First they ran crazy ads with Jerry Seinfeld which nobody understood. Then they tried to run ads to make Windows look cool which, of course, it’s just not (ask most anybody who has used Vista). Their latest ads showcased little kids doing complex tasks like offloading images from a digital camera and while very cute, you can’t really expect us to believe that these kids did this entirely on their own, can you?
Check out Microsoft’s latest — and so far, most direct — campaign against Apple, to whom they are loosing market share every day:
Microsoft just doesn’t get it: people who use Apple products do so because they are better than yours. Why do some people drive an Acura and some people drive a Honda? Because the driver of the Acura feels it is a better car than the Honda and is paying a premium for such.
I understand, in this economy, the rationale behind running a “Macs are expensive” campaign. Some people will probably even agree with this campaign but those people are not buying a Mac anyway. Sure Macs are expensive but you are paying for a premium product, so of course it’s going to be more expensive.
If your product can’t stand on it’s own merits besides being cheaper than your competitors then you have much larger problems. Why aren’t they going after the iPhone? Oh, that’s right, because contrary to what they thought people are buying them and loving them.
It’s no secret that I dislike Microsoft so yes, I am highly biased here. But you heard it here first: look for Apple’s rebuttal ads, stressing that they are a better product, to be out by the end of the year.
The three children of Bill and Melinda Gates may not be allowed to have a product from a certain Cupertino-based rival in their home, but that doesn’t mean Mrs. Gates doesn’t wish for an Apple gadget every once in a while.
…
“There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household,” she said. “But iPods and iPhones are two things we don’t get for our kids.”
Getting a replacement phone. Sent a nice strongly worded, and very logical email to Apple and just got a call back from a person who took my serial number and verified that they would replace it. He called the store manager at the Apple Store to tell them I’d be coming in, and set me up a Genuis appointment for 5:15.
I was doubting Apple for a second there but, in the end, this experience reaffirmed why I love them: in the end, they do the right thing!
More details when I get the replacement unit. It’ll be a refurb but that’s fine by me.
So it finally happened, my iPhone is broken. There is a 1/2″ strip of the touch screen, at the bottom, that does not respond. I’m still deciding how to address this as there is a KB on Apple’s support site that implies this is a known defect, and they’ll replace it. Unfortunately when I brought it into the Apple Store last night my only option was spending $199 on a new unit, which I’m not prepared to do quite yet.
I may jailbreak it and tweak the sensitivity settings but that is really a last resort. First I’ll bring that KB into the Apple Store, discuss it with a manager, and find out why my phone isn’t covered.
Anywho, I thought this may be a fun opportunity to play “what you CANNOT do on your iPhone when the bottom part of the touch screen wears out!” A long title for sure, but here is a running list which I’ll update as I come across more:
* SMS, Mail, Safari, or Phone
* Take a picture, since shutter button is down there.
* Navigate the Amazon, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter apps.
* Type a space, number or non a-z character, or “return”
* Maps: Find My Location, Search/Directions, or change view options.
Obviously this critically impacts my ability to use my phone, arguably turning it into a brick since I can’t make calls to non-contacts on it. Here’s hoping I can come to some resolution with Apple.
For anybody out there with Verizon FIOS: the latest router update, which was automatically pushed to you without your knowledge, broke port forwarding and the “DMZ Host” functionality. The solution to this problem is to go into the Advanced menu and select the “roll back to last firmware” option.
To Verizon: while I applaud you being a responsible service provider and automatically updating my router for me, a simple email notification would have been nice so I could have isoalated that, and not my latest Ubuntu upgrade, as the source of my problems. Of, of course, actually test your upgrades before you push them out to your customers but that’s asking a lot…
The article itself is pretty involved but this quote struck me:
Most adware targets Internet Explorer (IE) users because obviously they’re the biggest share of the market. In addition, they tend to be the less-savvy chunk of the market. If you’re using IE, then either you don’t care or you don’t know about all the vulnerabilities that IE has.
The emphasis was added by me. By now you’ve all heard me rant about how IE is bad on many levels, the worst of all being security, and by now you should know that I advocate the usage of Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is a free download so unless you’re reading this at work (and your IT people are the ones too inept or lazy to let you use it) you really have no execuse for at least trying it.
In this day and age the security of your desktop is critical. Do you do your own taxes? Do you bank online? Do you have naughty pictures? Hell, do you have email? If your desktop is compromised, all of this could be stolen from you without your knowledge. An attacker can install a keylogger and then it’s game over: your toast.
Will using Firefox prevent all this? Of course not, but it’s the single biggest step you can make towards protecting yourself and it will take you all of ten minutes, and it is free. IE is the most often-used attack vector, so why make it available to a potential attacker?
So what are you waiting for? You now know: do you care at all about your personal security?
Most of you probably haven’t even heard of Twitter, so let me begin with a brief description of what the service is:
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or email, or through applications such as TwitterMobile, Tweetie, Twinkle, TwitterFox, Twitterrific, Feedalizr, and Facebook. Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, and a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. Twitter had by one measure over 3 million accounts and, by another, well over 5 million visitors in September 2008, a fivefold increase in a month.
At the insistence of my friend Ben Thomas (@bdthomas) I signed up for Twitter a few weeks ago, around the same time Christi and I started using Facebook (you can follow my tweets @ryanmaple, or via my RSS feed if that’s your cup of tea) and am starting to really like it. Why? Well I’m glad you asked!
In the world of Twitter people follow you and you follow other people. When logged into Twitter via the web or a third-party application (like TwitterFon, an application I use on my iPhone), tweets from people you follow show up in your timeline and you can reply back to them, using the @person syntax. This reply mechanism lets you get into conversations with people and some apps, like TwitterFon, will drill these down into actual conversations if you wish. Following people is really fun, because you get real-time status updates. A sample of people I follow:
@Foodimentary: Today~N~Food: Today is the day of St. Bernard of Vienne, patron of farm workers and field hands. ~For all who toil in the soil, enjoy!
@TheBeerWench: FYI: One of the most annoying thing in the world is having to listen to skinny girls complain about being fat. Sooooooo annoying.
@wholefoods: Stop by wholefoodsmarket.com/live Friday 1:30pmET for a live blog with Angela Rakis. She’ll talk about value shopping & take your questions.
@brewingnetwork: Reminder that The Jamil Show returns tonight to re-do the Cider show & add Malt Liquor & Australian Sparkling Ale to the lineup. Starts @ 7
@MoreBeer_B3: Deal of the Day for the rest of the week and on into the weekend is all about … Whole Hops!
Of course following people is fun, but tweeting is the really fun part. Once you start blogging (*cough* *cough*) you develop a form of narcissism that is hard to control. Sure, I only get on average 30 hits or so to this blog per day but does that stop me from blogging? Hells no, because if even one of those 30 people take value from what I say (or at least read it!), I feel like it’s worth it. Humans have a need to express themselves. Some people make art or sing music, some people decorate their homes, and some people brew beer. Blogging is just another form of self-expression that is fun, liberating, and fulfills some deep-down need in ourselves. I never really understood this until I started doing it.
Okay, now that I’m done waxing philosophical, I’ll actually get to the point: I blog twice per day, on average, but tweet way more than that. Yesterday I put out eight tweets ranging from excitement about the year yeast vendor I found, to my boredom labelling bottles of my Irish Red Ale. Did anybody care? Who knows. Do I care if anybody cares? No way!
So, in a nutshell, I encourage you to all take a look at this wonderful service. The more people you know who use it the more valuable it becomes and even if you don’t sign up for an account and tweet yourself, you can follow people you find interesting via RSS (but that’s another post that I’ve had queued up for weeks now… I’ll try to finish it next week sometime).
While I am a big advocate of the consumer, I think The Consumerist often crosses a line. I think my opinion of them changed when they published this highly innacurate article about the security of Chase online banking. Within minutes of them posting that article there were comments about how inacurate it was. A few observations of this event:
* They did not publish a follow-up story, stating their error, which means people who saw the headline (and didn’t click-through to the comments) had no idea it was dead wrong. I’m sure Chase took several phone calls because of this.
* They were deleting comments, and banning users, who were critical of their handling of the whole ordeal. Of course, you’d have no idea of this now because (oddly) the archived article doesn’t have any comments associated with it, but I remember it happening when I was tracking this story (since it interested me).
I know, expecting a blog to be accountable is laughable, but I expect it. Ever since that incident I’ve found myself having more and more problems with their content and, today, they published something which pushed me from thinking how much they bother me to sharing my thoughts with you.
I suppose someone ordering an HDTV from Amazon would appreciate a timed delivery, but even that is more or less assured by frantic UPS/Fedex tracking. Essentially, it gives you all the joy of waiting for a cable television install with none of the actual productivity. Someone places the HDTV box on your stand, unwraps it carefully, and then goes away, leaving you to hire an actual installer, waiting more time, spending more money, etc. Does this seem unnecessary to anyone else?
It must be a really slow news day for them to post crap like this. As somebody who has actually used this service, where oh where do I begin:
* First off, the “white glove” service is free. Complaining about a free service makes you look like a real asshole. If you want something more, then get off your lazy ass and pay somebody.
* Amazon’s white glove service is NOT via UPS or FedEx, which you would know if you did a little research on it. Mine was delivered by CEVA Logistics (whose online tracking quite honestly sucks, on the contrary), and I’m pretty sure that’s who they use for everybody else in the country (given the data in the forums on Amazon).
* The CEVA delivery people (there were two of them) waited until I hooked it up and powered it on so I could check it for dead pixels. Again, if you look a little closer at the service you’ll see people who rejected the television on delivery (due to damage), and the CEVA people took it right back and Amazon sent them a new one out.
* Do you really want a delivery person messing with your electronics equipment? For one there are liability issues, which would probably drive the delivery cost up to something “not free”. Second, how hard is it to connect a television? If your gear is so complicated that you can’t do it yourself, do you really expect somebody to perform this service for free?
Bottom line: I got my television for a lower cost, and a lower delivery cost, from Amazon than I could have from my local big box store. I’m not sure how much I was quoted, but I know PC Richards, Circuit City, and Best Buy all quoted me $30-$50 for delivery (a few miles, mind you) and that charge did NOT include installation, which I would never have let them do anyway.
Like I said, you have to be a really inconsiderate asshole to complain about a free service, especially when the service is better than the alternatives out there. So congratulations to the moron of the day: Alex Jarvis!
I’m not Tina Fey, but I’d like to share a little Weekend Update with everybody!
Christi and I (mostly Christi) are hooked on Facebook. Christi has not put her iPhone down since I installed the Facebook app on it and she’s having a grand old time connecting with long-lost friends (67 at current count, but I’m sure more will come). I’m taking a more conservative approach, only befriending people that I am genuinely friends with… if I stopped talking to you then there is probably a reason
It’s really cool being able to keep in touch. During the Giants game yesterday Jay, Becky, Nick, and I were all commenting to each other about how crappy they were playing. If you’re putting off joining because you hold your privacy dear — like me — rest assured that you can lock your profile down very tight so that only your friends can find you.
Oh, I’m also on Twitter now too. You can follow my tweets here, or by subscribing to my feed. I currently have my tweets setting my Facebook status, but I’m not sure how much I like that and it will probably change at some point. If you’re interested in spying on me, check out that Twitter page every so often.
Of course, the real fun this weekend was brewing-related (did you think otherwise?)
On Saturday I kegged one half of the 10g Irish Red Ale batch and bottled the other half. I don’t think it turned out as good as last time but time will tell. I’ll be giving away most of the bottles (drop me a line if you’re interested!) and will be bringing the keg out to the Poconos, so if it’s any good it won’t last long.
Christi was amazed at how much easier it was to keg than it was to bottle, to which I replied “duh!” She resisted against me kegging for a real long time but now she’s realizing that kegging = spending more time with me. Silly Christi
My gas manifold will get here later in the week so in the next few weeks my kegerator conversion should be mostly complete. I’ll let everybody know when that happens so you can all come by and help me test it.
Sunday was a big brew day. As you all know my current brew method is “extract with specialty grain.” Basically this process involves steeping some cracked grains in water (for color, unfermentable sugars, and flavor) then pouring extract and hops into boiling water. I started out on the stovetop but have moved outside, doing this on a 5g scale.
On Sunday I tried a new technique: partial mash (also known as mini-mashing).
This technique involves mashing 5 pounds of grain in 170*F water for 45 minutes, then sparging it with 175*F water for another 45 minutes or so. During this process the 2-row barley in the mash activates enzymes which breaks down the starches into fermentable sugars.
In a nutshell, the extracts I currently use are made from full-mashes. Because this was a partial-mash I still added extracts into the boil, but not nearly as much as I would have otherwise. This is a step-up from plain extracts, and is halfway towards all-grain brewing… which I plan to move to in the spring (as soon as it’s warm enough outside, and I can get the rest of the gear I need).
The brew went very well and I expect this batch to turn out fantastic. I had fermentation by the time I woke up (less than 12 hours) and can’t wait to see what the carboy looks like when I got home.
Our weekened wrapped up watching the Golden Globes… fun.
So it finally happened, my iPhone is broken. There is a 1/2″ strip of the touch screen, at the bottom, that does not respond. I’m still deciding how to address this as there is 
