Dish is really going to make some waves with their new product offering, the Hopper and Joey. They have rebranded, and essentially relaunched, their main satellite service offering. Gone are the crappy interfaces and slow boxes. Gone are debates trying to figure out which room gets the DVR.

Their new product offering centers around Hopper, their new set top box. This box is no slouch - it packs a 750mhz processor, and a 2TB HDD that will hold up to 2000 hours of HD content. It is super slim, and packs a ton of connectivity as well - the remote works 2 way, allowing for the box to send things back to the remote, or to trigger a locator on it. It can record 6 shows at once.

They also have a new DVR thin client, called Joey. Joey is much better than old DVR extenders - it is a first class citizen, getting full DVR access, allowing multi room watching, pausing in one room and picking up in another, and full access to the HD on the hopper.

These devices are backed up with new software as well. There is Prime Time Anytime, which records all the shows from the 4 main prime time channels every night. This allows you to pull them up, functioning like Hulu with less time delay. They also will have a ton of music channels from Sirus, and over 10000 movies for streaming from Blockbuster.

For people who live in a market without broadband, they have Dish unplugged, which gets content via satellite for later playback. They also have a new Internet service for these consumers, offering 12mbps down.

This is a great move for Dish. They were quickly losing market share, and they also were falling behind the tech race. with their new offering, they are eliminating most of the need for consumers to use oer devices to get their TV where they want it. It is a much more consumer focused strategy, and one that should push the industry forward. They are making people thing less and less about using the product, and catering much more to the product fading into the background - the CEO even pointed out that it works in a cabinet with it closed.

Comcast should be on notice. This DVR is what theirs should have been. Dish pointed out multiple times that price is no longer a good thing to compete on, and that the consumers should be getting more value.

(Note: Dish had several live kangaroos in attendance, and they were adorable. Check @mitchellhislop for a picture of it.)

This years CES was unofficially kicked off yesterday with the State of Consumer Electronics event. The Chief economist for the Consumer Electronics Association, Shawn DuBravac, spoke on the trends in tech. According to him, the last decade has been about the transition from analog to digital.

I agree with him on this 100%. We have gone from analog to digital TV, then to HDTV, and connected sets. We went from analog phones, to phones riding the digital spectrum, and finally to smartphones. This is a trend that we have seen throughout the industry.

The next step is leveraging this. We are at a point where we have TV sets connected to the web, but all that offers right now is Netflix and a way to check your stocks. Most of them have interfaces that are stuck in the early 2k era, and everyone who has checked their email on a 42” screen knows that, while it’s cool to show off, it’s not a great experience. The same largely goes for tablets and smartphones - we have devices in our pockets that have more power than what sent us to the moon, and we are still doing things the way that we did 10 years ago. I personally refuse to believe that these interfaces are e best we can do. The Kinect has shown us that there is so much more possible, but for e most part we are still slaves to remotes, keyboards, and pointing devices.

While sitting in the event, hearing about how the next decade will be about leveraging this new technology that we were transitioning to over the last decade, something else came to mind - an article recent by Jason Calicanis.

In his post he talks about how the next wave won’t be about lean forward (desktop) vs lean back (watching) interaction with media. It will be about curling up with it. Tablets are unique since they are basically just a screen, and as such, move with you. You are sometimes leaning forward (like I am, wr iting this post on my IPad in a coffee shop at the Palms casino) , other times leaning back (watching Netflix on the plane), and you are sometimes laying on your back holding it over your head (note: dropping an iPad on your face hurts a ton). The interface doesn’t care. Its not just a personal device, it’s almost more personal than your personal computer.

This next decade will be about how we interact with and leverage these devices. Sure, an iPad is cool, and useful, but the interface still could be better. Input methods could improve. Think back to Star Trek, and how they interacted with things. It was rarely as involved as it is now- say a few words, tab a few buttons, and they were on their way. We are getting there, but there is no device that is as frictionless as theirs. Think back to the screens from Minority Report - whose technology leads were also involved in the Natal/Kinect project - and that interaction. It was fluid, smooth, natural. Compare that to where we are today - friction filled interactions that are ofent barely faster than using the controller.

Now that we have these devices, let’s see how we can use them. I will be focusing a lot of my coverage here on things that help us get there; help us leverage the things we have in new and unique ways, and help us generally move forward in technology.

Let the show begin.

newsweek:

tanya77:

caterpillarcowboy:

You must be kidding me. Are movie studios this out of touch? You think theater revenues and DVD revenues are going to reverse their downward trend if you punish your customers by making them wait an extra 28 days? This isn’t some Econ 101 discussion about substitutes. This change is structural.

Like I said.

Warner Brothers doesn’t care about digital people.

That assumes Warner Bros cares about any people

And this is awesome.

This is way off topic, but I am proud.

My BMI has not been below 30 in years.

Mitch 3.0 is successful so far.

Another one of my favorite web people just released a blogging engine. It looks super sick - going to test it out later.

Ben, who I love as a writer (I even bought a bag off of him - for carrying just the iPad and keyboard for CES), wrote about something that I just dealt with - using the iPad as a main PC. However, he came to a slightly different conclusion:

I can do it, but it means using two apps — both of which are incredibly horrible to use. I have to >use one app to upload the images — one at a time — then a second to set each file (individually) >to public. Then generate a time sensitive URL to email for each image, but copy out just the >normal bit of the URL.

All in all: it’s a horrible experience.

Until that experience changes I will be toting the MacBook Air.

I just faced a similar dilemma - all my computers are getting old (3+ years). I was thinking about getting a new MacBookAir for my laptop/main home computer, but then it hit me - why am I spending so much on something that will be tethered to a desk, when I usually just carry my iPad. I also have similar tasks - occasionally logging in remotely for work, SSHing into various boxes, posting content, etc. The experience does not, in fact, suck. I was able to spin up, configure, and launch a new node for TwinkleTrail with just my iPad and keyboard.

This is something that you are going to need to try for yourself. His setup wont quite work, since he uses S3 for images. With this site on Tumblr, and my VPS configured to work as a very good desktop enviroment (running Ubuntu server, Oh My Zsh, and screen), I am just as productive on my iPad as I am without.

parislemon:

Last week, there was a story on TechCrunch with the title: “Dropbox Automator Is Like IFTTT For Dropbox”. I had to laugh. First of all, it’s awesome that there’s already “Ifttt for X” stories. That’s usually a good sign for a young startup. Second, um, isn’t Ifttt like Ifttt for Dropbox? 

The answer is yes. Yes it is. And I’m happy to announce today that CrunchFund is part of a great group of investors that have put money into Ifttt’s seed round of funding. Both TechCrunch and AllThingsD have a bit more on this.

Ifttt is one of those services that has been able to gain some good early buzz among the tech crowd despite no marketing or any kind of real outreach. And there’s a good reason for that — Ifttt fills a need that many of us have. 

Read More

ifttt is one of my favorite services - I use it for all sorts of things, mostly storing things away that I want to keep - Starred email go to evernote, etc. If you are not a hacker, but want hacker-like ability to pipe things around, ifttt is amazing.

murketing:

(via [Image - 224418] | Wikipedia Donation Banner Captions | Know Your Meme)

This is my favorite movie of all time, mixing it up with my favorite unintentional meme ad of all time.

Now, off to check the score of the match

I have always liked writing this blog. It has changed throughout the years (as close as I can tell, I just hit like 3.5 years), but I have always tried to keep it at least related to tech, life, or really, anything. I like posting long-form articles, but I also like shorter posts, link posts, and the like.

Also, I just got a shiny new domain! I have always loved my initials (Mitchell Patrick Hislop - MPH), and have wanted them for my domain since I started. Yesterday, I pulled the trigger on mph.name - and immediatley migrated my site to use it. The old one will still work, thanks to the magic of .htaccess files.

With this change, I am going to tweak my focus. I will be talking less about the tech echo chamber - sites like TechCrunch, BetaBeat, and the like handle that far better than I do. I will provide opinion or commentary, or link to the ones that really stand out.

What I will be writing about more is web development, projects I do, startups, thoughts that I have, and the like. I realize that I was not adding a ton to the conversation before. That will hopefully change.

In doing this, I will also be re-publishing a few of my old articles - ones that I really, really liked, but are no longer accessible.

I am going to go for more original content, and less echoing of ideas that you have already heard. This will be seen coming up next week, when I am at CES 2012. Sure, there will still be posts from it, but I will not be live blogging the pressers (I will still tweet them - I’m @mitchellhislop).

You could call this a bit of a re-invention, a re-launch. You would not be wrong. Since I started blogging, my focus has shifted. Back then, I was a wide-eyed kid in marketing, just starting school. Now, I am a slightly more jaded web developer, who doesn’t want to talk about how to use Twitter anymore.

I know what I will be using if I need to present. Like Prezi, but better, lighter, and its 3D. Thats one more D than your presentation. How can you compete?

Either more corporations need to start acting like human people (i.e. more like 37Signals or Amazon, less like BP), or they need to not be people. Or, punish them like people - throw CEO’s in jail, fine them actual amounts that they will notice.

They can’t have their cake and eat it too.

This is something that has been rattling around my brain for some time now:

I really don’t want analog interfaces to die. I don’t want them to turn digital. I want them, just how they are, for certain situations.

First up, cars. I just recently leased a new car (2012 Ford Focus), and of course, maxxed out the tech that it carries. I did this partly because I saw it get introduced at CES 2009, but mostly because I am a giant geek. However, one thing that I made sure to check on, and might have been a deal breaker, was the speedometer and tachometer. If these were digital, I would not have gotten it.

To me, speedos and tachs are things that should always be analog. When cruising at freeway speeds, or bombing down and on-ramp when there is no traffic, digital interfaces do not convey information FAST enough - sure, its clear and legible, and looks great in that typeface, but I need to know how far I am from the redline, and how quickly I am approaching it. Digital interfaces suck at showing the velocity of data - something that my speedo and tach can do, while keeping me (in my opinion) better informed on the single data point “How fast am I going right this second”.

The last time I floored it in a car with a digital speedo and tach (was still a manual), I was missing shifts left and right. Not badly, but I knew that something was off. Going back to an analog interface in my Focus means no missed shifts - I can keep the swinging needle in my peripheral vision, and not have to think at all as to when I need to shift.

Think of a gas gauge - there is a reason that even in tech-heavy hybrids, most still use an analog interface, or a digital equivalent (a bar graph) over displaying any kind of numbers. Why? Because you don’t care about the number - you care about how full the tank is. That is much better represented as a part of a whole (the bar graph), or a swinging dial.

Now, the only evidence I have of this is anecdotal, but think to your own experience - how often are you able to look at a speedometer dial and know exactly how fast you are going, without actually looking at it very long or reading it. It is an interface that does an amazing job of showing you different amounts of data based on how long you have to look at it - if its a glance, you know the rough speed from the angle of the needle. If you stare at it longer, you can ascertain the exact speed, and the velocity of the change in that speed. Same goes for the tach - how annoying would it be to drive a car that did a shit job at telling you what the engine speed is? What would you pick: a visual interface telling you “You are at 3000 RPM, rapidly increasing your RPM, and the redline is coming up”, or “You have filled up 75% of the bar about the numerical value of your current speed, and the choppy refresh rate means I have no damn clue how fast you are accel..WHINEMISSEDSHIFTCARHATESYOU”.

Watches are the same way. I much prefer analog watches because, aside from being classic, timeless, and beautiful, they are also excellent at conveying different amounts of data based on observation length. Now, we don’t really care about the velocity of time, since it is usually static (and if it is not, stop looking at your watch). However, I have yet to see a digital timepiece that allows me to know the time as quickly as a watch does. Sure, this is an acquired skill, but even someone who grew up on digital watches could not beat me in a race (both watches face down on the table, no other clocks, we did it a few times) to know the time. I think that a lot of this stems from digital watches doing to much, and not being standard - its easy for Casio to make whatever digital interface they want, and apply whatever UI to it they want, but most analog makers do not screw around with “12 on top, hands move clockwise” - meaning that I can tell the time on just about any analog watch within microseconds of seeing it for the first time. Try that with a digital interface.

Lets not count analog interfaces out yet, world. They are often better than you think