High Impact Noise

So I spent the last couple of hours moving AlarmTube from a Rails application to one that is host by Google App Engine (GAE).

I did this for two reasons:

1) To play with Google App Engine

2) Can’t tell you. Hopefully will announce next week.

GAE makes a lot less choices for you then RoR, thus taking a little longer to set up your application infrastructure. I am sure it won’t be long before someone puts together a web framework that makes GAE simpler to setup. Simply creating some scaffolding would help a lot. Now AlarmTube does not need to scale, but if it did I here GAE would be kick ass. GAE is also free so it really lowers the barrier to enter the web world.

Those are my thoughts on Google App Engine, it will be interesting to see how the big guys in the web world respond to this complete development environment (cloud) that Google has set up. Amazon has the closest thing to what Google has setup, they just need to integrate their disparate services.

The internet has lowered the barrier to entry into many fields. Amateur writer/reporters can blog, amateur singers and movie makers can post to youtube, often achieving success inline with the “pro’s”. I for one see this as natural progress though much of the establishment media is often threatened, and denigrate online talent.

This movement of amateurs could be creeping into the investment world. SocialPicks has recently received a round of funding from Bay Partners. SocialPicks offers a forum for amateur investors to show off their analysis and investment skills.

As we are finding out more and more, experts most of the time, are not so expert (see Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb). And aggregated crowds are often smarter than individuals most of the time (Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki). This includes highly paid Wall Street analysts.

SocialPicks looks to let amateurs compare their performance against the Pro’s, often showing that such “gurus” as Jim Cramer are not the people you should be taking investment advice from. In addition SocialPicks aggregates the information about stocks giving an overview of how the crowd feels about a given investment.

The Internet has developed under a “philosophy of free”. Watching Chris Anderson Talk at Nokia has only reaffirmed my belief that to succeed on a large scale in this digital era, Free is the key.

The internet and traditional phone companies are headed for a clash. Ribbit may be the first company to lead the charge in changing the telephony landscape, making it accessible to any developer. Their API offering is extremely interesting, allowing any developer to use their telephony backbone, see their demo for some nifty stuff.

But as All Thing D Article writer John Paczkowski points out

”.. how’s the company going to make money? Ribbit says it plans to charge for services like calls to traditional landlines, voice-mail transcriptions and billing…. Being able to use text-to-speech transcription services and archive voice calls are many of the features that consumers have shown interest in over the years. However, whether or not they’re willing to pay for these features is going to be the big question.”

I know that I am barely willing to pay for my phone calls, especially knowing the cost of a phone call is diving toward zero. Archiving my voice calls would be great, but if Google got in this game I know that they would do it for ZERO. So I am wondering, where is the advertising opportunity in this venture.

I just acquired two Orb Audio Mod 1 speakers and they kick ass! Whats even more refreshing is their business model. They focus on simple high quality products. The really only sell 2 products a round speaker the size of a CD and a sub woofer. But the round speakers are very modular so that they can be combined into different combinations.

They do not sell their products through distributors, instead they choose to only sell through their website. Distributors markups are often on the order of 3 times what the manufacture would sell the same product for. Orb Audio would rather supply costumers with high quality products without the excessive markup, selling through the internet allows them to avoid the middleman (you gotta hate the middleman).

The speakers they sell are great looking, most speakers are Ugly!, but these babies are small and well designed. I am certainly no audiophile but to me the sound kicks ass, you will be amazed at how big the sound is.

I just got my new Meraki Mini today, plugged it in, and started setting up my own wireless mesh network. My network is pretty boring right now, as it is just this one node, but I wanted to take Meraki out for a testdrive.

For those who don’t know anything about Meraki, the company started out of an MIT research project Roofnet. They are trying to change the economics of internet access providing cheap wireless equipment (mini costs $49) capable of creating large mesh networks. They have some pretty heavy backing from Google and Sequoia Capital.

Your wireless network is controlled through Meraki’s control panel. You can see usage statistic, uptime, and it even has a cool Google Maps mashup of where the mini is. Unlike most control panels this one is centralized on the internet so you can manage multiple minis, though they also give you a web control panel straight on the device.

Another thing that I am looking forward to checking out, is that they allow you to charge people if they want to use your network. No more people grabbing my free internet, they can now pay me like 50 cents. I can see the pennies pilling up.

Spring is finally here as the Boston Redsox begin their 2007 season today. Ahhh don’t you get warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.

Without further ado, here are my 2007 predictions.

Sox Pitchers:

• Curt Schilling: 16-7 4.10 Enough to get him a 2008 contract
• Josh Beckett: 15-9 4.25 Improvement but I ain’t buying the hype
• Daisuke Matsuzaka: 18-6 3.65 I am buying Dice-K
• Tim Wakefield: 13-12 4.80 Typical
• Julian Tavarez 4-6 5.20 Replaced by Lester by the All Start Break
• Jonathan Papelbon 48 Saves 0.95 Era – Cy Young Winner

Sox Hitters

1. Julio Lugo .280 AVG 13 HR 24 SB 95 Runs – Solid Leadoff Guy
2. Kevin Youkilis .265 AVG 19 HR 85 RBI – Improved Power Numbers
3. David Ortiz .290 AVG 48 HR 120 RBI – 5 Walk Off’s, The usual
4. Manny Ramirez .305 AVG 32 HR 105 RBI 4 Manny Moments – Disappointing Season
5. J.D. Drew .290 AVG 25 HR 100 RBI – Flourishes in Boston
6. Mike Lowell .260 AVG 14 HR 60 RBI – Continues second half slump from last year. Traded near the deadline
7. Jason Varitek .245 AVG 12 HR 60 RBI – Boston starts looking for Tek’s replacement
8. Coco Crisp .300 AVG 15 HR 70 RBI 25 SB – Nice bounce back year
9. Dustin Pedroia .290 AVG 6 HR 70 RBI – Solid Rookie Year, 4th in Rookie of the year voting

• East: Mets
• Central: Cubs – Off season money well spent for this year at least
• West: Diamondbacks
• Wild Card: Dodgers
• Champion: Dodgers

• East: Sox
• Central:Tigers
• West: A’s
• Wild Card: Blue Jays – Sorry Yankees Fans
• Champion: A’s – They finally breakthrough in the post season

World Series Champs – Dodgers – As long as Grady doesn’t have any managing brainfarts (Reference 2003 ALCS).

I just finished my 2006 taxes and I just wanted to take this time to thank TurboTax. It was a breeze. I am not going to lie (I hate that phrase), I don’t have a lot going on in my taxes but I can’t imagine doing my taxes with a pen, paper and calculator.

Maybe I will ask my folks what it was like later, I bet if my dad had his way he would be doing the taxes the old fashion way.

I found that the TurboTax software was much improved from last year. Almost completely hiding the ugly calculation details, intelligently importing last years return. They have seemed to embraced Web 2.0 or just like javascript. I am a little pissed at Bank Of America because they were not on the list of banks that could automatically import my 1099’s.

One of the user interface things I love is when forms fields automatically format phone numbers, social security numbers, putting in the pesky ”-” or “(” around area code “)”. Something that simple really enhances the whole user experience.

Note: I used TurboTax basic online edition.