Google Apps Review

Did you notice that Google Apps was released? Did you notice that the Google Documents Spell Checker has been broken for about a week? Bad timing eh?

I've been using the free Gooffice for about 4 months now for notes. My vote? It is impressive what they've done, but what they've really proven is that the functionality/price ratio for Word and Excel is most excellent.

Taking desktop functionality away is silly, Gooffice is all about sharing and collaboration, it is more a "sharepoint killer" than desktop replacement. Example 1: The Google document spell checker has been broken in IE for about a week now. Go for a week without a spell checker in Word then tell let me know what you think about online based desktop replacement apps. (side note: flip over to FireFox and spell check is working fine, there is a javascript error in the IE version of Google's spell check code). On the flip side? Create a document and e-mail it to four people, ask each of them to change one sentence and send their change back to you. Then see how long it takes you to merge the changes. Now go to goofice, upload a word document and share it with four people, revel in the online change integration.

Also in Googles defense I will say that GMail and Calendar have been rock solid. Google calendar can even create and reply to Outlook/Exchange calendar notices and support apparently unlimited shared calendars with appointment reminders via SMS. People who already have Outlook are not going to get anything from it, but new businesses looking for shared calendaring could be better off than small business exchange based solutions.

Making fun of some things and sense of others

From indexed.blogspot.com

Things that make you say hmmm...

Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study (The Guardian Guardian Unlimited): "Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."

A noteworthy story:

- Has a catchy headline

- Seems sensational on first glance

- Raises questions about the topic without actually saying the activity is wrong.

- Contains a nice polar bear picture

Early Adopter Woes

One of the issues with being an early adopter of a new Operating Systems is compatibility with exiting applications. Why? The app vendors need a bit of time to get their software updated to be fully compatible with the new OS.

If the company has a serious desire to promote their product they can get involved during the beta phase to work out bugs and ensure a smooth transition for early adopters. But what if the app vendor doesn't really care if the new OS succeeds? What if the app vendor may actually benefit from a difficult transition, say for example if the app vendor makes a competing operating system? Say, someone like Apple...

Item from InformationWeek:
Windows Vista May Corrupt iPod Music Players, Apple Says

Upgrading to Vista may result in the inability to play songs purchased from the online iTunes store; other problems 'may corrupt your iPod,' Apple warns. Apple Computer is warning customers who use the Windows version of its iTunes software to hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until it can release a patch to fix a number of serious compatibility issues, one of which could result in a corrupt iPod player.

Apple, in a statement posted Thursday on its Web support forum, says upgrading from Windows 2000 or Windows XP to Vista may result in the inability to play songs purchased and downloaded to the desktop iTunes player from its online iTunes store. Worse, however, is the problem that iPod users could encounter if they try to eject their digital music player from a desktop port using the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature found on the Vista system tray. That, Apple warns ominously, "may corrupt your iPod." Apple says the safe way to undock an iPod from a Vista-equipped PC, until a patch is released, is to be sure and use the "Eject iPod" control in the iTunes software. Apple says the problems will be fixed when it releases the next version of iTunes "within a few weeks." Until then, PC-using iPod customers could experience a number of other problems if they're running Vista, including contacts and calendars that won't synch with their iPods and problems making changes to iPod settings.

In the meantime, some users report that they can get downloaded iTunes songs to play on Vista if they right-click on the iTunes.exe program, select Properties, click on the Compatibility tab, and check "Run This Program As An Administrator."

Blogger vs. WordPress Smackdown, Round 1.

I was starting to think WordPress was such a good blogging tool that Blogger would become obsolete. Then I noticed something cool. Blogger has been doing Mobile Blogging for a while, but I ignored it. I really didn't 'get' it. Now I do.

The picture above (pretty bad eh? read on) was taken using my phone. I took a picture of my laptop screen showing an image on the blogger instructions for mobile blogging. Self referential, but it serves its purpose. Once the picture was taken, I sent it to Blogger (go@blogger.com). Blogger then sent me a reply with a 'token' to claim my picture. Blogger had also set up a blog for my phone (elfbug266, cute). When I was back at my computer, not too tough since I was sitting at it the whole time, I launched Blogger and claimed my picture. Blogger then asked if I wanted to merge the elfbug266 blog into my existing blog. The post migrated over and I was able to add this text to explain the very bad picture.

According to the instructions, Blogger accepts text messages as well. No photo required, same process. One nit on the whole thing: When I tried to edit this post by adding text, Blogger's text editor kept trying to delete the picture. After a few tries, I switched to 'Edit Html' view of the posting page and added some text then flipped back to 'Compose' view and here we are!

Round 1 goes to Blogger for mobile blogging. Wordpress, bring it on.

10x10 Photo Experiment

An online time capsule—every hourPart news portal and part interactive artwork, 10X10 collects the 100 most prevalent images and words appearing in online news outlets every hour—then arranges them into a vibrant collage, inviting both a user's involvement and contemplation.

http://www.tenbyten.org/

Hackmaster Apple-tastic

An interesting hack...
This morning I went off campus to eat some real food, and my cell phone rang just as I was sitting down with the day's first cup of tea. I flipped it open and said "Hello?" The caller said "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I'm coming to you tonight from a microphone inside a sock!" and then hung up.
Generally when people phone me and tell me that they're calling from microphones inside of socks I'm somewhat befuddled. This morning I knew. My PowerBook had decided to give me a call.
More (including how to do it) at:
http://www.applefritter.com/node/10758

One of the comments on the entry seems very appropriate:
Well, you've succeeded in making the most complicated nonsense delivery system I've ever heard of. Great job!

Useful Treo 750v Review

I keep loosing this link so I thought I'd stick it here:
http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=3415

An actually useful review of the Treo 750v (Vodaphone). Latest reports indicate the Treo 750 won't be available in the US until 3Q2007. By then Vista will be established and maybe Mobile 5 will have an update to match?

And the winner is...

Is it funny to you that Access, the company that makes the Palm OS (they bought it from, well, palm), recently won an award (of sorts) for making the best PDA/SmartPhone web browser?

FYI that browser, the NetFront browser, is not available for the Palm OS.

So maybe you're thinking they just haven't gotten around to releasing it for the Palm OS. Plausible, except this is the 3rd year it has been named best browser. You'd think they'd have it dialed in by now.

A quote from the press release is in order:

ACCESS' NetFront Browser continues to be the browser of choice for the
world's leading mobile handset manufacturers and mobile operators. Featuring a
number of unique technologies, ACCESS’ NetFront Browser has been designed to
enable a rich and robust mobile Internet browsing experience.

Apparently Access doesn't think the Palm OS is running on "...the world's leading mobile handset[s]..."

Welcome to Business 3.0

http://www.access-company.com/news/press/Current/110106_pocketpcmag.html

What's really wrong with the Zune?

The real zune screw-deal appears to be the Windows Media Store. I listened to a TWiT podcast last night (This week in tech) and they said people who had bought songs through the windows media store could not use them on the Zune. Apparently Zune has its own DRM, separate from the DRM system used by Windows Media 10 (probably related to the whole Zune "Welcome to the Social" song sharing for 3 days deal- Windows Media's DRM doesn't support 'sharing').

So if you bought songs from iTunes, you can't use them on Zune.
If you bought songs from Napster, you can't use them on Zune.
If you bought songs from Sony, you can't use them on Zune.
If you bought songs from Windows Media Store, you can't use them on Zune.

I guess you don't have to worry about filling up the 30 gig drive anytime soon.

On a side note: I think this Zune is akin to the first XBox. Wait for the Zune360 and we might have something exciting on our hands. I'm thinking Zune wireless syncing with the 360, and using Live credits to buy media (songs, tv, and movies).

Regarding Pigboy Crabshaw

I've had an item on my task list for a while and keep putting it off. Its a task that simply says "Blog entry on Elvin Bishop". I assigned it to myself so why keep putting it off? Better yet, since I assigned it to myself why do it at all? Why not just delete it rather than repeately pushing it back? And who is Elvin Bishop anyway, and what about him warrants a blog entry?

A quick stroll through Wikipedia reveals the following.

Elvin Bishop (born October 21, 1942) is an American blues and rock and roll musician and guitar player. Bishop was born in Glendale, California. He grew up on an Iowa farm without electricity or running water. His family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was ten. He moved to Chicago in 1960 after he won a National Merit Scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he studied Physics. He met Paul Butterfield in the surrounding neighborhood of Hyde Park in 1963 and joined his band. He remained with Butterfield for another nine years. The Butterfield Blues Band's third album, The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw is based on Bishop's nickname. He went solo in 1968 and formed the Elvin Bishop Group by the end of the year. Bishop would spend the next 35 years as a hard-working performing act, releasing several albums. His most memorable song was "Fooled Around and Fell In Love" from 1976.

Bishop's daughter, Selina Bishop, was slain in 2001. According to the Point Reyes Light newspaper, "Bishop, her mother Jenny Villarin, and a friend of Villarin, James Gamble, were murdered as part of an elaborate scheme to extort $100,000 from elderly Concord residents Ivan and Annette Stineman."[1]

In 2005, Bishop released his first new CD in 5 years, Gettin' My Groove Back.[2]

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvin_Bishop"

Maybe it's the Pigboy Crabshaw bit that first caught my eye. But the
follow-up paragraph about Bishop's daughter was worthy of reading again.
Three people killed in two sentences. Did you catch all those names?
Exactly how does one extort money from the Stineman's by killing three
different people?

This is worth a bit more research.

Blogs by smart(?) people, part 2

Another chess commentary, cross-linked from the others I have mentioned. I only add it here for my convenience, so move along- there is nothing here for you to see.

http://megaskins.blogspot.com/

Blogs by Smart People, Part 1

You can't swing a dead cat on the Internet.

But if you could, you couldn't swing one without hitting a web page that includes a short list of Blogs related to the article.

I had some good rotation speed on a dead tabby and it smacked into a blog entry about chess. Did I just hear a pin drop? Stay with me for a minute.

This is a blog called Confessions of a Chess Novice, and included an entry called "A Divine Tragedy on the horizon". Tell me you're a bit more curious than a couple sentences ago. If so, here's where you'll find the goods: http://chessconfessions.blogspot.com/2005/04/divine-tragedy-on-horizon.html

But first, this is an old entry. Using the 'recent posts' link list on that entries page you might be tempted to classify the whole blog as suffering from Blog-fade (a made up term derived from 'podfade', a less made up term for the condition when a podcaster fades away and stops making podcasts). That isn't the case, it's just an oddity of Blogger. If you click on the name of the blog, you'll be taken to the current entries.

Another "smart about chess" blog still actively posting is http://onlinechess.bravejournal.com/index.php featuring an extensive list of other chess blogs and related links.

The New Blogger Beta

In 1999, Pyra Labs launched Blogger. Today this blog has switched to the latest version of Blogger, currently in beta. This post isn't much more than a test, so you can move along now to the rest of the entries.

Regarding routers and the boney part of your ankle.

Want to giggle like a kid again? Go outside at night and kick a soccer ball around in the dark. I did, with my bare feet. Being barefoot restricted how hard I could kick the ball. That can be important in the dark, particularly if you have someone to kick the ball back to you. For the kicker, it constrains the force exerted on the soccer ball. For the receiver it constrains the chance a soccer ball will come shooting out of the dark and take their head off. After a few easy kicks, the temptation to lay into the ball is hard to resist. The increasing pain of a solid barefoot kick teaches real quickly which parts of the foot are good for this type of activity. Word to the wise; using the bony part of the ankle is good for power shots, inside of the big toe less so.

I was relating this story to a co-worker after we had just gotten done discussing some of the nuances of configuring a wireless router. It turned out that the previous evening, at about the same time I was testing the bruise potential of my feet, he was figuring out that when installing a wireless router in his home the cable modem and new wireless router may need to be powered off and on in sequence, with the cable modem restarting completely before powering on the router.

We had discussed that since the cable company's head-end equipment provides an address to the cable modem, and the cable modem provides an IP address to the router, and the router provides an address to the computers in the house, this little ankle-bone connected to the knee-bone chain should be activated in sequence to ensure everything flows automatically.

We agreed that both the appropriate use of the boney part of the ankle for kicking a soccer ball with your bare foot and the nuances of router configurations are pretty useless pieces of information. We also had a good chuckle when we determined that if your brain were to attempt to store these useless bits in the same part of your mind you may end up with the desire to kick your router with the boney part of your ankle the next time you need to reconfigure your router.

Rome Roof Top

No cheap aluminum chimney caps here, Rome has class all the way to the rooftop.

Appropriately Sized Cars

Small Cars and Mopeds make easy navigation of Rome's smaller streets and alleys.

Old and New, Side by Side

One of the daily wonders of Rome, old and new existing side by side throughout the city.

Vatican Grounds

Back to the Vatican, for an interesting view of the grounds. Lots of interesting little passages and buildings in that most small country.

Vatican Court Yard

This picture is of a court yard space in the Vatican, I don't know what the proper name for it is. After going through the painting gallery, this court yard is accessible on the way into the Museum.