October 15, 2006
My Del.ici.ous
Posted by Steve Warren at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2006
Yahoo Music Engine - Problem
I work at a large interactive agency in New York City. I am a Senior Flash Developer, part of the overall Technology team. This is my first big gig as an employee of a major company, and this is the first time I haven't had administrator access to my own computer. Technically, I suppose it's *their* computer... but I work on it every day.
I had to pull strings with our IT department to get them to install Yahoo Music Engine on my computer. They routinely install iTunes on request, but they don't support other software that hasn't been approved. Today, I am disappointed to find a forced upgrade to Yahoo Music Engine. This means for me, that I need to request IT support to install the "FORCED" upgrade, which is likely to put YAHOO MUSIC ENGINE on our IT departments BLACK LIST! They don't have time to come around to everybody who pays for and uses Yahoo technology, and support their fiendish legal music habits.
A tip: I can install software on my computer that doesn't touch my REGISTRY. I believe this is the problem I'm having with YME's upgrade. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this. I have been able to install Java programs, no problem. Trillian installed just fine. Various other downloadable apps work with no problem.
Yahoo - can you please not force users to upgrade to new versions? There are reasons users like old versions, and not having to download an extra 20MB all of a sudden when you just want to listen to a new record you discovered through the NPR Music podcast. Forced upgrades are invasive, PARTICULARLY when they're NOT TRANSPARENT. Windows gets away with this, downloading in the background, and is on our IT department's approved list. There is no other software I'm aware of that gets away with this behavior without losing customers as a result.
Please fix this problem. Screenshots below.
Posted by Steve Warren at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2005
My New Device - iRiver PMC-120
Here's my new media player:
http://www.iriveramerica.com/prod/multi/pmc_120.aspx
I'll post a more comprehensive review of it soon. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a real gadget freak with some tech savvy... the Windows Media Player synchronization is really tricky to manage. I'm working through the issues by myself, and am ultimately really happy to own this unit.
I haven't gotten Tivo To Go to let me play my tv programs on it without breaking the Digital Rights Management, but Napster To Go was the "killer app" that drove me to the purchase. The PMC-120 is quite large to use as just a music player, but the promise is that Microsoft and Tivo are working to implement the Tivo To Go features into the Portable Media Center paradigm.
The responsibility for the difficulty of use here is Microsoft. Hey, Robert Scoble - Do you really see every blog posting that mentions your name? I'd be very pleased to work with the developers over at Microsoft to resolve these issues if you have someone contact me.
On another Microsoft note - I finally shelled out the $200 to upgrade my Windows 2000 machine to Windows XP Pro in order to take advantage of all the latest DRM capabilities with Tivo To Go, Napster To Go, and Windows Media Player 10. I have this older analog to digital converter, the Sony Media Converter which is incompatible with Windows XP unless you call Microsoft Customer Support and ask for the special HotFix. I did this, installed the patch, and my device still didn't work. I called back and started the process of troubleshooting with a Microsoft representative named Prabhakaran. The end of the story is that my problem has been fixed after much research, but what I wanted to say was... Microsoft Tech Support ROCKS! It was a Saturday, and my call was answered each time I called within a couple of minutes, and this guy bent over backwards to help me. Everyone I spoke to was smart, polite and helpful.
Robert, endorsing your blog is another thing that I like about Microsoft. I saw a bit of your trip to Seattle, downloaded from Ourmedia - are you going to start vlogging next? I'd subscribe. One more question captive reader: Will I be reading The Scobleizer on this device someday?
The Scobleizer:
http://scoble.weblogs.com/
Posted by Steve Warren at 1:13 PM | Comments (0)
March 8, 2005
Software Development - Speed versus Style
A must read by Uncle Bob:
excerpt:
The way to go fast, is to go well. Going well means taking time to keep the code clean, to write tests, to refactor, to take care of the code. Going well means taking a deliberate and caring attitude for the code, and the system. Going well means working as a team, communicating frequently, reviewing and inspecting code and designs. Going well means never checking in code that fails unit tests or acceptance tests. Going well means integrating frequently, at least once per day. Going well means staying rested.
Posted by Steve Warren at 6:31 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2005
Kevin Mitnick Speaks at Hacker Conference
I found an amazing collection of audio files from The Fifth Hope hacker's conference sponsored by 2600 Magazine. Kevin Mitnick is the first keynote speaker, a hacker legend. He tells his amazing story to the crowd that includes running from the FBI to multiple cities with several fake identities. At one point they're tracking his cellphone and a military helicopter is on his tail. When he turns the phone off, the helicopter hovers in one place. When he turns it back on, it moves directly towards him! Eventually he is caught, thrown in jail for 10 years, and his case set many precedents. Go listen to his story here, and if that floats your boat there are dozens of other speakers' audio files from that conference, including Steve Wozniak and Jello Biafra as keynote speakers for the following days.
Keynotes:
http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/2085
All Audio Files:
http://www.the-fifth-hope.org/hoop/5hope_speakers.khtml
Posted by Steve Warren at 5:12 PM | Comments (0)
WebTalk Radio - Blinkx Interview
I just listened to a very interesting interview with Suranga Chandratillake of Blinkx. They're doing a audio/video search engine that's different from what Google, Yahoo and MSN are doing at the moment. Download the February 5, 2005 show from WebTalk Radio here:
http://www.webtalkradio.com/DATEARCHIVE.shtml
And check out Blinkx here - there are two different sites. The .TV site is the video search engine. The .COM site is the company website that offers a downloadable Desktop Search tool that will search the web, your desktop, and even some P2P filesharing networks! Available for Mac and PC!
http://www.blinkx.com
http://www.blinkx.tv
It sounds almost too good to be true, but when you listen to the guy speak in the interview it's clear he's one bad-ass-muthafugga!
-steve
Posted by Steve Warren at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2005
Google Picasa - Free Photo Program
Google just bought this photo management software, and is releasing it for free! It looks a lot like Adobe Photoshop Album/Elements in it's capabilities. You can organize your pictures by creating Tags, and output slideshow files and web pages. Looks great... gotta try it soon!
Posted by Steve Warren at 3:40 PM | Comments (0)
February 2, 2005
Kevin Mitnick Speaks at Hacker Conference
It's February already, and my blog page is blank again... I hate it when that happens! I guess it's encouragement to post something at least once per month. Okay now, let me think... what's interesting this month?
I found an amazing collection of audio files from The Fifth Hope hacker's conference sponsored by 2600 Magazine. Kevin Mitnick is the first keynote speaker, a hacker legend. He tells his amazing story to the crowd that includes running from the FBI to multiple cities with several fake identities. At one point they're tracking his cellphone and a military helicopter is on his tail. When he turns the phone off, the helicopter hovers in one place. When he turns it back on, it moves directly towards him! Eventually he is caught, thrown in jail for 10 years, and his case set many precedents. Go listen to his story here, and if that floats your boat there are dozens of other speakers' audio files from that conference, including Steve Wozniak and Jello Biafra as keynote speakers for the following days.
Keynotes:
http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/2085
All Audio Files:
http://www.the-fifth-hope.org/hoop/5hope_speakers.khtml
Posted by Steve Warren at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2004
Speaking of Microsoft and Linux
I recently installed Microsoft's Virtual PC Trial on my WinXP machine in order to run Fedora 2 Linux in a window simultaneously. I have to say, it works pretty well! The idea is that you're running two PC's at the same time... one master and one slave - in my case the slave being the "virtual PC" running Linux.
Do not be deceived -Microsoft bought this fine piece of software from Connectix less than a year ago. I suppose Microsoft would prefer that users purchase Virtual PC, so that they can purchase additional licenses of Windows to run as the virtual machines. I suspect that they're not too keen on people checking out Linux in the safety of their comfortable Windows environment. I wonder how long it will take for Microsoft to disable this ability...
A competing product I also tried was VMWare Workstation 4.5. I had problems installing Fedora 2 in this environment. I almost got it to work, but failed to get my display configuration settings to work consistently. Truth be told, Virtual PC was a breeze to set up, so I gave up on VMWare for the time being. The good thing is that if M$ kills Linux in VPC, there's a competitor to pick up the slack!
The best way to run VMWare though, is to install Linux on your PC, then install Windows to run as virtual machine inside it. I tried this as well, and found the performance to be pretty good on my virtual Windows machine! My strategy is to take this in steps. My main platform will remain Windows XP until I migrate the majority (51%) of my computing tasks to Linux. Then I will switch.
A co-worker of mine showed me his setup, Fedora 2 using VMWare to run WindowsXP... this is initially what got me excited enough to try it for myself. He *also* showed me Mac OSX running on his system using the PearPC emulator... albeit quite slowly. If Linux will let me run all three of my favorite operating systems on a single machine... I'd think that I died and had gone to heaven.
Posted by Steve Warren at 4:17 PM | Comments (0)
Ballmer: Microsoft "far more secure" than Linux!
I wonder how this trackback stuff works, and how automatic it is...
Drew (from the Dawn And Drew Show) posted today about M$ running scared from Linux. He links to a BBC News article in his post:
Steve Ballmer sez:
"We think our software is far more secure"
HAHAHAHA...ROTFL!
Posted by Steve Warren at 3:35 PM | Comments (0)