I am a total gadget nerd. I admit it. I owned the second portable MP3 player and got on the Blackberry bandwagon earlier than most (soon after the 8700c was released). But this post isn’t about gadgets past, but rather the next one that I’m really excited about.

Imagine two seven-inch screens connected by a hinge to form what looks like a book. Then add to that a slick interface that utilizes multitouch gestures and stylus input. Finally, throw in some obligatory features like a digital camera and cool ones like inductive pad charging (how most electric toothbrushes are recharged). What would you have? The Microsoft Courier.

What? Did he really. Just. Say. Microsoft?!

Yes, yes I did.

Taking a couple pages out of Apple’s playbook (and leaving some behind as well), the cat is out of the bag regarding the Courier, Microsoft’s upcoming foray into the tablet PC market. If you look at the images and video on Gizmodo (linked to above), you’ll see the potential for a well-made, bleeding-edge, and actually useful device. I could very easily see this being great for professionals and students. You could use it for writing notes, reading books, checking email, managing personal data and information, watching videos, and more. The versatility of this device could easily rival that of the latest smart phones (i.e. iPhone, myTouch 3G, etc.), though it would be a different type of versatility (noone is going to hold a seven-inch rectangle to their ear).

The Courier could easily complement your laptop, cell phone, MP3 player, and e-reader while enhancing the experience that all of those devices provide. But there in lies the rub for this and any similar next-generation tablet device set or rumored to come out in the next year (Apple, ASUS, and Nokia all have new tablets in the works). Such a device is a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none. Except in specific sets of circumstances, I don’t see how this device truely replaces any other device I’ve mentioned. It’s too big for some tasks, too small for others. It’s more flexible, but less convenient. The advantages it provides in one area are equally disadvantageous in another.

So what can the Courier and other similar devices provide? First, they provide the same functionality that tablets have always provided. Being able to write on digital paper has always been the headline feature of tablet computers. Next, the two-screen nature of these devices (a la Nintendo DS) is a big step forward in my opinion. It allows for effective multitasking and enables the easy flow of data between applications. Finally, and this is where the Courier differs from the rest of the field, is the ability to use both fingers and a stylus to interact with the device. Each interface method has its advantages; the combination of both provides the potential for a really rich user interface.

Ultimately, a rich yet accessible user interface is what will either make or break the Courier. Microsoft is showing here that Apple’s mantra of interface simplicity isn’t the only effective way to go. But the interface needs to be easily learned and understood by users for the device to shine. Many opinions that I have seen regarding the Courier worry about the simplicity of the interface. I would argue that discoverability is more important than simplicity. If the user can figure out the steps involved in accomplishing a desired task, than interface complexity is less of an issue. Sure, a simple task shouldn’t take 25 steps to accomplish, whether or not those steps are easy to intuit. But sacrificing efficacy and ease-of-use in the name of simplicity would be swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. While simplicity and discoverability correlate with one another, they aren’t directly and completely equivalent.

So what specifically excites me about Microsoft’s new tablet? It’s much of what I’ve already mentioned. The two-screen form factor, the touch and stylus interface, and the svelte user interface demonstrated (albeit in a limited fashion) in the use case video. I see myself potentially using it as an e-book reader, writing notebook, and convenient and fully featured internet and email device (cell phones are the former while full-fledged computers are the latter).

And last, but certainly not least, it looks incredibly awesome.

Having gone through two weeks of orientation at school now, I’ve learned a lot more of what the next 21 months of life will be like and met many of the people with whom I’ll spend it. In meeting lots of my new classmates, I’ve been frequently asked the following question.

Do you go by Matt or Matthew?

Most people would have a definite answer to this question and respond one way or another. However, my response is almost always “either.” And I answer that for a few reasons.

First, in every academic setting (but no workplace setting) I’ve been in, there has always been at least one other Matt or Matthew. Since I’m relatively easygoing, I’ve typically deferred to either going by whichever the other Matt or Matthew didn’t go by or just given the interrogator the choice of convenience.

Second, and over time this has become a corollary to the preceding point, I’ve noticed that others will call me what they are used to calling people named Matthew. In the few situations where I provided a definite answer to the question, over time many people will switch to calling me by the other name. They’ll even spell my name differently if that’s what is familiar to them.

Finally, depending on the situation, context, and rhythm or cadence of what I’m saying, I will identify myself by either name. Typically, I introduce myself as Matthew, but a minority of the time, I will introduce myself as Matt. I’ve identified myself with both names, so others doing so is fine by me.

I use Google Apps for email on my domain, which is awesome and pretty much just like GMail save for the lack of themes. When setting it up, I had to choose a username. At the time, I reflected on how some people call me Matthew and others call me Matt, and how whichever I chose, some people could be confused. My solution? I picked one as the user name and set up the other to redirect to the first. So if you want to send email to my waymost.net email, you can use either matt or matthew in front. Either way, I’ll get your message.

And that’s just the way I like it.

I set up Google Analytics on my site yesterday for all the typical reasons. I want to see traffic quantities, patterns, and statistics as well as play around with the software. It can take up to 24 hours before it starts reporting data (it starts gathering data as soon as you add their script on your pages though). So I check it this morning, and, not surprisingly, there isn’t a whole lot of activity.

But as I played around with some of the reports, an interesting datum caught my eye. I had two visits that came from Google search results. “Who the hell is searching for me on Google?” I think out loud. So I take a look at the keywords. It turns out these visitors weren’t interested in me at all (surprise, surprise), but instead were searching for Los Angeles traffic on Google. What?!

Sometime during or soon after college, I played around with adding traffic data to a Google map of L.A. I was just testing out the Google Maps API and figured traffic data made sense to work with (at the time, Google apparently hadn’t heard of traffic since they didn’t add the feature until late 2007). I used a PHP script to pull data from Yahoo and overlaid (I hate the term “mash-up”) that data onto a Google map and put it up here. Then I promptly did nothing else with it. So you’ll understand my surprise when I saw that page randomly getting hits from Google queries.

What is even more impressive is that I’m the number three result for google traffic los angeles and the number one result for la traffic google! I haven’t played around with other queries much, but having my site come up as a top result for those two is very cool and rather amusing. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t occur on Yahoo or Bing (another surprise).

But now that I’ve discovered this, I feel I should go back and put some more effort into the page and make it a more useful resource. Maybe I can get repeat visitors! Then I could start pulling down ten cents per month by slapping on some Google ads! The possibilities are endless. But mostly, it would be fun to turn that page into something even a small number of people get use out of on a regular basis.

Feel free to check it out and let me know what useful stuff pertaining to L.A. traffic you’d like to see on there (not that there is much content there now); any and all input is appreciated.