Skydrive v3, Hits and Misses

November 13, 2008 19:57 by kcorax

The details on the 3rd public release of Skydrive are out. I consider Live’s online storage service extremely important due to the shape of things that are coming. Both from a user and a developer standpoint.

So let’s see what we’re getting.

Hits

25 GBs of storage space. Since no one was using the ginormous 5GBs that were previously available they though they could ramp it up anyway. That’s only good. In fact it’s crushing every single paid service I know of.
Better photos. You can now download straight to the Live Gallery, or download a folder as a zipped file. Awesome !
Photos can be seen in fantastic Flash or Silverlight slideshows. It also syncs with Live Photogallery’s tags for people etc. The thumbnails are huge blah blah blah. If this was a standalone photo service, it would be great, but it’s actually more.
Integration with the new Live Home page that we’ve only seen in the Connect programme. It’s awesome, I promise.
Sync your Internet Explorer bookmarks among machines.

Misses

25GBs of space that are separated from the Live Mesh service. No comment.
Better photos that actually antagonize the photo service found in Live Spaces.
Sync your Internet Explorer Favorites, but not with favorites.live.com . WTF ?!

And let’s see the user survery results that were taken back in March. This is what users were asking:

Allowing multiple downloads at once.
Displaying how many times a file has been downloaded.
Supporting file synchronization from the desktop.
Providing an API for storing and retrieving files.
Adding SkyDrive access from Windows Explorer.

NONE OF THESE IS IMPLEMENTED ! And it remains to see how the fuck they will plug the Live Sync service in this.

What happened to the Live teams being feedback driven ?

Letter to the macsexual community

November 4, 2008 15:40 by kcorax

To the people that are whining again over Windows 7 copying OSX's dock:

look at how the Dock copied the Taskbar in the first place. OS Classic users need to think what they had before that.
the simple fact that 7’s taskbar has only 3 things in common with the Dock:
1. the use of icons instead of descriptions, which is inevitable for multitaskers and makes sense in a touch enabled OS.
2. the ability to reorder things, which was a longtime request of users
3. the ability to mix launchers with instance switching. Launchers such as the Dock's stacks existed in Windows since the shell 95

And the reason I'm bitching about this, is that now that the macsexuals have started bitching, I'm bound to hear shit like : "Why do you use a copycat OS ?" AGAIN.

Thing is, OSX has systematically ripped off every bit of Windows they found interesting, JUST like Microsoft has.

Quick review of the new del.icio.us

July 31, 2008 18:07 by kcorax

From Twitter -- Cross Post with Unseen here

unseend @KCorax haha lol about TechCrunch... but now as I see it I think it really sucks. end of story. switch to minimalistic delicious A S A P ! 2 λεπτά ago from web in reply to KCorax

KCorax @unseend because the 'expert' crowd of people who 'know better' and 'think different' is more vocal. I bet TechCrunch will love it. 12 λεπτά ago from web in reply to unseend

unseend @KCorax yeah man... too much "noise" in the new del.icio.us design... the minimalistic "theme" was perfect.. wonder why they changed it... 13 λεπτά ago from web in reply to KCorax

KCorax While the new delicious design is good, this case underlines why web application deployment sucks: I can't find many of the things I want. 17 λεπτά ago from web

Categories: Nasty talk | Review
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Lessons learned today: MS SQL Server edition

June 8, 2008 06:23 by kcorax

Microsoft SQL Server only offers user instances and lax security conveniences in the free Express Edition. In any other case it's a big fucking truck driving towards you. Managing the security features alone is a science of itself.
SQL Server requires that I eat with a knife and a fork and that I don't rest my elbows on the table. I have to take small bites and chew with grace. Otherwise it will lock me out of my database.
SQL Server is a mean matron when you piss it off. It enjoys dominating the lives of men and making them subservient and docile pets.
Don't even think of knocking on SQL Server's door when you've attached your useland databases to the server. You will have to wait until it's gone asleep (shut down the service) in order to reclaim the rights on them.
SQL Server doesn't care if you're the Administrator. It looks at your credentials, spits on the ground and then shuts the door at your face. After all can you play the 'get the file rights' game faster than the machine ? No you can't.

And heed my advice, cause it's worth gold: If you own an SQL Server with Analytics (Standard or greater) don't you dare miss out on the Excel analysis toolkit. It's by far the best way to deal with BI stuff.

Observe as the Dell XPS trashes the Macbook

June 6, 2008 13:23 by kcorax

I often get attacked when I suggest that Apple is ripping of it's loyal customers. Even when I produce data they dimiss it quickly and point me to rigged comparisons where Apple always emerges victorious.

To this end I have created the following comparisons which are actually as favorable to Apple as possible. You see there is no way to compare a la carte products when deals are included. Each manufacturer builds their systems and then make deals that actually allow them to reduce prices according to hiden traits in their production chain.

Macheads usually pull the best deal they can find from Apple and then try to stretch the worst value-for-money that they can find to show that Macs cost the same or less. This is not fair ! Still Dell's offerings have such good VFM that they still beated the Macs even in this process.

To conduct my comparissons I:

pulled out offers from Apple's store
picked a same priced Dell from the XPS line of products
augmented the Apple to match the XPS's features, this was never possible to do the other way, since the XPS's hardware was always better
augmented the Dell to my liking until it met Apple's price point, although in the last case that was impossible

And why the Dell XPS you will ask ? Like I said I make this test favorable to Apple to show that it's still ripping it's customers. The XPS lineup provides machines with the exact same screen diagonal and almost exact same thickness. The Macs are orthorectangular and the XPSes are wedge shaped, but their actual volume is about the same.

So here goes:

Entry level 13'' laptops

	Dell XPS m1330	Macbook

Price	1099$	1110$
CPU	2 GHz	2 GHz
Display	CCFL	CCFL
Memory	2 GB	1 GB
Hard drive	160 GB 5400 rpm	120 GB 5400 rpm
Graphics card	X3100	X3100 (onboard)
Wifi	801.11g	801.11n
Battery	6 cell	6 cell
Palmrest	Aluminum	White plastic that gradually turns yellow
Audio	Onboard	Onboard
Warranty	1 year parts & labor	1 year parts & labor
Weight	~ 2 kg	~ 2.27 kg
Fingerprint reader	Yes	No
Theft protection	None	None
Ridiculous stuff	Remote that hides in a PCMIA slot & Recycling kit & Plant a tree for me	External remote
Crapware	Various	.Mac for month

The differences are not really significant. As an owner of this product I would like to point out that I really like the fact that the remote in the laptop hides in the actual body of the machine.

Powerhouse 13'' laptops

	Dell XPS m1330	Macbook Black

Price	1684$	1710$
CPU	2.4 GHz	2.4 GHz
Display	LED (brighter and thinner)	CCFL
Memory	4 GB	4 GB
Hard drive	320 GB 5400 rpm	250 GB 5400 rpm
Graphics card	GeForce 8400M GS 128 MB	X3100 (onboard)
Wifi	801.11n	801.11n
Battery	9 cell	6 cell
Palmrest	Aluminum	Black plastic that actually manages to discolor
Audio	Soundblaster Audigy HD	Onboard
Warranty	3 year in house, parts & labor	1 year parts & labor
Weight	~ 2 kg	~ 2.27 kg
Fingerprint reader	Yes	No
Theft protection	LoJack	None
Ridiculous stuff	Remote that hides in a PCMIA slot & Recycling kit & Plant a tree for me	External remote
Crapware	Various & 2 years McAffee	.Mac for a month

Apple's 15'' high end

	Dell XPS m1530	Macbook Pro 15

Price	2092$	2499$
CPU	2.5 GHz	2.5 GHz
Display	LED	LED
Memory	4 GB	2 GB
Hard drive	320 GB 7200 rpm	250 GB 5400 rpm
Graphics card	GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB	GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB
Wifi	801.11n	801.11n
Battery	9 cell	6 cell
Palmrest	Aluminum	Grey plastic that is very hard to discolor
Audio	Sound Blaster Audigy HD	Onboard
Warranty	3 year in house, parts & labor	1 year parts & labor
Weight	~ 2.6 kg	~ 2.45 kg
Fingerprint reader	Yes	No
Theft protection	Lojack	None
Ridiculous stuff	Remote that hides in a PCMIA slot & Recycling kit & Plant a tree for me	Fake multitouch trackpad & External remote
Crapware	Various & 2 years McAffee	.Mac for a month

Mac users (which very often act as marketing beacons) argue that PCs have hidden costs. To counter that, I have included in each configuration the greatest possible dell warranty. This means that given the propability of an breakdown which can set you back an average 250$ we're actually saving money. Also the added performance should more than make up for running the free AVG antivirus and Windows Defender. Granted that Macs get by default only 1 year of support and you have to bring them in, the 3 year total cost of ownership should be greater, but it's ok, even if I factored that in noone would actually accept it as a price argument.

On the mac side I chose not to do that because the AppleCare contracts are actually ridiculously expensive and don't actually include in-house fixing.

At some point I promise to do the tests the other way around. This means that I will pick a good value-for-money from Dell and adjust the Apple to meet it's characteristics. In my early experiments this would make the Mac 30% more expensive. It really should be fun !

Mens' work

June 2, 2008 12:37 by kcorax

Before you ask, no I'm not ashamed of taking photos from careless neighboors. He had it coming.

Categories: Musings | Nasty talk
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Time.com proves itself to be superficial

April 7, 2008 04:39 by KCorax

by giving the following review for Ars Technica

A perennially top-rated blog that bills itself as covering "the art of technology." Verdict: too much technology. Hardly any art. And lose the fruity name.

Ars Techninca for me, is the best of breed over many factors such as variety, update speed, accuracy, technical insight (as opposed to being parrots of what the press releases say), technical consistency, carefully opinionated writing, quality of writing, aesthetics and then some others.

I'd bash the journalist who wrote this, but the page isn't signed by anyone.

Update: They've also commented on Slashdot

Reading Slashdot these days is like visiting the IT guy at work. He's infuriatingly smug and cares passionately about stuff you don't care about, and views your lack of interest as further confirmation of his intellectual superiority. Enjoy.

It seems that these two are part of the list of the Most Overrated blogs out there. It's sad to see a major news company troll around like this. To call Ars and Slashdot blogs, and bad ones at it, is just..

This is unbelievable.

Update 2: I wonder if they picked up some Gawker media DNA along the way.

Αγαπητά θύματα που αγοράσατε macbook

February 28, 2008 04:25 by KCorax

Στέλιο καλορίζικο το νέο μαύρo macbook, σου εύχομαι ολόψυχα να το χαρείς και να σου φανεί χρήσιμο σε ό,τι κάνεις.

Για όλους τους υπόλοιπους που με σνομπάρουν ενεργά όταν λέω οτι δεν συμπαθώ την πλατφόρμα ούτε ούτε το "θείο" Steve, ή ακόμη και οτι [ουρανοί] τα μηχανήματα είναι υπερβολικά ακριβά για αυτό που προσφέρουν, αφιερώνω το ακόλουθο.

	Μαύρο Macbook	Dell XPS m1330
Επεξεργαστής	2.2 ghz	2.2 ghz
Μνήμη	1Gb	3Gb
Δίσκος (χώρος)	160Gb	160Gb
Δίσκος (στροφές)	5400	7200
Κάρτα γραφικών	Onboard	nVidia 8400 GS
Οθόνη (τύπος)	CCFL	LED(30% πιο φωτεινή, μισό πάχος)
Οθόνη (διαγώνιος)	13.3 ίνστες	13.3 ίντσες
Βάρος	2.27 κιλά	1.9 κιλά με τη μπαταρία των 9 στοιχείων
Μπαταρία	6 ή 6 στοιχεία	3, 6 ή 9 στοιχεία
Ραπανάκια για την όρεξη	σαφώς	οπωσδήποτε
Εγγύηση	1 έτος	3 έτη
Τιμή	1560€	1600€

Ειδικά το τελευταίο το έχουν σαν καραμέλα πια, ενώ η διαφορά τιμής είναι πολύ πέρα από εμφανής.

Το XPS το αγόρασα πρόσφατα και εκκρεμεί να γράψω εκτενέστατο review μόλις κλείσω ένα μήνα.

Jaiku is simply inexcusable

January 11, 2008 04:23 by KCorax

I just read Google's response to Ars Technica's accusations of letting Jaiku to linger into insignificance.

Lets review the story a bit

Jaiku is founded by Jyri and Petteri. They offer a service which happens to be identical to Twitter, only their basis is mobile messaging for Nokia N-Series phones, and they kind of trump Twitter in almost every aspect. However they never gained much traction. If it weren't for Chief Twit, O'Reillyand some other new media moguls even I wouldn't care.
Google falls in love with Jaiku. They decide to acquire the company. Aside from the physical assets which are of course way beyond petty and insignificant to the mothership, they acquire the insight of Jyri and Petteri.
Jaiku is let alone to dry up and shrivel. To date:
- their embedded badges still can't display international characters,
- outages are common,
- the iconset that decorates messages is crappy,
- the look and feel of the site makes me think that the designers need to visit colourlovers.com way more often
- the only channels with life in them are those of support/feedback, and two podcasts: twit and buzzoutloud. The latter isn't an official one and no one from the podcast seems to observe it.
Ars Technica complains about the situation, stating among other things that this reminds of the Google/Urchin acquisition. And boy are they right ? I started out mocking Twitter, but not only is Jaiku technically challenged, they also failed in creating a community where my interaction options aren't limited to like 5 people.

Whatwhat ?

And the 5th episode is the answer of Jaiku to everyone out there. After4 months of silencetheypost this. I quote and provide a summary below:

"First,we know the Jaiku site is currently notasresponsiveas it should be. The issue is that users (some of them spammers) are starting to add new feeds to their accounts at a more rapid pace, sowe’re workingon cleaning up the database to get the site back to its normal level of responsiveness. We should have everything sorted out soon; in the meantime,thanks for your patience.

Second, I know you’re all excited to hear what’s next for Jaiku and what we’ve been working on since joining Google. To be honest,a lot of our timein the early goingwas spent on getting to know Google. And, of course, a little R&R during the holidays. But we’ve also been working hard on the next steps for Jaiku, and are already making progress on what I think are some cool new ways to help you stay connected with the people you care about.We can’t share anyof the specifics right now, but stay tuned."

Which is long for: We know you have problems, but we're enjoying our free lunch at the Google campus, so.. we''ll be in touch.

Update: Neglected to mention that while preparing the post I landed on this. Notice the text overflowing there ?

jaiku notification. a sparrow says: whoa ! who turned up the heat ? servers are running a bit hot right now. some queries are taking long to get through.

[mashable]

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Note to self / Spamming biatches

November 14, 2007 03:50 by KCorax

The next time I'm involved in some web project, I should make sure that the support department is empowered to fix all those annoying things for which I often get this:

To stop getting the newsletter, you just have to log in and edit your mail preferences:

- Log in at www.splicemusic.com

- Click Home

- Click 'Account Settings' (on the left)

- Scroll down just a little bit to the mail section, where you can set what we mail you about and how often.

Even more so for the cases when my users didn't sign up for it in the first place. Thankfully in this specific case they also offered to delete my account entirely.

OpenSocial == Utopia

November 2, 2007 03:53 by KCorax

Apparently Google is working on the OpenSocial API (Techcrunch, O'Reilly) which should enable data exchange or some level of interoperability between social web sites.

That by itself is a noble but also futile cause. People can't agree on feed formats and we end up with RSS 0.93 through 2 and then Atom. The reason why these were so troublesome to establish is that they enable users to get the site's content without the site itself. The only reason why CNN gives full headers in their feeds is that the people that use feed readers often are now non-negligible in count, but still not too many such as to threaten the revenues of the site's ads.

So there ! Getting people to let you take your content and leave is a bitch.

Can you even consider what would happen if MySpace's users could just leave and take their belongings to Facebook ? The same thing that happened with the LiveJournal to MySpace exodus, which was enabled by the fact that users could upload all that much stuff and therefore weren't feeling too locked.

On top of these, the whole attempt at being 'open' is a very cheap play on people's emotions. Google has never before complained about the state of the social web, and obviously called no one else in the discussion. They just decided to create a format that will probably match, their Orkut service which happens to be the least common denominator.

Oh and exchange formats are bitch to get right too. Can you export your wordpress blog and bring it into typepad ? It appears possible, maybe in 2005. How about back again ? Didn't think so either.

Exchange formats for markets that are not uniform simply stifle innovation. Bottom line, it would be much more honest and effective if they just asked sites to provide an export of their data to any format and let the sites that receive them to make sense of it.

Kindly relay this to Ozzie ?

October 6, 2007 03:36 by KCorax

Apparently Major Nelson of XBox Live fame is meeting with upper execs later this month. He has posted an open invitational for propositions on what to discuss with the upper management.

Passport

Stop renaming services again and again. Passport was made into MSN then .net then Live Passport and now login.live.com.
Renaming also creates discontinuities in our code. Each change of name for passports was reflected in namespaces, urls etc. I don't think anyone likes that. Just make sure the code is based in very neutral names like Search Engine, Blogs, Mail, Calendar etc.
Do you dig loosing money ? If not then expedite the adoption of OpenIDand dump the load to 3rd parties. This also solves the problem of people not trusting you with their data. Feeling lucky ? Make a public challenge to Google to provide you with their authentication services for users who want to log on Live using Google's OpenID servers.

Software plus Services

Old timers really dig this approach. It's nice being able to rely on the responsiveness of desktop applications. It is the right way to go. However some services need to get their software. I don't see any reason why I can't monitor Expo auctions or QnA discussions in a messenger tab.
There isn't enough action going on. I wholeheartedly understand that services are delayed because you are preparing infrastructure, but that's not an excuse. If the resources are limited then give people access via invitations. It's proven to work, it's viral and it keeps interest at healthy levels.
Good god, get us a Live Calendar. We want a desktop app that will sync with an online app. Both should be very simple and fast. The Vista calendar will do as a codebase I suppose.
Get Skydrive to mount as a network folder, and merge it with the Live Messenger shared folders. I don't see why I have to pray for my contacts to come online in order to leave my workplace without worrying if they will have their updated files.
Give us a unified SDK wrapped in .net code, and package it with Visual Studio. Let the changes be slipstreamed like the Vista SDKs were. Let the tools appear in the toolbox so we can drag drop them in, instread of making REST calls for god's sake.

Letting people know

Blogs are great and stuff, but information is way to dispersed right now. There should be a single vector of pouring in information about Live. An official Live blog, where we would see a monthly article from Ozzie, and get accurate information about what's coming and when.
A unified index of the blogs behind each service is a good start. Take a cue from Office's site where each product has a list of it's members' blogs.
That said, why is there no RSS reader software available ? Couldn't you at least endorse another free product and package it with the Live Suite ?
Fill the gap of information and feedback. Many many products out there don't have a channel where users can tell what's wrong. The forums won't do. They are dated and my personal experience is that Microsoft employees don't read them.

Outlook

And final point: Allow us to dump Outlook ! I swear to god, when I realized that I would have to upgrade to Outlook in order to sync with my Windows Mobile device I was seeing red. Outlook is great, but everytime I wait 15 seconds for it to open a mail item on my Core Duo laptop I die a little on the inside.
The best way to improve the state of the onion is to detach the Outlook database and ActiveSync extensions from the UI. This way the Live apps can take advantage of those, maybe sync directly with the Live.com services, and perhaps later the open up the API for other apps to click in.
The Outlook connector sucks. It ate my data more than once. Thankfully reviving older files in Vista is a snap.

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So now Apple owns BSD too ?

July 25, 2007 03:25 by KCorax

Apple was using FreeBSD in iPods, the iPhone as an OSX is also based on FreeBSD, so it comes logically that the iPods were running OSX all along.

Makes sense to you ?

The story began from Daniel Erran (and I noticed that he edited the page heavily while this post lingered in my notebook) , the grand pope of Apple fanboyism. His articles can generally be broken up to small distinct and ordered pieces of { news piece, historical references, why the competitors failed, why Apple will be successful, outro and triumph }.

Make no mistake. The man is viral. He spreads so much FUD against Apple's competition and satisfies the Macheads so greatly that while everyone reads his stuff noone admits to do so. Remeber though that if you get into a conversation where an absurd promac / die-other argument, chances are he's behind that.

The reason why I call him a fanboy is that he almost always employs the sweetest history lessons, rich vocabulary and link honeypot techniques to dull your mind. His site is exceptionally well built, and if you are opposed to his views in advance you will likely agree with him. Be wary though, be as critical to him as you are to me.

What I don't get, is how by any definition what Apple builds over the FreeBSD kernel makes the substrate a product of Apple's labor.

Ever since Apple moved it's efforts into the OSX platform, they have taken from open source software as much as they can, while giving back squat.

The FreeBSD and Mach foundations, both of which were available under liberal licences. They even started an 'open' software project under the name Darwin, just so that they wouldn't have to contribute back to the community.
The Bonjour project for connectivity, which is essentially the Avahi set of techniques and protocols.
The webkit project, which is ofcourse the renderer available by KDE's Konqueror file/network navigator, available as KHtml. They even forked it as webkit so that they can package it with the Safari browser without the browser being contaminated by the GPL licence.
The Gnu Compiler Collection, which is packaged with the super-pathetic XCode IDE/editor. They didn't even have the guts to port KDevelop and chip in for it's maintenance.

The first time (to my knowledge and perception) that Apple did the right move wrt to Open Source, was hiring the CUPS developer and thus making sure that they will be able to work with printers in the future. It remains to be seen if they will make a private fork out of the source.

All in all, Apple is a company shrouded by closedness of metaphysical proportions. When it comes to taking from OSS the term used for anyone else would be leechers, but then again they are Apple.

So apparently now BSD Unix belongs to Apple. The future will tell us if they also own answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.