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Reviews for Apple’s iPad are all over the place. Personally, I feel that tablets have tried and failed enough times in the general consumer market to call the concept dead. iPad will likely find adoption in the same niche’s as its predecessors: hospitals and other similar venues where it can effectively replace a manilla folder of documents.

Instead, I find the lack of Flash support more interesting to consider. This seems like a terrible omission for a device that Jobs touts as “the best browsing experience you’ve ever had” (around 0:30). I don’t know about you, but *my* browsing experience would be far less than perfect without access to the de facto standard video streaming technology.

The decision was apparently made due to compatibility problems…

Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.

That may be where the web world is headed, but the iPad is entering a market nowhere near that reality. This just screams classic Apple mindset. They may share the mantra “Everyone else’s stuff is crap” with Microsoft, but Apple tacks the phrase “and that’s why you can’t use it,” onto the end.

I thought that Apple had figured out the market, how to balance a closed platform in order to maintain stability and skyrocket profitability. The Flash decision definitely throws that balance off kilter, and now I’m curious to see if they’ll fall back into the decision-making style of the PC wars in the late 80’s and early 90’s (Note to the kiddies: Mac wasn’t always “cool.” They lost a lot of weight and their acne cleared up just as you entered buying age).

They can get away with dictatorial control over platforms like the iPod and iPhone because they are very focused devices. However iPad is a closer technical cousin to the laptop than the smartphone, and the last few years of App Store and iTunes revenue may be skewing their vision on this one.

My gut tells me they are using iPad to push public perception away from Flash and toward HTML5. There’s no way they’ll make such a play on the Mac platform, but the iPad offers very controlled environment to test the waters. If people (continue to) complain, they’ll publish the iPad Flash patch that they’ve already got sitting on the shelf. Trust me, it’s there.

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Today is something of a landmark for me. Just a few minutes ago, I launched my first full-time commercial venture when I flipped the switches and took Fwd:Vault out of beta. There’s an announcement over at the official blog if you’re interested in the details. Here I’d rather talk about what’s going through my mind, lest any of you are proceeding down a similar path.

First off, this has been 14 months in the making. I started working on this shortly after the startup I was working for went belly-up in November 2008. Like so many people these days, I found myself facing a lean job market. Starting a business has been a lifelong dream of mine, so after talking it over with my wife — a world-class vet with double my brain power — we agreed that the timing was right for me to pursue my dream.

So many startup publications talk about “taking the plunge,” of overcoming the fear that holds people back from getting started. This was not the case for me, and I’m not sure why it has to be the case for anybody. If you think and plan ahead, you can avoid the worst of the action-paralyzing fear. I wanted to run my own business since I was a kid, which instantly diffused fear around the general concept. I kept trying to come up with viable business ideas until I had one that stood up to scrutiny, decreasing some of the fears of failure. I worked on it in my free time until the opportunity to go full-time presented itself, removing the fear of having no income. Knowledge and understanding are they key. If you fear the unknown, know more.

Other people on the entrepreneurial road falter when they look at the work involved. Admittedly, looking back on the last year ‘n change, I’m astounded at how much I’ve done. My subversion repository had 700 commits when I launched. The site and service cover 1200 files in 175 folders (that doesn’t include framework stuff, I wrote every one of those). I taught myself a library’s worth of new tech, including automated recurring billing, search engines, email syntax, Amazon S3, daemonizing, undocumented PHP functionality, and even more HTML/CSS/JS techniques. On the business side, I registered an LLC, got a business address and phone number, bought servers and domains, began proper bookkeeping practices, won a competition, dealt with consultants, performed basic market research, investigated advertising venues, taught myself basic SEO/SEM, and learned to analyze traffic.

That’s simply a staggering amount of work to think about at once, and I never would’ve gotten any of it done if I tried. You simply cannot look at it as a whole all at once and keep your sanity. Every day was just one or two tasks: get a page working: fix an email processing bug, and so on. You know where you and where you want to go. In between is simply a mountain of very tiny to-do’s. As long as you keep an eye on the prize — launching a business — the task list sorts itself.

Finally, I put the most important exercise in the title of this post. Every time you complete a page, add a feature, piece together another part of your business structure, celebrate it! Relay your latest conquest to your wife, family, friends, whoever will listen. Write a blog post about it (you’ll find tons of posts on this site inspired by my startup efforts).

Even if they don’t care — my wife glazes over every time I get into technical stuff — or nobody listens — this blog averages less than 100 hits/day — you’ll feel energized knowing that you were able to proclaim “I finished something, I took a step.” That’s so crucial, because of all the naysayers you will meet, the worst one is your own self-doubt.

Then, when you finally reach your big goal, mark the calendar, and celebrate that day every year. Savor it when facing your next mountain. And write a blog post, leave a mile marker for the next guy.

My next hill starts tomorrow. For now…

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…I suggest you do so immediately. We’ll have a major announcement by the end of the day, and the perks that come with signing up beforehand will go away at that time. Basically this is your last chance to get into the Fwd:Vault Beta, and enjoy the perks we have planned for our beloved early adopters.

Not-so-subtle hint: Beta users will have the chance to enjoy a serious lifetime discount.

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I typically hate the random flash games that go around the web, but I stumbled on one today that’s actually pretty fun, if only because of the mechanic at work. It’s called Invisible Cursor.

The game randomly spawns targets for you to click, but you can’t see the mouse cursor, forcing you to “feel” your way to each target. You do get a quick highlight of the cursor location each time you click, but it’s really brief and is accompanied by a screen flash and the target shattering. Oh and you only have a few seconds to shoot your next target.

It’s got all the depth of most web games (i.e. none), but the effect of trying to hit targets without seeing your cursor is very similar to playing a first person shooter. Lots of motion on the screen and you need to be accurate, thus demanding fast response times and a lot of eye-hand coordination. If you suck a sniping, I suggest you play this for a while to improve your aiming skills.

My top score right now is 164 408. Feel free to brag in the comments if you beat me.

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I had an interesting experience the other day at my local BJ’s (it’s like Sam’s Club and Costco). I had finished loading my items into my car, and was returning the cart to the corral, when I passed an employee gathering carts to reload the stack at the entrance. He had already gathered the carts from my nearest corral, so I figured I’d save him some work and tucked my cart onto the end of the line.

My good intentions were met with a lot of headshaking and a terse, “No, line’s full.” I apologized, and started to explain that I was just trying to help him out, and he repeated the same answer in the same cold tone. I took the cart off the end of the line, put it in the corral, and headed back to my car.

I didn’t even get to the car before I decided that, had that been one of my employees, I would have fired him on the spot.

From my perspective as the consumer, this gentleman couldn’t have done more to make me awful. He pointed a mistake I made, and blew off my explanation. I even apologized to him, and he still chastized my actions.

I walked away feeling like I had done wrong, like I had acted foolishly. No one likes making a mistake, but he only exacerbated my feelings by dismissing me again when presented with my explanation.

Having moved passed the experience, the business owner in me kicked into gear. I would be utterly mortified to know that one of my employees has left a customer feeling the way I did.

In this age of abundance, every consumer knows that they have a million options when it comes to just about anything. As a vendor, you simply cannot afford to give them excuses to look elsewhere. Forget being the stellar standout in your field, this is a minimum requirement simply to compete.

There is only one right answer for the employee in this situation: just say “thank you.” Wait for the customer to walk out of sight, pull the cart off the end, and go back to your job. I don’t care how much work they create for you, the customer has zero clue when it comes to the intricacies of shopping cart retrieval. And justifiably so: it’s not his job. I use the term “intricacies” here in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, but the same reality applies to almost any job.

The road to market failure surely begins where good (or at least neutral) consumer intentions meet employee apathy and negativity. If you can’t save the bad apple, cut it off.

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Avatar was a fantastic movie. A feast for the eyes and a halfway decent storyline, Hollywood actually got it right. But I don’t think that I was as amazed at the imagery as the larger population, and I can trace that disillusionment back to one place: my time in the World of Warcraft and a lifetime of gaming in general. So if you thought the stuff you could do and see on the world of Pandora was bad-ass, take a short walk with me through Azeroth.

Let’s start with the whole concept of an avatar. The Dictionary.com definition lists its use in computer circles as “a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet.” Geeks use the term to refer to the icon next to a forum post, or to describe the polygon representation you control in a gaming environment. James Cameron’s movie takes that concept to the next level. So to get started in World of Warcraft, you need to build your avatar.

And unlike the movie, you don’t have to grow them in tanks, and you get an even wider selection of far less human forms to choose from. Fans of the Na’vi will want to go with a Draenei. They’re big, blue, have tails, and actually are aliens in Warcraft lore.

Another big part of Avatar is the connection that the Na’vi have with the environment around them, flora and fauna alike. WoW’s got you covered there as well. Every WoW avatar plays as a certain class, which dictates all the battle actions you can take. Mages cast spells, Warriors hit stuff, you get the idea. There are 10 classes in all.

A Na’vi fan will want to choose a Hunter (“at home in the wilderness and have a special affinity for beasts”) or a Druid (“shapshifters with an affinity for the plant and animal kingdoms”). Hunters can tame and train nearly all the wild animals they’ll come across in Azeroth to fight by their side, and fight primarily at range with a bow. Hunters also have the ability to track any living thing: animals, beasts, even undead. Their training would do Neytiri proud. And some of the beasts you can control look like they belong on Pandora, like the Warp Stalker.

Meanwhile, Druids use nature-inspired abilities to attack enemies and heal allies. An “attack” druid will transform into a cat or bear, while a healer-style druid will transform into the Tree of Life. That’s right, a walking, talking tree.

And you though the voices in the Tree of Souls were cool.

You do have a bit of a decision to make, though. If you want your big blue Draenei, you can be a hunter, but not a druid. If you want to go the druid route, your choices are limited to the Night Elf (who’s big and blue without a tail), or Tauren (Huge! With horns and a tail, but not blue).

To finish off the “connection with the environment” motif, I would consider skinning and herbalism for your professions.

Much was made of the colorful settings that we saw Jake Sully and Neytiri stomping around, but again, WoW has left me jaded. Everyone thought that the floating “Hallelujah Mountains” were cool, but I’ll be impressed when they build a city on top of those rocks, like Dalaran.

Of course you need a way to get up to Dalaran, and Azeroth natives don’t have access to banshees. No, instead we just use dragons

…and hippogryphs

…and gryphons

…even a phoenix

And there’s plenty more. Personally, I don’t think Turok has a prayer.

Of course Dalaran is just one of the locales you can soar around, and some of the destinations in Azeroth would give Pandora locales a run for their money. Avatar fans will particularly enjoy exploring and questing the alien landscapes of the Outlands, especially Zangarmarsh and Terokkar Forest.

Finally, there’s one aspect of Pandora and Azeroth exploration that is identical: the smell you have from spending way too much time wandering around either one. To that end, Dr. Augustine and I provide the same advice: get up, shower, have a bite to eat.

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If you still don’t have any plans this evening and will be in the downtown Philadelphia area, you’re welcome to come out and meet me at the Philly Startup Leaders next Fishbowl event. We’ll be having a roundtable discussion of sales and marketing, with Fwd:Vault as the focus. Totally free to attend, light refreshments and snacks will be provided.

Registrations are still open, but you can make a last minute appearance if that’s what works for you.

PSL Fishbowl w/ Fwd:Vault
Wednesday, January 20th @ 7:00 pm
Terra Building, Room 1107
211 South Broad St., Philadelphia, PA

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The latest and greatest version of jQuery, version 1.4, was released on January 14, the birthday of jQuery’s original launch. Bugfixes and improvements abound!

The jQuery team has put together a site devoted to the new version, called the 14 days of jQuery, covering the major version changes as well as infrastructure updates coinciding with the new release. For example, the documentation site has been completely redesigned, and been moved to it’s own subdomain home, api.jquery.com. Links from the primary jquery.com site should be updated within the next week. With video demos of new features, Q&A’s with the core team (including founder John Resig), it’s well-worth checking out for every jQuery developer.

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According to Search Engine Land, Google has been letting a “small number” of users try out a revamp to the search results page, and yours truly has been lucky enough to stumble onto it a few times. Unfortunately, the small number are only given a small chance of actually seeing the damn thing, and even a refresh will bump you out of the redesign.

Having seen it whoosh by me a few times, I was ready for it last week, and managed to poke around and snap a screenshot:

I don’t think it will do anything to stem the “spartan design” criticisms, but it definitely makes it easier to access the menagerie of advanced search functions (assuming the left nav menu becomes a permanent fixture). The chunky blocks for the “Everything” and “Search” buttons are surprisingly effective at framing the page, making the entire layout less nebulous and giving off less of that “just there” feeling. Aligning the search box with the results is another subtle touch with big impact.

The Search Engine Land article provides more screenshots and hands-on time; I’ll post more if Google decides to let everyone else look at more than 1 pageload at a time. In the meantime, compare the screenshot with the current advanced date search layout and see what you think.

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I’m usually dreadfully behind on viral sensations, so this time I’m gonna stay ahead of the curve this time.

This aired on American Idol last night:

A “Pants on the Ground” Facebook fan page followed very shortly thereafter. My wife and I saw 40,000+ fans before midnight last night.

The morning after, “Pants on the ground” is a trending Twitter topic, and usage of #pantsontheground is spiking.

I think I know why this has been picked up en masse, and it’s not just because it’s a catchy tune. More analysis when I have time to lay it out.

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