Tretakoff Musings

Thanks to my Amazon Prime membership, with it's growing catalog of free streaming TV and movies, I've recently been reliving the delight of what was the 2nd best show ever to air on US television, The West Wing . The first 4 seasons, with Aaron Sorkin pitching fastballs every episode, are some of the smartest, engaging, and emotionally riveting television I have ever seen, and they hold up, even today. One interesting phenomenon I've discovered, however, is that these characters, although off the air for nearly a decade, have gained a second life on Twitter, of all things. It started when I found the Twitter account for President Josiah Bartlet , the president so many of us wanted to be real. With great excepts like "Working with the Solicitor General to see if I can revoke citizenship for one Congressman an hour until a deal is reached." and "If we're making a list of the mentally ill in this country, start with anyone who remains a member of the NR...

Yep, it's official: Steve Jobs has been reading my blog on the ultimate device, and went ahead and created it. This will serve as an epitaph for my Palm: ladies and gentlemen, I humbly yield my evangelism of my Palm TX as the ultimate multipurpose device, and give you the iPhone. Why is the iPhone the perfect device? Let me count the ways: - Apple (no longer Apple Computer; now just Apple, inc. - nice touch, Steve) understands that the killer app for a cell phone is...the phone functions. With Apple's clout, they were able to make the largest cell carrier innovate (visual voicemail: click what messages you want to listen to, rather than be forced to listen to them all), and promises more. Hell, they make making a phone call look sexy on this thing. - Perfect form factor. Slimmer than any other smartphone, to appeal to the sexy crowd. All screen: you can't mess up the buttons on this thing. The right size to talk on, watch movies...just perfect. - It runs Mac OS X. Read t...

The ultimate smartphone/entertainment device is getting closer and closer. Palm's new Treo 680 hit the streets last week: smaller, sleeker, but still not quite there. The price ($199) is very appetizing, but not the out of the park hit it would have been at $99. And those cool colors? Only if you buy the unlocked version ($400). Thanks, Cingular. But, aside from that, it's not quite the ultimate device I'm waiting for. My Palm TX still is the closest to it. Here’s what the ultimate device needs, in my humble opinion: - Palm OS. Pipe down, you Windows Mobile folks. Palm OS is still the easiest OS to use, and offers literally thousands of programs. Yes, it could use a refresh…and it is not getting one ( ALP? ), but neither Windows Mobile or Symbian are making a compelling enough case to knock it out. Why was the Treo 680 introduced with Palm OS instead of Windows Mobile, hmm? - At least 64MB of RAM, and an SD card slot that supports up to 4GB cards. My TX does this; I w...

Think of the ludicrousness of combining a camera with a phone. What a seemingly arbitrary combination! Why not a music player, or a video game, or even a newspaper reader? Nope, for whatever reason, just about every phone is a cameraphone, and usually, like mine, not great quality. Yet, maybe those phone designers have more forethought. How many times have I been someplace and said, "If only I had a camera." Now, albeit a really poor excuse for a camera, I find myself in just that place, with the tool in hand. And sometimes, you get lucky. For instance: The full moon, rising over the Bay Bridge, as seen from the Golden Gate Ferry during the last full moon. Sure, with a real camera, I could have had a masterpiece. But at least I got enough to make you understand the sheer impact. Better, consider this: The view from the top of the lighthouse on Forbes Island, a man made island/restaurant, just off the edge of Pier 39 in San Francisco. The lighthouse gives the best view on the ...

Imagine a world of network TV with quality shows like LOST or 24...that don't go stale. This New York Magazine article makes a compelling argument for just that, and it's hard to refute. My coworkers are getting tired of the mysteries of LOST this season, and 24 has clearly jumped the shark. With competition from Netflix, HBO, Showtime, and the web, it's time to start thinking this way.

Look, I know LOST is all about conspiracy theories and puzzles but the new season has me asking an unexpected set of questions: what is it about characters of color that the writers don't like? Michael? Gone, along with his son. Michelle Rodriguez? Killed, after an absurdly short arc. And now, one of the best actors (an fellow OZ alumni to the aforementioned MIA Michael, Harold Perrineau Jr.) and characters on the show, Mr. Eko (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) has been killed. Yes, I was happy to see the sense of menace back to the island. But you can't tell me that we could not have killed a few of the extra white people? Seems we've got plenty of those on the island. Heck, get rid of Sayid, Jin and Sun, and it's practically a milk farm. C'mon, guys. I like watching the show, and love the storyline, but the big mystery this season is why, with an expanding cast, the characters of darker complexions are being eliminated. Not cool.

Cryptic policies, unfair practices, and a virtual monopoly are not ways to engender customer goodwill....something PayPal found out today when a bomb exploded at PayPal HQ. No one hurt, thank (what is the Atheist version of "God" in that sentence, Penn ?) {insert belief deity here}. I'm not saying it was as obvious as "Hey, if we invade Iraq, we'll start a civil war and lose thousands of American lives needlessly," but it was pretty easy to see it coming.

No secret I'm a sports fan, especially football. One of the more interesting aspects of sports to me, however, is the uniforms. Think of the design, the attention to detail, then layer on the appeal to the crowd, and finally the creativity of the players. It's remarkable, when you think of it. For instance, look at that picture to the right. Yes, it's LaDanian Tomlinson of the Chargers, one of the better running backs in the game. He's wearing the Chargers' "throwback" uniform, which is, to me, one of the best sports uniforms in football. The color? Powder blue, that just screams Southern California. The player's number is on the helmet, in a sleek retro font, again echoing the Chargers culture as a team that came of age in the late 60's/early '70's. Just perfect, compared to the Chargers' dramatic lighting bolt on a dark blue outfit that scream late 1980's with no pizzaz. In baseball, think of how drab the uniforms were until the 1...

What brought me to San Francisco? What started my fascination with gadgets? What seduced me into the perfect marriage of traditional retailing and online business? What put me on the forefront of e-commerce? It's many things, sure, but it comes down to one man. Richard Thalheimer. If you have not yet heard, Richard, the founder and CEO of The Sharper Image, was ousted this week, after a serious decline in the company's fortunes. He remains on the board, but the company he has been, and always will be identified with, is no longer his to run. This happened earlier this week, and yes, I knew the minute it happened. You would have had to be blind, deaf and dumb not to know it was coming. I've been busy, sure, but I also was thinking about how I felt about it, before I wrote it. It's complicated. So, bear with me. If you don’t know, I spent a decade working for TSI. I started at the bottom rung, literally: a stock boy, in a retail store in Boston, in the 1980's. Sharpe...

Some of you call me on my cell. As you know, I am frequently unavailable (meetings, work, etc.), and I feel bad that I can't talk more often. However, thanks to a free service, YouMail, you can all now have a personal greeting from me on my voicemail. Yes, a greeting for each of you. It's actually pretty easy to set up, and cool. It involves changing your voicemail from the one your cell provider gives you (which everyone just loves the flexibility of) to YouMail's service. Why? Here's some of what you get: - Listen to your messages on the phone or on the web - Get a text message whenever someone leaves you a voicemail, with who the voicemail is from - Ability to record personal greetings for any specific person who calls you. No limit on how many! Record from your phone or through your computer. - My favorite: ability to play a specific message to certain callers...and not let them leave a voicemail. Because as much as I love telemarketers and recruiters, I'm even...

On my trip this week, I found it interesting that my Gadgets and need for information have become so pervasive, yet I only notice just how dependent I am on them in those few moments at takeoff and landing that I am utterly deprived of them. For instance, here was my trip: Drove to San Jose in my car. Talked on my Bluetooth headset and Sony Ericsson phone for part of the trip; other times, I was listening to podcasts on my Palm TX. At the airport, I parked, and connected with my Palm's browser, over my phone's GPRS connection, via Bluetooth, to mobile.southwest.com to get my boarding pass, from the parking lot. At the airport, got my email over the same connection on my Palm. Boarded the plane, and read the San Francisco Chronicle on my Palm that I had downloaded that morning, thanks to Sunrise XP and Plucker . The dreaded "turn off anything with an on/off switch" announcement. Nothing to do but read the damned SkyMall catalog. 10K feet! Out comes the laptop , so...

In my job, I fly more than I like. Heck, next week I'm on four flights in 2 days. As the government attempts to help keep us safer when we fly, the secuirty precautions are gradually resembling the very horrors we were warned about of our enemies in the Cold War. One man decided to chip a hole in this suffocation, and stand up for the principles this country was built on. And you know what? He proved it all a tissue of lies. Remember...remember...the 5th of November.