Apple just announced some interesting upgrades to the iPod Touch. Some new applications are now available for the iPod - including maps, email, weather, stock quotes, and a customizable home page. Unfortunately, the are planning to charge existing users $20 for the upgrade.
I don't think this is going to persuade people to stop hacking their iPods. Many of these applications already exist for the iPhone, and Apple is simply installing them on the iPod Touch as well. The binaries are identical, so they don't even need to recompile. It costs them nothing to do this - just add the applications into the iPod deployment package.
To an uninformed customer, like me I guess, it seems like they are simply trying to get another $20 from my pocket, for no discernable reason. It's not costing them $20 to develop and deliver these to me. It's just they've been holding them back from me. It's like a cover charge to a bar, where I've already paid $400 to be a member (to buy the iPod) and regularly pay for drinks (songs) anyways. So why this extra $20?
Add this to the already long list of reasons Apple is one of the most consumer unfriendly companies around. (With Sony of course.)
I wonder what a Zune is like?
It struck me the other day, as I was in my local Sony Store oogling the beautiful televisions, that I have mixed feelings towards Sony. I mostly hate them, but I do own all Sony stereo equipment, and when I redo my home theatre later this year it will probably be Sony as well.
Sony makes great products. No doubt, their products might cost more than the competition but you get what you pay for. You want the cheapest LCD around, buy Prima. But if you want something to show off to your friends and make them jealous, get a Sony.
But they are also one of the most consumer unfriendly companies around. While everyone has standardized on the SD flash memory format for cameras, Sony introduces the MemoryStick. So if I buy a Sony camera, I can't use all these cheap 2GB SD cards I have and instead have to buy expensive Sony-only cards. No thanks.
A few years ago I purchased a new camera, made by Konica Minolta. I liked that camera a lot, except I lost the lens cap for it. Speaking with a camera store sales clerk some time later, I learned that Sony purchased some assets from Konica Minolta and that Konica Minolta would stop making cameras as a result. (So no, I could not buy a new lens cover for my camera.) Did Sony buy the Minolta technology just so that Minolta would get out of the camera business?
The lowlight was of course the famous (infamous) rootkit incident. Inserting a Sony Music CD into your computer actually modified Windows in such a way that made it easier for virus writers to hide viruses in your system. Inserting a music CD in your computer should not have to install software, let alone modify Windows. It should just play.
Sony was the company that brought the world BetaMax, and now they are the company behind Blu-Ray. I understand innovation, but I don't understand doing things to make life more difficult and confusing for your customers.
I suppose I should be thankful that Sony computers run Windows and not some proprietary operating system. I'm sure they would have done that if they could.
A CNN blogger at CES this year made the comment that Sony makes too many products.
"There will be 16 new Handycams, two new Walkman phones, a Blu-ray PC drive, a mainstream entry into the Alpha camera line, new Mylo models, some new Vaios, a bunch of new Bravias -- although I missed the exact number, apparently 10 of them are 1080p," Jongewaard said.
"How on earth can it be profitable to have this many different products?" she added.
That's another thing about Sony. They make something like 200,000 products. No exaggeration, it's that high. They seem a bit unfocused.
It's Christmas. And every year at this time, as families get together to sit down and eat a traditional meal together, there's one ritual that also happens in millions of homes across North America as well.
I'm talking about removing viruses from your relative's computer.
I knew my nephews machine was due for some cleaning, as a few days ago I started receiving strange MSN messages from him, inviting me to download a ZIP file. I knew it was bogus, and there's no way I'm accepting a file like that under those circumstances. He's got a virus. Again.
It occured to me tonight, as I was applying the latest Microsoft patches (which strangely never get applied even though I set it to automatic install), that I actually enjoyed cleaning viruses off the machine. Maybe that's the geek in me. But I have a standard set of tools I use to get rid of the nasty stuff, and I get a certain level of satisfaction when the AVG anti-virus program reports 55 threats found, and is able to remove all of them.
Now I do wish that there was some, sure-fire way, to keep that machine clean no matter what the kids did to it. The problem I guess is that they do need to install software from time-to-time and I live to far to take away their "admin" access and be able to come by to install things as they need. That's not a reliable solution.
But in the meantime, I sit there for hours running anti-virus scans, and anti-malware scans, uninstalling bad programs, removing odd registry entries. And feeling geek superiority over the virus writers for now.
I'm switching DNS providers tonight. I've had it with my current provider, which has let me down again.
If this site goes offline for a bit, that's what happened. Sorry about the interruption... Be back soon!
When starting a new business, entrepreneurs have a dream. That dream is that there is this great untapped demand out there, who are looking for something and not finding it. There are people out there looking for green widgets, and no supplier currently makes green widgets, and you're going to come along and sweep up this customer base who are waiting, just waiting, for a product like theirs to come along.
In modern Search Engine Marketing, that's impossible.
Internet marketers are watching the major search engines like hawks. They are looking at their analytics tools, their adwords tools, and their estimated traffic tools. They see what ordinary people are typing into search engines. They know before anyone what is becoming more popular.
And they're waiting. They're catching them early. A search marketer finds a term that estimates 50,000 search a month. He sees that the top results for that term are somewhat irrelevant or old. The top result is Wikipedia, or the top result is some news article from 2003.
And they register the domain name for it. Buy it cheaply off someone if necessary. And they build an ad site. They capture that 50,000 right away. They're fast and nimble, they know all the SEO tricks. Pretty soon they're the number 1 result. And it's going to be hard to knock them off that perch.
This is the efficiency of search engine marketing today. There is no known keywords that are easy to rank well for. And they know faster than anyone when a set of keywords gains or loses popularity. And they move with it.
And forget just "ad sites" any more. That was so 2006. Search engine marketers are moving beyond just Google Adsense and advertising based revenue. The company that owns "Phone.com", primarily known as just an advertising site, is building an actual VOIP product. They think they can make more money selling phone service than the $10,000s a month they're making in ads. And they're doing the same thing with "Software.com" becoming a software download store. The same company owns Chocolate.com, Jeans.com, Relationship.com, and a host of other good names.
The internet marketers have arrived. They're not just selling advertising. They're building businesses around the best keywords. And they're going to be hard to beat.
By the way, I searched "Phone" in Google. Phone.com is #3. Software.com is #3 for software too.
I'm starting to lose trust and confidence in Firefox. What has happened over at Mozilla to turn what was once the "standard browser" of technology-savvy people everywhere, into the browser that's always letting me down?
It started with the ocassional crash. I remember feeling kind of shocked the first time I saw Firefox 2 crash. After a number of years of being reliable and stable, there it was - falling flat on its face. Over time, as the crashing happened again and again, I was less shocked.
Firefox has gone through a number of security and stability upgrades. From 2.0.0.0 to 2.0.0.1 and on and on. Firefox automatically updates for me whenever a new stable release is pushed out by the developers.
But how did 2.0.0.8 slip out?
I started Firefox today, and noticed for the first time on a particularly ad-filled web site that for some reason Adblock wasn't blocking any ads. I opened the extension tab and saw this:
All of my extensions are broken. Restarting Firefox didn't fix it.
According to the official bug report which was filed TWO MONTHS AGO, developers are still trying to figure out how to fix it. Downloading the latest browser (2.0.0.9) or even one of the development builds won't do it.
Open source is supposed to be better than closed source right? Bugs are found and fixed in 24 hours, or so the story goes. I consider this to be a serious problem - all of my extensions no longer work. And as far as I can tell, this bug has been known for 2 months now. All-in-all, it's a huge knock to the reputation of the supposedly "stable and less bugs" browser. That myth has just been shattered, although truth be told it's been in jeopardy for some time.
Someone recently hired me for a very specific task: improve their site ranking in Google for some specific search terms. I thought that was a fairly easy task. One look at their web site made me see that their site was quite search engine unfriendly - a lot of images with text in it. Obviously, as pretty as your site is, if Google sees page after page of blank space, its not going to think very much of your site. So, I went through all their HTML, changed many of the text-images to just text, and added alt text to the others that I didn't want to change (like headers, and text with graphics behind them). And now I wait. And wait. And wait. The problem now is that Google isn't coming back to reindex their site. Google did make an appearance in October, but that was before I had uploaded the new pages. And since October, Google hasn't been back. So, this is the SEO dillemma. In an ideal world, I could make a few changes to the site, watch for the reaction in Google. Make a few more changes, and check the reaction. Rinse and repeat. But if I have to wait a month or TWO each time, that kind of makes it difficult. I understand Google has various spider priorities, where they visit CNN.com 100 times per day, visit my site once per day, and apparently visit my client's site once per month or less. I wonder how long it will take to get Google to visit my client's weekly at least. Is that even possible? I'll let you know, as only time will tell. (And I wait. And wait. And still waiting.)
SEO Theorist Michael Martinez shares an interesting list of 20 hard core SEO tips.
My favorites?
2. Add 5 new pages of content to your site every week
It's true. The more original content you have, the better. And if your content is growing steadily over time, people will bookmark your site and come back. Content, content, content.
15. Create a 1-page listing of 20 unknown web sites you wish you had created, and post it to your site.
You grow reputation by not only having quality content, but by pointing to other people's quality content. If you link to the same old sites everyone else is linking to (YouTube), it's not that significant to Google. And if you link to bad neighborhoods (like link farms, made for adsense sites, and the like), you'll ruin your own reputation with Google. But if you link to quality content, not only will your visitors be happy, but the big ol' Googlebot will too.
20. Define a metric of three to five factors that does not include Alexa, PageRank, Compete, or any of the common backlink checkers.
This one's hard. Basically, in order to stand out in a crowd you have to be different. You shouldn't do what one million other web sites are doing (comparing themselves to Alexa), you should come up with your own definition of success.
I'll admit to only being an iPod Touch owner for two weeks, but so far the device has acted perfectly until today.
I was playing some music, and while I was playing with the music selection menu, something strange happened. All the controls disappeared. So I can see the album cover, but none of the play, pause, fast forward type controls. But the music was still playing.
So anyways some time later, I go to unlock the device and I get the familar Earth wallpaper. But no "Slide here to unlock".
It's really weird. I made a video of it here.
Anyways, rebooting the device has fixed it for now. But does this have anything to do with upgrading to iPod software 1.1.1? The same version that bricked a bunch of iPhones? Don't know.
The Apple iPod touch looks like a brilliant piece of technology. It's an iPod, it can surf the web with WiFi, you can view YouTube videos and buy iTunes songs. I want one. It'll be my next iPod. But in one move, Apple has cut the legs out from under a few rabid iPhone fans.
From some reports, apparently the iPhone isn't a great phone. What about all those people who gave up phones they were really attached to, locked themselves into a 2 year contract with AT&T, in some cases giving up cheaper monthly plans with AT&T to pay more with the same provider? Some bloggers estimate the total 2-year cost of the iPhone at $1,900. The iPod touch is $399 with no monthly fees. Those early iPhone adopters - just got screwed. What about people who flew to the United States from England, or drove down from Canada, purchased iPhones (again with 2 year agreements) willing to pay hefty roaming fees? Screwed. What about those people who spent all summer trying to hack the iPhone, to allow people in other countries to own and use such a cool device? Well, their business model just went up in smoke. In some ways, the iPod touch seems like a better device than the iPhone, since it has no monthly charge associated with it. (Most people with iPhones seem to think that AT&T is overcharging for the monthly plans.) I can keep my phone AND own an iPhone. Cool!
I have been looking for a Poker game for my XBox 360 for a while, and while browsing the shelves at Blockbuster, this one caught my eye. So I rented it. I want my $7 back.
There's only one thing really important when it comes to a poker video game: that it plays poker well. All of the other considerations, such as interface design, come second.
On the sole criteria of "playing poker well", World Championship Poker: All-In featuring Howard Lederer and his sister Annie Duke on the cover, ranks an "F" - it fails by a long shot. If I were Annie Duke, I would be suing to take my picture off the cover cause it ruins her good name.
How bad can it be? Here are some examples:
* Playing in career mode, I sat down at a 5-card stud game. When my pair of Aces was beaten by 3-Queens the first time, I thought I was fairly beat. When it happened again 3 hands later (trip Queens over my two Aces), I cursed my bad luck. When it happened AGAIN 3 hands after that (huh? trip Queens again?), I started to get suspicious. And when I was dealt two aces AGAIN 3 hands after that, I folded them.
THE STUPID GAME DEALS THE SAME CARDS OVER AND OVER! This happened a few times, where I remember getting a pair of eights, drawing 3 cards, and getting two pair aces and eights. Happened a few hands later. Happened again a few hands after that. Getting random numbers right is FUNDAMENTAL to a poker game. Not this one.
* Playing in a tournament (100 player, multi-table). The opponents "go all in" almost every hand, or as a minimum "raise big". All-in. All-in. Raise $400 (blinds are $25/$50). All-in. It gets tiring. Finally I catch pocket Aces, and I call. Opponent catches a straight and I'm out.
Next tourney. Same thing - computer goes all-in every hand. Finally I catch A-K suited and I call. Opponent catches a straight and I'm out.
Next tourney. Same thing - computer goes all-in every hand. This time I keep folding, waiting for the all-in players to be busted out. Smart guy right? No. As soon as my table is broken up, I lose the very next hand. I didn't even get a chance to fold or call or even see my cards. And I am out of the tourney. Must have been a programming bug.
This game is seriously broken.
One thing that has always stumped me, and many others I bet, is how Apple has risen to become such an admired and respected company while essentially limiting their customers choice to zero. The most anti-competitive computer company in the world is also the most admired... how odd!
For instance, in 2006 Apple was the PC World Hardware Company of the Year. Fortune named it the Most Admired Company in Innovation of the Year in 2006 as well. And almost daily consumers are faced with "Hi I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC." ads that despite their gross inaccuracies and untrue claims, are generally thought of as an advertising success story.
But then you compare their actual product offerings with what competitors offer, and you're left wondering why their customers are often repeat buyers given the way the company treats them sometimes.
* The iMac is a beautiful machine. A computer hidden inside an LCD monitor. But as a PC owner, I upgrade the memory, hard disks, DVD writers, and video cards on my machine every so often. Sometimes I get a new LCD for my computer, as the prices of large 21" LCD screens have dropped a lot. How do you upgrade an iMac? You don't. You buy a new one every couple of years for $1,500-$2,000...
* In the time it took Microsoft to go from Windows XP to Vista (Oct 2001 to Jan 2007), Apple had 5 versions of OS 10 (10.0 to 10.4) and is expected to ship their sixth one this year. That's five times the Windows upgrade costs. Outraged that Vista Home Premium Upgrade costs $149.99? OSX users pay $129.00 for each version, or $645 for those 5 upgrades from OSX 10.0 by the end of this year. Microsoft releases service packs for free, while Apple rolls it into a DVD and calls it a new version.
* Apple TV looks awesome. Even I've been at the Apple Store watching the demo. But just like its iPod cousin, it only works with iTunes and iTunes Store. And iTunes Store has almost no video content in Canada. So while Americans are happily paying for and downloading TV shows and the like, Canadians do not. So why by an Apple TV for which there is almost no content?
* Speaking of Apple TV, it falls into the same no-upgrade trap as the iMac. It comes with a puny 40GB hard drive. In a world of 1000GB hard drives becoming affordable, why should Apple limit you to 40GB? And when they release the 80GB version later this year and then the 120GB version next year, what about the poor saps who bought this version? Sorry, you'll have to throw away this one and buy the next release...
* Which reminds me of the iPod. For years the iPod has been part fashion-accessory, part-music player. It seems like people were waiting for the iPod Video for years, and even when it eventually came, it wasn't the full-screen device consumers wanted. We're on the 5th generation iPod now aren't we? I own a 4th generation one (iPod Photo) that can't play videos. Wait, why can't my device play videos? There is apparently no technical reason. People have hacked their iPod Photos to do it. I guess Apple wants me to throw this $400 device away every year and buy a new one too. I hate when a device CAN do something, and the only reason it doesn't is that the company wants you to buy a newer model.
* Let's not get into the famous Apple FairPlay issues. Apple (the dominant music seller on the Internet) refuses to license the technology to other companies, thereby enforcing its MP3 player monopoly. And the only reason they are beginning to offer DRM free music is because consumers and governments worldwide are starting to complain. It's like throwing a dog a little bone, hoping he'll be distracted enough for you to get away. Meanwhile their monopoly persists.
So I ask - why is this company still so highly regarded and loved? Are consumers really so enamored with the shiny packaging to ignore the handcuffs packaged inside?
For fun I'm going to try this. Google has a new service that lets you create your own search engine. As an example. .NET web developers will find http://www.searchdotnet.com/ useful as it only returns authoritative Microsoft sources. MSDN, microsoft.com, MS blogs, etc. I've added that to my custom Google homepage.
So what should I create a search engine for? How about poker - a search engine that will search only the top poker blogs nd ignore the ads and such?
Check http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=007309252445351814162%3Aym0xcd0ajbk in a little bit to see how that goes. :)
The next adventure in my journey from Visual Studio 2003 to the wonderful Visual Studio 2005 is to convert our large source control repository from SourceSafe (VSS) to the new Team Foundation source control. This should be fun. Visual Studio 2005 comes with a tool called VSSConverter which analyzes your existing VSS database, and then when things look good it migrates it for you. Very handy. VSSConverter will migrate the files, including check-in history, to a new project in Foundation Server. In my practice, the migration happened almost flawlessly. The one big hiccup for me is that there are some developers who have left the company, and since Foundation Server is built off of Active Directory, I had to map those users to Guest. So you lose some user names in the conversion from people who have left. Is there any way around that? Any tips or hints would be appreciated.
After the success of my Office 2007 upgrade, I had been itching to upgrade to Vista.
Vista has an Upgrade Advisor Tool and it is well recommended. The Upgrade Advisor told me my system would be able to run Vista. It did point out a couple of issues, one of which stopped me from installing right away.
The computer I wanted to install Vista on has two physical drives, a C: drive with 15GB total space, and an E: drive with 250GB total space. The Upgrade Advisor said I did not have enough space on my C: Drive to run Vista. That worried me, because what was I going to do?
The other issue UA warned me about was that my video card did not support Aero Glass. I was disappointed.
Those two issues stopped me from installing Vista for a little bit, but one night I was listening to the Windows Weekly Podcast with Paul Thurrott. This Podcast had me so excited to try Vista that I said I would install it anyways, Upgrade Advisor be damned.
Now during the actual install, I thought I had the disk space problem licked. Vista asked me which drive I wanted to install it to, and I picked E:. Whooo!
Except, during the install, Vista started filling up my remaining free space on C:. It uses C: as its temp drive! Argh! Basically, I needed 5-6GB free space on C: just to install on E:. Good thing I had some free space.
After the install was done, Vista was looking great. I updated a few drivers, including my audio and video drivers to the latest version. And swapped in a newer video card I had from another computer, so now I can run Aero.
Basically, Vista is a prettier Operating System. I can see how the Mac-zealots say that Microsoft copied the look from OSX, although somehow I like Vista and not OSX. Microsoft has done it right, and the pretty graphics grew on me.
There's not much reason to upgrade except for the prettier UI. XP was pretty good, but Vista is a bit better.
I received a box of DVDs from Microsoft as part of my Microsoft Partner subscription, and one of them was the latest version of Office. I'm a sucker for upgrading for no reason, so I popped in the DVD and let it work its magic on my computer.
Now I don't use every component of Office in my everyday work, but the three programs I do use (Word, Excel and Outlook) got complete face lifts.
The big innovation in this release is the ribbon. The ribbon has been getting a lot of press and deservedly so. It seems to have been designed with significant thought and intention. It's like a group of usability experts got into a room and said, we're going to design an intelligent toolbar. Things the user is most likely to do should be prominent and hard to miss. Things should also be grouped together logically. And when the user does something, it should intuitively change.
This is the new ribbon toolbar for sending an email in Outlook:
Compare this to the old way Outlook used to look:
Its a vast improvement, not only from an asthetic perspective, but also in usability.
I highly recommend upgrading to Office 2007. And NO, Vista is not required for the upgrade.
This may or may not be new, but VMWare has a product that can turn a physical PC into a virtual machine:
http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/
What this means is that I can take my old PC that I've had for 5 years or more, and turn it into a virtual machine. Then install that onto my brand new machine and get rid of the old one.
The major thing stopping me from switching 100% to my new PC is all of the little applications and data I have accumulated over the years. For instance, I do my taxes using QuickTax or similar computer programs. I have 7 or 8 years of this tax software installed (1 per year). To switch to a new machine, should I bother reinstalling all past years of tax software? Can I even find the CD's and the license keys?
I'd like to start over. But I'd like to have the old PC on standby, in case I have a need for some little used application. This is perfect.
Microsoft recently released a toolkit called Atlas at http://atlas.asp.net/
Atlas is an AJAX framework for ASP.NET 2.0. If you don't know what AJAX is, it is best described as a web programming technique where the page appears to update itself (or actually does update itself) without a full refresh of the page by the server. This can be automatic or at the request of the user viewing the page.
For instance, the up-arrow images on the left side of this page are AJAX-type controls that allow the user to alter their view of this page. This happens without a trip back to the web server.
An example of automatic updating would be a page with stock quotes embedded inside a news article (like http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/5x12BB8tQmtNw49x3nlsrfJ?siteid=mktw&dist=TNMostRead ), and every few seconds the stock quotes update themselves with the latest values, but the rest of the page stays the same. In this case, the web browser is actually going back to the server to get a new quote, and updating a small part of the web page with the new value. The reason this is useful is that full page refreshes are slow, and annoy the user by making the page flicker or become unreadable.
For a live example of Atlas, check out the official samples page at http://atlas.asp.net/atlastoolkit/
Look at the Accordion control. As you click the headers, all other headers collapse and only the one selected is open. Or try the slider control - a control not normally available in HTML web pages. These controls are cross-browser compatible with IE and Firefox.
I saw a demo of this last week and it was very cool. http://www.msdnevents.com/
A few years back (well, many years now actually)... Microsoft gave me a free copy of Visual Studio 6 Professional Edition for taking and passing a MCSD beta exam.
At the time, I was amazed because I think the software retailed for like $1000. It was like winning $1000 in a lottery - well, not exactly but still... free expensive software.
Nowdays, Microsoft offers their Visual Studio Express products free. I am using Express to assist with a big Open Source development project from home, and it's incredible that it is free. In fact, they may have lost a sale of the retail version of Visual Studio 2005 to me, because I don't need it.
Yesterday I heard that Borland is offering it's Turbo products free - Turbo C#, Turbo Delphi, Turbo C++. Wow again. So if I wasn't using Express already, I would definitely try Turbo C#.
Java people have Eclipse, which I hear is really good. Are there any other really good free development tools out there? Let me know.
I've been having a blast with my XBox 360. As you may recall, I bought one a few weeks ago and have been having a great time with it. I've mostly used it to play games - from Need for Speed Most Wanted, to Tiger Woods 06. And I have been enjoying the XBox Live Arcade a lot too - purchased a couple of games from there.
A little while ago I installed Windows Media Center on one of my PC's - mostly because the XP Pro key I have didn't work. I have stacks of official Microsoft XP Pro CD's and no working keys. But Media Center PC has been just as good - even better. Media Center is XP with a PLUS.
Media Center kind-of integrates with the 360. Well, actually, it is supposed to be full integration. My XBox 360 is a media center pc for my living room television. But MCE only runs Windows Media WMV file fornats. Since all of my videos are more compressed than that (DivX mostly), I haven't been able to play streaming videos on my XBox.
Until today.
Today is the day I found VLC360. VLC360 is an ingenious little app that converts DivX and other movie types to Windows Media format ON THE FLY. So, as far as my XBox is concerned, I am playing WMV files. But the files are stored on my computer in DivX or xvid. It's amazing really. The person who came up with this idea and was able to implement it so nicely is a genious, no doubt about it.
If you have an XBox 360, and you have a Media Center PC, get this app. I have a REAL media center now. Wow!
It's not even 9pm, and I am home. Surprising, because we did a rather large "production deployment" tonight at 4pm, and that usually means an two to three hours of running around, followed by a couple of hours of stabilization.
Not this time. Things seem to have worked right out of the gate. I stuck around a few extra hours just in case (and have to prepare for another deployment tomorrow), but it was mostly unnecessary.
I give full credit to the QA department (particularly this one tester) who tested the crap out of the code before it went live. She found all the interesting defects, and I had them fixed a couple of weeks ago.
I love it when that happens. I think my company finally has its development process exactly right.
Rip It, Mix It, Burn It. That used to be the Apple iPod ad slogan, until the record companies declared ripping illegal. Coincidentally, the iTunes Music Store also debuted around the time that slogan died, as it become against Apple's financial interest for customers to Rip music.
Speaking of which, no one ever "mixes" any more. I had a friend in University that used to make killer mix tapes. For you younger kids, he would get some good songs and put them on a cassette tape that you could listen to in your car. With the advent of the iPod, and MP3 players in general, I now carry 1,000 songs around with me everywhere, and mix tapes are dead. I do miss them, because creating them was an art. Not to mention the actual art my friend used to hand-draw for the lining of the cassette holder.
The next evolution in home-rolled entertainment became SVCD. It was so easy to take an AVI or MPEG and burn it on a CD-ROM. Even old DVD players supported VideoCD format. The downside was CD's could only support 70-80 minutes of video content. So if your movie happened to run 90 minutes, as most movies do, you ended up having to split the movie over two CD's. It was a bit of a pain to have to get up and switch the CD in the middle of the movie, but programs such as TMPGEnc made it so easy to convert and split long movies. Burning SVCDs were easy.
I have always found burning actual DVD's hard. Extremely hard. First of all, the CD/DVD burning software that I have does not convert the movies from AVI format to the proper DVD format. You have always needed DVD Editing Software. I even tried some trial-versions of DVD editing software, like Pinnacle Studio, and even could not get 1% close to getting it to work. I was destined to not be able to burn a DVD playable in a DVD player.
But then I found Avi2Dvd. I have used this software before and could not get it to work. But I downloaded the lastest free beta, and have been burning DVD's like crazy for two days. Whatever the author changed, it works. It really really works.
Now the basic DVD Burning is fairly simple - load the AVI file, leave the default settings alone, and click Add Job and then Go. Easy. Not even 1-2-3. As easy as 1-2.
You can also author DVD menus, although I have not yet tried to. You know, that intro screen where you can either press play, or set some options, or view a chapter guide. You can make them. And it's all free.
Really amazing. If you have some videos on your PC (home or otherwise) and you want to turn them to a DVD, look no further. The quality has been amazing so far. No coasters, no audio-video sync problems. So far, perfect.
I may have just bought my last $5 movie... blank DVD's cost 25 cents a piece!
Tonight was going to be an extremely productive night, or so I thought.
1) I planned to upgrade this blog from dasBlog version 1.6 to 1.8.
2) I planned to install Windows on a new PC, and start using that as my primary machine.
Ah well, 1 out of 2 ain't bad.
The upgrade to dasBlog went fairly smoothly. For some reason my web server's FTP server is extremely flaky, and I lose the connection every few minutes. So upgrading was tedious, but I blame FTP. So here I am on 1.8. I might try a new theme in a few minutes too!
The install of Windows is currently on pause. And I may be screwed - well, I may have to pony up $200 for a new license for Windows. Damn.
OK, here's the story so far. I am currently running an old Pentium 4 1GHz (1.5GB ram 400GB hdd) as my main home machine. Yes, I know - 1 lousy GHz. But I don't do much with it other than Office, Outlook and IE, so it suits my purposes at home.
I have been accumulating parts for a new computer, and finally have it together. An AMD Sempron 2800+ (512MB ram 300GB hdd). I will of course have to buy some more RAM later. But last night I was doing some speed tests, and it turns out the Sempron is 3 times faster than the Pentium 4 I have. So what the hell - I figured I would switch over permanently.
And so here I sit. Having done the Windows install on the new machine. And it's asking for my license key. I have a box full of official Microsoft CD's and keys, so no problem. Or so I thought. I must have 20 official copies of Windows around, and 20 keys, but none of them work. I have keys for XP Home, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Enterprise, Advanced, this, that and everything. But no XP Pro. I have an official CD for XP Pro. But I can't find the license key anywhere.
This is crazy. There should be a better way to manage these keys. They are slips of paper and they can be easily lost. So what can I do? Call Microsoft and say I lost my key, and I would like to transfer my copy of Windows XP to a new system??? Hey... maybe I can do that. It's worth a try at least. Right?
There is something about car racing that makes it the perfect genre for a video game. It's the type of game format that allows for 2-3 minutes of intense concentration (a big race), and you can follow it up with some low-intensity fun (just driving around, exploring the game).
Game makers learned long ago to add a "career" element to most games, so you can feel a sense of progress. Computer-controlled competitors get tougher every race, and you in turn get cash and points to improve the look and performance of your car. You get better as they get better.
I recently read an article that claimed that computer games have gotten a lot easier over time. That is, 99% of gamers that played PacMan could not get past the first few levels, whereas in today's games allow "saves", infinite lives, and are more easily conquered. I don't view this as "the games of today are suckier", but instead as "games have evolved and improved".
For instance, when you play the game Laura Croft Legend, for instance, there are several pre-defined levels. Each level gets tougher. If you had to go back to the beginning each time you died, you would never see the later levels. All of the graphical design and programming work that went in to creating them would be wasted on all but a small number of gamers.
So I don't think it's fair to say that games are easier today than they once were. It's just that the objective of the game has changed. In 1976, a video game was meant to provide 10 minutes or so of entertainment at a time. In fact game designers didn't want you to play for longer than that, since it would cost them money (fewer quarters in the arcade slot per day). Now 30 years later in 2006, games are meant to provide weeks of entertainment. They provide in game prizes for achievement. They provide an incentive for a customer to keep playing them again. The next level is only 1 hour away!
So on my new Xbox 360, I have been finding myself investing dozens of hours in Need for Speed Most Wanted. I am defeating Blacklist guys left, right and center. And I am loving every minute of it.
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