Author Archives: derykpiper

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April 17, 2017

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Home Automation

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(Vizio Smart-)Cast All the Things

So the music system has been running really well with the various Chromecast Audio (and regular Chromecast) devices sprinkled throughout our house.  No complaints really on interaction, responsiveness, usefulness, etc.  However… Progress(tm).

I’ve probably alluded to my ongoing quest to reduce and de-clutter my living space.  This is and probably will forever be a source of intrigue, excitement, and cash drainage.  Technology marches forward and enables ever-smaller devices to fill the role that myriad other devices once filled – or at the very least, that much larger devices once filled.  And in some cases devices become virtualized and move into the realm of bits and bytes, losing their corporeal selves and existing in “the cloud”.

Riiiight.

Back to music.  When I first began the home audio aspect of my Home Automation ambitions 11 years ago, the unanswered question was: how to bridge the digital world and physical world?  Digital, in that I was writing the software that would form the basis of the home audio system, and physical in that you need hardware to produce the music – and also to control it.  It’s interesting reading the old articles chronicling those first steps, and then reading the machinations I went through as I struggled with concepts and financial constraints to realize the system I was aiming to build.  All of this reading is available on Piper’s Pages, if you’re interested.   Even then, the two big questions were: how to physically interact with the system? And: what will produce the music?

It’s the latter that I’m focusing on in this post.  The early system’s intentions were so cute, in retrospect.  Multiple sound cards, running outputs of cards into inputs of other cards, worrying about card addressing.  So quaint.  And then we moved to another house, and those sounds cards haven’t done a single DA conversion since.  Nope… the new, temporary solution was to use smartphones or tablets connected via AUX or Bluetooth.  The remote/renderer capability of the system made this a little more bearable, in that you could purpose a tablet as a renderer and have it tethered to an amp via AUX/Bluetooth, then control it with your smartphone running as a remote.  But again… so quaint.

This was certainly a stopgap solution.  I had envisioned a full-fledged Sonos setup for the move, a dream that was never realized due to cost and unanswered questions of how to get my music to Sonos.  Would I be back to utilizing sound cards and piping music to the Sonos network via AUX?

At some point we gained Cast integration, and that was a Good Thing(tm).  Cheap to implement, could repurpose existing amplifier/speaker hardware, and it brought with it the software challenge of how to integrate my 11-year-old software project with something that was both modern and surprisingly sensical in its approach (I’m speaking of the technology that underpins Cast).

But…… Progress(tm).

The system has certainly been capable.  Multiroom is a thing, mulitple audio streams is a thing, Bluetooth headaches are not a thing.  What became evident through is the divide between interaction models.  You can get as far as casting audio to a destination, but then you have to switch mindset and think of the destination itself: is the amp on? is it on the correct input? do I control the volume in software or hardware? is the Harmony remote in the right mode?  It’s a conceptual disconnect.

Still, Cast certainly seemed like the right way to go.  And Google eventually launched the Chromecast Built-in program, which seemed to address most or all of my problems.

Which brings us to the real reason for this post – my experience with Vizio’s SmartCast products.  Specifically, the Crave 360 and Crave Pro.  And I have to tell you, I’ve really been on the fence about the move to Chromecast Built-in, much less Vizio’s own implementation.  Truthfully, moving to built-in represents more of a sideways move than a forward move: same Cast technology, same Cast integration, same music in the same physical locations (probably).  You’re spending money but on the face of it the only thing you’re really addressing is the “disconnect” issue.  Unless, of course, the new hardware does better at music reproduction.

In my case the Sony bookshelf that the Crave Pro was to replace is a pretty good system.  It’s louder than the Pro, it has boomier bass.  What irks me is the “disconnect”.  And the wires.  Man, the wires.  Getting the Sony into the music ecosystem means four physical devices (1 amp, 2 speakers, 1 Chromecast Audio), 5 wires, and 2 power outlets.  In this age of appliances I really wanted a single integrated device with a single wire going to a single power outlet.

Sooo… Crave Pro.  It really is my first experience with the amplified-speaker age that we’re in now.  And… I was disappointed.  The Cast aspect was fine, really.  But the music reproduction was something altogether different from the Sony.  Again, the Sony is louder and has boomier bass.  But… but… does that make the Sony better?  Because, truthfully, the Pro actually has a wider soundstage and richer bass at moderate listening levels.  It can’t get as loud as the Sony while maintaining the same composure that the Sony can, but… it can get loud enough.

I’m aware of the danger in trying to convince yourself of something.  And I definitely vacillated on the Pro.  The 360, on the other hand, went through one night of uncertainty but then became a firm “yes” after applying a software update which solved strange Cast disconnect issues.  The 360, unlike the Pro, is a new entrant – having a portable speaker that can be used in the yard or the garage.  It fills that role and it fills it well, so it got to stay.  And so did the Pro, honestly, once I decided that insane volume no longer has a place in our house.

That’s right folks.  Apparently I’m maturing… who knew.  The Pro is the right answer for the intended application.  It’s different than the Sony – in all the ways previously mentioned – but it turns out that it’s the right answer for the particular application.

So ya… the march goes on.  The music system is evolving.  I’ll spare a paragraph to say that what I like about the Crave 360 and Crave Pro are their simplicity: an amplified speaker with a physical volume knob (actually a ring) which itself is very thoughtfully integrated into the design of the unit.  Whatever transport controls the speaker supports are hidden away as swipe and tap gestures within the ring.  Music reproduction is nice – and actually impressive on the 360 given its size – at anything below 75% volume.  Which, frankly, is just fine when you remember that these things are not meant to be concert speakers but rather are intended to fill a room with music.

I’m happy.  They can both stay.

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December 2, 2016

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2016 Gift List

Almost forgot about this this year – and I would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those darned kids!!!

(Ok, that’s a little weird to say since I actually have kids…)

Without further ado:

  • Tesla Model S P100D (check it!)
  • McLaren P1 (for the weekends) (check it too!)
  • 60″ 70″ (or larger) 1080p (or better) quality flatscreen TV. Shelly, you cannot get this so don’t even think about it.
  • Ummm… socks???
  • A blazer
  • Gift cert for inside/outside/engine-bay car detailing @ Engineered Automotive RECEIVED!
  • 5-port USB desktop charger PURCHASED!

That’s all I’ve got for now, and it wasn’t easy coming up with even the items above. Honestly I don’t actually want/need anything but Management keeps asking me so… Hopefully there’s something above (socks?) that’s reasonable and won’t break the bank.

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August 19, 2016

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Music – now with Google Cast integration

So it’s taken me the better part of two weeks to implement and many months of contemplation, but I finally have a fully-functional Google Cast implementation in the music portion of my home automation system.

Why two weeks?  Much of it was spent doing research.  Most of it was spent spinning my wheels before realizing that a lot of the pieces I’d need to complete the project were already in place.

I don’t recall how much detail I’ve gone into in this blog about the technical details of my web-based music system, so I’ll just summarize.  As far as playback is concerned there are two ways to actually listen to music on my network; either via a SHOUTcast server, or by accessing the music files directly over HTTP. SHOUTcast was the method of choice in the early years of development and eventually it became possible to add transport control functionality to control the SHOUTcast stream.  As a result the entire experience resembled a web-based player and the tunes were on-demand.  But it wasn’t really a web-based player, so the next phase of development was to implement a real web-based player that accessed the music files directly.  And as is the case with all modern web “apps”, that player uses HTML5, Javascript and CSS to work its magic.

So that’s the history.  When implementing Cast I followed much the same path; the first crack was to use the Default Media Receiver and have it stream from SHOUTcast.  This worked – surprisingly – but again the limitations of such a setup (mostly a result of buffering lag) proved onerous.  I deliberated, and researched, and deliberated some more, before deciding that the Cast device had to access the music files directly.  How?  Where to start?  And then it hit me.

IFRAMEs.

I don’t remember what came first; the Internet(tm) or my own “Aha!” moment.  The Internet(tm) said that it was possible to browse arbitrary websites on a Cast device by loading those sites into an IFRAME.  My “Aha!” moment came when I realized that my web player – the HTML5, Javascript and CSS player – used the very technologies that underpin Cast’s receiver “apps” and should therefore be able to run directly on a Cast device.

Put your web app in an IFRAME and by George you have it

Of course there was some “glue” to sort out.  Most important to a Cast implementation is that the receiver app stays resident, otherwise Bad Things(tm) happen.  Well, more like Undesirable Things(tm): the Cast device may go back to its default state, or at the very least your sender will lose connectivity to the (non-existent) receiver.  So I had to code a small receiver and get a little creative on the host side to make sure that the web app and receiver stayed in sync.

But mostly – it just kinda worked.  The web player runs in an IFRAME and the receiver app runs in “top”.  The web player – if left to its own devices – will just trundle through the server’s playlist until there are no more songs to play.  Or, with the correct settings, the player can be controlled from any other device accessing the music system.

How to control your Cast audio player

This is the interesting part.  Obviously you can’t interact with a web app running on a Cast device.  The Cast APIs have a robust messaging system that allows two-way communication between the sender app (which you can interact with) and the receiver app.  This is great, and I imagine it works well for transport control.  But I didn’t use it a great deal for two reasons:

  1. I had already developed a way for a “remote” to control a “renderer” in my music system (see the last couple of paragraphs of this post).  That is, any device – the “remote” – can access the system and see a representation of another device’s web player – the “renderer”.  The remote queues commands on the web server which are subsequently picked up by the renderer, effectively making transport controls available to the remote.
  2. While I appreciate Google’s concept of senders and receivers, my only desire is to have a device load the web player onto a Cast device and then have the Cast device communicate with the web server directly.  I don’t need the sender to maintain connectivity to the receiver.  This mirrors the existing status quo where any device – smartphone, tablet, PC – is just a client to the code running on the server.

I do use the messaging API to setup the receiver app and load the IFRAME.  But once the web app is loaded on the receiver, all messaging goes through my code running on the server.

So ya, add in some housecleaning and Bob’s my uncle.  I even designed a new web player interface specifically for display-capable Cast devices; something that looks a little more presentable on a TV.  The audio-only Cast devices just run the same player that any old smartphone/tablet/PC web browser gets.  I may reduce this to the bare essentials at some point but it’s really not necessary to do so.

I may post some pictures at a later date.  You know, if the adoring masses that frequent this blog demand as much.

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November 24, 2014

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2014 Gift List

Okay folks, here it is:

– Tesla Model S P85
– Moto 360 silver steel band edition (Purchased!)
– Roku Streaming stick
– Nexus 9 (black, WiFi, November manufacture date) (Received! Thanks SS)
– Canon EF zoom lens (Purchased! Finally, after about 4 years of being on my gift lists!)
– Brown leather gloves (Received! Thanks MS)

Final wrap:

Well it certainly looks like I made out like a bandit this year. Granted, 50% of said gifts were from yours truly to… yours truly… A gift received is a gift received!

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August 6, 2014

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A small August 6 update

My keys have been silent, and I apologize for that.

The summer has been another one of those summers that fly by.  Fortunately I can say that it hasn’t been a summer of idleness, but I am somewhat dismayed at the realization that the local “official end of summer” festivities (otherwise known as the CNE) closes shop in less than a month.

My summer to-do list has been shrinking, which is a good thing.  It wasn’t a big list to begin with, but the items are worthwhile and it’s nice to see them getting ticked off one-by-one.  One of the remaining items is one I’m most looking forward to – taking Andrew’s training wheels off.

It’s utterly amazing to me how children grow.  Justin is a regular talker now, when he’s not being overly stubborn that is.  Andrew courageously carries the torch of first-born-son and big-brother, with all of the unrealistic expectations that go along with those responsibilities.  Sometimes I feel so sorry for him – outwardly he’s a little man, but inwardly he’s still an innocent child.  I find myself constantly reminding myself of this, usually after I realize that perhaps I expected too much of him following some admonishment for a trivial transgression.

But the little man is quite creative.  He’s very adept at recreating on paper the things he observes in person.  His fascination with planes and buses continues – moreso the former these days – and as with his general development I’m quite impressed at how refined his visual arts talents are becoming.  He has an interesting attention to detail, and it’s very amusing to experience his attempts to dissect music and, later, construct instrumentals with his mouth.  He’s very much an innocent, creative spirit – and I love him for it.

Justin is a whirlwind.  As mentioned earlier, his stubbornness continues.  I’m reminded of the Dark Knight’s undercurrent of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.  And I sometimes wonder if his stubbornness is his way of attracting attention in a household where his older sibling seems so capable by comparison.  He’s very calculating, and I find that a response needs to be measured – because although he may not just want to watch the world burn, I’m very aware that he will escalate, and the repercussions will become evident as he ages.  Even so, he will repay your efforts if you spend quality time with him and keep him from making fun of the subject at hand; he learns very quickly, as perhaps most children do, and I think he deserves more of my time.

The great news is that the two of them do work together, and are even supportive of each other.  Yes, Andrew is supportive of Justin’s potty training (!)  And Justin makes no bones about giving credit to Andrew for his latest visual arts creation.  And then they fight – albeit briefly – and serenity is shattered.

Meanwhile I continue to plod on with my various obsessions, although much less often as in the past.  It would seem that there’s not enough time in the day to get through everything I want to do or should be doing; but if I’m being honest, I secretly suspect that I’m simply not maximizing the time that I have.  I’m working on it.

On the Home Automation front there hasn’t been much improvement.  Some refactoring of code, some cleaning, some additional logic, but nothing groundbreaking.  If I had to pick something to report on, it would be that I coded 2FA for remote access to the Home intranet.  Which is nice, I guess.  I also activated Last.fm “scrobbling” for the DB.Music system, in the hopes that Last.fm would be kind enough to make worthwhile recommendations and alert me to new albums from artists in my collection.  Neither appear to be happening very well, mind you.

And probably the last worthwhile mention regarding code development is that I implemented full HTML5 client-side playback for DB.Music streaming zones.  I also implemented a system that would allow you to control said clients from another client acting as a “remote”; this is a precursor to deploying low-cost web-based audio players to re-implement the “zones” we used to have at the old house.  I still haven’t settled on the hardware/OS that would be used client-side, but I was digging around in the server code so I did what came naturally. 

So that’s a little update.  I would love to bring back the old Thoughts posts I used to do on occasion, as I do have sparks of inspiration every now and then to share some apparent insight I have into some worldly issue.  But my memory is so horrible these days, that the minute I think “Hey, I should write about that” the insight flees and I’m left with nothing.  Perhaps a combination of voice memos and scheduling will resolve that problem.

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October 21, 2013

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More [home automation]… more more more!

(trying to conjure my best Agent Smith voice)

The never-ending journey continues.  First there was music.  Then came cameras.  Finally, a thermostat.  And now… [drumroll] Lights, camera, action!

No… literally: lights, cameras, actions!

That’s right, I’ve finally added lights to my little home automation system, courtesy of Belkin’s WeMo line of WiFi-connected peripherals.  Specifically, I’ve got a Smart Switch and a Light Switch, with potentially more to come (and definitely more to come if Belkin introduces a 3-way Light Switch)

The upshot: welcome-home lighting!  Among other things obviously…

I won’t get into the current use of the Smart Switch, but the Light Switch is currently connected to my front porch lights, and the most useful rule that I’ve coded into the automation system is intended to turn on those lights if somebody is enroute after sunset.  This will happen even if, for example, one spouse is driving home while the other is already at home.  As the coming-home logic is already a staple of the home automation system, the real challenge was getting the system to actually communicate with the Belkin gear.

To that end you can follow some of the discussion in my Twitter feed – but honestly there’s not much there.  Ultimately I went with the Python ouimeaux library – after much gnashing of teeth given my Windows environment rather than the favoured Linux environment – and it was Job Done(tm).

So all credit to Radio Thermostat and Belkin for your cloud services and mobile apps, but… I’m a control freak; I’ll take a RESTful API over a mobile app any day.  (And I’ll take your devices too, of course!)

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August 2, 2013

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Latitude is (almost-)dead – how do I go on?

I’ve espoused the virtues of Latitude as it relates to my Home Automation obsession.  While Google’s Location service once provided a critical means to validate home/way state, it was always critical in the determination of “occupant prediction” – that is, setting up a home-automation posture in anticipation of homeward-bound residents.

It’s no news anymore that Google is shuttering Latitude on August 9th.  It’s something that I predicted on my twitter feed, and I wasn’t alone in feeling that the end was near.

Google attempted to placate the masses by adding a Location feature to Google+, but from a developer perspective it was the retirement of the Latitude API that hurt the most – never mind the giveth/taketh soreness that has come out of Google’s decision to maintain Location History but close it off to 3rd-party developers going forward.

Whatever.  That ship has sailed (or soon will).  The bigger question for me was – how the heck do I keep location-awareness as a staple in my home-automation system?

I was pretty sure that 3rd-party solutions would crop up, ala the Google Reader debacle.  But unlike RSS feeds, there’s something very personal about location data.  Obviously I was (am) placing a large amount of trust in Google to hand over my location data to them, but I was very loathe to do the same for any other entity on the face of the planet.

So I enlisted my go-to man Tasker to fill the void.

Tasker always had a close relationship with Latify on my smartphone.  Tasker would determine which of three Latify profiles were most suitable at any given time.  So it wasn’t a huge stretch to rip out Latify and have Tasker poll location itself, sending that information to my home server so it could Do Something(tm).

And in a nutshell… that’s all there is to it.  With the help of the Tasker App Factory, I’ve produced an .apk that’s been installed on the wifey’s phone and – voila – the home automation system will remain location-aware after August 9.

So that’s part one.  And a very important part it is.

Part two encompasses what to do about sharing location information with friends, whcih is what one traditionally thinks of when they think of Google Latitude.  And in all honesty, I’ve only ever really seen that as valuable in the context of family, where each member probably wants to know where the other is for safety reasons.  To that end I whipped together a page on my intranet which takes Tasker’s reported location data and puts it on a lovely map.  As with all things intranet, this page is accessible from the Internet at large – for authorized users – and works on a laptop as well as it does on a smartphone.  It uses the Google Maps API for all the map-py stuff, AJAX so that locations update dynamically, and it’s generally Very Cool(tm).

So there it is – I’m quite happy with the current solution.  So a heartfelt “Thanks!” to Google for $crewing developers the world over once again.

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April 17, 2013

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Here’s to you HP Touchpad

The (self-given) gift that keeps on giving?

Once upon a time, I brought home a shiny, almost-firesale-priced 16GB HP Touchpad, with the desire to get in on the tablet game and, hopefully, have a useful media-consumption device that anybody in the family could use.  I went through a WebOS phase, believing that it Kept It Simple Stupid(tm) while also allowing functionality approximating that of a true multi-user implementation.  And indeed, the little-tablet-that-could saw its fair share of Castle and Young and the Resless (the former for me, the latter for the significant other).

And as support waned for WebOS, I tinkered with Android – and Android eventually preempted WebOS, the latter of which saw its use decline drastically once an issue popped up that made it inconvenient to apply community homebrew patches and updates.

But the device soldiered on, and it continued to be a media-consumption device – although my heart-of-hearts still yearned for a true multi-user solution, particularly one that would allow me to move seamlessly between my personal Android phone and the Android tablet.

Said Android version was pegged at 4.0 for  many months, until the plunge was made to install 4.1 – if only to gain some speed and newness, if not multi-user capability.  Ultimately 4.2 was the goal, and with it the realization of true multi-user support.

Meanwhile, other factors conspired to reduce the Touchpad’s daily handling; it became more relegated to spending its days basking in the electric warmth of its Touchstone charging base.  The onslaught of Plex and Roku spelled the introduction of have-it-your-way TV consumption, enabling dead-simple large-screen (and small-screen) viewing as well as the ability to resume playback across multiple devices.  But even Plex and Roku had to play second-fiddle to the ever-increasing demands of two active and highly-inquisitive young boys.

So what of the Touchpad today, and the myth of one needing a tablet?

Well… I’ve never believed that one needs a tablet, but I’ve always believed that there is real utility in the device.  And despite the explosion in phone screen sizes in the past year – such that even yours truly will likely go 5″+ on my next phone upgrade – my experience with the Touchpad has spoiled me.  When at home, there is simply no doubt in my mind that a larger tablet can offer a more immersive, more productive and rewarding experience than a smartphone.  And to substantiate that claim, I recently played with a Nexus 7 for the second time in my life, except this time I came away thinking that nothing short of a 10″ display (or perhaps 8″…) makes any sense.  The Nexus 7 quite literally felt like a phone – and worse yet, one with a horribly-large bezel.

(can I just say that there are way too many hyphens in this post…)

What I like about the Touchpad – and probably any other 10″ tablet – is that it is big.  And again, given that my idea of the ideal tablet use-case is for media consumption in the home, mobility does not enter the equation.  Would a 12″ tablet be better?  Perhaps, but a 10″ is Good Enough(tm) while a 7″ – in my mind – is Too Little, Too Late(tm).

So with the kids in bed and Plex/Roku beckoning, what sort of media consumption can a tablet really provide in my household?

Not a difficult question to answer – the portable kind.  But more importantly, there’s enough of an overlap between a tablet and smartphone – in concept and software – that all of the things I use my smartphone for at home can easily be done on the tablet, and with a larger screen to boot.  The benefits are twofold; again, the larger screen – and critically, the abundant battery that doesn’t need to be sufficiently charged if I need to go on the road for some unknown reason.

Basically, I can put down the phone (or more likely, slip it in my pocket) and do everything on the tablet instead.  My digital existence is “in the cloud” (both private and public), and the holdouts are being likewise relegated.  This allows choice – and boy do I love Choice(tm) – with the decision being completely dependent on which device I feel like using rather than what tasks I want to perform.

This is what multi-user enables.  I am the only person who uses my phone, but the tablet is intended for anybody in the family.  Even if WebOS had a wicked-awesome Plex client, the card-stacking metaphor that I invented previously would not allow for the seamless shift between personal smartphone and family tablet… when it came time to access my digital existence.

Sooooo…. more than a year after being welcomed into my home, the trusty old Touchpad is finally starting to fulfill its destiny.  It’s now sporting an alpha 4.2 ROM – and with it, true multi-user capability.  It’s a liberating experience; yesterday evening, my smartphone was at 99% charge by bedtime simply because it had been on the charging pad all evening, yet I read more Pocket(tm)’d articles, flipped through more Distro mags and trundled through more videos in my Youtube subscriptions than on any evening in recent memory.  And in a counter-intuitive twist, I fully expect that that level of consumption will not continue; not because the “fad” will wear off, but rather, because there are no barriers to getting that stuff done.  There are no battery concerns, there’s no weird logging-in to be done (aside from selecting my user profile on the lockscreen and unlocking with my preferred security method).  There’s no pressure; there’s just this relaxing knowledge that the decision to do that stuff is based solely on Time and Desire; once those technology-unladen conditions are met, I can wash dishes and watch Top Shelf, or lean against a wall and thumb through mail, or recline on the couch and catch The Daily Show.

Or I can defer to another day or time, knowing how easy the decision will be to choose the Right Device(tm) for the Right Time(tm).


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February 2, 2013

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Blackberry will be a strong 3rd, and it won’t matter

So the company once known as “Research in Motion” has finally played its hand, and the reviews are mixed.

Personally, I side with Goldman Sachs and I’ve tweeted as much – I truly believe that Blackberry will be a strong 3rd in the smartphone market.  And I’m going to attempt to explain why.

When people think of RIM and its long slide from #1 in its industry, they instinctively think of Nortel – another Canadian tech darling that rode at the top of its industry, but now exists as a small part of a larger patent portfolio.  Management issues aside, both companies found themselves in a position of increased competition and eventually lost much of their perceived relevance.

Yet, I still believe strongly in Blackberry’s prospects – on the mobility side at least.  Part of that is of their own doing, the rest is a function of their industry.

Industry first.  Blackberry’s competition consists of Android, iPhone and Windows Phone.  And while you can argue the finer points of who has executed most impressively with respect to O/S, ecosystem and application offerings, you can’t deny that each company manufacturers a smartphone experience that is starkly different from the others.  Apple’s iOS devices offer a curated, walled garden.  Windows Phone, a less-curated walled garden but a very polarizing user interface with strict design guidelines.  Android represents the wild-west of the smartphone industry; no restrictions, and vendor-specific customizations.

Each platform offers a modern version of a smartphone operating system.  Each platform is supported by an application and media ecosystem – arguably of differing sizes and content quality, but the infrastructure is there.  So on the face of it, you have four competing products and solutions, all of which represent the state of the art in the smartphone space, all of which offer distinctive user experiences.

That being said, Blackberry no longer needs to compete on specifications alone, or price alone.  They’ve differentiated sufficiently on standout, unique features – Blackberry Hub, Blackberry Balance, Blackberry Peek, an interesting take on the homescreen – that they have a compelling offering in BB10.  Note that I’m not saying that these are good features; just different.

That’s the industry that Blackberry is playing in.  And it’s fortunate that they’re not aiming to take on iPhone or Android, because they honestly have no chance of gaining any signficant market share from those competitors.  However I do believe that they stand a very strong chance of stealing market share from Windows Phone – and that comes down to the Blackberry name and legacy.

My evidence is subjective.  iPhone and Android are considered the gold standards when it comes to smartphones and app stores, yet I’m still surprised that I continue to see people clinging to their older Blackberry devices.  Meanwhile, Microsoft has a 1 1/2 year head-start on Blackberry yet they’ve failed to establish themselves as a bona-fide 3rd.

What is it about Blackberry that inspires so much loyalty?

I don’t have the answer, and while I’m under no allusion that the suggestion of loyalty  is enough to bring the masses flocking, I can’t deny that there’s something compelling about the Waterloo-based company’s iconic products.  I never see a Windows Mobile phone in public – why so many BB7 (and older) devices?

But the real question is – is it enough to convert BB7 (and older) users to BB10?  Will that be enough to pull Blackberry out of its slump?  Will users that have eschewed iOS and Android for Windows Phone, instead jump ship again to BB10?

Realistically, the long-term prospects for the company are still questionable.  And unfortunately, it does appear to be a result of the amount of time that it took for RIM to finally get its act together.  While I have no doubt that BB10 can trounce Windows Phone in the smartphone marketplace, the real truth is that Microsoft is quite happy to lose money on Windows Phone if necessary in order to push its presence in that space – with the intention of promoting its vertically-integrated solutions.  Blackberry, meanwhile, has no worthwhile consumer business outside of Blackberry mobile phones – in that respect it’s truly make-or-break on BB10.  Meanwhile, their enterprise business is not the behemoth it once was:

  • It has come under intense competitive pressure due to the BYOD movement
  • It has been scrutinized due to recent service outages
  • It doesn’t have the same brand loyalty that exists in the consumer market

Consider the news of changes to service fees, and it becomes more obvious that Blackberry’s traditional revenue streams are drying up as a result of the industry shifting more towards generic, data-centric service plans.  I imagine they’ll even have an increasingly-tough time hocking their BES software, despite the ability to manage iPhone and Android devices, as any potential customer must realize the obvious conflict of interest: that Blackberry would rather you use their software to manage their devices while they also collect on BES service plans.  Why go with Blackberry’s enterprise software if alternatives exist from vendors with no vested interest in the end-user devices they purport to manage?  Who wants to hitch their wagon to the horse that left them behind the pack for such a long time?

Okay, so why is Blackberry a “buy”?  And why do I agree with Goldman Sachs?

Because the company still has value.  And having brought their consumer side out of the doldrums, they have arguably more value than they did 12 months ago.  They’ll probably see mildy-impressive sales of BB10 devices after launch.  They will inevitably report strong earnings for a quarter or two, perhaps longer.  They’ll beat expectations.  And around the same time they’ll plateau as they struggle to gain more market share.  They may divest Enterprise.  There may be more layoffs.  And their rating will change to “sell”, and investors will make their quick buck.  What of Blackberry after that?  Who Knows(tm).

Which brings us to the second part of this article’s title.  Blackberry will be a strong 3rd, but they’ll either maintain that position as a smaller, more streamlined version of their current selves or – more likely – they will attain that position and then find themselves in the same boat as Palm in the not-too-distant future.  There simply isn’t enough market share to support their continued existence as the RIM we’ve always known.  Even if Apple releases a new iPhone with the same stale iOS, it will only take them one product cycle to rectify that problem.  Microsoft will not go away and will not concede significant market share.  Android will not cede market share, particularly as Google continues to push its software and hardware agenda.

I simply don’t see the version of reality playing out that has Blackberry being a content, distant third in the smartphone space, gaining no significant market share while giving investors a continuing return on their investment.  And that’s a shame, because I truly believe that Blackberry is an innovative company with a compelling legacy and the technical know-how to create good devices.

Ultimately, we’ll see if I’m wrong.  Considering that I’m no expert in this field, I can naively hope that I will be wrong.

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November 28, 2012

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My ’12 Gift List

I’m posting this in the name of tradition.  Suffice it to say that gift-giving isn’t on the mind of the usual suspects this year; this list is not intended to solicit, although it may also serve to simplify a decision that some would rather not be burdened with at all in 2012.

Disclaimer aside, on to the list.

Items I’ve been fortunate to receive from year(s) gone by:

  • Shop-vac

Outstanding paraphernalia:

And new for 2012:

  • black leather gloves
  • brown leather gloves
  • a pair of Ray Bans, to replace the black pair that finally succumbed to age

There may be more to come, including one item I thought of the other day but can’t recall at the moment.  Anyhow, keep checking back (if you’re into that sort of thing).

Thanks, and God bless.