Robert’s Ramblings

I have not written about Windows 7 Phone because I have been contemplating its implication to the advancement of computing, telephony and gadgetry in general. Microsoft wiped the slate clean with Windows Phone 7 and acknowledged that its previous offerings were less than stellar. I never thought that the Windows Mobile platform was undesirable, it had just become very dated compared to offerings from Apple, Sony, Nokia and Google. Windows Phone 7 may just be Microsoft’s lucky seven that wins back some of the phone users that have moved on. It may also lure in a new set of consumers. I can easily see it as very appealing to two sets of customers—the very young, hip social crowd and the serious business user. You may not think that this is possible, but it is because of the magnificent user interface that Microsoft has designed (and is still improving).

The user interface is no longer an underpowered version of the Windows desktop with a “Start” button and menu system. Instead, it is a series of large colorful tiles that expand into spaces. Each of these spaces is a window into a large pane that is full of information. Some of these spaces are dedicated to People, Music & Videos, and Pictures. Others are more business oriented like e-mail, search and office connectivity. The People space includes information gleaned from Facebook and presents a constantly updated view of your friend’s updates and profile pictures. This will attract the socially voracious younger crowd. The Xbox Live platform that is integrated into the device will also appeal to the younger user. Everyone loves Music, Videos and Pictures so these spaces will have broad appeal and are so well designed and tightly integrated with the phone that they surpass the iPhone. The business oriented space contains sophisticated Outlook-like e-mail that is constantly synchronized with Exchange server. It also synchronizes with Microsoft Office OneNote and SharePoint Server. These business functions put it ahead of all other phones and makes the Microsoft server offerings even more appealing.

The hardware that is planned for the Windows Phone 7 must adhere to a hardware specification that Microsoft has created. All the phones must have multi-touch screens, a powerful processor and three buttons for navigation. This is a departure from Microsoft’s laissez faire attitude from the past. Fortunately, it should help create a Windows Phone 7 experience that rivals Apple’s iPhone experience. The viewing spaces are all larger than the viewing area of the screen and are navigated by dragging them across the viewing area with your finger. Responsive hardware is critical to making the Windows Phone 7 navigation work well and feel like a quality product.

I am excited about Windows Phone 7, but not because it is a new generation device that integrates personal and business information seamlessly. I am excited about it because it is a new software platform that demonstrates Microsoft can still be creative when challenged. It has the potential to be much more than a phone platform. I believe that Microsoft could use it as a new tablet operating system. I can see it being more useful on a tablet form factor than the iPhone (or iPod Touch) operating system. It is more intuitive, more beautiful and encompasses everything that the vast majority of people would want to do on a tablet. I also think it is better than having Windows 7 on a tablet. It is perfectly geared for touch computing. I give Microsoft an A+ for Windows Phone 7 and for the potential that it has on other form factors.

To see demos of the user interface: http://www.windowsphone7series.com/

Robert Alonso
Alonso Consulting

Outlook. Since I have my iPhone automatically synchronizing with my Outlook contacts, all it takes a simple and quick scan of a card to get all its data into my iPhone. This is how gadgets should work.

I am very happy with the scanner and with the results. I am even happier with the customer service that the company provides. Dymo is the company that sells the CardScan. My unit would not work after an upgrade to Windows 7 on my machine. I am not sure what happened to it, but after suggesting I try a new driver, reinstalling the USB cable and other things that I had already tried (I am a computer consultant.), the customer service representative thought that it might be a hardware failure. He sent me an RMA number so that I could return it to the company. Being without the unit for a few days and having to pack it up and send it were not an exciting prospect for me. However, the next day I was pleasantly surprised to receive a box from the company with a replacement unit and a prepaid Fedex slip to use for sending the defective one back. I unpacked the new unit, plugged it in and it has been working perfectly. I sent the other one back in the new unit’s box. That is what I call excellent service. I will buy products from Dymo before I ever buy from a competitor based on this excellent experience. Kudos to Dymo!

I wholeheartedly recommend this product.

Robert Alonso
Alonso Consulting

Google is a very successful company that is very worrisome to me. It has a corporate culture instilled from the very top of the company that is disdainful of religion and of any conservative view points. One obvious example of this behavior is their logo designs. They change the “Google” graphic logo to represent various holidays and remarkable events throughout the year. They typically do a good job with scientific or historical dates. Whenever the date is related to religion they tend to ignore it. The following image is what they chose to put on their home page on Christmas. I find it it offensive that they refuse to put anything religious or any image that is remotely associated with the spirit of Christmas. Over a billion Christians celebrate the birth of Christ on the 25th of December. One would think that Google could provide something a little less secular than a space ship and peace symbol along with some other stupid little images. (Yes, this gets me very angry.)

Bing, chose to place some Christmas imagery on their home page, but chose to minimize the religious aspect of Christmas as well. By comparison, I must commend them on not ignoring a billion plus believers worldwide. They also included several linked areas of he images that include references to interesting facts about the decorations seen in Rockefeller Center. What I found the most heartwarming is that one of them uses the word Christmas. Bravo Microsoft! I think that I will advertise with your search engine and not Google’s.

The only way to stop large companies like Google from ignoring the beliefs, hopes and feelings of a large majority of the world is to vote with our pocketbooks. I, for one, do not intend on supporting Google. I will also limit any future positive blog entries about them. (If you look through the older entries here, you will see quite a few positive entries on various Google products or services.) Google ads have been removed from this blog and I will be removing them from my other web sites as time permits. It is only fair that their lack of respect be met with my indifference and total lack of support for their corporate empire building.

Merry Christmas world. Much love to every one on earth.

It was reported today that the Taliban in Afghanistan are using inexpensive software to view video from United States drone airplanes. The software is called “SkyGrabber.” It can capture picture, video and audio streams that are downloaded from satellite Internet connections. You do not even need an Internet connection to have this work for you. All you need a satellite dish. The software can then let you select what you want to capture. You can do it by by file type, IP address, by the hardware MAC address of the source, or by send or receive port. You can download the software from http://www.skygrabber.com.

You would think that the United States military would be smarter than sending live video streams from multi-million dollar aircraft without encryption. Unfortunately, they are not. You can see the unencrypted, live feeds using this inexpensive software.

Robert Alonso
Alonso Consulting

The clock is ticking towards the release of a faster and generally more robust operating system for PCs. As many of you know, Windows 7 will be released in two days. What does this release mean to you? The most immediate impact is that it will become increasingly difficult to find any machines with Windows XP. Vista was so unpopular that Microsoft allowed Dell and other PC makers to offer downgrades to XP. Most of my customers chose that path and paid an extra $100 for the privilege.

Once Windows 7 is released, Microsoft will try to never talk about Windows Vista again and will instead tout the great new improvements in Windows 7. This is not without precedent. The same thing happened with Windows Millennium Edition (Me). Most people have forgotten about Windows Me but it was the worst operating system that Microsoft has ever sold—far worse than Vista. It followed the successful Windows 95 and 98 and preceded Windows XP which was arguably the most hardy PC operating system produced by Microsoft so far. Maybe magic will strike twice and Windows 7 will be a huge success and, more importantly, be a solid replacement for Vista.

If you are a reader of this blog, then you know that I have been testing Windows 7 for some time. I have also been reporting about features that I find useful or interesting. I have found one that makes Windows 7 worthwhile to me. That is the “BitLocker To Go” feature. This is an extension of the BitLocker functionality that Microsoft released with Windows Vista Ultimate. BitLocker is still only available on the Ultimate version, but now comes with this additional feature that enables the complete encryption of external hard drives or USB thumb drives. I find this extremely useful because I am always worried about losing a USB drive with important documents or pictures that I would not want a stranger to have. With BitLocker To Go, I can live in peace knowing that my data is secured.

You enable it by inserting the removable device into the computer and then starting the BitLocker application. Once it is started, you tell it to encrypt the USB drive and give it a password. It takes care of the rest. The next time that you insert that USB drive into the computer it prompts you for the password before you can access the data on it. If you provide the password and check off an option on the screen, the PC will recognize that drive and make the files available each time that you plug it into that specific machine without you having to retype the password.

If you are wondering if that USB drive will then work on an XP machine, you are in luck. It does. When you insert the USB drive into the XP machine, it prompts you for the password and loads an application that lets you copy the data off the device and use it. However, one of these encrypted drives will not work on Apple Macintosh computers.

If you are like me and are worried about your laptop being stolen or lost, you can use BitLocker to encrypt the entire drive of your machine. The process is straightforward and works automatically. It takes a long time to process initially, but once completed, you have peace of mind. That hard drive’s data will be inaccessible without your password. This is the case even if the drive is removed and put into another machine.

To me, these two related data security features are enough of a justification for upgrading to Windows 7.

I am normally wary of any claims of power savings, recycling or turning green made by large corporations. I know that most of the claims are just lip service to the environmentally conscious amongst us. However, I read some news today that makes sense. It seems that the MySpace web site has dumped all its hard drives and switched to solid state devices that are like the thumb drives that most of us carry around. Doing so has reduced the power consumption at the their data center by an astounding 99%. Now that is what I call socially responsible action. It  makes sense from both an environmental perspective and from a power cost savings.

I have a data center in my office and power consumption is now my third largest expense after payroll and rent. It has become such a large expense that I have been looking at ways to trim it. My efforts have been concentrated on replacing older servers that were less efficient with newer ones and also consolidating wherever possible. With this news, I now have another avenue to explore.

MySpace’s move is smart. It is economics coupled with ecological responsibility. Bravo!

Robert Alonso
Alonso Consulting

Adobe recently released a version of Photoshop for the iPhone. It is a great little  program that makes it easy to edit photos that you have taken on your iPhone or photos that you take using the program. You can crop, resize, and flip your pictures. It also includes ways for you to adjust the exposure, saturation, and tint of your photo. Many other options are included which is surprising for a free iPhone app. One that I thought was interesting was an Andy Warhol-like series of cubes with different tints. This is called, “Pop” in the application.

The user interface gives you tips on how to use the software. Once you are familiar with it, you can turn off the tips. I loved this feature and it is an excellent example of how good software should be written. Another feature that I think is fantastic is the undo feature. You can make as many changes as you want and then undo them if you think you have made a mistake or do not like the result. The “save” function will save the image in your “Camera Roll” and does not overwrite the original photo. I was unsure about this and was quite nervous to save my creation because I did not want to overwrite the original. I should have known that this would not be a problem.

The program will also allow you to upload to photoshop.com. I have not tested this feature yet, but you can sign up from within the program. I recommend this iPhone app wholeheartedly. Get your copy now!

One of the most amazing things about NASA’s flying a rocket into the south pole of the Moon today was not the rocket, explosion or analysis that will follow, but instead the minimalist control room that was used to direct the rocket to its intended location on the moon. If you had a chance to see it on television, you would have noticed that the control room was about the size of a large conference room. It had several computer monitors and some laptops. This is in sharp contrast to the huge control room that was used in 1969 to direct the first Moon landing. Computer technology has advanced so much in the intervening forty years that one of the engineers packed up his laptop and power cord shortly after the explosion and walked out of the room carrying it. If one of the engineers had decided to walk out with his computer in 1969, he would have needed a crane to lift the massive computers of the time.

I was very young when man first landed on the Moon, but I was fortunate enough to see it live on a small black and white television. It was one to those amazing and never-to-be-forgotten moments of my youth. I am hoping to witness a new landing on the Moon or perhaps Mars in my lifetime. If it happens, I will be able to watch it in high definition on a huge flat screen television set. I will be able to record it to Blue-Ray disks for future review and will also be able to direct my friends to watch specific moments of the landing on YouTube.com or Hulu. I don’t know about you, but to me this is all amazing progress. My hat is off to the engineers of this world—especially the ones who brought us the transistor and integrated circuit.

Google just introduced a new way of reading news on the Internet. It provides news content from a few major print publishers that have agreed to participate and a few web site publishers. Its claim to fame is that it allows you to “flip” from one news article to another one by clicking on left or right buttons on the web page or pressing the left and right on the keyboard. The “flip” is more like a slide, but I’m sure most of us will overlook that fact. The site is still part of their lab effort, but you can access it here.

Google Fast Flip includes, among many others, The New York Times, Esquire, US, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and The Atlantic in its index. You can search for a topic or just peruse what Google displays for you. If an article grabs your attention, you can click on it to view it in its entirety on the publisher’s web site. This is a more visual way of looking at the news and improves on Google News—something that I have been happily using for over a year. Most of the magazines, publications and web sites that are included are liberal so this may not be a good choice for conservative-leaning readers. The image to the left shows a sample of what you will see on the site. (Please click on it to see a bigger version.)

When you click on one of the displayed news items, you are presented with the flip interface and Google ads. These are  now being displayed to the right of the articles that you are reading. Google has agreed to share ad revenues with the publishers that have partnered with them. This is a big difference between Google News and Google Fast Flip. The Google News product does not share (and perhaps does not generate either) any revenues with publishers. I suspect that Google Fast Flip will be more popular with content creators and publishers. The image to the right shows what you will see when you click on an article. Note that other articles are displayed on the left in a scrollable region. I recommend you give this web site a try. Let me know if you like it.

News reports indicate that this video game is a huge success. Best Buy in NJ has reported that there were people lined up outside stores for a chance at being first to buy the video game. The game is available for the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The official web site is here.