i finally got the upgrade to Windows Vista for my Dell XPS 410. my $2,000 PC that sits neath my TV.
the immediate results of my "upgrade":
i am flying out to Israel in a few hours, and i want to fix at least some of these issues so maskit will not kill me.
$#&* Microsoft.
this is an excerpt from the FAQ page from TiVo regarding their new partnership with Amazon.
What is the "Pay-TV Blackout Window"?
Due to restrictions from the video rights holders, most newly released movies will occasionally become temporarily unavailable for re-download from Your Media Library—even after they’ve already been purchased.
During this "Pay-TV Blackout Window" certain programs will be temporarily unavailable from the Unbox catalog and Your Media Library. This happens during the program’s run on a pay-cable channel.
The video will be automatically replaced and made available to you through Your Media Library once the "Pay-TV Blackout Window" has ended.
if i get it right what they are saying in this cryptic explanation is that lets say i bought a movie and kept it in the Media Library i may suddenly find out that i can't watch it because there is some sort of blackout?!
i am sure this was not the idea of anyone at either TiVo or Amazon, but rather some twisted minds (probably a lawyer) in the media industry. it is amazing that they still don't get it. trying to find new (and clearly stupid) ways to make it hard for people to get their content.
i am quite sure that people trying to watch a movie they already paid for who will get the bizarre error message will go to bittorrent for good, never looking back.
insane.
i have been playing with the wii console for a week now. i had to pay a premium to get it (on ebay) cause i could not find any in the stores in our area.
tom came over for the weekend and we spent a good chunk of time playing with the wii. as a testament to the poor shape of both us, we had more workout playing baseball on the wii than we had otherwise for months.. (tom actually complained about sore muscles…)
nintendo did a GREAT job in putting together a fun experience. while microsoft and sony focused on technology, developing chips and processors, nintendo focused on the user experience.
it is a new gaming experience, and it is easy to imagine where it will go from here (actually no need to imagine i saw the future of gaming in wired's nextfest a couple of months ago). gamers will not only be great consumers for energy drinks, but will also have to buy deodorants and shower gel, cause they'll be running, jumping, fighting and dancing for real in a virtual world.
we played till every night till 1am or so when we had to quit, since our reflexes were not as sharp and we started losing games and dropping points in our rankings. it is addictive, and it is really a good workout.
i went to walk around the street markets in hong kong last night. it is divided so there are several markets each focused on a specific category: electronics (the biggest), clothes, gold fish?! (these guys are weird in more way than one), food, and "all the rest".
being the impulsive shopper that i am i looked to buy a compact digital camera. i made the mistake of asking sellers what would they recommend. each one recommended a different model and bad mouthed models recommended by others (they all had good arguments..).
the amount of choice was overwhelming. so i found it hard to make a decision.. at the end i decided on a panasonic. now i assumed (like many other shoppers i suppose) that this type of market will offer very attractive pricing, especially that many of them have stickers claiming their products are not fake..
when i got the quotes and started to bargain i used my blackberry to access shopping.com and see what is the best price i can get for the product if i was shopping online in the US.
to my surprise the prices online in the US were ALWAYS cheaper than the prices in the market. only in one case i was able to get the seller to match the price (and throw in a bigger memory card), but he was out of stock…
when i got back to the hotel i checked the reviews for the camera, and was happy i didn't buy it..
this does not bode well for these small merchants. as mobile comparison shopping will hit the mass market (and it will) these guys will be left with very little or no margin. consumers will be smarter and will negotiate better. information is king.
danny sullivan from searchenginewatch reports about google's announcement that it is shutting down google answers.
there are a couple of things that are interesting here:
a. google is not invincible - with google stock hitting $500 and hype that just continues to build it is easy to see google taking over the universe. but this failure i think brings a lot of hope to small start-ups, entrepreneurs and product managers in yahoo, msn, aol… google can be beaten.
i can already see the above chart appearing in the powerpoints of entrepreneurs looking to raise money or answer the inevitable questions from investors "but what if google decides to do it?", or "google already does something quite similar".
google has become the microsoft of the 90s in that regard. back then the questions were the same, just the big invincible company was microsoft.
b. yahoo! can still put out a good product - i am not a fan of yahoo! answers, or any other answers service for that matter (i am usually looking for instant gratification when searching, and don't want to wait for a human to come up with an answer). but i did try out yahoo! answers when it launched, and saw how it could be successful and hit a nerve for some people.
it is encouraging to see yahoo! being able to be aggressive and innovate. i'd like to nominate the product manager/head of business unit for a fat bonus 
c. google is mature enough to shutdown failing products - deciding to shutdown a business unit requires some level of maturity. and it is nice to see that google can admit failure. still i think they are probably a couple of years away from a "peanut butter manifesto"
in the skype 3.0 beta that i am using they added a bunch of features. one of them is a new button in the chat window offering the user to “do more”. this is currently used for games, but seems like a type of a place to throw in junk.
following on my previous post on what makes me switch between online services i’d like to extend a small piece of advice to skype/ebay: do less.
there is also an additional tab on the main window for joining “live conversations”. doesn’t seem like a mass market feature to me.
they should look at what happened to icq, aim, yahoo and msn. too many features are hurting the user experience. their challenge is how to promote new capabilities to the user, but whatever the new feature is, it does not worth messing up the user experience.
their core business is free (or cheap) calls made simple, and getting people to buy skype credits (mostly for skypeout and skypein). this is where they should focus.
i experience the war between these titans personally as i make decisions on which services to use online.
following are the key services i am using online, and a bit of rationale behind the decisions that got me there.
email: gmail has taken over as my primary personal email from yahoo. my first personal email was hotmail. i moved to yahoo because it had a better user experience.
i moved to gmail a few months ago, because i thought the yahoo user interface became too clattered and slow. they also did a poor job in filtering spam.
instant messaging: skype and gtalk are the only IM services i am using now. i stopped using MSN and Yahoo! messenger.
i started to use IM with ICQ. when it became too much off a bloatware i moved to Yahoo and MSN (and Odigo too, but this is a different story). i settled on skype and gtalk because of their simplicity and voice quality.
photo sharing: after a long affair with imagestation from sony, i moved to flickr (bought by yahoo). what got me to move to flickr was the richness of the features to edit and organize, with what i think (but my wife and other disagree) is a simple interface for viewing the pictures.
search: i use google. and i haven’t tried microsoft or yahoo search engines recently. i guess they’ll have to do something really different and innovative to get me to switch (or google could do something to hurt the user experience).
reading blogs: i used to get my fix through my yahoo!, but last week i officially switched to google reader. i wanted a better way to manage my feeds, and i thought google reader is a better choice (even though it can use a lot of improvement).
i hated the fact that i had to find a trick in order to get my OPML file from my yahoo, so i can import it into google reader.
finance: one of the last things i still use yahoo! for. google finance is playing catch up and is not there, yet.
maps: started like everyone else with mapquest, moved to yahoo. and now am an avid google maps fan. especially after i found out they have a mobile client for my blackberry.
blogging: i use wordpress to power my blog, and windows live writer to publish posts. i guess this the only online related microsoft tool i am using. which also happens to be a downloadable client rather than a web service… i guess that says a lot about microsoft’s internet play so far
so to summarize:
it is seems that there is a clear trend that more than new services win me over, it is services that i currently use that cause me to switch and look for alternatives. this happens when they “upgrade” and “improve” their product to a point where i no longer find it useful.
google is currently winning the war for my personal online usage. yahoo is on a steep decline, and microsoft are showing some signs that they may still have a play.
interestingly enough this same phenomenon can be traced in the stock price of these companies. i guess the common wisdom that you should buy (stock) of companies that make stuff you use and like, is a common wisdom that i should actually follow.
tom sent me this one this morning.
i am not sure it is real. but this looks like a cool phone.
i understand it will come out in Q1 2007 exclusively on Cingular and that Verizon Wireless is concerned (they should be).
if it will work well then they will most likely meet their internal (very aggressive) projections
i downloaded the gmail mobile app to my blackberry 8700 yesterday
. it is awesome! (does any one still use this word?) really. the best mobile app i played with to date.
it is fast. simple. and delivers the good.
it is just amazing that with all the companies playing with mobile email all these years it took google to come and show how to do it right.
now i have both gtalk and gmail on my blackberry. next should be google reader, so i can read all my RSS feeds easily.
mark cuban thinks that anyone who will buy youtube is a moron. i guess he is talking from his own personal experience, since yahoo! proved to be morons for buying his company, broadcast.com for over $5 billion…
his big reason has to do with the legal liabilities. that as soon as someone with deep pockets (say yahoo! or viacom) will buy youtube the record labels and movie studios will file their lawsuits.
he also does not believe that advertisers should be really interested in putting their ads on user-generated content.
i kind of agree with his first point. copyright laws being so twisted make for a very real risk for youtube or anyone who would acquire them. i believe youtube (and its likes) are discussing the copyright issues with the big copyright holders, and hopefully they will come to some sort of an agreement.
i disagree with his second point. there are now over 100 million videos being watched on youtube daily. they reach a massive audience, and are also collecting information about their userbase. i don't think IBM or GM will buy ads there, but consumer brands who are targeting the 15-35 demographic will do well to advertise there. and youtube could offer much more than the plain-vanilla video ad.
mark cuban just does not like youtube very much. for whatever reason it rubs him the wrong way.
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk
