Robert’s Ramblings

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.

I wrote recently that Microsoft might be forced to stop selling Word because of a court ruling against them over an XML patent. Yesterday, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed the injunction against Microsoft pending an appeal. This means that Microsoft gets to continue selling Word until the appeal is adjudicated. I bet that they are reprogramming Word to make sure that they will not have to stop selling it should they lose the appeal. Either that, or they are negotiating a settlement. In either case, all the back-to-school shoppers can continue buying their student versions of Microsoft Office without any problem.

I also wrote that I was upgrading some Mac Minis to the new 10.6 (known as Snow Leopard) version of the Mac OS. The good news is that the upgrade was inexpensive and relatively painless. It took slightly over an hour to upgrade each Mac. I had no glitches or problems and can report that the Macs are working fine and appear slightly faster. I cannot quantify this for you, but it is the feeling I get from using them. One thing that I am disappointed in is that I have yet to get the Exchange synchronization to work. It does not recognize my server in the office using a direct LAN connection and it does not recognize it from home using a fast Internet connection on both ends. I have not given up on making it work. It is the reason I upgraded. I suspect that there is a filter or firewall in the way that is not allowing the Mac Mail traffic to reach the server. I have one of Alonso Consulting’s best techs working on it.

One thing that I have not written about that much is Windows 7. I think the reason for this is that Windows Vista has been such a disappointment. Vista was and is beautiful and also graceful in the way it works, but it is a resource pig that is unacceptably slow. I have used Vista on two Intel Core 2 Duo Q6600 machines running at 2.4 Ghz with four cores and it sometimes took nearly half a minute to right click on a file to move or copy it. This is just the right click, never mind the copy and/or move which often did not work for inexplicable reasons. I found that a small Aspire netbook running Windows XP Home on a low powered Intel Atom processor often outperformed the faster machine running Vista. That is really pathetic performance for Vista.

Well, I am happy to report that I have upgraded three Vista machines to the Windows 7 and the performance has improved noticeably. The user interface for Windows 7 is still beautiful and elegant, but I found Vista’s more so. Maybe Window 7’s user interface will grow on me over time. I have found that devices work very well with the new operating system and that it was able to correctly identify everything connected to my machine. It shows even external hard drives by the name of the drive. For example, a My Book, shows up named as such in the “Devices and Printers” application. Other devices that are correctly identified are an Apple iPhone, various HP printers, the type of mouse, fingerprint reader and the monitor that I use. The version of Windows 7 that I installed is the Ultimate version and it is the final release that will be on sale in late October. I was able to download it from Microsoft because of Alonso Consulting’s  partner status with Microsoft.

Here is the bad news, it took over two hours for the upgrade from Windows Vista Ultimate. There were a few Dell applications on my system that the upgrade advised me to uninstall. It also did not like the version of Adobe Encore, iTunes and Norton Ghost that I had on my system. This is unfortunate since I use, Norton Ghost for my automated backup every week. When it advised me to uninstall all these apps, I removed the Dell apps and left the others. I also took out a few others that I knew I did not use. I needed a restart after the uninstalls and forgot about it. After going through the system check for about 20 minutes, I was told that the upgrade could not be performed until I rebooted. I rebooted and ran through the same system check for a third time before experiencing over two hours of the upgrade process including a few automated reboots. The Mac upgrade also took over an hour, but it was a little smoother.

On a Toshiba laptop that I upgraded, I was informed that the upgrade could not continue because the Vista that was installed was not Service Pack 1. I had to download that, install it and wait over an hour during that process and then upgrade to Windows 7. That really made me angry. I think the upgrade should work with any version of Vista and with any service pack level. I was also not pleased that I could not upgrade from the 32 bit version of Vista to the 64 bit version of Windows 7. To make that move requires a complete reinstall. Both of the Q6600 machines will support the 64 bit version of Windows 7 and Vista, but were sold to me with the 32 bit version.

That is all the news for now. I will update this blog as I discover more about the Mac Snow Leopard and Windows 7 upgrades.

Who would have imagined someone calling a Microsoft search engine, “Cool?” In the last couple of years, the answer would have been no one. The various incarnations of Microsoft’s efforts have been lame, slow and completely bereft of any savvy marketing. That has changed completely with Bing.com. Microsoft finally has a service that works well, is intelligently laid out and can make your search more meaningful and educational.

If you go to Bing.com, the first thing you notice is that the search engine is the anti-Google. It has a beautiful home page with images that change with each visit. These background images load quickly, are not obstructive and can help you learn facts. For example, in a recent Bing visit, I was presented with an image of the Bastei bridge in Saxon Switzerland. By moving my cursor over a small square in the image, I was told that the bridge was constructed of sandstone in 1851. I was also given an option to learn more. Clicking on the link, brought up search results for the bridge and included a Wikipedia entry as the top result. This distracted me from my main search, “Robert Alonso,” (just kidding) but I can assure you that it was far more instructive. It gave me the feeling I would get scanning through microfiche of old newspapers and discovering something new that I did not know before.

You perform your search just like you would on Google. For example, the image below shows the results for a search for “Democrats fishy activities program.” If you look at the image, you will also notice that under the “Bing” logo and orange colored band on the left, there is a “SEARCH HISTORY” listing. I have removed mine for this image, but that comes in handy if you need to go back to a previous search. You also have the option of turning that feature off completely.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is that you can move your mouse over any of the results and see a popup blurb of the content to be found on the site. This is very helpful for finding out if a result is what you are looking for without having to click through to the site. The third image below shows the popup blurb feature in action. To get it to appear, I placed the mouse over the second result and waited a few seconds. In some of these blurbs, you are also shown other links and prominent items that are found on the page. This gives you a very clear idea on whether to proceed or not.

These neat features aside, what really matters is finding what you are looking for. Bing compares very well with Google on relevance of results. In many tests that I have run, it actually does better. You can test this for yourself using this site: bing-vs-google.com. The site will give you a split view of the results from both engines side by side. This allows you to be the judge yourself.

Another feature that you are sure to like is that the left panel of the Bing results will show you meaningful links. The next image shows the results for a search on “Elisha Cuthbert,” an actress from the television drama “24” and from various films including, “The Gil Next Door.” You will notice that the results are very good and feature several images and the most likely sources of information including Wikipedia and IMDB. The left hand panel shows links to, “Images, Biography, Wallpaper, Posters, Fan Club, Interview and Videos.” These are the most typical results that people searching for her might want.

The next image shows what a search for “Bill Gates” delivers.

You will notice that the left hand panel is different and offers, “Images, Biography, Quotes, Books, Blog and Interview.” It is this kind of subject knowledge that makes Bing far superior and cooler. If you try entering a product name, like “Nikon D90” you are presented with a chart summarizing the camera, images and meaningful result listings. The left hand panel will give you relevant links that include the manual. This is very cool. There are many other features related to image and video searches, but I will recommend that you try them for yourself and let me know what you think in my comments section.

(I must also include a shameless plug. If you are needing help with search engine optimization (SEO), please contact Alonso Consulting. We will create a comprehensive plan for making your site appear higher in search results.)

In a future predicted by George Orwell’s “1984,” the government censors writing that it deems inappropriate and the population is left to read only what is approved. It seems Orwell was off by 25 years, but the dystopia he predicted may be beginning. Amazon recently deleted “1984” and “Animal Farm” from customer’s Kindle devices without notice or authorization. I consider this equivalent to a store clerk from a book store breaking into my house and taking a book that I purchased earlier that day. It is outrageous and portends a bleak, dystopian future.

Amazon has said that they mistakenly sold copies of the digital books without having the right to sell them. This may be true, but it still does not give them the right to delete them from personally owned devices. If this were allowed to stand as something that is acceptable corporate behavior, it would enable other companies to delete items from your computer, iPod or iPhone if they deem it to be pirated or objectionable for whatever reason. Now imagine a future where there are no paper copies of books, just electronic ones on devices like the Kindle. The government is taken over by, lets say left wingers, who want to eliminate all copies of Bill O’Reilly’s conservative books. They remotely delete them and all other conservative authors that they abhor. In that scenario, what can the regular guy do to get a balanced view of the world?

Amazon’s ill advised deletion should be the catalyst for congressional action. We need a Digital Rights Amendment that specifically details the rights of purchasers of digital content. It is outrageous to allow a corporation to go into our property and delete or take back something that you have paid for. It is also dangerous to a democratic society.

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon has apologized for his company’s action. Here is a quote from his apology:

Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

I accept his apology, but I do not accept his promise that Amazon will not delete books from end user devices going forward. I believe that the time is right for a law that prevents this type of abuse from occurring again in any form and from any source. What do you think?

I recently purchased a few Mac Minis to be used in the development of iPhone applications at Alonso Consulting. This is the first time that I have owned an Apple computer and it is the first time that I have used one for any purpose other than to click on the Safari browser and say, “That’s nice.” In fact, the last time that I actively used a Mac was in 1989 as a consultant at GE Capital and all I used was Microsoft Word to document some requirements for a project. These Mac Minis have given me more respect for Apple. They are solid, useful machines that are easy-to-use and configure. Even taking the components out of the box was a pleasant experience. Everything came in white boxes and all the parts were wrapped in thick cellophane. There is no comparison between the way a Dell arrives and the way an Apple computer arrives. It is a totally different experience.

I have grown accustomed to several open source applications on the PC. Three of these are TrueCrypt, FileZilla and VirtualBox. These are for encrypting volumes of files, using the FTP protocol for file transfers and creating virtual machines on the PC, respectively. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there were Mac versions of these available. I installed them and a few other very useful applications including Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac and am at the point where I could do all my work on the Macs and ignore the PC completely.

I am quite pleased with the way the Mac OS X works. It is pleasant and fast. I find the performance on a 2 GHz, dual core Intel processor with 1 GB of memory to be superior to the 2.4 GHz Intel quad core processor with 3GB of memory on my Vista PC. The only thing that I can’t stand is the crappy Mac keyboard that is flat and missing tactile feedback. I found a way of using an old IBM Model M keyboard with a Belkin USB to PS/2 Keyboard adapter and now feel more comfortable typing on the Mac.

Apple has a good thing going for itself requiring a Mac to develop apps for the iPhone. As we make progress on some applications, I will keep you posted on the progress. If you are looking for iPhone development, please consider my company; Alonso Consulting. We will deliver excellent results at a very reasonable cost.

It is ironic that I wrote yesterday how Apple’s iPhone software upgrade added functionality that I had wanted for a long time. I have experienced the opposite with a Microsoft upgrade. I upgraded two computers that I work on regularly to Internet Explorer 8 and have found out that the new version of the browser does not support opening a web address as a folder. This is handy for people who have a Windows server configured to share files through WebDAV—a technology that Microsoft developed and has promoted for sharing files over the Internet. Even Linux servers now have code to support this and my iPhone allows transfers to and from it using the Air Sharing application which works by mimicking a WebDAV server. I used to connect to the iPhone by opening the address shown in the Air Sharing application screen using Internet Explorer 7. It was as simple as going to the File menu, selecting Open, entering the address and selecting the check box that said, “Open as Web Folder.”

To get this functionality now, in Vista you have to go to Start, Computer, select Map Network Drive and then click on the link that says: “Connect to a Web site that you can use to store your documents and pictures.” You are then taken to a wizard that walks you through a series of steps to connect to the WebDAV folder. This is not what I consider progress. Microsoft, how about a patch that fixes this downgrade to a real upgrade?