Shortly after getting my float plane endorsement,  I had the opportunity to attend a one-day Egress training session hosted by Bryan Webster near Ottawa to answer these questions and more.

I had a vague idea of what to expect before attending this training. But after going through the day, I can only recommend this to any private pilot (even if you don’t fly on a float plane) as well as for those who fly a lot in GA airplanes and are sometimes over water.

The day starts with the equivalent of ground school, to learn the basics, understand the theory. We’ve spent some time discussing the importance of egress training, and the high-level view of what to do. Bryan took the time to go through the statistics related to water ditching… not a pretty picture. One of the fun and very interesting part of this part was when we all had an opportunity to put on a yellow un-inflated life vest and did pull the red trigger. I actually was one of the “lucky ones” who had a working model, and it is getting really cold very quickly when all that air is let out of the tiny bottle that quickly.

Following the theory came the practice. No, we didn’t go flying, but we did jump in the pool. Bryan has developed multiple “torture boxes” to get as real an experience as possible when completely disoriented. I for example learned that all single engine piston Cessna windows are the same size, and that I easily fit through them.

The first exercise is actually outside of the water and teaches you that you should take the habit to have a tactile representation of the cockpit and not only a visual one. If you are upside down and immerged in salt or muddy water, your eyes are really not the most useful thing, and knowing how the exist handle feels and how to get there by following things you can feel will be a life-saver.

Then comes the water. First thing was to have some first hand experience with the life-vests. As we all pulled the red trigger earlier, we had to blow in the tubes to inflate the vests. Luckily for us, the pool was really warm. Following a try to swim with the life vests inflated, we also learned more about how to get on a raft / life boat… a lot harder than they make you  believe in movies, especially as they don’t always inflate on the right side and you might have to flip them over.

Then comes the torture box… or should I say the “representation of a GA airplane cockpit”. You volunteer to go and sit in a small box that will be flipped on its head while under water, and your mission, if you want to survive, is to get out of it before you run out of air in your lungs. OK, Bryan is there to monitor that it never gets to that stage, but you still will get a lot of water up your nose going through this exercise. Somehow, looking at the first picture above, I seem to enjoy the experience. I actually did go through the torture box multiple times to make sure things become as automatic as possible. Just be aware, Bryan loves increasing the number of spins as your experience in getting out increases, to make sure you are even more disoriented than last time.

I make it sound horrible, and the nose-drinking of pool water sure isn’t fun, but learning how to get of that box in a safe and controlled environment is absolutely amazing. You have an opportunity to learn the right reaction to have, to teach your instincts what to do in case this was for real one day (which I hope will never will).

We continues the session with another larger model of the torture machine, to learn different types of exists while under water. And for those with a cold, the GA airplane torture box is an amazing way to get your sinuses cleaned multiple times.

At the end of the day, you will have learned how you would feel in case you really had to ditch in water, you have a good sense of how disoriented you are under water after stopping upside down, and will make sure to never let go the frame of the plane / a fixed part, know without looking the configuration of your plane and how to open that window to get out as quickly as possible. You will also make sure to keep your seatbelt fasten as long as possible, e.g. until the exit window / door is open, so that you keep a fixed frame of reference with your mental representation of the cockpit.

You will find additional videos on the dunkyou.com web site and will find all the details about this course, its upcoming locations and much more. Looking back at this course and at my recent sea-plane rating, going through egress training should almost be mandatory for anyone flying float-planes regularly, and it should be highly recommended to GA pilots of all experiences (the Rockcliffe Flying Club members communication is how I learned about this course in the first place, thank you Jean). If you are a passenger frequently flying over water, you should also seriously consider this lesson.

Thank you Bryan for everything I learned. Let’s hope I will never need it.

And outside of WebOS (lucky that I didn’t go down that path), I’ve been intrigued by the Windows Phone 7 OS since its launch just over a year ago. But the first iteration of the OS was too rough around the edges, and the lack of great hardware got me to stick with iOS until now at least. During a recent trip to the UK, I decided to get myself a Nokia Lumia 800 running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) and I have to say that outside of a few little details (see below), I am really impressed by this device!

Let’s start with the hardware. I always loved Nokia hardware. And while the N900 was a little too bulky to my taste, the Lumia 800 feels really great in the hand. The weight is just right (for me at least) and the 3.7’’ screen size is exactly what I want. The industrial design / rounded shape of the phone has a very nice touch to it, and having all the connectors hidden is really nice, even if I am expecting the flip to the micro-USB port to break soon (so far so good). One the downside of the hardware, the Lumia only comes in a 16Gb model, but so far, it isn’t a big problem for me.

The 8 megapixels camera produces really good photos based on the little testing I have done. It isn’t a DSLR, but for a mobile phone, it does the trick really well to take pictures of white-boards at the end of meetings and the 720p videos are of good quality. Having a physical camera button that can be used at any time is really nice. I know some sites have done detailed comparison with other mobile phones, and you should look into these if the camera is the most important thing for you.

The one negative of the hardware is the lack of “ecosystem” around the device for in-car integration (or external loudspeakers, …) that is available around the iPod/iPhone dock connector. Not a deal-breaker, and it’s the same for any non-Apple based device I guess.

But what makes this device one of the few mobile phones that can really compete with an iPhone in my mind is the combination of the beautiful hardware with the really innovative and fluid UI from Microsoft’s mobile OS.

Metro, the user interface used by Windows Phone 7.x and that will also be the basis for Windows 8 when it comes out next year, is really enjoyable to use. Its task-centric approach compared to an app-centric world for iOS (and Android from what I can tell) is very refreshing. While there are many apps available for Windows Phone, the great integration of the main components with the key things you do on the phone anyway covers the majority of your needs out of the box. And as Harry McCracken wrote in a recent review: “I not only lived to tell the tale, but enjoyed doing so. In most respects that matter, Microsoft’s mobile software is terrific.”

One example of how this task-based WP7 OS user experience is different from iOS: if you want to contact a friend, you go to the People hub and select their name, without having to know if their details are in an Outlook, Office365, Facebook or LinkedIn contact. It’s one place to see your contact, get the recent status updates on the various social networks and to give them a call (it is a phone after all). On other devices, you would have to go to the built-in Contacts app, or to the Facebook app, or to the LinkedIn app… to find the right place. Yes, you will most often go to the right place for your common contacts, but it is very nice to have one hub to go.

The pictures hub works in a similar way, showing your camera roll, your synced photos as well as the Facebook albums from your friends. The messaging hub integrates SMS with Facebook chat and MSN Messenger all in one place. And the “me” hub centralizes your online profiles and ways to post status updates / check-ins in one place. I guess you get the idea

The web browser is a mobile version of Internet Explorer 9. While it isn’t compatible with all the latest mobile-OS frameworks which require a webkit browser, e.g. Sencha Touch based mobile apps won’t work for now, the rendering engine is fast and fluid, and the way multiple tabs are implemented is working well for me.

When it comes to Office compatibility, Microsoft has a great implementation (as expected) that integrates really well with SkyDrive, Office 365 as well as with SharePoint servers, and is compatible with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Sadly no WordPerfect support out of the box, but that would have been a huge surprise from Microsoft

But where Windows Phone 7.5 really shines compared to iOS is regarding Exchange / ActiveSync integration (including Office 365). You can combine multiple Exchange accounts into one consolidated inbox or keep them separate, which isn’t possible on iOS. The email functionality is really nice on WP7.5 and includes a conversation view very similar to the one in Outlook 2010, integrating the full discussion from all the folders and not only from the inbox. The only strange behaviour so far is that while I have configured my phone to use push-email, there doesn’t seem to be an automatic sync happening when you use your email client on the phone. Here is an example: I get a new mail. I read it on the phone (e.g. it gets marked as read) and then move it to an archive folder. That change will take a while to replicate on the server, but I can force the sync by a simple press of a button (I guess that this reduces the bandwidth used). But the really annoying thing is that the message in my archive folder will be marked as unread on the server!

On the subject of Exchange integration, the calendar and especially the group scheduling features are miles ahead of iOS. You can accept a meeting tentatively, propose a new time, include a comment with your answer, forward a meeting to someone else, and much more. The one thing not supported by WP7.5 is the ability to subscribe to iCal calendars (I want my TripIt calendar on my phone for example). The work-around here is to add the iCal calendars to your Windows Live Calendar, and they will then get automatically synchronized with the phone.

Throughout the phone, you can see that Microsoft has followed the rule that “perfection is in the detail” and that they went the extra mile to add little touches here and there. For example, when you scroll through a web page “almost” vertically, the phone will know that you actually wanted to be “really” vertically and will constraint the scrolling. Another example is how the spacing changes when you come at the bottom of a list, giving and elastic feel to the experience. One more example is when your phone is in your pocket with the screen off and a reminder rings. When you pull it out of your pocket, the phone turns on in locked screen mode with the reminder readily visible. No need to press the power button. This attention to details really makes the Nokia / Windows Phone combination a highly enjoyable experience.

There are three buttons on the front of every Windows Phone device. While the Windows logo gets you to the home / start screen, it will start the voice command feature if you keep it pressed. But not everything is perfect, and the voice recognition on the device is far from it. The idea is great (and Apple was able to implement it very well with its Siri acquisition from what I understand), but Microsoft still has a lot of work ahead to make this even close to usable.

To the right of the Windows logo is the search button, which opens Bing. One very nice touch there is that you can do an image search and there is built-in support for QR Codes / Microsoft Tags without the need for an extra app (again, task centric). But at the same time, the text scanning feature is far from perfect (or even usable), at least for the small tests I have done so far.

On the left of the Windows logo is the back button. Apple implemented something similar with 4 finger gestures, but this button is a welcome addition. Most apps / hubs us it extensively to come back from the setting for example (they are accessible from within the app, not hidden in the control panel). It is therefore very quick to go back a step if you tapped the wrong button, and by keeping the back button pressed, you will see the list of previously launched apps / hubs side by side for quick access.

The one hub I didn’t mention yet is the ”Music & Video” one. It is another example of a single place to access all your media. Overall this works well, but (yes, another but) I am really missing the 2x feature to listen to podcasts. I do listen to a lot of podcasts, and not having the option to go through them at double-speed in the car is really preventing me from using my Lumia for podcast listening. My only solution for now was to get a small iPod Nano for the car. This also means that I am unable to move away from iTunes, which is a shame.

There are tons of apps for Windows Phone 7.5 including a PDF reader from Adobe, a Kindle reader from Amazon, an Evernote client, a Netflix app, TripIt, RSS readers, and many more. The Nokia apps built-in are really nice as well, including one for off-line turn-by-turn navigation at no extra cost. But two are missing for me: Audible (rumoured for the 1st half of 2012) and Skype (shouldn’t be too hard now that this is a Microsoft product).

In summary, I am really thrilled by the Nokia Lumia 800 and its combination between the hardware and the software. It is impressive how mature a 1 year old operating system is, and while ahead on many aspects compared to the 5 year-old iOS 5 level, it still has a few things missing. If you are a heavy Outlook / Exchange user, this is well worth considering (I guess a Google Apps user will have a better experience with an Android Phones). If you want to get a taste of the user experience, try the Windows Phone simulator on a mobile webkit based browser. I will be using the Lumia for a while and will most certainly be selling my iPhone 4 shortly.

Update 19.12.2011: Just wanted to add on more piece of comparison. The Nokia Lumia 800 (16Gb) unlocked phone in the UK  is GBP 399, while the iPhone 4S (16Gb) unlocked is listed at GBP 499 on Apple’s site. For those outside of the UK, keep in mind that the VAT rate is 20%, which is included in the price quoted above.

Since earning my wings, I’ve continued with additional ratings such as the Night rating and VFR OTT one. But the one I recently finished certainly was the one that opened my aeronautical knowledge to a whole new topic: floatplane endorsement!

As any pilot knows, the PPL is considered a license to learn. In order to keep true with that tradition, I continued my training by adding the Night Rating (another 5 hours instrument time plus 10 hours of night time flying, including a 2 hour cross-country) as well as the VFR Over The Top (VFR OTT) that adds yet another 5 hours of instrument training.

While I am considering doing my IFR rating in a not too distant future, I had the opportunity to get my wings wet outside of the clouds by getting a floatplane endorsement with Lake Country Airways as they do offer training out of Constance Lake near Ottawa over the summer months. All I can say: What a blast!

I wasn’t sure what to expect before my first floatplane experience, but with that many lakes in Ontario, it sounded like a great and fun opportunity that is relatively quick to do. All you need is a total of 7 hours of floatplane experience with at least 5 solo take-offs and landings (also called splash & go if I understand it well). I did my rating with the Cessna 172 on floats below:

The handling of the C-172 is very similar in the air compared to a land plane. The two floats below have an effect on drag though, e.g. your glide ratio is even worst than the wheel version (getting a lot closer to the one of a brick) and your cruise speed is affected, but that’s about it. It’s in the water that things become really interesting.

First, the walk-around is quite different… try to check the wing-tip that is well out in the water! You also need to thoroughly checks for water inside the floats and make sure you aren’t taking extra weight that adds no value (e.g. not fuel or passengers & their stuff) as these floats are only mean to stay out of the water when you land. Refueling can be a little more challenging, but this really adds to the “experience”.

Taxiing is when things become really interesting especially when, like myself, you have almost no boating experience. First things first, while you are on the water, you are considered to be a boat and therefore need to get a “Pleasure Craft Operator Card”, e.g. a boater’s license. Yes, another exam / license to get, but the great news is that the complexity is at about the same level as the one of the PSTAR except that you won’t get the question pool ahead. All it takes is 3 hours of online training, a 75% success rate at the online 50 (overall very easy) question multiple-choice exam and you’re done. Really glad that it is a lot harder to get a pilot’s license as it really made me feel unsafe while on the water.

Once you have your boater’s license, you can start having fun taking off and landing on water, experiencing the full pleasure of floatplanes. I won’t go into the details of the how and the what, but I would recommend you practice your soft-field technique ahead of time (with a much stronger deceleration than the icy runway we sometimes get in the winter).

One thing that took me a little while was flying low… during my PPL, I heard over and over again from the instructors and ground school teachers that the higher you are the better. Logical when you need to find a place to land after an engine failure. But with floatplanes, you might need to get very close to the tree-tops in order to land on a small lake.

To give you an idea of how it feels, here is a small video montage of shots I took while doing my training.

I ended up flying over 5 hours on a Saturday to get my rating done before the end of the season and was really exhausted at the end. Thank you Antwan for getting me through the process and letting me loose for my solo splash & goes.

I still need to build more hours (7 hours isn’t enough in my opinion) so that I can feel comfortable renting a floatplane and discovering the beautiful lakes around the Ottawa region and beyond. The other thing I did since adding the letter S to the end of the SEL ones in the blue book is an Egress Training. More on this in another blog post.

Next step: I will most certainly get my tail-wheel endorsement and then will look at getting back to ground school for the IFR rating.

For those who read my (very) infrequent posts, you know that I have been looking for solutions to reduce the numbers of trees needing to be cut every year in order to print all the documents I read (mainly in PDF and MS Office / WordPerfect formats). I also travel a lot, and have tried different solutions to reduce the weight of the books in my carry-on luggage (the Sony eBook reader does a good job for eBooks, but isn’t that great for PDFs). Doing email and browsing the web on the go are secondary (or so I thought) as I have an iPhone and a Sony Vaio laptop with me (and tethering works just fine in Canada with my data plan, sorry US friends).

My first experience with the iPad was for a few hours one evening shortly after it got released (and with no apps optimized for it to speak of). I really was not that impressed after this quick test. The device felt heavy after a short usage period, and the apps I had at that time didn’t provide a must-have type experience… A large iPod touch was my verdict when I gave it back, something I would not purchase.

But as for the other iOS devices, what really makes the iPad interesting are the apps. Noticing that I had more and more iPad compatible apps as my iPhone ones got updated, I wanted to give this device a new spin, this time for a longer period. I was able to borrow a WiFi-only model for my recent trip in Europe (3G would remain off anyway due to roaming charges) and I loaded it up with all my apps / information. I used iOS 3.2 for that trip, and used the 4.2.1 version of the OS for a few more days after its release (almost feels like a new device as Steve would say).

From a hardware perspective, there is a big debate if the tablet devices should be 5, 7, 10 or any other inches size. Considering that I already have an internet phone in my pocket (there was a great article about Symbian OS and why modern devices should not be called smart phones on TechCrunch recently), and that I really look for a content consuming device that I can have in my bag when I travel, I am happy with the 10” form-factor. The iPad size therefore is really well suited and is perfect for letter / A4 documents reading (smaller would require some reformatting). And when it comes to the weight of the device, yes it feels heavy, but you actually get used to it quickly. Battery life is great, and as long as you charge it once a day, as with any modern gizmo, you should be good to go (at least I am).

But not everything is perfect from a hardware perspective neither. First, why do you need a 10W USB charger, and why can’t the iPad charge over a normal USB connection? Really annoying when you travel. Yes, it might have taken a little longer to charge, but you cannot use a normal USB charger (or a laptop) to get juice to this device.

On the subject of hardware, the other big problem is that the iPad very quickly got old with the launch of the iPhone 4 and the latest iPod Touch, especially when it comes to the display resolution and the front-facing camera. I know there are many rumors that the iPad 2 will have a retina display (the name Apple chose for the high-DPI display used on the iPhone), and I really look forward to it. If this happens with v2, it will truly be a great device to read magazines and books on the screen. And having a front-facing camera will certainly be nice, but is not a must in my use-case.

I won’t spend too much time on the built-in apps as they are almost identical to the ones on the iPhone. Overall, Apple did a really nice job at leveraging the larger real-estate and optimizing the screen of the portrait vs. landscape mode. At the same time, why aren’t there calculator, weather or clock apps? I was hoping that these would make it in the iOS 4.2 update, but that is not the case. The one big negative with the built-in apps is that the iPad doesn’t support the concept of multiple users. Yes, I know, in the world of Apple, everyone in a household should have one of each, but seriously, would it be possible to select your username when you swipe to unlock, and then get access to your email, your calendar (or your Twitter if you have an app for that™). Perhaps with v2…

As mentioned, what makes the iPad such a great device is the amazing apps available. Instapaper (that I only started using recently) is really great to read long web articles, the Evernote app is cool (especially the offline mode for premium account holders), and Zinio is really nice to read a huge list of magazines. You can even subscribe to magazines with Zinio that you can only purchase individual copies on the iOS app. One example: Flying Mag has an iPad app where each issue is $2.99, but the Zinio subscription of the same magazine is under $13 for the year (12 issues)…

Watching videos (especially videocasts) and reading books / PDFs with iBooks is working really well. For those who recall one of my complain regarding improving eBook readers, the iBooks app actually tells you how many pages are left in the chapter you are currently reading… looks like Apple took the time to talk to people who actually read books like I do. And with DocumentsToGo supporting Dropbox and other online services for document syncing, you can read Office documents (and even edit / annotate them), PDFs and more on the go with ease (could DocsToGo add support for the WordPerfect format?). The only iPad optimized app really missing is the Remember the Milk iOS app, but it looks like Bob is hard at work eating bananas.

And this brings me to another of the improvement request for iPad 2: Enable apps to sync / download stuff in the background. I fully understand the policy set in place by Apple only to allow specific tasks to be done in the background in order to keep the battery life and user experience as unaffected as possible (Skype in the background in the iPhone is really horrible for battery life). I can also understand that there could be concerns about background data transfer over 3G (fewer and fewer people have unlimited 3G data plans)… but if my iPad / iPhone is connected to the power adapter and is on a WiFi network, why couldn’t Instapaper, Zinio and other content delivery applications such as The Economist app or even a podcast / videocast viewer apps download the latest stuff over night? The Kindle can do it with books, the Mail app can do it with emails… why can’t other apps do it (under conditions of external power and WiFi for example).

All in all, after two weeks of usage, I really like the iPad as a content consumption device. I even have a few ideas / concepts of iOS apps that I wasn’t able to find in the store, but I won’t share these in this public forum (if you are a serious developer and are interested, feel free to contact me). Will I buy one? I am really tempted, especially as Apple is doing their Black Friday promotion today. But with the next generation iPads expected for Q1 2011, I have decided that I will be waiting for v2, hoping that it will include a high-DPI display and a few other goodies before I make the jump.

Well, the laptop is now available in its standard form (the custom built ones will be available in about a week) and I decided to go on a field trip to the nearest Sony store to have a look at it. And after playing with the device in the store, I “borrowed” one for a few days before ordering the custom one (I was upfront about that with the sales guy at the store)… and I have to say, this is one impressive little high-end laptop.

I’ve been looking to replace my MacBook Air (the original model from two years ago)  for a few months and was really waiting for the i5/i7 generation of laptops to switch back to non Apple hardware (I have already switched back to Windows 7 as the primary operating system shortly after its launch). While I loved the size and weight of the MacBook Air, the form factor & design advantage does not seem to currently justify the price premium Apple is asking for their hardware. I will also add the disclaimer that at the time of blogging, Apple didn’t announce their i5/i7 models. Throughout this post, I will do some comparison with my existing 2 years old MacBook Air and will therefore not look at the performance (that just would not be fair).

Let’s start first with the screen resolution. The current generation (pre i5/i7) of MacBook 13” laptops (Pro and Air) have a screen resolution of 1280 x 800. Sony’s Vaio Z default resolution is at 1600 x 900 for the same display size. This means that the ratio is not 16:10, but 16:9 instead. In countries outside Canada, Sony also seems to have a version of the 13” display at 1920 x 1080 (in the US, this is only available part of the Signature Edition that is priced at $4,500… ouch). The interesting thing is that Windows is configured by default to have the display at 125%, which still gives large fonts. I always liked to have a high-resolution display and don’t mind small characters. I therefore changed the Win7 settings back to 100%. Once this was changed, I realized that going to 1920 x 1080 might actually make things unreadable (good thing I tested this, because the techno-geek in me thought that a higher resolution would be better ). Here is a comparison of 1280 x 800 vs 1600 x 900 screen estate:

Regarding the device size, I’ve taken a few pictures comparing the Vaio Z with a MacBook Air (in the form-factor that has been used for 2 years now and should get an update shortly based on Apple’s usual timelines). Keep in mind the the Vaio has a built in DVD Burner (Blu-Ray burner is an option) a Wireless On/Off switch (useful when you travel) and  following connectors: 3 USB, 1 VGA, 1 HDMI, 1 Express Card, 1 SD, 1 MemoryStick as well as Audio in and Audio out. The MacBook Air only has 1 USB, 1 Audio out (latest model support iPhone compatible headsets for the mic) and 1 display port (you need a cable to choose between VGA, DVI, …). This makes the size of the Vaio Z really impressive. The only thing I would comment is that the shell, while looking like it is aluminum, feels actually somewhat like plastic.

Even more impressive are the specs inside. In addition to the intel core i5 CPU (an i7 is available as an option), you can have up to 8Gb of RAM (2Gb max for the Air), and a Dual-SSD configuration (in Raid 0, with support for Quad-SSD from the controller) for up to 512 Gb of really really fast disk space (if you have a lot of money to spend). There are actually no configuration with traditional hard drives. And considering that the weight of the VPCZ1 isn’t noticeably different from the Air, this really makes the form factor Sony delivered with the Vaio Z an impressive one. The standard model I am currently trying out has the i5 520M at 2.40 GHz with 4Gb of RAM & 128 Gb of SSD space (actually 2 64Gb SSD drives), and comes with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Using it for a few hours, I am really impressed with the general speed and loading time (I am certain you can find detailed benchmarks on other sites).

Another thing on the hardware side that Sony has is what they call the “Dynamic Hybrid Graphics System”. Basically, they include both an intel graphics chipset and an nVidia GeForce GT 330M graphics card with 1Gb of VRAM. Even better, the Vaio is capable of automatically switching from one to the other (built-in slower but lower power graphics when on battery, dedicated faster graphics when plugged-in). You can also switch this yourself if you want.

There is a little thing I noticed with the form factor… for the first few minutes of using the keyboard, I had the impression that the spacing between the keys where slightly wider than what I am used to on the MacBook… but this feeling vanished after a few minutes of typing (this blog post is written with the Z on my lap with battery power, more on this later).

Another thing that I really appreciated with the Apple laptops is the noise the fan does, or should I say the lack of noise. Having played with an HP Touchsmart tx2 last year, I was a little concerned about another PC device that sounds like a jet airplane taking off on a short runway. Well, the Sony laptop is nothing the like. On battery and with normal usage, the fan noise on the Vaio Z is at about the same level as the one on my MacBook Air. And the impressive thing is that the bottom of the laptop is noticeably cooler than the Air.

From a battery perspective, the model I have been playing with has the standard battery. Sony claims up to 6.5 hours of life, which from the tests I have done so far will translate into a good 4 to 4.5 hours of continuous normal use on WiFi. There is also an option for a long-life battery with up to 10-11 hours of battery life according to the manufacturer (didn’t test it, but sure will order it for the custom configuration) which should keep the device going for flights across the Atlantic.

When considering a new laptop, I’ve been looking at two options: Either the Sony Vaio Z described here (actually its Custom version) or the Lenovo ThinkPad X201T, a 12” Tablet PC convertible device with an i5/i7 CPU. My dream configuration would be to have a touch-screen built into the Vaio Z (I don’t need the convertible aspect), but comparing the other specs, the Vaio Z wins my choice. And when compared to a MacBook Pro 13”  (pre core i5/i7 configuration), the Apple tax remains a good 10% for an similar configuration & lower screen resolution (assuming same pricing for the i5/i7 models from Apple which are bound to be release any day now). The one thing I will be missing from my Air (from what I can tell so far) is the multi-touch trackpad. (Update April 2, 2010: It actually seems that the trackpad supports at least some basic multi-touch gestures, but that they are disabled by default and can be turned on with the Synaptics drivers… to be confirmed)

All and all, it is now time to return the standard Vaio Z to the store, get a refund and place the order for the custom model. Looks like I will have a trans-pacific flight in April where I will put that little marvel of technology to good use.

Updage April 23, 2010: I’ve been traveling over the last two weeks with my Core i7 version of the Vaio Z and I have to say that this is one great little laptop. I also got the long life battery, which gave me a good 8 hours of life with some time to spare on board of a long-haul flight, including watching a 2 hour movie with the brightness to the max. I also love the screen resolution and the speed the SSD drives provide. And I really don’t miss the Apple trackpad that much in the end. All in all, I can only highly recommend it.

And what a great time it has been to go through the process. I earned my Private Pilot License (PPL) on January 15, 2010 in about 10 months and wanted to share the journey for those who might be interested in doing the same. While this post is based on the Canadian regulations, PPL licenses seem to be fairly unified around the world and the comments here might still be of interest for you.

First step first: Find a flight school. While you will get the same overall curriculum in all of them as the Transport Canada requirements are identical for everyone, take the time to look at the different ones available in your region and find out which one works best for you. In my case, I was looking for a place where I not only would get professional instruction, but also a place where I would have fun and enjoy spending time at. Selecting the people you will learn from is very important as you will be spending at least 17 hours with them in the plane (the legal minimum… it will be quite a few more hours in the end), plus quite a lot of time on the ground for school and briefings. I was also looking for a place where I could rent planes going forward for an hour, a day or a week once done with my formal training.

You certainly hear a lot about glass cockpit these days, and if you want to learn from the get-go with the latest and greatest in technology, then that will also have a price (if you can find a flight school in your region). I decided that I wanted to learn the traditional way (with the “six-pack” instruments), so that I know the basics first, just like I learned to drive a car with a stick, even if I know have one with an automatic transmission with GPS and on-board computer.

There are a few places in and around Ottawa, and I opted for the Rockcliffe Flying Club (RFC) based at the Rockcliffe airport (CYRO) next to the museum of aviation in Ottawa. I have to say that I don’t regret one second my choice. The instructors are really fantastic, the other club members are great to spend time with (the tagline of the club is “where friends come to fly” and you feel it from day one) and they have a a choice of Cessna 152 and 172 to rent (I did go for the 172 all the way as I am rather tall). As I found out later in my training there is an extra bonus. Because CYRO is an uncontrolled airport, you don’t have to wait for a clearance to get in the air (quite important as you pay by the hour of “engine on” time, not “in the air” time).

Once you selected the club, your instruction will really be split in three main parts, all happening in parallel: Theory, Paperwork and Practice.

Part of the PPL, you have to pass a written exam (actually a multiple-choice questionnaire). In order to prepare for it, you also have the requirement to do at least 40 hours of ground school. At the RFC, this is done over approximately three months, with 3 hour evening sessions twice a week. The ground course is broken down into various sections (meteorology, air law, navigation, …) for quite a few more hours than the legal minimum. In addition, once you have done the ground school, you can always attend the lectures again to keep up-to-date. In addition, I was really happy to see that the classes where not focussed around “passing the exam” (that is a side effect), but much more to provide you with all the information needed to become a safe and proficient pilot. I won’t say it was easy to pass the written exam (there is really a lot to learn), but I was well prepared, and the teachers are readily available to answer questions outside of the class-room (most of them work in positions related to what they teach from what I understand, which is a plus). After the ground instruction, I took a little break from studying to welcome my daughter (actually the last evening was the day after her birth, you can imagine how hard it was to get my brain to understand anything I finally passed my Transport Canada exam in November.

Regarding what I put under “paperwork”, you need to get a medical certificate in order to be able to fly solo (and for your license to be valid). My recommendation: Get it done as soon as you start the training as it can take a while. First, you will find out quickly if there is any medical reason you could not fly, and second, you don’t want to be ready to do your first solo flight and not be able to go because you don’t have your medical certificate. An other part of the paperwork is the English proficiency test (they can do them at the club), which takes about 20 minutes and is really really easy if you speak decent English. You would usually do this towards the end of your training, just before doing the flight test.

Still under “paperwork”, I will add the Restricted Radio Operator license and the PSTAR. The Radio license is another multiple-choice exam that gives you the right to use a radio on the frequencies reserved for identified flying objects (remember, everything is confidential and comes in 3). The PSTAR is yet another multiple-choice exam… but this one is even easier: you get the questions and possible answers before hand (and there are great sites with detailed answers). An exam where you have the answers beforehand is really paperwork that requires a little work to prepare

And now for the fun part: Practice.

Part of your selection of the flight school process, you really should arrange for an intro flight. First, it will confirm if you really want to go through with everything, especially if you haven’t been on a single engine aircraft before. If you are rather tall, ask to be on a Cessna 172 instead of a 152 for your intro flight (or whatever larger fixed pitch single the flight school uses). And the good news is that you can count the intro flight towards your dual flight hours in case you decide to stick with it.

Training is really broken down in 3 parts: Pre-Solo, cross-country and emergency procedures. The first part is really about the basic handling of the plane (on the ground and in the air), the basic procedures (walk-around, pre-takeoff checks, in-air checklists, …) and be able to take-off / land the plane safely without having the extra weight on the right seat (also known as an instructor). And don’t worry, the person in charge of your training will not let you go on your own until he is certain you will bring the plane safely back (and use enough right rudder). I did my solo on June 23, 2009… as for every other pilot, it is a moment that I certainly will remember vividly for quite a long time. It is really surprising how faster a plane climbs when it is lighter.

The cross-country phase is a lot of fun and comes after having turned around the airfield for many hours doing touch-n-go practice with different types of techniques (short or soft field). Getting to another airport outside of the 25nm radius you stayed before that point is really a great feeling. And having done the trip with your instructor before you get on your own, you shouldn’t get too much lost on the way.

The final part of the training is all about emergencies and how to react correctly. This is not really a distinct section of the training as it happens all along (the first time the instructor pulls the power on you when in the circuit and comes out with a simple “simulated engine failure” over the intercom, you better remember what to do quickly). It makes a lot of sense to spend a lot of time on this, even if the small single engine planes are very safe (no this is not a message for my wife, it is the truth).

Once you’ve gone through all this, you will start the finishing steps with a pre-flight test and ultimately the flight test itself. My recommendation for everyone: Over-prepare the forced approaches and diversions. And if you trained all these procedures before the first snow, make sure to get some extra training when everything is white… it really looks differently from up there once the snow has arrived (I write from experience on this one).

Here are a few tips I would finish with that might be useful for everyone interested in getting their ticket:

• be well prepared before the briefing / flight lesson… read the related chapter / section in the flight training manual and come up with questions for the instructor.
• be ready to spend quite a few hours reading books / preparing for the written exam and don’t just learn for the exam. I might have over-prepared, but I am certain that what I learned then will serve me a long time.
• You can sit in the plane for free when it is on the ground to review emergency procedures and make sure they become almost second nature.
• If the weather is not well within your personal limits & comfort zone, especially for the flight test, re-schedule. Yes, your dream is almost there, but it might be wiser to go a few days later. I did my flight test on a windy day with a fairly strong cross-wind, and in retrospect, I should have told the examiner that we need to reschedule. Remember that you are the Pilot in Command for the flight test.
• You might want to book flights in the regions where diversions are normally done for the flight test, so that you can get a good feel of how things look like at 1000 ft AGL and where the closest airport is.
• On the subject of diversions, make sure to mark you CFS so that you can quickly find the info you need during the procedure. This is also true when you fly after the test. And remember to not only fly the heading to your new destination, but also to adjust your airspeed according to the simulated conditions.
• Enjoy every step of it! While there is a lot to learn, the time to and from the practice area is really nice. I remember one late afternoon when coming back to the field in the fall when all the balloons were taking off from Gatineau, and started to blow exactly between myself and the airport towards the city.

If you always wanted to become a pilot, then go with it… it is worth it. I can’t wait to continue my training with a night rating (will start it in the coming weeks) the VFR OTT and later the Instrument Rating. And if you see a small plane doing circles above your heads, you no longer have to go and hide in a safe place according to Transport Canada, at least not when I am up there

I was really excited with the announcement of the iPhone version for Skype earlier this week. But when I tried to get it from the Canadian iTunes Store, it was nowhere to be found! Doing some search over the Internet, it appears Canada is the only country where the iPhone version of Skype is not available.

This is very surprising and I would like to get a better explanation as it is possible to download the Windows Mobile version from your site when in Canada, it is possible to purchase Skype WiFi phones in Canada and Skype works fine on notebooks / netbooks in Canada.

I can only suppose that there is a small delay for this and that Skype will be available shortly to people in Canada. Can you please let me know the reason why it is not yet available as well as when you expect Skype for iPhone to be available to Canadians?

Thank you for your quick answer.

And here is the answer I got back:

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.

We apologize for the inconvenience you’ve experienced while trying to download Skype for iPhone. Unfortunately, the Skype for iPhone application is not available for use in Canada at this time. There is an ambiguous restriction in one of the standards-based technology licenses, and we are looking into it. The issue is not related to Apple, nor is it specific to Skype.

Once again, we apologize for this inconvenience and would like to assure you that we are working on resolving this issue as soon as possible.

Thank you for your understanding and we hope you enjoy using Skype on your iPhone in the nearest future.

OK, there is hope, but let’s not be in a hurry.

Update (September 9, 2009): Skype for iPhone is now available in Canada! Next step, being able to do calls over 3G

In a nutshell, I still prefer to read books / documents on paper, but the geek toy solution works quite nicely. The main reasons are, in no particular order: DRM, geo-specific content, no way to flip through pages and no way to annotate / highlight the text you are reading.

As previously mentioned, the reading experience is really nice with the ePaper technology as it mimics nicely how traditional paper interacts with light and the size of the device / form-factor in the hand. It is also very nice to be able to carry around only a small device with the big book you are almost done reading and the next one you absolutely want to get through, especially when traveling.

But there are a few things that I find annoying or even frustrating, that need to be addressed before I would ever consider getting an updated device or stop purchasing paper books all together (and I do buy a lot of books). So here you go:

1. DRM: Yes, it is possible to read PDFs on my eBook device, and there are sites that offer free eBooks, but still, the vast majority of the books I am interested in are protected, locked and only compatible with one specific hardware. The fact that I can read a physical book and then lend it to a friend / family member is a huge plus for the multi-century old technology. If DRM is a requirement (not that I think it should be), then why not at least evaluate a similar option as the one for movies… you buy the DVD/Blu-Ray and you get a free DRMed Digital Copy. There is no way I am going to pay twice for the same book. Some publisher are already going in that direction. For example, I just got an email from PackPub with the option do download the previously purchased eBooks in unprotected PDF format. Let’s hope the book industry as a whole will understand this soon based on the experience of their music industry counterparts who finally gave up on DRM (on a side note, I have stopped purchasing CDs since DRM-free music being readily available and am actually buying more music now).
2. Geo-specific content: OK, most of you might not experience this as a problem, but because the content is available in digital form and there is no shipping / storage limitation, why couldn’t I purchase European books while living in Canada (yes, I originally come from the other side of the Atlantic). I know, traditionally, there was a geographical breakdown set in place for the right holders due to the cost of distribution, but now that everything is digital, there is no reason for this… except if the book writers don’t want their works to be read and don’t want to get paid for them. This comment, just like the one above regarding DRM, is applicable for all digital contents including music and movies, not only books
3. Flipping through the pages: This is one of the biggest negatives related to the user experience of the eBook Readers in general from what I can tell. Here is a simple scenario that applies to me almost every every time I plan to read a chapter: I want to know how many pages I will read, e.g. how long it will take me, to go through this chapter. Do I have the time / am I not to tired / … to go through it? With a traditional book, it’s very easy: just flip through the pages till the next chapter, and then do a mental page count calculation. Yep, I can read through 20 pages tonight. With an eBook Reader, there is no way I can think of to get this information as flipping through the pages are really slow. Perhaps it’s just me, but I really like to finish a chapter before putting the book down. Why couldn’t there be a button on the eBook Reader that tells me how many pages are still left to the end of the section, chapter, book, …? And as this device has some memory and a built-in CPU, why couldn’t it tell me, based my average historical page reading time, how long this will take approximatively. My car can tell me how many more kilometers / miles I can still drive before I need to fill-up the gas. It sometimes feels like the device was designed by people who might not read that many books (no, programming languages reference guides don’t count).
4. Annotation / highlighting: When reading a non-fiction book, I usually have a market / pencil with me to highlight words, sentences or paragraphs that I might want to easily find later. With the eBook Reader, there is no easy way to do so. The new Sony Reader has a touch-based display, but from all the information I can see, this is still not possible neither. And once I have highlighted the text that I am interested in, could I get a simply summary sheet of everything I highlighted with links to the corresponding page. That would be a great improvement over paper. Think of if as a way to tag parts of the book based on what I want, not the Table of Content or Index that the publisher / author decided on my behalf.

All in all, eBook Readers are great for people who travel a lot and ideally are geeks, but there is still some progress to do before there will be mass-adoption, especially considering that the competition is a technology that has improved over many centuries and that brings a lot more flexibility to the user.

Update – March 13, 2009: Looking at the Sony site, it appears that the new version of the eBook Reader (the PRS-700) had annotation / highlighting available through the touch-screen. I haven’t played with it, but intend to go to a Sony Store shortly to give it a spin. Anyone knows is some of my comments are solved with the Kindle?

Update 2 – March 21, 2009: I’ve played with the PRS-700 for a week. Annotation works really well on the device, but there is no way to get the notes off the device to use somewhere else, not even a text file with the highlights. This means it is a good first step in the right direction, but it isn’t there yet. Combined with the fact that the screen contrast is a lot worst than the previous generation of eBook Reader from Sony, I returned the 700 to the Sony Store and will continue to use my 505 until something better comes up.

Update 3 – March 21, 2009: If you didn’t notice, Google and Sony announced that you can now get all the Google books in public domain in a format that is compatible with the Sony eBook Readers and will display nicely. Really cool.

In summary, I really enjoyed the fact that the author looked at existing pre-conceptions (the warning label on cigarettes to prevent people from smoking) and, through scientific research, looked at what really happened in the brain vs. what people tell. Quite a few widely accepted ideas have to be re-considered based on the results presented in Buyology… and it should every everyone in Marketing to think twice about a new campaign.

The books description on amazon.com states following:

How much do we know about why we buy? What truly influences our decisions in todays message-cluttered world? An eye-grabbing advertisement, a catchy slogan, an infectious jingle? Or do our buying decisions take place below the surface, so deep within our subconscious minds, we’re barely aware of them? In BUYOLOGY, Lindstrom presents the astonishing findings from his groundbreaking, three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study, a cutting-edge experiment that peered inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His startling results shatter much of what we have long believed about what seduces our interest and drives us to buy.

In my day job in Product Management, I work very closely with the marketing teams and I am always very interested in better understanding what people go through with their buying decision, in addition to the fact that the product they are considering is great and answers a specific need they have… but what happens when there are so many different offers that fulfill the same need? How important is the brand? What makes the difference, especially when it comes to commoditized products?

Working on products dedicated for the graphics industries, I am well aware of the visual information overload that is characterizing our modern society… From memory, a NY-based research firm recently estimated that we are, on average, exposed to over 5,000 unique messages every day (anyone remember the exact source of the quote btw?). This book looks at various questions and de-facto assumptions. Some points that are analyzed are:

• how the scary health warnings on cigarettes packages are actually having the opposite effect on smokers
• why sex doesn’t sell
• the importance of other senses (smell, touch and sound), except when over-done (Nokia ring-tone anyone?)
• How strong brands stimulate similar areas in the brain as religions

This book is really a great tour in the mind of consumers and is well worth a read by everyone who works on products or services and who is in a competitive space (yes, I know, this doesn’t leave many of you excluded). Highly recommended.

So far, I’ve been keeping the files I want to be able to access on a regular basis from anywhere on Apple’s online storage space called iDisk (part of the MobileMe service that I blogged about previously). While it has been working well for the last few months, I have noticed a few synchronizing problems from time to time, and I find the service rather slow. In addition, the offline sync option is only possible on a Mac (you can access your files from a Windows computer through the web interface or through WebDav). The space available is also getting a little small for me (20Gb at the time of writing). And to increase the security risk, I’ve also kept some of the files I am working on on a USB stick that I carry with me… yes I know, not good, and I need to change that.

I therefore started looking at various alternatives for online services that enable to sync files across multiple computers, give access to your files through a web interface and is relatively secure (assuming you trust the provider of the online service). I’ve excluded Live Mesh as it is still in early beta, Windows Live Sync because it is based on a peer-to-peer network and requires at least one of the machine to be online to sync the others, and BeInSync because it is targeting the business users (pricing starts at $10 per month for 5 or more users) Here is a quick summary table of the various solutions I looked at and what they offer:

Regarding the pricing, you can compare this to the cost of storing files on the Amazon S3 service which cost $0.15 per Gb per month, excluding extra costs for transfer and access. This means that storing files on an S3 server would cost you $1.8 per Gb per year, or $36/year for 20Gb, $90/year for 50Gb, $180/year for 100Gb… OK, you might not need all the storage, but as you can see, some of the pricing above is very interesting.

Looking at the different options, I will give SugarSync a try for a while and see how it works out in the long term. I really like the ability to be able to start with a smaller plan, and then later add more space.

Update 1 – Feb 21, 2009: Thank you danlist for your comment and for correcting my mistake. I didn’t know that you could sync any folder and I have now changed the table above accordingly.

Update 2 – March 2, 2009: I have experienced some files & folders disappearing in the synchronized folder from SugarSync. I have contacted the technical support team to investigate and provide a solution. I will post an update in my blog when the issue is resolved. In the mean-time, remember that online sync should not be the only backup you rely on, only one of them.

Update 3 – March 13, 2009: All the problems with the files & folders disappearing are now resolved… from what I can tell, I did push the system a little to hard during my tests. Everything looks good now.

And yes, it is about Apple. I place my order for the new iLife and iWork ’09 packages a few weeks back, selecting free shipping as an option. This usually means that my order will be combined to minimize the costs, which was fine for me. And as you certainly know, these two products (as almost all software from the Cupertino company) are packaged in boxes almost as small as a CD case (works for me).

At the time of the order, iLife was still 2 weeks away from shipping, but iWork was available. Well, a few days later after confirming my order, I received the first parcel with iWork, and followed at the end of last week with another box with iLife. But the problem is not that these where shipped separately (I was OK with that as I didn’t pay for shipping)… the problem is much more with the size of the boxes used to wrap the products. See for yourself:

Anything wrong here?

Conclusion: When making public claims about the “eco-friendly” packaging of your products, please make sure to think about the whole supply chain, including the boxes used for shipping.

	First and foremost, the iPhone is the number one device for twittering, and I’ve been a very happy user of Twitterific since it launched. Yes, I know, there are certainly other twitter clients for the iPhone, but this one does exactly what I want, works fine and has a very clean and simple interface. And because the Mac version of twitterific is also a very nice user experience, I can only recommend you get this one. The only thing really missing here is the background notification push service that Apple promised for September 2008…
	As those who have been reading my blog for a while know, I’ve been a huge fan of Remember the Milk for quite a while, and getting support for my favorite to-do lists management tool directly on the device I always have with me made me happy. Yes, you need to have a pro account of RTM, but that shouldn’t be a problem for anyone who is serious about keeping track of their tasks with this tool, and the $25 per year are well worth it to support the team behind this great solution.
	Not only are to-dos missing on the iPhone and RTM came to the rescue there, but the notepad application is really not that great (sorry of you are the developer of that app). I’ve been using Evernote for a while between my different computers, and being able to access and edit my notes from the iPhone, as well as being able to post new text, voice and photo notes is really great. And here again, the premium yearly subscription is really worth it if you are going to use this in any meaningful way.
	Keeping up-to-date with your RSS feeds can be a little hard some times. I’ve been using Google Reader for a while, and was using it happily on the iPhone through Safari. But it was lacking some features such as an off-line more (especially for the starred and annotated items) and I was looking for a native application to go through my RSS feeds. Well, Byline integrates really nicely with Google Reader and is a very nice RSS reader. Yes it is a commercial app and you can use the free mobile web version of gReader, but this one works really nicely. And if the notification service comes to life one day, this could be really nice.
	One application I’ve been using for a while on the Mac is 1Password and it has been a great tool that integrates very well with Safari and Firefox on the Apple Operating System. While they where testing an online password storage service for a while, I was missing (and still am) missing 1Password for Windows. But now that the iPhone version can synchronize the data stored with the desktop application, I am able to remember myself the username and password combination I used for that specific site… and with the encryption they use, I am really not to concerned. The only downside is that my pass-phrase on the iPhone is also rather long to protect the data stored, which can take a while when typing on the virtual keyboard.
	Another nice little utility that I found very handy is Units. Over and over again, I wonder what these inches, Fahrenheits, miles or ounces mean, having been educated with the metric system, and having a little utility on my iPhone that helps me communicate with other people in anglo-saxon countries is really helpful…
	Finally, in an effort to figure out a way to use the bandwidth I have (remember my previous post about the 6Gb data transfer limit, well, I’ve never come close to that), I started streaming audio over the 3G network. And even better, I can now listen to Couleur 3, a Swiss-French radio station streaming at 128kbps, Canada or anywhere I have a wifi connection (no, I am not going to do 3G roaming).

An now for the application I can’t wait to be available: Skype. Please, please, please, get my a true Skype application for the iPhone, ideally with voice calls over 3G. I know it is possible as there is a Windows Mobile application and there are 3G phones that have built-in Skype support.

I have quite a few more applications on my iPhone, but the ones above are those I use on a very regular basis. Other apps worth mentioning are iSSH, Jisho Touch, Last.fm, MobileFiles, MochaVNC, SimCity, Sudoku, WeatherEye, What’s On TV?, WinAdmn, WordPress and X-Plane.

And you, what are your favourite apps for the iPhone?

For those who are attending, I will see you there tomorrow morning… and for those to also subscribe to my Graphics blog on CorelDRAW.com, sorry for the cross-posting

While this book does not cover specifically software piracy, it contains a lot of insightful information about the challenges traditional companies face and how they should embrace piracy vs. fighting it, including great insights in different ways of thinking.

The books description on amazon.com states following:

Music journalist Mason, a former pirate radio and club DJ in London, explores how open source culture is changing the distribution and control of information and harnessing the old system of punk capitalism to new market conditions governing society. According to Mason, this movement’s creators operate according to piratical tactics and are changing the very nature of our economy. He charts the rise of the ideas and social experiments behind these latter-day pirates, citing the work of academics, historians and innovators across a multitude of fields. He also explores contributions by visionaries like Andy Warhol, 50 Cent and Dr. Yuref Hamied, who was called a pirate and a thief after producing anti-HIV drugs for Third World countries that cost as little as $1 a day to produce. Pirates, Mason states, sail uncharted waters where traditional rules don’t apply. As a result, they offer great ways to service the public’s best interests. According to Mason, how people, corporations and governments react to these changes is one of the most important economic and cultural questions of the 21st century. Well-written, entertaining and highly original, Mason offers a fascinating view of the revolutionary forces shaping the world as we know it. (Jan. 08) – Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Overall, this is a very interesting book to read and brings many new points of views and perspectives to the problem. The biggest (obvious) conclusion is that fight might not the best answer when it comes to piracy, much more embrace, which makes sense for the examples in the book. But at the same time, Matt Mason clearly gives examples where taking legal actions make sense.

Looking at the table of content, this book covers many different subjects, from pharmaceuticals to music, and from radio stations to tags and graffitis. Yes, many of these areas have re-shaped how we do and understand things, and many of them are about to. The example of the 3D printers is certainly an excellent one and will have huge implications in the future. And showing how industries have grown from underground activities was very interesting (think about music trends such as disco or the hip-hop). The part I was missing most was related to a look at the current IP laws in major countries and thoughts on how this could be updated / reformed. And if you don’t have time to read the full book, focus on the last chapter (outro titled “The Pirate’s Dilemma: Changng the Game Theory”) next time you are in a library or a book store.

If you want more information on the subject, I can only recommend the related blog: thepiratesdilemma.com

There have been quite a few reviews such as the one from Lifehacker that gives other great perspective on the online service from Apple. The comments below provide those I noticed and have been making me happy, annoyed me or are driving me crazy (outside of the reliability problems).

The Good, e.g. the stuff I like

In my blog entry about the MacBook Air, I mentioned how I use iDisk from, at the time, .Mac to keep the documents I use / need in sync between my desktop and laptop computer. And with Secure WebDAV access to the iDisk information, I am also able to access the content of my online storage space from Windows XP or Vista computers while at work for example. And with the new storage increase by switching to MobileMe from .Mac, I am good for quite a while before I run out of space. I know that there are other solutions available that might be cheaper, but as far as I can tell (I didn’t do extensive research on this), none integrate as well as MobileMe with the operating system from Cupertino.

In addition to iDisk, MobileMe offers preferences, bookmarks, contacts, calendar, keychains … syncing acorss multiple computers. This is really great and is working as well with MobileMe as it was working with .Mac, e.g. overall pretty good. And when you install iTunes 7.7 on Windows, you gain MobileMe syncing for contacts, calendars and bookmarks with some Windows apps. I am so happy that my Safari bookmarks are synced across Mac and Windows that I really don’t care if some people find it sneaky to add the MobileMe Preferences with the iTunes update.

The new web apps for Mail, Calendar, Contacts and iDisk are really nice. There is plenty of room for improvements, but overall, they are fully usable. The contact manager is almost a clone of Address Book on the mac, and the online Calendar feels very similar to the desktop app provided by Apple. Yes, there are things that can be improved with the email and iDisk apps (see below), but overall, it works. Having used Outlook for the Web 2007 recently, I would say that the Apple implementation has potential to offer the same level of user experience, but there is still some way to go before getting there.

The gallery feature works well for me, and now that I got the capability to upload photos directly from the iPhone, I will be able to publish photos to certain galleries while on the road… I am certain my parents will be very happy to see family pictures on the go. And the integration with iPhoto on the Mac makes it really nice. You can even sync iPhoto albums using the MobileMe galleries across multiple machines. I understand that the galleries are not working that well from a Windows computer, but this isn’t a problem for me at this stage.

The Bad, e.g. the missing things for a killer solution

There are a few things that annoy me. First, why is it that when I check “Keep me logged in for two weeks”, I need to log back in every time I restart my browser? Yes, it is not the best option from a security perspective, but if you give the option, make sure it works.

Another annoyance, at least for me, is the choice of color Apple made for the iDisk icon on the MacOS desktop: Pink! And even worst than than, when you change the icon to something else, it doesn’t seem to update the mini-icon in the Finder window. OK, it makes it really hard to miss, but I am not a huge fan of that color… if the MobileMe logo is blue, why not stick with that color?

On the subject of the iDisk, one of the biggest feature missing for me right now is access to my documents in the iDisk from the iPhone. Why couldn’t I have read access to my iDisk files while on the go from my mobile device… everything else is linked to the cloud offering from Apple. OK, there might be an additional application that will be released in the future, so just make it quick. The iPhone already has support to display various document file formats when they are attached to emails. Why not give access to your online files through an iDisk application, that connects to the back-end server through Secure WebDAV. To make things even more frustrating, you cannot go to the iDisk web application with Safari from the iPhone. Ultimately, you should be able to save email attachments to your iDisk from the iPhone email application, but that’s a future feature request once the basics are there.

To continue with the iDisk subject, why can’t I preview documents within the browser from a desktop computer? Every modern web browser can display txt, pdf, gif, jpg, avi, swf, … inline, why do I need to download the file first to my computer before I can quickly view the content. Makes it a lot harder to get the right image or PDF document for example.

The last thing I have in this list is regarding the online and iPhone calendar. OK, Apple changed its messaging and stopped using the concept of “Exchange for the rest of us”, but iCal on the Mac can invite people to calendar events, sending out emails in the background. Why can’t I do this with the iPhone calendar app or the MobileMe online calendar? And why can’t I accept or decline meeting proposals that I get per email from another iCal user on my iPhone / through the web interface?

Now to make MobileMe the killer offering, once you have the scheduling capability obviously, Apple should enable free-busy time information to be shared across all MobileMe members. Apple is already storing the calendaring information about all those who subscribe to the service on their servers… if you could expose this information on the iPhone / Online calendar / iCal (CalDAV anyone?), that would really offer an Exchange solution for the rest of us. Yes, having previously worked as a product manager for a group scheduling software company, I know that this is a lot more complex that you would think, but half of the problem is already solved: Apple has access to real-time information about availabilities thanks to push. OK, will need to wait for MacOS 10.6 to get that on the desktop, but even the 15 minutes delay is better than the average time it takes for an Exchange server to update the free-busy time information.

The Ugly, e.g the showstopper

The ONE thing that is preventing me from switching over to MobileMe for all my private emails is that there is no support for email aliases. I am not speaking about adding @me.com addresses to your existing @me.com account… I want to be able to send and recieve emails for my @metrailler.net or my @gmail.com email address from Mail.app on the desktop, the MobileMe online service and the iPhone. Gmail does it for free and it works great. This means that Apple needs to allow emails to be sent through their SMTP server with emails addresses that don’t end with @me.com or @mac.com and they need to give the option to change the from email address to anything the user wants (already possible on the desktop app). How hard could this be?

Ant the ONE thing that makes the web interface unusable is the fact that the site (outside of the account section) is not secure! Yes, that’s right, no HTTPS to access your mail, contacts, calendar or documents. This is simply unacceptable and makes it a show-stopper to use the online service for me. The IMAP access to the mail is secured, the iDisk access through WebDAV is secured, so why isn’t the web site access secured?

Overall, there are very few things that are show-stoppers for me at this stage, and many things I would like to see. Some of the benefits already available make the service worth the yearly subscription to me, but because of a few small things, I am unable to use it to its full potential. I fully understand that you cannot develop everything in one version… so if you are interested Apple, this post has a list of priorities from my side. Once these are done, why not open-up me.com to third-party developers and enable them to add apps to the ones you provide (using SproutCore), getting 30% of the additional subscription fee?

And the great thing is that you can easily update your posts…

The one thing they didn’t say is that you needed to sign-up for a voice plan of at least $35 per month to be eligible to the $199 / $299 purchase price for the iPhone 8Gb / 16Gb respectively. If you want a $30 per month voice plan, the phone will cost you an extra $50 (less that 1 year of $5 extra subscription if you do the math). In addition to that, they are offering Visual voice mail for $8 per month as a stand-alone offer or for $15 per month part of a pack that also includes caller id and way to many SMS messages. Therefore, the cheapest comparable monthly plan that you could go with a 6Gb per month data plan was, under this offer, CA$ 73.

So how does it look when you map this pricing against the others in the graph I previously used:

We have a clear winner there, except if you will only use less than about 400Mb of data per month. But then again, you need to hurry to get this plan as Rogers / Fido announced it would only be available until the end of August 2008… except if they decided to extend the offer.

One more thing, if you manage to exceed the 6Gb limit, pricing is identically to the iPhone plans, e.g. $0.5 per megabyte for the first 60Mb and $0.03 per megabyte thereafter. This means that 10Gb of data per month will still be under $225… OK, not as cheap as the unlimited data in the USA, but almost half of the original iPhone pricing offering from the canadian mobile network operator.

The one huge thing that is a potential show-stopper for me is the 3-year contract that you have to sign to be able to have an iPhone in Canada. I don’t know what will happen in 3 years time, but I am 100% certain that I won’t have the same phone (iPhone 4.0 should be out by then). I would not mind paying more more for the phone now so that I don’t need to get locked in for such a long period of time.

Digging further into the offering, I wanted to do the math behind cost for data usage, to get a better picture of what we are actually talking about… and the findings are quite interesting. All pricing below are in Canadian Dollars.

In a nutshell, if you expect to transfer more than 2.1Gb per month and don’t use the iPhone as a phone a lot (under 150 minutes per month), go with the $60 plan, it’s cheaper! If you transfer 5Gb per month, it will cost you $229.80, $234.30, $251.08 and $235.36 on the $60, $75, $100 and $115 plans respectively.

So what do the numbers tell us. Last week, Rogers / Fido announced the price plans they are going to offer for the iPhone in Canada. Here is a screenshot of their pricing as of June 30th (link to the page here):

My initial reaction was really negative based on this. Historically, I haven’t used my cell phones a lot as a phone, but am expecting to use the data option of the iPhone extensively. Therefore linking the included minutes with the data usage doesn’t make sense to me. I am, for the rest of this post, assuming that 150 minutes of voice communications per month will be more than enough for my needs.

And when it comes to text messages, I am planning to have CallerID on my phone, e.g. I will certainly end-up with the $15 Value Pack 1 that bumps the SMS count to 2,500 on every plan (not sure about the extra $5 for the Value Pack 2).

Therefore, the choice of the price plan really comes down to the data usage. To better understand this, I built a little spreadsheet that calculates the actual cost for different amounts of data transfered, resulting in interesting findings. Again, all these assume that the number of included voice minutes are irrelevant.

• You can immediately see the spike due to the first extra 60Mb at $0.5 per Megabyte vs. the $0.03 per Mb linear increase thereafter.
• First and foremost, avoid the $100 plan (green line in the graph)… it is the most expensive of all by over $20 per month, except if you are certain you will be between 800Mb and 1Gb every month.
• The $115 plan (purple line in the graph) only makes sense if you are going to be between 1 and 2Gb every month. Above 2.05Gb of data transfer, it will cost you about 6$ more per month than on the $60 plan.
• The $75 plan (red line in the graph) is the cheapest if you transfer between 400Mb and 800Mb. Above that, it is about $5 more expensive than the $60 plan, and it is $1 cheaper than the $115 plan if you transfer more than 2.1Gb per month.
• The $60 plan (blue line in the graph) is the cheapest if you transfer less than 400 Mb or more than 2.1Gb. Comparing the $60 and the $115 plans, you are better off with the cheapest plan except if you know you will be between 1.25 an 2.05Gb per month of data transfer every month for 3 years.

Update (June 10, 2008): OK, my unfounded rumor was completely wrong… that must be why it was unfounded

With the iPhone 1.0, Apple introduced a brand new business model for the mobile phone operators. Instead of massively subsidizing the devices, locking in the users for a multi-year period and keeping all the revenue, the new approach was to charge full price for the phone and then get a revenue share of the subscription. Not only did this provide a high perceived value by the end users as they had to pay for it (normal cell phones are considered “free” or at least “cheap”), but it also opened up a brand new revenue stream for Apple in addition to the one from the sale of the hardware… But to achieve this, it required the phone to be locked and only available to the mobile phone operators who agreed to the revenue share. Great model, except that the hacker community didn’t like AT&T or didn’t live in the USA and took this as a great challenge. They were able to defeat the mechanisms in place on an ongoing basis… I for example used ZiPhone to unlock my iPhone and use it on the Fido network (a fully owned subsidiary of Rogers) here in Canada without any problem.

So why would Apple go ahead with an unlocked iPhone and how could they protect the ongoing payment from the mobile operators, which enable them to double the revenue per device according to the estimates?

Regarding the why, my guess is that the adoption rate from operators around the world hasn’t been at the level that Apple had hoped, resulting in lower than forecasted unit sales of the iPhone. In addition, now that the Cupertino company has realized that you cannot win the fight against hackers (very similar to the intentional pirates in the software world, but that’s for another blog post), it has added cost to the development and had negative impact on the user experience with the brand and device to the reason why to unlock the device… With revenue soon to come from the distribution of third-party applications, having as many devices as possible out there is certainly a very attractive value proposition.

Regarding the how to protect the revenue stream, the answer is in the software. No, not in the software of the iPhone itself, much more in the software that is implemented by the mobile operator to deliver specific services for the device from Apple, which will be a lot harder to hack or pirate. For example, I don’t have (currently) visual voice mail in Canada. Now that’s certainly not a killer feature for me and I can live without it, but what if the iPhone 2.0 was to add more of these “unique” features that require to be on a network which provides a revenue share to Apple. A few examples that come to my mind are visual chats between iPhone users, instant messaging (remember, rumor has it that this will be one type of app that won’t be allowed to be developed by third-parties), or an access to your iDisk (hey, there are rumors of updating .Mac in sync with the WWDC iPhone announcement, so why not). Basically any feature that won’t be available on the iPod touch could require a subscription with an Apple approved mobile network operator (e.g. one who provides a revenue share to Apple).

And the good thing is that this “how” would also work in countries where iPhone 1.0 where introduced, except that there will most certainly not be other operators who will be able to offer Apple’s cell phone and won’t have the service. Finally, with the latest rumors about Rogers offering an attractive data plan price according to Electronista (at least for the HTTP protocol), looks like I will need to change mine for a new one soon.

OK, I know this is a stretch, but as mentioned in the title, this is a completely unfounded rumor that I just made out of thin air. If you don’t agree with my logic, feel free to let me know

On a recent plane from Asia back to Canada, on board of a very recent 777 that had a completely updated interior, I got this message again. So can someone tell me why there is actually an ashtray in the lavatory, especially if it is placed just below the big “No Smoking in Lavatory” sign:

I can understand an ashtray in very old planes (those that are over 10 years old and that didn’t go through a complete overhaul since). But on a very modern one, I have to say that this evades me completely! Perhaps they are expecting the regulation to change, just as this is becoming the case with cell phones and wireless devices for Internet access.

Update 10 March 2011: I finally got an answer from the team at the AirplaneGeeks Podcast – here is the link to the episode with the answer: http://www.airplanegeeks.com/2011/03/08/episode-138-the-radial-rocket/

It really sounded like the currency from Switzerland was the equal of the one from a third-world country where the exchange rate changes by the minute due to civil war… so when I asked what currencies are actually accepted by my bank, the answer was simply US Dollars and British Pounds (at least one European currency, thanks to the Queen). Yes, you’ve read correctly, my bank in Canada isn’t even willing to exchange Euros.

And for those who ask, I am banking with one of the biggest ones in Canada who charge a fortune for a normal account per month, not a small unknown internet bank. I was already convinced that the banking system in this country is completely outdated, but this was just the little extra that confirmed everything. The only solution for me is to go to a currency exchange place downtown (yes, where the tourists go) and then take the Canadian Dollars to bring them to my branch! Not impressed…

Gérard

When Apple announced the MacBook Air, I looked at it with an intrigued eye, but didn’t place the order immediately (I know, really amazing) as I was still quite happy with my original 15” MacBook Pro (the Core Duo version). But then, walking into an Apple Store in Montréal, I saw the Air and by the time I left the mall, I had one of the SSD based model in a small bag specifically designed for it, looking forward to experience it fully during a three weeks trip to Australia and Taiwan. In Summary: I love it!

First things first, this blog entry is not about benchmarking, so let me answer the battery question first: on a plane, e.g. without wireless connectivity, I get over 5 hours of battery time reading PDFs, writing documents, cleaning-up my inbox and catching up my offline Google Reader account, while listening to some music and podcasts in the background. Now with WiFi enabled, I appear to get about 4.5 hours (again, I did not time it exactly). OK well enough time for my needs. Yes, getting 15+ hours battery time would help to keep the Air alive during a Vancouver, Canada to Sydney, Australia flight. But in that case, first, I still try to sleep a little, and second, I had a power-plug near my seat to charge back the battery while sleeping. And the reason I wasn’t using the MacBook Air while having the power plug connected on the plane is that there seems to be, as previously reported, a conflict between the type of power provided while in the air and the multi-touch trackpad! And yes, I just confirmed it during the Air Canada flight home I am currently sitting on between Tokyo, Japan and Toronto, Canada. I will report this issue to Apple tomorrow as it really defeats the logic that a device aimed at the frequent travelers has issues when you actually travel!

On the subject of the multi-touch track-pad, I have been very positively surprised by it. Yes, I’ve been experiencing multi-touch on the iPhone for a few months now and am a strong believer of this type of interaction with the device, but I wasn’t clear on how that would work on a “computer” operating system. There again, the integration with the applications that Apple delivers is seamless (other applications will need to be update to react correctly to these events). For example, when I read to the latest PDF edition of the “Le Temps” newspaper with Preview, I can very easily zoom into and flip through pages, even rotating them is very easy, even if a lot less useful when it comes to reading a magazine on the screen. iPhoto also works very well with the track-pad. I can’t wait for tools such as Pixelmator to support the multi-touch events and build on them for an even better user experience.

Now when it comes to the keyboard and the screen, these are absolutely great to use. The keyboard feel is really nice (I am slowly getting to a North American keyboard as I’ve always been using a Swiss French keyboard before, and am getting better with accented characters). The LED glossy screen is really nice to work with. It is actually so bright when turned all the way on that I normally keep the brightness between 40 to 50%. That certainly helps with battery time.

I know that a lot of people have been complaining that there is no integrated DVD drive and no built-in Ethernet port, not to mention the lack of built-in EVDO or EDGE support. In all cases, having been on the road for three week, I didn’t miss any of them a single time. Regarding the DVD drive, I actually can’t recall the last time I used the DVD drive while traveling. I normally need it to install software, and the remote installation feature works amazingly well. But I only install software when I am at home normally. In addition, as I am carrying my work laptop anyway, I installed the remote DVD software support there just in case.

When it comes to built-in Ethernet port, I am very happy with WiFi support. Most of the hotels I stay have actually wireless access available these days. And for those who have only Ethernet access, I discovered a long time that the best solution is to have an Airport Express base station in my suite-case, so that I can actually use my laptop anywhere in the hotel room, and not only at the desk with the generally uncomfortable chair. Oh yes, and when it comes to EVDO or EDGE support, I live in Canada, do I need to say more? With a mobile phone provider who charges about 1$ per Megabyte before roaming charges, I don’t see this as an option any time soon anyway.

I know that it is, according to the specs at least, the slowest Mac currently available. But as a user of a laptop traveling to surf the web, answer emails, write documents and view the photos I captured during the trip, it is more than fast enough for my needs. And I’ve been using vmWare Fusion 1.1 (more on this in the future) with a Windows XP virtual machine to run CorelDRAW and PHOTO-PAINT X4 on it very smoothly, thanks to the 2Gb of RAM that come standard. For the more advanced things such as advanced video editing or 3D modeling, I will be using the much faster and powerful machine I have at home.

The other factor to consider is the disk space. With the SSD option, the size announced by Apple for the drive is 64Gb. Oh yes, once formatted, it goes down to 55.4 Gb?!? Talk about maths that go wrong. Out of that, you’ll need about 10Gb for the Operating System, 10 Gb for applications (Xslimmer is a must-have application for Air owners) and another 15 Gb for the Windows virtual machine, which leaves 20Gb to play with. This means you don’t have enough space to store your entire music and photo library, but it leaves plenty for data when you are on the road. Here is how I’ve got it split currently: About 8Gb for iTunes (I sync my iPhone with the Air), about 2Gb max for all the photos I’ve captured during my trips and about 10Gb for a full sync of my iDisk. Yes, .Mac makes total sense for people with multiple Macs – the possibility to synchronize the settings and data on multiple computers is really great, and having the “Back to my Mac” feature of 10.5 enable you to access that one file you completely forgot to copy before leaving home. Even better, it works really well.

All in all, the MacBook Air is a fantastic device when traveling that gets people turning their head and asking about how I like it. The constraints are something you need to consider up-front and make sure they won’t be a problem for you. I cannot see it as the main computer for most of us, but as the machine to take with them for the road-warriors that syncs with the iMac they have at home, it is an amazing device – if only the price was a little more affordable

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the rules related to renting movies… Looking at how I normally watch movies (I do subscribe to Zip.ca, the Canadian equivalent to Netflix), I’ve rarely started watching a movie that I got through the mail more than two weeks after receiving it, and I don’t recall having once stopped watching the movie before the end of it to continue a few days later. Yes, being able to watch movies for 72 hours after pressing the play button the first time. But as I haven’t gotten used to the Tivo time-shifting experience as of yet, I don’t really mind the 30 days / 24 hours rule. Yes I know, I will certainly regret writing this in the future…

After updating my version of iTunes and the software on my iPhone (I was actually traveling with a trans-atlantic flight the next day), I rented a movie to give it a try (The Simpsons) and enjoyed watching that movie on my hand-held device while being stuck in economy class. Overall, the quality and experience was great, except that in the middle of the movie, I suddenly get an advertisement message for something!!! That destroyed my whole experience and, while being as unobtrusive as possible, is unacceptable in my mind.Update 9 July 2008: The “advertisement” I saw was actually part of the movie. Thank you Geoff for pointing this misunderstanding out to me

The other thing related to the new media offering from Apple is the fact that some DVDs you can buy (at least in the USA and Canada, yes, in Canada!) will also include a digital copy. While not specifically for iTunes (it also works with Windows Media Player’s PlayForSure, but not with the Zune), the idea is very intriguing… the only DVD I could find at this stage with the digital copy (another cartoon movie: Family Guy – Blue Harvest) actually includes two discs in the case, plus a little flyer with instructions for the digital copy. This card also include a unique serial number. When you insert the second disk in your computer drive, iTunes detects it and asks for the unique number on the card to unlock your very own digital copy of that movie. Type in the code, and then something strange happens. Instead of copying the movie from the disk and unlocking it over the network (strange I know, I don’t even complain about the fact that there is DRM all over this), iTunes actually starts downloading the movie! I get a second disk in the DVD case, and the only thing that is included on it is information for the media player to display a page on the store to start downloading the movie for “free”… In summary, these DVDs don’t implement and evolution of the DRM used by Microsoft or Apple, they simply link back to the normal workflow and require you to download the movie in electronic format… Handbrake still sounds very appealing for a digital backup of your purchased DVDs with this type of approach from the movie studios.

The last change regarding the media offering from the makers of the iPod, the new Apple TV experience, is great. Version 2.0 of the software installed seamlessly on my device, and it then was very easy to find a movie to rent, click a button and watch the movie within a few minutes of deciding what to watch. I understand that the HD version of the movie is not 1080p, but the quality on my HD-TV was really good. And the good news, I didn’t get any add on the movie I rented to try the Apple TV experience out (Michael Clayton). What I really enjoyed is the fact that from the moment I decided what to watch and the point where the movie actually started, only a few minutes where required.

The Apple TV experience is really seamless… once the size of the Interweb tubes grows a little more (Bell, Rogers, take this as a strong request from my side) and the quality of HD rentals move to true 1080p, the monthly fee for Zip.ca will be hard to justify. I don’t see myself stopping buying Blu-Ray movies that I want to see more than once for the foreseeable future (I stopped buying DVDs as a rule since I got the Playstation 3 last year). But for those movies that I just want to see once, getting it directly streamed to your TV is a seamless experience that I look forward to enjoy again. The one thing missing is as following: after watching the movie, why not offer me a 48 hour window to convert my rental into a purchase for an extra $9.95? As the whole thing has already been downloaded once, that shouldn’t be to difficult from a technology perspective… but then again, DRM and the studios might be the biggest reason that will prevent this from happening.

In summary, while there is still room for improvement in many aspects, this offering around movies from Apple is a great first start. Just start offering these outside of the USA, and get rid of this @$#%#*! DRM and I will be a very happy camper.

On the subject of DRM going away, when can I get DRM free music from all the major in addition to EMI outside of the USA??? Currently, the only option is Amazon.com if you have a US credit card. When will I get all the music DRM free on iTunes, wherever I am?