Wii

Why is the Wii crushing the competition? Why are shortages expected to last through 2008, more than a year after the release of the console, and through two holiday shopping periods?

The naive answer is that the Wii is a simple machine with fun games and an nice innovative controller. The naive answer isn't wrong.

If we dig a little deeper, however, we realize that back when it was still called the Revolution, we kept hearing little tidbits here and there of how the game machine would be awesome. At E3 we discovered that there was motion-sensitive control and that the controller was wireless. Then we found out that the controller would have built-in rumble. And finally a speaker. These are impressive features, and the reason the Wii sells so well is that not only does it have these features, but they are done well and correctly.

Comparing with another "revolutionary" product, Windows Longhorn ("Vista") which was supposed to revolutionize storage with WinFS, UI with Avalon, and countless other features. It sounded great, but as time dragged on and on, these features turned out to be poorly implemented, and soon removed from the final release. When a company does amazing things well, the result is good. When a company promises amazing things, doesn't do them well, and ultimately doesn't deliver on its promises, the result is not good.

Prince Harry and Iraq

Contrary to all previous reports, Prince Harry will not be allowed to go to Iraq, because of specific threats against him.

Umm... aren't there specific threats against everyone in the coalition armies in Iraq? Why is Prince Harry's life any more valuable than any other private? And if he can't go with his squad, then he shouldn't be a commanding officer.

Woman Veteran

So I was driving this evening and stopped behind this SUV at a red light:




The first thing that caught my eye was the SemperFi and Marines bumper stickers, but I soon realized that this person was proud to be a woman veteran.

My next thought was that I was also a woman veteran, as is anyone who's ever survived a relationship with a woman. The problem here, ultimately, is that this proclamation is entirely incorrect as both "woman" and "veteran" are nouns, and what they really want is an adjective to modify "veteran". That adjective is "female", as in "proud to be a female veteran."

Perhaps it's no coincidence that this person with her poor grammar was a Bush supporter.

RSS

I've finally figured out why people use RSS and a reader instead of going to individual blogs -- most blogs don't post on a daily basis, so when I go and check your blog every day and it isn't updated, I get discouraged. With a nice RSS reader, I check that daily, and if your blog was updated, I read your post.

For blogs which are updated daily, however, a reader is mostly useless.

Finally, a disclaimer: I hate it when the RSS feed for a blog doesn't include the entire blog entries, and makes you click through to the actual blog. Then you're increasing the amount of work I need to do when I read your blog. I honestly have no idea about the behavior of my own blog. If anyone reads this, then feel free to drop me a note and let me know.

Flickr & Stock

A lot of rumors lately about Flickr monetizing photos by allowing users to sell them (and grabbing a piece of the payment, a la traditional microstock companies). Here's why it won't work.

Quality. Sure, there are great photos on Flickr. Stop browsing by "interestingness". Start browsing random people's entire portfolios. Most photos are of poor quality, either technically, compositionally, or something else. There certainly is a small demand for poor quality photographs, but the majority of stock purchasers (ie, designers) demand quality, and they don't have the time nor inclination to browse through a bunch of coal to find the one diamond.

Quantity. Again, there's just too much to sort through that's irrelevant.

Tags. I personally don't like the "controlled vocabulary" that iStockphoto.com uses, but Flickr's users tag their photos poorly. Some photos are just tagged "unclebob", other photos of a lake are tagged "industrial". This mis-tagging and inconsistency makes it hard for designers to find the photos they want.

LinkedIn

I've had a LinkedIn profile for a while now -- perhaps 3 years or so. I never really did much with it, but clearly I've underestimated its importance. If you haven't searched for your coworkers on it, and you work in a technology company, you'll be surprised just how many of your colleagues have a profile.

I certainly was astounded.

Ferries Redux

As I mentioned before, Seattle is prime territory for more ferries, especially ones across Lake Washington. The Seattle-PI reports this morning that a new ferry district has been created and is considering a route between UW and Kirkland. Woo!