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Thursday, March 29, 2007
I've noticed a disturbing trend by certain web developers to host their site's images on flickr. This is a HORRIBLE idea in so many ways so if you're thinking of using flickr to serve up your static images consider the following: 1. Flickr is an evolving service. This means that there will be downtime, system upgrades and perhaps even changing URLs. All of which can lead to slow load times or even broken links. 2. Flickr is public facing. What I mean by this is that they're a self-described photo sharing web-site where most people use the flickr site to
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Friday, March 23, 2007
Gizmodo recently ran something I was just thinking I wanted to see, an Apple TV vs. XBox 360 showdown. Gizmodo is one of those sites that has a bunch of different contributing news bloggers and I'd say at least 70% of them are highly biased in some fashion, with most of their "news" coming off as impassioned mini-editorials about a single product. That's why I was impressed with how balanced the comparison between the 360 and Apple TV was. If you're in the market for an Apple TV but are also open to a 360 give it read though. I
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Thomas Hawk, a new Mac convert, has recently been praising all things Apple. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to see a level-headed assessment of Apple's new media extender, Apple TV. I agree with all of his points and then some. It was nice to see his tip of the hat towards Media Center and using the XBox 360 as an extender. He mentioned that he never really planned on using his 360 as a game console but found some game joy none the less, which helps debunk the myth that the XBox is only for the "hardcore gamer".
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Sunday, March 18, 2007
It used to be that the desktop ruled the computer landscape. Servers were for large corporations while laptops were the province of rich college kids and sales creatures. I see all of that changing, the future belongs to the laptop and the consumer-level home server. We're already seeing more and more laptops and I know of small software companies where everyone is on a laptop, even those that never take them of off their desk. I've seen households where the only person on a desktop is the nerdling, tinkering husband and even he usually also has a laptop. They make sense
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Thursday, March 15, 2007
You'd think for all the effort that went into Vista and updating a large number of the embedded applications they would have spent at least a little time making sure any previous bugs in Windows Mail were fixed. I use Outlook Express, or Windows Mail as it's now called, to read newsgroups. One thing I do quite a bit is drag it over to my secondary monitor, right click on a newsgroup and then select Properties. On XP this was highly annoying because the pop-up always shows up on the main monitor, regardless of where Outlook Express is. Enter Microsoft Mail
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Thursday, March 15, 2007
I just caught a blurb from some major news outlet talking about how Apple TV is trying to bring digital content into the living room. What I find so ironic is that you've been able to do that for awhile now with the XBox 360 and it's Video Marketplace downloadable content. I can't blame the media outlets though for their ignorance, for the most part reporters in the mainstream media aren't really known for their depth, they're trying to stay on top of the breadth of things and the digital media download space is an ever changing landscape. The party
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Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Ever hear the phrase, "lipstick on a pig"? It applies to a vain attempt to make something ugly look pretty, as in "putting a fresh coat of paint on that water-damaged, termite-eaten, water leaking house is like putting lipstick on a pig." The software world often has the opposite problem, let's call it "a swan wearing galoshes". There are an amazing number of great software applications out there that I don't give a second look at because their user interface is horrible. Everything from inconsistently positioned buttons, ugly icons, poor spelling, cramped interfaces, badly explained features or hideous splash screens. By
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Thursday, March 01, 2007
A post by Ed Bott recently reminded me of a topic that I think about from time to time, that of newsgroups (NNTP) vs. blogs (RSS). I've been using newsgroups since before there was Google, before there was Yahoo!, and definitely way before blogs. Developers like myself seem to favor them because they are a great way to post a quick question, learn something new or help out a fellow nerd. I've heard a lot of people say that now that blogs and RSS are here that newsgroups should be ditched and everything should be a feed. I have a