blindsquirrel.org

This will be an almost exact duplicate of a post I made nearly one year ago about Infoworld and how they made the decision to clog my RSS reader with their advertisements, so I made the decision to unsubscribe.  Today I get to say the same thing about eWeek, but their feeds are even worse.  With Infoworld they at least kept a decent amount of content in the feed, but my feeds from eWeek are barely one sentence and then the rest is advertising.  That’s no longer acceptable to me and I’ll continue to get my news elsewhere.

For me the pattern is clear, I do not like RSS feeds that do partial posting in an attempt to make me visit their sites, and if you are going to include advertising in my RSS feed you better provide some content as well.  Don’t force me to go to your site.  I go through way too much data in Google Reader and I’m busy hitting j, j, j, j, etc. reading everything I can and I don’t have the time nor tolerance anymore for those tactics.

So eWeek, just like Infoworld, you’re banned from my feed reader.  I’m doing just fine on  FriendFeed now anyway.  It’s a shame, as I used to enjoy the content you provided, back when you used to provide it.  I’m sure somewhere there is an advertising exec that received a bonus for this great idea.

As I wrote about a few months ago, I started checking the Amazon MP3 store along with the iTunes Store when shopping for music, and I was surprised that most of what I was looking for was not only available from Amazon, it was cheaper as well.  Well, I have been buying more and more music lately and I can’t remember the last time I ended up buying it from the iTunes Store.  This is a huge change for me, but money talks.  I am getting individual songs a little cheaper, but I am usually getting full albums $2 cheaper.  That’s significant.  I still check with iTunes and I make sure to compare the number of tracks on the full album because once in a while iTunes has more songs for the money than Amazon does, but that has been really rare.

Apple, I realize you have the majority of the market share right now, but as one of your loyal customers that has way too many of your products than most people should, I think you have a problem here.  Not only do I have more Apple computers and iPods than any household should, I’m a share holder!  If I’m comfortable using another service over the iTunes Store what does that say for the average customer?  It may not be today, it may not be this year, but I think you need to address the pricing issue before others see what is going on and Amazon starts eating away at your market share.

I love reading Robert X. Cringely’s articles.  Always have.  He’s definitely one of my favorite writers.  In his most recent posting he states that Apple appears to be looking to unload its Pro applications in preparation to clear the way to acquire Adobe.  Interesting idea, but I’m not sure I agree as Apple’s Pro apps are some of the tops in the industry and Apple has made acquisitions that sure up that side of the business.  It might be nice for Apple if they controlled Flash, but I’m not sure any of that affects me much as a consumer.  Plus, those Pro apps only run on OS X, not Windows.  That may come in to play with the company that would want to acquire such applications.

While listening to my weekly fix of MacBreak Weekly, the topic of GPS came up and I was happy to hear that some of the folks on the show feel the same way that I do about the Garmin Nuvi GPS - it’s an excellent product.  So that got me thinking.  I don’t care about an Adobe acquisition as much as I would like to see Apple acquire Garmin.  I have used Magellan, Tom Tom, and Garmin GPS systems in my car and I have always felt the Garmin was the best.  I have the Nuvi 350, which fits easily in a pocket and takes us through turn by turn directions.  I like the interface better and I definitely like the maps better.  I’ve always found the Garmin to be very accurate as well.

Whether or not the rumors are true about the 3G iPhone having built in GPS, I think it is a safe assumption to believe it will be in there some day.  It’s just the way most phones are headed.  Nothing revolutionary, just evolutionary.  Many already have GPS included.  So why not take the best GPS technology and marry it with one of the best phones out there?  If not an outright acquisition, at least license the Garmin technology for the GPS solution that Apple uses?

If I remember correctly, I believe that even Garmin is working on a phone.  That could be an interesting product depending on how well they implement it and its final size, weight, and especially battery life, but Apple has already set the bar pretty high with the iPhone, so Garmin will have its work cut out for it.

So Apple, you know what you have to do; acquire Garmin, kill the Garmin phone, integrate Garmin’s GPS technology in the iPhone, wrap your interface around all that tech, and price it aggressively.  Oh, and figure out how to achieve decent battery life.  Easy, right?  So go get started already - I’ll be over here waiting with my credit card.

First, Colorado Springs is absolutely beautiful.  I’m out here for an HP Executive Briefing that went very, very well and the place is just amazing.  We’ve definitely added this place to our short list for future vacations.  I wish I had brought a decent camera as the one on my Treo700wx is as close to garbage as one can get.

Second, after sitting on a conference call for 90 minutes with a Treo that just kept getting hotter and hotter glued to my head, I finally broke down and purchased a decent bluetooth headset.  I picked up the Jawbone at the Palm store at the Pittsburgh airport of all places.  I know what you’re thinking, but their prices were actually better than the Apple store and they sell ones that are already charged.  Nice perk.  I picked up the black model.  The noise canceling seems really good and I can hear really well with this thing instead of the straining I used to do to hear from some of the others I have purchased over the years.  Hopefully this one is a winner.

Third, if you use VMWare Fusion, make sure to check out the update that came out tonight.  No problems with it so far, although anymore I tend to only fire up my WindowsXP VMWare guest to perform anti virus and Windows patch updates.

Fourth, are you running Firefox version 3 beta 5 yet?  If not, you should take a few minutes and check it out as the performance is excellent and it is very close to becoming my main browser, although Webkit has yet to let me down.  Very impressive release so far.  I think I heard the final release comes out in June.  Pick your operating system and try it out.

Fifth, I’m finding it harder and harder to avoid the iPhone as I am finding it harder and harder to find free WiFi where I need it.  The iPod Touch I use for so many things is nice when I have connectivity, but I almost wish I could have an iPhone with just the data plan.  I don’t really need the phone piece as work gives me a Treo that I have to have with me, but everything about the iPhone and iPod Touch is so much better that I can feel I will eventually break down and end up with an iPhone.  We’ll see how things look after the release of iPhone 2.0 in late June.

Lastly, I finally joined Twitter.  Why?  I don’t know, Robert Scoble told me to.  After having it for one short week I have learned that, for me, it is not a matter of being followed, but a matter of who you follow that makes it interesting.  I’m there as blindsquirrel.

That’s about it, looking forward to getting home.  I like seeing new cities, but I still can’t wait to get back home to Pittsburgh.

Since VMWare Fusion has worked out so well, I was finally able to get rid of the last remaining Microsoft Windows computer in our house by installing WindowsXP on our shiny 20″ iMac.  We still need Windows for Quicken since the Mac version of Quicken is not even close to the Windows verion and can’t even import all of your Quicken for Windows data.  Since we’re giving our old Dell PC away I thought I would completely wipe the hard drive, boot from the WindowsXP CD and give them a nice, clean computer to start with.

I forgot how long this process takes when starting from scratch.  I had to load WindowsXP, then I had to use another computer to find any 3Com NIC drivers that would work, then I went straight to Service Pack 2 to reduce the amount of updates needed.  SP2 took quite a while to install, especially since it forces you to backup all your system files in case it has to revert back to them.

Then I ran Windows Update.  91 updates.  Wow.  After they completed and the system rebooted, I ranWindows Update again.  10 more updates.  Rebooted.  Installed IE7.  Windows Update.  More updates.  .NET.  Windows Update.  More Updates.  Might as well grab Silverlight while I’m there.  Oh, can’t forget Adobe Reader, Flash Player, and Shockwave Player.

It looks like I’m finally finished as I am watching it go through its (hopefully) last reboot now.  No way can there be any more updates for this thing.  Total time, somewhere between 4 and 5 hours - and I have Verizon FIOS - 15Mb of glorious bandwidth delivered over fiber to our home.

So thankfully it’s over.  Maybe I’m done building WindowsXP machines now.  The machine is too old to run Windows Vista, but I know from experience that Vista SP1 took somewhere between 1-2 hours to update on a brand new Dell computer.  That’s still a long time to me.

What did you do with your Saturday?

I was picking up some new music for an upcoming trip when I thought I’d look at the Amazon.com MP3 Download store.  I’ve done 100% of my music purchasing on iTunes for the last few years because it is just so easy the way things are integrated with my iPods.  I was surprised to see how easy Amazon has made it not only for those of us that use iPods, but OS X itself.

Amazon provides a decent downloader that brings down the music and adds it to your iTunes library automatically.  It’s completely browser based so it’s not as seamless as iTunes, but I think it’s about as good as we’re going to get with a vanilla web browser for a while.

But the fun didn’t stop there.  I picked up 3 “albums” (is that really still a valid term?) and not only were they $2(US) cheaper per album, but they even had one that iTunes did not carry - an old Radiohead album. $7.99 for the full album definitely has my attention.  The no DRM piece is a nice bonus as well, and I’m happy to take 256k MP3 files for less money.

I think iTunes finally has a little competition here and competition should be good for the consumer.  I felt a little like I was cheating on iTunes with the first purchase.  The second click was easier, and by the third click the guilt was gone and I was just begging to get caught.

Nice job Amazon, I’ll be sure to check your store as well as iTunes when i am looking for music in the future.

While at home, I’ve done a fairly successful job of not using many Microsoft technologies for my Internet experience.  At work I’m locked in to all things Microsoft, at home I can use any technology I choose.

I use Gmail for my email, Google for my search engine, Adium for my IM client, Safari, Camino, or Firefox for my web browser, Google Reader for my news feeds, and Flikr for some of my photos.  But the most important page I hit every day is my personalized My Yahoo! page.

I’ve never been impressed with MSN.com’s pages and the new Windows Live sites don’t do much for you with an alternate browser or operating system.  I was not happy with Yahoo when they released the new version of their home page because I was so used to the old plain text look, but over time it has greatly improved, added Safari browser support, and is finally performing like the old version.

When Yahoo first released the new version I decided to try to make the move to iGoogle.  It wasn’t even close at the time.  We use the Yahoo Finance pieces a lot and Google’s instructions to import that data over to iGoogle sounded easy enough - just highlight all the data, including headers, and paste it in to the import field.  It almost never worked, and when information finally did import it never brought all the information I needed over.  Very disappointing.

So I went back to the new My Yahoo and that’s when things started getting better.  It’s become a great home page again - except for the massive ad that you can’t get rid of, but I worry that Microsoft’s influence would ruin the experience.

So I took another shot at iGoogle and was happy to see that things have improved a bit and they now have themes as well.  It is still not as nice as my My Yahoo page, but my iGoogle page is pretty darn close and I’m ready to make the switch if necessary.  After all, if Microsoft really got all the Web 2.x stuff they would never be bidding on Yahoo.

From the outside it sure looks to me like Microsoft needs Yahoo a lot more than Yahoo needs Microsoft.

Hang in there Yahoo, you can right this ship on your own.  If not, I’m sure there are better suitors out there that would make better partners.  Microsoft will take your best technologies, rebrand them, and you’ll be but a distant memory 5 years from now.

Hey, whatever happened to Excite anyway? ; p

There has been something that drives me crazy about using Safari to access Outlook Web Access for Exchange email on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Whenever I reply to a message it is always a surprise where the cursor will land and I found that if I just press in one location and move upwards the magnifying glass will popup and it will slowly scroll to the top of the message where I want to reply. The longer the email the more patience this move takes.

Then I ran across this post that discusses two-finger scrolling in Safari on the iPhone. Although it doesn’t specifically mention Outlook Web Access, it does work for what I needed.

When you reply to a message in OWA on the iPhone/iPod Touch just tap inside the message area and the keyboard will popup. Press Done and the keyboard will then go away. Now scroll in the message area using two fingers to the top of the message, tap, and the keyboard will now let you reply where you expected it to. I never knew you could scroll in a text box like that with two fingers. That should take care of Safari Mobile’s lack of scroll bars in certain text boxes.

So thank you to Brett Peters at http://nobodywantsastyl.us/ for teaching me something new, and valuable, today.

Although I switched to Macs many years ago, there is still one last application that stops me from getting rid of the 9 year old Dell running Windows - Quicken. Now, I know you can buy Quicken for the Mac, but if you’re in the same boat as I am, you’ll think twice before you pull the trigger and spend the money. Quicken on the Mac is not the same as Quicken for Windows.

I thought I would do a little research before I made the switch and boy am I glad I did. Reading the support forums at Quicken.com I quickly found that there are not too many happy Quicken for Mac people hanging out over there. That’s pretty typical, since most forums are used for support and most people without problems don’t hang out on support forums, you tend to only get the bad news and upset customers when you use the forums.

I can almost understand that the Mac and Windows versions are not 100% feature by feature identical. Almost. But what I think is unforgivable is that the file formats between the Windows and Mac version are different. This means you cannot just take your Quicken for Windows files and use them on Quicken for Mac. You have to go through the process of exporting everything from Windows, creating new files on the Mac, and then importing everything. Even this wouldn’t be that bad if it actually included everything. But it doesn’t.

Check out the official support document from Quicken and you’ll see all of the things you get to recreate. I think Quicken says it best:

Quicken for Windows and Quicken for Macintosh have different features and data file structure. Due to the differences in the programs, not all data can be converted from Quicken for Windows to Quicken for Mac. The following information shows the data that will NOT convert from Quicken for Windows to Quicken for Mac. This information will need to be re-entered in Quicken for Mac after converting your file.

Then the list begins. These are the 2 main items that are just show stoppers for me -

Add to these that the Mac version is still not feature complete with the Windows version and I have to wonder how serious Quicken is about supporting the Mac platform. To me it feels more like they are doing the absolute minimum necessary to keep Mac customers hanging on in the hopes that some day it will be what most of us expect - feature complete with the Windows version. Don’t hold your breath.

I’m not willing to run a virtualization product just so I can keep Quicken around - yet. I think I’ll take a look at competing personal finance products for the Mac and see where that leads me, or I may just switch us over to the web based online banking that our bank offers and see if that works well enough to allow us to get rid of Quicken completely - and Windows. Complaining on a Blog that nobody reads really won’t make a difference, so I’ll have to let the money do the talking. Maybe it’s time to break the endless cycle of upgrading to the latest and greatest version every year. Shame on you Quicken.

I’m going to tell you something that your family and friends aren’t - you look like a complete tool when you walk in to the restaurant with that bluetooth headset on your ear.  Look, I know it’s a great technology, but if you’re still using the phone, stay outside until you’re done.  If you’re not using it, take it off your head.

Seriously.  I’m just trying to help you.  I’m sorry you had to hear it from me.