home links tools blog about
home

« July 2007 | Main | October 2007 »

August 25, 2007

Windows Vista - Still Broken

I still say it's broken. Or, at the very least: it still has some decent problems and doesn't offer any truly compelling reason to upgrade - this despite the fact that it's MS' new OS that took YEARS to develop.

I'm not alone...
Looks like other people think the same way:
Acer: PC Industry 'disappointed' with Vista
Biting the Bullet on Windows Vista: back to XP
More raves for Vista (fake Steve nails it on this editor's antics)

The Fix?
My thought is that Windows needs a 100% clean break if it's going to muster-up as anything valuable in the future. Here's a great Op Ed that says pretty much the same thing.

Only it doesn't address backwards compat - which is critical. No one will stick with Windows if their old hardware/software doesn't work.

And that's where virtualization comes in, and why I can't stand Windows Vista. If MS had decided to truly run with the ball and innovate with Windows Vista, like they initially planned on doing, then Vista might have provided some truly compelling reasons to upgrade. But they kept getting hung up on backwards-compat, and we kept seeing news-releases telling us that MS was dropping more and more features from the list of goodies that they initially promised. In the end, all they shipped was some eye-candy and a new kernel that really benefits the MPAA and RIAA (but still didn't deliver on the ability to let me control volume and output per application).

So what if MS had taken all that energy that they wasted trying to get square pegs into round holes (only to fail after 4 years of trying different size hammers) and dumped it into building a sweet new virtualization layer for Vista? Then they could have provided a CLEAN, FAST, and INNOVATIVE version of Windows and then just 'transparently' opened 'windows' into a virtualized machine running Windows XP on the same box to support older programs, scanners, printers, and the likes. Taking that approach would have allowed them to innovate and deliver on new paradigms while ensuring full backwards compat. And I'm sure they would have spent considerably less development effort. 

And yeah, I know that you can pretty-much do what I just described on a Mac. In fact, the fact that APPLE figured this out while MS did not, just drives me batty - and is the big reason for which I continue to maintain that Vista is broken - because it lacks such serious vision that it's not funny. And that's hard for someone like me who has been an MS fanboi for so long.

But I'm pretty sure my next machine will be a Mac.

Posted on August 25, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 10, 2007

Verizon Wireless - WOAH

So, the last three times I've called verizon wireless I've actually gotten intelligent people that seemed like they wanted to help.

More importantly, they've been able to help me completely with what I wanted to accomplish.

In fact, the hardest part of my last three interactions (over the space of a few months) has been to get OFF the phone with them as they're so busy trying to see if I've got any OTHER issues that I need resolved after they've addressed whatever it has been that I called about.

A phone company that actually GETS customer service? I'm dreaming right?

Posted on August 10, 2007 | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

August 09, 2007

When Will Windows Live(TM) Finally Die?

Here's what I predict:

1) Amazon's new Flexible Payments Service (FPS) will do insanely well with developers and smaller businesses. And Amazon will make bank with it. (It's a great idea - Amazon has effectively built themselves up large enough to become a 'bank' and now they can simultaneously watch out for the 'little-guy' (who is sick of getting gouged to death with absurdly high transaction fees) while making a bunch of quick-nickels themselves.)

2) Microsoft will notice Amazon's success, pull a bunch of developers off of projects that currently make money and which many of us actually give a crap about, and then stuff them into a highly-caffeinated environment in order to create Windows Live Payment Services as a way to cash-in on Amazon's great idea.

Only, like every other hair-brained catch-up project that MS has invested time, energy, and talent into over the past few years... it will end up being "too little, too late".

Oh sure, they may even get it to the point where it makes money (after the third iteration or so). But like Windows Live Search, Zune, and Virtual Earth... it will just be a shadow of what the competition has created, and will really only ever amount to some sort of 'flattery' of an original idea - without ever really ever becoming a real-life competitor.

Innovation Anyone?
Call me crazy, but I'd love to see a return to innovation over at Microsoft (and no, a $10k coffee table that weighs as much as a small-car doesn't really count). And for sure, there are people and even groups at Microsoft that can innovate - it's just that I worry they're too frequently sucked from something with real potential in order to work on some stupid catch-up project that will be branded with the stupid "Live" moniker.

Honestly, I can't wait for the "Live" marketing push (and all the 'quick... let's build something just like that so we don't look stupid' rationale going on behind it) to die.

So yeah, I'm waiting for "Live" to die. 

Posted on August 09, 2007 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

August 08, 2007

YouTube Lawsuits: A mounting storm?

I've gone on before about how dumb I think it was for Daddy Warbucks (aka Google) to take on a new orphan (YouTube) that took such a cavalier stance towards something as horrendously litigious as copyright infringement.

But it looks like steam is mounting:
Class-action suite against YouTube grows to eight parties

Any guesses as to whether or not these eight parties have some decent legal talent behind them?

Posted on August 08, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 07, 2007

Political Correctness Run Amok

I got a kick out of watching the marketing folks at MS work themselves into a frenzy over this one:

Here's Part of the Download Page for ActiveStink 4.5 (screen capture):

pc_run_amok

I was in a hurry to install - so imagine my double-take when I couldn't immediately find English where it was supposed to be (you know, between the D and the F)...

My bad: I'd forgotten that English has been transformed into _Worldwide English_.

So... in an attempt to avoid appearing ethnocentric (i.e. non-politically correct), English has now been taken away from Brits, Americans, Canadians, etc... and given to the world. Only doesn't that impose, in an ethnocentric fashion, English upon the rest of the world?

Kind of reminds me of a dog chasing its tail... only that doesn't require a meeting of 3-12 people to figure out the best way to proceed... (as I'm sure the 'Worldwide English' 'promotion' did...).

Posted on August 07, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 06, 2007

There's one born every minute

If there's one thing I just love about the internet, it's all the hype that some companies are able to latch on to when it comes to 'innovative' business ideas.

Take, for example, a company that will clean up your online profile - in order to help you land that dream job. Of course, they'll do it for a fee:

For about $30 a month, clients can have them do a cleanup, which involves ensuring that all links to, for example, a college kegstand on Facebook.com or a disparaging blog entry from a former partner, will not appear during an online search.

Only, anyone with a brain knows that these claims are all crap. Let's think this through: I have a picture of you with... a goat, posted on one of my sites with your name plastered all over the caption. For $30 they'll somehow come to MY site and get rid of that picture. Wow, these guys ARE l33t.

More importantly though, was another revelation that people just use this service (for $10/month) merely to check up on their profiles:

"More than half of my clients use us just to search and don't even ask us to clean anything up," the company's chief executive and founder Michael Fertik, 28, told Reuters.

Damn! Now that IS impressive. Squeezing $10/month out of people because they're too stupid type their own name into Google sounds like an awesome business opportunity. You could sell those people virtually anything if you've already got them on the hook for $120/year.

And my favorite:

Using proprietary technology, company founder Rob Russo said DefendMyName creates links to promotional sites and blogs on clients in order to bury negative search engine results.

I'm feeling entrepreneurial. I think I'll start a company called LyingCandidates.com. Then I'll use 'proprietary technology' to Google their names, and then see how many links to the candidate's name come from spam-tastic sites owned by DefendMyName.com...

Posted on August 06, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 02, 2007

An Open Letter to the Office 2007 Team

Dear MS Office 2007 Team,

For the love of PETE, get your installers to work together!!! I've installed Office 2007, then Office 2007 OneNote. During the install of OneNote I had to make sure that Office didn't sneak in all of the Office Tools and Office Shared Features that I explicitly didn't want when I installed Office 2007.

Now I'm installing the Microsoft Expression Suite (4 separate installs) and they're 'Office' Products too - meaning that I've got to make sure that I don't get that piece-of-crap clip organizer, web themes, and an Access Database Replication Conflict Manager tool. 4 times in a row. 

Uh yeah... like I need any of that crap - or should have to worry about installing it when I'm installing graphics and design tools.

office installer

Oh, and I'll also need to tell the installer (each and EVERY time) that no, really, I just don't want office to take over my pictures by installing 'Office Picture Mangler'... and I could give two turds less about proofing in Spanish, using Smart Tags, or bastardizing my HTML editing experience by letting Office install it's 'Script Editor'.

Good hell, can't you guys figure out how to remember my last settings/directives and import those for the 'common' features and tools? These are computers we're dealing with right? And you should be able to pull my LAST config preferences from an MSI or the registry somewhere right? (And if not - make it so.) 

Idiots.

And another thing: You guys suck for getting rid of the 'Save my settings wizard'. Yeah, the ribbons largely do away with a need for lot of that crap - but that functionality was SOOOOO nice for remembering all of my email accounts in outlook and stuff.

Love,

--Mikeey

"We now returned to our regular scheduled programming... "

UPDATE: Expression Blend, Media, and Design just provided me with the cleanest/nicest installs process in history. Good job Blend/Media/Design folks. (And, frankly, that says something HUGE about MS products designed on top of the .NET Framework - I can't wait till they're ALL there.) 

Posted on August 02, 2007 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Why YouTube is OverRated

All those silly videos, plenty of them even featuring cats.

And no "Baxter" commercial.

You know, the one where a bunch of people are crowded into a car on a highway and the phone rings? Someone yells at the driver: "Don't answer that"... and after a few seconds of anguish the driver just HAS to pick up the phone. "It's Baxter!!!" he exults - and then the camera switches to Baxter on the other end of the phone singing the Meow Mix song.

I've searched high and low (okay... 10 minutes over two attempts)... and no love. Seems like whoever makes Meow Mix would do well to put that commercial/vid up on their site.

Posted on August 02, 2007 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)