Situation:Terminal » My Xbox Live HD Video Rental Nightmare

Situation:Terminal » My Xbox Live HD Video Rental Nightmare

I love posts like this (I’ve written several myself). It is one of the joys of our interconnected age that when companies give bad service, it is now our duty to tell the world.

(Can you tell that I’m digging the “Press it!” button too much?)

Wow, the Zune is sinking like a stone…

Now, I’m not so much of a Microsoft-hater as I used to be. The Zune announcement left me a bit cold, there are some cute ideas, but the kow-towing to the music companies at the expense of the users kinda bugged me.

I guess I’m not alone. The Zune seconds ago is at #46 on the Amazon top sellers list, putting it behind 10 different kinds of ipods, 3 iPod accessories, and 3 different SanDisk MP3 players.

Yow! That has got to hurt!

Interesting article on the evolving Microsoft media ecosystem

Microsoft’s media convergence strategy has been eluding me even as it has evolved. With the Zune imminent, the 360, and Windows Media Center PCs already here, I’ve found myself monumentally unimpressed with it all. Microsoft has the technologies, but not the integration. The individual technologies themselves are completely unappealing to me. However, this article from tech crunch puts it all together in a way I hadn’t considered.

iTunes 7.0.1 is the buggiest piece of software I have ever used

and I worked at a Unix company in the days before testers, so that is saying something.

Usually, I take my time installing a major update. I waited until the 7.0.1 patch came out to iTunes which supposedly fixed most of the issues and for me, at first, it worked fine. What I’m finding, after a few weeks, is that it is becoming increasingly unstable. Like can’t run more than 10 minutes without crashing, as in, completely useless. As in, how fucking long do I have to wait for Apple to fix this P.O.S. now that they’ve captured my music collection? At least I wasn’t stupid enough to encode in a proprietary format so the biggest problem would be figuring out how to move my meta-data to some other music application (I love my metadata, hear that Steve Gillmor?)

The Motorola RAZR is a poorly made product

But what I really wanted to say was P.O.S…

In under 18 months I’ve seen two batteries die (one catastrophically), and I’ve had to replace one phone completely when the off key stopped working.Also, by the way, screw you Cingular for your incredibly crappy repair and replacement policies.

For a relatively expensive phone, this is ridiculous. I had each of my previous Nokias for years. I only had to replace my first one because my dog chewed off it’s antenna. Shame on you, Motorola.

Developers Developers Developers Developers

Apple hates Developers Developers Developers Developers

Just got back from WWDC ’06 and all I can say is “it’s amazing that anyone develops software for the macintosh at all.” Apple (like Microsoft) is continually trying to use their 3rd party software developers as a billy club to bring their users onto the latest OS. Apple (like Microsoft) is trying to get their 3rd party developers to adopt a new development language that is locked into their platform (but both claim that it isn’t). However, Apple (unlike Microsoft), pretends that all their developers have embraced this new language and new OS when all evidence is to the contrary. In session after session, Apple employees surveyed the attendees, asking “How many of you use C++, Objective C, Objective C++?” Each time, the answer was overwhelmingly C++, which I imagine was the result in each year previous. Yet, every new Apple API is in Objective C, every code sample was in Objective C. The new APIs look really fun. I bet we’ll see some awesome shareware when Leopard comes out. The professionals (especially those writing cross platform apps) and Apple’s high-end products will continue to ignore these new APIs as they always have.

You add this continual dismissal of developers needs with Apple’s insane secrecy and poor documentation and it seems amazing that professionals embrace this platform at all. I came into this (expensive) conference as a die-hard-mac-fan-boy and now I’m feeling much less so. I still like using macs, but developing for the mac seems much more a chore than a joy, especially compared to windows.

PalmTX as laptop replacement (review pt. 2)

I bought the TX for e-mail and web access during my Europe trip, here’s my thoughts.

A major reason for my purchase of the TX was that I wanted an easy way to check e-mail and surf the web without having to lug a heavy (and hard to replace) laptop around on my Europe trip.

How did the TX perform? Pretty well. Almost as well as I had hoped it would.

The benefits:
1) I had no problem finding and connecting to 802.11b networks and was surprised to find them everywhere we stayed, including St. Remy in Provence (thanks Biscuit, Biscuit for the free wi-fi!)
2) It was no problem carrying it around, the protective case that I got with it was much heavier than it was and even with that case, it fit into an inside pocket in my coat
3) The battery lasted long enough to take care of stuff in the cases where I had to leave my hotel room to get wi-fi.
4) The web program and e-mail program worked o.k. and a lot of stuff was reasonable even on the small screen
5) Nice to have some games to pass the time.

The problems:
1) A bug in the blazer web browser made it impossible to load some php pages which made it impossible to sign up for our hotel’s wi-fi in Nice
2) The 802.11b connector would disconnect from the network to save power if you hadn’t used it for a minute or so. This was a super pain in the ass because we had a card with a super long code we had to type in every time we connected to the wi-fi in our hotel in Paris.
3) The mail program got confused on which mail it had downloaded and which mail it hadn’t, leading to multiple downloads of the same mail.
4) Not enough memory to make the video player or audio player features worth-while
5) too hard to compose long messages with Graffiti
6) Bug in the mail program where you can’t easily delay message sending until you are connected.

I’ve had many PIMs over the years, but I’ve never really stuck with any. I don’t really need constant access to my information or whatever, so now that the trip is over, I’m not sure what I’ll use the Palm for. I can let you know that the “Speaking Language Translator” isn’t really worth your money. Not that it doesn’t work, but mostly, you aren’t going to whip it out in the middle of a conversation with a shop keeper, so it isn’t really that useful.

The one thing which I did absolutely miss from my laptop was the ability to play movies. The TX doesn’t have enough memory (and big MMC cards are prohibitively expensive). It would have been cool to be able to watch some pre-recorded TV shows or movies from home sometimes.

Most of the biggest pains we had with the TX where in its software. I couldn’t find a way to configure the network to stay connected until I disconnect it manually which is really painful if you have a code you have to enter in each time you connect to a network. The php bug in the web browser made it impossible to load some pages. The bug in the mail program made it annoying to compose mail while not connected to a network. We had to save our messages to the draft folders and then when we connected to a network, edit each “draft” message so that we could send it. It would be a lot easier if stuff got saved in your outbox when you were connected until you did get connected.

Would I recommend this as a laptop replacement for other travelers trying to keep the crap to a minimum? Absolutely. If you were planning on keeping your pals at home updated on your travels with extended e-mails though, I would absolutely recommend one of the portable keyboards. That would have saved us a lot of headache.

Interesting quote from Chris DeWolfe in the NYT

There was an article on April 23rd in the NYT about MySpace in which Chris DeWolfe made a classic mistake…

Mr. DeWolfe argues that MySpace won’t suffer that fate because, in just two years, it has already become so entrenched in so many lives. “People are truly invested in the site,” he said. “All their friends are on it. They spent months building their profiles. And so the cost of switching is too high. If we keep building the features they want, they will stay on the site.”

I’m pretty sure that Orkut and Friendster said the same thing, buddy.

PalmTX mini-review

I’ve had a PalmTX now for a few weeks, here are some thoughts

I bought the TX so that we could access e-mail and the web on our trip without having to lug around a laptop. I also figured that it might be a nice way to organize some of our info for the trip and keep track of things.

So far it seems ok, I haven’t had too many problems. I can’t say I’m overjoyed though either. Considering that Palm is the main PDA solution for Mac users, you might think that they would provide better software for us. It seems to work ok, but it doesn’t sink with Entourage automatically, the included PDF software doesn’t work at all on the mac side, the cable doesn’t attach securely to the device, so it is constantly disconnecting with the slightest touch. This isn’t my first Palm, I had a Visor before, but I sync’d that to a PC and I can say that it was a bit better of an experience. Even with the included Palm Apps and the freeware Palm Apps I’ve found, I’m finding myself having to buy quite a bit of non-cheap software to make this device useable for my needs. The software that Palm does include mostly seems ok, the web browser is functional and displays most pages well enough (although the Unit Circle Rekkids page doesn’t display at all), but it won’t display a text file off a web server for some reason. The mail app seems pretty reasonable.

On the plus side, it is fairly tiny. I could easily see myself whipping this out on the street to check an address or a map, but I couldn’t imagine doing that with an OQO or even an Origami. I think I was hoping to use this as my single information device whereas Palm was thinking that this would be the device I would use in transit or in a single meeting.

It will be an interesting test to see if we have to resort to an internet cafe during our trip, it will be an even more interesting test to see if I use it at all after we get back from our trip. I can’t sync it to my corporate e-mail outside of work thanks to our VPN, I can’t connect to my corporate wireless ethernet thanks to our authentication mechanism, so it isn’t that useful for me as a business tool. I don’t spend that much time on public transit since I live close to work. I have a PSP to keep me entertained on flights and in airports. The note-taking, list keeping and basic calendar and contacts stuff is already supported by my cell phone… Maybe PDAs really are dead…