I've seen the number in various install directories for Microsoft products. This shot of a Windows Vista retail box shows the very special number in the URL in the 2nd paragraph and my interest was suddenly rekindled.
According to this MSDN blog, the number is the local identifier for "English (United States)" based on a formula described in the post.
So there you have it…
Technorati Tags: The More You Know, Microsoft, 1033, Windows, Vista, localization, language, translation, software, TMYK
Robert writes about how Windows Live search has gotten a lot better. He then wonders if it'll do them any good.
Now, the problem is, if Microsoft matches Google, who will switch away from Google? I won’t. The trust I’ve built since the late 1990s of searching Google many times a day without a problem is going to be a very hard thing to beat. To get me to switch Microsoft will have to be better than Google.
How about you? Does Microsoft (or Yahoo or Ask) have any hope of getting you to switch your default search engine?
I have to agree with him. Any time I use a search that's not Google, I'm left with the lingering thought, "Is there something missing here that Google would find?" I trust Google's search results completely. I'm not quite there yet with any other service. And I don't think I ever will be. First of all, I'm probably not going to search my default search engine, but if I did, I'd most likely go through a trust-earning period where I'd double-check all my searches in Google. It would probably be way too much overhead to be worthwhile. I'm right back to Google.
Heck, when I directed one of my Yahoo-favoring friends to do a web search, I told him to "just use Google" without even waiting to see if what we were looking for was in the page results.
Something as simple as the name has a profound effect on search engine choice. "Just google it" sounds right. "Just live.com it", "just yahoo it", or "just ask.com it" sound awkward.
So will just being better than Google get me to switch? Probably not, since I'll have no way of knowing.
Technorati Tags: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Live.com, Ask.com, search, web search
Apple. The whole culture around Apple is simply amazing. People make fake photos of press events and upcoming products. Press events are covered live by several web sites. Geeks have finally embraced Apple and Macs are becoming much more mainstream. Apple's products have always been innovative and set the bar for design (and now with the switch to Intel, performance) that everyone else seeks to reach.
Microsoft. I was originally going to put Microsoft in the "Three I Don't" side, but couldn't really think of anything more to say about it than "I'm not excited about them as much as I was 6 months ago." I think in large part that has to do with Scoble (and Niall Kennedy) leaving Microsoft, leaving me with 0 Microsoft bloggers in my blogroll. That said, Microsoft still has some great products coming down the pipe, notably Vista and Office 2007. They will, however, face a lot of competition in the next year, particularly in the video games division with the Wii and PS3 releases imminent (not to mention against Apple's Leopard in the OS space). Still, Vista RC1 seems to have gotten a lot better than Beta 2; the new Office Ribbon has also had good uptake; and the XBox 360 (with XBox Live Arcade) has been a wonderful platform for both mainstream and casual games and will have had a year's worth of experience before facing the Wii and PS3.
Yahoo. Things have been coming along, albeit slowly, in terms of the integration of Yahoo's Web 2.0 acquisitions into it's mainstream content. We now have "Add to del.icio.us" links on every Flickr page and Flickr thumbnails on del.icio.us bookmarks. Also, not only is Flickr's geotagging feature is great as a standalone feature, it also does a great job of showing off Yahoo's new map technology. I hadn't known that Yahoo had finally made the switch to AJAXy maps, but after using it with the geotagging, I almost like it better than Google Maps. There's only so much that can be different in the two map services, but I feel like Yahoo's does a better job of labeling minor roads and landmarks.
Google. The "throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks" defines Google's strategy and I don't like it. I feel that it's hard to build a following for a company when you haven't given your fans enough time to really like your products before throwing something new at them. I think it's also going to be tough for Google to balance monetization of user data and easing privacy concerns. You can either piss off investors by not adding context-sensitive ads to Writely (as an example), or you can piss off your users by making them question your commitment to privacy when they see ads related to their top-secret business plan show up in a sidebar. The features of Google that I use have been around for at least 2 years, meaning that in my eyes (and probably the eyes of many others), the company has done very little in the past two years, a long time in any industry, but an especially long time on the internet.
Sony. Talk about a lack of ability to listen to one's customers. Sony has been stalwart in their approach to the PS3. They've defended their outrageous price tags to the death and really think that more graphics and more power will make for a better gaming experience. The success of XBox Live Arcade (and the Nintendo DS for that matter) point more accurately to the future of gaming: simpler, casual and more fun games. Case in point: despite having Madden 07 at our fingertips, I think we've spent more time trying to get 6 black pearls in Hexic. Grand Theft Auto or Zuma. What would your mom rather play? What would you rather your 9-year old play? Gaming aside, Sony bills the PS3 as the cheapest Bluray player on the market. While $600 may be cheap for a Bluray player, I don't know if many people will pay anything for a Bluray player unless it can also play HD-DVD or until the dust settles in the format wars. By pricing their gaming system at $600, they've effectively created an alliance between Microsoft and Nintendo. For the same $600, one could pick up an XBox 360 and Wii and have access to both system's libraries, plus everything on XBox Live Arcade and whatever Nintendo releases out of their back catalog.
Palm. Since the release of the Treo 600, we've had only minor improvements in Palm devices. I love my 650, but is there really a viable upgrade path from it right now? The 700p has only minor improvements over the 650 and not something I would consider worth waiting two years for. In the meantime, RIM has introduced a more phone-like, "less wide" form factor for it's Blackberries with the 7100 and refined it with the Pearl. Even on the Windows Mobile side, we've gotten a slew of phones, both of the Smartphone and full handheld variety. The Motorola Q and HTC's lineup have made keyboards the norm for Windows Mobile phones. Windows Mobile has been updated just about every year since 2002, in comparison to the Palm OS, which has had no real improvements since 2004. We've simply seen far too little in the past few years, from what was once the overwhelming leader of the PDA industry.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Sony, Palm, Vista, Office 2007, XBox 360, Flickr, del.icio.us, Google, AdSense, Writely, Playstation 3, Wii, Palm, Treo, Windows Mobile
Google Talk's one year anniversary is approaching, and a report has come out saying that it's not doing too hot, just as I predicted. The fact of the matter is, there's no use competing in the textual IM space anymore; the market is saturated. Everyone is pretty much ingrained in what their social circles will use and no amount of smilie packs or client skins will change that.
What AOL/MSN/Y! and Google should be concentrating on is audio (though this market is pretty much consumed by Skype) and video chat. Making an excellent service centered around great audio or video chat and being the first to release it will practically guarantee you market share. There's only so much you can do with text, but the possibilities are endless for audio and video. We already see Skype bringing people together from all over the world to record audio podcasts, but imagine being able to do the same for video. Or have your recorded conversations be easily posted to your blog or YouTube. The numbers YouTube is showing prove that video is the next (current?) killer app of the internet. As broadband gains even more traction and companies like Apple make webcams ubiquitous by building them into their machines, video is poised to find its way into more application "genres" than what we currently see.
Technorati Tags: video, YouTube, Skype, Google Talk, AOL, AIM, MSN, Microsoft, Yahoo, Yahoo IM, Apple, webcam, iSight, audio, market share
ZDNet blog, Googling Google, reports that Google Spreadsheets has received a minor update from version 1.1.4b to 1.1.4d. You can now add borders to cells and there's a useful "clear formatting" button. Also new is a contextual menu with Cut/Copy/Paste and Clear Selection, although the menu is obscured by my Firefox contextual menu (Firefox 2.0b1 on OSX). There's also an option to paste values or paste formats, the former of which is really useful for large spreadsheets. As the linked story reports, the app does seem much faster; I have yet to see the red "Loading…" tag. No improvements yet on the function arguments side, though. The application still shows "f(args)" instead of actual function arguments.
Still not replacing Excel, but at least it's moving along. Now if only I could get into the Writely beta to bash that too (jk, Google)…
Technorati Tags: Google, Google Spreadsheets, update, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Excel, Writely, beta
Microsoft and Yahoo have begun testing instant messaging interoperability between the two company's IM services in effort to better fight AOL's position in the IM market.
I really don't know how much it will help though. If they're looking for shear numbers, they've effectively cut their potential market in half since now there's no reason to have both an MSN account and a Y! IM account. I have both a Windows Live Messenger and a Y! IM account by virtue of the other services these logins offer (access to Office/Vista betas on the Microsoft side; My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Mail on the Yahoo side), but I have no reason to sign on to either IM service because I have no friends that use those services. The ability to use one login to have access to no friends on either service isn't very appealing.
Even still, in the age of Meebo and Adium, both multi-protocol IM apps, there's so much transparency between protocols that having to enter one less login name in the Accounts window is pretty inconsequential. Of course, having only one login name does have some benefits, namely synchronization. Now you will only need to worry about one buddy list, one status, one profile, etc.
Unless this interoperablity makes switching from AIM, I don't see it having much effect in the IM wars. What I do like about this agreement is the possiblilty of more Microsoft/Yahoo! collaboration and even the purchase of Yahoo! by Microsoft. Now that's something to chat about.
BTW, WY! = Windows Live Messenger + Yahoo! Messenger
Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Microsoft, MSN, Windows Live, Windows Live Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! IM, AOL, AIM, IM, instant messaging, instant messenger, Meebo, Adium, interoperability
Now that my iMac can boot Windows and I'm spending more time in general away from my computer, I'm looking for ways to synchronize my data across OSes. The easiest way, I've realized is to do everything on the web.
I've taken the first step today by deactivating POP access for GMail in Mail.app. That way I can manage all my GMail email online. If Google decides to offer IMAP sometime, I'll turn it back on. Until then, I need my email to be the same everywhere and that place is online. My school email is IMAP/Exchange, so there's not much of a synchronization issue with that, except that Mail.app's IMAP isn't too good and the school only gives us 50 MB of storage. Exchange Webmail is as good as Outlook if you're using IE, but in anything non-IE (e.g., any Mac browser) it reverts to an old version of Outlook Web Access which is terrible. Once I can spend a bit more time with Parallels, I can decide if running it 24/7 for just Outlook is worth it. If it's not worth it, I don't know what to do. Is there any way to push 3rd party email accounts through the GMail interface?
I was never a big fan of iCal and the lack of Exchange over HTTP on the Mac kept me from using Wharton's Exchange calendar, so I haven't really used an electronic calendar. Instead, I've been resorting to text files and post-its. Until Google Calendar showed up. Google Calendar has everything I need in a calendar (save Tasks), and with text messages to/from GVENT and RSS feeds, I can access my calendar away from the computer or offline.
I am still in search of a decent online RSS reader as I have yet to find something that can replace NetNewsWire. I like having a desktop client because I can read feeds offline if I have no connectivity. There is always NewsGator's multiplatform syncing solution, but I'd rather save myself the $50-$80 ($30 each for a Mac client, Windows client and $20 for the online reader) if there's a free solution available. My main requirement if I do decide to stick with NetNewsWire is that any online reader has to be able to do status syncing. I don't want to have to go through 100+ posts deciding what I've read and haven't read. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if I can find an online reader that is fast and fits my workflow (is that readflow?).
I listen to a relatively small number of podcasts and I'm so far behind that I don't need a cross-OS sycning solution. I'm backed up enough that I always have something fresh to listen to on my iPod even with only syncing once every few days. I haven't had a chance to set up iTunes in Windows yet, but I think with MacDrive I'll be able to share libraries between OS X and Windows without a hitch.
My other main concert with "going online" is that I won't have access to anything if I'm without an internet connection. There were many a time where I would be on-the-go with my Powerbook and still have my RSS feeds to read. I have no idea how good my internet connection will be in the new apartment, but if it's spotty then I'll be in trouble. Another issue is backup. Can I really trust Google and Mr. Online RSS Reader to hold my data for as long as I want it? What are my backup options for GMail/GCal, etc?
Technorati Tags: online, RSS, GMail, GCal, Google, Google Calendar, OS X, dual boot, Windows XP, Google OS, NetNewsWire, Exchange, synchronization, sync
Microsoft announced today their first keyboard/mouse combo designed especially for the Mac, the Wireless Laser Desktop for Mac. From what I've seen on the spec page, the combo uses an RF signal to communicate with the devices. Now that every Mac ships with built-in Bluetooth (and has had it optional for a long time), why not use Bluetooth? With the proprietary dongle you lose a USB port and you have at least one cable coming out of your machine. Bluetooth eliminates both of these problems (though a dongle/charger is useful for charging the mouse) but Microsoft went for the easiest way of getting into the Apple Stores instead of giving customers something really useful.
As someone who has been using a Logitech MX900 for the past two years, I'm surprised neither Logitech nor Microsoft have come out with a true replacement for it yet. My MX900 is pretty beat up from sitting at the bottom of my backpack on many trips and it recently lost a button due to some tinkering. What's out there to replace it? There are plenty of Bluetooth mice out there (most of them travel-sized, though), but none of them have a charger base! Until one comes along, I'll stick with my banged and bruised MX900 for the PowerBook and the nice but corded Mighty Mouse on the iMac.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Wireless Laser Desktop, keyboard, mouse, wireless, Bluetooth, Mighty Mouse, Logitech, MX900, RF, Mac, Apple
Hey everyone, long time no post. I've been really busy this past week. During the day I'm at work as an equity systems intern at DuPont Capital Management and at night I was busy moving out of the West End and into the fraternity house, where I'll be for a week until our new lease starts on the 1st. And finally, I bought a 17" iMac Core Duo so I've been busy playing around with that as well. Suffice to say that those three haven't left me much time for posting.
Now that I'm done moving furniture and boxes and my iMac is set up for the most part (waiting on a gig of RAM), I'm back. I don't know if I'll be able to post as frequently as I did last summer because I don't think I'll have much time to surf around scouring for post ideas and news.
Work so far has been alright. I have to be there at 8, so I'm out of here by 7:30. I thought it was going to be terrible waking up so early, but once I adjusted my sleep schedule, it was alright. I prefer working 8-5 rather than 9-6 because I can stretch the morning out to 5 hours and then the afternoon slump doesn't have much time to kick in. I've been mostly programming Excel/VBA macros to format data and now I'm starting to work on another macro that will automatically create charts from data pulled from FactSet, a financial data/research application.
The iMac has been spectacular so far. I was choosing between the iMac and both MacBooks to replace/supplment my aging Aluminum 1.25GHz PowerBook. I decided on the iMac, at least for the time being, because I'm not too sure I'll need portability over the summer. Once school starts I'll re-evaluate and possibly sell the iMac and get a Merom MacBook Pro. The MacBook was out because of the lack of dedicated graphics and the premium of $500+ for the MacBook Pro with specs similar to the iMac (not to mention the heat and whine issues) disqualified the MacBook Pro as well. Even with just 512MB of RAM, everything seems to be faster than my PowerBook with 1.5GB RAM. The iSight and FrontRow are welcome additions and while I don't think I'll use them every day, having them there when I do need them is a plus.
I'm thinking that a 30GB BootCamp partition (for gaming) and an 8GB Parallels VM (for apps I might want to run but don't want to restart for) will be good as a Windows solution. As per my last post, I've downloaded Office 2007 as part of the public beta program. I haven't had much use for it yet (and running it inside Parallels with only 128MB RAM dedicated to it was painful) so I haven't had a chance to take it for an in-depth test drive. The little I have used of it, however, I've been really impressed with. As someone who has spent a lot of time using previous versions of Office, I've gotten pretty used to the old-style toolbar and don't have much trouble finding the right button to push to do what I want. After using the Ribbon, I don't know how I'll ever be able to go back. Microsoft definitely got it right with this. Live previews are excellent and the larger buttons are much easier to hit as well. Bravo, Microsoft.
Technorati Tags: DuPont, internships, college, iMac, Core Duo, Mac, Intel, Excel, VBA, Microsoft, FactSet, finance, capital management, BootCamp, Parallels, Office 2007, Ribbon
Hello. I am writing from Office 2007 Beta 2 inside Parallels Workstation.
EDIT: It didn't get the time right. It posted the time as 11/29/99 19:00 :(
Technorati Tags: Office 2007, Microsoft, XML-RPC, Wordpress, blogging, Office 2007 Beta 2, Word 2007, Parallels, virtualization
