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The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
Archive for Miscellaneous
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
September 18, 2010 at 7:36 am · Filed under Miscellaneous, Web 2.0
Thursday I logged into my Google Apps for Domains “manage this domain” page. I was surprised to find an option to migrate my account to work more like a standard Google account. I’ve complained about this in the past and am glad they’ve resolved it.
24 hours later and my GAFD account worked as a logon – and more importantly, my account was integrated – with just about everything. 14 hours after that and I even have my Google Voice account and phone number ported into my GAFD account.
Awesome.
A couple of points:
- Once you migrate your accounts, it will appear that you need separate browsers for your accounts. You don’t, you just need to read the following and do what it says for each of your accounts: http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=182343
- If you want to move your Google Voice account, fill out this form: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cjlWRDFTWERkZEIxUzVjSmNsN0ExU1E6MA. They say it could take two weeks, but for me it was 14 hours.
GAFD being more integrated is actually a great help because I’m now managing one fewer contact list. Now I’m just hoping for a Google desktop app that can take calls.
Tags: GAFD, Google, GV, skype
September 13, 2010 at 4:49 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Some time ago I posted that I was abandoning Chrome until it supports Windows Speech Recognition (WSR).
I did go back to Chrome after some time as I became more embroiled in the different Google Apps services, but I have always found it irritating that speech recognition wasn’t supported.
Every once in awhile I try it again and found today an important improvement.
WSR does work in GMail now, albeit just with the “dictation scratchpad”, but that is a big improvement. It doesn’t quite work in Google Docs, but I’m hopeful they’ll get that working soon.
Thanks, Google!
BTW: I actually don’t know if this is Google’s doing or the result of a Windows patch . . . I hope it is the former, otherwise this is likely the end-state.
Tags: Chrome, GMail, Google, Microsoft, WSR
September 9, 2010 at 7:59 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Interesting announcement this morning from Apple: that non Apple dev tools can be used to create iOS apps:
In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.
Nothing in the release mentions the browser. In fact the part that says “apps do not download any code” seems to imply not allowing RIA at all. This part is a bigger pain point for users.
But if the Silverlight runtime (full .NET?) or Flash can be used to built full applications, that is pretty cool.
904 days ago I posted Counting the days till Silverlight announced for iPhone. That sure was more than I expected, but how many more days now?
Tags: Apple, Flash, iOS, iPhone, Silverlight
August 30, 2010 at 3:56 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I use Google Voice for incoming / outgoing calls all day. Certainly I’ve had a few problems in the past, but it has worked flawlessly for me in the last several weeks – certainly since the GMail / Google Voice integration.
Mike Arrington says Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now:
About 30% of my inbound calls have the caller muted – they can hear me but I can’t hear them. And outbound calls are worse. In the last 24 hours at least 75% of them failed completely. Either it never starts ringing, or it rings a couple of times and then dies. In fact, I called Google PR to give them a heads up on this story and that call failed too. As did a second attempt.
He goes on to say that sources tell him there won’t be a quick fix to the problem. Like I said, I’m not having any of these problems, but Google has sold me on the value of such a service – I would even pay for it!
So if this becomes a problem, I’ll probably jump over to Ribbit. They actually are a telephone company.
Tags: Google, GV, Ribbit
August 27, 2010 at 8:57 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Over the last couple of months I have started to rely on Google Voice (GV) and have been eagerly awaiting the integration of VOIP with Google Voice. My current solution of using GV with Skype is almost perfect, but I am hoping that Google VOIP can eliminate the pesky “where’s my voicemail” problem with Skype.
Anyway, this new Google feature was enabled on my account yesterday. While it holds some promise for me once GV is moved into GAFD, it has too many caveats today. Why?
Because the in-browser VOIP phone is a flawed premise for receiving calls:
- Hunting for the incoming call dialog within a browser tab is a terrible user experience. Perhaps they can fix this through an extension that allows a non-modal, “always on top” popup for notification of incoming calls.
- What if your browser stops working, is restarted, etc? You don’t get your phone call. Of course, you can say the same thing for the Skype client (i.e., if it isn’t running you don’t get your call), but I restart my browsers several times a day. And browsers crash a lot more than Skype (or Google Talk), for that matter.
Google really should resuscitate the Google Talk client – or the Google Voice Desktop App – and enable the same functionality there. In fact, I’ll go further and say that they will have to release a native Windows client if they want enterprise adoption of GV / VOIP.
Granted, the in-browser premise is great for the casual user, making outgoing calls, or as a backup when away from your actual work environment, but it just doesn’t work as a Skype replacement.
Does anyone know if the the GV Desktop App is actually dead? The last reference I find to it is the Arrington post: Google Voice Desktop App Launch Delayed, May Be Scrapped.
Tags: GAFD, GMail, GV, skype, voip
August 10, 2010 at 9:32 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
I finally jailbroke my iPhone.
I was never particularly interested in doing it. Even though I have been frustrated with the unnecessary limitations of the iPhone imposed by Apple/Jobs. I know this surprises people who know me – they’ve told me so. Why haven’t I? Because over time I have transformed form a gadget-happy tinkerer to someone who just wants these tools to work.
This is in-part due to my experiences with a particular kind of tool: the smart phone. On Windows Mobile and BB smart phones, I would try 3rd-party software and then quickly delete after crashes and negative battery performance. I’ve had few similar experiences like that with the iPhone. The 3rd-party tools add significant utility to the phone but generally don’t break it. This change in my thinking isn’t just for phones: I’m shipping back my PopBox today. Lots of promise, but it just doesn’t work for me with my video formats, and my NAS.
But I digress.
There are a few things that have bothered me about the iPhone. None of these are hardware problems, just things I think it should be possible to do with a non-jailbroken phone:
- I don’t want to unlock my phone to see if I have any email.
- I want notification profile support like on the Blackberry. I loved the feature where you can put your phone into the silent profile and have exceptions. Travelling and don’t want your phone to wake you up, but want to accept calls from your family in case of emergency? No problem.
- I don’t want to navigate around to change a simple setting (like turning off Bluetooth or WiFi).
- I want to use a Google Voice native app. The mobile Web app is quite good, but it takes too many steps to make a call – and too much time waiting for the page to load.
Long story short, I now can do all of these things and I am much happier about my phone.
The full story, though is that I jailbroke before a week of vacation during which I had no way of restoring my phone. As a result, I kind of screwed it up and didn’t feel like risking uninstalling some apps without a failsafe. I got home and fixed it (without the failsafe). All good, but it does leave me feeling that jailbreaking really isn’t for everyone. As easy as the jailbreakme.com site is, it certainly makes the phone more complex. I’m OK with the increased complexity – I’m still a gadget-happy tinkerer deep down – but I couldn’t imagine a non-techie dealing with it.
Tags: iPhone
July 15, 2010 at 5:27 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Plenty of people are guessing how tomorrow’s Apple iPhone 4 event will go. I’m pretty cynical about what Apple thinks of us customers, so here are my 2 cents:
- The entire event we will be about how users are wrong – that is, there is no problem if you just hold the phone correctly.
- A dizzying array of evidence will be presented concluding that the iPhone 4 has the best antenna of anything ever. And that users are wrong.
- There will be a direct attack on Consumer Reports for their apparent flip-flop and the validity of their tests will be questioned. After all, the Consumer Reports testers are users and, well users are wrong.
- Apple will provide a free bumper to those who request one, but it will be clear that only quitters and the non-worthy actually need one.
- No recall will be issued; however, a design change is certainly in the works and that won’t be mentioned at all.
I can sum this up as follows:
The Apple response will be that there is no actual problem aside from user error. Or as I’ve said to a few people, the real problem is that some iPhone users have left hands and they insist on using them.
Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone4, Mobile
May 17, 2010 at 10:11 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
I have been critical of poor performance in Windows Virtual PC (most recently, here). I still can’t explain the performance problems I have seen, but Windows Virtual PC’s improved USB support saved the day.
I was helping my Dad with a piece of hardware that just doesn’t work with Windows 7. The manufacturer’s instructions say that it will work if you turn of UAC, but it doesn’t. I had just about given up, and then remembered that Virtual PC is supposed to have better USB support. I really didn’t believe it would work, but had nothing to lose. After much downloading, installing, a little rebooting, and more installing, I was able to attach this USB device to an XP Mode VM. The corresponding software also launches correctly on the Windows 7 x64 desktop.
It even performs well. All cool.
The only annoying part of it is that I can’t figure out how to stop the running VM instance without opening the VM and then closing it. The VM gets started automatically when running the XP Mode application, but there is no simple way to stop it. I suppose that XP mode is designed for people who run it all the time, but really, no clean way to stop it?
Tags: Virtual PC, Windows7, XP Mode
March 12, 2010 at 9:29 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I am extremely annoyed with Windows Virtual PC.
It is markedly slower than Virtual PC 2007. And startup times are six to ten times worse. Same host, same VHD. Painfully slow.
I have witnessed this on three different host machines. I’ve seen other complaints of this online, but all of the suggestions of help completely miss the point.
There are some threads that suggest that it is caused by aggressive CPU throttling. In a comment on a post, Virtual PC guy suggested that installing SETI@Home might solve the problem. Seriously?
Virtual PC 2007 didn’t suffer from this problem, so I’m not going to bother with that. It would be great if I could find confirmation that either:
- Microsoft decided that Windows Virtual PC needn’t support laptops.
- There is a new bug or major flaw in Windows Virtual PC that is going to be fixed.
I have rolled back to Virtual PC 2007. I shouldn’t really care, except that I prefer the integration in Windows Virtual PC. I suppose I should move onto VMWare, but I really don’t want to hassle with this anymore. It works well enough for now.
Microsoft, are you acknowledging the problem? Perhaps you can blame it on the laptop vendors, but the customer experience is just terrible.
BTW: I recorded a video of starting a Windows 7 guest using Windows Virtual PC, but a 3 minute video of a crawling progress bar seemed intolerable.
Tags: Virtual PC, Windows, Windows7
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