Recommended Reading - Microsoft Discount

Great article by Dan Miller of Macworld.com

http://www.macworld.com/article/139945/2009/04/microsoft_discount.html

Win a Drobo!

The drooby dudes over at MyDigitalLife are giving away a Drobo.  Go their website to get more info:

Here is my Link:    HTTP://WWW.MYDL.ME

Good Luck Everybody!

Pilgrimage to Le Tub

Remember that list of the Best Burgers in the US that was published in Esquire Magazine a few years ago?  You know, the one that had Le Tub with the Best Burger in the country.  Well, I do.  I couldn't seem to forget that the Best Burger in the US was at a dive in Hollywood, Florida.

I live in San Francisco which is a bit far from Florida - even for the best burger in the country.  Lucky for me my parents live pretty close to Hollywood, Fl and my brother, another burger lover were recently there for a little vacation.   

We made the trip to Le Tub on Sunday afternoon after playing nine holes of golf.  We initially drove right by the place as it is pretty easy to miss.  We turned around and pulled into their very small parking lot.  They have a guy keeping order - kind of like a valet but he tells you where to park instead of actually doing the parking.  The Valet let us know what to expect.  "The grill holds 30 burgers and there are 100 seats.  You do the math."  

From the Esquire Article....  "This is a dream of a dump, located on the site of a former Sunoco gas station. Outside there’s assorted porcelain—toilets, sinks, tubs. Most have plants in them, and a lot of the plants look dead. Inside is a pool table, a jukebox, and tables reminiscent of the ones at highway rest stops. The view is magnificent, the Intracoastal Waterway at its broadest and most dramatic. Le Tub doesn’t take credit cards, and it has signs everywhere reinforcing that rule. I’m surprised anybody who eats here qualifies for a credit card."

We found great seats right by the water. We settled in, looked at the menu and were greeted by our waiter. We ordered drinks (Bloody Mary's were average) and our Burgers and Fries. Since the burgers would take an hour, we decided to start with the Chips & Salsa. I went to see the kitchen and it was a tiny nook with one guy manning the grill that, in fact, only held 30 burgers at a time.

Our seats were also right next to the servers station. We got to see them prep the plates for the burgers.  Buns, right out of the package were split and put on the plate along with lettuce, tomato and onion.  We were also next to the prep station and watched a guy bring out a couple of bags of meat and portion more burgers.  The view of the water was great and there was lots of good people / boat watching to keep us entertained.

After a while, the chips and salsa came out.  A basket of tri-colored tortilla chips with a plastic cup of homemade salsa and a plastic cup of nacho cheese.  The cheese was a bonus as there was no mention of it on the menu.   The Chips, Salsa and Cheese were fine and they took the edge off.

We saw a wave of burgers go out - apparently our burgers weren't in that group of 30.  A little before the hour was up, our fries were delivered and five minutes after that our burgers showed up.   It was showtime.

Kudos to NFL Network

The NFL network does a good job broadcasting NFL games - more football and less nonsense.

The NFL has been using Bob Pappas and Chris Collinsworth and they do a good job but the crew they used last night was even better.  Bob Pappas, Marshall Faulk and Deion Sanders did a great job broadcasting the Ravens vs Cowboys game last night (December 20, 2008).  I would like to see more of this trio.

The worst is Tony Kornheiser & co doing Monday Night Football.  I have to turn down the volume because the announcers are SO annoying.

 

Bookmarks for iTunes Store

Wouldn't it be great if you could bookmark an Application (or anything for that matter) while browsing the iTunes Store?

Amazon.com does this with their Wish List.

Click here to see a larger image

File this under the "It drives me Nuts" category.

I am shopping on the web and click on the button to see a larger image and the image I am shown is not much bigger than the original.

PLEASE give me a real option to see a BIG picture of what I am thinking of buying.

Thanks in advance.

How many Zunes?

How many of the 30GB Zunes did Microsoft have lying around?

I have seen them on clearance sites like Woot multiple times. I think Amazon had them on clearance. I just checked out this weeks specials over at CompUSA and they are selling the brown Zune for $100 (original retail was $250 and current retail is $100).

Microsoft must have zillions of the old Zunes. Maybe they are still making them?? They can't be making money on them, can they?

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Internetdickwad

Found at this site (via Digg)

I Think I Love My Wife

What a stinker of a movie. For some reason, I thought this movie was going to be good (Chris Rock starring could have had something to do with it).

I turned it off halfway through.

The Tomatometer is right....again.

Just the Facts

There have been numerous articles about iPhone initial sales and almost all of them report the sales numbers in a very misleading way. I don't understand this. Why is it that so many folks don't get a decent grasp on the facts and present the full story? Is it ignorance, laziness or do the facts just not matter.

There have been many examples but the latest is by Courtney Weaver & Businessweek.

I tried posting a comment but after writing my reply in the incredibly small text input box (18 characters wide), I was told that my post was too long. WTF??? Is this SMS?

Here's what I would have posted if I had the room:

Interesting premise but poorly written post.

1. Apple had a great quarter but said that the iPhone contributed next to nothing towards revenue or income (the iPhone sales are being spread out over 24 months and whatever payments AT&T is making to Apple didn't start in the quarter).

So what makes you say "the iPhone still helped Apple report strong earnings for the quarter"?

2. Your iPhone sales vs estimates is very misleading.

Your wording, "While analysts expected Apple to sell between 500,000 and 700,000 phones during the iPhone's opening weekend, only 270,000 units were sold during the product's first two days." make it sound as though Apple sold 270K phones for the weekend (most people think the weekend has 2 days in it - Saturday and Sunday). Would it be so difficult to give your readers a clear picture of sales instead of misleading them?

The estimates you mention (the one Apple missed) were made AFTER the weekend. Nobody is on record (especially not APPLE who didn't make any predictions)for having predicted that many phones sold. The iPhone was the most successful launch of any cell phone in history and somehow you are saying it's a failure.

How come you don't mention who made these predictions (or include links)?

3. What is the point of including AT&T activation numbers in your post?

Sunday Advertisements

I don't understand why stores don't make it easier to see their weekly ads. I check the weekly ads for the local electronics sellers every Sunday - Best Buy, Compusa, Staples, Circuit City & Office Depot.

I takes 4-7 clicks to see the weekly ad in the format that I want (HTML - Large). The Flash interface on the Ads is very annoying. Shouldn't these retailers be falling all over themselves trying to make it easy for their customers to see their ad?

Here's an example:

1. got to www.compusa.com
2. Click on Advertised Specials
3. Click on HTML (also labeled as Dial-Up)
4. Enter my Zip Code
5. Choose HTML (again)
6. Click on Ad to start viewing it
7. Click to see the Ad in the Large Size

Best Buy is better in that it only takes 4 clicks, but they launch the Ad in a new browser window which stinks.

Circuit city takes only 4 clicks and their Large setting is the Largest! Too bad, the Circuit City store near me is so run down and depressing looking.

I don't know why my zip code is not remembered - other cookies seem to work fine.

When will they start sending me an email with a customized link to their weekly ad in the format I prefer - one click and bam! I'm seeing their ad.

Swapping OS X hard drives

One of the great things about the Mac & OS X is its portability (Intel to Intel & PowerPC to PowerPC - no mixing and matching). The OS X install is self-contained and can be copied to another mac or external hard drive. In my case I wanted to swap the contents of 2 Macbooks.

I wanted to use a different Macbook as my primary computer (hooked up to external monitor, mouse and keyboard). I was able to easily pull out the hard drives from both macbooks and swap them. All of my programs & hardware worked flawlessly with 1 exception - I had to set up my Bluetooth keyboard to the new computer.

I have tried this in the past with Windows and it doesn't work.

Downloading a copy of iTunes Previews

There was a great How-To posted on TUAW explaining how to download a copy of the iTunes song previews (you know, the 30 seconds of the song you can listen to when browsing the iTunes store).

This is a great way to get ringtones for your cell phone.

Link to Story


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The War on the Wealthy

I mentioned the TV show 'On the Money' (CNBC) in my last post and it is a show I watch with some regularity.

I like the show - the host (Melissa Francis) does a good job, there is a good mix of stories and the talking heads are interesting.

I have one GIANT complaint about the show - occasionally they mention 'The War on the Wealthy'. Are you freakin' kidding me? There is no War on the Wealthy in the USA. I would expect to see this nonsense on Fox News.

Please - Let's tone down the sensationalism.

Thank you!

Product Placement

So, I'm watching 'On The Money' on CNBC yesterday (I had to see what happened that led to the stock market's big loss) and they introduce a segment (MSNBC Video) regarding the product placement ($40 mm of product placements) in the Bourne Ultimatum. I pause the DVR and try and think what products I can recall from the movie (I saw the movie earlier in the day):

VW - I clearly remember Bourne getting into a VW Golf (or something similiar)
Motorola - All cell phone shots were clearly Motorola phones
I didn't remember any other specific products being shown in the movie.

I then played the segment and it turns out that in addition to the little VW I saw one of the chases involved their newest Touareg. I clearly remember the chase scene and total destruction of the SVU but I the SVU itself (including brand) didn't stand out in any way).

Symantec also paid for their Norton products to be placed in the movie. I remember the scene and I got a big kick out of it. The Norton product somehow helps Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles)
get some top secret info from the CIA computer network. Nicky is doing her thing on her Notebook computer and a page pops up (1 second on screen) that is clearly Norton (coloring, layout, fonts, etc.). Thinking of any consumer Security software helping someone hack through CIA security is laughable, but Norton makes it even more ridiculous.

The CNBC piece also mentioned Barclay's Bank, which I didn't notice at all in the movie.

I'm not sure how effective these product placements are overall, but they didn't do it for me.

It's worse than I thought

I have many clients in their 40s, 50s and 60s and it took me quite a while to realize that most of them can't see very well. I would be demonstrating how to use their new Universal Remote Control (a model that has relatively large and easy to read buttons) and after 10 or 15 minutes, I would realize that they couldn't see what they needed to see. I now do my best to make sure they can see before we start .

But, I had no idea so many older people had so much trouble seeing.

"Such tools are of little help in the shower. Deborah Yager, 53, a science teacher in Castro Valley, Calif., counts the number of letters to figure out whether she is reaching for the shampoo or conditioner. Jill Lamar, 55, an acupuncturist in Charlottesville, Va., goes by color. Brian Lewis, 64, a retired doctor in San Anselmo, Calif., takes a thick black Sharpie and writes a big “S” or “C” on each."

New York Times Article

I am most surprised that people wouldn't carry glasses (or small flashlight (have you seen those microscropic keychain LED flashlights?) with them. I have been wearing glasses most of my life - it's not so bad. Is it vanity?

Customize iPod icons in iPhone

I don't know how I missed this, but the iPhone lets you customize the row of icons for the iPod application.

iPod --> More --> Edit

Very cool.

Engadget had a video showing off iPhone on-screen effects and showed this tip at the 4:00 mark.

Secret new iPhone features!!!

Walt Mossberg spotted new features included in the latest (only) iPhone update.

See Walt's find here

The Bourne Ultimatum

Best movie I've seen this summer. Crazy good action sequences - the hand to hand combat & motorcycle chase stood out. I convinced myself that the actress playing Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) was Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) from The Office - how wrong I was.

The tomatometer is right again.

I need to do a mini-rant about Movie Theater etiquette.

What the hell is the matter with people? There were a couple of kids who just wouldn't stop whispering throughout the movie. Some other joker had to check his cell phone every 10 minutes.

Is it too much ask for everyone to shut up and enjoy a movie for a couple of hours?