Torres Talking: Computers and Internet

Leaving Mozy, testing Carbonite

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:29:24 GMT

As usual, Omar is a couple weeks ahead of me here. But Mozy has been an absolute dog for me over the last few weeks, and it's time I move on. Of course I'm going to wait until I'm completely backed up elsewhere before ditching Mozy - and I've "sold" Mozy to a number of people, all whom I now have to cross my fingers and hope they're not having the same problems. To sum it up, look at this one screenshot:

There are like 4 “bugs” in that one screenshot.

Why 15 days? That's like a lifetime when you take pictures of a 4 month old.
ConnectionError1 – that’s great. Wha? Sometimes it says this, sometimes it doesn't. Nothing else on my machine has trouble connecting to the Internet.
Look at the bytes next to the # of files backed up (-86744233809... a negative number?)
224GB remaining even though I’ve been running this thing every single day since last summer? A couple weeks ago it said 0. What happened?

I'm not patient enough to deal with customer support - there are just too many problems here to deal. So I'm going to give Carbonite a go.

PS. Yes, I know. My blogging is slow. But I warned you ahead of time a little while back! Just subscribe to my RSS feed and don't bother checking back regularly; that way quantity or frequency of posts don't matter at all.

Amazon Kindle - a revolution?

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:00:54 GMT

The Amazon Kindle was announced today and to me, the most important news isn't the E-ink support or the fact that you can store 200+ books on the device. It's the use of Sprint's EV-DO network as a utility that you don't have to pay for (directly). Whether or not the Kindle will be successful, it's a fantastic example of a standalone device with a backing service, available from just about anywhere. I love the idea of the cellular networks "renting" out their services to devices like this without requiring a separate $49/mo data plan. I'm sure Sprint gets a cut of the books sold since they provide the transport - and they're likely to be cash flow positive in the process. Win-Win for everyone if the device is even mildly successful.

The model is actually in pretty stark contrast to Apple's iPhone which requires a Wi-Fi hotspot to purchase and download songs. That thing has a cellular radio and a very expensive data plan, and it can't even connect to its own music store. Crazy. I really do think that 5-10 years from now, we'll all look back at the Kindle as the first device that made the "network in the sky" obvious. It's just so futuristic ;)

So far, I'm really liking what I'm seeing with the Kindle. The price is still way too high (as was the price of the original iPod) but the promise of a 10 ounce device that can store 200+ books is really... well, promising. I likely won't jump on this bandwagon until the DRM scheme is ironed out though - the last thing I want to do is spend a bunch of money on "books" that are tied to one device. One cool thing they're doing is associating the purchases with your Amazon ID which means you can re-download any book if you lose or upgrade the device.

Digital books are the future. Just like I've cleared my home of all CDs and gone 100% digital, I can't wait to do the same thing with books. It's the side of me that just hates having "stuff" everywhere. When given the option between a physical artifact or a bunch of bytes, I almost always choose bytes. But until Amazon promises that the books I buy from them can be read on my PC, Mac, or a device like the iPhone or Sony Reader, I'm not sure it's worth it to invest in the Kindle. Make this one a no-brainer; I want to *own* the books just like I do now with paper.

By the way, I totally predicted this release back in July and as usual, I have to point that out :) "The hardware will be much more appealing to book worms - possibly with digital pages that actually flip - and the fonts and rendering technology will be wondrous. The dedicated device will be connected to the net for instant download (via an iTunes-like store, probably provided by Amazon.com and B&N) of new books, magazines, newspapers, and other types of content."

I've been saying for years that this is the next step for Amazon. They were beaten to digital music, but books are their domain to own.

Things rarely "just work"

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:00:34 GMT

We have a long ways to go... as much as I love technology - and trust me, I really do - I spend a good 20-40% of my time "dealing" with it instead of having it just work for me. Before haters jump on me and say it's because most of my stuff comes from Microsoft, that isn't the case at all. This entry is actually about Comcast, NetGear, Motorola, and Tivo, but it could just as easily be about how my MacBook Pro keeps bugging me about some ridiculous EFI firmware update and a 131MB update to OS X. Then again, it could be about how OneCare tells me I have 3 viruses on my machine, fails to quarantine them, and then doesn't let me see which files they occur in ;) That one I haven't figured out yet.

Anyway, this is story is a comedy of errors. I will try and keep it as short as I can because even thinking about it makes me want to throw my new Tivo off my balcony.

It all started with the latest Comcast DVR box - my fourth one - which was recently updated from a horrible OS to an even more horrible OS. The second the update happened, we started having even MORE problems with the thing - and this is after YEARS of dealing with botched recordings. Three times in recent weeks fast forwarding through recorded TV would crash the device. But the kicker was when watching Smallville the other night, the audio track just randomly turned off. So no sound at all. [luckily I recorded it as a backup on my Media Center upstairs, so I used Xbox 360's Media Center Extender to stream the show to my TV downstairs - but having a backup plan for a DVR is ridiculous]

After the latest debacle, I decided to just bite the bullet and get a Tivo HD now that it's priced reasonably (unlike the Series 3). A few hours later, a Tivo HD was ordered and a few days later, it arrived. I budgeted a few hours on Saturday to return the Comcast DVR, get a multi-stream CableCard, setup the Tivo, get it on the Wi-Fi network, and adjust the universal remote to work with it. A few hours, HAH.

I unbox the Tivo yesterday and plug it in - which alone took about 30 minutes because of all the cable routing you have to do. "Welcome - powering up!" shows up on the screen. This'll be EASY I'm thinking. After a couple minutes, the screen goes blank and the TV says "Video input unavailable" or something. After another 30 minutes messing with the cables to make sure they're placed right, I call Tivo Support. The first person I talk to BLAMED COMCAST and said that Comcast is sabotaging Tivo by keeping HDMI from working correctly. She recommended I get the Series 3 or just use composite cables permanently. She wouldn't accept a return or exchange.

Huh?! I just paid almost $300 for this thing and the HDMI logo is ON THE BOX and on the front of the device; it better work! I was totally civil and spoke without raising my voice once - and she HUNG UP on me. I called back and spoke to someone else who was some help. He had me plug in composite cables temporarily to see if we could pinpoint it to the HDMI. This worked - but once we went back to HDMI, it failed to "project" again. So I kept the composite cables in just to get into Settings and see if I could play with Video settings. This is where things got funny.

In order to setup a Tivo, you need a phone line or an Internet connection. I don't have a landline, so I had to set the Tivo up on my secure Wi-Fi network before I could get into the Video settings. I load up my NetGear router's config to add the Tivo's MAC address to the allow list. The router crashes. When it comes back online, it's restored to factory settings. Again, HUH?! I have to set my wireless network up again, security and all. Once it's up and running, I realize it isn't getting an IP from Comcast. Turns out my Motorola cable modem "forgot" how to talk to the router. This took me another 40 minutes to figure out - which basically meant unplugging and plugging in the router and modem about 10 times in various orders until the router got an external IP. Frustration. I was incredulous at this point.

I go back to the Tivo, get it on the network, mess with the video settings. Nothing. HDMI just doesn't work. So I went to Best Buy, picked up another Tivo HD, brought it home and set it up in 20 minutes. I just had a defective box (despite what their support staff tried to tell me). But the fact that the Tivo crashed my router, which in turn crashed my cable modem, is laughable. For hours I didn't have television or Internet despite all these "magical" little devices.

And of course, once the Tivo was setup, my universal remote "forgot" how to turn off my stereo receiver. So I had to spend another 20 minutes in advanced settings making sure it was sending the right infrared signal. How do non techies do any of this?

As an industry, we have to do better than this.

Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 feels like spyware!

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:27:36 GMT

Acrobat Reader is like anti-virus software, an IM client, or Microsoft Word; it's software that's hard to live without. Not impossible, just hard. The problem with Acrobat Reader, for all it's great qualities, is that it doesn't honor any boundaries; it treats your PC as if it owns the thing, and its only purpose in life is to show me appx. one document a week! Not exactly a fair trade if you ask me.

What bugs me about it? Let me count the ways...

1. It auto-opens when I click on a PDF online... fine. But immediately it goes into "update" mode without even asking me if that's OK. A little star icon shows up in my system tray indicating that the download is already 46% complete! Wha?! Who said you could do that? What ever happened to user consent? Maybe this is just because I'm using a PC that had Acrobat Reader installed on it from the factory, I don't know. I seem to remember this happening on other machines too. To make things worse, I can't find a way to turn this off in Edit: Preferences. It's hidden somewhere. At least give me the option.

2. Acrobat Reader pollutes my Documents folder with the ever-annoying Updater5 folder. Seriously, is this the best they could come up with? Windows Vista does a fantastic job of centralizing a user's special folders like Music, Pictures, and so on under C:\Users\Username - applications have no right to put junk into those folders... ever. [side note: Microsoft violates this same unwritten rule with Office 2004 for the Mac and the SyncToy app, which bug me just as much] How is "Updater5" a personal document folder? Of course, the second you delete this folder, the thing comes back with the next update!

3. It puts some silly Speed Launcher into the Startup folder. I'm pretty sure the latest version still does this, but I'm always so quick to delete this trash that this may actually be fixed. But I doubt it. The thinking is that if they load a certain portion of Reader into resident memory, the startup time will be decreased when you launch it. Of course - the problem with this logic is that some portion of Acrobat Reader is chomping away at your system resources 100% of the time, even though you're only spending about 0.005% of that time skimming some PDF. According to the Support page, the only use of the Speed Launcher is to pre-scan your "most frequent" PDFs for viruses - not to sit in RAM waiting for you to open a PDF file. But it doesn't take a master searcher to find hundreds of people complaining online of Acrobat Reader utilizing resources for no good reason, even when closed.

Aren't we past the point of allowing software vendors to do this kind of stuff to us? This is one area the Mac OS X excels - PDF rendering is built-in to the rendering engine, so you never need to go near Adobe Reader, which keeps things nice and simple.

A quick search turned up this post by Omar. It looks like the solution to problems #1 and #2 is simply to delete C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Updater5 and Acrobat will no longer a) self-update or b) add random folders into your personal files. The solution to #3 is simple too, just remove anything that starts with "Adobe" from your Startup folder in your Start menu and you won't have Acrobat Reader thinking it knows what's best for you.

Update: Never mind, this didn't work. What makes it worse is that the Updater5 returns ANY TIME you open up a PDF. So this is the "real fix" from Glenn90:

By default, it's configured to periodically check for updates, and download any updates to a folder called "Updater5" in the default "My Documents" folder. You can change this folder, or disable the updating behavior altogether, by going to Help-->Check For Updates. The program will, obnoxiously enough, check for updates first, but then eventually will display a "Preferences" button for you to click. From here you can change the updates folder or disable updates. Yes, I think this is one of the more obnoxious examples of common programs doing annoying things without asking permission.

Here's the screen:

Enjoy...

Lots and lots of Apple updates

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:04:37 GMT

As both a Mac user and a Windows user (who also uses iTunes and Quicktime) I'm absolutely amazed at how often I need to update some piece of Apple software for security vulnerabilities. It feels like it's almost daily, which makes it feel like Windows XP circa 2003.

Windows Vista on the other hand has had far fewer patches to download since launch, and when they do get downloaded they get installed automatically overnight. On my Mac - or PC with Apple Software Update - it always seems to require user intervention. Updating your jukebox software every couple of days gets pretty annoying when you're trying to get work done.

Does anyone else feel this pain?

More: Apple unloads torrent of patches, plus the first iPhone update

Robots are here to stay!

Thu, 10 May 2007 23:19:23 GMT

I've been waiting for the day when I wake up and realize that robots are starting to make real traction in people's lives. Of course robots have been used for years on assembly lines and in factories, but we have quite a ways to go before we all have Rosie from the Jetsons offering to clean our bathtub.

What we have today isn't so bad though. We aren't at the point yet where robots are ubiquitous by any stretch of the imagination, but we're starting to see a world where robots will be used to make people's everyday chores easier. We already have robots that mop floors, clean workshop floors, clean pools, vacuum floors, and even scoop the kitty litter (see pic below). Soon we'll have robots for folding clothes, mowing the lawn, taking dishes out of the dishwasher and putting them away, and so on. All those mundane tasks we all perform every single day ad nauseam. Most of these robots will be $300-500 and be "single function" robots for a period of time, ensuring that they can perform their small set of tasks with high quality.

Robots rock. Especially ones for cat crap.

(I so want that thing. It even matches the iMac!)

On Simplicity Again

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:45:32 GMT

Don Norman, a guy who knows a lot more about design than I ever will, has a great essay posted about "simplicity" when it comes to design. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that I completely agree with Don when he says simplicity is a myth. Everyone says they want it until they're presented with an option that does more. It's human nature to want more.

Here's a snippet from his post. What do you think the question is?

Answer: Because the people want the features. Because simplicity is a myth whose time has past, if it ever existed.
Make it simple and people won’t buy. Given a choice, they will take the item that does more. Features win over simplicity, even when people realize that it is accompanied by more complexity. You do it too, I bet. Haven’t you ever compared two products side by side, comparing the features of each, preferring the one that did more? Why shame on you, you are behaving, well, behaving like a normal person.

Source: Don Norman's jnd.org / Simplicity Is Highly Overrated

Jobs on iPhone: ISVs need not apply

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 02:22:19 GMT

This is the saddest thing I've seen in a while. It's as if Jobs is punishing ISVs for Apple not building an appropriately sandboxed phone operating system. The only way apps affect the ability to make a phone call is if the OS doesn't deal with the applications correctly. This is just control freak-itis and a ploy for fatter pockets.

Then again, Steve is known for saying one thing and doing another a few months later (who would want to watch video on an iPod anyway? :)

Moreover, Mr. Jobs also appears to be restricting the potential for third-party software developers to write applications for the new handset — from ringtones to word processors.
...

“We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”
The iPhone, he insisted, would not look like the rest of the wireless industry.
“These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.”
Source: Phone Shows Apple’s Impact on Consumer Products - New York Times

Prediction: when the iPhone launches, so does the iTunes ringtones store. $.49/ea. And a software store a few months later where Apple blesses each and every application and takes a large cut of the purchase price like they do with iPod Games.

<sigh>

I don't want to live in a world where something like this succeeds. I don't care how pretty it is.

I won't be buying an iPhone

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:30:03 GMT

There has been so much commentary on this already that I almost don't want to post this. But given that I love most Apple products (just not Apple TV), love and use a lot of Microsoft products, and I'm a mobile lifestyle and gadget junkie, I couldn't help myself. Unlike most though, I'm going try and keep this short and to the point. [ I failed, it's kind of long ]

When I saw the details of the iPhone for the first time, I was drooling on my keyboard. I was taking my credit card out of my pocket, screaming like a banshee, and thinking about how cool I will be when I show people my new phone. But I slept on it and when I woke up, the reality distortion field had dissipated. I won't be buying one. At least not this year. Why not? In no particular order:

I can't synchronize corporate email, calendar, tasks, or contacts over the air. In other words, no matter how beautiful the user interface is, I can't get to the information that's MOST important to me bar none. Finding a nearby Starbucks is nice, but knowing what building my next meeting is in is non-negotiable.
Looks like you can't swap out the battery for a better one, presumably because it would mess with the aesthetics of the device. We'll see if this means there will be an iPod connector add-on for extended battery life - if not, this is going to be a non-starter for most people, including me.
The EDGE network is so slow it's almost unusable for web browsing. I used EDGE previously and just downloading my email would take forever. Having been on EV-DO speeds for well over a year, I can't go back to waiting 20-30 seconds for a web page to load.
It's a closed platform. Sorry, no way am I spending that kind of money on a computer I can't install a program on! On my Smartphone I have over six 3rd party applications installed that I couldn't live without at this point. Most high-end users have an expectation that they can do what they want with their phones and not be limited to what the OS ships with. To think Apple thinks this is a good idea is incredibly disappointing. I'll stick with gaming, Live Search for Mobile, RSS readers, Orb, Skype, SlingPlayer, Power Tasks, and everything else open platforms enable.
It's ridiculously, insanely expensive. $499 and $599 WITH a 2-year contract? Plus a data plan, SMS plan, and voice plan? Who was smoking what when they came up with this price? Steve mentioned that Smartphones "go for about $299" but I don't know what phones he was actually looking at. My Q was $99 with a 2-year plan (that's a five hundred dollar difference between my high-end Smartphone and a high-end iPhone) and the BlackJack is in the $275 price range. But remember, this is $499/$599 in six MONTHS. Which means the Q, the BlackJack, the Dash, and most Pocket PC phones will be free - or even subsidized to the point that you get $50 back from the carrier just for buying one.
It's a version 1 from a company that's never built an OS for a phone before. See Omar's post for his thoughts on what this means. I agree with most of it, but I do think Apple has a much higher bar than other companies for a v1 product. So it will be bad in many ways, but I don't think it will be that bad. Either way, I'm sticking with a v5 or v6 operating system for the time being.
Typing on something without feedback has been tried - and it hasn't worked. It could be great if everything Apple folks say is true, but my expectation is that it leaves fingerprints, it's error prone and slow, and it won't feel natural. I could be wrong about this - but I've had Pocket PCs and Palm devices since the year they were first released and I've tried all the finger-enabled onscreen keyboards. And I need a true QWERTY keyboad. [ side note: I really hope I am flat out wrong on this because I want a big-screen device without a keyboard someday ]
I don't want a phone that can scratch as easily as my iPod nano. Enough said ;)
Functionally, it doesn't do any more than my current phone. Or even my last five phones. It just looks better doing it! Gizmodo talks about this a bit here: Windows Mobile 5 Already Does What the iPhone Does.

Don't get me wrong, I think the interface is gorgeous. Its animations, effects, and sheer usability blow away anything on the market today. But its actual functionality (what you can DO) isn't all that impressive when you dig into it - and the market could change quite a bit in 6-12 months if you look at the last 6-12 months as an indication. I've seen the plans for the next, next version of Windows Mobile (not Crossbow) and you can't assume all 200 patents Apple filed will actually be granted ;) In other words, how novel do you think this device will be when people finally get their hands on them (and then are stuck with them for 2 years after dropping six hundred bucks?)

The only thing it has going over my current phone is that it's prettier and "cooler" really, and that isn't worth $600+. The snazzy UI (and accelerometer!) reminds me of the first time I tried OS X at a friend's place after using Windows XP. Apple frequently makes me feel like the future is happening now, as the form-factor and look-and-feel of this device is exactly what I'm hoping to have someday soon. But not with the limitations I just listed unfortunately.

The one great thing about this device is how it will spur the competition to make their interfaces easier to use and better looking. It happened with PC operating systems and MP3 players and it will happen on phones. And once the "lust factor" is taken out of the equation, open platforms with a vibrant ecosystem are always better positioned.

Omar has more roundup of rational commentary.

MacWorld Keynote

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 19:21:24 GMT

Gut feel is that Apple TV gets a D - it's way too expensive for what it does, which is incredibly limited. The iPhone is a solid A and would have gotten an A+ if it didn't cost as much as a Mac Mini. And for all the amazing things it does, it oddly enough isn't even a true 3G phone. But it's still impressive... to put it lightly. I need to actually watch that keynote tonight and see it for myself.

More on the Office 2007 UI

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 22:26:45 GMT

For those not using Office 2007 (which is probably most of you until January at the earliest) you should definitely check out the demo and FAQ of the new user interface:

Get Started with the 2007 Release

I'm not MS-cheerleading or exaggerating when I say the new Office UI is the single biggest enhancement to software design since the back button/hyperlink combination. I find myself opening Office documents just to play with the Ribbon, SmartArt effects, and Live Preview.

Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are in stark contrast to most applications on Windows these days. They're easy to use, insanely powerful yet intuitive, and they actually feel lightweight. The ribbon puts everything at your fingertips with a very task-focused approach:

When you compare the consistent user interface in (most of) Office 2007 to our own apps like Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail Desktop, Windows Media Player, and Windows Photo Gallery, it demonstrates just how much consistency can improve the overall experience as you float from app to app. These applications (which, for the record, I love and use everyday) each have a very different interaction model for toolbars and menus.

Photo gallery does away with menus and has a clean "toolbar" which combines menus and the traditional toolbar.

Messenger HIDES menus, probably because they're sort of ugly. But it means you have no idea how to get to Options unless you know to click that little down arrow in the upper right hand corner near minimize. I readily admit that it may not come like this by default, but the first thing I do is hide those menus because they take up space I'm not willing to sacrifice.

Mail is different from Messenger strangely enough. Menus are hidden this time in that menu icon under your display picture. The toolbar itself is similar to Photo Gallery but looks different, probably due to the fonts and spacing, etc.

Media Player is the "worst" of the bunch. It's "ribbon-esque" at first glance but the tabs are actually drop-down menus too. To find the other menus (yes, there are two different kinds) you actually have to right-click (!) in the toolbar. Then File, View, etc. appear. This confused me so much I decided just to show the classic menu again.

Someday, maybe all applications will use the ribbon as it seems everyone has a unique approach to exposing actions these days. We've outgrown toolbars and menus and replaced them with a bunch of custom, one-off ways to make programs more functional and more aesthetically pleasing.

The good news is that the Office UI is actually available to license, so if you're an application developer check it out. There's even a video about it. In the meantime, I'll work on our internal teams ;)