02.16.09
Posted in General Rant at 10:55 am by Administrator
I just came across a February 12th press release from Microsoft saying that they are going to open retail stores!
What the??
Seems they’ve tapped former Wal-Mart entertainment guy (and DreamWorks Animation SKG, where he was head of worldwide product distribution), David Porter to head up the efforts.
Hey, what could go wrong with such a brilliant plan?
I can just see it now – rather than having a “Genius Bar” like the Apple Store – they’ll have a “Wonk Bar” where you can take your laptop to find out why after installing the latest Microsoft patch you can no longer print. It will be staffed with the arrogant IT guy Nick Burns satirized in the SNL skit who, rather than trying to explain what’s going on, simply says “move!” and begins typing at the command prompt.
Yeah, that’ll make people switch from XP to Windows 7…. no, really.
It just seems to me to be like the 1978 SNL skit that stars Fred Willard, Gila Radner and Dan Aykroyd where there is a store that only sells Scotch tape…
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Posted in General Rant at 9:26 am by Administrator
Some of the biggest complaints about the new Google phone is its lack of multi-t0uch interface. You can thank Apple for that.
Palm is trying now to figure out how to not have the bejezus sued out of itself for having multi-touch capabilities on their soon-to-be-shipped Pre phone. You can also thank Apple for that.
It all stems from Patent No. 7,479,949 (originally filed in September 2007) that covers the multi-touch interface and all its gestures (swipe, pinch, rotation, etc.) that are used on the iPhone.
How heavily is Apple going to protect this new patent? The day after the patent was awarded, Apple COO Tim Cook warned any potential iPhone competitors about Apple’s stance: “…[Apple] will not stand for having our (intellectual property) ripped off, and we’ll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal.”
Whoa, Tim – don’t blow a gasket, man! We know you guys came up with the multi-touch interface and that it’s THE competitive advantage that sets the iPhone apart from all the other handset makers. Relax!
Yes, we all know Steve is on leave, and you don’t want anyone to accuse you of sinking the ship while he’s gone – but dude, take a chill.
There’s this really cool thing – it’s called “licensing.” See, here’s how it works: you retain ownership of the intellectual property and then you “license” it to other people so they can use it in their handsets as well. This way you make an absolute boatload of money, and the general consumer wins by getting a device that’s really useful…. oh. Wait. Now I get it.
You figure that since every other handset maker on EARTH can come up with a much more feature-laden handset at a much lower price… that if you license the multi-touch stuff to them – then no one will ever buy another iPhone again?
Yeah, you got me there.
The good news is that your stock would be able to break 100 and you would have “recurring revenue” (that’s where you make money over time rather than on one-off purchases). Hmmmm…. but what about the fact that you’re now using that multi-touch stuff in your trackpads on your laptops as well?
This whole “licensing” thing might mean that other companies might come out with a device that would clean your clock, right? Something… oh I don’t know… like a netbook with a 10.5 inch screen that would operate as a laptop, phone, tablet, music player, etc.?
Yeah, you got me again.
So, hats off to the foresight to Mr. Jobs again – it looks like it will be a Small Apple World after all.
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02.12.09
Posted in General Rant at 10:33 pm by Administrator
Customer reviews suck. There. I said it. But, of course, there’s a story behind the statement. Here it is:
I was looking to buy an all-in-one printer/scanner. So, I scoured the usual sources: PCWorld, CNET, Amazon, etc. I was looking for the “best of” categories in each. Never mind that each of them had a totally different pick for the “best 10″ in the category (hey, they only get so many free evaluation units!) – the thing that got me was the “reviews” and the supposed satisfaction index of “real life” customers
Back in the day, the customer ratings carried some real weight. Now, they are just dead weight.
After wading through mind-numbing specifications on all models – I then began to read the customer ratings to see what real people had to say about the product. Big mistake #1.
Like most people, I was drawn to the products that had the higher user reviews – but some sites have the actual number of reviews and others just have the rating. So if a product gets 5 stars – but there is only one guy who hasreviewed it – it doesn’t really matter.
So I look for the product with the highest number of starts with the highest number of reviews. Then – I actually click into the reviews to see what people are saying – that was big mistake #2.
You would think hearing how people used them in real life versus how a tech-savvy writer used it would offer some insight into some “hidden” features or flaws that only come out after you get the thing home and try to use it. After scrolling and reading through a bunch of comments – both good and bad – I came to the same conclusion about every single one of the printers – regardless of how they were rated by the site:
Consumers are by in large, technically illiterate, stupid cattle that buy on price only and then have unrealistic expectation as to what the product should do.
No, really!
People would give the printer a 1 star and rant in the “con” comments on how they couldn’t get the printer to be recognized on their network.
People would gush with 5 stars because the ONE picture they printed looked “great.”
People would list things in the cons like “can’t fax more than 100 pages with the auto-feeder” – HUH? In the specs, on the box and on the point-of-sale it clearly says “35 sheet auto-feeder.” RTFM, people!
So, after about an hour of this nonsense – with model numbers and inkjet codes flying through my brain – I did what any other technically illiterate, stupid cattle person would do – and just went to my local stationary supply store (Staples), looked at the all-in-ones, found the one that had most of what I wanted for what I wanted to pay and bought the thing.
I think I’m going to go back up to the various sites and offer my cattle review:
***** (5 stars) “Highly recommend this printer! This was sure EASY to get out of the box! I can’t wait to make my first print!”
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02.11.09
Posted in General Rant at 5:42 am by Administrator
A new company called Postbox has announced – wait for it – a new email desktop client. It seems that a few Mozilla engineers, including Scott MacGregor, one of two original engineers of Thunderbird before it got killed and moved into the Mozilla Messaging unit, think they have come up with a better mousetrap.
The interesting thing about this tool is that it was built using Mozilla’s Gecko browser engine, and it’s based on Thunderbird. Now, I don’t personally know Mr. MacGregor, nor do I know of his reasons for leaving Mozilla and striking off on his own – but I’m just not seeing a huge need for yet another desktop email client. Especially one built on the same technology as a perfectly serviceable (and free) open source version.
There’s no mention on the site whether this thing will be free, or open source or charged for or what. It’s expected to come out “in the spring” – and will eventually be available for Mac and Linux – although the beta is a Windows-only affair at the moment.
Although it looks like it has some pretty cool features – it’s not a totally new paradigm in using email. I would call the features helpful, useful, and who doesn’t like faster searches of thousands of emails? But, in the end is it just a derivative work with some better graphics?
Ok, so I’m a BIT on the cynical side – so I decided to do a little digging. I thought – hey, some smart guys launching a new product into a utility section of software, in a recession, must have a pretty great business model – or some kind of edge that will help them succeed.
Or, not – as this quote from ComputerWorld’s Gregg Keizer piece points out:
Although the e-mailer is based on Mozilla’s open-source code, MacGregor wasn’t willing to say that Postbox itself would also be open source. “It’s too early for us to know right now,” he said, adding that the self-funded company is still trying to decide on a business model. “We’re going to use the beta to flesh that out,” MacGregor said.
Call me a crazy old fool – but it seems to me that if you’re going to be self-funded, and start a new company, in a recession, that it might be (just MAYBE) a good idea to have a business model BEFORE starting out. I don’t know from that statement whether they don’t know if the thing is a good idea or not themselves.
If you’re going to “flesh out” how you make money after you’ve already spend your time and money getting software to the public beta stage… well, good luck to ya’!
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02.10.09
Posted in General Rant at 11:26 pm by Administrator
Well, the pie-in-the-sky One Laptop Per Child program has called it quits after a tumultuous 3 years. The OLPC was hailed as the “$100 laptop” and had the noble and grand vision of providing accessible, easy-to-use hardware to people in developing countries.
There were a lot of great ideas – some of which actually came to pass. In fact, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC said at the TED Conference today that it was actually OLPC that helped to spark interest in the netbook class of portable computers. He even got up on stage and threw laptops and netbooks around – saying that if you tried to use them underwater or in a dusty African village – “they won’t work.”
Ummmm…. yeah. Very few things do – unless they’re military grade.
But, in the end, I think it was market forces that really pulled the grand vision back to earth. They never actually got to scale up the production – and because of that, they’ve had money problems almost from day one. They’ve produced over a half million units – and they’re working in the field.
So, their new idea is to just open source everything and hope that another company (with much deeper pockets) will pick up where they left off and through the economies of scale – be producing (in Mr.Negroponte’s words) “5 to 6 million machines, per month, in three years time.”
Hmmm… OK – I hope so. However as a my friend Jan Aleman is fond of saying “Hope is NOT a strategy.”
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02.06.09
Posted in General Rant at 11:51 am by Administrator
So the mighty behemoth released “Latitude” – a service that allows you to broadcast your current location to your friends (or the world). It works by usingWi-Fi access points, cell towers or GPS to figure out where you are.
Now, I know the “Big Brother is coming!” paranoid among you have probably already written, called and emailed your Congressperson about what an affront to personal privacy this is, and the other end-of-the-world-is-near folks probably have their panties in a bunch over the “potential” for abuse, stalking, etc.
My view is – it’s pretty cool and I can see some uses for it. As with any changing technology – at first there is the FUD factor (”Those horse-less carriages will be the end of civilization I tell you!”), and then the marketplace will decide if it’s something they like (iPod) or if it’s something that sucks (Zune).
It’s not as if this thing is turned on by default on all cell phones without the user’s full knowledge and consent. In fact, it’s almost annoyingly the other way around. As my friend DanTynan points on on his ComputerWorld Culture Clash blog:
You type your cell number into a field on the Google latitude page; it sends you a text message with a download link for the 1.35MB file. Install the app on your phone, click through a bunch of user agreements, and sign into your Google account (or create a new one). You can then choose which friends you want to add to Latitude; they get an email inviting them to do the same thing.
Boy – that sure sounds pretty insidious to me. Making you download it. Then install it. Then give you all those “I agree” buttons to click (along with an explanation of what’s what). I mean, hey – YOU might actually have to choose to turn it on. Then choose to invite your friends. Then choose to activate it on the phone. Then choose to allow Google to know your position.
It’s a conspiracy, I tell you!
If you don’t like it, or you’re afraid your privacy will be invaded, or you’ll be “stalked” or that it will cause the utter downfall of the human race – don’t sign up and install it. Period.
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02.05.09
Posted in General Rant at 11:31 am by Administrator
Hey kids! Microsoft is about to screw the pooch again when it comes to the number of “editions” it’s planning for Windows 7. I guess “screw the pooch” is maybe too strong – let me put it another way: if you LOVE the convoluted, screwed up, totally senseless way they rolled out Windows Vista – you’ll LOVE the Windows 7 launch just as much.
They are planning to focus only on two editions – Windows 7 Home Premium for consumers and Windows 7 Professional for business users. That part, I like. Two editions – likeXP. Clear. Easy. Good.
NOW – for those of you playing the “Professional” version of the home game – look behind door number 3! OK – now we have Windows 7 Starter Edition, Windows 7 Enterprise Edition and finally, Windows 7 Ultimate Edition.
This of course, doesn’t include the special “N” versions (that remove Windows Media Player) as mandated by the European Union…
This is just such a crappy way to sell an operating system. I guess they feel they need to squeeze every ounce of revenue from every potential customer (they do have over one BILLION of them, BTW)… but I think it MUST be easier to do it the way that everyone else from Apple toUbuntu do – and have a one-size-fits-all distribution. Then allow people to modify it, or sell “add-on” functions and package them together in ways that make sense for Enterprise or Government users the way they packaged productivity applications together in one package called Office.
Does Microsoft fail to recognize that the OS business is in the decline? People care less about what OS they have and care more about what THEY can do with a particular application. It’s the functionality – not the thing that runs the browser that matters. If you follow that logic – it seems – at least to me – that less is MORE… *sigh*
Microblog: 6 Flavors of 7
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