Recently I upgraded my 3.5yr old Thinkpad to Windows 7 and the experience couldn’t have been smoother (and faster). I’m glad that finally Microsoft and the OEMs figured out the “driver supply chain”. Windows 7 setup + post-setup Windows Update does a great job of identifying and retrieving the proper drivers.
The big kudos here goes to Lenovo however. My Thinkpad has an embedded EV-DO modem that connects to Verizon and on which I depend heavily for work while on the road. It’s made by Sierra Wireless and it’s among the first models that OEMs started embedding in their laptops. I was concerned I wouldn’t find a driver for it, but Lenovo published an update not just to the driver, but also to their connection manager app so the broadband experience is even better than XP or Vista.
This is more than I can say for HP which on multiple occasions did not publish updated drivers for hardware I own when a new OS was released (the Laserjet 3055 All-in-one comes to mind which hasn’t had drivers for Vista let alone Win 7). Bad, bad, HP!
Thanks Lenovo!
I was flipping through the Dec 14, 2009 issue of Newsweek and on the inside cover there’s a spread advertisement for GEICO. What’s different about this one is that the text refers poignantly to the greatness of Warren Buffet:
What the Gecko lacks in stature he certainly makes up for in ability. In fact, under the ownership of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., he’s helped GEICO rise to become the nation’s third-largest car insurance company. [...]
Has the Gecko really been Buffet all along? 
Also, The GEICO logo now features in small-type: “a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.”
The whole thing caught my eye since I’m reading at present Buffet: The Making of An American Capitalist which goes into detail about the GEICO investment in the late 70s. The 2009 recession has definitely positioned Warren Buffet as an investment genius even more so than before. The fact that GEICO uses his persona image to promote itself and associate with those values is similar to how Branson uses his feats and persona perception to aid the promotion of his Virgin businesses.
In between exams and end of year business chores Felicia was such a darling and cooked a beautiful birthday dinner and invited four of her girlfriends over. What more can I ask for than tasty dinner and five gorgeous women =)
She cooked…
…roasted pears with Gorgonzola
roast duck breast with pomegranate seeds and arugula
…butternut squash
…and bowtie pasta with vodka emulsion.
Lots of red wine and chocolate cake from Citarella.
Yum, yum! Thank you sweetie! Muah!
Just came across this fabulous piece of journalism and for a moment I thought I was reading The Onion but it’s actually meant to be a serious piece from CNN Money:
It basically bashes Microsoft and Windows 7 in every conceivable way using 12-year-old-mommy-took-my-toys kind of infantile arguments to make a point which… wait, what is the point of this article? I’m asking because after a pagefull of bashing using some random out-of-context statistics it ends with a single positive quote:
“While there are a few bugs, I haven’t seen or heard of any show-stoppers,” said Laura DiDio, principal analyst at ITIC. “In fact, just the opposite. Some Vista users can’t wait to upgrade. So far, this has been a home run for Microsoft.”
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Google, Apple or Microsoft fan: I think you too will find this writing infantile, along with more infantile interviewing of Ballmer and BSOD screenshots from Windows 98(!) inserted in the article. It’s clear that the write-up is not based in reality because it talks about “plug-ins” during installation and calls application included with Windows “applets”. Neither term is to be found in any of the Windows 7 UI.
It makes CNN reporting much like FOX News reporting which is what I’d imagine would happen if you took Jessica Simpson, told her she’s a business analyst anchor for the night and that she gets a cookie for telling the world how bad Microsoft is.
Very very strage to see this low quality reporting… 
But hey, what’s new I guess…
Apparently that’s the lesson to be learned from the recent verdict in the RIAA vs. Joel Tanenbaum lawsuit. Sad, but true.
As reported by ComputerWorld in Judge affirms $675k verdict in RIAA music piracy case:
[U.S. District Court Judge] Gertner said the court would have been willing to consider Tenenbaum’s fair use defense in the case but concluded that the manner in which the arguments were presented by the defense counsel made it all but impossible for her to do so.
“Rather than tailoring his fair use defense to suggest a modest exception to copyright protections, Tenenbaum’s defense mounted a broadside attack that would excuse all file sharing for private enjoyment,” the judge wrote in a 38-page decision. Such a broad definition of fair use would “swallow” all copyright protections, Gertner said.
So, had Tenenbaum’s defense team narrowed its fair use argument to Tenenbaum’s own activity rather than “mount[ing] a broadside attack that would excuse all file sharing for private enjoyment,” she would have been willing to consider the argument. Seems to me that Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson was defending Tanenbaum more on ideological grounds than trying to save his student ass. A very Hardvard-esque thing to do perhaps, but a tough lesson to learn.
Recently I’ve been bombarded (while watching The Daily Show) with advertising for phones running Google’s Android OS. These phone were on my short list but the advertising turned me off.
Google, have you learned nothing from Microsoft’s lame advertising in the past years? Your advertising is just as geeky. Your customers are not machines! They are people! You’re effectively telling me these phones are for geeks and robots. And the best feature you have is turn-by-turn directions? Seriously?! Dude, my geeky crappily-designed Windows Mobile phone was giving me turn-by-turn directions three years ago when shopping for Burning Man supplies in Reno (see what I’m doing here? take a lesson and empathize with you audience ).
Let’s see what avenues your competitors are exploring…
See? Cool inspiring music! Connecting with people and audience! What else?
See? Peeeooople! Connections! (plus you too know just as much about your customers )
The other ads in this campaign are just as cold and geeky, effectively portraying the phone as an alien device (see them in the Verizon Wireless channel). In a recent interview on Fox News, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO says they’ll try not to make the same mistakes Microsoft made (02:55) but in fact they are making the same mistakes around bullying other businesses and lame geeky commercials.
And yes, I do believe the Windows 7 advertising campaign is a successful one. Leading with the customers and leaving your ego behind is always a good thing.
I recently became acquianted with Alonia (www.alonia.ro), an IM client and VoIP softphone. On the IM side it can interoperate with the MSN and Yahoo networks. The part the impressed me however is the VoIP softphone (calling phones). It’s unimaginably cheaper than Skype. Calling mobile phone numbers costs €0.06/min or about $0.09/min instead of $0.29/min which Skype charges (among others because it’s written by a Romanian VoIP provider which has great interop deals with the local mobile operators).
One feature Alonia has which I have yet to see in other softphones is, it recognizes when the caller’s mobile phone is switched off or unreachable and it pops up a message box telling you it can’t reach the caller rather that charging you for a full minute just to find out this info. Skype is very dissapointing in this regard. Not only do they not have the feature, but they charge you more than a full minute when you get someone’s voicemail for instance ($0.06 instead of the regular $0.02 for US phone numbers for instance).
Use Alonia!
So I’m having a great and productive time working on my laptop from a coffee shop and enjoying the beautiful Spring weather when I notice and Windows Update icon in my system tray telling me it’s downloading updates. Crap!
Why? Because I’m on a modest broadband connection over GSM (or CDMA doesn’t really matter) and I don’t have an unlimited plan. Do you know there’s no way to stop WU from downloading updates once it starts? Crap! I have no idea how big these updates are so I wonder how much is this “initiative” to keep me secure is going to cost me.
In an attempt to keep (l)users secure the WU service starts itself if you kill the process from Task Manager. So really the only way to do something about this is to stop (actually disable) the service from the MMC Computer Management snap-in. I didn’t know that at the moment plus I was in the middle of writing some beautiful code and haven’t really noticed until a significant chunk of the updates (about 20 MB in total) had already downloaded.
Lesson to be learned: WU team, please detect the connection speed and DON’T download updates over a limited/paid-per-KB broadband connection. You cost me real money!
The beloved direct flight from New York (JFK) to Bucharest (OTP) is back!
The flight was in service for about a year and a half starting with 2007 and ending in October 2008. Rumors have it that Delta stopped flying the direct route because the merger with Northwest put it in conflict with whatever dealings Northwest had with Air France-KLM about not taking away any of the European business. Which is too bad because after flying Air France on two roundtrips JFK to OTP in the Fall of 2008 I concluded most everything about that airline (and CDG) sucks! Good thing KLM can save the day in that company. But I digress…
Starting with June 1st, 2009 there will be Delta flight #134 JFK to OTP departing at 5:00pm EST and arriving at 10:20am Bucharest time. The return flight is #135 departing at 12:20pm Bucharest time and arriving at 4:05pm EST.
I’m not reporting this as any official news and I don’t know of any official annoucement. I figured it out through my own ticket booking excercises
Since the Holidays, I’ve been spending half my time in NYC and half of it in Bucharest. This nomadic entrepreneur lifestyle definitely has its peculiarities. One of them is that you get acquainted a lot with cafes, bookstores, and pretty much any place where you can find a wireless connection and a plug. It pretty much feels like being digitally homeless (years ago I purchased the domain name DigitalHomeless.com; I never had a plan for it, but I now realize I was just anticipating this blog =) ).
In any case, one place that’s a favorite right now is the East West Living bookstore on 14th and 5th Avenue. The coffee is good, the ambiance is awesome, and the staff is great. Today, as I sat down, I laughed out loud reading this:
Readings Disclaimer
Please be advised the readings of any kind, including but not limited to psychic, tarot, angel, oracle cards, I-Ching, Feng Shui, astrology, past-life or any other type of reading – cannot predict, forecast, diagnose or provide information with absolute certainty.
No guarantees or assurances of any kind are given to customers who choose a reading at East West Living, and the company will not be held accountable for any interpretation or decision made by recipients based on information they are given or receive during readings.
According to the laws of the State of New York, this reading is for entertainment purposes only. For medical concerns, please consult a health professional. For legal matter, please consult an attorney.
I understand the theoretical reasons for disclaimers in modern societies. But everytime I encounter moronic disclaimers like this I can’t stop thinking that in order for the disclaimer to show up on that table there must’ve been at least one person who complained of the lack of “guarantees” .
The beligerant, litigious American society clearly comes across in this example in a major antithesis to the spirit of the East West bookstore itself :-)
Peace!
