Election 2010 Predictions

My fearless, just-before-the-polls-close election predictions (which, if they come true, I will gleefully link back to in the future... if they don't, this post will fade into oblivion, never to be spoken of again - like any of you are going to remember this in two years):

Voters, angered by the state of the economy and frustrated with the failure of the Democrats to make it better despite controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, will hand the Republicans a sweeping victory in the election, including a majority in the House.

The leaders of the Republican party will misinterpret the victory as an approval of their policies rather than a rebuke of Congress' behavior in general (including theirs), and will tack to the right instead of the center. The leaders of the Democratic party will likewise misinterpret the loss as a failure to understand their policies rather than recognizing that voters understand and simply disapprove, leading them to tack to the left instead of the center. The White House will view the losses as voter frustration borne of misunderstanding and ignorance, and dismiss the significance of the message entirely. Any attempt at bi-partisanship will be abandoned. With Congress thus deadlocked, neither party will be able to enact any meaningful legislation for the next few years.

Suddenly freed from interference by either side, the economy, the housing market, and unemployment will gradually improve on their own. No dramatic recovery, just a slow, steady climb.

In 2012, the Republicans will claim that the recovery is entirely their doing, and that the Democrats would have kept the country mired in recession if it hadn't been for them. The Democrats, on the other hand, will claim that the Republicans short-circuited the swift recovery they would have achieved, and that we'd all be better off if they had stayed in control. Both will be incorrect.

With the economy's recovery, voters will lose much of their anger, but will remain annoyed by the partisanship and arrogance of both parties. As a result, the Tea Party will retain its influence in particular races where both major party candidates are drastically out of sync with popular opinion, but will not develop into a viable third party.

President Obama, having been unsuccessful in passing any major legislation in the second half of his term will base his re-election run on claiming credit for the economic recovery but will ultimately lose in the Democratic Primary to a more liberal candidate who better represents the core of the party's supporters following the leftward tack after the midterm elections. The Republicans will nominate an ultra-conservative candidate in keeping with their belief that the voters rejected liberal ideals in the midterm elections. Voters in general will truly like neither, but will hold their nose and vote for the less offensive candidate.

Agree? Disagree? Reasoned Discourse is welcomed...

New Hacker Hardware

(And that's hacker as in "guy who likes to tinker with things", not "moron who attacks websites"... we're taking it back!)

So there's some sweet new hardware on the block from iobridge, the idea being to web-enable your project. (You do have a project, don't you?) Looks like it can work with sensors (light, temperature, moisture), control various outputs (servos, motors, remote controls) and feed the output to a variety of different front ends (website, blog, twitter, email).

My takeaway is that it's one more building block in the toolkit, and a novel one at that. Yes, I could slap an Ethernet shield on an Arduino and put it on a network, but... if the iobridge is going to solve all of the networking issues (around/through any firewalls or other impediments) and make the data available on the Web, not just on a network (I don't have to own the server, I don't have to program the interface, I just drag and drop the widget), and if I don't have to code the protocols into the Arduino...

The way I see it, the iobridge complements the Arduino... let the Arduino do what it does well (logic, smarts, hardware control, etc) and let the iobridge deal with the interface to the world.

Seems to me the iobridge could be a big help for "hardware geeks"... I'll build complex robotics all day, but ask me to open a TCP socket and I start to twitch. I can't be the only one...

Long story short, I can't wait to get my hands on one!

(P.S. Bonus points for anyone catching the movie reference)

Libraries - Close, But...

Had a conversation a few nights ago with a friend who's discovered the joys of his local library. Apparently they've joined the digital age and it's now incredibly easy to search the catalog and place holds online, so all you have to do is stop by periodically and pick up your stack of books. Seemed pretty useful, so I decided to take a look. Sure enough, my county library has the same kind of deal - search the catalog online, place holds, etc. Only problem is, out of 30 books on my Amazon wishlist, they have a grand total of 2...

"Strange", I thought to myself... "Do I just have a really odd taste in books? Is my local library terrible? What's the deal?"

Then it struck me...

I went back and checked the last 10 or 15 books I've ordered on the Kindle... sure enough, at least a 90% hit rate at the library.

So what we have is this: The library and the Kindle seem to have highly intersecting sets of books available. Makes sense - only the most popular X% of books get the investment necessary to make them available in either format (the development of a Kindle version or the purchase of multiple copies of said book for the library system).

What this means, however, is that the usefulness of the library drops by several orders of magnitude for me. Let's take a look at the Pros and Cons (again, with the caveat "for me"... your mileage may vary):

Kindle Pros:
Selection - At least one or two orders of magnitude wider than the library
Timing - Books are available instantly, no waiting 3-4 days for the hold to process
Location - Books come to me, I don't have to go pick them up or take them back
Size - No matter how many books I request/buy/carry, it never gets any bigger
Longevity - I don't have a specified timeframe in which I *have to* read a particular book, and I don't have to give it back when I'm done

Library Pros:
Price - It's free! (Oh, unless you take your books back late, in which case it could end up costing more than just buying the book)

Now, I can already hear the cries of "Wasteful Capitalist Overconsumer!!!" Remember the caveat? "For me".

For me, the pros of the Kindle provide value. Value I'm willing to pay for. Sure the library is free, that's what it's there for! But if there's a more convenient solution that allows me to read more, to read more often, and to read more easily, I'm willing to spend a few bucks for that.

It's great to see libraries entering the Digital Age. I'm willing to concede that the local library is probably approaching Amazon itself in usefulness, and if it weren't for the Kindle, I'd probably give it a shot. Unfortunately for the library system, from where I sit they're just catching up to several years ago, and once again the technology world has passed them by...

The Death of Quality?

Normally Jay and I are fairly in sync. However, I just can't agree with this one.

Jay works hard to earn a living. He spends some of that hard-earned cash on things like webhosting, storage space, and a spiffy new iPhone. When these devices/services fail, Jay takes it in stride with Zen-like calm, and even comments:

"The important realization is that everyone and everything disappoints in some way… this is life after all. We’re usually lucky in that failures are rarely life threatening or permanent."

What's more, Jay dutifully shoulders the burden of working to resolve the issues:

"It’s rough, but manageable. It just means time working through various support queues."

Is this what the world has come to? Are we destined to forever more accept not only cheap build quality, sloppy coding, and shoddy quality assurance, but also poor customer service?

Don't get me wrong... I don't expect every product or service I shell out money for to be perfect right out of the gate. This is the real world after all... mistakes happen. Products have problems, software has bugs, services have glitches. I get that. But there's a difference between being mentally prepared to deal with setbacks & issues and lowering the bar to the point where said issues are par for the course and nobody is held accountable.

I sell for a living. The products I sell are rarely perfect from Day One. That doesn't mean I don't hurt every time a customer calls me with a problem.

That doesn't mean I've learned to accept that "there are always issues... get over it". I don't.

I work hard every day to provide my customers with a quality product and a quality experience. When that goes wrong, I don't sleep well at night. I know Jay feels the same way. While the results may vary, the goal must always be excellence. Anything less and we're selling ourselves, our companies, and our customers short. Is it wrong to expect the same from the companies we do business with in our personal lives?

Thoughts on Integration & Convergence

Interesting thoughts from Jay regarding integration of devices:

Software Above the Level of a Single Device

I'm of a similar mind to Jay on this one, but I take it a step further. I want my devices, and possibly more importantly, my services, to integrate with one another. To me, a device should simply be a conduit to access "my data". And when I say "my data", I don't necessarily mean data that I've created. Rather, I mean "any information that I want access to at any given point in time". That data could consist of my calendar, my address book, my bookmarks, the blogs I read, YouTube videos, Wikipedia entries, etc. Part of the beauty of the Web is that any information posted by anyone, anywhere in the world, instantly becomes for all intents and purposes "mine".

I'm skeptical of devices or services that try to be everything to everyone. Part of this can be seen in my choice of online apps. I don't particularly want a single app that's a pretty good calendar, a decent address book, and an okay RSS reader. I'd rather have a great calendar and a great RSS reader even if they're separate apps. I don't want to manage my calendar from my RSS reader... my calendar does that just fine, thanks. I don't want to read my RSS feeds from my calendar... I've got an RSS reader that does a much better job of that. However, if these services integrate with one another (for example, if my ToDo list on Basecamp can put entries on my calendar in 30Boxes, which sends reminder emails to my GMail account), so much the better.

Going back to the device portion of the equation, I'm in agreement that I don't want my PC to manage my devices. I hate ITunes and won't use it... if I could download songs on the go directly to my IPod, I'd be a much happier camper. Along these lines, one of the selling points of the Amazon Kindle for me was that I *don't* need to connect it to my PC. *That's* the sort of integration I'm looking for... I've got an Amazon account which I can use to buy books. Whether they're paper or electronic, whether I buy them from my PC, from the Kindle, from my Blackberry, or from Jay's IPhone is irrelevant. I want a book. In this case, my devices and the service work together to make that book available to me anywhere, anytime and make the transaction almost transparent.

If it works for books, why not music? Ipod with built in 3G wireless and Wi-Fi anyone? How about movies? The Slingbox is a good start... I can watch the cable that I've already paid for from the TV in my living room, from my PC in a hotel room in Dallas, or (if I had the right wireless provider) from my phone in an airport lounge. But what if the movie I want isn't on TV right now? I haven't tried Netflix downloads or Amazon Unbox, but they may fill that gap.

And how about non-media content? Wikipedia, blogs, my calendar, to-do, list, etc? Part of the beauty of having all of this information online is that as more and more devices become wireless-enabled, we get closer to any info, anywhere, anytime.

Interestingly enough, by virtue of my job I'm heavily involved in the back-end infrastructure that will enable all of this integration and "always-on" connectivity. One of the hot topics in the telecom industry right now is Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC). Essentially, it's a movement to enable devices to use whatever connectivity is available at the lowest cost at any given time... landline, Wi-Fi, wireless, whatever. An extension of this is the development of femtocells... using small, ultra-low cost access points to provide backhaul for wireless signals, increasing capacity and coverage of wireless networks while simultaneously lowering costs.

A cell-site in every attic? Devices that can access any network that can see? Services that are available from any device, anywhere? That's my utopia...

Currently listening to:
Fidelity - Regina Spektor



Currently Reading:
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell - John Crawford

Recently Read:
Blackwater - Jeremy Scahill



Review:
OK, so I have to be honest. I only made it halfway through this one before I was so filled with hate and rage that I wanted to take it out back and burn it. I picked it up expecting a history of what I think is a cool and interesting private military training organization. Boy, was I suckered! Now I know I'm not the most liberal in my politics, but really, this was too much. It's basically a liberal hate-fest stringing together of semi-related facts that goes like this, "The guy who started Blackwater is a radical Christian - so is Dick Cheney - Dick Cheney was with Halliburton - Halliburton hired Blackwater to work in Iraq... therefore, Blackwater is George W Bush's personal Praetorian Guard which he's sent on a mission to destroy the Muslim world and anyone who gets in their way." Huh!? I can't believe I willingly gave this guy my money, nor can I describe the burning hatred I have for him for taking it...