More pictures up on my Flickr site

We're here at Gnomedex at Chris Pirillo just pointed out on his blog that it looks like TechMeme has been hacked?  If you have no idea what I'm talking about. Move along. :)

Brier Dudley seems to agree about the Clix in his latest column in the Seattle Times:

"I'd argue that Microsoft has already developed an iPod challenger, and it's been on sale for a couple of weeks at Best Buy and Amazon.com for about $200... The device is called the Clix."

I was interviewed for this article and got a nice quote.  Brier has more details about the development experience over on his blog.  Just one correction- we didn't specify the silicon for use, but we did provide direct feedback as decisions were being made . 

I also want to call out the amazing work done by the iRiver America team.  The packaging is largely to their credit- we provided critical feedback and encouraged a new, more refined design based on existing packaging in Korea.  The iRiver team did all the heavy lifting and it shows.

At the end of the day, my job was two-fold: As UX (User Experience) PM, to play the part of the consumer end to end- to apply what I've learned working in this space for 7+ years and document our recommendations.  From there, we (the v-team as we called ourselves) agreed on relative priorities w/ iRiver up-front.  We acknowledged where we disagreed without ego or hubris, and worked together on a solution in the interest of the customer.  We were invited to provide input in every meeting on the UX, system flow and regular milestones on naming, branding, messaging, out of box experience and more.  

Shifting gears for a second.  Looking to the development process we used as a case study, Chris Pirillo is still largely right in my opinion about the "User". Except it's users vs. the traditional development process that's the issue- not the developers themselves.  PMs, Devs, Testers, and Marketing are still WAY too silo'ed from their customers and residing in the echo chamber.  I get irate when a PM or Dev tells me they're too busy to go on a customer visit or staff a booth and talk to customers about their product.  I look for these opportunities. But a better requires a multi-disciplined approach working together on a daily basis as well as talking to customers.  That's why we instituted a Scrum Model with "butts in seats at 9:30am accountability" on this project. Our mission statement, "Help our partner build a device we're proud to recommend to family and friends everywhere with WMP11 Beta".  In my opinion, that's what made it work so well this time around.  And the fact that with the U10, iRiver was already on their way to building a great product.  I speak for many within Microsoft when I say thank you to Reigncom/iRiver for the opportunity to work together.

P.S. I'm getting out of my echo chamber later this week at Gnomedex.  See you there.  And a question for the future- where else should I go to further get out of the echo chamber?

I've recently upgraded to a Nikon D200 w/ an 18-200mm lens that took four weeks to arrive off backorder! So I'm running around taking "Happy Snaps" as my Aussie friends like to call them and just loving the quality of the camera.  Any tips/techniques I should be aware of with this particular camera beyond the traditional "learn what ISO is"? 

See some recent shots on my Flickr account.

What I really need to do is take another more advanced class.  Or maybe just follow Thomas Hawk around for a few days in San Francisco. ;)

TiVo Desktop 2.3 now supports scheduled transfers and conversion to PSP, iPod and Treo but expect to pay for the privilege- $24.95 to be exact vs. free for Windows Media-based devices like the Toshiba Gigabeat-S.  Looks like they're passing the licensing cost onto you for MPEG-2 and H.264 support.  Still, not a bad price.

Scoble has bit the HD bug hard and he's coming out swinging against HD-DVD detractors.  While I disagree that there's more HD on Xbox Live than HD-DVD (in terms of minutes or available content), he makes a few pretty good points.

At the end of the day, it's about price.  Mainstream users aren't going to buy a PS3 for Blu-Ray, but for the cost they could buy an Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii!  Blu-Ray players are going for $1000+, HD-DVD sub-$400.  Yes, they're first generation units but attactive to americans who have upgraded to HDTVs sets (happening at a rapidly accelerating rate).

Then there's the question of quality.  I have it on good authority that many of the initial Blu-Ray titles don't look very good, use MPEG-2, and suffer from issues in the mastering process.  I believe "asleep at the wheel during encode" was one comment heard from an industry insider. Yes, they'll improve, but HD-DVD went to the mat on quality up-front.

I have a Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player. It's ok as far as first-generation devices go.  I don't speak as a video compression expert.  But I've shown it to a slice of mainstream america in my home.  Is it a revolution? Not the way VHS to DVD was. But I have a 50in 720p Samsung HDTV and everyone can definitely tell the difference between it and DVD.  Perhaps if I had a 1080p system the difference would be even more striking.

What about HD cable?  Perhaps good enough for most who don't mind watching when it's on and the quality tests the lower limits of HD in order to cram as many channels in as possible. But even my premium HBO-HD craps out (macro blocking) on high action sequences because of a lower bit rate. And yes, I've checked my signal quality :).

But... I'm not an expert, I just have access to a few and you do too.  Spend some time in AVSForum (www.avsforum.com) and you'll come to see that key players, big and small, trusted engineers and even the developers of the formats are still at odds. 

I still say the cost vs. benefit for Blu-Ray is out of whack.  "Good enough" and "cheap enough" will win in the end.  And the funny thing is, HD-DVD just might also be the best in terms of quality of the final product too. Add to that the often-ignored fact that women in the household have a major say in these kinds of family purchase decisions. I don't know many wives who would buy or green light a $1000+ player for their husbands this coming fall having just spent $2000+ on an HDTV over the past few years. 

Another way of looking at this is, for the price of a "low cost" Blu-Ray Player coming next month you could get an HD-DVD Player and seven years of HD-DVD rentals at NetFlix. 

Who will win? Only the customer will decide and right now the decision factors are too complex and nuanced, the technology too new for anyone to say definitively. 

Whatever you might think, Aaron Spelling was an amazing producer of quality and some questionable television.  Thanks for getting me through the teenage years Aaron.

Geoff Harris leads the team responsible for Windows Media Player 11.  In this interview, he talks about the new player and the Urge Music Service.

Watch at On10.net

Like my fellow Gnomies, I'll be at Gnomedex again this year.  I procrastinated and will be in the "other" room.  That may make me easier to find actually.  Ping me if you want to meet up.

Apparently this guy, "Remi Frazier" has a million dollar destiny (and a myspace account).  He says he's gone to NYC with $100 in his pocket and says he will return to Colorado in a month with a million dollars:

I've never been to New York. I don't have a place to stay. I don't have a network of people in the city; I haven't set anything up in advance. I'll be starting from scratch, building a business and a new social network from Friday, June 16 to Saturday, July 15th.

Interesting idea there Remi.  Personally I'm getting a little tired of these hair-brained "missions" and the dolts that pay for them. Perhaps this is a PhD experiment gone awry but I expect it's just another attempt to pilfer a million dollars from unsuspecting folks looking for a cheap (Internet) thrill.  Here's an idea, give that $3 you were about to send Remi to a local non-profit organization instead and watch something useful come from your local community. 

Check with your employer- they often match donations too. There you go.  $6 to a worthy cause instead of $3 wasted dollars to Remi.  Perhaps some good can come from this after all.

Wonder how active Microsoft is going to be in giving people new features as well as comprehensive driver coverage via Windows Update and the Ultimate add-ons?  Try this on: a major update for Vista Beta 2 users went out for the Mobile Device Center.  Thanks to Sidebar Geek for the scoop- this is great to see.

Last week I wrote about the new MusicGremlin portable media player.  An interesting concept, the musicgremlin is the first portable media player to incorporate music sharing via WiFi and the concept of community sharing.  Both are compelling ideas to me, but I have some fundamental issues with the implementation.  Net-net, musicgremlin in my opinion has a long way to go before it's ready for prime time. 

Out of the Box Experience
The "MG" (as it's called in the UI) has a premium enough cardstock box with matte finish. The front flap has the only other messaging on the box- "the record store in your pocket".  In an attempt to achieve Apple-like simplicity though, other essential details are missing- storage size (8GB), formats supported (WMA, MP3) essential features (Local and Network music playback, FM radio), battery life (reportedly could be better).

The unit is displayed right on top and protected with a spongy foam insert.  A "get activated now" card is placed on the top, another smart touch.  Pull the gremlin out of its nest and a bright orange backing can be seen, another premium touch.  There is no electrostatic or adhesive protector over the screen or the face which I would like to have seen. Underneath is the getting started guide and three items: An AC charger, a USB 2.0 (mini) cable, and headphones.  All three are in plastic baggies, the AC adapter bad was open-ended.  This was not a great experience- it felt like the item packaging was an afterthought.  A pang of buyer's remorse set in.

The headphones look and feel cheap- plastic and too big to fit in my ears.  What bugs me the most is that the left and right earbuds have different length of cable and are unlabeled.  This doesn't generally bother me since I use my Shure e-series or Sony studio headphones when listening.

Despite its chubby girth, the device fits nicely in my hand, but not nearly as well as my current two favorite devices - the Toshiba Gigabeat-S (HD) and iRiver Clix (Flash) (disclaimer- I worked on the Clix). The left-hand side control is a slider with neutral central position- up for lock, down for on/off.  The right hand side has +/- at the top for volume, Play/Pause, and Prev/Next from top to bottom.

The front D-pad is fine as well with good, tactile response.  During boot up, the d-pad lights up very brightly but not at all as far as I can tell during use. 

Ed. Note: I was intending to do a full review of the device, but have decided to wait and focus my time on providing MusicGremlin with a comprehensive list of all the bugs I encountered and in most cases was able to easily reproduce.

Pros

• Nice concept
• Simple browsing of other's libraries
• Can only download/play back subscription music on others' devices
• Supports PIN Locking of device

Cons

• Expensive
• Unstable firmware
• No Windows Vista support (yet)
• No Photo support
• Easily scratched
• No case for device
• Cheap headphones
• Poor audio quality w/ pops

Sample of Bugs/Issues Found during a 20 minute eval:

Bootup/Shutdown/Charging

1. Screen shows unpolished "Please wait" and firmware version over refined logo.
2. Audible "pop" on startup & shutdown.  A big no-no.
3. Returning from standby, saw pixelated, multicolor "static" across entire screen on multiple occasions
4. Turn off device while connected to power for charge and it blanks the UI, then entire screen is blank (white and lit)

On-Device Navigation

1. Music experience always prompts the user to search and peck in letters.  Even if you're searching artists and there are only two in the list. 
2. No menu option for "Now Playing" to take you back to album art and seek view, but volume and seek take you temporarily to the view?
3. Alpha entry & search navigation isn't consistent.  For example, Up/Down scroll for network security key goes backwards through alphabet as if centered on "blank" between "Z" and "0" vs. defaulting to "A" when searching music.

Sync Experience

1. The device reports itself as "MTP Device" when syncing with Windows Vista.  It should state the name, and present the Device Icon and Device Logo in WMP11.  Right now WMP can't even see it.
2. MTP-class devices shouldn't prompt the user for drivers.  Something is wrong here. After forcing a device reboot, it installed. Other devices sync no problem w/ Vista using MTP.
3. Device never reports status of sync relationship other than USB icon. The icon reports actual USB connect state instead of communications state with the PC.  It should tell the user if it's connected, busy, or if there's a problem.

Get New Music

1. If I choose Get New Music, why am I prompted for "New Search" when there are no saved searches?
2. Search on Genres returns Artists.  I want to browse by Genres>Albums.  This makes the feature unusable.
3. Gremlists NEVER worked.  Every song is unavailable, even when other tracks could be downloaded
4. Downloading no longer works at all. Even after factory reset.  No downloads are queued up.
5. Display of queued tracks to download isn't centered on icon when double digit value exists (e.g. 10 downloads)

Community

1. Device stopped playing back tracks downloaded from any users.  DRM-12 error when I went into the Download Manager which told me to contact MG technical support.
2. A number of users in the community could not be browsed.  After factory reset, no users could be downloaded from.
3. Device is now in a state where I cannot download any music from any users.  Nothing gets added to the Download Manager even after rebooting or factory reset.

FM Radio

1. You have to push up/down to tune. 
2. No visual notification of presets found during seek. 

Mailbox

1. It looks like on 06/08/06 the device was either flashed or tested and "Error getting root license" was found.  Why would a new user need to see this?

Settings

1. If the device is registered, it should tell you.  Right now if I go to the website it says the device is registered and will not give me a key.  The MG unit prompts me for a regkey. 
2. If you restore the device to factory defaults, this should wipe out your list of downloads in the download manager and your WiFi security keys.
3. There is No way to de-activate the device (e.g. if you wanted to resell it on ebay in the future.)

Conclusions

If you're going to give your product a name that refers to a mythical creature that destoys machines and is the subject of one of the scariest episodes of The Twilight Zone ever and two campy 80's movies, you better make darned sure you've worked your own Gremlins out of the system.  This was honestly one of the worst device experiences I've ever had. The fact that Walt Mossberg's column seems to like it so much tells me either someone over at the WSJ isn't really spending much time living with the device or perhaps I just have a bad unit.  Either way, it's time to put this one back in the oven and let it bake a bit longer. Here's to hoping there's a firmware update because right now, the device isn't working for me as-advertised and is about to get returned. I'm waiting to hear back from technical support.

Update #1: Well, it looks like MusicGremlin got my bug list because they sent me out a new device and a separate box to ship the "defective" unit in.  They did look at my connection and it does appear something was awry.  I still think many of the user experience points stand but will report back tomorrow on my experience with the new unit.  Big points to MG's customer service though.

Larry Hryb, Mr. Major Nelson himself and I were chatting a few weeks back about his move to Community Server.  I'm thinking of doing the same.  I like DasBlog and it's been good to me.  Back when I moved to it, it was one of the few .Net based blog engines.  It seems now though that most of the new development is coming out of CS by way of the fine folks at Telligent Systems.  Now I just need a way to port my existing blog entries and help on the design- any suggestions are appreciated!

Update: Ryan Hoffman from Bink.nu fame contacted me and offered to work on a migration utility.  Thanks Ryan!

Today the announcement was made that Bill Gates will be stepping down as Chief Software Architect and in two years will retire to his part-time position as Chairman of Microsoft. Instead he's going to focus on efforts such as battling tuberculosis, a topic near to our family. 

My "little" sister is a microbiologist for the CDC, running Tuberculosis projects around the world.  Yesterday she IM'ed me from Botswana-a surreal moment.  She was in Kazakhstan just a few months ago, it's amazing.  Regularly she talks about Bill Gates a reverence not seen (in my parts) in a while now.  Despite all the flak he received in years past, Bill is doing something incredibly worthy with his immense wealth.

I've had the opportunity to work with and talk with Bill on four separate occasions.  In each of these, he had the air of an elder statesman, on one occasion even sticking around for an extra hour to brainstorm a few ideas with a group of us.  It was energizing to have this kind of engagement with him, outside of a review, just like a group of friends and co-workers out of the office shooting bull about the industry.  He's human, we didn't necessarily share all the same ideals but could discuss and debate.  I enjoyed our time in this capacity.

Bill is part of the reason I joined Microsoft- the mystique inspired me like many; the desire to meet him "one day" was strong (checkbox filled plus pictures).  But in actuality his is just one person.  Microsoft is filled with bright and passionate people I learn from every day. He's not the only one.  The transition is bittersweet, but now it is perhaps my sister's turn.  I know she (like many other scientists) would like to one day work at the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation.  Perhaps she'll get her opportunity one day to meet Bill and the two of us can compare.

For now, we can all joke about how Bill is following Robert Scoble's lead :).