its still in private beta and there are no signs that it will be coming out of the closet any time soon. What does Grand Central do? Its a single point of contact system which focuses around a phone number. The service gives you a number and you can add any number of phones to that service. Once added, you can control when and how people reach you and when and how the phones connected react. 

Its not clear what Google plans for Grand Central and how it might fit into the grand scheme of things, but it is a compelling additional notch in Google’s already battle-tested belt. Grand Central could very well be a component of an everything or nothing play which leaves all other contenders on the field. Take Picasa, Google Gears, a desktop application compatible with Mac and Windows, Google Sync, and Grand Central and you have an all-in-one data powerhouse which can handle your internet access, search, email, contacts, agenda, images, feeds, voice mail, phone calls, and back it all up while offering you ubiquitous access. Its not hard, then, to imagine a cheap netbook with 3G network access or tethered to a Google/Android phone (more are coming, I assure you) and a Google-specific Linux distro designed to take advantage of all of these features. 

If prices of netbooks aren’t compelling now, wait until you get a deal which includes unlimited wireless internet. My guess is that the sweet spot will be US$99-250 for MIDs to 10-11″ netbooks. Does this mean that Google’s taking over the world as we know it? Yes and no, depending on who you talk to. If you ask the nuts, sure. Google’s been trying to wrest freedom from our already tenuous grasp since day one. If you ask me (and you are reading this), then the answer is no… with concessions. Google is very clever. It will pretty much own the internet in 10 years, but not alone. It will be owned by a largely loosely compiled group of open source advocates who have been eyeing this prize since Steve Ballmer started gloating about Microsoft’s position years ago. 

More specifically, with the way that Google has positioned how it uses and leverages technology, there will be a number of sources for Google’s almost assured dominance, and this is clever because it almost completely bypasses Anti-Trust. Android is Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) so, technically, Google doesn’t own it. Email is ubiquitous, and Google makes no claims that its Gmail or nothing. In fact, Google has been opening Gmail up further and further since it started, making it pretty damned compelling. Docs: There’s no real competition, but Google’s not exactly vying to stop it, either. The same goes for Calendar, Sync, and Picasa. When you buy a WinMo phone, it won’t work with anything but Outlook on Windows. Hmm. Everything from Google works everywhere. If you were Anti-Trust, who’d you look at first?

So, as Sherlock Holmes used to say (despite the fact that he is a fictional character), “The game is afoot.” Google isn’t playing, either. They’re in this to win. They’re already one of the world’s largest companies in what is most assuredly a record breaking time. I can assure you with every fiber of my being that there’s no way in hell (or Los Angeles, if you like) that Google’s going to willingly give up that growth and power position, recession be damned. Mark my words, though. In the next year or so we’ll start hearing about desktop applications, and then you’ll know that I saw the future as clear as day… or at least that I guessed well

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Now, some would argue that I rail against such an act in order to protect my right to be a pervert and take up-skirt images on trains and buses. This is the content of arguements for such laws as it is with anti-virus software makers whose marketing policy is to engender fear in order to sell. (I may be a hardcore Machead, but I do use Windows, and when I do, I don’t use A/V software, but I also don’t use Microsoft software or do things I shouldn’t. Because of that, I’ve not been infected in 10+ years.) The real argument, and the one Republicans and the Religious Right don’t want you to make, is that its about freedom of speech. Yes, taking pictures is a right we have because its a form of personal expression.

What I’m more concerned about is Republicans fighting as hard as they are to not support our President, Barack Obama. We are in a serious recession, we have a dangerously high jebless rate, we have a large, National population of homeless people, we have banks and other financial institutions ripping us off, the credit market is in shambles, and money fund managers are giving themselves multi-million dollar bonuses with TARP funds. We’re in trouble. Deep trouble, and Republicans are up to their same, tired, ridiculous old games claiming that Democrats are all about spending and spending and spending. Its shameful.

Think about it, kids (and I’m no mathematician). If you spend X number of Billions of dollars on a bridge refitting project, where does that money go? Republicans would have you believe that simply making the money available is waste and will produce nothing. Democrats, on the other hand (and who never seem to say anything about this), know that what will really happen is the money will go to planning which will create staff positions for design and implementation which will pay architectural firms to design the refits which will guide the project leaders to determining a contractor who will need to hire people to actually perform the work. I don’t know how many bridges there are in the US, but I know there’s a lot so I imagine that’s several hundreds of thousands of jobs right there.

I have a feeling that some of you will ask yourselves what you can do about it. Don’t. Know that you can call, write, fax, or email your representatives in Congress and tell them what you want them to work on. Tell them that pushing a bill (HR414, in case you were curious) to make mobile phone cameras click by law is less important than reinvigorating our economy. Let them know that you’re not happy about this. I’m certainly going to tell my reps what they should be working on.

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When Vista was announced, it was reveled that Microsoft’s Windows team was yanking features (including WinFS, their new filesystem baby), and then its system requirements, I knew we were in for a rocky road with Microsoft’s obsession with making Windows more Mac-like. I was far from wrong. Vista has turned out to be Microsoft’s least liked OS ever (even less popular than Windows Me, though not nearly as hated as BOB).

Microsoft even stooped to tricking people into liking Vista by showing them Mojave, a tweaked version of Vista. Now, if they’re willing to modify the system to make all references to Vista become Mojave instead, what else were they willing to change… but I digress. I reported here that I would not be upgrading, and for some time I didn’t, but since Microsoft had sent me a press kit with a copy of Vista Ultimate, I couldn’t resist for long.

My fears, however, were well founded, and even on my powerhouse MacBook Pro, the best rated laptop (not Mac laptop, but laptop overall. If you don’t believe me, check it out in PC World Magazine) for running Windows Vista, I was disappointed. I had stability issues, speed problems, application crashes, random errors, and just general lack of cohesiveness, even after upgrading to Vista SP1. So, I removed Vista and reinstalled XP with SP2 back into my Boot Camp partition. I was done with Windows Vista.

But then… along came Windows 7. Microsoft had been telling us that it had been working on Windows 7. Now, my conspiracy theory explanation is that Microsoft determined that they were not going to finish Windows 7 in time to release anywhere near their announced date and so they were going to have a hard time getting rid of Windows XP the longer people used it. Its at the time, I believe, that they plucked a few concepts from their target OS and crafted a version of Windows Server 2008 with the UI elements from the upcoming Windows 7 to cobble together Vista.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. Interestingly, Vista’s release did quell the dissent which was pelting the intarwebs. It didn’t take long, though, for the issues to start cropping up and people to begin complaning. The complaints from all corners of the computing world that it seemingly pushed Microsoft to announce Windows 7 early. They opened beta testing to more developers, and word started leaking out that, while it looked like Vista, it didn’t work like it. The errors were gone, the UI pains were gone or modified to work better, the underlying core was far more efficient, and it all took less resources to do the same thing Vista had so much trouble with.

When Microsoft released Windows 7 to general beta, I hopped on over to my resource and got a copy. I did not, however, want to install it on my MacBook Pro. I already have a nearly year old install of XP SP2 over there, keep it up to date, and play my Windows games over there. Sure, I use Steam, but I’d had to back everything up and it would be a hassle. My wife just stepped on the Averatec AIO, de-tailing the mouse and gouging the screen, so that was out, so my eyes fell to the Averatec Buddy netbook which came with the AIO. I burned the installer DVD (x86, if you’re interested) image to a disc, plugged in my LG external USB DVD burner, and fired it up.

Total install was absolutely painless. It even archived the XP install into the ../windows.old directory and created a boot loader entry for it. I had previously installed Wubi’s Xubuntu, and that boot entry was retained as well. I should note for details sake that I’ve not booted either, removed them from the boot.ini file and deleted them. I wanted to focus on Windows 7 and nothing else. For posterity, Xubuntu 8.10 worked fantastically well, though I was unable to get the wireless module to compile correctly and was unable to test the webcam. Of course, XFce is a fantastic window manager, but its not resource intensive.

That’s good, too, since the Averatec Buddy netbook sports a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB drive, a 10″ 1024×600 display, an integrated webcam, wi-fi and Ethernet connectivity, and SD card slot and an anemic 3-cell 2200 mAh battery pack. Its really no different than just about any other netbook out there and its a repro of the MSI Wind series. From what I can tell, it can even take the replacement batteries designed for the MSI Wind. With less than two hours of battery life, getting a large 9 or 12 cell pack should be a priority. I also wish it had integrated Bluetooth, but you get what you get.

Installation of Windows 7 took approximately one hour, maybe a little less. The process is generally the same as installing Vista, but is cleaner. That may be my imagination. Setup was straightforward, though it wouldn’t accept my key until I entered it correctly (yeah, I’m a dork). W7 intalled drivers for video (Intel GMA950), audio, and Ethernet (everything else is Realtek except the webcam) but was unable to install drivers for the wi-fi adapter, SD card reader, and Buffalo webcam. Installation of drivers spec’ed for Vista was easy, though.

There are a number of improvements to the entire system. I’m not going to get into details in this article. I’ll save that for a full review when it actually ships. I’ve experienced it when Microsoft makes last minute changes to a product after the Beta phase has been passed, so I don’t want to miss anything here. RIght off the bat, though, Microsoft makes it clear that they knew they made mistakes with the Vista interface, so they’ve made nice changes which make it more usable. The first thing you will notice is the intergration of the Quicklaunch buttons, the Start Menu pinning feature, and the list of running tasks all into one neat, clean, tidy, and functional icon.

The taskbar also works slightly differently. You’ll note that the entire Start button fits all the way into the taskbar. This makes the pinned icons or icons from active applications larger and, therefore, easier to see. You can change this behavior by making the icons small (then the Start button protrudes again), add the title, or show all buttons for all windows, just like the old system. The new visual identification system, however, just works better. Its amazing that its taken so many years for Microsoft to get this. Apple finally got it when Mac OS X 10.0 shipped in 2000 and introduced the dock. Linux got it years earlier with various window managers.

The second thing you notice is that everything seems to run faster and more efficiently. One drawback is having to use Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s unfortunate choice for a direction for their web browser. IE7 was bad enough, but it could be tolerated. IE8 is just crap. Like most products Microsoft created based on the successes of others (like Firefox), they have taken what is good from them and created overly complicated and unecessarily obtuse versions. Don’t look to IE8′s add-ons to be anything even vaguely like Firefox’s plugins. I installed one for Skype into both Firefox and IE8, and where the former works just fine, the latter still won’t start, and there’s no clear way to get add-ons to start. Feh.

The third thing I noticed was how theming and interface tweaking has changed. Its mostly the same way as it was in Vista, but they’ve added some important changes. For one, you can now select any number of wallpaper images and arbitrarily decide when they change. Aero also apparently requires far less resources to work right. Linux distributions have proven that transparencies can be done easily on low power systems for years (I don’t count it when the console app shows the wallpaper but not the windows which are underneath… That’s just silly). Aero would not run on a MacBook (pre-unibody) in Vista, but will run on an underpowered netbook in Windows 7. Aero isn’t just some silly eye candy, either. There are subtle little behaviors which Aero can perform which improve readability and object identification.

For software, I promptly installed Firefox for web, Thunderbird for email, OpenOffice 3.0 for productivity, and, for the first time ever, Digsby for IM and social networking. All installations worked perfectly and there were no hiccups. Since I was getting the latest versions of them for installation I didn’t need to do any patching. I also went into Windows Update out of habit and gave that a shot, only to get an error. Oddly, two days later it started getting updates on its own. I don’t know why it happened, but it did. There’s been a long history of Windows fixing itself while giving no indications as to how or why. Maybe it was because I rebooted. Overall, everything I installed works just fine. I also installed Skype 4.0 beta and it works perfectly as well.

SIDEBAR: I’m disappointed and pleased with Digsby at the same time. While its very functional and has a lot of great features, it tries to trick you into installing no less than SIX freaking spyware/cashware/crapware titles onto your machine. You can opt out of each one, but its not a no-brainer. TIP: click the Decline button for everything after the first page where its deactivated (you have to install Digsby). I’d rather donate money to the project. -TCR

Working on a small 1024×600 display isn’t hard, either. Windows 7 has some new features which deal with this (or I didn’t notice them in Vista since I never installed it on a netbook). When you drag a window to the top of the display, it automatically fullscreens it. It will also move dialogs so that the buttons are exposed. They also added a permanent Show Desktop button to the far right of the taskbar. Once I had sussed all of that out, I then installed a few widgets. At first, I thought that they just made the widget bar invisible, but then I added more widgets than will fit, and it showed up in the middle of the screen. That’s when I realized you can place widgets anywhere on the display.

I haven’t tested enterprise networking, directory integration, VPN connectivity, or any of the other elements which made working with Vista a pain in the ass, but most of the crap that Vista dished out seems to have been rectified in Windows 7. Of course, its still running on NTFS and there was no sign on WinFS. I think that Microsoft may be on track to fix the problems they created from whole cloth with Vista, but I don’t think there will be a way to fix the growth Apple has made into their territory, and that’s a good thing. Microsoft needs to do a lot of growing up. It will have to innovate in order to remain relevant. Windows 7 is just a start.

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Apple has reached a point where they are now the defacto name of cool in the technical space. Apple has a cachet which Microsoft never had and it looks like Apple is now trying to capitalize on that. The simple truth is that cool doesn’t carry, and Apple will have to fundamentally modify its strategy to continue to grow. Its become clear that Steve may have figured out that no matter how many moves of the chess pieces he orchestrates, there is no longer anything new Apple can do that will have the Zing Factor of the iPhone.

They’ve captured the laptop market, the mobile media player market, the music market, the mobile phone market, and enough of the desktop market to make them very happy, and they’re watching that marketshare grow consistently. Anything they do now will be a derivation of something they’ve already done and people will necessarily be disappointed. This, I believe, is why Apple has been migrating away from the event-driven announcements over the past few years. Apple also had to have noticed that shares of Apple stock drop after every keynote.

I’m pretty sure that Steve knows that Apple rises and falls on his perceived failings and fortunes, and that’s not good to the ongoing fortunes of a huge multinational. Apple needs to become a brand again and right now its Apple is Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs own mortality had to play a role in his views on how Apple should appear to the world. Apple is now distancing itself from its fanbase and will, in the next year or so, become something akin to Microsoft.

This will actually help Apple to grow as the lifestyle brand it has been forging itself into, something Microsoft has never been able to get a handle on. The people who purchase Apple goods now don’t do so out of brand loyalty or because they are phanboiz. They buy because it is popular and it works. This was the image Steve Jobs has been crafting over the last decade. He started with the iMac then the new PowerBooks then Mac OS X then the iPod and so on.

If Apple is going to move forward, gain more marketshare, and be a powerhouse from this point on it needs to behave differently. Will this piss off the phanboiz? Sure. Will it upset the loyalists? Some. Will it cement Apple’s role in the future of lifestyle computing? Without a single doubt. Apple has created a brand image for itself which works on all levels of a persons needs from the technological standpoint. They have made themselves as necessary as shoes, and unlike Microsoft’s lumpy pennyloafers these shoes are nice and comfortable.

That brand image doesn’t have a picture of Steve Jobs in it. Think back and try to find any piece of advertising material aimed at the general consumer in the last decade which has included Steve Jobs in it. My bet is you won’t find any. I’m also going to bet that Apple will return to MacWorld soon, maybe even next year, but they won’t do the keynote.

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• iBclean – a complete set of toiletries including the iFoof, iBrush, iPit, iPick, and iWipe systems. All devices feature a specialized version of Mac OS X and have accelerometers for position and action detection functions.
• AppleVHS – a special version of the AppleTV deck which supports playback and upcoding of VHS video cassettes.
• iPlunge – This bathroom tool sports an ergonomic handle, a 4200 mAh LiIon battery pack, and the optional iScrub toilet brush. The iPlunge can root out 150 gallons a minute and store 4,000 songs.
• iChair – There is little known about this product as Apple refuses to comment on unannounced products, but from what The Dojo iTeam can tell, it emits a Jobs Field which causes people within range to have absolute faith in Apple products. It also has adjustable height and lumbar support.
• iGuy/iGal – These complementary products offer companionship, download support, Apple’s new iHug technology, storage for 25,000 to 100,000 songs, and can operate for 12 hours before requiring a charge. You can add the optional iPerambulate system which was developed in conjunction with iRobot and adds Roomba functionality.
• iGuess – This Apple-shaped device predicts the future. Just pick it up, give it a shake to activate the accelerometer driven start function, and ask it a question. Turn it over for the answer and be in the know at any time.

That should do it. If any of these products are actually announced, I can easily say I didn’t have any insider information. I just used my iGuess. <WINK>

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