Thank Gawd

The Microsoft ads featuring Seinfeld and Gates have been officially cancelled. Thank goodness. Now if Gates could get some of that 10 million back from Seinfeld for sucking so bad and fire the marketing staff for lack of message focus. It's okaybto be cute, judy make sure that you are selling product. People are looking for reasons to buy. But ads like these Micosoft one's leave people confused and skeptical.

Jaye

Geolocate this post

Posted with LifeCast

To Write Love on Her Arms

There is a really nice video piece that MSNBC did on Renee Yohe the Social Movement, "To Write Love on Her Arms," who focus is helping people struggling with issues such as "cutting," and "drug addiction," and the barriers that can get in the way of people getting treatment. It's work the look.

~ Jaye

Real Genius

I'm really pleased about the iPhone and iPod Touch 2.1 software update. So far since completing installations on several units, I have to say that none of the iPhones or Touch has crashed (as yet). Right on!

It's also notable that the apps are much snappier (with the exception of Twinkle - but that might be bad coding). They seemed to get a handle on issues like slow applications and keyboard lag. The push functionality in the MS Exchange and MobileMe is supposed to be much better. But to tell you the truth, I've been having a great MobileMe experience.

For those interested, the iPhone and iPod Touch seems faster in the backup functions and the App installs are way faster. Thank gawd. The previous backs took so long, I could microwave something and eat it and the backup would still be going. This is a true improvement.

The last thing to note is Apple Genius. This is interesting because you can select a single song and then then touch the "Genius," button and it creates a playlist based on what goes well with that particular song. And to tell you the truth, it's flat out amazing. It not only appears in you iPhone and iPod Touch, but iTunes 8 (which is awesome by the way). in iTunes, based on what you are playing it analyzes your music collection (no private data is kept on file) and compare it with what other users are listening to and then makes suggestions to you.

To be quite frank coming up with cool playlists and finding new material generally sucks. There are times I've wasted hours attempting to "discover," new music still only to come up empty. Genius has been offering some really good choices and introduced me to some things that I wasn't aware of. It's a Win - Win.

Let me know your thoughts. I look forward to hearing your experience.

Tech-On,

~ Jaye

You're A Beautiful Liar

Sara Palin implied during the RNC convention that in an effort to save Alaska money, she "sold it on eBay." Turns out she listed it on eBay, but didn't sell it there, even after listing it twice. Check out the story on Valley Wag. Maybe she should have turned to an eBay powerseller for some tips and tricks.

~ Jaye

The Powerset

I came across a great web application called Powerset. The website offers "natural language" search placed on steroids. It's been a really nice way to cut through the information chaos for me. Having used a lot of search tools, especially for research, I have to say that Powerset is a winner hands down.

On top of the enhanced and very easy tool set that it offers, in a paradigm you don't have to think very hard to catch on, they also offer an iPhone Webcentric page as well that is amazingly fast and cool. It has earned a place on my main "Home Screen." Give it a spin and let me know your thoughts.

~Jaye

Chrome Rims

Google today launched it's newest weapon from their war chest, Google Chrome. I installed it over Parallels today, since there is not a OS X installation as yet. As it turns out, the installation was light-weight and simple.

Firing up Chrome, my first thought was "cartoon" like. The color scheme threw me off a bit, but given my design background, I'm probably a little more sensitive to that sort of thing than the average person.

The second thought I had was "lawsuit." The home page looked amazingly similar to the Opera "Speed-dial." I suppose plagerism errrr imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The third thought was, I found it interesting that Chrome is based on Apple's "Webkit." the reason that I find it interesting is that Apple releases almost nightly builds. The browser is always in a perpetual state of motion and iteration. With Chrome, average users probably won't be too happy to put up with that. Actually it's almost an act of God to get average users to update their Antivirus correctly.

All of the above said, doesn't mean that I don't like Chrome. In reality, I think that Chrome 's very cool (except for the suck color scheme). In the interface, I do like the tab positions. I also think it's smart that an individual tab might crash but the other tabs are in separate threads if you will and can remain working. That in and of itself is awesome. Also a nice little touch is that when you type in the address bar, it dynamically lists URL's, offering suggestions. Kinda web 2.0 feel to that little trick.

In all, Chrome shows real promise, offering a modest alteration to your normal web browser paradigm that will be east for most people to pick up on. It will be interesting to see how people take to it, especially since it contains Googles usual minimalist approach. If you've downloaded and tried Chrome post back and let us know your thoughts.

~ Jaye

Posted with LifeCast