A friend at work found this. I just had to share.
Pirate Encyclopedia
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Twitter Updates for 2008-07-04
- Watching DCI (drum corps) in Vista. Bringing out the band geek in me. #
What were we thinking?
Since I was quick to criticize Netflix for their plans to eliminate user profiles, it is only appropriate that I acknowledge and congratulate them on their recent decision to undo their plans.
I got a bit of a laugh when I saw the email as the tone when you read between the lines is quite funny. Something like “yeah, it was a dumb idea. The guy who o.k’d it is now working at 7-Eleven.” Either way, it was smart of them to listen to their customers.
A Google maps for booklovers?
I ran across an interesting website the other day which was mentioned in a podcast I listen to. Zoomii.com uses a web interface similar to Google Maps but instead of panning streets, they let you browse stacks of books. Each book is represented in its relative size on a bookshelf and organized by category. Clicking on a book provides full information and provides an option to add it to your Amazon shopping cart or wishlist.
What intrigued me most about this site, other than an original interface which provides a really decent analog to walking through a bookstore, is the fact they are using Amazon’s affiliate program to make money and as a result there’s no advertising or overt efforts to “monetize the visit.” The price they present is the same as if you navigated to the same book using Amazon’s “up-sell at every turn” interface.
I’m always pleased when I see a truly unique idea. It seems the best ones are the ones that are completely obvious when you think about it.
What’s a little fire when you’re already hot?
Becky and I are without kids this weekend and, of course, we decided to take the opportunity and go to CostCo. While purusing the normal selection of bulk items and picking up some of our standard selection of staples, Becky saw a very unexpected surprise.
We are fans of Daphnie’s Greek Cafe which is a Greek restaurant chain headquartered in San Diego (not far from my office, btw). One of the more enjoyable items they have is Fire Feta which is a really good feta cheese spread with all sorts of spicy additions. We get it every time we go there as it is quite tasty.
So, while checking out the deli section at the back of the warehouse, Becky found a 28oz container of Daphnie’s Fire Feta for $8.49. We promptly picked it up and swung by Henry’s to get some pita chips and we are good to beat the heat.
Twitter Updates for 2008-06-20
What a lousy move, Netflix
We’ve been using Netflix for about two years now and come to really like the service. One of the better features is the ability to have different profiles each with their own queues of movies you’d like to watch. Our membership allows us to have three DVDs borrowed at a time. We set up a queue for Becky and me (for two DVDs) and one for the kids (with one DVD).
How all this works in practice is that when we return a movie from our queue, the next one in line get sent to us. Likewise, when we return a movie from the kids’ queue, it takes the top of theirs. All-in-all it is very convenient and keeps things quite organized.
Unfortunately, Netflix has announced that they will be doing away with profiles at the beginning of September. Any profile other than our main will get merged in to the main and then removed. We’ll have to make sure that one of our kids’ selections is at the top when we return theirs. What if the top one isn’t available (which happens sometimes)? I guess they lose out.
I personally don’t see why they need to do it. Perhaps they figure they’re moving through too many exchanges per subscriber each month. As many are considering (as am I) to drop their membership from 3 to 2, there’ll be some impact on their revenues. It’s already been a hit to their public image.
Twitter Updates for 2008-06-12
I know the question you’re asking
If you’re even half-way plugged into things, you’ve most likely heard that Apple announced the next version of their iPhone. Now called the iPhone 3G, they have revised it in some pretty decent ways. They’ve made it a full “3G” phone using AT&T’s HSDPA for downloading email and web pages at about twice the speed as the original EDGE. They’ve also added GPS support. The one thing they’ve taken away is $200. It now costs $199 in exchange for a two year service contact commitment.
Am I going to get one? Not likely. Surfing at twice the speed is nice, but considering the higher-speed data plan is $10 more per month ($40 versus the current $30) I don’t see enough value in the upgrade.
There is the new 2.0 upgrade of the OS which is standard on the 3G but will also be made available for free to existing phones. They have focused quite a bit on main aspects of the OS which are enterprise support and 3rd party application support. I’m interested in that and will have it with the phone I have now when the upgrade is released next month. They haven’t listed completely what is included with the upgrade, but here are the things I either know they aren’t doing or aren’t sure:
- Video support for the camera
- Wireless podcast downloads
- Wireless syncing (iTunes)
- Document storage (I want to store and read PDFs)
- Flash support (kinda don’t care)
- Keychain support (partially resolved with the excellent 1Password)
I’m just glad that Omni Group has committed to producing an iPhone version of OmniFocus. That I will buy.
It’s too bad
First, apologies for not blogging lately. Yes, I’ve been busy, but not so much not to be able to write. Sorry.
I’m in San Francisco this week attending Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference on behalf of my employer. They’ve done a good job with providing an IT track and this year is no different. The one thing that is different is the extensive iPhone track for all the developers and IT shops looking into producing applications for the handheld. Having seen some of the applications, there is no question that the iPhone (and iPod Touch) is a full computer.
The overlap of the two tracks pertains to the enterprise support that is forthcoming in the 2.0 release of the OS X Touch OS (what runs on the devices). Apple will be providing tools for establishing policies for an organization’s handhelds and performing security functions like remote kill (for a lost device). We don’t have any specific plans for iPhones at work, but I did want to understand how things work in case it comes up.
Unfortunately, I attended a session yesterday that pretty much ruled out iPhones for us. As an attendee I am under NDA and as such can’t go into any details, but suffice it to say there are some fundamental deficiencies in the initial enterprise support that prevents me from recommending it to my managers. Since we didn’t have any plans, nobody is going to really care. Most likely they’ll chalk it up as yet another way Apple is showing how they just don’t get enterprise customers.
I suppose it’s all for good as I wouldn’t be keen on carrying two phones.