I guess there's a reason I don't clip my shoes to the pedals

I guess there's a reason I don't clip my shoes to my pedals thinking that I'm going to get a few seconds off of my transition time in T1 coming out of the water getting onto the bike. What I like to do is get my bike shoes on at transition. Perhaps that is because I'm not a pro triathlete, or perhaps it is because I'd end up like one of these women coming out of transition. But wait, these women are pros. Just like dominoes....

Facebook's Announcement on Skype Video Chat

I just got done reading a write-up summary of Facebook's announcement that it will be integrating Skype into its chat feature. The original article is "Facebook introduces Skype video calling" by Nancy Gohring and Juan Carlos Perez.

After reading this article I had a sense that Mark Zuckerberg might be a little overly concerned with Google Plus for a number of reasons.

Being able to chat in Facebook is nothing new. Google has been doing this with its video chat feature for quite sometime. This video chat feature is now integrated into Google Plus. Moreover, Google's chat has integration with its Google Voice system already and that has become quite popular.

Zuckerberg claims there is an advantage to partnering with companies like Skype because they are focused on specific technologies. That comment to me sounds like an excuse to not being able to to all of the things that Google already can, on your own. So, knowing that Mircrosoft has purchased Skype and Facebook has a tight relationship with Microsoft, and Microsoft's failures in mobile and search technologies, makes me wonder how this relationship will help bolster Facebook.

I find that Zuckerberg even acknowledging Google Plus at this point quite fascinating. A product that is still in beta and kept from the real world is getting special attention from the Facebook CEO. He goes on to say it is "consistent with companies of all stripes tapping into the social-networking wave". Does he have a profile on all of these sites? Which also makes me wonder if the judgments about Zuckerberg as a brat are now becoming exposed at the slightest hint of competition. Also, touting that Facebook allows third-party developers to post their own apps instead of writing them all themselves further demonstrates a concern Facebook is aware that Google has the all of the puzzle pieces, and if Google Plus works, it will simply be a glue bringing them all together. Also, if you've noticed Google's App Store, they work with plenty of third-party developers.

Zuckerberg and Skype CEO Tony Bates in discussions that they will consider including voice-over-IP calling soon, well Google is already there with Google Voice.

Their claims  that video chatting over a one-to-one connection  is preferred, I'm not so sure of that. That might be true in personal life, but in business, I've always clamored for video chat in a group setting. One-on-one communication is only the most important part of chat, if the communication required is one-on-one.

I also found it interesting that Zuckerberg says they will now measure growth in the number of things shared as opposed to the number of users which is now 750 million. Is this change of measurement because Facebook's user growth is beginning to slow?

In short, this article does nothing for me but show a few dents in Facebook's armor.

What Will Happen to Orkut Now That We Have Google Plus?

As I anxiously await my Google Plus+ invitation and I take a look at the existing Google services that I use, I can't help but wonder what will come of Orkut.

After doing a search online for who uses Orkut, it appears as if it is popular and Brazil and was in Iran before it was blocked by the government.

What we already know about Google Plus+ is that it is supposed to be a simpler form of the online social thin. The Circles feature allows you to create groups of people that you can then create privacy settings around. Settings such as who can see a collection of photos is now more easily identifiable. The Hangouts feature allows for group video, for free I believe, which I think is great because I currently use Skype all of the time and while I want to use group video pretty badly, I won't pay for it.  The Instant Upload feature will allow quick upload of video and pictures. Sparks will send you content relevant to the things you like, and Huddle will allow group chat. I get all of that and I'm excited, but I wish I knew more about it. What I have been seeing over the past year or so with Google is a slow merging and consistency between all of their applications. All of the app designs and logos seem to be merging with what I hope becomes a one stop shop for everything I do on the web. I can only imagine the possibilities once Docs, Music Beta, Latitude, and Places are all integreated. Google seems to be coming in the back door of this social thing.

The thing we seemed to have gotten used to from Google is their products change so much so fast that we never really get set in a certain way using their stuff the way we normally would a desktop application that puts out a new release every year or more.

As for Orkut, never used it. However, I do have a profile with no friends and it just seems as if, over time, Google continued to collect my information and build the profile for me. I see it does have video and photo upload, communities, and applications which all seem pretty with some features of Myspace and some features of Facebook. The newest feature I see is the same chat integration that exists in GMail. I'm wondering if Google will merge Orkut into Google Plus or if they will keep things separate. Do we start the end-of-life of Orkut now?

Improvements In My Open Water Swim (OWS)

As much as I enjoy the sport of triathlon, I hate the open water swim. Not to mention, I practice diligently for the swim getting in my 3 sessions of 4+ miles per week, some in the open water, and some in the pool. In my first full season of triathlon last year, I was absolutely horrendous at the swim, even after getting lessons at the YMCA (more on this later). I was always in the bottom 10% out of the water.

After putting in extra hard work in the pool and putting time in the open water during the week without seeing any significant improvement, I started to wonder if it was something with my technique that was making me so horrible without little noticeable improvement race over race.

As a USA triathlon member, I get weekly emails with articles that have tips for improvement in all facets of triathlon. I'm always on the lookout for improving swim times. Back in May, one of the email newsletters contained the article Develop World-Class Open Water Swim Mechanics by Jesse Kropelnicki. The article seemed to really hit home for me with some parts of my training that might be translating to poor results in open water swims.

Because I've done most of my water training in a pool, and have had swim lessons from an instructor who swims competitively in a pool, I was taught a stroke that is ideal for the pool but not the open water.  The article talks about how pool-born swimmers have "long glide, strong catch, and low turnover/cadence who are most efficient in calm, smooth, non-crowded waters." However, any triathlete knows the open water on race day is anything but calm and non-crowded.  The article recommends doing a more efficient and comfortable swim by having a strong back end to the stroke with high turnover. Such a stroke will allow me to maneuver better in a very crowded water and will allow me to get the most out of my stroke without being stalled by the current. It is difficult to explain in writing so here is the video of swim analysis with coach Jesse Kropelnicki.

Since watching this video I've been working on a shorter stroke that has my hand perpendicular to the water and my elbows bent in such a way that it feels as if i'm pushing my way through the water similar to when you do a tricep dip by hanging off of a flat bench. I've also been making sure I am pushing through completely especially on the second half of the stroke where prior watching this video I was abandoning the stroke in favor of straightening my arm out to efficiently prepare it for the next stroke. I'm no swim guru so the video explains things much better than I could but I wanted to write about my experience with these tips.

The jury is still out on how much it has improved my swim time but my year-over-year results in the Morton Plant Mease Triathlon have improved significantly enough that my overall time has improved by several minutes and my peers have noticed me getting out of the water sooner. My pool lap times have even improved by 3-5 seconds per lap. I just feel like I'm learning to swim all over again so I have to pay attention to every stroke and be sure to focus on keeping my elbow up and my hand perpendicular to the water.

Google Music Beta Feedback

Recently I was selected by Google to be a beta user of their new music service. While I was still holding out to be a chrome book tester, my second favorite thing to technology is music.

As soon as I got the email, I downloaded their Music Manager application, installed it and I was uploading music in no-time. In anticipation of being selected as a beta tester, I already had their Music application installed on my phone.

It took a few days to upload my 4,900 songs. Once I noticed that there were no more songs to upload (I only knew this after checking every so often), I anxiously launched the mobile phone app to see if my albums were there. All of my albums were there. Some things I did like was how everything was alphabetized and easy  to find. A couple of things I didn't like were some of the album covers didn't resolve and there were duplicate albums of music that I had copied to my phone previously.

The mobile app has settings for streaming over wi-fi only, and download over wi-fi only. So I don't exceed the limits on my data plan, I setup the application to allow streaming over the data network, but not to allow downloading over the wi-fi. These settings have me feeling that if there is an album I really like, I can flag it for offline use, and then the next time I am on a wi-fi network, the album will be downloaded to my phone. So knowing this I flagged a whole bunch of albums and now have a pretty decent library on my phone. With the music mobile app, I can even toggle the library to display everything in my library, or just what I've made offline. The downloading of the music automatically starts and stops based on me being on a wi-fi network. The quality of the sound over both the data network and the wi-fi network is just fine but I've never been in an area with a poor signal while using it.

My full blown experience with Google Music Beta came this week. I got a Groupon email to order a live David Gray album for $6 that can be downloaded. Excitingly, I made the purchase. Once the Groupon was made available I quickly downloaded it and copied it to my My Music directory so the Google Music Manager could pick it up and upload it. As soon as I copied it over I started an upload from the Music Manager. I watched the songs upload and they appear to upload two at one time. After the songs uploaded, I noticed that two of the songs did not upload. The online help told me to run the troubleshooter. Disappointingly, the "run troubleshooter" didn't really troubleshoot at all but displayed the details of a log file. Nonetheless, the only error regarding the two songs that didn't download read that there was an error uploading. There was no additional information.

Anxiously, I played the album anyway, through my Chrome browser. The songs played fine, and I was able to give them all a thumbs up (similar to Pandora). The cool thing about Google's Thumbs Up is that it automatically creates a playlist of all of the songs you "Thumb Up".

Overall, I'm impressed with Google Music Beta thus far. Integrating into how I listen to music has been convenient, I just need to start remembering to make some stuff available offline. Now I get to look forward to all of the improvements Google plans to make to the service.

BroadcastReceiver, BOOT_COMPLETED, and the Emulator

There are plenty of helpful pages out there on how-to's for having your application run on the startup of your Android device. Here are just a few:

http://www.androidcompetencycenter.com/2009/06/start-service-at-boot/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2784441/trying-to-start-a-service-on-boot-on-android

http://www.helloandroid.com/tutorials/running-code-phone-boot

What the pages didn't tell you was how you can make sure you have your code setup right with the emulator. For starters, I'm not sure if others have this problem but the power off button on my emulator doesn't even work. It just hangs on the message that reads "Shutting down".

When you try to debug your project from a clean emulator, well your app isn't on there yet when the emulator is loading so you kinda miss the boat.

The message boards indicated you have to run the emulator from the command-line with the app already loaded on it.  Well, I tried that but lazily, I didn't want to go back and figure out what my command-line parameters needed to be to launch it.

So instead, from Eclipse I just went into the Android SDK and AVD Manager (under the Window Menu) and started the emulator from there. I did this of course after loading the app into the emulator. I start the emulator and my BroadcastReceiver on boot works just fine. There was no need to go to running the emulator at the command line.

Delta's Mobile Boarding Pass

I thought I'd take a few minutes to talk about my experience with Delta's Mobile Boarding Pass since it was less than perfect. My first time using the mobile boarding pass was an accident. When I checked into my flight back from Sydney Australia, and asked for my final destination, I told the check-in agent that it was Los Angeles (LAX) because I booked the flights separately. Even though I booked the flights separately I could have said my final destination was Tampa and I would have gotten all of my boarding passes at once.

After going through customs when I got to Los Angeles, I had to recheck my luggage for an LAX to Atlanta (ATL) flight. I did not have a printed boarding pass, but the person responsible for checking the luggage wanted to see one before taking my luggage. I didn't have it. Almost instantly, I thought of the mobile boarding pass, so I  fired up the Fly Delta app on my Android phone, and after a small wait with the horrible cell phone signal (more on that later), I was able to check-in and get a mobile version of my boarding pass. I gave my phone to the luggage person and was able to get my luggage checked.

After checking my luggage, I had to go through another customs screening area that required me to have my boarding pass. Here is where the less than perfection begins. While I was online toying with other applications, my boarding pass was no longer easily available since it was no longer an active application on my phone. I had to relaunch the application. Well, this time when I went to recall the app, I had no cell phone signal since I was a few levels below ground in the LAX customs check-in area. Without a boarding pass, and approaching security, I nervously kept waving the phone until I got a signal. After a few minutes wait, I finally got an adequate signal and was able to recall my boarding pass. At the security checkpoint, I put my phone under the scanner and the scanner confirmed my mobile boarding pass. All is good.

With a three hour wait until my flight to ATL, I spent a lot of time on my phone. So much time in fact, my battery was getting low. Without a battery charge area around, I started to get worried that my mobile boarding pass wouldn't be available because the battery was going to die on my phone. So at that point, I decided to turn my phone off not thinking about when they board, I was going to have to reboot my phone, which takes several minutes, relaunch the app, and bring up the mobile boarding pass again. So again, as we are boarding the plane, I'm impatiently waiting for my phone to boot so I can launch the app to recall my boarding pass. With another weak signal in the airport, it took several minutes to load the mobile boarding pass. I was able to load it, scan it, and gain access to the plane. So, I guess this is a good opportunity to lay out some tips with the mobile boarding pass:

1. Make sure you have enough battery power.
2. Make sure you have a strong enough data signal.
3. Don't drain your battery if you are set on using the mobile boarding pass.

I probably won't continue to use it because I won't want to have to worry about these three tips.