Christmas is over and the heady 1st of Jan is over. Sigh! Went too soon. But retailers in Oz are still keeping doors open, often not even taking down the Boxing Day banners in the shops. So, what did you get that was geeky, nerdy, computery or camera-iy? I helped someone into a new 13 inch Aluminium Macbook. Another friend got an MSI Wind Netbook. Got a bug – one painful and one a toy. There’s this Logitech Wave that’s gesturing at me more than an IBM click clack ever did. Stephen might be impressed – the keys have a high level of comfort and then there’s that huge task switch button near the little left pinky – would be useful in switching between virtual machine sessions. It’s a lot more sensible that those huge Microsoft Natural Keyboard models of old. Before Christmas, I kitted up with a Nokia E-71 – finally giving the clunky O2 xda II a rest – it’s now serving time being used for Eggstreme which the wife loves (actually the classic game, not Yolk’s Revenge). Symbian has grown up a lot since I was winging it on the Nokia 6800.
So, c’mon share your experiences – it may wean us off the itchy wallet syndrome given the doom and gloom supposedly round the corner.
Seems a lot of people are walking around post Christmas, post Boxing Day, pre-New Year. The retailers are reporting good sales figures. Is that because for months, now, we’ve been told that we should buy existing stock hoarded from the days of near parity AUD vs USD rates or is it because we feel that this is a last hurrah before February sanity hits?
There are crowds for sure, but the parking lots don’t look that full these days and shoppers are driving really hard bargains. Aussies are learning to negotiate and bargain – several times in the shops, the sales people have been overheard saying “I’ll do the best I can but I can’t do miracles”. I was helping a friend buy a Macbook (our first Mac buying experience) and unexpectedly I went into a Dick Smith’s who had it at AUD 2099 RRP and mentioned I had seen it at AUD 18xx – the salesgirl went away for a while and came back with that price (or a few dollars lower). Whether that’s a good price for the Core2Duo 2.0 Macbook, I don’t know, MLS hadn’t whispered any indications.
In the meantime, there are Boxing Day sales and then there are Boxing Day Sales. Photo fans would see Canada’s Futureshop dropping prices on an outgoing Olympus E-410 kit that does not seem to have similar parallels, Aussie style.
The new mini, bite sized netbooks seemed to attract interest – the price is also bite sized, with some brands offering close to AUD 100 discounts on AUD 600 type machines. Will the the public will establish a long term multi-function use for them or will they eventually become Vivienne Tam clutch items?
While at the bookshops, I see senior couples wandering in to look at those highly illustrated, how-to-use-Windows or Email books. It would be a good time for forum members to add their guides-with-a-slant to the wiki or the forum. Like Amit has done in his Dear Mom letter.
Toad Leader and I have often discussed what drives bloggers and more importantly how they monetize the issue. Here’s a quick, hilarious interview – Arianna Huffington with John Stewart. There are some sound bites that you can walk away with.
Readers of this blog are knowledgeable community. Remember, I was looking at the sky one day and noticed skywriting but could not make out the intent? I was surprised to see quick and well informed response.
How about this one - looking up in Melbourne City, we're seeing lots of stars
There's some doom and gloom about the world's economic crisis. It isn't all bad. There're big fish with cash reserves waiting to pounce on the little ones (yes, I know, mixed metaphor...) . Or little piranhas waiting for a chance at a big un with no reserves.
People are predicting that major brands will collapse - the automotive industry is hoping to or getting bailed out depending on which country you're in. There will be a thinning of well known camera brands says Thom - of course, he's not using the brand that's gonna thin out.
If you're steering the ship though (yes I know, what is it, with these metaphors), it's crucial to make the decision whether to soldier on with a grand project or to discard it as non core business. You can over worry about it and make the wrong decision, or you could flip a coin.
I have long detested the Windows autorun dialog which opens up when you insert removable media into the machine. The autorun feature has been heavily leveraged by all and sundry. The infamous Sony rootkit fiasco used that, respectables like Adobe love to give you some starter PhotoAlbum as a rider to some download you want and from then on, autorun offers to do additional things to every USB flash you insert. Whiz! Autorun for CDs is also famous for interfering with early attempts at CD / DVD burning and device useage contention in virtual machines.
The breaking point came for me when my precious USB stick got infected by virus/malware, promising to spread to my own Windows machines. Since that time, I have switched off all autorun on all drives on the computers I use. Which isn't a big problem for me, I prefer to explicitly run Herr Ghisler's Total Commander to see what's what.
The other day, I spotted DeskDrive from one of my RSS feeds. It's a little app, it only does It's still early days in my use but this little app is really giving me a wow! experience. It dynamically puts drive icons on your Windows desktop (and removes them when they are disconnected). That's all it does.
I remember a colleague who wanted to dominate the corporate LAN. He would create drive icon shortcuts to all the LAN drives for staff machines. I asked him what would happen to those notebooks or even desktops where staff routinely forget whether they are logged on or not. If they were not logged on or attached, those drive icons would be irrelevant and confuse the very people they were supposed to help. He gave me one of those withering stares. And for the next few years, Helpdesk had to patiently explain that even though the drive icon was there, the drive might not be there, if LAN connection had been terminated, if they were not logged in or if they were plainly at home.
Part of the charm of Deskdrive is the developer. He's hit what many of us in the software industry hit often - adding a feature or resolving a bug creates new ones..... But there's "moment of truth" from him and that's always precious in this world where the author of the program is insulated from the end users by other corporate divisions. To the extent that Microsoft had a WYSYP campaign
Oh, one disclaimer - some corporates and relationships really want you to have your autorun untampered with, and working. In which case, you didn't hear this from me.
I don't think Charles as particularly referring to Microsoft when he referred to Computing in the Cloud. With Bill Gates now sitting in the back benches with Jerry Seinfeld, I guess time for Ray Ozzie to justify his Chief Architect title. Will Ballmer reprise his "Developers, Developers, Developers" cheerlead? See Microsoft's Power to Developers on November 6th
One of my RSS feeds gave me this Steve Jobs 1991 NEXT gem - presenting at a wyteboard, distinctive black jumper and jeans but a lot younger. Strong emphatic speaker and delivery. No Keynote or Powerpoint aid. A good one to show and tell at my next Powerpoint class. BTW, the competitors and machines he talks about? They're history.
I don't normally drop by Monash University, Caulfield Campus. Today, I did and happened to chance by the Monash Museum of Computing History. It's open 9-5, weekdays, no one around, just students passing by the glass cases on the way to their assignments and classes. I didn't know it was there or that my friend, Stephen Dart, had donated his Vax to the display (how on earth would Stephen keep a Vax at home?)
Having a look at the exhibits brings back lots of memories of my undergraduate days and the early part of my working career. You'll find classics like the Apple ][ and the IBM PC, revel at the really little CRT of the Osborne (I think the LCD displays of these new point and shoot digicams have even more resolution and are bigger). The Lisa is there, the DEC line printer that produced those FOOBAR printouts of my 20 line FORTRAN programs.
Of course, there is the venerable Ferranti Sirius, part of an IBM 370. You gotta have a look - it's free.
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