rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
Archive for Miscellaneous
April 25, 2012 at 11:18 am · Filed under Miscellaneous, Web 2.0
Taking a page out of Marc’s book, I’m going to start linking to things I think are interesting (or useful) in digest form.
Microsoft is changing the free storage for SkyDrive from 25GB to 7GB. If you are an existing user, though, you can get grandfathered in, but you have to logon and tell them you want it.
With Google Drive finally released, Aaron Levie of box posts When Elephants Attack. While I do agree with the sentiment (race to bottom for free storage / clear vision and value of box), I find the basic claim of “Elephant attacking startup” a bit weak. Both Box and SalesForce (the latter also mentioned in the post) followed the same playbook going after one of the elephants from day 1. I don’t have a problem with that at all, but the post implies this sort of passive “we became a target” and states explicitly that “Salesforce became the target of Microsoft . . .” without ever mentioning that they were actually hunting for that elephant all along.
I appreciate Mike Arrington’s post on Acqui-hires and the follow up today. There is no doubt he has a vested interest in the venture capital standard terms — although, who doesn’t in this business? — but, I read his posts as being straight up, honest, and valuable.
McCartney’s RAM is being re-released in deluxe packaging (and better, in 24-bit 96kHz). great album, there is a cool video here.
April 17, 2012 at 6:17 am · Filed under .NET, Miscellaneous
Reading the news on an unplanned overnight in Houston, I see that Microsoft is sticking with “Windows 8″ as the name of the next Windows client.
I can only imagine there was some heated debate on whether to give it an evocative name or stick with a sequence of numbers. I’m glad the sequence won out, even if just for now.
I much prefer the “8″ and then, I hope “9″, etc. I don’t really care that these are names and not version numbers, but I do care that there they make sense to customers and partners alike.
Plus all the evocative names start sounding like brands of cars.
I just came back from Costa Rica, and I swear I saw someone driving a Windows Azule. 
Tags: .NET, Windows
March 8, 2012 at 9:25 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I had a problem with my OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray player, so I contacted support at OPPO to see what to do. They gave me an RMA and instructions for returning the unit for repair.
It took me about a month to get it shipped — the unit was still functional and we use it fairly often. Anyway, I packaged it up and sent it off.
- Tuesday morning, I dropped it at UPS.
- Wednesday morning, they received it and I got an email explaining their process.
- Wednesday afternoon, I was told it was fixed and would be shipped back to me.
- Thursday (today) I received it. All fixed, works great.
Great service, and something like a 6 hour turnaround from their service center! Amazing!
This is truly an excellent unit, and way beyond a typical consumer player. Blu-ray too is excellent. Even my wife — who generally doesn’t care about video/audio fidelity — really prefers watching on Blu-ray.
For those who say they don’t need Blu-ray because of streaming, well, they must have some pretty incredible bandwidth . . . or (more likely) they don’t actually care about fidelity. In a world of 128-bit MP3s, I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Anyway, thanks OPPO, keep up the good work!
BTW: When I opened the box, the top piece of cardboard was for the newer model, the OPPO BDP-93. For a second I got my hopes up, “did OPPO send me a new unit?!??!”. Of course, not . . .
June 14, 2011 at 9:18 am · Filed under Energy, Miscellaneous, Utilities
I haven’t done a survey on how green home products present savings to consumers, but my guess is they are generally doing it wrong. Granted, this might be some mandate from some industry group or governmental body, I don’t know, but it is key that consumers see the difference.
Here is an example, but first some background.
I recently picked up a Kill-a-Watt and have been measuring different devices in the house while on standby. I want to get a handle on how much vampire power is being wasted.
It turns out that around 60 watts is bleeding from our main home entertainment system when on standby. That is about 60 watts * 8760 hours = 525 kWH per year.
Aside from a classic power strip with a switch, there are solutions now that supply controlled outlets that only make power available when some master component is on. One solution is the Zuni Digital smart powerstrip. Another is the is the Belkin Conserve, though the latter doesn’t have enough outlets (disclosure: those our Amazon links).
So what am I on about? If you look at the Belkin information, they present a very similar scenario as mine and conclude that the Conserve power strip can save up to $67 / year! Unfortunately, they are using the wrong price:
Dollar figure based on US Department of Energy average retail price for residential electricity of $0.1132 per killowatt-hour.
Residential electricity rates are often more complex than that, though, and here in the PG&E territory, such a low rate only applies to your baseline usage. The rates go up based on your usage. The top rate is actually $0.40352.
If you are a consumer making a decision on saving 525 kWH per year, you should be looking at your top rate — i.e., the top rate you are actually paying to your utilty based on your circumstances. Because if you shave off kWH, you are saving the money on the top rate, not on the bottom rate. I’m embarassed to admit it, but our rate is 40-cents. If I save 526 kWH that saves me $212. (Of course, if your energy savings drop you to a lower rate, the calculation changs).
The Zuni sells for $39 — that pays for itself in just over two months. Now, granted, our entertainment system is actually used sometimes, but I estimate it is unused 94% of the year, so that still nets nearly $200.
So, what is the marginal rate you pay?
Tags: Efficiency, Energy, Utilities, Vampire
June 3, 2011 at 3:45 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Here are various thoughts I have about Windows 8:
On the name:
- I hope this “codename Windows 8″ stuff is just a joke. Just call it Windows 8. Every other OS that I can think of has first and foremost a number associated with it. In fact, I think this must just be a joke, because Microsoft is more and more coming around to the “Windows” name as the brand. Calling it Windows Flambe or Windows Azule or Windows Enchilada doesn’t help with the brand. 8.
- Now, of course, this ignores the fact that Windows 7 is a name, not a version. So implicit in my plea for Windows 8 is that it actually be version 8, not just named 8. Sorry if that is confusing, but I’m not the one who decided that Windows version 6.1 would be called Windows 7.
On the new interface:
- Looks kind of interesting, but I’m concerned about the “one interface to rule them all” approach. Remind anyone of the original Windows Mobile? Just a small form-factor Windows machine with Start menu. That seemed logical, but it turned out that it was nearly unusable. The Windows Phone 7 Metro UI is pretty cool for a phone. It would work well for a tablet. It seems wierd for a desktop/laptop, but maybe not.
- The bigger problem is that I hope Microsoft gets that standard Windows applications don’t become productive tablet applications with the addition of touch. I have a convertible laptop. It would be interesting to have Metro on it, but that will only solve one piece of what makes it nearly unusable in tablet form.
On Silverlight:
- So, unlike Windows Phone 7, Windows 8 won’t use Silverlight for the Metro UI. This isn’t surprising. Microsoft has eschewed .NET for core Windows development from day 1. OK, from day 2, because on day 1 they said .NET would be the new Windows API. It never happened. And this is just another indication that it never will.
- That said, I think it makes total sense for them to use HTML 5 and not Silverlight for Windows.
- This begs the question: if HTML 5 and JavaScript are good for Windows 8, then how long until these replace Silverlight for Windows Phone?
- Which begs another (future) question: what will Silverlight be good for then?
A little snarky, but I’m feeling snarky today.
Tags: .NET, Silverlight, Windows7, Windows8, WinFx
May 17, 2011 at 5:03 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I’ll be presenting at Connectivity Week on Monday, the 23rd on this panel. I’ll be talking about experiences in California integrating retail DR in the wholesale market.
Update: I’m filling in for Rizwaan at the CAISO on another panel. This time I’ll be speaking about ISO perspectives on DR.
If you are at that conference, look me up. Also, they provided a discount code. Email me at robert at rwandering dot net, and I’ll give you the code.
Tags: AS, CAISO, DR, Energy
March 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I had one hell of a time updating the Windows Phone 7 LG Optima 7 from PDC 2011.
It seems like many people have had some form of this problem: When the zune software reboots the phone before the update, the phone gets stuck with the “connect your phone” picture.
Some people seem to get errors of some kind or a timeout, but on my machine I never got any error. It just didn’t work. I went through all of the troubleshooters I could find but just couldn’t get it to work.
The solution turned out to be to perform the update on a different computer. I did this with the February and March updates.
Note that I tried to update on the original computer after the February update, hoping the problem was gone, but no luck. I had to do both updates on the second machine. Who knows, maybe when the next update comes it will work on the original machine (or maybe Microsoft will fix this with Windows Update or a Zune software update).
Tags: WP7, Zune
February 25, 2011 at 10:51 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
So I never forget this again. When an upgrade of Virtual PC Integration Components fails,
Delete %windir%\system32\drivers\wdf01000.sys.
October 28, 2010 at 12:00 pm · Filed under .NET, Miscellaneous
PDCs used to be something special, only reserved for big announcements or trends for Microsoft / Developers. Of course, they used to be bigger too – regardless of Ballmer’s calling this the biggest PDC ever. Holding it in Redmond, keeping it down to two days, limiting the attendees to 1000 (or so?) are all indicative of this PDC change. Will it be permanent? Who knows, but I do wonder why they held it now.
Ray Ozzie was sorely missed in the keynote. I can’t help but wonder if this PDC was put on just to show that Microsoft is still developer focused even with Mr. Ozzie’s departure. Ballmer did a fine job this morning, but without Bill Gates and now no Ozzie, it doesn’t feel the same.
Anyway, in terms of the announcements (i.e., the “reveals”), not too much and nothing I would say is truly big.
There are lots of announcements though, but mostly they are incremental additions to existing products (e.g., all the new Azure enhancements) or the completion of initiatives that have been in process for years (e.g., Dallas).
All together the announcements show terrific strides for the Azure platform making it all the more compelling.
Windows Mobile 7 is also pretty cool. I don’t know I’ll every use it, but I can see why a lot of people will. I think they’ll have a homerun here.
Here is a live view on my PDC10 tweets:
Tags: .NET, Azure, Microsoft, PDC, PDC10, WM7, WP7
September 24, 2010 at 11:11 am · Filed under Attention, Miscellaneous, Web 2.0
Robert Scoble makes some good points about Angel Gate in his post The secret hell of tech industry angel investors.
I mostly agree with what he says, except I think his underlying premise is wrong:
It’s good for entrepreneurs and good for users to have angel investors caught in hell. When they feel they have to spend more money to stay in the game, that’s good for all of the rest of us (press, users, entrepreneurs).
First, there really is a place for the classic angel – that is, the Ron Conway kind that is in it to help entrepreneurs succeed. I don’t think it helps anybody if these angels are “in hell.” The angels that Robert talks about are really VC in my book and frankly I don’t think they belong “in hell” either. Now some do, of course . . .
Second, more money thrown at entrepreneurs is not in and of itself a good thing. On some level it gets more people building companies, but does it really get more people innovating? Before the “dot bomb” hit, the same thing was happening in VC. Everyone and their brother formed a venture company and all sorts of things were funded that were patently ridiculous. That was a part of why the crash happened.
Tags: AngelGate
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