SXSW Part 2

March 11th, 2010 Comments

SXSW hasn’t even started yet and I’ve had quite a day. I got into Charlotte ok, although the plane did have to attempt the landing a second time due to another plane being in the wrong place. This is the second time this has happened to me in Charlotte and it is always slightly unnerving.

Before I took off I sent a DM to Jeff Pulver (140Conf, Vivox, Vonage) asking if he knew of anyone. Jeff is always massively helpful and I saw him helping his friend Geo Geller out trying to get to SXSW as well. Jeff almost immediately got back in touch with me and referred me to Alan Weinkrantz in San Antonio. When I touched down I emailed Alan and he called me back almost instantly and offered to help not only get me to Austin, but a place to stay for the night.

For this I am highly thankful and appreciative. I’m on standby for doing directly to Austin, but if that doesn’t work at least I know I’m in good hands.

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SXSW Part 1

March 11th, 2010 Comments

I’m headed to SXSW Interactive today on behalf of imVOX. My journey started at an early 4:30am wakeup. Sarah drove me to the airport, but we didn’t get there until 5:38 or so. By the time I got through the checkin line they told me that it was too late for my flight which was at 6am, and scheduled to takeoff at 6:20. Boo.

The US Air rep was nice enough to look through flights for me to try to find an alternative. At first the results were grim. No way to get there. Period. Until Saturday. At best. We could get to Charlotte, NC, but there was no way of getting to Austin. This does not make me happy. He checks other airlines. Same story. We find a flight to San Antonio, TX instead. Just 71 miles away from Austin. Close enough.

My current hope is that I can get to Charlotte and that the flight at 4pm from Charlotte to Austin isn’t completely full or someone else misses it and I can get onboard. If not, I’m looking for a way to get from SA to Austin. The train only runs in the morning so that isn’t an option. The Greyhound is a remote option, but doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the airport (increasing the cost).

The best way there seems to be a rental car one way to Austin, or finding someone on Twitter to give me a ride. Are you headed from SA to Austin tonight? If so please email me or comment here. It would be much appreciated as I’m trying to keep costs down here.

Hope this works.

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Comcast: 250GB is too small of a bandwidth cap

March 3rd, 2010 Comments

Comcast has a 250GB cap per calendar month for transfers made over their home cable modem services. They claim that this meets the needs of 90% or so of their users and that the other 10% is damaging the network. Perhaps this was true for 2009, but I don’t feel that it is true for 2010 or the needs in the future.

What is this Cap? I thought it was unlimited?

Having a bandwidth cap means that you can only download a certain amount per month before Comcast gets upset. The amount is currently 250Gb and has been unchanged since they initially instituted it in 2008. Comcast does often advertise that their service offers unlimited usage, however this simply isn’t the case.

250GB ought to be enough for anybody

Just as the quote often misattributed to Bill Gates of,”640K ought to be enough for anybody.” shows faulty logic, so does the cap imposed by Comcast. Perhaps this best describes their ideal user who pays for their service, but rarely uses it. This probably does reflect a large portion of the population. My mother does little more than check her email and Facebook with her cable modem.

Yet for a small but strong portion of the population this is simply insufficient. Those between 14-34 are using the internet in a far different way than an older generation. I am one of these.

Common Uses

Everything is streaming. We live in households with several roommates who are all similarly connected. We have not once computer, but multiple. Even if our needs are currently met, we are always pushing the edge and using more and more services. A quick look at some of the bandwidth heavy services that those of this generation use.

  • NetFlix- My household has all but stopped using our physical Netflix movies. Waiting a day is too long. Instead we use their streaming service, often watching several films in one night between all of the house residents. NetFlix is soon to start streaming along with 5.1 Surround Sound. 1080p which will use 2x as much bandwidth as the current 720p library is surely also just around the corner
  • Hulu- Another video streaming service, which also streams in 720p.
  • YouTube, Vimeo and Blip.tv- Streaming HD video content over the web has become daily activity for many people. While a few years ago this was a very small portion of people’s behavior, this is only increasing.
  • Bittorrent/Usenet- Not that I would ever admit to downloading something that isn’t public domain, but I’ve heard that downloading 1080p movies with full surround sound in Bluray quality takes around 10-30GB per movie. Queuing up a dozen or so of these is trivial and commonplace these days.
  • Large downloads- I recently reinstalled my laptop and I must have downloaded at least another 15GB of legitimate applications to get it up and running again as I like it. Lets say there’s a new operating system release and you do this to 8 computers in a household. Boom, 120GB used.
  • Streaming Music- Pandora is constantly streaming high quality audio to the house, if not several streaming in parallel.
  • Rich websites- Websites now are larger and more complex than ever. I shudder to think about using Facebook through 14,400 baud modem which was commonplace 10 years ago in many households.
  • Backup services- If you’re using something like Mozy to backup your entire computer and you multiply this by 8 or so, then you’ve got a problem with Comcast suddenly. Yes, the backup (after the initial) should only do diffs, but still the initial usage is a problem.
  • Professional use- I work from home often. VMWare images, Photoshop files, huge amounts of code, video, logs, Skype calls and audio go over my connection daily. This has got to add up.
  • Gaming- Xbox, Playstation and PC games eat bandwidth as well from gameplay but also patches, downloads and voice chat.

I do think that a single individual would have to try pretty hard to use up 250GB/month, but a common household in the Cambridge/Boston area of 20-something tech professionals can tear through it like we can a keg. A typical evening might be something like this:

  • Roommate A is watching Lost streaming from Hulu in HD in their bedroom.
  • Roommate B is downloading software updates on their computer
  • Roommate C is downloading some public domain/open source torrents
  • Roommate D is chatting on Skype video and playing WoW
  • Roommate E is playing the Xbox 360
  • The Playstation 3 is Folding
  • 6+ smart phones are connected and doing their thing

8 Computers?

That number is actually low. We’ve got 6 fulltime people living in my house. Add in three significant others that are often here, and the fact that most of us have more than one computer or computer-like device and we’ve actually got around 20 devices on the network. When we’ve had friends over we’ve probably hit near 50-60 devices on the network before counting everyone’s iPhones and laptops. Game systems, netbooks, an OLPC, iPhones, security cameras, sometimes some servers and a ton of laptops. It all counts.

250GB Cap Workaround

From what I understand  you can’t ask them to upgrade your 250GB home package to something higher. They’ll give you faster packages so you can burn through it faster, but not bigger. You can’t buy two packages either and load balance in a single household. But there is a workaround, although I haven’t tried it.

If you call and order a small business package, it will cost you a bit more, but they won’t bug you about needing cable TV and the top speed of the package isn’t as high- but you are free of bandwidth caps.

Moving to the Future

While I don’t have any hard numbers on this, I feel that I use approximately 2x as much bandwidth online every year as I did the prior year. This has been a fairly consistent path for the past 15 years that I’ve been online. My usage goes up, but so does the complexity of the content that I’m downloading. With upcoming services like OnLive that promise 1080p gaming streaming into your household, more HD streaming, the release of 2K/4K video to the consumer market, more connected devices and greater cloud computing this problem isn’t going away.

I realize that Comcast needs to protect themselves, but it isn’t like they are on the edge of profitability. They are massively profitable in fact. Yet, they should also realize that this is a system and market that is quickly growing and will continue to do so. Equipment is getting faster and cheaper too so the upgrades shouldn’t be too painful to keep up with the curve. 2011, we will need 500GB/month and in 2012 we will need at least 1TB/month of transfer available.

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The Best Apple Laptop is 2 years old

February 19th, 2010 Comments

I’m on my fourth Apple laptop, but I think that’s where it will stay for a quite some time. Apple doesn’t have anything new that interests me.

I’ve had:

  • G4 iBook 800
  • Macbook Pro 15″ 2ghz
  • Macbook Pro 17″ 2.4ghz (gamerDNA provided, and thus i sold the 15″)
  • Macbook Pro 15″ 2.5ghz, mid – 2008 model(purchased after gamerDNA)

This isn’t the monobody slick new one. Yet- I think it is far better than what is currently offered. The good news is that you should be able to pick these up for under $1,000 easily if you look in the right places.

Why is it better? So many reasons:

  • Far better keyboard – The keys have more travel, the keys are curved inward and provide better feedback.
  • Real mouse button – I often don’t use it, but when I want it it really is nice.
  • ExpressCard/34 slot – The 17″ is the only model to offer it now, which is $3K
  • Firewire 400 and 800 ports, two USB ports – The new ones only have a single FW800, which is backward compatible, but annoying since I have a FW400 audio interface and several hard drives that don’t like being chained with an audio interface
  • Matte Screen – I hate gloss screens. You can pay more for the 17″ model to have a matte these days, but it isn’t worth the cost.
  • 512MB Video Memory – I know the new ones have a slightly faster graphics card, but the memory is only 256MB on the 15″ models.
  • Same processor – The processor is still an Intel Core 2 Duo. They offer the 2.53ghz standard now. Mine is ‘just’ 2.5ghz. Big deal.
  • DVI Output – Sorry Apple, but DisplayPort isn’t as common as DVI. I carry around adaptors anyway for VGA, but I don’t see what DisplayPort buys me today. I do rather like that the new 27″ iMac allows you to use the screen as an external monitor for another computer. I hope they do the same on laptops soon.
  • Easier to play Operation – I really can’t imaging that the Monobody is all that easy to get inside or work on. I haven’t tried, but it is probably either really easy, or really hard. I’m guessing really hard. I’m thinking of hacking mine to put in some SSD drives instead of the optical drive soon. Or maybe I’ll just get the ExpressCard/34 SSD.
  • Removable Battery – I don’t buy the argument that everyone will carry about extra batteries. They don’t. How many people do you know carry charged extras? Yet, it is nice to be able to replace yours easily. I threw a new one in mine and rather enjoy being able to do so without a reset even.

About the only thing I like about the new ones better is that I can pay out the nose for 8GB of memory in them instead of the 4GB that I have in mine. If you’ve got 2GB in your Macbook Pro you can upgrade for around $100 from Crucial and installation takes about 3 minutes. I recently put a 500GB 7200rpm Western Digital drive in mine, which has made for a nice speed boost in loading applications. They haven’t upgraded the stock hard drive size since mine was purchased either.

My Macbook Pro does everything that the new ones do and more. They’ve done firmware updates lately and added in things like 4-finger mouse controls and such. I’d like an 8-core Mac Pro with 24GB Ram and 4 video cards, but really this machine does 99.9% of what I realistically need on a daily basis. Oh and it plays modern games just fine!

If you do happen to pick up one however, try as hard as possible to find one with Applecare. I had my keyboard/mouse die the other day and because of Applecare I was able to get a repair within 48 hours. 100% worth it.

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Video Game Industry isn’t Recession Proof

February 10th, 2010 Comments

Seeing the impending doom and gloom of the economy in 2008, many players in the video game industry parroted the phrase “the video game (and alcohol) industry is recession proof!”. The theory was that video games are cheap entertainment, and that when people have nothing better to do, like work, they would play games instead and shift their spending dollars.

Perhaps the industry itself is recession proof. None of the major players have had AIG or GM style downfalls. Blizzard is still the king of MMORPGs with World of Warcraft and the big companies keep getting bigger.

Yet, this doesn’t feel like the roaring 20’s for the industry either. Show me all the charts that you want to about major title releases selling more and more, but that doesn’t mean that it is any easier to release a title, raise Venture Capital funding, meet sales goals or hold a job in the industry. Nothing is going so well that people are about to call it a bubble.

Raising VC funds right now is damn hard. I’ve seen some great ideas and companies fall apart due to the inability to raise money for creating video game related products and companies. This isn’t 1999, or even 2007 and no longer can a 6th-grader raise 6M+ in an A-round of funding. This isn’t because there aren’t good ideas out there, or even lack of raw venture money being out there. It is largely due to the relatively small number of exits available in the market today. IPOs are nearly non-existant, and major acquisitions seem to have slowed down as well. Sure Google, Apple and friends still snap up stuff for absurd amounts occasionally, but things are getting more ‘realistic’ which VCs don’t really benefit as much from.

Even companies that are well past their funding stages and have major products released and selling well are having budget issues. You’d think that a company that started one of the biggest shifts in gaming in 10 years and had just released one of the best selling games of 2009 would have no problem budget-wise. Yet Harmonix (now owned by MTV) had to slash nearly 40 positions in December. Not all of those were QA positions as initially reported in the media and the damage done to the company internally was massive. Harmonix itself may have been recession-proof, but MTV with its heavily reliance on advertising as their primary income source wasn’t. The cross-collateralized risk meant that a hit to MTV was a hit to Harmonix.

EA, one of the largest gaming companies out there laid off over 1,500 employees in October and canceled around 15 games. At the beginning of 2009 they cut 1,100 employees. Crispy Gamer slashed their editorial staff and their CEO resigned in protest last month. Only months prior, they had acquired/merged with gamerDNA, prompting yet more layoffs. GamerDNA themselves had to cut staff earlier in 2009 (which I was a part of) due to funding difficulties. None of these decisions were made lightly for sure, but all of them have built up to effect the industry overall.

The stories of such happening are seemingly endless. To call an industry recession proof is to say that a recession won’t effect it, or would even have a positive effect. This clearly isn’t what is happening and those who thought it might be recession proof were either underestimating the effects that the recession would have, overconfident, or wanting to sell this story to their investors.

However there is good news! While I’ve only been in the industry for a short time, I feel that I’m seeing a nice resurgence of indie games and innovation. Delivery platforms like Steam, Direct2Drive and the iTunes Store for the iPhone/touch/pad, combined with tools that allow for rapid development like Unity are allowing more people than ever to get into the field and create rich and amazing titles that actually have the chance of reaching large audiences with minimal upfront cost. There will always be the need for blockbuster titles however and I don’t foresee this canabalizing the main studios in the way that the ‘home studio’ has killed much of the music recording industry.

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