Raju Vegesna's Blog

As I write this post, I am waiting for one of my video to render in iMovie 08 and it says that it has 45 minutes remaining to save my video in MOV format.

Today I bought iMovie ’08 primarily to edit some new movies. I am really blown away by its simplicity and it is very very well done. Great job to whoever is involved in this project. It saved me lot of FinalCut Pro time. I was able to finish editing a seven minute movie in about 30 mins, but when I wanted to save the movie in .mov, it is taking forever on my iMac. While this is happening, my CPU usage is less than 25%.

While it is doing its job, I thought I’ll quickly post on this.

No, I am not refering to Apple TV. I am speculating about a possible upcoming product. Looking at the trends, I cant help but speculate on this. You’ll find details on why I think it makes sence for Apple to do a TV.

In a recent (I actually wrote this prior to iPhone release) Q&A Session, Steve Jobs said the following.

Q: So many analysts have suggested that with the expected success of the iPhone, Apple is about to be transformed into a different kind of company. What’s your take?

Jobs: I hope it doesn’t change Apple too much, we like it the way it is. We’ve got two strong legs on our chair today — we have the Mac business, which is a $10 billion business, and music, our iPod and iTunes business, which is $10 billion. We hope the iPhone is the third leg on our chair, and maybe one day Apple TV will be the fourth leg.

We know that iPhone (and its successors) have the  potential of being a third leg to apple adding another $10Billion.

On the other hand, anyone who have used Apple TV can easily say that it doesnt have the capability to be another leg (I mean another $10Billion business). I see Apple TV as an experiment to test the waters for a possible TV product from Apple. Having released excellent 30” displays and products like Apple TV, I dont see Apple far from doing an iTV.

…and BTW, if you remember, Apple initially named its current Apple TV as iTV initially. If iTV is supposed to be the third leg, it suites its current naming convention. But why did it change the name, well, I can guess there is another product named ‘iTV’ that is on the way. Apple is just testing the waters with its AppleTV.

When this happens, assume that iTunes playing a more central role. It is the only application that’ll connect the four legs of Apple – The Macs, iPods, iPhone and ofcourse iTV. Now with a Computer, Phone, Music, Movies and a TV, Apple will completely control your living room. I am not going to say no as I love their products.

The next questions is, how can iTV be better than current TVs? Well, there are lots of things you can expect. Here are a few quick ones.

• Current Apple TV will be part of iTV (streaming photos, movies, audios, movie trailers, YouTube etc)
• TV will have a web cam embedded for virtual family gatherings
• Wont you love it if your TV has WiFi (to Sync photos, music, movies from iTunes)
• Tivo like functionality to record your TV
• Your iPhone or your Touch Screen iPod becomes the remote for your TV (or even the keyboard for your TV)
• If you get a call on your iPhone while watching TV, it’ll show up right on your TV
• With Steve Jobs on Disney’s board and with iTunes succesful, it sure can get all the content

Anyway, this is all speculation. But if I were to bet on Apple’s next category, it would be this one. 

No wonder Apple dropped ‘Computers’ from its name.

Robert Scoble responds with a great post to some of the discussions going on regarding Facebook. Reading through his post, one part caught my eye. Facebook is not good at, as Scoble explains, is capturing the information regarding a person and a relation. To quote him…

Second, how could the friends definitions and ties be improved? 1000 ways. I’ll be honest, I don’t use the at all. I just add you as a friend and don’t put any details in there about how I know you. For one, adding that kind of detail is a competitive advantage for me and for PodTech.
For instance, my first result is for Danny Krimgold. I’ve never written about Danny. You don’t know who he is. But he was one of the first people I talked with on Netmeeting back in 1996. He was in high school then and I could tell he was damn smart. I kept in touch with him as he went to Cornell, got a masters in computer science, and now is working at McCann Erickson as a project manager. There isn’t a good way to tell Facebook how I know Danny. In fact, I found that there isn’t a good way to tell Facebook how I know people for about 70% of the people I know through the Internet. So, I just leave them all blank. I guess the best choice in NetMeeting is the “met randomly” choice, but that sounds so stupid. So, I leave it blank.

In my view, there are two areas where Facebook can be further improved.

• Easy way to find the right people
• Good way to capture relations

This is exactly where Spock shines. Spock finds people and it does it well and keeps on improving as more people are on it. Earlier I was searching for ‘Matt Marshall’ on Facebook and I find 200+ people in Facebook. If I do the same search in Spock, I get more than 500 results. But if I search for ‘Matt Marshall VentureBeat’ in Facebook, I get no results (I know he is on there) while Spock is spot on with the correct result.

As Scoble says, the relation ships are not captured well in Facebook and I completely agree with him. Again, this is where Spock shines. The ‘Related People’ section in Spock is very flexible and can greatly help Facebook.

I can go on with different scenarios. I think Facebook and Spock can be a great couple. Will it happen? Lets wait and see.

Scoble’s Spock video is here.

I want to jot down some of my experiences with iPhone in the last 5 days. First of all, I should say, I LOVE it. I cant imagine myself switching to any other phone now. If you are a gadget freak like me, I recommend getting it. But if you are not, I’d say WAIT. It is soooo 1.0 product.

Why do I say it is 1.0 product? Well, it crashes. It crashes so often, it gets frustrating at times. In the last 5 days, I have seen applications crash tens of times. Just today I was using Safari and it crashed….it crashed 8 times in an hour. I see this as the biggest issue. I really hope Apple will fix this issue soon.

I really like the way music fades out when a call comes in and when the call is done, it simple fades back in. This is awesome. But I really wish they use this concept for others too – Like Music-Safari especially if both these apps cannot work together. If I play Music and then open Safari, guess what happens – CRASH – both safari and iPod. I have seen many other scenarios like this which will crash different iPhone apps. I have also seen YouTube and Mail apps crash several times.

Another key issue with the iPhone is, it is VERY hard to operate it with a single hand. You’ll need both the hands to make any decent entries/changes. The interface is designed for two hands. You sure can operate it with one hand, but you’ll drop it one day. Ofcourse, the iPhone can withstand a drop, but not a flat-drop if you are unlucky.

Many people say they use their mobile for their email. My question is, how is it possible especially when these email apps have no filters. Am I missing something here? Currently, I get about 250-300 emails a day. Not all are addressed to me. There is no way to filter and fetch emails addressed directly to me. I hoped that the email in iPhone will have filters. But it doesn’t. So I cant iPhone for my work email. This is sad. But I love the email app, it does work well for my personal email.

Overall, I love my iPhone, but I do hope that the issues will be sorted out soon. The good news is, everything is software in iPhone. A simple update one day could fix most of the issues. Its like SaaS in that sense.

I got my iPhone today. So I tried different stuff. First, I could’nt use my phone number that belonged to a business account. It asked me to contact customer care and they had no clue on what the error is and I wasted about 30 mins on that. When I asked the AT&T rep on how to activate my number from a biz account, she said it cannot be done and she suggested me to return my iPhone for my account to work. Are they kidding? Anyway, after putting me on hold for several times, she gave me some contact info of National Biz Ordering center and they are open during weekdays only.

I later went ahead and signed up a new account.

After the activation is complete, I thought my other AT&T SIM Card would work, but iPhone throws a SIM Card Error and it asked me to reactivate the phone. Well, I did try few things, but no luck. I cant believe this….it is not just locked at the carrier, but also at the SIM Card level too.

Update: I was able to get this working. If you want to use your Biz Phone Number with the iPhone, follow this procedure.

• Activate your iPhone signing up for a new account. You’ll get a new phone number
• After the activation is completed, insert your other SIM card. It’ll throw a SIM Card Error. It’ll ask you to activate again.
• Activate again with your existing SIM Card in, but provide the details of the number you previously got
• AT&T will say that it’ll activate it after verification. Give it few hours time. You’ll get a confirmation from AT&T to your email address once activated
• Once activated, your new SIM should work fine
• Now, you can cancel your new phone number saying that you dont have service at your house (I need to try this yet). Will do next week

Engadget reports that Apple has an RSS Reader coming for iPhone. The URL is currently active on Apple’s website. I am sure it’ll be taken offline soon. Here is what the says currently.

We probably will see more such apps for iPhone coming soon from Apple….and ofcourse from many other app vendors.

I have been using my Apple TV for months now and I must say I LOVE it. I started watching more TV after Apple TV. Videocasts are awesome. I wish there is a place to capture the URLs of all video and podcasts available for Apple TV. May be I should take a lead here.

After using my Apple TV for so long, I couldnt figure out a way to turn this thing off. It appears that it cannot be powered off. If you really need to power it off, you have to pull the power plug out. Hmmm

I hope green going Apple will consider it for its next generation Apple TVs.

I am not sure about you, but I wasted few hours trying to get Safari on my Windows XP system work with no luck. This is what shows up when I try top open Safari on my windows machine.

Yes, it doesnt show any text in the browser. When I hover my mouse on the menus or when I click somewhere some text is shown. Also, look at how Apple’s website is rendered. I tried installing it few times to find the same result. I tried 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 too. What pissed me most is, it screwed up my iTunes installation. I had to do a fresh install of my iTunes again. For now, I’ll stick with Maxthon as my favorite browser on Windows.

Safari on my iMac is a different story. I love it. I find it much faster than Firefox and Flock. I really hope Apple will fix all these annoying bugs soon.

If you looked at Spock (I didn’t try it, but the screenshots show its capabilities), you’ll notice that it can be a very powerful people search engine. You can check out the review @ TechCrunch and O’Reilly’s Blog.

This is a great vertical in search to be in my opinion (compared to blog search etc). My prediction….these guys will be aquired by Google. If Yahoo or MS makes their move first, Google might be in trouble unless they are already working on something similar. I am sure Google’s team is already talking to them.

I recently purchased Apple TV…while I’d have preferred a lower price tag, I am happy with its features. I am not going to write about its features here. Instead, let me mention couple of points. The best feature according to me is, it let me put my home theater to full use. While I have all my songs on my iMac, it certainly doesnt have the best audio system. But with iTv, I can put my home theatre to full use. That according to me is the best feature. Now to something I dont like…

I knew that Apple TV supports 802.11n. So I enabled 802.11n in my iMac (purchased from Apple Store $1.99) and only then I noticed that Apple TV and my iMac doesnt communicate with each other directly and instead they go through my access point which is still 802.11g. I dont understand this…why cant Apple make these two communicate with each other using n? Instead, apple is asking us to purchase their Access Point (they call it as Airport Extreme Base Station).

Did you have any comments on your Apple TV?