Skype Beta 3.0.0.106

A quick one about another beta - the new skype beta is out, available for anyone to download, from here. Again, haven't played much with it, but 3 things I noticed & liked:

1. Browser extensions that recognise phone numbers in your browser (works in Firefox, can't see it working in IE6 & Opera at the moment - not sure why) and turn them into clickable links with a little flag showing what country code Skype thinks it should use - Nice! Except that I wish voipcheap (more later) had this instead of skypeout!
2. Skypecasts & the Live tab... seems like cast-fever & Live-fever is catching on here. Welcome to the next big thing :-) But they're pretty interesting features, and I can see them being of some use, even if in just limited ways as free radio stations or free conference calls! But I actually caught a bit of one yesterday and immediately saw something interesting .. see the Wireless Electricity Becomes a Reality article. Most I've looked briefly at since have all been crap, noise and weird noises & heavy breathing. No thanks.
3. Auto updates: maor releases & hotfixes both. Finally. I always wondered why they didn't do this a long time ago. As with Apple for their software. Maybe they (apple) argue that unlike Microsoft software their's didn't break & need a patch every 30 seconds, but they do have a steady stream of updates, why not automate it (or provide the option) years ago? I would have been using newer versions of iTunes much quicker if the bloody thing didn't ask me to spend half an hour on it. A new version is available - would you like to download? Click yes. Get taken to the Apple site where it looks like you have to give them your email address, but you don't. Click iPod+iTunes and download about 3 times, choose where to save the file, wait for it to come down (massive bloody bloated files, too - I want a media player that's no more than a 5mb download). Double-click setup.exe or whatever and then follow the damn installshield wizard. Man oh man. Couldn't we have just left it at the first time I said YES??? Anyway, this isn't about Apple... this is Skype. So anyway, apparently Skype will do it's thing on it's own now and not ask me to follow a similar apple-esque waste-of-time mind-numbing hair-tearing cringe-making crappily thought out process that makes me wonder how these guys ever came up with a whole piece of software, if they couldn't even think this through. Funnily enough, the major-version update option was set to automatic on my installation, but the hotfix (for patches, bugfixes etc) was set to "Ask". That's a bit weird isn't it?

Oh yeah and about voipcheap... for those who don't know it, it was one of the best VoIP apps around for a while, with great quality service, free calls to landlines AND mobiles all over the world, and a client app that updated IN ONE CLICK. Since the time I started using it, they've started charging for calls to a lot of the places that were free, but I've got free calls to all of Europe and the U.S. on my mobile now, so I don't mind that much! As you may have guessed, it's at www.voipcheap.co.uk and also at www.voipcheap.com ... and they've just announced that credit you buy for calls to traditional networks will no longer expire - so that's another reason, apart from the main one - which is that it's a fair bit cheaper than SkypeOut, and you get a complimentary local number. Huh.

Beta Blogger

And by the way, while we're talking about betas, as of two posts ago I've switched to the beta blogger. I'm not sure why, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. And it was easy.

I haven't seen much difference in the interface yet... except the auto-save thing doesn't seem to happen any more, and you can add tags / labels. But then again I haven't really looked...

Word 2007 - things that make you smile

It's sad, I know. I've already been told as much. It's not healthy to get so happy by something so foolish. Yet every once in a while a computer does something CLEVER. And it makes me happy :-)

Using Word 2007 about five minutes ago, and I was writing a bulleted list like I have done a thousand times before. What I was doing slightly differently was using a differently formatted heading for each point, something like this:

• Heading: This is the bulleted item.
• Heading 2: This is another one.

I've probably done this a few times before, but I don't do it that often. And I've also recently (since Word 2007) gotten a bit organised and created templates with custom styles so that I can save myself some formatting overhead. All the stuff was there before, and I even used it once in a while, but I hadn't integrated it into my workflow. I have now, so that's one good thing that Office 2007 has prompted.

Anyway, back to my smile :-). I had just typed the second item in this list & hit enter for the next one. I suddenly realised that the foromatting had switched and I was typing in orange text. I figured this must be a mistake and Word screwing up as usual, but I continued to type. As soon as I had written the 2-word heading and typed the colon, the formatting changed back to black! And I thought I had seen the lightning-bolt-Office-has-changed-something-to-a-way-that-makes-more-sense-to-it-but-you-can-change-it-back-if-you-want icon, so I did it again in a new document, and there it was!! Word can automatically format the beginning of lists differently! How cool... I knew the big brains at Microsoft had to be up to something all these years :-p. Anyway, I'm not sure if you need to use styles or if normal formatting will do the trick. Wait, I'll check... OK it'll work even with manual formatting, not just styles. And I'm not sure if this is something new to Word 2007... wait, I'll check on 2003: OK, 2003 can do it too. Kinda sad because it's nice to come across proper "new" features, rather than one of the 1,645 that were always there but you never noticed. But even so. I like it, and I'll even throw in a shot of what the dialog in 2007 looks like:
It's the first setting in the "Automatically as you type" section.

And I enjoyed it.

HOW much???

I thought this was quite interesting... looking at a couple of options for desktop computers, and ended up getting a bit sidetracked.

Right. So here's the common belief (mine): Dell PCs are cheap, and Macs are expensive. OK, so I went onto both manufacturer's sites and decided to look up the most expensive desktop I could configure...

Will it be or will it be our funky friends at ?

So here's what I found... on the Apple store I clicked on MacPro and pushed all the options up to the max. I ended up with two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors, 16GB of 667MHz DDR2 fully buffered ECC RAM, and NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB AGP with Stereo 3D (2 x dual-link DVI), 3TB of 7,200rpm SATA II storage, two 16x DVD-writers, Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme, a USB dialup modem, a 2GB fibre channel PCI-X card, wireless keyboard & mighty mouse, 2x 30" Apple Cinema HD displays (WOOHOO), all running Mac OS X of course. I could have gone for the server variant, but I'm trying to configure a workstation here (couldn't you tell :-p), wrapped up in a mysterious soundingAppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro - Auto-enroll. I also got five USB ports, two FireWire 400 ports and two FireWire 800 ports! Oh and Aperture 1.1 (funny how you can only choose ONE software package to stick onto your Mac). All for a grand total of £10,851.09 ex VAT. Not bad for about 5 minutes shopping, eh?

Right, so over to Dell UK we go (I have the small business site bookmarked, so that's the one I used). First to find a suitable base system. Not quite as straight forward as choosing the Mac Pro, I settled on the Dell Precision 690 minitower. The rest wasn't going to be easy either, with Dell offering a total of 28 configuration options, compared to 18 for the Apple. So what did I get? I got Two Intel® Xeon® 5160 (3.0GHz,1333,4MB) processors (I chose not to go for the quad-cores since this was the more expensive option, and even though the quad-cores have 8mb L2 cache, their clock speed is much lower & FSB also much slower - I know the obsession with speed is often false, but in this case the guiding factor was the price & nothing else), 32GB of DDR2 533 Quad Channel FBD Memory, a 512MB nVidia Quadro FX4500 SLI ready DUAL Graphics Card, 1.5TB of 7,200rpm SATA II storage, with an extra 160GB of 10,000rpm space (for my swap & page file silly), 16X DVD+/-RW and a 48X CD-ROM Drive> I also got (deep breath) a Sound Blaster® X-Fi XtremeMusic (D) Sound Card, a 3D Connexion SpacePilot (3D motion controller), a StopTrack anti-theft Label, an APC Back-UPS RS 800VA,a USB Smartcard Reader Black Keyboard, a Logitech® MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse, an internal media card reader, a 56.6k Data/Fax V92 Internal PCI Modem, Microsoft® Office 2003 Basic and McAfee SecurityCenter - Englishv7 with a 36 month subscription. Did I mention a widescreen Dell UltraSharp™ 3007 30" Widescreeen Flat Panel AND a Dell UltraSharp™ 2407WFP 24" Wide Black LCD Monitor. All that and I still only get lil ol' Windows XP Pro, albeit the 64-bit version. I also get all my old data migrated using Replace My PC - Data Transfer and Backup Software. All the gadgets set up for me by someone else (what fun is that?) with a a 1 Unit, Business Networked Set-up and Test Installation, and all wrapped up & covered by a 5Y NBD (Next Business Day) On-site (incl. e-Learning Pack) Warranty and also 5 Years Business Support, so that when I'm old and feeble I can call Dell and chat. Oh, and I also get the Google Search Assistant free of charge. What they won't do, the miserable ******s, is give me free delivery, so I need to pay £49 on top of my £22,298.01 price tag. That's ex-VAT :-).

Just for the heck of it I also configured a server - the details are boring, but it was just a shade over £50K. I then increased the quantities of servers & workstations until my basket totaled a shade over £1m! And yes, you can click on checkout, and yes, they do give you the option to pay with a credit card. Now I recently had the credit limit on my Visa increased, but I'm not too sure if it'll stretch to this. Does anyone's?? Does such a card exist?? I even entered card details, but no, I didn't go any further than that. I don't know what the consequences of entering into a binding contract by trying to buy £1m worth of Dell hardware on a visa credit card is, but I didn't really want to find out the wrong way...

Well there you have it - Macs are half the price of Dells. Or something not like that. :-)

To Zune or not to Zune?

Having seen sneak-peeks of the much-touted and highly awaited media device (can't just call them mp3 players anymore, can we?) from Microsoft, and having had a couple of Microsoft guys get a few of us partners quite excited about the device (including a few almost-promises of freebies!), I have to say that I'm quite underwhelmed... Initially there was a bit of excitement, I must admit..


At first look, the Zune player (available in black, white and... brown yes, brown - Mr. Prada, are you listening?) looked slick & stylish, seemed to be well designed, and with features like Wi-Fi & FM tuner built in, it looked pretty good to me... but having seen more pictures and reviews, it seems to be a bit more about the hype and less about a WOW iPod-killer... it's quite similar to the comparable ipod actually, both are 30GB, both about the same weight (iPod:5.5oz, zune:5.6oz), similar dimensions (hxwxd: iPod: 4.1x2.4x0.43 inches, zune: 4.4x2.4x0.6 inches), both with a 14hr playback time, both have QVGA (320x240) displays, but the Zune display is significantly larger at 3" compared to 2.5" for the iPod.

But what does all this mean to me? What exactly are we talking about? My iPod of choice is a Nano... if it doesn't fit in the pocket without causing further distress to my wardrobe (most of my jeans end up in the bin from having holes where the outside of the pockets have worn out), it's no use to me... The new Nano is 1/4th the capacity of the Zune player, but at 1.4oz, is also 1/4th the weight, and at 1.456 cubic inches is less that 1/4th the volume. And with a playback time of almost DOUBLE that of the larger players (24hrs), it is a far more appealing lil gadget to me. It's so light that if I drop it, it floats down to the floor. It doesn't get dented, and if it's in the pouch, it'll not only float down, but also bounce back into my hand (well alright, almost).

Oh, and by the way it turns out the wireless isn't Wi-Fi. Zunes can only talk to each other, and will play transferred songs no more than 3 times, or for a maximum of 3 days before refusing to play them any more. So all you have is a reminder to go onto the Zune Marketplace and buy the song. Great. More expense, more performance & reliability issues, and actually less real use. I can soo see myself wandering all over the country to find another Zune to zap tunes & pics with. For 3 listens of the song. Even if it's non-copyright material, that my friend came up with on garageband and wanted me to have. For ever. Maybe next time. Except that there's no next time, since he wouldn't be able to send me the same song again. Ever. And I wouldn't be able to share this wonderful piece of musical genius with anyone else (unless I happen to give them the headphones and waste one of my 2 remaining listens - I've already heard it once, right?), since I'm not able to pass on a received track any further. Woo hoo!

One of the interesting about the Zune isn't really about the Zune, it's just the first of it's kind deal to be done between a hardware vendor & content company.. Universal gets a percentage of revenue from every Zune sold! Read more here.

What's worst is that Microsoft seem to be a bit ashamed of the Zune themselves... most companies will have massive flashy websites devoted to the launch of a consumer device like this, will kill you with jargon & lifestyle cues, image galleries filled with 35.7 shots from every possible angle, and 360-degree views of every colour in the range. Have you seem the Zune gallery? Have a look at http://www.zune.net/en-US/ and click on the "Up Close - See photos of Zune". All the pictures are of PEOPLE. The Zune is sitting somewhere in the corner, but HELLO??? Is this what you call UP CLOSE? If it can't even be made to look drool-worthy in marketing mug-shots, this is probably as up-close as I want to get! I admit, there is still gadget-value even if it isn't the nicest looking device on the planet... to be honest, my black iPod Nano isn't in danger of winning any beauty contests.. don't get me wrong - I love the look of the Nano, especially the 1st generation - but mine has spent so much time in pockets, bags and being generally "lived with" that it's now no longer a gloss-black & chrome. It's more a matt gray and gray. But I still love it. It's probably too late, but it now lives in a nice Moshi pouch which replaced a rubber iPod skin & screen protector (which did more harm than good, scratching the life out of my poor Nano every time it was pulled on or off).

My point being (there is one somewhere here, I promise), that I'm not heartbroken that my Nano ended up getting scratched almost beyond recognition. It was a known flaw when the Nano was launched, and mine was one of the last ones to ship without the suede-ish Apple-supplied pouch. My girlfriend's Nano was bought a month after mine, and hers is still pristine. Mine isn't, but I don't really mind. It works great, and it's still cool :-)

And what about the Zune? Oh yeah... still waiting for a free one so I can talk about how great it REALLY is :-)