I hadn’t been up to Shenzhen for several months and was feeling in desperate need of a massage.  Add to that a friend who is relatively new to Hong Kong and had never been across the border.  And so, yesterday, off we went.  Since he’d never been there at all, I figured it made sense to do some of the usual stuff for his first visit.  Which meant, of course, the Luo Hu shopping mall.

First stop lunch.  I always love to eat at Laurel but we were hungry and I knew that at 1 PM on a Saturday afternoon it would be at least a 30 minute wait for a table, so we picked a different spot in the mall (sorry, I’m spacing on the name) with reasonable quality stuff and average price of around Y10 per dish.  Of course I ordered way too much and we were full before the last dish came.  And since it was a long time in coming, I tried to  cancel it but they wouldn’t let me.   Oh well, at Y38 (fried chili peppers stuffed with minced fish, spicy as hell) I didn’t mind too much.

Walking around the shopping mall, it seemed as if every shop had the same two iPad knock-offs, each of which seemed to have both Windows and Android installed.

As you can probably tell, the boxes look the same (the one on the right has the Android logo on top) and these things seemed relatively okay on first glance.  Note that on the bottom there is a connector port (not Apple’s dock connector) as well as USB and a Micro-SD slot.   The interface seemed like Windows and then you’d tap an arrow and another icon menu would launch featuring Android options, Android 1.6.  The smaller iPad also has a front-facing web cam built in.   Some dealers had taped an Apple logo on the back.   I couldn’t figure out what processor was inside but these suckers were pretty freaking slow.  Asking price everywhere was around Y1200; one shop came down to Y700 and they were trying really hard not to let me leave without buying one, literally hanging on to my arm as I tried to get out of the shop.  But I figured, even if I could get them down another hundred or two (which seemed likely), this was something that I wouldn’t actually use more than a couple of times for novelty or show-off value due to that really slow processor.   Perhaps there are better ones available at Huaquiangbei but we didn’t have time to get over there to check it out.

I did buy a different cute gimmicky thing – a key chain with what looked like the usual set of buttons for locking/unlocking a car but actually had a tiny video cam embedded – for Y80!  Takes Micro-SD cards and seemed to work decently in the shop – tested out this one and it seems to work okay so I’ll be dangerous during the week ahead.

The only other photos of possible interest are these two shots taken from the toilet in Luo Hu looking at the border.  I find the graves on the hillside facing Shenzhen to be of particular interest (sorry, couldn’t get rid of the reflection in the glass) – were these placed there merely because it’s on a hillside facing water or was there some political significance that I don’t know about?  I fantasized that these were people born across the border, came to Hong Kong in 1949 and are hoping that some day their spirits will return to a free China?

The next stop was massage, of course.  I asked around in the mall and the name that came up most often was Queens Spa & Dining so we went back to the train station, found the Queens Spa shop and hopped on their free shuttle bus for the 10 minute ride somewhere near Dong Men.  I thought I’d been there before but everything there was new to me so perhaps it was my first time.

There were six people, all dressed in white, lined up outside to welcome people.  Everything in this place seemed shiny new and immaculately clean.  One floor features a “30,000 square foot water park!” but we hadn’t brought appropriate attire.  The shower area featured three huge baths set at different temperatures with those big stone jacuzzi loungers, very relaxing.

On entering the lounge area, we encountered a Caucasian woman in uniform with a big button that read, “I speak ENGLISH!”  Her name was Natalya, Russian, living in Shenzhen for 10 years.  Actually we encountered a lot more English outside of Luo Hu than I’d encountered in the past – many of the Chinese staff members at the sauna spoke at least some English, at least at a similar level to my Mandarin (probably better), and when we went for our massage later on, one of the two massage girls could speak basic English and told us she was studying at a nearby school on her days off.

We settled into huge lounge chairs in the movie area – big projection TV, the day’s film schedule posted (we watched Four Christmases, Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, better than I expected) while helping ourselves to drinks and fruit – fancier drinks and food available at extra charge and we did spend Y10 for some popcorn.

When we felt ready for the massage, we were brought to a computer screen where we could choose from baseball-card-like displays of each masseuse, her name and specialties (though only in Chinese) – each one photographed in skin tight outfits looking like pop stars, each one more beautiful than the last, although of course no “extras” are to be had in these kinds of places.  90 minute massages start at Y168 and go up depending on which options you want.  ”Hong Kong style” oil massage was Y188, if memory serves.

Note – if you just want to go there and use the facilities without getting a massage – pool tables, movie and karaoke rooms, mah jong room, water park, food, etc. – the cost is Y98 for 24 hours.  That’s really nice, right?   Walk around Shenzhen, get hot and sticky (no pun intended) and come here and pay 98 yuan for locker, shower, pool and some food, that’s a damned good deal IMHO.

From there, jumped in a taxi to my favorite restaurant, the Luo Hu branch of Sichuan chain Ba Shu Feng.  And for the first time, these guys let me down.  I ordered 4 dishes – 3 of them came relatively soon and were as fiery spicy and wonderfully tasty as ever.  But the 4th dish never showed up.  I kept calling waitresses over, the manager kept coming over, they kept getting on their walkie talkies and asking, they kept telling me it was coming, but it never came.  Finally it was getting close to 11 PM and I told them we had to get back to Hong Kong and didn’t want to miss the train.  As opposed to our lunch experience, this time they were very apologetic and didn’t charge us for the dish that never came.  Which was very nice of them except that fish dish is really freaking tasty and I had been looking forward to it but it was not to be.

So we hopped in a taxi back to the train and very soon we were back across the border in Hong Kong.  One thing I find is that people in Shenzhen are consistently friendly, smiling and helpful – and not just when they’re trying to help themselves to some of the money in your wallet.  Then we came across the border to Hong Kong where no one smiles, everyone’s in a rush and grouchy all the time.  Logic would seem to dictate the opposite should be true.  But these days I find people in Shenzhen to be more laid back and welcoming than the people in Hongkie Town.  My friend’s reaction to his first trip?  He wanted to leave Hong Kong and move there.  Next trip I’ll take him around Dong Men and Shekou and see if he still feels the same way.

Not much time so not much commentary ….

I liked Life as a Bon Vivant’s review of this congee place in Jordan.

A very cool wristwatch, looks like a cassette tape (daddy, what’s a cassette tape?) and the little reels actually spin.

Americans spent $168 million on virtual mobile goods last year.   That’s a lot of nothing!

Taste test of Japanese curry mixes.

Round-up of the “big” reviews of the iPhone 4 so far – Pogue, Mossberg, etc.   In a nutshell, they all pretty much love the phone and hate AT&T.

Kubrick vs. Scorsese – Wonderful montage of the two filmmakers I feel most connected to.  (Kubrick’s from the Bronx and I worked for him for a short period.  Scorsese & I went to the same school several years apart, had the same teachers, each got our first gig at CBS sports – never met him although when I lived in Manhattan, for some reason location scouts came to look at my apartment as a possible location for King of Comedy.)

Rolling Stone mag puts its controversial profile of General McChrystal online, something they rarely do.  But in this case it was being excerpted in so many other places, I guess they had no choice.

The iPad has sold 3 million units in 80 days, putting it on track to become the fastest selling mobile device ever.  And with so many territories still to roll out, it should maintain or even quicken its pace.

Last but not least, via CNNGo, this piece at Lonelee Planet highlights Japanese ads featuring beautiful girls in bikinis holding up mugs of beer.  I know at least one of my steady readers is gonna enjoy this one.

There aren’t that many shops for buying big ticket electronics items in Hong Kong.  Most people seem to go to one of the chains.  The biggest, Fortress, is owned by Li Ka-CHING! (surprise, surprise) but there are others … go to Sai Yeung Choi South Street in Mong Kok or the 8th floor of Times Square in Causeway Bay to see them all.  There are some independent shops hidden away – used to be a great shop on Cannon Street in CWB but that’s long gone; here in Sai Kung we enjoy great, friendly service from Patsy House.

I mostly steer clear of these shops.  So believe it or don’t, I didn’t know that there was this whole new class of televisions, called LED, replacing LCD.  (More properly, these are LCD sets that get their backlighting from LEDs rather than fluorescents.)

On Friday, there was an “electronics show” set up in the main area of the Cyberport mall and we took a stroll through this during lunch time.  The first thing that caught my eye was an LED/LCD TV showing the Blu-Ray of Avatar.  Holy Christ on a Harley.  I never saw a picture on a TV like this in my life.  Honestly, it looked better than it did in the movie theater.  The level of detail.  The brightness of the colors.  The blackness of the blacks.  The thingness of the other things.  I couldn’t help it, the Pavlovian response kicked in and I had to wipe the drool off my chin.

My buddy informed me that Samsung is once again the leader in this space and we went over to the Samsung booth where I saw a very lust-worthy 55 inch Samsung LED/LCD set.  The guy told us it’s normally $42,000 but at this show they are selling it for $37,000 and that if I paid cash, there would be a further discount.  The 46 inch version looked like a poor relation by comparison though that one was going for “only” $19,000.  They were not offering the standard 12, 18 or 24 month no interest installment plan and, as it happens, I didn’t have $37k in my wallet at that moment.

As it also happens, I didn’t see this chart from Gizmodo until today.  (Click on the image to see it full size.)

Actually, I didn’t need the chart.  I came home and told my girlfriend about the wonders of this Brave New World of teevee sets and she said that we don’t need it and that if I bought it, I could count on sleeping alone (or, if not alone, with someone other than her) for the rest of my life.  It’s hard to be a gadget freak and have a sensible mate.

Saturday, gear envy of a different sort kicked in.  I’ve been having these problems with my PC, not really certain if it’s the video card or the monitor.  The truly weird bit happened when I went to run the ATI control center software to reconfigure my monitor set-up and the software wouldn’t run.  It was there once, I did install it, but now it’s simply gone.  Was I hallucinating?  Did I not install it?  Did some virus eat it?  Beyond that, was the problem with the monitor, the video card or even just the cheap HDMI cable?  Was I going to spend the entire weekend running through 27 different set-ups and configurations to try and narrow this down?

I found myself once again gritting my teeth and cursing Microsoft.  (I wasn’t going to blame myself, was I?)  And started looking at Apple again and thinking, hmmmm, iMac or Mac Pro?  I was really this close to pulling the trigger and ordering one of these shiny things and dumping my PC.

In the end, I went to one of the shops in the Wanchai Computer Centre that I trust, discussed the issue with the two guys there who know me, and ended up walking out with a new video card which I’ll install later today.  And now my sound card seems to be acting up as well.  Sigh.

As much as we love to hate the mobile companies in Hong Kong for a whole host of reasons, some real, some imagined, we should at least take a moment to be grateful that none of them are AT&T.  Following the massive security breach in which someone hacked AT&T to get the email addresses of more than 100,000 iPad owners, now comes word that the entire iPhone 4 ordering process might have been hacked.  And that AT&T’s servers completely melted down when iPhone 4 pre-ordering went live in the US yesterday.   Many people reported that they couldn’t complete the pre-ordering process and now the pre-orders are completely sold out.

Here in Hong Kong, there’s been no details on the exact release date (presumably at some point in July but possibly liable to get pushed back if US orders exhaust the available supply, something that happened with the iPad) and no announcement of local pricing.   At the online HK Apple store, you can click on a button labeled “Notify Me” and then enter your email address.  I’ve done that, for whatever its worth.  The HK Apple store still seems barely aware of the existence of the iPad even though that too is presumably getting officially released in HK next month.

Carrier 3 Hong Kong has a web page that allows you to fill out a form to “register your interest to iPhone 4″ (hey, let’s face it, Li Ka-Shing didn’t get to be one of the richest men in the universe by paying generous salaries to his peons).  No mention of pricing or data plans or upgrade policy but I’ve filled that one in, too.  24 hours later I got an SMS telling me my registration has been confirmed.

Time, as always, will tell.

Meanwhile in the US it’s E3 – the largest annual video game conference in the U.S. and since I work for a company that develops and publishes games, I have to at least feign interest in this stuff.  The last major video game I played was Diablo 2, which I’m told was about 8 years ago.  I did go out and buy a PS3 and XBOX360 more than 3 years ago, but that was for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs.  I bought a handful of games to go along with them but never really had the time to play any of them for more than a few minutes.   (I’ve still got 50 or 100 HD-DVD movies sitting around if someone wants to make an offer – or do I wait ten years and hope that they become rare collectibles that I can auction on eBay, if eBay’s still around?)

It’s probably worth noting that there is a new XBOX360 shipping this week – smaller and slimmer and shinier.   Microsoft also has a new motion controller called the Kinect that comes out in November (US$149) and Sony has a similar device for the PS3, the Move, coming out in September for $99.  I’m sure Nintendo also has something up their metaphorical sleeve and there will be lots of 3D related announcements and of course one can expect billions of press releases announcing new games.

The new 800 pound gorilla in the games business is Zynga.   They make those social games that you love to hate, games like Farmville that fill up your news stream on Facebook, games that aren’t actually fun to play but rely on social pressure to keep you going.  Some people have spent thousands of real world dollars buying virtual items, a concept that strikes me as completely off the fucking wall, and yet best estimates are that Zynga, prior to going public or getting bought, is now valued at roughly US$5 billion – the company has received US$366 million in VC funding to date.

Zynga, by the way, fucked up massively earlier this week and you can read the full details over at TechCrunch.  Basically they sent out a redemption code for their Mafia Wars game to lots of people.  But they didn’t do it right.  The code could be shared with your friends or even posted on the web and anyone could enter it into the game.  So 100,000 people typed that code in and received $120 in fake money that they could use to buy fake goods.  If Zynga had any brains, they would have simply ended the promotion.  But no, they have generated millions of dollars of bad publicity for themselves by not just ending the promotion but by rolling back the accounts of anyone who entered the code – not just taking away the fake money but also rolling back the game status of anyone who had entered that code in the game, rending 24 hours of game play as useless.   And then sent out emails to people playing the game informing them that if they did it again, they’d be barred from playing the game.

This is what happens when you take kids with no real world experience and hand them millions of dollars to play with.  They have some spectacular successes but those are often partnered with serious flame outs.  As we’ve seen time and time again with Facebook.   Long term it’s not going to hurt them and one can only hope that there have been some lessons learned.

Last week Zynga launched a new game, Frontierville.  100,000 people tried the game on its first day.  Farmville has 66 million registered players on Facebook and the estimate is that 20 million of them spend some time playing the game every day.  20 million people a day?  That’s a company that didn’t exist just a handful of years ago getting more eyeballs on a daily basis than almost any network TV show in the U.S.   Time Magazine named Farmville as one of the world’s 50 Worst Inventions – but they say the stuff on their list consists of ideas that didn’t work and that’s hardly the case here.  You can now buy Farmville-branded merchandise at 7-11s in the US and there’s going to be a Farmville iPhone app.

In other words, this stuff is bigger than almost anyone realizes.  How disruptive will it be in the long term?  My guess is “very.”

Okay, the weekend is the time when the least number of people are reading blogs, but this is when I have time to post ….

Just a couple of random notes from Saturday.

The first is that I went over to the Wanchai Computer Centre for a few odds and ends.  One thing I needed was another USB hub, one with as many ports as possible.  I spotted a 10 port hub in one shop, Japanese writing on the back of the package, and this shop was selling it for HK$280.  I thought it would do but then decided to look in a few other shops as well.   The next shop I went into had the exact same thing for HK$98.  Seriously.  Caveat emptor and all that.

I was also looking for yet another bag.  I’d like a new day bag for when I’m working, something that will hold my iPad, two pairs of glasses in their cases, my Canon S90 camera, my pocket WiFi, ear buds, a Moleskine pad and some pens, keys, etc.   Didn’t see anything suitable at the various shops selling cases at the computer center.  A Crumpler bag came close but they didn’t have it in any color that I liked and actually I don’t like the fact that Crumpler bags are just one huge pocket; I like lots of dividers and spaces.  I like the look of this one from Timbuktu.

Anyone know any shops in HK that sell Timbuktu bags?  According to their web site, the only shop is on Cheung Chau and I’m sure that’s not right.

Dinner.  Hmmm … I was with a group of friends at Doghouse but I’d already eaten there twice this week.  Been to Sabah and Thai Farmer too many times lately.  And the rain was pouring down so I didn’t want to go too far.   Thought about Amici so we went up there but the joint was packed and noisy with people watching some sports.   So I was ready to head upstairs to Flying Pan – haven’t been there in years and thought pancakes could be a good choice.  But it was 9 PM and my gf got cross – “You haven’t eaten all day, you need real food, pancakes aren’t real food.”   This was further complicated by the fact that my gf had already eaten so I couldn’t go somewhere for Indian or Chinese (can’t order so many dishes if just one person’s eating) and Uno Mas is outside of my budget at the moment. There’s that new Jack’s Terazzo joint above Typhoon but I haven’t heard anything at all about it yet.

So at a total loss at this point, we went over to Outback.  The horror!  The horror!  $198 for a ribeye steak that was not only undercooked but completely devoid of taste.  The portion of garlic mashed potatoes was clearly done via an ice cream scoop – a small ice cream scoop – and completely dried out.  The Caesar salad was vaguely acceptable if you don’t know what a Caesar salad should taste like.  The wait staff never brought bread.  The only good food on the plate was the “chef’s veggies,” a decent selection and not cooked to death.

Part way through the meal, a couple of friends came in and we invited them to join us.  The guy (British) went for fish and chips and everything about the dish looked wrong to me.  I asked him if it was any good and he hesitated and said, “Well, um, uh, it’s okay,” clearly trying to make the best of what he also realized was a bad situation.

Just crappy, sad, unpleasant food top to bottom and the thing is, at 9 PM, this place was full!  What do people actually like about this place?

Well, today is Sunday.  A quiet day at home.  And hopefully something better for dinner tonight than what I had last night.

Android is getting me curiouser and curiouser.   I note that bizarrely named HTC Droid Incredible (google it) is getting great reviews in the US; it’s not available in HK yet.   But then again, I have downloaded 247 apps for my iPhone(s) and iPad from Apple and that’s a big investment to walk away from, not to mention the fact that the next generation iPhone should be announced in the next couple of weeks and they’ll probably leapfrog Android.   But I’m worried about Apple’s development cycle.  It’s little wonder they’re losing ground overall to Android when they are releasing just 1 or 2 phones per year.

Though it’s not as if Apple is losing any sleep over this, what with their market cap passing Microsoft.  Is this permanent or just a temporary blip?  Either way, pundits are saying this represents the sunset of the Microsoft era and to some extent I agree.  Microsoft is winning in precious few categories these days.  Most of their market dominance in Windows and Office comes via their entrenched corporate user base – it’s just too expensive for large companies to move away from these tools without a more overwhelming reason than anyone has yet offered.

It’s clear that Bill Gates was right again – that the war for the hearts and minds of users is being fought through browsers and mobile devices now.  Too bad MS couldn’t deliver – whatever users IE has are simply because the thing is built into Windows.  And Windows Mobile is desperately trying to play catch-up but like Windows, it’s simply band-aids on top of band-aids, hauling those 16 tons of legacy code up the side of an infinitely high mountain.

Microsoft’s had some high level departures in the past week.  But someone there must be looking at Ballmer and saying he’s not the right guy to revive the company and one of these days Ballmer will “retire” – and if not a Steve Jobs-style success at Microsoft, let’s face it, the guy will retire a billionaire, so no tears in my beer (or my Coke) for him.

At work, they’ve given me a Dell laptop running Windows 7.   At home, I dual-boot Windows XP and 7 on my desktop, but I’ve just never acclimated myself to Windows 7 and I’m finding no particular love for it at work where it’s all I have.  My first Dell there (a hand-me-down) died after three weeks.  Data transferred to another Dell hand-me-down, I chunka-chunk along all day but I’m on the edge of asking to switch to a MacBook Pro, something I couldn’t do at my prior job but could do here.    Almost everything I do at work is via Chrome and MS Office – and there’s the problem, MS Project.  Which means dual-booting the Mac (which of course is not really practical) or running VMWare.

My car is now semi-fixed.  A recommendation for a different repair shop in the SK area brought me to HP Cars and they have much more expertise with BMW’s than the last guy I used to bring my car to.  That last guy, I’d bring the car, give him a list of 5 things, and 4 days later he’d say my car is ready and I’d ask about the 5 things and they’d only done 3.  This guy – one day to check things out, give me a quote, buy the parts; one more day to do the work and all of it’s done (and the list I gave him was 10 things).  This guy also told me about all of the things that the previous owner had done to mess with the car, some of which is reversible, some of which isn’t (at least not without spending a whole lot more money than I care to spend).   At any rate, the car is now running not just properly but also much more comfortably, and given the fact that I’m in a serious negative equity position on it, I’m now much more content to stick with it for another year … or even two?

Couple of links to videos you might enjoy:

A run-down of all the questions that Lost asked but couldn’t be arsed to answer.

And for corporate drones like myself, a fascinating 10 minute animated presentation from Daniel Pink (author of Drive and other books) on the surprising truth on what really motivates employees.   In a nutshell, it’s not more money.  (But that’s if you’re already following his advice on paying your staff enough to take money off the table as an issue – meaning that you pay people a decent salary so that they don’t spend half of their work day worrying about money problems at home.)   What I find in things like this presentation or in the current best-selling book Rework and even in that book I mentioned a couple of posts back (Team Leadership in the Game Industry) is that the great majority of what these people are writing (and successfully selling) is just basic logical common sense stuff; there’s no rocket science in any of this.  It’s all stuff I know on at least an intrinsic level, based on my own experiences.   So, to paraphrase the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz, what is it that they have that I lack?  The talent or focus to collect their thoughts and get this stuff down on paper and pixels in an easily digestible format.

But following the old dictum that you hire a consultant, hand him (or her) your watch and ask him (or her) what time it is, it may very well be the case that when I say, “We should do this,” people may not pay as much attention as when I say, “Jason Fried and Dan Pink say you should do this.”

And that’s just a part of my problem.   My larger problem at the moment is that the workload for everyone at my current company is so overwhelming that no one has time to do anything except act on a reactive basis.  I’m trying to focus on strategic thinking but there is just such a mountain of stuff that I’m getting sucked into reactive mode as well.  And that’s not good.  The answer probably lies in the advice that I’ve been giving to someone else – “you better step back and start figuring out what you need the organization under you to look like and then start finding a way to implement that.”  Spike, heal thyself!

Over at TechCrunch, this post titled Google, Apple, Jacob, and the Man in Black got me thinking.

Back in the 50s and 60s when I was a kid, when Hong Kong meant cheap plastic pocket AM radios, Japan’s technology was also a joke around the world.  Then in the 70s, Sony started getting serious.   Before the 70s were over, Sony TVs were the standard of quality, a product that all other TVs were measured against.  In the 80s, Sony solidified their position in consumer electronics, creating the Walkman and other products, one hit after another.

Sony’s downfall started in the 90s.  They had mountains of cash and bought Columbia Pictures and Columbia Records.  And they started stumbling.  Their products started looking as if they had been designed to protect IP content rather than with the end user in mind.   And they got arrogant.  Rather than going with accepted standards, they started creating their own proprietary technologies – things like the Memory Stick (rather than going with CF or SD) and that mini-DVD for the PSP that was a complete failure.  Sony may have been a world leader in portable cassette and CD players but they missed the boat on portable MP3 players because of their insistence on ATRAC, a technology that no one wanted.  The result is that there are now very few niches in which they can be said to dominate the way they once did; they’re perceived as vulnerable on almost every front.

Apple is similarly big on proprietary technology and closed systems.   So why did they succeed where Sony failed?  I think that first and foremost, Apple’s products are designed with the user experience in mind.  One of the reasons that I like the iPhone so much more than phones with Symbian or Windows Mobile is that it’s just that much simpler to do things in fewer steps on the iPhone OS than it is on others.   Apple did open up on the audio front, making devices that work with MP3 and not just AAC, which is good.   But on the video front, they’re still stuck on QuickTime and haven’t opened up to AVI and DiVX yet (let’s not even get into Flash!) and my opinion is that this could be an area of vulnerability for them.

Enter Google.  Google’s success has been built almost entirely on open standards.   Start with AdSense, a product that truly revolutionized the global advertising and marketing fields.  That’s the source of their mountains of cash.   And just about every product since then has been open – the published APIs that allow anyone anywhere in the world to extend and enhance Chrome, Gmail, Google Maps and Google Earth and so on.  Their tentative entry into the hardware world (the Nexus One phone) was a failure but I expect them to learn from that failure and to be able to turn things around.   I’m extremely curious about their upcoming desktop OS.  The only reason that I haven’t switched from an iPhone to an Android phone has been my investment in apps (247 apps for my iPhone and iPad downloaded to date).   I don’t think Google will crash and burn any time soon.

The dark horse in all of this may well be Samsung.  Ten or fifteen years ago, Samsung made the conscious decision to make the journey from joke to world leader and their TVs are now some of the best and they’re one of the top five mobile phone brands in the world.   And they seem to have learned from Sony’s mistakes.  Their phones offer Android and I don’t see a Samsung equivalent to the Memory Stick.

Looking around my house, I see very few Sony products.  I’ve got a couple of Sony TV’s and that’s about it.  My computer monitor is Samsung and, if and when I ever decide I can afford to upgrade my TVs, I’ll probably buy Samsung.  I’ve got a MacBook, two iPhones, an iPad and several iPod Nanos for different purposes.  My browser is Chrome, my email is Gmail and Google Maps (and especially Street View) has become a part of my life.   As much as I enjoy using Apple products, I think the future is Google and Samsung (and of course other yet-to-be-founded companies that will surely come along and disrupt everything as much as Sony, Apple and Google were once so disruptive).

(Amazing the things I come up with to keep myself busy so that I don’t do the things I need to do, like cleaning my room …. )

So after doing the full restore of my iPad overnight, I was able to get Gmail working again on my iPad, both via POP and IMAP.  But for how long?

Tonight, I come home, I check in iTunes for app updates.  It’s back to its old tricks.  Click on apps, click on check for updates, it tells me there are 10 updates available, click on download all, it asks me to input my password, then takes me to a page to confirm my account info, then I click on “done,” then it returns me to the app update page where I have to again click on download all.  12 hours later, same thing.  It’s not as if I shut down iTunes and restarted it; it’s not like I’ve rebooted my computer in the interim; it’s not like I’m coming in via a different computer or IP address.   And it’s not like this is the end of the freaking world, it’s just annoying.

Not to mention that there are still times (not as many as in the past) where I connect my iPad and iTunes thinks it’s an iPhone and it then tries to wipe all the iPad-specific apps off the device if I don’t catch it in time and cancel the sync.

iTunes is Apple’s Windows.  It’s too big.  It’s doing too many things for one bit of software.  I am guessing that there are too many lines of legacy code, too many band-aids on top of band-aids.

It’s taking me days to catch up with the backlog in my RSS and I’ve skipped over tons of stuff in Twitter.  Clearly once I start working again I’m going to have to figure out a better way to manage the tidal waves of information coming in my direction.  Anyway, some stuff that’s caught my eye.

Neil Innes is touring the US.  An interview and a career retrospective as Innes talks about the Bonzo’s relationship with the Beatles, his work with Monty Python, the Rutles and more.

M.I.A.’s new video was yanked from Youtube (by Youtube, apparently) but you can see it here.

From the SCMP a couple of days ago, some guy goes to Thailand from HK.  He gets an offer from 3 for unlimited data roaming on his iPhone for “only” HK$138 per day.  He accepts that offer.  He comes home 3 days later and gets a HK$29,000 bill for data roaming.  For 3 days.  Seems 3 neglected to tell him it was only $138 if he stuck with a specific carrier and of course every time he stepped out of an elevator his phone switched carriers.

PhotoPad – a photo editing app for the iPad that allows you to adjust color, tint, contrast, saturation, chromaticity, plus crop, filter, lots more.  All with one finger.  I knew stuff like this would be coming and expect to be seeing a whole lot more.   Almost forgot to mention, this is a free app.  I’ve got the iPad camera connection kit now and looking forward to using this app.  I also have the official Apple iPad case and it’s kind of nice and kind of sucks at the same time.

Via CNNGo, S. Pellegrino’s annual list of the world’s 100 best restaurants.  Top restaurant in Asia is in Japan of course.  HK has 5 restaurants on the list, but the highest placed is Robuchon at 53.  El Bulli drops to #2, some place in Denmark is now #1.  Denmark?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation publishes a brief timeline of Facebook’s rapidly eroding privacy policy.  This is scary stuff.

If you’re a Nikon DSLR user (like me), Thom Hogan’s seriously definitive guide to when you should use VR – and, more importantly, when you shouldn’t.

Jon Stewart takes on Apple and the whole Gizmodo 4G iphone thing.  ”You guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes.  What the fuck is going on?”

As you may have seen elsewhere, HP has just purchased Palm for US$1.2 billion.  I think if they waited another six months they could have picked it up for $20 at a garage sale.  How many years ago was it that the Treo was the cutting edge of smartphones?  I can’t remember, but I had one and loved it.  And then followed a series of egregious failures as they squandered all sorts of opportunities to build on its success.  Books will be written how the world was knocking on Palm’s door but they were passed out on the sofa in front of the TV and couldn’t be arsed to open the door and let the world in.

Avatar is now the best selling Blu-Ray disc ever in the U.S.  This despite the fact that the disc contains no extras, not even a trailer and it’s been widely publicized that a four disc deluxe edition will be out in November.  And also despite the fact that the heavy DRM on the disc is rendering it unplayable on many Blu-Ray players (hello Samsung!).

I’ve now had my iPad for just over 24 hours.  One of the things I’m most curious about is how it functions as an eReader, especially in comparison to the Kindle.   Since Amazon’s Kindle application is available for the iPad, I can access all of the e-books I’ve previously purchased on Amazon on the iPad.  I have not yet purchased any books from Apple’s iBook store.

The iPad is noticeably heavier than the Kindle.  The WiFi iPad weighs 1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) while the Kindle weighs 10.2 ounces (0.289 kg).  That might seem insignificant but I can tell you that when lying in bed, holding the reader with one hand, my hand never gets tired with the Kindle but my wrist starts acting up after 10 minutes of holding the iPad.  I should mention that at night, I use a clip-on light for reading with the Kindle; clearly this is not necessary with the iPad.

The Kindle’s e-Ink screen may seem dull by comparison but it’s easy on the eyes.  I can read for an hour without my eyes feeling tired.  I haven’t had a chance to read on the iPad for that long a period of time yet.  The Kindle app on the iPad allows for 3 different color schemes – black text on a white background (which is very bright), white text on a black background (I can’t imagine anyone preferring this) and black text on a kind-of-sepia background (which is my preference so far).   Like the Kindle itself, the Kindle app on iPad allows you to adjust text size – apparently one can also change the fonts using iBooks.

So here are some side by side comparisons.  Right now I’m reading The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins, a business book.

(The above is a jpg from the Amazon site.)

Side by side viewing pure text, the differences are not that huge.

But this book has lots of graphs and charts and I found them almost impossible to clearly read them on the Kindle, so much so that I was thinking I might have to go out and buy the physical book despite having already spent $10 on the eBook.

I don’t know if it comes through in the photos above, but the resolution seems higher on the iPad.   And reading on the iPad means you can take advantage of multi-touch and enlarge the charts or images as much as you’d like.  On the Kindle, you can click on the image to “zoom” but the zoom is not adjustable and the result is usually no more legible than it was before the zoom.

This to me represents a big win for the iPad over the Kindle.

Another book I’m reading right now is Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

This book is filled with cartoon-y graphics.  They look better on the iPad.

The end result is more pleasing on the iPad although in this case, not that big a difference overall in terms of comprehensibility of the book itself.

Note that after using the iPad as a reader for awhile, when I went back to the Kindle, I forgot “where” I was and tried selecting menu items by touching the screen.  Obviously reaching out and touching something is more intuitive than going through a series of button pushes.  This is even more relevant when it comes to placing a bookmark by a relevant passage – with the Kindle, you can use control-B or select menu, scroll down to bookmark and then press enter; with the iPad just touch the screen once to have options appear and then touch the screen on the bookmark icon.

So overall, when it comes to pure text, the Kindle wins for me because I believe the screen is easier on the eyes and the weight is easier on the arms and wrists for long term reading.  But for anything other than pure text, the Kindle app on the iPad wins hands down.

The differences are even larger when it comes to PDF files.  Trying to read PDF files on the Kindle is a disaster.  Reading them on the iPad is a joy, thanks to a $0.99 app called Good Reader.  Unlike the PDF reader built into Dropbox, Good Reader handles massive PDF files with ease, including having the ability to search the text.  The original iPhone version of this app required you to use a separate application to send PDF files to the iPhone.  They’ve now updated it on both platforms and it’s a simple matter of drag and drop the files from Explorer into iTunes.   And the result?

Again, you can use multi-touch to zoom the text.  I didn’t even bother to load this file onto the Kindle, it would have been a waste of time – of course the graphic would have been grey instead of color and the text would have been so small as to be totally illegible and not re-sizable.

Last thing for now, a quirk with the Kindle store.  Rework is $9.99 in the U.S. Kindle store and $11.99 in the international shop – a $2 surcharge is built into every title to cover the “cost” of downloading the book over 3G but this surcharge applies regardless of how you purchase the book.   My Kindle is registered in the U.S. with a U.S. address and credit card, so I can access the U.S. store.  But using the Kindle app over WiFi, signed into my U.S. account, Rework would have cost me $11.99.  I went back to my PC, bought the book for $9.99, downloaded the file to my PC and transferred to the Kindle via USB.  I then went to the iPad and the Kindle app, selected “archived items” and was able to download the book to the iPad over WiFi for free.  I don’t understand why Amazon would charge that $2 surcharge for a WiFi download even if it detects via my IP address that I’m outside of the U.S.

I’ll be posting more reviews and thoughts on the iPad later on as I continue to test out other apps.  I can say that last night, sitting in a bar, doing email and Twitter on the iPad was a pure joy, a seriously improved experience over doing the same tasks on the iPhone.   I have encountered one minor bug so far – sometimes when I connect the iPad to my computer, iTunes thinks it’s an iPhone and tries to delete all of the iPad-specific apps from it.  The first time this happened, I didn’t catch it in time (because I wasn’t expecting it).  So then I had to reconnect, reinstall those apps and then go back into some of the apps and get them set up again.  A minor inconvenience but an inconvenience nonetheless.