Solo, Piano -- N.Y.C.

I’m not inclined to repost anybody else’s work, but after watching this devastating little film on the New York Times website this evening I’m making an exception.  Take a look—and be patient.  The ending will surprise (and maybe rattle) you.

Tumblr Devs: Are They 30 Years Young Yet?

When you finish signing up for a Tumblr account, the site asks how old you are:

If you enter a number below 30, Tumblr responds this way:

If you enter a number of 30 or above, Tumblr suddenly morphs into Willard Scott on The Today Show:

Apparently turning 30—excuse me, becoming 30 years young—is a cause for profound self-reflection in our lives … or at least the next best thing: home video blogging:

Note that this video, one of 132 posted by the breathtakingly self-pleased and blindingly teeth-whitened katilette (“You're only as old as you feel!”, her description of this video declares), has, as of today, garnered 75,880 views and 2,971 likes.  Looks as if, as far as life’s milestones, katilette’s YouTube subscribers, and Tumblr’s developers are concerned, 30 is the new 70.

Postscript (5/21/13): When I first posted this item back in December 2012 I knew nothing about the people behind Tumblr, including its founder, David Karp—now in the news because Yahoo has agreed to buy his site for $1 billion.  But based on the ultra-cute signup I described above I can't say I'm surprised to learn that Karp is 26 years old.

Almond: Touch Screen WiFi Meets 2 ½ Min Range Extender Setup

My main rationale for this blog has always been to write about consumer technology that’s seldom as simple or effective as its makers—or its marketers—claim it to be.

The disconnect between what’s promised and what’s delivered typically leaves me conflicted, part of me seething with frustration at the nonintuitiveness of the device or service I’ve paid for and another part worrying that this complexity somehow proves I’m shamefully unqualified to use it.  Neither response is good for the soul … or for the tech industry.

I believe Ram Malasani, the Indian-born CEO of tiny Taiwan-based tech startup Securifi, feels the same way.

I’ve gotten to know Ram a bit since last winter, when he engaged me to write a press release and make a demo video for his company’s debut product, a wireless router he’d given the whimsical name Almond.

Almond: “The First Router for the Post-PC Era”

Just one thing set Almond apart from the zillions of other routers out there: a touch screen:

Most of Almond's set up and configuration chores can be performed from its touch screen, eliminating the need to boot a PC, launch a browser, enter a private IP address, and navigate a web UI.

Ram claimed Almond’s touch screen not only simplified set up but completely obviated, at least for home users, the need for a PC to configure it.  (Almond can be set up via the usual web interface, but it’s needed only to configure advanced features such as port forwarding or assigning static IP addresses.)  When he pronounced it “the first router for the Post-PC Era”, I made sure to include that provocative phrase in my release, and CNET’s router columnist, Dong Ngo, picked it up for his first Almond story.

Uh Oh: Could Almond Be Vaporware?

In the early going it wasn’t easy nailing down Almond’s feature set because Ram—embodying the fevered creativity I imagine typical of tech entrepreneurs—kept thinking up ways to expand it.  At CES in January 2012 and at succeeding winter trade shows he was promising Almond would hit the market in the Spring of 2012, but by March he’d decided his router should double as a range extender (also known as a repeater or booster in nerdspeak) for an existing router.  I understood that making Almond a dual-function device would give it more bang for the buck and widen its market, but my press release, issued late in February on PRWeb, had said nothing about the router’s range extender capability.

And as I became more invested in Almond’s success—continuing to discuss product packaging, the interface, in-the-box setup instructions, tech support, and other issues with Ram—I worried that adding range extender functionality would delay the product’s availability well into the Summer, draining any momentum generated by my release and leading the tech press (and even me, in moments of weakness) to suspect Almond was vaporware.  Hadn’t D-Link shown off a touch screen wireless router at CES two years before Almond’s debut there but ultimately chosen not to manufacture it?

I suggested Ram skip the range extender functionality for the initial product and offer it in the next one.

As it happened, he didn’t listen to me.  Which meant Almond didn’t become available until mid-July.  Except that turned out to be a very good thing.

Set Up Almond as a Range Extender in 2 Minutes 30 Seconds

Almond is now readily available on Amazon Marketplace and on Newegg, and based on early customer reviews its range-extender functionality appears to be extremely popular.  I’m not surprised.

Almond’s out-of-the-box setup wizard asks whether you’d prefer to use it as a router or as a range extender, and, as easy as it is to configure Almond as a router, turning it into a range extender is such a piece of cake—taking a mere 2 1/2 minutes—you have to see it to believe it:

Now, if your wireless router can’t be configured as a range extender, or if it can but you’ve never needed to use it as anything but a router, you may not be impressed by my demo video.

On the other hand, if like me you’ve actually spent 70 bucks on something similar without a touch screen—and then discovered what was involved in getting it to talk to your router—you may be shaking your head in disbelief.  Which is what I did, thinking back on my experience with D-Link's DAP-1522.  Let me explain.

My TiVo Premiere Needs a TiVo-branded WiFi Adapter

In January 2011 I took TiVo up on a tantalizing offer: get a TiVo Premiere DVR for free in return for paying $19.95/month ($21.76 with tax) for 2 years of TiVo’s TV program scheduling service.  Basically I was agreeing to fork over $478.80 on the installment plan to own a TiVo capable of recording and playing back HD video.  Since I’d just bought a 37” Panasonic HD TV capable of displaying 1080 lines progressively it seemed like a good idea.

Then I discovered that the Netgear USB WiFi stick the TiVo website had recommended for networking my old TiVo Series2 DVR—and which I’d dutifully purchased—wouldn’t work with my new Premiere.  In fact, I learned that the only WiFi client that would put my new Premiere on my home network was TiVo’s own pricey branded device.

My existing device would no longer work?  I had no choice but to pay extra for a TiVo-branded WiFi adapter?  I was plenty annoyed.

Luckily for me (I thought), I’d recently heard about something called a wireless bridge.  A wireless bridge does much the same thing a range extender does, except it’s intended to give wireless capabilities to devices that, lacking their own wireless network adapter, have only an Ethernet port for networking.  Basically the bridge fools such a device into thinking it’s got a wired Ethernet connection to a home network instead of the wireless one the bridge actually supplies.

TiVo Premiere and D-Link DAP-1522: Lengthy Negotiations

Since my new TiVo Premiere had an Ethernet port I figured I could buy a wireless bridge, use an Ethernet cable, and plug the Premiere into my wireless router via the bridge.  No need to pay TiVo for its required wireless adapter.

Even better (I thought), I’d noticed that D-Link made a wireless bridge—the aforementioned DAP-1522.  Since my home network ran on a D-Link DIR-655 wireless router I figured the two devices would talk the same language to each other and set up would be a breeze.

Silly me.

Despite their commonality as D-Link products, the DIR-655 and DAP-1522 mysteriously used nonoverlapping IP address sets—so getting the D-Link router to hand the D-Link wireless bridge an IP address it would accept turned out to be nonobvious … at least to me.

But since I don’t like to be defeated by fussy hardware or software, after a couple of hours of noodling around, trying different ideas, and opening a Word file in which I documented for posterity what didn’t work and what did, I got my TiVo Premiere online.

If Only Almond Could Be a Wireless Bridge!

So imagine how I felt when Ram—Securifi’s idea man and CEO—told me that in range extender mode Almond’s Ethernet ports also allowed it to be used as a wireless bridge.

Had Almond been available in January 2010 I could have avoided the hours of agita D-Link’s DAP-1522 gave me.  Assuming, of course, I’d heard about Almond in the first place.

Which is why I’m blogging about this amazing little router/range extender/wireless bridge now.

Yes, I’ve consulted for Ram and Securifi and been paid for it.  Yes, my paid relationship with the company entitles you to be skeptical about my motivations for touting Almond.

But if you’ve read my blog, you know I don’t like to shill for inferior tech.

And Almond isn’t perfect.  As easy as it is to set up, it can be a bit slow to save your settings while you’re configuring it.  The 2.8" screen, though clear and responsive, can get a little cramped when you’re trying to enter a lengthy alphanumeric password on its virtual QWERTY keypad.  And Almond isn’t always as informative as it might be when you accidentally press the wrong on-screen button.

In the scheme of home networking and its perpetual gotchas, though, these are quibbles.  The touch screen streamlines setup enormously and allows you to skip the chore of firing up a PC, launching a browser, entering the router’s URL as one of those cryptic IP addresses (my D-Link's, 192.168.0.1, is taped to the front of my PC), and wandering through the average multilayered, multitabbed, multiexasperating web UI.

Not to mention that Securifi’s dev team issues helpful firmware updates at a furious pace.

Get Even Firmware Updates Via Almond’s Touch Screen

Which brings me to another forehead-smacking Almond feature: it even delivers firmware updates via its touch screen.  Just find and press Almond’s firmware tile:

And, if a new update is available, press the Update Firmware button:

I’ve told Ram it would be great if Almond’s touch screen notified you as soon as it learned about a firmware update.  So will we see that feature turn up soon in a future firmware release?

Maybe.  Stay tuned.

*     *     *     *     *

Update: Securifi is hard at work on an even more ambitious version of Almond—one you can control remotely with a smartphone to perform chores like locking your front door or adjusting your home thermostat—known as Almond+.  Check it out!

iPhone 4S on Virgin Mobile June 29, 2012

Yep, it's official.  Got the email from Virgin Mobile about 20 minutes ago.

Not sure why the Virgin Mobile website is willing to say only that the iPhone is "coming soon", but the email says it'll be available starting June 29.  See the screen cap above, where the date appears in the fine print.

No word on what the upfront cost will be, but PC World has already assembled a chart showing the total cost of ownership for 2 years and it looks like Virgin Mobile comes out on top despite your obligation to fork over $649 for the iPhone itself.  Yowza!

Related question: is that retail iPhone unlocked?  Should a Virgin Mobile subscriber discover that her Sprint-run CDMA network is -- as the kids say -- a fail, would it be possible to take the phone to, say, Verizon's CDMA network instead?  Those CDMA phones have no SIM cards, so if Virgin Mobile is baked into the firmware that would likely be a no.

Indeed, I just checked to see what a brand new unlocked 16GB iPhone costs on the Apple store and, by golly, it's $649.  Moreover, it comes with this caveat from Apple:

The unlocked iPhone works only on supported GSM networks, such as AT&T in the U.S. When you travel internationally, you can also use a micro-SIM card from a local GSM carrier. The unlocked iPhone will not work with CDMA carriers such as Verizon Wireless or Sprint [or, my 2 cents, Virgin Mobile].

Lastly, if you're willing to join Auto Pay -- which allows Virgin Mobile to bill your credit or charge card automatically -- you can save 5 bucks a month and pay as little as $30 a month (though, yes, you'll also be charged sales tax on top of that) for the usual 300 voice minutes and unlimited (as in 2.5GB) text, email, and web data.

Virgin lets you sign up for email updates, though I'm not sure what they'd be updating you about ... unless that June 29 arrival date is tentative.  (Possibly they'll alert you when you're eligible to preorder?)

Ah, Virgin Mobile.  Your diabolically clever marketers specialize in Faustian bargains like these.

Put Harry Potter on Your iPad in 5 Easy Steps

NOTE: This post does not offer workarounds for iPad users intent on enjoying Pottermore’s Potions and Wizard’s Duel activities, which require the Adobe Flash Player.  It’s my understanding Adobe Flash is (and will forever remain) unsupported on Apple’s mobile devices.  Sorry!

Pottermore Shop doesn’t yet have an official relationship with Apple’s iTunes store—one that, were it in place, would presumably allow anyone to link an iTunes account to Pottermore Shop and send a purchased book directly to an iBooks bookshelf. Instead, here’s the rather involved 10-step procedure Pottermore Shop recommends for iBooks users:

iBooks App:

1. Purchase your eBook (or collect it, if it is a gift)
2. Your eBook will then appear in 'My books'
3. Click the 'Select' button under the eBook you wish to download
4. Choose the 'Direct download' option
5. Click the 'Yes, download this book' button. Your eBook will now be prepared and download to your computer. If you are prompted to save it to your computer, click 'Yes' or 'Save', taking care to note where it is being saved
6. Open iTunes on your computer
7. Locate your eBook on your computer and use your mouse to drag and drop it into the 'Books' section of iTunes
8. Download the free iBooks App to your device
9. Connect your device to your computer and sync it with 'Books' in iTunes
10. Open the iBooks App on your device and access your eBook

However, if you’ve got an iPad, an iTunes account, and the iBooks app you can cut these 10 steps in half and simply direct download the Harry Potter ebook to your iPad.  Which means you’re beginning as Pottermore Shop suggests above ...

To add a Pottermore Shop ebook directly to your iPad, select the Direct Download option

... but after Step 5 you’ll see this helpful message on your iPad:

Once the direct download is finished, your iPad will invite you to open the file in your iBooks app.  It will also place the book on your iPad's bookshelf.

I suppose there are other ereader apps available for the iPad, which is why you’re also given the choice of using the Open in... button.  I used Open in “iBooks” and found the DRM-free epub file opened flawlessly (which it should, since iBooks supports its epub file format).

Granted, Pottermore Shop may recommend its laborious 10-step approach to ensure that you place the DRM-free copy of your Harry Potter ebook on your Mac or PC for safekeeping.  That way should your iPad meet an untimely end and you require a new (or reformatted) one from Apple you won’t use up another of your 8 (or fewer) allowable downloads obtaining a new copy of your ebook.  Instead, you can simply synch the replacement iPad with your computer and voilà!—your Harry Potter ebook is once again ready to travel.

On the other hand, if you’re impatient to read and would like to skip a few steps ... my approach will save you serious time.

Pottermore Shop Scotches My 8-Download Limit

16 April 2012 UPDATE: When “The Pottermore Shop team” was pleased to inform me in its email late last week that the remaining downloads of my Sorcerer’s Stone had been “increased” (see post below) I should have double-clicked on my copy of the book in my account’s “My Books” page and inspected the number of remaining downloads it displayed.  Had I done so I’d have seen the total number was now 6, or merely 1 more than it had been before.  Basically I’d been spotted an extra download in compensation for my original trouble obtaining a readable copy of the DRM-free edition for my PC.  Hardly noteworthy.  However, I used the extra download to try pulling a copy of Sorcerer’s Stone onto my mother-in-law’s iPad, which turned out to be a breeze.

*     *     *     *     *

Curiouser and curiouser.

Received an unexpected email today from “The Pottermore Shop team”.  If you’ve read my post Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s DRM-Free eBook, you know that I experienced some difficulties directly downloading a DRM-free copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to my PC.  I vented my frustrations to Pottermore Shop’s tech support and initially received an unhelpful email reply with step-by-step instructions for downloading the file.  I replied to the reply that downloading the file wasn’t my problem: reading the file was.  Well, today’s email explained that my “query” had been forwarded to “our technical team and we’re now pleased to tell you that the remaining downloads of your Harry Potter book "The Sorcerer's Stone" have been increased.”

Upon visiting my Pottermore Shop account I discovered, indeed, that I now appear to have an indefinite number of downloads at my disposal and the 8-download limit has been done away with.  The Q&A on the right nav of “My books” page puts it this way:

How many times can I download each book?

The books that you buy from the Pottermore Shop can be downloaded multiple times each for no additional cost.

OK: multiple times is an ambiguous number.  And, oddly, Pottermore Shop doesn't seem to have discontinued the 8-download limit across the board; it’s still mentioned on the site’s Downloading eBooks page.

So good on Rowling and Co. to own up to their mistakes and take action to set things right.  But it appears this gesture is strictly for customers the site judges to have been inconvenienced during Pottermore Shop’s rocky opening.  It doesn’t represent the kind of sea change in sales philosophy I’d originally thought (and hoped) it to be.  (Yet to be learned is whether this indeterminate limit applies to any future ebooks I might buy from the site.)

BTW: through all of this I’ve failed to point out that, ironically, my first, unreadable direct download from Pottermore Shop never counted against my now revoked 8-download limit.  It was only after initiating the successful download the following day that I noticed my Pottermore Shop download count had reached 3—1 for my Kindle version, 1 for my Nook version, and 1 for my readable, DRM-free direct download.  The previous day’s unreadable download had clearly never been counted at all.

Lastly, I did confirm that that infamous first, unreadable file, 9781781100271_epub.v1.epub, was in fact Nook-DRMed.  Here’s how I verified it: after synching my desktop PC with my Nook account my Nookcentric copy of Sorcerer’s Stone—the one Pottermore Shop had successfully sent directly to my B&N cloud account to read on my Nook 3G—appeared on my hard drive in the folder My Barnes & Noble eBooks.  Its name: harrypotterandthesor_9781781100271.  So I moved it to a backup folder, copied 9781781100271_epub.v1.epub into My Barnes & Noble eBooks, and renamed it harrypotterandthesor_9781781100271.  With the new name I was able to open and read it with my PC’s Nook ereader software.  It was clearly identical.

Harry Potter Audiobooks: Team Dale vs. Team Fry

Search for Harry Potter on Audible.com or Audible.co.uk and here’s the banner ad you’ll see.  Apparently Pottermore Shop now has exclusive rights to downloadable audiobook editions of the novels.

When Pottermore Shop opened last week (and I went on an unmagical adventure trying to download a DRM-free epub file of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) I discovered there were 5-minute samples of both the Jim Dale and Stephen Fry audiobook readings of all 7 Harry Potter novels.

I was eager to compare them.

Since we live in New York, my wife and I have bought for our daughter the Jim Dale readings of most of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.  But choosing Dale was less a preference than a requirement.  Bloomsbury holds the UK rights to the books and Scholastic holds the US rights; each was entitled to license audiobook subrights separately for its territory.

Any Potter Audiobook You Want So Long as It’s Dale

So if you live in one of the 50 states your choice is Jim Dale, and in the Commonwealth it’s Stephen Fry.  It’s a little like Henry Ford’s famous comment about the Model T: Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.  In the US you can choose any Potter audiobook you want so long as it’s Dale.

Though Pottermore Shop is happy to tease you with samples read by both actors, its servers appear to recognize where you live and won’t permit you to buy Fry’s readings if you live in the US or (I’m guessing since I haven’t quizzed anyone shopping from London, Glasgow, Dublin, Ottawa, or Melbourne) Dale’s readings if you live in the UK.  More about that later.

Let’s begin by listening to Dale and Fry reading the beginning of chapter 1 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which is what the marketers for Scholastic in New York insisted Rowling’s first novel be renamed when they were told the original UK edition would be called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—because (according to Wikipedia) they knew American kids wouldn’t read any book with the boring word philosopher in the title.

NOTE: I’m using the European music-sharing site Soundcloud to host my Dale and Fry audioclips.  Please accept my apologies if the site is down and you’re unable to listen to them.

Here's Dale:


And here's Fry:


For some time I’d been under the mistaken impression that the central difference between Dale’s and Fry’s reading styles was Fry’s refusal to devote himself to the kind of voice impressions that Dale relishes.  But listening to all the Pottermore Shop samples makes clear this isn’t the case.  While the chapter 1 excerpts above don’t offer much variety in voices—most of what we hear is an interior monologue by Mr. Dursley—I recommend those of you unfamiliar with Fry’s readings listen to his other samples.  The difference in voice characterizations isn’t nearly as dramatic as I’d been led to believe.

The Long (Fry) and the Short (Dale) of It

Indeed, I stumbled on the most measurable difference between Dale and Fry by accident when I noticed that Dale’s samples encompass a larger slice of the book than Fry’s.  For instance, in the brief excerpts above Dale reads these lines that Fry doesn’t reach:

Mr. Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor.  If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning.  He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead.  Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime.

Just as surprising is that Dale’s excerpt, though it bites off a bigger piece of the book, is actually shorter than Fry’s:  4:52 vs. 5:13.

What I found extraordinary about this discovery was that I hadn’t noticed Fry’s leisurely pace at all while I was listening to him.  As deeply familiar as I am with Dale’s approach I hadn’t found myself becoming impatient with Fry or even considering that he was speaking more slowly than Dale.  Yet the differences in speed between the two really add up—especially in the later, longer books.

For instance, Pottermore Shop lists Fry’s reading of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as 20.5 hours and Dale’s as 18.5 hours, while Fry’s reading of Rowling’s longest Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, runs 29.25 hours versus 26.5 hours for Dale.

Of course, no one wants to speed hear an audiobook.  (Unless it's about, say, how to improve your leadership abilities ... or earn that first million.)

Fry: A Leisurely, Nuanced Read

And thanks to being given the chance to compare Dale and Fry word for word I did notice, in just these short excerpts, Fry offering more nuanced interpretations than Dale.  As he reads Rowling’s description of Mr. Dursley—“He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache”—Fry seems to delight in this nonsequitur, changing inflection to note blithely that having a very large moustache has nothing to do with having hardly any neck.

By contrast Dale’s reading is far more routine.

Then, too, Fry picks up on the parallel description of Mrs. Dursley having “nearly twice the usual amount of neck”, appropriately emphasizing nearly twice to make clear the distinction between Mrs. Dursley’s long neck and Mr. Dursley’s short one.

Dale, unfortunately, fails to convey this difference to the listener.

Lest Dale fans protest that I’m picking on him, rest assured I love his readings—especially his energy, theatricality, and otherworldly voice for Dobby the house elf.  In looking around the web for preferences about Dale and Fry I ran across someone defending Dale’s readings by observing that he recorded three of the Potter books before the first movie adaptation was released—and that his voices seem to anticipate those used by the film actors.  Indeed, it’s hard not to see Robbie Coltrane when listening to Dale’s Hagrid, or Dame Maggie Smith when listening to his Professor McGonagall.  Though I’d imagine the same is likely true of Fry’s voices for these very distinctive characters.

How to Flout (Maybe) Pottermore Shop’s Audiobook Copyright Safeguards

Ultimately, though, true Potter fans should be given the chance to hear both readings unabridged and judge for themselves.  So it’s vexing to discover that Pottermore Shop hews to copyright laws that keep Americans away from Fry and Britons away from Dale.

Someone, however, has noted a workaround for this problem.  I haven’t tried it and can’t guarantee that it works, but it sounds plausible.  Pottermore Shop’s product pages encourage giving all the Harry Potter works as gifts, and when you click the Buy as a gift link you see this popup:

Take a closer look.  This instance of the gift popup appears if you’ve selected one of Stephen Fry’s readings—so the default location shown for Where do they live? is United Kingdom, which is where you’d ideally be residing to be entitled to listen to his work.  (I’m guessing Canada and a number of other UK commonwealth countries would also work here, but why fuss?  Let’s stick with the default!)  Pick your own email address as the email address for the gift recipient—though make sure it’s not the same address you’ve used to establish your Pottermore Shop account.  (Does Pottermore Shop know a random Gmail or Yahoo! or Hotmail account belongs to a US resident and not a UK resident?  Seems unlikely.)  You should shortly be sent a download link for the audiobook of your choice.

Again, I haven’t tried this ploy and can’t honestly claim it works.  And technically I’m obliged to remind you that even if it does work you’re violating international copyright laws by exploiting it.

12 June 2012 Update: I have confirmation from a visitor that the Buy as a gift stratagem does indeed work!  However, based on this visitor’s personal experience (and difficulties) it’s advisable that once you’ve completed the gift purchase you log off Pottermore Shop and either flush your browser’s cookies or open a different browser entirely to complete the gift download.  It’s also advisable to send your gift to an email address that differs from the one you used to open your Pottermore Shop account.  Still, gratifying news for Potter fans who’d like to broaden their audiobook horizons.

Whose Team Are You On?

On the other hand, if it does the trick I’d love to hear from anyone who’s been successful with it.  While you’re at it, let me know whose team you’re on.