Posts with tag "windows"

Braindead TechCast Ep. 74 – Does your ISP lie? DUH!

  • Category: Podcasts
  • .
  • Comments are off for this post
  • .
  • Posted 1085 days ago

Not that any of this will matter since the Steve Jobs Effect is in action and everyone is hanging off of every word he says at the D8 conference but hey we’re gluttons for self-abuse so on with the show.

We start off talking about the absolute ridiculousness surround the whole Google gives Windows the boot story that everyone is falling for hook line and sinker. From there we have a little bit of a go at the Wired iPad app that everyone – except Sean – is in love with and how Adobe thinks its creation tools for iPad magazines is all the snizzle.

The show ends off with us talking about the silliness that is the FCC asking people to let them know if they think their ISPs are a bunch of liars. Duh!

Posts referenced in the show

Enjoy the show

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hey, like this post? Why not share it with a buddy?

Braindead TechCast EP39: Yes we are out of our ever loving minds

  • Category: Podcasts
  • .
  • Comments are off for this post
  • .
  • Posted 1140 days ago

Actually we aren’t really out of our ever loving minds but to really understand you’ll need to listen to the podcast as all is explained in that regards. In the meantime Sean and I take a shot at a bit of Windows prognostication in light of another screen shot popping up on the web purporting to be Internet Explorer 9 but unlike any IE we have seen to date as it is sporting a heavy dose of the Metro UI design.

As well we both call bullcrap on news or rather rumor that AT&T is going to let iPad users have true unlimited accounts for the .. are you sitting down … $30.00. Yes you heard that right AT&T giving iPad a whole bunch of love that their iPhone counterparts aren’t getting. Ya that will play well which is exactly why neither Sean or I am biting on this one.

Update: since the show it seems engadget has found out that the screen cap was a mock-up from LiveSino.com .. oh well it would have been nice but really doesn’t change my feelings expressed in the show on the larger scale.

Posts referred to in the show.

Internet Explorer 9 going all Metro, according to allegedly leaked screenshots? (update: nope) – engadget
Windows 8 Faster, Smaller, and More Responsive than Windows 7 – Codename Windows
Let’s not get ahead of our Midori shall we. – WinExtra
AT&T: iPad 3G is Truly Unlimited, Not 5GB – Gearlog

Enjoy the show

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hey, like this post? Why not share it with a buddy?

Anti-virus should be OS level but it’ll never happen

  • Category: Technology
  • .
  • Comments are off for this post
  • .
  • Posted 1438 days ago

computer-security I’ve been playing around with different anti-virus software packages the last few days, and still am, which made reading a couple of recent post rather interesting. The first one was by Svetlana Gladkova over at Profy.com where she related her trials and tribulations trying to find a package she was comfortable with. Being Russian she tried a couple of ‘native’ solutions including one from Kaspersky’s.

In the end though she decided to go with new offering from Panda which is the first cloud based anti-virus product on the market. I also gave it a shot but it definitely didn’t want to play nice on my Windows 7 RC install so I was back hunting once more.

Hey, like this post? Why not share it with a buddy?

It’s no wonder people think Macs are elitists

Not all Apples are beautiful and tasty We’ve all heard it before. Macs are cool and Mac software is better than anything for Windows – blah blah blah.

I had almost begun to think that we had gotten past this elitist’s better than thou attitude, especially when people like Louis Gray is willing to give Windows a chance. But no, the self-righteous belief that only Mac developers know how to produce elegant and easy to use software once more rears its ugly head in a post by Rob Fahrni.

What is it Mac developers do differently? They create elegant, useful, stable, simple, to-the-point, software. You see it time and again on the Macintosh and I’ve come to appreciate it. The application I use to post to this weblog is a prime example, MarsEdit is something I use everyday, and it fits all those qualities I’ve listed above. Most Windows applications have noisy UI’s, just look at Microsoft Word, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Leaving his jab at a corporate level application like Word aside, the fact is that there are a lot of Windows developers out there creating just as elegant and easy to use software. Rob uses the example of MarsEdit as an elegant Mac application and while I agree it is nice to look at I would suggest that Windows Live Writer is as equally good to look at

I am really happy that Delphi is working on a Mac version of their compiler so that more developers can work across more platforms. It’s too bad though it doesn’t seem to be doing anything to help improve the pompous attitude some Mac fans have.

Interestingly enough MarsEdit retails for $29.95 and Windows Live Writer … free.

Update Note: fixed the grammatic error with the apostrophe in Macs before someone had a apoplectic fit

Hey, like this post? Why not share it with a buddy?

Some interesting thoughts about Microsoft’s future

  • Category: Technology
  • .
  • Comments are off for this post
  • .
  • Posted 1478 days ago

touch_screen Fair assessments of Microsoft and some of the things it should do moving forward are usually heavy handed with all kinds of buzzwords and negative connotations. It’s understandable I guess given that’s how you get readers to your blog and earn you Web 2.0 brownie points. So it was rather nice to see a post by Jason Hiner today over at the ZDNet blogs that wasn’t your typical big bad Microsoft type of hyperbole.

The part of Jason’s post I found interesting though was he three suggestions for Microsoft and the future of the company. I found them interesting enough I thought I would add some of my own thoughts to them as well. So let’s start with his first suggestion which is

Use its expertise and experience in software applications (including OS) to create a new breed of applications that have seamless online/offline capabilities from the Web browser

When it comes this area I think Microsoft has kind of boxed itself in to a corner because of two things. The first being Internet Explorer in that I think that, at least as of IE 7 and IE 8 Beta, their browser has become a bloated piece of software. As well because of their proprietary mindset their implementation of Add-Ons was a mistake.

Hey, like this post? Why not share it with a buddy?

Whining about a secure Windows

secure I have been a user of the Windows operating system since it was nothing more than a stub for programs like Corel Draw and PageMaker. During all those years one of the biggest complaints, sometimes justifiable but most times not, was how insecure the OS was. In the early days of Windows e.g., Windows 3.1/3.11 and Windows 95, the Internet wasn’t something that was really on anyone’s, other than hard core geeks, radar. So when it did blast onto the scene in the heyday of Windows 95 and the dying days of Windows 3.1 security wasn’t high on anyone’s priority list.

Microsoft paid heavily for this and continues to pay for it to this day. Unfortunately though Microsoft suffered from another major problem – it was too popular. While it may have had made billions from this popularity they did it by appealing to everyone and their proverbial brother. They weren’t in the market to cater to niche type users.

Hey, like this post? Why not share it with a buddy?

When Microsoft comes around that mountain watch out

win7-release Right now we are probably in the deepest parts of the valley of a world-wide recession but as with all cycles it is inevitable that we’ll climb up out of it and start back up the mountain change that technology is bringing to our world. The thing that will be interesting to see is who is going to be the survivors of what will probably be a massive round of buying and consolidation; which is also inevitable during times of economic hardship.

Mike Elgan has a very interesting post over at Datamation where he suggests that one of the biggest winners could be the company everyone likes to diss – Microsoft. In his post he points to Windows 7 as being the lynchpin that could see the company regain its dominant position

Hey, like this post? Why not share it with a buddy?

Bravo Ed, it’s about time this was said

lemons It wasn’t always like this and while it might be easy to point fingers in the direction of instant gratification bloggers of the tech world it is only a portion of this sense of entitlement that seems to be spreading like a bad virus through the web. Everyone seems to think that companies must listen to what everyone is saying about their products and how they think is should be improved. It doesn’t matter that a company may have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development or that design decisions have been made that are not going to be changed.

As Ed Bott said in a post today about this

Frankly, I’m having a hard time working up any level of sympathy for those doing the complaining, partly because I heartily approve of the way Windows 7 development is going right now and partly because I have seen the feedback process up close and personal. Microsoft is getting a bad rap from a group of people who are mourning the reality that they’re no longer being treated as privileged elites.

Along with that he also quoted WinPatrol developer and Microsoft MVP Bill Pytlovany when he suggested the following about the majority of beta testers

Most Beta Testers Suck

As a developer I can tell you , beta tests aren’t what they used to be.  The number of people who actually report decent bug information is minimal. Most people download the beta just to be an earlier adopter. Developers are lucky if users read the release notes and compatibility list let alone any beta instructions. There are so many different machine configurations that sadly the only way to find some bugs is to have full global adoption of new software.

Having been a developer I can relate with this sediment.

Bravo Ed and thanks for being willing to take the flack we both know you are going to get over this, but it was something that needed to be said.

Hey, like this post? Why not share it with a buddy?

Older entries →

Follow Me On ……

Mail Google+ PayPal RSS

Advertising

Post Categories

Advertising