Droid 2 vs iPhone

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I recently came out very positive on Google in a comparison of Google’s and Apple’s respective business models and product philosophies, but the post itself was very high-level and theoretical. So, I decided to write another post: this time on how the differences I mentioned before translate when comparing products?

I recently dropped my Blackberry and got Motorola’s new Droid 2 phone (on Verizon). Earlier this month, my company also happened to provide me with Apple’s iPhone 4 (on AT&T). Having played around with the devices and relied on them heavily for over a week, I decided to make a comparison of the two, not only to help myself think through how I’d use the devices, but also to help anyone out there considering a smartphone (warning: this post is LOOOONG):

1. Neither phone is better, they’re different. In the same way that there is no one “best” car or one “best” significant other for all people, I would have to say the “best” phone for a person is the phone that has the right features/attributes for that person and makes the appropriate tradeoffs. In the case of DROID 2 vs. iPhone 4, each has their share of weaknesses, and each has their share of strengths and they will match different people’s needs and preferences.
2. There’s still plenty of room for both products to improve. I think the “fanboys” on both sides seem to have missed out on this point – in their desire to tout one as superior to the other, they seem to have forgotten that both devices have more than their fair share of weaknesses. In fact, I’d say my dominant impression of both devices is more around “this needs to improve” rather than “this is awesome”.
3. I’ve got a lot of more detailed commentary below, but my basic  impression of Android vs iPhone is very much like the comparison I drew in my post on Google vs Apple: the DROID 2 feels like a device where a bunch of engineers decided to cram a ton of “cool features” into a phone whereas the iPhone 4 feels like a device that was architected to support one particular user experience (but not others) as seamlessly as possible. What does that mean in terms of a direct comparison? In order of importance (to how I use the phone):
   1. Typing – Typing is extremely important to me as my main goal for smartphone is to let me write and respond to emails on the go. Given my years with the Blackberry’s famous high-quality keyboard, I was expecting to hate the iPhone 4’s soft keyboard. Much to my (pleasant) surprise, I actually got to be quick enough with it that speed did not become an issue. However, a few things plagued me. First, I absolutely hate the placement of the backspace key – its not where I expect it to be (having been trained by QWERTY computer keyboards) and is just close enough to the “m” that I hit it when I’m typing quickly. Secondly, the iPhone interface doesn’t actually support a landscape interface mode in all applications (i.e. the App Store) – which forces me to use a much more constrained portrait keyboard which slows me down. Finally, as good as the iPhone soft keyboard is, because there’s no good way to position your fingers or to “feel” when keys have been pushed, soft keyboards intrinsically force you to think more about how to type than a hard keyboard than otherwise. Enter the DROID 2. It has a hard keyboard which although not quite as good as a Blackberry’s (the keys seem oddly spaced to me, and they are more stiff than “springy”), still lets me position my fingers and type without thinking so much about how I’m typing.
      In addition to the hard keyboard, the DROID 2 also supports Swype, a very cool (and fast) way to type on a soft keyboard where, instead of typing keys consecutively, you simply drag your fingers to the letters that you’re trying to type. There’s a little bit of a learning curve (in terms of learning how to punctuate and do double-letters), but once you get over that initial hump, I think the average person can get to a faster speed with Swype than they can just pecking at keys. In my mind, the DROID 2 wins hands down on typing.
   2. Exchange support – If you want a smartphone that can function as a work device, you need to support Exchange and you need to support it well. Both the iPhone and Android claim support for Microsoft Exchange with push synchronization. While I have some quibbles with the iPhone’s mail interface, there’s no denying that the iPhone’s Exchange support is seamless and fast. I have never had to think about it. And, on occasion, the iPhone would even notify me of emails before my computer received them! The DROID 2, on the other hand, is a different story. While the Exchange sync works most of the time, there have already been two occasions where the sync was broken and the device would think that a message I had already read was a new message. The sync is also significantly slower – requiring me to wait (sometimes up to 10 minutes) before an email that has already showed up on the iPhone and the desktop shows up through the DROID 2′s sync feature. I don’t know if this is because Motorola/Google introduced some intermediate layer in between the Exchange and the phone, but the iPhone 4 wins hands down on Exchange support.
   3. Google integration – I use a ton of Google services (Gmail, Google Calendar, Picasa, Google Reader, Google Voice, Google Maps, etc.) so integration with Google services is a key criteria when picking a phone. While the iPhone has an excellent interface to Google Maps (which puts the Android’s standard maps interface to shame in terms of smoothness and speed), its inability to do very much beyond basic synchronization with Gmail and Google Calendar and only webapp access to Google Voice makes its integration with Google on par with the Blackberry’s. On the other hand, is it  any surprise that Google services integration works best on a phone which runs a Google operating system? You can make calls using Google Voice as if it weren’t even there. You can easily apply and remove labels on and search through your Gmail seamlessly (without the semi-awkward IMAP interface). You can even access your personal online search history through Google Maps and Google Search. DROID 2 wins this one by a wide margin.
   4. Attachment file format support – its not enough to be able to access email, a good work device should be able to handle the PDFs, Powerpoints, Word documents, and images that are likely embedded. Motorola had a stroke of genius by preloading the Quick Office application onto each DROID 2. But, while this app does a very good job of opening files, it not being integrated into the DROID 2’s email applications gives it a disadvantage compared to the iPhone’s in-line and integrated attachment viewer. Combine this with the DROID 2’s inexplicable inability to open certain image types in email and there is a distinct, albeit slight, advantage on file format support for the iPhone 4.
   5. Customization – I’m very particular about how I use my devices. As a result, I want to be able to customize the heck out of something. While the iPhone gives you some basic customization options (i.e., do you want to hear a sound when a new email comes in?), it doesn’t give you much beyond that (i.e., what sound do you want to hear when a new email comes in? would you only like to hear a sound if its gmail rather than exchange? would you like to hear a different sound for gmail and exchange?) On the other hand, the DROID 2 provides remarkable customization capability. Granted, some of the choices can be difficult to find, but the ability to customize so many things (including the ability to embed live, functional widgets on your home screen and not just functionless shortcuts) and to install apps like Tasker which let you customize even deeper is a big differentiator for the Android platform.
   6. UI responsiveness/slickness – Smartphones are expensive. They consume a lot of battery power. So when a device feels sluggish, I can get annoyed. The iPhone is, simply put, amazingly slick. No choppiness when you scroll or swipe. Great responsiveness. No odd user interface defects. While Google’s Android has made remarkable strides since its earliest incarnation, it still doesn’t come close to matching Apple’s user interface polish – the most shameful example of which, in my opinion, is the Android Google Maps’ sluggish multitouch support when compared to Apple’s. Come on guys, ITS YOUR OWN APP!
   7. Notifications – I don’t know a single person who likes the iPhone’s primitive notification system. Its overly intrusive. It can only display one particular message at a time. And, there’s no way for someone to get the history of all their recent notifications. And, as a Blackberry user who used to rely on a small LED indicator to unobtrusively inform him when something new happened, the iPhone’s lack of any way of notifying its owner that something has happened without activating the screen just strikes me as stupid. The DROID 2 is FAR ahead of Apple here.
   8. Network – I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, I would  say that the call quality I’ve experienced on the DROID 2 has lagged what I experienced on the iPhone 4. Furthermore, my DROID 2 seems to have schizophrenic reception – I sometimes amuse myself by watching my signal indicator go from full bars to just one bar, all while sitting on my desk leaving the phone completely alone. The other side to this story, though, is that this experience quality has been primarily driven by an odd pocket of bad Verizon coverage in my girlfriend’s apartment – our calls from almost everywhere else have been very good. Also, despite my DROID 2’s signal indicator fluctuations, I have not yet observed any actual impact on my connection speed or call quality. When you combine this with the fact that my iPhone struggles to get signal where I work and in Napa (where I just came back from a wedding) but my DROID 2 had minimal issues, I have to say that DROID 2/Verizon beats out iPhone 4/AT&T.
      
   9. Ability to turn off 3G – The two main things that burn out a smartphone’s battery are the display and the wireless connection. While its a pain to reach that particular menu item on the iPhone 4, Apple’s product does make it possible to turn off the 3G connection. Shockingly, despite all the customization, the DROID 2 does not provide this option. The iPhone 4 wins here.
   10. Turn-by-turn navigation – The DROID 2 has it. The iPhone doesn’t. And, believe me when I say this is: it is an AMAZING feature and completely displaces the need for a GPS device. I don’t drive places I’m unfamiliar with often enough for this to be higher in the priority list, but lets just say it saved my butt on my recent trip to Napa. DROID 2 wins here.
   11. Access to Bluetooth – In California, you cannot talk on a cell phone while driving without a Bluetooth headset. So, quick-and-easy access to Bluetooth settings is a feature of considerable importance to me. With the iPhone, the ability to turn Bluetooth on and off and change settings is buried beneath several layers of settings. The DROID 2’s pairing process is not only faster (although this is only by ~10-20 seconds), the ability to customize the home screen means I can embed widgets/links to quickly and easily toggle Bluetooth without diving through settings. DROID 2 wins here.
   12. Chrome-to-Phone – DROID 2 has it. iPhone 4 doesn’t. This is a very cool browser extension which lets you send links, text messages, and maps to your phone straight from Chrome (or the Firefox clone of it). When I first heard about it, I wasn’t especially impressed, but its become a very useful tool which lets me send things which would be useful while on-the-go (especially directions). DROID 2 wins here.
   13. Absence of pre-loaded bloat – This is something where Apple’s philosophy of getting full control over the user experience pays off. The iPhone 4 does not come with any of the bloatware that we’ve come to see in new PCs. That means that the apps that run on my iPhone 4 are either well-designed Apple utilities or apps I have chosen to install. My DROID 2? Full of crapware which I neither want nor am I able to install. Thankfully, I’m able to remove them from my homescreen, but it annoys me that Verizon and Motorola have decided that preloading phones is a great way to generate additional revenue. The iPhone wins hands down here.
   14. Camera – To be perfectly honest, I hate both the DROID 2 and the iPhone 4’s cameras. With the iPhone 4, I find it pretty awkward to shoot a picture using the soft keyboard to both zoom in and out and take the shot. While the DROID 2 has obvious physical buttons to use for zoom and to take the shot, it has a lackluster flash and I found it more difficult to take steady pictures than I did with the iPhone 4. It also captures video at a lower resolution than the iPhone 4. In the end, though, I’d have to say that awkward use of the camera trumps bad flash photography and poorer video resolution: iPhone wins here.
   15. Flash support – DROID 2 has it. iPhone doesn’t. This means no more stupid boxes on web pages which haven’t made the plunge into HTML5 video (because Firefox and IE don’t support it yet) or activating another application to watch YouTube videos. Does it burn battery? Yes. But its not like I’m watching it non-stop, and there are definitely some sites which you can’t visit without Flash. DROID 2 wins here.
   16. Voice control – Google recently unveiled its Voice Actions for Android application which allows you to perform all sorts of commands without ever typing a thing. While the Google search app on iPhone and apps like Siri have supported voice-based web searches, they don’t provide access to the wealth and depth of functions like email, text messaging (although, sadly, it does not yet seem to support Google Voice-based-SMS), calling up the map application, or controlling the music player that Google’s does. Granted, Google seems to still have issues understanding my girlfriend’s name is “Sophia” and not “Cynthia”, but the DROID 2’s voice-control functionality is way ahead of the iPhone 4’s and adds a lot of convenience when you are on-the-go.
   17. File management – Apple’s iTunes software works great as an MP3 player. I’m not so sure how I feel about it as the ultimate gateway to my mobile phone for pictures and applications. It also irks me that, because of iTunes, there is no obvious way to access or modify the directory structure on an iPhone 4. The DROID 2, however, looks and acts just like a USB drive when its connected to a computer. It even comes with a file manager app with which you can use to go through its file system innards from within the phone. If you are fine with the inability to specify your own organization structure or to use a phone as portable storage, then this is wash. But, if you value any of those things, then the DROID 2 has Apple’s iPhone 4 beat.
   18. Not proprietary hardware – You cannot remove/upgrade an iPhone’s internal storage. You cannot charge or sync with an iPhone without using its proprietary cable. This is great if you never want to upgrade your device’s storage capabilities, never want to slot its memory into another device, and never lose cables. But, if you ever want to do any of the first two or inadvertently do the last, then you’re better off with DROID 2.
   19. Display – One of the features I was most impressed with during the iPhone 4 announcement was the Retina Display: a screen with a resolution so high it was said to be at/near the limit of human detection. I can honestly say it works as advertised – the resolution on an iPhone screen is incredible. However, as I rarely use applications/websites where that resolution is actually necessary, its value to me is not that high (although the increased contrast is a nice touch). With that said, though, it is a nice (and very noticeable) touch and is definitely something where the iPhone 4 beats out the DROID 2.
   20. Device “feel” – The two devices have comparable screen sizes, but the DROID 2 has significantly greater thickness. The iPhone feels like a crafted piece of art. It feels metallic. Substantial. The DROID 2 feels like a thick piece of plastic. This doesn’t really impact the functioning of the device, but the iPhone 4 is definitely nicer to hold and look at and feels a lot sturdier.

   So where does that leave us? If you’re keeping score, I noted 12 things which (in my opinion) favor DROID 2 and 8 things which favor iPhone 4. As I mentioned before, which device you would prefer strongly depends on how you weight the different things mentioned here. If you value work-horse text entry, customization, and Google integration a lot (like I do), then the DROID 2 is probably the phone that you’ll want. If you value the Exchange/attachment support and UI slickness more, then the iPhone 4 is a better bet. And, there’s definitely room for disagreement here. If you think my assessment of Bluetooth support and notifications are off, then that could be ample reason to pick Apple.

Hopefully this was informative for any reader deciding what phone to get (even if they’re considering something which isn’t even on the list!). I’ll probably follow this post with a few thoughts on where I’d like to see the Apple and Google platforms go next – but until then, happy smartphone-ing!

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How big does it take?

Everybody knows Twitter and Facebook are big deals. Like Google before them, they have themselves inspired a new wave of startups aiming to be the next big thing.

But how big do you need to get to truly be a home run? This is something I think very few people have a good grasp of (and one reason so many people think social networks are the “easy way” to money). Granted, if you have the right business model, you might not need to hit quite the same heights as a Twitter or a Facebook, but even the right business model doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got to be big to have the type of influence and IPO/M&A potential that the true giants have.

So how big? We’re talking at least three million users (FourSquare) if you’ve got a PR engine and potentially ultra-disruptive model but more likely you need more than fifty million users! (Thanks to this infographic I pulled from GigaOm which itself came from digital agency Jess3)

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Why I Favor Google over Apple

Many of my good friends are big fans of Apple and its products. But not me. This good-natured difference in opinion leads us into never-ending mini-debates over Twitter or in real life over the relative merits of Apple’s products and those of its competitors.

I suspect many of them (respectfully) think I’m crazy. “Why would you want an inferior product?” “Why do you back a company that has all this information about you and follows you everywhere on the internet?”

I figured that one of these days, I should actually respond to them (fears of flamers/attacks on my judgment be damned!).

First thing’s first. I’ll concede that, at least for now, Apple tends to build better products. Apple has remarkable design and UI sense which I have yet to see matched by another company. Their hardware is of exceptionally high quality, and, as I mentioned before, they are masters at integrating their high-end hardware with their custom-built software to create a very solid user experience. They are also often pioneers in new hardware innovations (e.g., accelerometer, multitouch, “retina display”, etc.).

So, given this, why on earth would I call myself a Google Fanboi (and not an Apple one)? There are a couple of reasons for it, but most of them boil down basically to the nature of Google’s business model which is focused around monetizing use rather than selling a particular piece of content/software/hardware. Google’s dominant source of profit is internet advertising – and they are able to better serve ads (get higher revenue per ad) and able to serve more ads (higher number of ads) by getting more people to use the internet and to use it more. Contrast this with Apple who’s business model is (for the most part) around selling a particular piece of software or hardware – to them, increased use is the justification or rationale for creating (and charging more for) better products. The consequence of this is that the companies focus on different things:

• Cheap(er) cost of access – Although Apple technology and design is quite complicated, Apple’s product philosophy is very simple: build the best product “solution” and sell it at a premium. This makes sense given Apple’s business model focus on selling the highest-quality products. But it does not make sense for Google which just wants to see more internet usage. To achieve this, Google does two main things. First, Google offers many services and development platforms for little or no cost. Gmail, Google Reader, Google Docs, and Google Search: all free, to name a few. Second, Google actively attacks pockets of control or profitability in the technology space which could impede internet use. Bad browsers reducing the willingness of people to use the internet? Release the very fast Google Chrome browser. Lack of smartphones? Release the now-very-popular Android operating system. Not enough internet-connected TV solutions? Release Google TV. Not enough people on high-speed broadband? Consider building a pilot high-speed fiber optic network for a lucky community. All of these efforts encourage greater Web usage in two ways: (a) they give people more of a reason to use the Web more by providing high-value web services and “complements” to the web (like browsers and OS’s) at no or low cost and (b) forcing other businesses to lower their own prices and/or offer better services. Granted, these moves oftentimes serve other purposes (weakening competitive threats on the horizon and/or providing new sources of revenue) and aren’t always successes (think OpenSocial or Google Buzz), but I think the Google MO (make the web cheaper and better) is better for all end-users than Apple’s.
• Choice at the expense of quality – Given Apple’s interest in building the best product and charging for it, they’ve tended to make tradeoffs in their design philosophy to improve performance and usability. This has proven to be very effective for them, but it has its drawbacks. If you have followed recent mobile tech news, you’ll know Apple’s policies on mobile application submissions and restrictions on device functionality have not met with universal applause. This isn’t to say that Apple doesn’t have the right to do this (clearly they do) or that the tradeoffs they’ve made are bad ones (the number  of iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch purchases clearly shows that many people are willing to “live with it”), but it is a philosophical choice. But, this has implications for the ecosystem around Apple versus Google (which favors a different tradeoff). Apple’s philosophy provides great “out of the box” performance, but at the expense of being slower or less able to adopt potential innovations or content due to their own restrictions. Case in point: a startup called Swype has built a fascinating new way to use soft keyboards on touchscreens, but due to Apple’s App Store not allowing an application that makes such a low-level change, the software is only available on Android phones. Now, this doesn’t preclude Swype from being on the iPhone eventually, but it’s an example where Apple’s approach may impede innovation and consumer choice – something which a recent panel of major mobile game developers expressed concern about — and its my two cents worth that the Google way of doing things is better in the long run.
• Platforms vs solutions – Apple’s hallmark is the vertically integrated model, going so far as to have their own semiconductor solution and content store (iTunes). This not only lets them maximize the amount of cash they can pull in from a customer (I don’t just sell you a device, I get a cut of the applications and music you use on it), it also lets them build tightly integrated, high quality product “solution”. Google, however, is not in the business of selling devices and has no interest in one tightly integrated solution: they’d rather get as many people on the internet as possible. So, instead of pursuing the “Jesus phone” approach, they pursue the platform approach, releasing “horizontal” software and services platforms to encourage more companies and more innovators to work with it. With Apple, you only have one supplier and a few product variants. With Google, you enable many suppliers (Samsung, HTC, and Motorola for starters in the high-end Android device world, Sony and Logitech in Google TV) to compete with one another and offer their own variations on hardware, software, services, and silicon. This allows companies like Cisco to create a tablet focused on enterprise needs like the Cius using Android, something which the more restrictive nature of Apple’s development platform makes impossible (unless Apple creates its own), or researchers at the MIT Media lab to create an interesting telemedicine optometry solution. A fair response to this would be that this can lead to platform fragmentation, but whether or not there is a destructive amount of it is an open question. Given Apple’s track record the last time it went solo versus platform (something even Steve Jobs admits they didn’t do so well at), I feel this is a major strength for Google’s model in the long-run.
• (More) open source/standards – Google is unique in the tech space for the extent of its support for open source and open standards. Now, how they’ve handled it isn’t perfect, but if you take a quick glance at their Google Code page, you can see an impressive number of code snippets and projects which they’ve open sourced and contributed to the community. They’ve even gone so far as to provide free project hosting for open source projects. But, even beyond just giving developers access to useful source code, Google has gone further than most companies in supporting open standards going so far as to provide open access to its WebM video codec which it purchased the rights to for ~$100M to provide a open HTML5 video standard and to make it easy to access your data from a Google service however you choose (i.e., IMAP access to Gmail, open API access to Google Calendar and Google Docs, etc.). This is in keeping with Google’s desire to enable more web development and web use, and is a direct consequence of it not relying on selling individual products. Contrast this with an Apple-like model – the services and software are designed to fuel additional sales. As a result, they are well-designed, high-performance, and neatly integrated with the rest of the package, but are much less likely to be open sourced (with a few notable exceptions) or support easy mobility to other devices/platforms. This doesn’t mean Apple’s business model is wrong, but it leads to a different conclusion, one which I don’t think is as good for the end-user in the long run.

These are, of course, broad sweeping generalizations (and don’t capture all the significant differences or the subtle ones between the two companies). Apple, for instance, is at the forefront of contributors to the open source Webkit project which powers many of the internet’s web browsers and is a pioneer behind the multicore processing standard OpenCL. On the flip side, Google’s openness and privacy policies are definitely far from perfect. But, I think those are exceptions to the “broad strokes” I laid out.

In this case, I believe that, while short-term design strength and solution quality may be the strengths of Apple’s current model, I believe in the long run, Google’s model is better for the end-customer because their model is centered around more usage. And, in the long haul, if you believe in R&D investment economics (how much R&D dollars an Apple model can throw at innovation versus how many R&D dollars a Google-plus-its-partners model can muster), I think the latter has an advantage – although that may be the subject for another post.

I will leave you with another reason to love Google: Google ads have helped save princesses.

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Batman + Snoopy = Very Happy Ben

If its not apparent by now, I’m a fan of comics. Two of my favorite characters in comics would be Batman and Snoopy (of Peanuts fame). So, when I read this week’s Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed (its a weekly series on CBR’s Comics Should be Good blog), I was extremely delighted to see that there was a short Batman comic written in 1981 which homaged Snoopy’s great American novel.

What novel you ask? It was a regular Charles Schulz gag about Snoopy authoring the greatest novel you’ve never read on his cute little typewriter:

Amazing, right? Now, pay close attention to the next four comics:

Why pay attention? Because then check out the following Batman comic. See anything familiar in the text?

I was in nerd-fanboi heaven

(All images borrowed from Comic Book Legends Revealed page)

My Take on Google/Verizon’s Net Neutrality Proposal

If you’ve been following the tech news at all, you’ll know about the great controversy surrounding the joint Google/Verizon proposal for net neutrality. Recently, Google came out with a defense of its own actions, and I thought I’d weigh in.

First, I think the community overreacted. There is a lot to not like about Google’s stance, but I think there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. There are political limits to what strict net neutrality promoters can achieve. Its a fact of life that the telco providers have deep pockets (part of their having government-granted monopoly status) and stand to gain or lose a great deal from the outcome of net neutrality legislation and thus wield enormous influence over broadband legislation. Its also a fact of life that the path towards net neutrality is more easily served by finding common ground which preserves the most important aspects of net neutrality than it is to fight the telco providers kicking and screaming the whole way. What I mean to say is: we should not criticize Google for dealing with a telco or with making compromises on net neutrality. That’s an unreasonable stance typically held by people who don’t have to actually make policy. With that said, we should criticize Google for making the wrong compromises.
2. I don’t think Android was the issue here. Many people may disagree with me here, but I don’t believe Android has much direct impact to Google’s bottom line. From my perspective, Google’s commitment to Android is about two things: (a) preventing Apple from dominating the smartphone market (and potentially the mobile ad market) by empowering a bunch of phone manufacturers to provide devices of comparable (or better) quality and (b) forcing all mobile phone platforms to have decent-enough web surfing/app-running capability (by providing a free alternative which did) so that Google can provide its services effectively on those platforms and serve more ads. If anything, Google’s incentives here are better aligned with net neutrality than most companies: it benefits the most if there are more people using the web, and the best way to push that is to encourage greater content diversity. While Google TV may change Android into a true profit center, it wouldn’t be for several years, and so I think it’d be a stretch to say it is a big enough deal to significantly impact Google’s political policy moves. I can buy the argument that Google pushed a deal with Verizon because they have a closer relationship via Android, but I think suggesting that Google subverted net neutrality as a concession to Verizon on Android is taking it too far.
3. I think Google did a good job of emphasizing transparency. The proposal emphasizes that telcos need to be held to higher standards of transparency, something which is sorely lacking today, and something which we definitely want to and need to see in the future.

With that said, though, there are definitely things to criticize Google’s agreement on:

1. Wireless: I can sympathize with the argument that wireless is different from wired networks and could require more aggressive traffic management. I even went so far as to call that out the last time I talked about this. But, given the importance of wireless broadband in the future, it doesn’t make any sense to exclude explicit protections around neutrality for wireless. The arguments around competition and early development strike me as naive at best and Verizon PR at worst – whatever provisions exist to protect neutrality for wired networks should be applied in the wireless space. Competition and the development of more open gardens make it possible to compromise, but not necessarily throw caution to the wind.
2. Wording weirdness: I’m concerned that the proposal contains phrasings which seem to give avenues for telcos to back out of neutrality like “prioritization of Internet traffic would be presumed inconsistent with the non-discrimination standard, but the presumption could be rebutted” without clearly explaining what are reasonable grounds for rebuttal. Even parts of the compromise which I accept as valid (i.e., letting telcos do basic network quality of service management, prioritize government/emergency traffic, fight off malware/piracy, etc.) were framed in terms of what telco’s were permitted to do, but not without clearly laid out restrictions (i.e., network service quality management must be subject to FCC review). For a document meant to safeguard neutrality, it sure seems to go out of its way to stipulate workarounds…
3. “Additional online services”: I understand (and agree with) the intent – carriers may want to provide special services which they want to treat differently to meet their partners’/customers’ needs like a special gaming service or secure money transfer. The language, however, is strange and not imminently clear to me that there aren’t “back doors” for the telcos to use to circumvent neutrality restrictions.

Truthfully, I think most of the document rings true as a practical compromise between the interests and needs of telcos (who would bear the brunt of the costs and should be incentivized to improve network quality and provide meaningful services and integration) and the interests of the public. But, I would ask Google or whatever legislator/FCC member who has a voice on this to do two things:

• Not compromise on content neutrality on any medium. The value of the internet as a medium and as a platform of innovation comes from the ability of people to access all sorts of applications and content without that access being discriminated against by the network operator. Not sticking to that is risking slower innovation and choking off a valuable source of commentary/opinions, especially in a setup where large local players hold enormous market power because of their government-granted monopoly status.
• Create clear (but flexible enough to be future-proof) guidelines for acceptable behavior with clear adjudication and clear punishments. No squirrely word weirdness. No “back door” language. You don’t need to browbeat the telco’s, but you don’t need to coddle them either.

How You Might Cure Asian Glow

It’s ironic: right after I mention that I’ve been on track with my New Year’s Resolution to blog about one science paper a month, I get the following month done extremely late.

The paper I read for the past month is something that is very near and dear to my heart. As is commonly known, individuals of Asian ancestry are more likely to experience dizziness and flushed skin after drinking alcohol. This is due to the prevalence of a genetic defect in the Asian population which affects an enzyme called Aldehyde Dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2). ALDH2 processes one of the by-products of alcohol consumption (acetaldehyde). In people with the genetic defect, ALDH2 works very poorly. So, people with the ALDH2 defect build up higher levels of acetaldehyde which leads them to get drunker (and thus hung-over/sick/etc) quicker. This is a problem for someone like me, who needs to drink a (comically) large amount of water to be able to socialize properly while drinking wine/beer/liquor. Interestingly, the anti-drinking drug Disulfiram (sold as “Antabuse” and “Antabus”) helps alcoholics keep off of alcohol by basically shutting down a person’s ALDH2, effectively giving them “Asian alcohol-induced flushing syndrome” (aka an Asian person’s inability to hold their liquor) and making them get drunk and sick very quickly.

So, what can you do? At this point, nothing really (except, either avoid alcohol or drink a ton of water when you do drink). But, I look forward to the day when there may actually be a solution. A group at Stanford recently identified a small molecule, Alda-1 (chemical structure above), which not only increases the effectiveness of normal ALDH2, but can help “rescue” defective ALDH2!

Have we found the molecule which I have been searching for ever since I started drinking? Jury’s still out, but the same group at Stanford partnered with structural biologists at Indiana University to conduct some experiments on Alda-1 to try to find out how it works.

To do this, and why this paper was published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology rather than another journal, they used a technique called X-ray Crystallography to “see” if (and how) Alda-1 interacts with ALDH2. Some of the results of these experiments are shown on the left. The top (panel b) shows a 3D structure of the “defective’ version of ALDH2. If you’re new to structural biology papers, this will take some time getting used to it, but if you look carefully, you can see that ALDH2 is a tetramer: there are 4 identical pieces (in the top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right) which are attached together in the middle.

It’s not clear from this picture, but the defective version of the enzyme differs from the normal because it is unable to maintain the 3D structure needed to link up with a coenzyme (a chemical needed by enzymes which do this sort of chemical reaction to be able to work properly) called NAD+ or even carry out the reaction (the “active site”, or the part of the enzyme which actually carries out the reaction, is “disrupted” in the mutant).

So what does Alda-1 do, then? In the bottom (panel c), you can see where the Alda-1 molecules (colored in yellow) are when they interact with ALDH2.  While the yellow molecules have a number of impacts on ALHD2’s 3D structure, the most obvious changes are highlighted in pink (those have no clear counterpart in panel b). This is the secret of Alda-1: it actually changes the shape of ALDH2, (partially) restoring the enzyme’s ability to bind with NAD+ and carry out the chemical reactions needed to process acetaldehyde, and all without actually directly touching the active site (this is something which you can’t see in the panel I shared above, but you can make out from other X-ray crystallography models in the paper).

The result? If you look at the chart below, you’ll see two relationships at play. First, the greater the amount of co-enzyme NAD+ (on the horizontal axis), the faster the reaction speed (on the vertical axis). But, if you increase the amount of Alda-1 from 0 uM (the bottom-most curve) to 30 uM (the highest-most curve), you see a dramatic increase in the enzyme’s reaction speed, for the same amount of NAD+. So, does Alda-1 activate ALDH2? Judging from this chart, it definitely does.

Alda-1 is particularly interesting because most of the chemicals/drugs which we are able to develop work by breaking, de-activating, or inhibiting something. Have a cold? Break the chemical pathways which lead to runny noses. Suffering from depression? De-activate the process which cleans up serotonin (“happiness” chemicals in the brain) quickly. After all, its much easier to break something than it is to fix/create something. But, instead, Alda-1 is actually an activator (rather than a de-activator), which the authors of the study leave as a tantalizing opportunity for medical science:

This work suggests that it may be possible to rationally design similar molecular chaperones for other mutant enzymes by exploiting the binding of compounds to sites adjacent to the structurally disrupted regions, thus avoiding the possibility of enzymatic inhibition entirely independent of the conditions in which the enzyme operates.

If only it were that easy (it’s not)…

Where should we go from here? Frankly, while the paper tackled a very interesting topic in a pretty rigorous fashion, I felt that a lot of the conclusions being drawn were not clear from the presented experimental results (which is why this post is a bit on the vague side on some of those details).

I certainly understand the difficulty when the study is on phenomena which is molecular in nature (does the enzyme work? are the amino acids in the right location?). But, I personally felt a significant part of the paper was more conjecture than evidence, and while I’m sure the folks making the hypotheses are very experienced, I would like to see more experimental data to back up their theories. A well-designed set of site-directed mutagenesis (mutating specific parts of ALDH2 in the lab to play around with they hypotheses that the group put out) and well-tailored experiments and rounds of X-ray crystallography could help shed a little more light on their fascinating idea.

Paper: Perez-Miller et al. “Alda-1 is an agonist and chemical chaperone for the common human aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 variant.” Nature Structural and Molecular Biology 17:2 (Feb 2010) –doi:10.1038/nsmb.1737

(Image credit) (Image credit) (figures from Figure 4 from paper)

Forget Moore’s Law, its all about Crayola’s Law

As a tech aficionado, its clear that I’m a fan of Moore’s Law (the observation that technology seems to double in capacity every 2-3 years). But, as my friend Elizabeth pointed out, Crayola’s Law (as coined by economics blog Marginal Revolutions) is far more visually awesome:

(Image taken from Marginal Revolution, original source Weather Unsealed)

Last thoughts on consulting

It’s not the first time I got this question, but, now that I’m done (at least for now) – what do I really think of management consulting?

• Great first job: I believe this is one of the best first jobs that you can get coming out of college or business school. It challenges you to think about issues which most people don’t get a chance to until they’re at the middle/senior manager level (e.g., the clients you work with). It also gives great practice in handling tough situations (e.g., hostile clients/customers, rapid deadlines, changing requirements, etc.) and forces you to learn how to work with many different types of people and thinking styles. It also introduces a mental discipline around finding and structuring solutions to tough problems, no matter the political situation or the perceived difficulties. Beyond the “boot camp” aspect, its also tends to pay a pretty decent salary and offer a very young and “work hard, play hard” culture which large companies tend to be unable to replicate.
• Opens many doors: Consulting doesn’t end up fulfilling the 4 criteria for job satisfaction for everyone. But, not to fear – the skills I alluded to in the first point make new consultants very attractive to employers (some job openings primarily target consultants, like some private equity and corporate strategy roles) given the broad set of experiences and ability to perform in difficult situations. Furthermore, the abundance of MBAs and the networks of the more senior members of the firm provide consultants with a great network to use to help position themselves in new jobs. It’s a benefit that should not be discounted.
• Very cyclical: There is no business which isn’t, to some extent, vulnerable to the business cycle, but as a fairly expensive client-services business with long lead-times in both hiring and getting new clients, management consulting is especially vulnerable. I can tell you that during a recession, things can get pretty tough. Clients are rarely willing to pay full price and demand much higher levels of quality. This, in turn, makes everyone’s lives harder and makes the firm reluctant to pay bonuses, hire additional workers, provide perks, or give promotions. This has no effect in the short-term, because there are no other job opportunities available in a recession, but when the economy begins to recover, it pushes more people to look elsewhere for jobs. The result of this is that during the ensuing recoveries/booms, firms can’t seem to do enough to hold on to their people. Compensation/bonuses go up and more promotions are granted as the firm becomes both forced to and more willing to do more to keep its people and hire new employees to handle the increased quantity of client work it wants to service – which itself becomes the over-capacity which leads to problems when a recession hits (and the cycle repeats). Now, this cycle is not unique to consulting, but it’s important to keep this in mind when considering consulting as a career because the very nature of the consulting business (long hiring/project lead times, expensive client-service) strongly amplifies the bad aspects of the consulting experience in recession and the good aspects during booms.
  
• Changing model making it harder for junior people: Like the previous bullet point, this is not unique to consulting, but it is a growing trend which I have observed. In the “Dark Ages” of business when the internet was not around and electronic data/contact lists were not so readily available, successful consultants did not require deep industry or operational area expertise to be effective – they could quickly come up to speed by finding the right data/experts and conducting the select set of analyses needed. But, as more data and “industry experts” became more readily available via the internet (and the market understanding there was demand for such things), clients began to demand more and more industry/operation-specific expertise from their consultants. This has forced the more senior members of a consulting firm to become industry/operational area experts. While this is a natural progression of the consulting model, an under-appreciated result of this is that junior members of the team now start new projects with a significant knowledge disadvantage from the senior members of the team. The result of which is that junior members may get less of an opportunity to work deeply with “the higher ups” and with the client (who expect junior consultants to be as well-versed as the senior members of the team). While strong teams and cultures find ways to mitigate these problems (with team norms, strong mentorship, and/or by allowing junior members to specialize, etc.), the change in the consulting model (and their adverse impacts) will likely continue. This is definitely something to think about if considering consulting.

(Image credit) (Image credit)

Suggestion to Major Blogs and Websites

If I can make a suggestion to American TV studios to move towards a miniseries system, why not more?

I recently spent a couple of hours organizing and pruning the many feeds that I follow in Google Reader. It’s become something of a necessity as my interests and information needs (and the amount of time I have to pursue them) change. But, this time as I found myself trying to figure out which news sites to follow, I found it easier to drop websites which didn’t have sub-feeds.

Most major blogs and websites today use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to let subscribers know when the site’s been updated without having to check the site constantly. While this is extremely convenient, the enormous number of updates that major websites like the New York Times issue per day make subscribing to their RSS feed an exercise in drinking from the firehose.

So, what to do? Thankfully, some major websites (the New York Times included) figured this out and now provide sub-feeds which provide only a fraction of the total content so that a subscriber can not only avoid RSS information overload but get a focused feed on the information that matters to him/her. The New York Times, for instance, allows you to only get RSS updates from their tech column, the Bits Blog, or even just the Venture Capital section of the New York Times’ Dealbook coverage.

Sadly, not every website is as forward-looking as the New York Times. Many sites don’t offer any sort of sub-feed at all (much to my dismay). Many sites who do offer it, offer a very paltry selection with very limited options.

And, given the choice between an information deluge which I mostly don’t want vs an alternative information source which gives me only the information I do want, I think the answer is obvious. As a result, with the exception of two feeds, I dropped from Google Reader every blog which posted more than once a day which didn’t give me a targeted sub-feed option.

In a world where its getting harder and harder for publications to hold on to readers, you’d think these sites would learn to offer more flexibility (especially when such flexibility is practically free to support if you have even a half-decent web content management system) in how their content is pushed.

But, I guess those sites weren’t interested in keeping me as a reader…

(Image credit)