Changing How You Comment, To Defeat Spam...

Over recent months, I've seen a big increase in the number of spam comments submitted to this blog by people selling everything from Viagra to cheap software. I've been catching them during comment monitoring - so you don't see them.

However, it's become a chore to keep weeding them out. So I've added a "word recognition" box to the comments page, which you'll have to fill in before your comment appears in my email Inbox for moderation. That should prevent automated spammers from trying to post.

I apologize for having to add this extra step to your comment process, but it can't be helped. Please keep those comments coming!

iPad: Dodging The "Doonesbury Bullet"...

Doonesbury cartoons flayed the Newton to death for its (dreadful) handwriting recognition...

Here's a little story I'd like to share on why I believe Apple's iPad will succeed where Microsoft Windows-based TabletPCs have failed to gain more than a tiny niche-market share. I believe it offers a classic illustration of "geek" versus "consumer" thinking...

I happened to be having an online conversation several months ago with a former colleague who had been one of the Handwriting Recognition (HR) experts on the Microsoft TabletPC team. His view was that Apple would have real trouble launching a Tablet device - because Microsoft holds a number of key patents in the area of handwriting recognition, and he could see no way in which they'd be able to get around those to create a usable device.

It's true that Microsoft has indeed done some great work around handwriting recognition. My wife Tanya wrote the first draft of a 400,000-word book using it, on a Windows TabletPC. It wasn't absolutely perfect. But it was perfectly usable. And I'm sure MSFT has a ton of patents around it.

Apple, of course, has been seriously bitten in the past by handwriting recognition - or lack of it. The Newton was launched in 1993, as the first in a new category of device - the Personal Digital Assistant. Theory was, you'd write on the screen with a stylus, Newton would recognize your writing, and turn it into typed text on the screen. Newton might not do a perfect job at first, but it would "learn" your handwriting as it went along, and rapidly improve.

It was a disaster. Newton's recognition mistakes were so legendary that the widely-syndicated Doonesbury cartoon strip poked fun at them for months, at the end of which time Newton was a laughing-stock. It eventually died a well-deserved death.

I bet Steve Jobs vowed at that time that the company would never again ship a device which depended on handwriting recognition for its success. Anyone on the iPad team who suggested putting it in would be given The Glasgow Farewell. (Pick a window - you're leaving!)

Classic. If there's an obstacle, go around.

To the geeks at Microsoft, though, handwriting recognition was one of The Last Great Problems of Computing - a really interesting and complex area. Lots of languages, too! They tackled it head-on.

And, you know what? By applying brute force, effort, huge investment, and some really smart people - they solved it! I've never tried Windows HR with any language other than English - where it does work really well. But I'm sure it does a great job on other languages, too - even Chinese and Japanese.

And you know what else? It won't matter! Because when you pack a tablet device with enough power to run Windows and Office, do handwriting recognition, full-screen video, and everything else, you end up with a machine that is too thick, too heavy, uses too much power, and runs too hot. And it doesn't help that the hardware manufacturers who're building them all get off on a 16:9 aspect ratio video trip at the same time.

You've built a fleet of Hummers, when the market just wants a Prius...

iPad: It's definitely not a Newton...

Steve Jobs knows how to hook consumers. The first Macintoshes had 128K of RAM, and only a 400K floppy disk - no hard drive at all. But they reset people's expectations of what a computer should look like, how easy it should be to use, and what you could do with one. As they got better, people just kept upgrading, with no resentment. Today, Macintosh laptops and desktops are better than Windows machines. You pay more, for sure. But if you can afford it, it's worth it.

The Windows TabletPC philosophy was: "If we can build it, they will come". It's a valid gamble, if you have deep enough pockets. Occasionally, it even comes off.

Apple's philosophy, on the other hand, is: "First, we get them to come. Then we can take them with us." If you create a market with enough customers, they will tell you what they want next. They'll tell you what's missing. You build on a relationship with a LOT of customers. And you make a LOT of money while you're doing it. And oh, by the way - there's a new business model that goes along with it so you make more money AFTER you've sold the device.

I would not be in the least surprised to find that in a few years there's a high-end iPad that is a powerful computer used for many tasks other than media consumption. I've already speculated elsewhere that we might see a stylus for the iPad sooner rather than later. Apple's website says the iPad's touch-recognition capability is high-precision; so a stylus ought to give a lot more precision than a finger for applications like drawing, for example.

Geeks have been complaining since the launch: "It doesn't do multitasking!" "There's no support for Flash!" "It's not an open environment!"

All I have to say is this: It's a Prius, not a Ferrari - yet. And you'll see plenty on the road...

iPad: No egg freckles on its face...

iPad: Apple Upsets The eBook Apple-cart...

iPad: Will truly upset the Apple-cart...

It's been a while since I posted a blog here. I've been pretty busy with other projects - but that wasn't the reason. At least two blogs I had in draft form for months were based on the rumors filling the Internet and the business press that Apple was about to launch a Tablet device. Like everyone else, I had lots of information that could end up being either true or false - like the story that Apple had taken delivery of a quantity of 9.7-inch displays, which ended up being true. I decided against publishing, because I felt another dose of speculation added nothing.

Here are a few of my pre-launch speculations, though - copied and pasted from draft blogs:

1. "Apple could easily create a really elegant Tablet which looked just like a larger iPhone. With the iPhone, it already has a keyboardless UI which millions of users have found easy and convenient to use."
2. "With a Tablet device, Apple could enter both the NetBook and eBook markets at the same time."
3. "Apple has shown with each of its devices - PC, phone and music player - that there are millions of people who'd happily pay a premium price for a great user experience."
4. "If Apple can get reasonable battery life from an iPhone-like Tablet, it's going to make the Amazon Kindle screen unacceptable."
   

Well, as the whole world now knows, Apple did indeed launch a Tablet. It does look like a giant iPhone - even runs the iPhone operating system. It's set its sights on the growing eBook market. And it has succeeded in getting a reported 10-hour battery life from a color screen which also supports video.

Apple's PR department must still have sore hands since the launch, from high-fiving each other. When was the last time the launch of a new computer made the front page of all the major newspapers - with a huge color photograph? (Answer: Never!)

I predict it will be a huge success. It will cause the same kind of mayhem among TabletPC and eBook manufacturers that the iPod and iPhone did in their respective market categories.

It's a great-looking device. It's sleek and elegant - exactly what you'd expect from Apple. But that isn't why it will dominate the Tablet category. It's because Apple understands that computers have made a transition from "computing devices" to "consumer devices". Apple has built its huge success in recent years by becoming a company which creates great end-to-end consumer experiences.

The arrival of the iPad is bad news for the Kindle. Even though I've owned Kindles since the first one shipped, I've always described it as a "transitional device". It was simply the first device with a screen good enough to enable reading text for long periods, with long battery life - and an acceptable book-buying experience built in.

The trouble with the Kindle is that for all its vaunted modernity, it's really a backward-looking device. So is the eInk technology at its heart. Both are aimed at creating an experience close to paper. But that's not the Future of Reading. The future will be created by first equalling, then going beyond, paper. It is books with full color, books with video, books which update through the Web. Kindle was good enough to jump-start the digital book market. But it's not good enough to keep it. eInk was acceptable only until the appearance of a color screen with acceptable battery life. And the iPad's 10 hours is more than enough to knock it off its pedestal...

iPad is also bad news for Microsoft, which has been pushing TabletPCs for years. It pioneered the genre, and my good friend Bert Keely has been at the heart of its efforts.

The trouble is trying to innovate at Microsoft, which is a company of geeks, run by geeks, and dominated by Windows.

When TabletPC began at Microsoft, it was a research effort - outside of the regular Windows organization. Once it was re-organized into Windows, that was the kiss of death. I never really thought much about this while I worked there, but it's my belief that despite all the lip-service paid to end-users, the only Windows customers with any real power are the Windows Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

They're the customers Windows really has to care about - because most people get their OS upgrades when they change machines. And the Windows OEMs never seemed to get what TabletPCs should really be about. Most of them shipped machines which were basically conventional laptop PCs with Tablet functionality implemented like an add-on. They all had keyboards, and converted to tablets by swiveling a standard screen.

There were some true keyboard-free tablets in the early days - NEC shipped two models (version 2 shipped in Japan only, though!) They died the death by being ahead of their time, and suffered from poor battery life. So we ended up with TabletPCs like Toshiba's M7, for instance, which were neither one thing nor the other, and wound up being terrible at both. I ran one for more than a year - using it as a conventional laptop because as a Tablet it was just too big, too heavy, too awkward and ran far too hot to be used more than occasionally. Even as a laptop, it suffered from the unreliability all-too-likely in any device whose hardware and software are designed by different companies.

My M7 was replaced by a MacBook Pro, which turned out to be the best Windows laptop I ever had (until I left Microsoft and bought a 133ppi MacBookPro to replace it...) As a result of that experience, my wife Tanya replaced her Windows laptop with an iMac desktop with a large screen and an internal 1Terabyte hard drive. It's wonderful.

I run Mac OSX when I'm doing page layout or working on high-resolution scans using Adobe InDesign, PhotoShop and Lightroom. But I spend most of my time in Windows. So I run Vista using BootCamp. This MacBookPro is the most trouble-free Windows machine I've ever had. I could never get a Windows laptop to Sleep and Wake instantly. Even if it would sleep when brand-new, inevitably the Sleep capability would fail within a few weeks, and I'd be forced to use Hibernate instead. My MacBook Pro still Sleeps and Wakes reliably, months later.

Vista is a great OS - provided you are running it on a fast and powerful machine. I know it's the fashion to dump on it - even inside Microsoft. Hey, it's the old story - blame all of your mistakes on the guy who just left. There's no question that it took waaay too long to build, and that when it first shipped it lacked so many drivers that most people had problems getting their existing equipment to run. I knew plenty of people who had problems running it on Macs using BootCamp back then. But once Apple had released all the drivers the problems went away. I like Vista, and so far I've seen no compelling reason to upgrade to Windows 7.

After a few months, I still find text on MacOSX too blurry for my taste, even on this 133ppi display. ClearType was one of the things we did get right at Microsoft - even if it took ten years to get it into the hands of most customers.

I'm not revealing any confidential information here. Anyone who saw Bill Gates' keynote speech at Comdex in 1998 saw me on stage demonstrating ClearType. And they heard Bill say - in pretty emphatic terms - that it would ship in Windows.

Well, it shipped in Windows XP, right enough. But the Windows team buried it so deeply that most users never even found out it was there, or how to turn it on. It wasn't until Vista that it was turned on by default for all users. And that shipped in 2008. Ten years after we first showed it before we truly got it into the hands of our customers!

Apple implemented its own version. However, they turned it on for everyone the instant they shipped it. It's a pity they took a more simplistic approach, and that's the only question-mark I still have against the iPad.

At Microsoft, we invented ClearType specifically to solve the problems of creating highly-readable text at normal reading sizes (between 9 and 13 point). There's a lot more technology going on than simply utilizing the RGB sub-pixels on LCD displays. Apple's clone creates text whose characters look more like the original print fonts at those sizes than ClearType does - but the price they pay is a lack of sharpness and clarity, and text that's slightly blurred at the edges. That means I still prefer to do all my reading on Windows, with "genuine" ClearType - even on this great 133ppi display.

My only misgiving about the iPad is that its screen is 122ppi. If Apple implements its current ClearType clone on it, we might end up with text that's slightly blurry, and could cause problems reading for sustained periods. That's only speculation, though. I can't say for sure until I've held one in my hands and tried to read on it for several hours.

When the merits of different operating systems are discussed, people - especially at Microsoft - have always trotted out a standard argument: "It's much easier for Apple, they have control over both the hardware and the operating system, they don't have the same number of different processors/screens/mice/devices to support".

That argument was logical enough when comparing Macintoshes running MacOS with Windows PCs. But my BootCamp experiences led me to ask the question - publicly, in this blog: "How can Apple make a better Windows machine than any Windows PC maker?" (That turned out not to be such a good career move for me at Microsoft. Take my tip - never tell the Emperor he's butt-naked, unless you're sure he's big enough to see it as an opportunity to buy new clothes).

If you install Vista on a Mac using BootCamp, and run the Windows Experience Index diagnostics which rate its capabilities, you end up with better scores than the vast majority of Windows machines. This machine rates a WEI of 5.3 - and I've never seen a score higher than that.

Apple's had its failures in the handheld device area before, of course - anyone say Newton? But in my opinion they're a long way past that, and haven't put a foot wrong in years.

Newton's "Achilles' Heel" was that reliable Handwriting Recognition was critical to its functionality, and we all know what a Doonesbury Disaster that turned out to be! iPhone was built without that dependency, and thus dodges the "Doonesbury Bullet".

Even in these tough economic times, Apple has proved there are plenty of people who'll pay a premium for a great device. It has been creating winners for years now. There were plenty of cheaper MP3 music players available long before Apple's iPod appeared. Yet the iPod owns the market - even though it was both later to market, and more expensive. Checking out eBay recently, there were only 3 used iPods for sale (and over 1000 Zunes...)

iPod, therefore I am...

There are plenty of mobile phones around. But Apple's much more expensive iPhones (both the phone and the service) have been flying off the shelves. I've had a Windows Mobile phone for years. But compared to the iPhone it's a complex, fussy, unfriendly brick. I had been meaning to get rid of it for a long time, but I don't use a mobile phone that much, and I still read books on it using Microsoft Reader, so I've been hesitant about making the switch.

However, last week I dropped my Windows Mobile phone in the water. It was DOA when brought back to the surface. So now I need a new phone. No way am I buying a Windows Mobile replacement. I really grew to hate that phone. I've checked out the new Google phones, and I don't like them much either. No, I want a great customer experience - so I'll go with Apple.

iPhone: Now I have an excuse to buy one...

I'm not an Apple Fanboy. But you have to give credit where it's due. From being browbeaten into a mere 2-3% PC market share several years ago, Apple has parlayed its expertise in "consumer computing" into astounding success. I expect the iPad to continue that success.

Digital Independence Takes A Step Closer...

In 2007, it became clear to me that access to technology - especially computers and Internet connectivity - is critical to the future of reading.

There's no question now that if reading does have a future - and it must - then that future is digital. We spent 550 years since Gutenberg developing a complex ecosystem in which people wrote content, which was then turned into dirty marks on shredded trees and distributed to the people who read it.

It's hard to realize that, against this 550 years of history, the Internet went mainstream only about 15 years ago. So we're really only at the very beginning of creating a new ecosystem which will replace the "Gutenberg" ecosystem.

That's why we're having all the thrash, controversy, legal action etc. around Intellectual Property, patents and so on. We forget it took developments like the international signing of the Berne Convention (spearheaded by French author Victor Hugo - which I wrote about in an earlier post) before authors' and publishers' rights were truly recognized and protected.

One of the key issues moving forward is: If digital technology is truly to replace paper, then how do we make sure that everyone has access to it?

We're going through changes on a historic and global scale. I felt we needed a beacon to illuminate a long-term goal to which we could all aspire. And that was why in 2007 I wrote the Digital Declaration of Independence which always appears at the head of every post on this blog:

We hold this truth to be self-evident: That every human has an equal and unalienable right to the means to create, distribute and consume information to realize their full potential for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness - regardless of the country they live in, their gender, beliefs, racial origin, language or any impairments they may have.

I took as my model the US Declaration of Independence. It wasn't a goal which would be reached in just a few years, but was truly long-term. After all, the 1776 Declaration stated that all men (!) were created free and equal, with certain inalienable rights. But it took more than 200 years before the United States could elect a black President, and it could take a while yet before we see a woman President (unless Sarah Palin performs a miracle - in which case I'm heading back to Europe :-))

Although it is a long-term goal, there are at least some signs that some governments are beginning to realize the importance of universal high-speed access to the Internet.

CNN reported last month that Finland became the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right. The move by Finland is aimed at bringing Web access to rural areas, where access has been limited.

According to CNN:

"Starting in July, telecommunication companies in the northern European nation will be required to provide all 5.2 million citizens with Internet connection that runs at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second.

The one-megabit mandate, however, is simply an intermediary step, said Laura Vilkkonen, the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

The country is aiming for speeds that are 100 times faster -- 100 megabit per second -- for all by 2015.

"We think it's something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection," Vilkkonen said.

"Universal service is every citizen's subjective right," Vilkkonen said.

CNN reported that the United Nations is making a big push to deem Internet access a human right, and in June, France's highest court declared such access a human right. But Finland goes a step further by legally mandating speed.

The news network also pointed out that the United States is the only industrialized nation without a national policy to promote high-speed broadband, according to a study released in August by the Communications Workers of America, the country's largest media union.

Forty-six percent of rural households do not subscribe to broadband, and usage varies based on income, the study found.

In February, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is expected to submit a national plan to Congress. The FCC says that expanding service will require subsidies and investment of as much as $350 billion -- much higher than the $7.2 billion President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package has set aside for the task.

There's a long way to go. But at least there are the first signs of movement towards the digital future...

What Does Amazon Have Against Europe? Or Is Kindle Just A Digital Stalking-Horse?

...but not in Europe!

There's something strange going on with Amazon's Kindle eBook Reader - and also with the Kindle app for Apple's iPhone...

It's going on for two years now since Amazon first launched the Kindle and really cranked up the interest in eBooks. It was understandable that Amazon should launch the device first in the USA only, to gauge interest and see whether there really was a market.

It was a little strange that Kindle didn't also launch in the UK at the same time. As a Brit, I'm well aware that British English and US English are not quite the same - but they're near enough as makes no difference once you've made it past color/colour, neighbor/neighbour and so on. I mean, there are really no barriers to Brits reading books formatted in US English - so why not take advantage of a second ready-made market?

Amazon UK won't sell you a Kindle, though. And it doesn't sell Kindle books either. My FB friend Iain Rae Lennox, who lives in Glasgow, has been desperate to get his hands on one ever since they shipped.

Iain's an Apple iPhone user. Apple sells its wildly-popular phone in Europe, of course. So he was overjoyed when the new Kindle app was announced. He'd be able to use his iPhone as an eBook reader - or so he thought.

Trouble is, Apple's iPhone app store in the UK doesn't sell the Kindle reader. And he still can't buy Kindle books in Britain.

So what's going on? I'm sure Amazon wouldn't tell me if I asked. But perhaps one of the better-known tech journalists will pick this up.

But here's my theory. Copyright enforcement is much more rigidly enforced in Europe than in the USA. Google has hit this problem with its book digitization, and it's clear that Europe will not roll over and accept what Google's done here in the USA - even if the US courts eventually do.

I think Amazon sees the whole eBook copyright issue in Europe as a can of worms it really doesn't want to open right now.

As Steve Jobs pointed out earlier this week, Amazon's not sharing its Kindle sales figures - although I do recall seeing figures on the increasing proportion of Amazon's overall book sales going to the Kindle.

Could it be that Amazon doesn't really care about the success or failure of the Kindle device itself, and that's its only a stalking-horse to ramp up the number of digital book titles out there? I'm sure that's where Amazon makes its money - not on the Kindle hardware. If I'm any yardstick, I've already spent twice as much money on books as I spent on the device (at least as I would have spent if I hadn't drowned one and lost one :-()

If there were lots of eBook readers out there, and they all read Amazon's Kindle format, would Amazon care? I don't think so.

Anyway, I'll be watching Europe closely to see when the Kindle and the iPhone app actually make it into the hands of customers...

En France? Mais Non!

Homo Africanus: Time To Admit That We're ALL Africans?

How humans left Africa and populated our world. Map reproduced from The Human Story © 2004 by James C. Davis (published by Harper Collins)

In the course of all the research I have done into "Reading", it became obvious that "Reading and Writing" were "learned activities" which were built on top of the human visual perception system, and especially the way it works in the environment in which it developed - the wild.

Over the past few decades, researchers have answered the mysteries of where the human race came from, and how we managed to spread across the entire globe. Interestingly, geneticists such as Spencer Wells and others have used DNA tracing to confirm earlier theories.

Humans came out of Africa only about 160,000 years ago, and spread across the face of the world in the manner shown in the map at the top of this post. DNA tracing has confirmed the "branching" shown in the map (for more detail, read Wells' excellent book The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey).

With our typical human arrogance, when we first began to research human origins we called ourselves Homo sapiens, or Wise Men, to distinguish modern man from ancestors such as Homo erectus (Upright Man), whom we replaced.

Human history has shown that we're really not that wise at all.

We all originated in Africa, but just as soon as different branches of humans began to develop external differences in response to their new environments (dark skin turning pale in colder climates to ensure we could absorb enough Vitamin D from the weaker sunlight, for instance), we began to seize on these as "racial differences", and use them as excuses for conquest, conflict and persecution.

We began to view those with a different "environmental adaptations" to our own as inferior. Later, we added cultural and religious criteria to our categories of discrimination.

It's a human tendency which has been well exploited by power-seekers, and the process is seen at its starkest in the genocidal measures instigated by Nazi Germany in the years leading up to and including the Second World War.

First, begin a campaign to stir up feelings against an identifiable group with visible "racial differences" (Jews, most notably). Gradually step up the racist hate campaign until you can get your target audience to accept the notion that a particular racial group is somehow "sub-human". Once you have done that, you can treat them in the same horrible ways you treat animals. (a whole other topic...)

From that point on, as the Nazis proved, genocide is a simple matter of logistics - IBM punch cards, brutal "herders", railway timetables, and mercilessly efficient slaughterhouses for humans.

It's easy to point the finger at Nazi Germany. But the British settlers who landed on the island of Tasmania off Australia in the 18th Century were no better; they embarked on a successful campaign to exterminate the native Tasmanians, who were still living in the Stone Age (called The Black Wars).

The "we're superior - they're inferior!" rationale was used to build the British Empire, by Japan to enslave Korea and Manchuria, and so on - the list of examples is both exhaustive and depressing, down through the millenia and including both Ancient Greece and (especially )Rome.

The lamentable history of black slavery and discrimination in many different parts of the world (including the USA, of course) is another stark example.

Racial discrimination is still going on in many parts of the world today.

I know this is a simplistic step - and it can't possibly make racism and racism persecution go away by itself - but don't you think it would be at least making a start to get rid of the term, Homo sapiens, and replace it with Homo Africanus?

Web Typography Takes A Big Step Forward With Stéphane Curzi's Baseline

Stéphane Curzi's Baseline website

The noise-to-signal ratio on FaceBook is pretty high, but it's worth keeping up. Once in a while a real gem arrives, something you might otherwise have missed.

Earlier this week, Jackie Goldberg in LA shared a link to a project by Montreal-based designer Stéphane Curzi using baseline text alignment on the Web.

It's very impressive. This is the nicest-looking typography I've seen on the Web using HTML and CSS, because it has the consistency only an underlying grid can provide. Most websites you see - even if the designer has tried to take pains with the typography - somehow still end up looking as if they're missing something. What's missing is typographic harmony, which can be achieved only by integrating all the type on the page - headings, captions, body text, etc. - using matching grid units.

Take a look at the page below. Notice how stable and harmonious it seems (look at the website to get the true picture).

The underlying grid creates harmony. Baselines are aligned between columns, and headings are harmonically spaced from the text.

Stéphane has created a download on his site so you can go and get all the CSS, Javascript etc. and start experimenting for yourself. I'm looking forward to seeing what others can do by building on top of this great work. There are both PC and MacOSX versions, and the code will work with most browsers (but not IE6).

So far, it doesn't work with the CSS3 multicolumn attributes. But I'm hoping someone can figure this out. Stéphane's made his work free under Creative Commons. All you have to do is give him a credit.

It ought to work with any font, just by editing the CSS.

Exciting!