February 23, 2010

Microsoft’s Browser Selection + User Ignorance Lets Google’s Chrome “cheat”?

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Michael B. from the Mozilla Marketing list recently posted an hypothesis on why Google Chrome may suddenly start taking a much larger chunk out of the browser market now that Microsoft’s browser selection screens are appearing in the EU.

I’ve a hypothesis to explain Chrome’s recent and sudden surge of usage share the last couple months. Let me first say that almost every time I ever ask what web browser someone uses, the answer I get is Google. After I explain that Google is a search engine, not a web browser they usually tell me that they have no idea. I later find out that they are either using Internet Explorer or Firefox. Enter Microsoft’s new browser ballot into the equation. Instead of just saying “Chrome,” Google’s web browser says “Google” and then says “chrome” in smaller letter. People are asked what web browser they want so they think, I want to search with Google of course so they choose Chrome. If this is the case, it might be a problem that should be addressed.

Perhaps user ignorance on what a browser actually is will give Google a major boost.  Because, admittedly, even my own father reference to Internet Explorer as “my internet”.

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February 21, 2010

Europeans Get a Taste of the Browser Choice Screen

Microsoft Browser Choice ScreenWe might finally get more people off of IE, FINALLY.

It might seem like a minor thing, but it isn’t.

Microsoft has been fined billions over browser choice (or lack thereof) in Windows, and the solution that finally satisfied EU regulators was a browser choice screen, which would let users choose a web browser rather then having Internet Explorerinstalled as the default.

Now, Microsoft has posted images of what the browser choice screen will probably look like.

Here’s how it will work: The user will be presented with five major browsers, randomly ordered. He will also be able to choose several additional browsers, which are also randomly ordered. Once you install a browser, you’ll get a shortcut of that browser on your desktop, while Internet Explorer will be unpinned from the taskbar.

Since Windows 7 has been available on the European market for quite a while now, one may ask why (and how) is this happening so late? Since Microsoft needed some time to implement the browser choice solution, it will now use Windows Update to provide the browser choice screen to European users who are using Internet Explorer as their default browser. Better late than never, huh?

More precisely, testing of the browser choice screen begins next week in the UK, Belgium and France, where users will be able to download the software update from Windows Update if they like. A phased rollout of the update will happen across Europe starting with March 1.

via Europeans Get a Taste of the Browser Choice Screen.

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February 14, 2010

Directed Energy Weapon Downs Mosquitoes

via rss.slashdot.org

I so, totally, want one of these….badly.

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February 13, 2010

Setting up a Google Nexus One in Canada on Rogers/Fido

This is one of the huge welcoming signs for Go...
Image via Wikipedia

Another question I recently answered on Aardvark, thought it would be useful to more folks as well.

Where can i get the Nexus One in Canada and will it work on Fido?

The first thing to note is you can’t get Nexus One’s that easily if you’re in Canada, since, the Google store that sells the unlocked phones doesn’t like to sell to Canadians.  But, if you have a friend in the US… or a proxy and a US mail drop, you can get one.  Once you get an unlocked Nexus One, you can activate it with Rogers or Fido using the directions provided over here.

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February 12, 2010

Moving from Windows to Linux, iTunes to…?

Songbird
Image via Wikipedia

Here’s a question I get hit up on Aardvark with earlier today:

I have a very very big collection of music in iTunes. I want to move to Linux but I don’t know if the players can handle 200,000+ files as efficiently as iTunes. Help?

The answer, is rather simple.  Songbird is probably the closest thing you`ll have on Linux to iTunes (and, IMHO, MUCH better than iTunes); you can even try it on Windows first to see if you`ll like it.  The only downside is your tracks MUST be DRM free to move them away from iTunes.

Usually you can remove the DRM from iTunes music by burning it to a CD, and then ripping it back off the CD into a freed file format.

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February 4, 2010

Thanks Microsoft!

Microsoft Expression
Image via Wikipedia

So, Microsoft sent me a complimentary copy of Microsoft Expression Studio 3 today for being a partner.  Kudos to them.

As to Expression Web, it works wonderful for prototyping but, doesn’t really handle CMS themeing that well.  Will be playing around with Expression Blend a bit later to see what geekiness I can come up with.

It has an interesting screen capture utility too (try the demo flash video below full-screen).  Oh yeah, I’m gonna have fun…

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February 2, 2010

Web 2.0 MacGyver

MacGyver
Image via Wikipedia

TV shows like MacGyver and Junk Yard Wars, as well as real world survival and minimalist training [even camping] tell us that it’s cool to take bits of whatever is lying around, and jury-rig it into something useful, and potentially vital to our survival.  Today as I was thinking about the plethora of hacks we need to do something insanely simple…like…embed a flash video and have it work properly in all browsers. This made me realize, anyone who does web development or design is a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, certified, Web 2.0 MacGyver.

We use CSS hacks to get things to look right in IE, load extra images or add a wack of useless tags to get rounded corners to work.  And, don’t think HTML5 is going to save our butt, it won’t.  We’ll need to make videos in 2 different formats and nest three different video and embed tags and hacks for it to work (seriously).  Worse, one of those formats we’ll need to license and pay for (or, as is the online way, hope we don’t get caught for not).

So, developers, hold your heads high; we’re holding the world together with duct tape and paperclips, and we make it look easy.

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November 18, 2009

Microsoft may have crippled up to a million of their Xbox 360 consoles

Xbox
Image via Wikipedia

A recent PCworld story, suggests in a measure to prevent hardware modding (which does have fair use purposes as well, such as making backups of content) they have banned up to a million Xbox 360 consoles from the Xbox LIVE service, and may have rendered the machines mainly unusable.

DailyTech’s sources claim the ban blocks game installations to the hard drive and the Windows Media Player extender, corrupts save games and Gamertags, and disallows the console from accessing Xbox LIVE.

If this is in fact true; and does render installations mainly useless; it may result in ~$200,000,000 of consoles (at new market value) no longer being usable and requiring their owners to purchase new consoles from Microsoft if they want to keep gaming on the 360 platform. Sounds like Microsoft may be stuffing their Christmas stockings a little earlier in the name of fair play.

[Kudo's to a friend of mine for nudging me on this, thanks Dylan!]

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November 7, 2009

Social Experiment for Prizes! Yellow ribbons and red balloons (messin’ with DARPA)

DARPA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia
Image via Wikipedia

So; someone pointed me to a rather interesting contest by DARPA, the DARPA Network Challenge. Now, I appreciate what DARPA tries to do as much as the next guy (basically throwing money at problems hoping someone finds the solution).  But, this context in particular struck my fancy; socially organizing a way to find, locate and then tell the government where something is for a prize.  Granted a bit of big-brother outsourcing, but I found the idea curious nonetheless.

Basically, DARPA is going to place 10, 8′, red, anchored weather balloons around the US; and thenwants people to use social networking to find them all and report in for a prize.  One thing I instantly thought of, is “hey, I want to do another social experiment”.  So, here’s the skinny: For each person that hangs up (within their local laws, legally) an 8′ red weather balloon somewhere visible in the US and provides a photo I’ll list you here and send you $15 US via PayPal to cover your expenses and buy a fancy coffee (up to a max 15 entries).

What’s the point?

  1. To give DARPA another angle to deal with, dealing with extraneous data… it is social networking after all :)
  2. To show just how fast ordinary people can get out there and organize when needed.
  3. Hey, it’ll be funny too ;)

Let the balloonigans begin!

Edit: Yes, things that look similar to 8′ red weather balloons do count, including painting a similarly sized white balloon red.
[and just one more note to do this legally, don't go setting up the balloons on someone's else lawn without permission, etc]

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February 13, 2009

Wordpress Upgrade: I could cry

[This whole post is written tounge-in-cheek.  Please don't flame/bash/perl or python the author.]

I just did an upgrade from Wordpress 2.7 to 2.7.1, and it was completely done in under 5 seconds. Didn’t need to connect to SSH, didn’t need to connect to FTP. I click two buttons and my blog was running the latest and greatest Wordpress.

Why are they allowed to make it this simple?

This kind of proceedure should be hard, time-consuming; and most of all full of stress.  Why, if this keeps up, I’ll be out of a job.  So, with that in mind:

Drupal must never become this simple.

All of us that work that Drupal consultanting circut need to rise up and make sure that Drupal never becomes this simple, easy or friendly to use.  Why, it could ruin the entire Drupal eco-system.

Now I’ve got to run, just noticed I need to upgrade a wordpress plugin…I’m sure that’ll take all of 2 seconds too :)

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