Webthoughts

"Jake smith" [sic] was ever so kind to let me know about a great refinancing deal (in an e-mail message with the subject "December water bill" no less)! I thought I would pass on this incredible deal to all the rest of you! Here is the e-mail that "Jake" sent to me, in its entirety:

Re-finance now, even with bad-credit!

*Best Re-finance Rate for credit challenged.
*Best Customer Service
*Lowest Interest-Rates in Years
*SAVE $100-$400 per month

Our easy application only takes 1 minute.

What a great deal! What an amazing bargin! Jump on the band wagon now! NOW NOW NOW! Go! Click on the link and start saving! Click on it! Wait...uh...what link? Where's the URL for this amazing deal?

Huh.

Okay. Never mind.

My wife and I made a visit to CompUSA this morning to try to take advantage of a pretty good deal on a Maxtor hard drive that was advertised earlier in the week (160GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB Cache, ATA-133). The drive was on sale for $69.99 (normally $139.99).

When we got there, however, we found that they were completely sold out of the drive. Bummer.

Blah blah blah blah IE7 blah blah blah blah too many people using Firefox blah blah blah blah not enough people using Windows XP blah blah blah blah

If you've ever wondered how to program the output of the lyrics to "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" in any of 621 different programming languages, this site is for you.

Somebody has way too much time on their hands.

Just saw that Opera Software is giving away registration codes for its web browser Opera. It only lasts until tomorrow morning though (at the latest), so if you'd like a free registration code, you'd better get crackin'.

Although I've been impressed with Opera from a rendering point of view, I've had problems with its UI. It's gotten better with the most recent release (Version 8), but still looks way too Windows-ish. But, I know some people that swear by Opera, so it does have its fans. I've always kept a copy around just to see how my web sites render in Opera.

This is going to be the next version of Microsoft Word (on Windows)? How much more incredibly ugly could it possibly get?

Now I will grant you, I have not seen this interface in person, nor have I used it. I have not seen it in action at all. All I've seen are a few screenshots like the one linked to above. But holy cow! This thing looks like a bloated, brushed-metal, primary-color nightmare!

I have a feeling that Microsoft is trying to push the stereotypical mouse-driven desktop-metaphor interface to evolve here. But, I get the feeling that it's a little to radical in its changes here. I'm all for pushing the HI boundaries a little (Apple's doing the same thing with recent versions of Mac OS X and iTunes and whatnot), but I have to wonder if such a radical jump is going to just confuse people.

Despite my ranting ranting here, I suppose that I will withhold final judgement until I've actually had a chance to see and/or use this in person.

Okay... You people who are paying two-to-three times the retail price of an XBOX 360 really need to think about what you're doing. Seriously.

Think about this. You are paying $1,200 for something you can get for retail value in a month or two. In fact, my guess is that after the initial craze dies down, the price of the system will drop by at least $100 by next summer.

Is it really worth it? Is it really that important? Will your previous XBOX/PS2/GameCube really not cut it until then? Will games for those other systems simply disappear?

More evidence of the stupification of our society... *sigh*

UPDATE: It's just a video game people!

WOO-HOO!

Omaha finally gets an Apple Store! (Not that I have any money or anything at the moment...)

My wife and I headed out to Village Pointe Mall this morning for the Grand Opening of the newest Apple Store. First--let's get this out of the way--I did take my camera and I did take pictures. Here they are.

The store was scheduled to open at 10:00 a.m. We got there about 9:00 a.m. When we arrived, we found the line waiting to get in already wrapping around the corner and down to the end of the block. When we got in line, a security guard that was nearby estimated that there were about 230 people ahead of us. As we waited, the line simply got longer behind us.

We spent the time waiting for the store to open chatting with the couple in line behind us. They were very excited about the opening of the store (especially the wife), but were very surprised about the line of people. They mentioned that they had driven by the night before and there were already people camped out in order to be the first in line.

About 9:30 a.m., a string of about 30-40 Apple Store employees walked/jogged/jumped by making a huge racket, doing the really excited about the opening of the store thing. They shook hands with people in line and thanked them for showing up. Some stopped and chatted for a small amount of time. Many in line responded to their excitement to cheers and claps of their own.

Finally, 10:00 a.m. showed up and the store opened. We could hear a huge cheer from up around the entrance. Obviously, we didn't get into the store right away. Omaha police were on hand to make sure that the store never went over capacity. Once the store first reached capacity, they waited for 20 people to exit the store and then they would let 20 more enter. My wife and I finally were able to enter the store at about 10:40 a.m.

The store was packed. It was literally very difficult to move around. The interior was bright and well lit. It had the standard tables with various MacBook and MacBook Pros set up for people to use--and using them they were. Along the walls were the Mac Pros and iMacs. Strangely enough, I don't remember seeing any Mac Minis. I'm sure they were there, but I do not remember seeing any. iPods were also on display toward the back left of the store.

One thing that surprised me was that there was only a small selection of software (on two shelves framing the back wall of the store. I know this is one of the smaller Apple Stores, but with these stores geared toward "switchers", having such a small selection of software isn't going to do much to change the impression that there is no software available for Macs.

They were giving away free T-shirts (all extra large)--black shirts that had the Apple logo and the text "Village Pointe"--to the first 1,000 people in the store. There was also a drawing for a $2,500 shopping spree in the store. The drawing for the shopping spree is on Monday, apparently.

The employees were very friendly and genuinely seemed excited to see the large crowd. Three different employees asked if there was anything they could help me find while I was in the store (all of them very politely). While I turned each of them down, my wife asked one to show her some arm bands for her iPod Shuffle. Although they had none on display, the employee offered to go back to the store room to get a few items that might fit the bill for her that they hadn't put on display yet (none of the items worked for my wife, but it was very nice of them to retrieve them anyway).

When I was able to get near one of the computers (this was really hard to do because of all the people using them), I was surprised to find that even though all the MacBooks I tried showed an AirPort signal, they could not connect to any websites. Similarly, the desktop Macs (a Mac Pro and an iMac) were directly wired (via the Ethernet port), but also could not connect to any websites. I know some computers did have internet access because I saw other people browsing the web, but I could never get to any of those computers. Very odd.

There was also a small kids area with iMacs set up with games. The kids I saw appeared to love the fact there were computers they could use. There was even an Apple employee watching over them and cheering them on.

There was also a small selection of third-party hardware (keyboards, mice, hard drives, etc), but make no mistake, most everything there were Apple products. The third party stuff was in the vast minority.

My wife and I spent about 20 minutes in the store. I'm sorry there aren't a lot of pictures, but when I was in the store, it was difficult to move, let alone actually frame a picture. I was a fun experience and had drawn a lot of interest. When we were walking around the rest of the mall, employees of other stores kept asking us all about it (after noticing the boxes we were carrying around with the t-shirts in them).

Apple looks to have a good thing going here. With the only real competition in town being the CompUSA (which is actually a pretty good store within a store) that is really on the entirely opposite side of town. Granted, it's only the first day, but it looks like there was a lot of interest, so hopefully that bodes well for Apple in Omaha, Nebraska.

After seeing this commercial for the PlayStation 3 on Monday Night Football, I will never sleep again.

That is by far one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen on television. What the heck was that?

One of the things that led to me to go with a different design on this site was that my Moveable Type database apparently corrupted at some point over the last week or so. I noticed that there were posts missing in the RSS feed and, when I visited the site itself, I found that the archive would only display posts back to November 2006. Even though earlier posts could be found manually, if you knew the permalink, you could not find them by searching.

So, I decided I would restore the database from a backup that I had and just repost the one or two posts I had made since I figured the database corrupted. Unfortunately, this sounded a lot easier said than actually done.

When trying to upload the backup copy of the database, the server kept returning a cryptic error (which, I don't even remember at this point). No matter what I would try, I could not replace the database.

At that point, I logged into the Moveable Type admin page and tried to completely delete the blog (again, I was going to restore from an exported backup of all the entries I had) and start from scratch. Moveable Type would not delete the blog. When I told it to delete, it would go through the motions and say that the blog had been deleted, but when I would log out of the admin page and back in again, there the blog was in its undeleted state.

Frustrating.

By this time, after a few other troubleshooting tries, I decided to simply delete the entire weblog directory on the server (which WAS successful), and reinstall MoveableType (I had been meaning to upgrade the newest version anyway). Again, easier said than done. For whatever reason, the server kept dropping the connection as I was trying to upload the MT files. If I only uploaded a few files at a time, it would do fine. If I tried to upload a long run of files, it would drop the connection at random times. So, I had to upload the files a few at a time.

Finally, after about five total hours of work, I had the blog back and all the posts restored from the back. Things seem to be going fine (except for the formatting troubles). Lets hope this continues.

This is a very interesting read. Steve appears to be taking a direct shot at the music companies and their licensing requirements which force Apple to provide music in DRM protected formats.

This has been brewing under the surface for quite some time. I had the impression when Apple first introduced the Music Store, that it wasn't exactly happy it had to DRM protect the music. That, of course, is one of the reasons they fought as they did for the lenient DRM terms that they got (purchased tracks play on up to five computers, unlimited iPods, burn up to 10 CDs, etc.). We've heard stories about the music companies putting pressure on Apple to re-negotiate licensing terms (and you can bet that as part of that re-negotiation, they wanted stricter DRM).

I really wonder how this little open letter from Steve Jobs will affect Apple's relationship with the music companies (if at all). Better or worse? I really have no illusions that Apple will ever convince the music companies that they are better off providing DRM-free music. That's just not going to happen, at least not with the current mentality of the RIAA. Will this make the music companies more willing to take back their ball, go home and not play anymore? (I doubt that would happen either. The iTunes store is too big a deal for them to ignore it.)

Should be interesting to see how this plays out.

I haven't really been caught up in the iPhone hysteria that has been building leading up to its June 29th introduction, but I have to say that this independent (read "Non-Apple") commercial for the iPhone is pretty darn cool.

I've already read a few places that this is the ad that Apple should have put out for the iPhone instead of the current crop. I find this attitude funny. Apple has come under fire many times for having advertising that doesn't actually show Mac OS X in action, instead providing more abstract ads that simply talk about what the Mac can do, rather than show it.

Yet, now that Apple has put out ads that actually show one of its products in action, it's still not good enough.

Funny.

At any rate, back to the original point of this post, this independent ad, which will probably never see TV airtime, mind you, is a great spot that celebrates, not just the ad, but the diversity that is New York City. Having never been to New York City, I can't speak too much about how accurate the ads portrayal of the city's denizens is, but it's still a very good "feel good" TV ad.

My only criticism of the ad is that some of the camera work is a bit too shaky for my tastes. I understand that they were trying to go for a feel that the viewer is simply standing by watching what is happening, but the camera work was too jerky. It's possible to still get a good handheld camera feel but tone down the jerkiness.

The best part of the ad though was the end where the name of the iPhone is spelled out in Sign Language. This part continues to point out diversity while at the same time literally spelling out the name of the product. Brilliant.

I downloaded the Safari 3 Beta for Windows today and took a look around. What struck me the most, interface-wise, is that Apple appears to have, at least in some form, ported the Aqua interface to Windows. Take a look at the following screenshots:

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2

Interesting, no?

In the first screenshot, the default button (the "OK" button) even pulses like default buttons do on Mac OS X.

Now, there are a couple of different tracks you could take with this. The first is that Apple ported over the underlying code that generates the Aqua interface and all its widgets (the buttons, popup menus and the sort). But, that seems like an awful lot of work for very little benefit.

The second possibility is that Apple is faking the Aqua interface by simply drawing pictures of the widgets, similar to the way a website might draw a button, and then has custom code handling how the widget should look depending on the state of the mouse button. This even goes straight to recreating the pulsing look of the default button and the throbbing look of the progress bar in the downloads window. But again, that seems like an awful lot of work for very little benefit.

Why would Apple do this? If it is simply to try to show how "beautiful" Mac OS X's interface is, that doesn't seem to be a brilliant idea. Many Windows users don't like using Apple software on their computers (such as iTunes) because it doesn't look and feel like a Windows program. And iTunes, for example, uses mostly Windows-native widgets. Why would Apple depart even more from the way Windows behaves in Safari's case to the point of even recreating the Aqua widgets?

Don't get me wrong. I think the Mac OS X interface is a billion-times better designed and better looking than anything Windows could hope to muster. But still, this just seems like it might alienate people that Apple would rather reach.

Huh.

IT'S iPHONE DAY!

IT'S iPHONE DAY!

IT'S iPHONE DAY!

Are you lining up to wait all day for the chance of not being able to buy one because they're already sold out?

I find the hype hilarious. I'm sure it's an incredible hand-held device. I've already mentioned that I think Multi-Touch is groundbreaking.

But people, keep it in perspective. It's a phone. And, I'm pretty sure that even if Apple and AT&T run out today, Apple will make more.

Heh.

Actually I'm probably not the one to talk. I once stood in line for the better part of a day to get tickets to an opening day showing of Star Wars Special Edition.

Yes, that big L stamped in the middle of my forehead does stand for "loser". Why do you ask?

John Gruber has posted a small writeup about his thoughts on the "confirmed" upcoming OS X-based iPods (Daring Fireball: Regarding OS X-Based iPods).

When Steve Jobs first demonstrated the iPhone at Macworld in January, one of the first things I said to my wife was "Wow. If they introduce something like that as an iPod, I am so getting one." I've mentioned before that the iPhone just doesn't do it for me. I rarely use a cell-phone and refuse to be tied down to a two-year contract at a minimum of $60 per month for a devise that I would rarely actually use as a phone. The iPhone just is not for me. And that's fine.

However, introduce an iPhone-like iPod that does pretty much everything the iPhone does just without the phone or data-plan and then my attention is focused. I would buy something like that. As long as it was around current iPod prices.

Of course, the question is, when Steve Jobs said they are working on OS X-based iPods, what exactly did he mean? Did he mean something that really is an iPhone minus the phone part? Did he mean just an iPod that worked the same way as the iPhone's iPod module works? Or did he mean something completely different?

That's the key question.

Yesterday, the Mac BU at Microsoft started publishing some new information about Office:mac 2008 (due for release in January, apparently). They've put up a new website dedicated to information about the product, and the Mac Mojo blogs (along with individual employee blogs) have started revealing some info.

Early looks at Office have provided some interesting tidbits. It definitely looks as though the Mac BU really is interested in making Office more user-friendly and Mac-like. The new page-layout view seems to make it much easier to design complex layouts in Word. Of course, it remains to be seen how well this actually works when the product is actually in users hands versus just looking at marketing videos.

But, a few things are bugging me. I should probably note that I'm not an Office hater. I own Office:mac 2004. I've owned ever version of Office for the Mac since Office 98. I use Office frequently for many different things, although, to be honest, the application I use the most from Office is Entourage (with Word a distant second and Excel and PowerPoint even more distant thirds). I mostly like Office for the Mac and want to see the product succeed.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

• I find it interesting that, in all information we've seen so far since Office 2008 was introduced at MacWorld (which, to be fair, hasn't been much yet), there has been little information about the new version of Entourage. As I indicated above, I use Entourage the most of any of the Office applications. It is always running in my dock.

  Why the dearth of information about Entourage? The only thing I can think of is that either Entourage 2008 will not be that big an evolution of the current version and won't get a lot of the new whiz-bang features Microsoft is currently trumpeting (like the Elements Gallery and such), or the new Entourage will be such a huge leap that they're carefully keeping it under wraps until they get the "lesser" stuff out the way first.

  I'm figuring the reason we're not seeing too much is more the first guess than the second. Really, what would Entourage need with an Elements Gallery?

  By the way, before anyone asks, I don't see My Day being that big a leap. That really is just a natural evolution of the idea behind Entourage.

• Besides the fact that Visual Basic for Applications will no longer be included in the Mac version of Office (which already has set off some harsh criticisms of Microsoft), what we've seen of Office 2008 so far shows that the Mac Office is diverging from the Windows version of Office even more than ever before.

  Let's look at Office:mac 2004 for a moment. Although Office 2004 was definitely the most Mac-like version of Office to date and even included some Mac-only "innovations" like the formatting palette, a Windows Office user could sit down in front of a Mac and feel mostly comfortable. The toolbars mostly looked the same, with the same options in the same places. The menus were mostly the same (with a few minor variations). The dialog boxes were mostly the same. The point was that the Mac version of Office was going to be mostly consistent with the Windows version of Office, with a couple of exceptions to help the software feel more Mac-like.

  But, now we have Office:mac 2008 and Office 2007 for Windows. Suddenly, consistency is no longer an issue. Office 2007 for Windows has the Ribbon. Office:mac 2008 does not. It has the Elements Gallery, but that seems to serve an entirely different function than the Ribbon. Office:mac 2008 still has toolbars, but they now look like standard Mac OS X toolbars and look very little like the toolbars found in versions of Office for Windows prior to 2007.

  Office:mac 2008 does look more like a Mac application. I'll have to wait until I actually use it to see if it feels and actsmore like a Mac app, but I'm willing to bet it does. Personally, I think this is a great thing. I want to use good-looking, Mac-like applications. I do not like the clunky feel of Office for Windows, especially with that horrid Ribbon.

  BUT...

  With the two products diverging even more, how is this going to affect the perception of the Mac in mixed-platform shops or even to the common consumer? Let's face it, like it or not, the Mac needs Office. If Office:mac went away, the Mac would become more irrelevant (note that I'm not saying that it's irrelevant now—far from it). Someone may decide not to switch to a Mac because he or she couldn't get Office. A business may decide to standardize on Windows rather than be mixed-platform because Office was not available for the Mac.

  Unfortunately, that's the computing world we live in. Office is still that important.

  But now, we have two software suites using the same basic name, but look and perhaps act very differently based on the platform they are on. Something that works one way on Windows may work completely differently on the Mac. Word 2007 on Windows does not look like Word 2008 on the Mac. It is becoming harder, it seems, to apply knowledge of the software on platform to the same software on the other platform.

  Is it possible that this could cause a similar reaction as if Office for the Mac disappeared altogether?

  Granted, the new version of Office:mac may be heralded as Microsoft finally "getting the Mac"? Mac users may finally begin to say that perhaps Office is a good thing.

  But, what does that matter if a business says that the versions are too different and they don't want to take the time and expense to train employees on two different versions of Office for two platforms. Therefore, they decide they are going to standardize their entire fleet on one platform. Which platform do you think they'll standardize on?

  Or, what if Joe Consumer is in an Apple Store, contemplating the purchase of his first Mac? He walks up to a display iMac and sees that it has Microsoft Office on him to try out. He launches Word and is quickly confused because it doesn't look or act like Word 2007 (or 2003 for that matter) on the computer he has now. Obviously, that means that Macs are difficult to use and they don't do things the "right way". Therefore, he decides he's not going to buy a Mac.

  Those examples are probably a little contrived and very probably a little stereotypical. It's also entirely possible that I'm completely off base. It's not as if I've actually used the software. I'm just going off of the previews I've seen from Microsoft. I should also probably add that I don't want Office:mac to just be simple clone of Office for Windows. As I said, I hate the ribbon! Plus, I want my software to be Mac-like, not Windows-like.

  But, I do think this is something to think about.

• I also think it's interesting that the new promotional website is entirely Flash based. Say what you will about the appropriateness of using Flash for this type of website—that is neither here nor there. What I find interesting is that Microsoft, when they decided to make this website heavily media-based, decided to use Flash and not their own Silverlight technology.

  Make no mistake: this website was not put together by the Mac BU. That group has their hands full getting the new version of Office ready. They don't have time to muck around with websites.

  No. Instead, some marketing group at Microsoft put this site together. And they used Flash. Not Silverlight.

  It is true that Silverlight is still a very new technology and probably hasn't really propagated all that far just yet. There probably just isn't a huge installed base yet, especially on the Mac. But, that brings up another interesting point. Does this mean that possibly someone at Microsoft was actually taking the target market into mind and decided to do what was right for that market instead of just imposing the "Microsoft Way"? Silverlight probably doesn't have a huge installed base, especially on the Mac platform. Therefore, Silverlight is not an appropriate technology for this website. Since we want to be media rich, we'll go with a technology that has a near 100% installed base on the target platform (Flash) even though it is a direct competitor.

  An interesting thought.
  

Those are just a few ideas that started rattling around in my head as I browsed some of the new info on Office:mac 2008. I should say that I am looking forward to actually trying the new software.

I find it oddly funny that the old "Student and Teacher Edition" of Office:mac has morphed into the "Home and Student Edition" for Office 2008. It looks like Microsoft figured out that people were buying the Student and Teacher Edition instead of the more expensive editions because it was cheaper and had a more liberal licensing scheme. Heck, even the local CompUSA hawked the Student and Teacher Edition as good for home use, completely ignoring the old education use requirement.

Old Microsoft would have responded by making it more difficult to get the Student and Teacher edition. New Microsoft says "let's give people what they're wanting." I'd say this shows a few cracks in Microsoft's facade. And that's a good thing.

What is up with eBay?

They have implemented, over the last year, several changes that make me wonder they are sniffing in their corporate offices. It really seems that they are making changes that will not help the eBay community.

The first of these was the ill-advised change in policy that no longer allows sellers to leave negative feedback on buyers. I understand their point about being worried about retaliatory negative feedback from sellers, but what are sellers who get legitimately screwed supposed to do? For example, I recently had an item bid on and won. The "buyer" never paid for the item. Repeated attempts to contact the buyer were ignored. I relisted (and sold) the item, but this buyer, for whatever reason, didn't pay and no consequences occurred.

Second, the mandatory requirement to include shipping charges in the auction. Okay...sounds good, right? Well, the problem is, their automatic calculation tools only work for USPS and UPS. For a variety of reasons (the biggest being, I've had BAD, BAD experiences with UPS), I'd prefer to ship via FedEx. eBay offers no option to automatically calculate FedEx shipping, so I need to pre-calculate shipping costs to include it in the auction. The problem with that is, I have no way of knowing exactly what shipping costs will be until I know who the winner will be. Therefore, because eBay requires that shipping costs be included in the auction, I'm required to use to services that I really don't want to use because of the bad experiences I've had before. This just smells of both those services putting pressure on eBay to force their services to be used, rather than the competition.

Now, eBay is going to mandate PayPal payments (or credit cards if the seller has a merchant account), rather than allow mailed payments. Granted, most payments sent to me were via PayPal, but I've had buyers who absolutely REFUSED to use PayPal and wanted to mail a money order or cashier's check. Plus, consider that PayPal is OWNED by eBay. That doesn't smell at all...

eBay seems bent on making sure that they do what they can to alienate their sellers, and in some ways, their buyers. I understand wanting to try to eliminate fraud and whatnot, but they have gone way overboard and many of their decisions seem more directed at lining eBay's pockets rather than keeping their user's best interest in mind.

eBay is still the number one auction site, but will this continue?