| Only Microsoft Could Create a Bug Like This |
|
Lifehacker alerts us that there’s a 30-second delay in the login process in Windows 7 if you have a solid-color background. It’s a bug that Microsoft is aware of. Sigh. Why does this not surprise me? |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
Comments (0)December 23, 2009
| An Eye For An Eye Makes Microsoft $290M Poorer |
|
Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Microsoft must remove the custom XML code from its Office software suite by January 11, 2010 and pay Canadian firm i4i $290 million for infringing on its patents. You may recall that back in early September Microsoft asked the Fed Circuit to stay an injunction handed down in U.S. District Court in Texas. The Fed Circuit heard the case and sided with i4i. Microsoft says that, aside from the money, it’s no real biggie: “With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction in August 2009 and have put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from these products. Therefore, we expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction.” Notice that first sentence, in which Microsoft calls the custom XML a “little-used feature.” Reading that, I immediately thought of Neal Stephenson’s book In The Beginning Was The Command Line — still fresh and relevant, even after 10 years — in which he calls MS Office an “omnibus software package” and compares it to Wal-Mart: “As [graphical user interfaces] get more complex, and impose more and more overhead, this tendency becomes more pervasive, and the software packages grow ever more colossal; after a point they begin to merge with each other, as Microsoft Word and Excel and PowerPoint have merged into Microsoft Office: a stupendous software Wal-Mart sitting on the edge of a town filled with tiny shops that are all boarded up … The most serious drawback to the Wal-Mart approach is that most users only want or need a tiny fraction of what is contained in these giant software packages. The remainder is clutter, dead weight.” What’s the app that I use most at work? Notepad. And at home? TextEdit on the Mac. Keep it simple. |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
December 8, 2009
| Google Chrome Extensions Are Now Available (Without Any Smack-Talk) |
|
Extensions for Google Chrome are now live for non-developer folks like me running Windows. I’ll probably go easy on them, just as I have with Firefox. (And there’s no point throwing down some smack about this at my wife because, unlike the Mac — which, according to some agreement I have no recollection of, is apparently “hers” — she could care less what I put on the netbook.) |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
| Google Chrome for Mac (and Some Smack-Talk) |
|
TechCrunch alerts me that a beta version of Google Chrome is available for the Mac. Note to wife: I downloaded the beta. It’s getting installed on the Mac. Oh, yes. You can’t stop me. Oh, no. You gotta sleep sometime. |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
November 24, 2009
| I Hit the Jackpot Yesterday |
|
I had the (dubious) pleasure of trying to get things done using 5 different computer operating systems: Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OS X, Crunchbang Linux, and Google Chrome OS. The latter is a very early pre-release version that I’m running as a virtual machine on my Windows XP laptop. I was stoked about Chrome OS when Google announced it back in July. I thought a stripped-down, lean OS made sense — you know, less-is-more. But I have to say I’m underwhelmed. Chrome OS just feels sort of dumbed-down. The applications tab strikes me as cartoonish. (It sort of reminded me of the Linux distro gOS.) I know Google’s got a lot of work to do on it, so I won’t presume to judge until I get to play with a more-developed version. |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
November 13, 2009
| Upcoming Chrome Releases |
|
TechCrunch reports that Google Chrome OS “will become available for download within a week”. It’s not for everyone, says Michael Arrington: “We expect Google will be careful with messaging around the launch, and endorse a small set of devices for installation. EEE PC netbooks, for example, may be one set of devices that Google will say are ready to use Chrome OS. There will likely be others as well, but don’t expect to be able to install it on whatever laptop or desktop machine you have from day one. Google has previously said they are working with Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba on the project.” Back in July I said I’d install Google Chrome OS on my Acer Aspire in a heartbeat. Now that everyone in my house covets the netbook, I may have to reconsider that. TechCrunch also assures us that a real, honest-to-goodness Google Chrome browser for the Mac “is just weeks away”. That’s a no-brainer for me — I’ll download it, no prob. |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
November 11, 2009
| Small Numbers Loosely Joined |
|
Item 1: Verizon sold 100,000 Droids last weekend. Not bad for an Android phone launch, but small potatoes when you consider Apple sells a million iPhones each time it debuts a new model. But Android is a long-haul project, for sure. Item 2: Only 2 weeks after its release, Windows 7 has the same market share (4%) that Vista had after 7 months. These numbers are based upon Web usage statistics, but they seem to confirm what everyone already knows: after a dog like Vista, anything else will look good by comparison. Item 3: Google has expanded its free holiday wifi offer to 47 airports. And, of course, Philly International isn’t. On. The. List. |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
October 23, 2009
| Win7 is Released! Hellloooooo? Are You Paying Attention? Anybody? |
|
Windows 7 is now out there for the taking buying. I wish Microsoft all the best. But I’m afraid Fake Steve may be right when he says that Microsoft is “now pretty much irrelevant, just like IBM, which is ironic and perhaps fitting since IBM was always the Borg’s ultimate role model.” Oh, and it didn’t take Apple long to tweak the Borg with a new Mac commerical. |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
| Android’s Everywhere |
|
John Gruber notes that Barnes & Noble’s new Nook eBook reader is running Android. You’d of though that since they got a freebie OS they coulda knocked a few dollars off the price, huh? But nooooo … |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
October 20, 2009
| Can I Have Your Attention Here? [UPDATED] |
|
You, in the back, pipe down. Alright. Got some product announcements to go over with you. I’ll do ‘em in alpha order. Apple They had a good 4th quarter: 3 million Macs (up 17% over last year), 7.4M iPhones (+7%), and 10.2M iPods (-8%). Almost $10 billion in revenue, with $1.67 billion in profit. These numbers beat Q3. So, to celebrate, Apple’s just announced enhancements to the MacBook (polycarbonate unibody shell), iMac (new LED display), and Mac mini (more memory and faster processor), as well as a new mouse, called the Magic Mouse, that sports a multi-touch surface. BusinessWeek has a good summary of the details. Barnes & Noble The WSJ is reporting (sub required) that Barnes & Noble will release an eBook reader called the Nook. They got their scoop by reviewing an ad scheduled to run in the New York Times Book Review on October 25: “A new electronic book reader is expected Tuesday from bookseller Barnes & Noble Inc. that will challenge devices from Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Corp. with a color touch screen and $259 price, according to a planned ad for the device. The price for the reader, called the Nook, matches that of Amazon’s Kindle … Details of the reader appear in a full-page advertisement viewed by The Wall Street Journal in the New York Times Book Review section dated Sunday, Oct. 25. The advertisement says the Nook will enable its owners to ‘lend eBooks to friends.’” Books and tools, electronic or otherwise — I never lend ‘em, ’cause I never get ‘em back. UPDATE: On a related note, yesterday Plastic Logic introduced its new eReader. B&N will power the bookstore for the device. Free wifi on every Virgin America flight between November 10, 2009 and January 15, 2010. |
|
|
Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
|
RSS