I'm at MacWorld today covering Steve Jobs' keynote. I was really impressed with the super-thin MacBook Air -- until I found out it has no Ethernet port and an "integrated" battery that can't easily be replaced.
It makes you wonder just what market Apple is targeting here. Business users are the natural market, but I can't see many corporate buyers overlooking these details.
Stage 1: Denial
Set up every possible appointment you can. That's the whole point of a conference, right?
Stage 2: Shock
Sudden realization that you might not have much time to walk the show floor, eat or go to the bathroom because you've set up too many appointments.
Stage 3: Bargaining
Running progressively later for appointments, make apologetic phone calls, try to rearrange schedule.
Stage 4: Acceptance
Brazenly skip every other appointment; use the extra time to run to remaining appointments.
I was aware that Google's e-mail service had a problem in which HTML mail accessed through IMAP on Windows Mobile devices shows up as blanks, but it never bothered me as much as it did today.
I got an urgent e-mail from work asking me to check a typo in a graphic I had sent last night sent -- it came in the form of a PDF (this actually makes a lot of sense when it comes to formatted graphics). Not only could I not read the message using Windows Mobile's default e-mail, I couldn't download the attachment, either.
Forwarding the message to my Yahoo account from the phone's e-mail software didn't work, because the message had been ruined by that point. So I had to log in to Gmail's Web interface and forward it to Yahoo from there. What a pain.
Maybe this is a Windows Mobile problem. But it doesn't matter -- a lot of people use the OS, and Yahoo has figured it out. Google engineers are aware of the problem, but apparently, don't consider it much of a priority.
I didn't really like the first couple of episodes of this series about a San Francisco journalist/time traveler, but kept recording it for some reason. With a dearth of new programming on due to the writers strike, I finally got around to watching the shows piling up on my Windows Media Center. And you know what? Journeyman really grows on you.
Now I'm all caught up on the first half of the season and can't wait for the second half to begin. I hope it doesn't get canceled. It's one of the more sophisticated sci-fi shows I've seen on TV (one of the strengths of Battlestar Galactica) in a while -- and has been far better than season 2 of Heroes so far.
Or maybe I'm just a sucker for sci-fi stories centered around journalists.
Update: Oops. Too late.
I went to the "install fair" at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus this weekend to get an early peek at the long-awaited service pack 1 for Vista. The event gave Microsoft engineers a chance to see how the install process goes on a variety of machines so they can tweak things before this week's public release. The entire install process took about three hours on my machine, but the folks at the event said many people there (including me) ran into a problem that caused a hiccup -- it should be fixed before the service pack goes public.
Unfortunately, I had to uninstall it, because it messed up the sleep function of my laptop. I don't know if this is because my 2710p's sleep feature is nonstandard or whether it's a bug in the Vista service pack, but I can't afford to have anything wrong with my laptop, so I'll just have to wait for the final release. I do plan to install the service pack beta on my home machine to see if it improves reliability. We'll see.
Between my Flash class, apartment hunt and pregnancy (Andrea's pregnancy, actually), I haven't had much time to do any real writing. Today, I'm at a venture capital conference in Half Moon Bay between sessions. Anyway, here are a few odds 'n' ends:
Holiday tip: There is no finer Thanksgiving Day desert than Coco's Harvest Pie. You can thank me later.
Better, stronger, louder. With a different serial number.
Microsoft must be sending already-refurbished consoles to replace newly broken units in rather than waiting to complete the actual repair. In any case, I'm glad to have a functional console back so quickly -- three weeks from the time the old one broke until the refurbished unit was on my doorstep. Just in time for the Thanksgiving weekend.
I can feel the heat coming out the back of the new unit, so it looks like the fix involved much better heat transfer out of the system.
The only downside is that -- because Xbox Live purchases are tied to the hardware as well as your user name -- I now have to be connected to the Internet to play my purchased arcade games, even though they're saved to my hard drive. I hope Microsoft is working on a way to transfer the licenses permanently to the new box.
Here.
Forgive the silly "credits" button. I was about to turn this in when I realized I hadn't met all of the instructor's requirements, namely, a rotating object and a gradient fill.
Is this a brand-new kind of hardware failure for the Xbox 360 or a holiday decoration?
This one was scary.
All the neighbors (and me) just ran out of their houses, which I'm sure is not what we're supposed to do. But I think it's a natural reaction.
Details here.
My Xbox 360 gave me the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" last night, the flashing red signal indicating a general hardware failure. I've heard estimates of fatal defects in up to a third of all Xbox's. From the anecdotal evidence I've run across, though, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the total was closer to two-thirds.
Anyway, my machine just fell out of its original warranty, but thanks to the warranty extension Microsoft announced last spring, I'll still get a free repair.
Unfortunately, this process will take about a month. This wouldn't be so bad if my Xbox didn't also serve as a media extender; in addition to no Halo 3, it also means no recorded Heroes, Smallville, ER, 30 Rock, Bionic Woman, etc. So what am I supposed to do in the meantime -- read or something?
Update: In related news, GameStop is reportedly scrapping its Xbox replacement plan.
From the Washington Post's Web site today:
Do they have interns working at the copy desk or something?
I've written separately about Microsoft Labs' Photosynth and Live Search Maps before, and now I can write about them at the same time. Microsoft apparently has incorporated the former into the later.
Using Photosynth's photo-transition technology, maps users can now scroll smoothly between separate high-resolution birds-eye photos. In addition to being very cool, the effect makes the birds-eye feature of Live Search Maps much easier to use.
Microsoft also improved the layout and user interface and upgraded its driving directions -- it will incorporate traffic into your route, for instance. And this might be just my impression, but the whole thing seems to have gotten a bit snappier.
I meant to write about this earlier, but I got to put Google Maps and Live Search Maps in a head-to-head competition a few weeks ago, on the morning of a traffic-clogging accident on the Dumbarton Bridge. Google showed the traffic flowing freely on the bridge; Microsoft correctly showed the bright red "standstill" line, along with a pop-up description of the accident.
So far it hasn't been enough to get me to switch away from Google Maps, but it's a step in that direction.
I have this album, but I haven't listened to it enough to form a strong opinion about it either way. I didn't think her last album was as good as the first, but that's probably because she didn't have the famed producer Cazuza as a collaborator.
Between Bebel and Ceu, someone at Starbucks seems to be really into Brazilian music.
Speaking of Ceu, she's coming to San Francisco on Nov. 3, which happens to be Andrea's and my first wedding anniversary. So we're going to the show. With the baby coming along, it'll probably be our last concert for a while.
