Monthly Archives: December 2004

Google Suggest

Google’s latest toy is Google Suggest, which suggests search terms as you type. Mucho neato. Here’s the Google Blog announcement and some stuff on how it works.

So, what’s your Google Suggest number? That is, how many letters of your name do you have to type into Google Suggest before your name appears on the suggestion list, and at what position does it first appear? (Plus where in the rankings are you when you search?)

Daniel Bowen 10.2.1

Toxic Custard 6.9.1

Geekrant doesn’t show up, dammit. Obviously we need to start GoogleBombing.

Why Trillian rocks

Was listening to the latest G’Day World Podcast, interesting stuff as always guys, keep it up. Noted the discussion about Trillian, ICQ, and MSN Messenger.

Until about a year ago, it seemed to me like most Australians on the IM circuit were on ICQ. I’ve been on ICQ so long I have a 7 digit UIN (though I forgot about it for a while, and subsequently have an 8 digit one I use more often, in the 26-million range, if that dates it).

But it became apparent that (like Hotmail) MSN Messenger was bigger than I thought. Even among people I knew, there were a number of people who I didn’t IM with, but who used MSN. Ditto Yahoo Messenger (which has some popularity with corporate users, since it’s long been usable through firewalls using HTTP). I understand AOL Instant Messenger is huge in the States, due to the vast numbers of people who use AOL as an ISP, but virtually nobody in Australia uses it.

When I realised I knew people who were on MSN but not on ICQ, I moved over to Trillian, which of course works with all of these. Although Trillian isn’t perfect with every protocol (some older versions didn’t do well with ICQ’s file transfer, for instance) even the free version is pretty damn good, and on my aging 2000-era PC, I’d rather not be filling my meagre 256Mb RAM by running lots of clients.

But even when I do get my brand spanking new super-duper fast-as-you-like mega-PC (before too long), I won’t want the hassles with clicking around on multiple windows just to talk to everybody. That’s just silly.

Dis-Intergration

Coles Myer may make a fortune each year but it would seem none of that is spent on system integration.

Today I had to go to Myer Melbourne to purchase a wedding gift. In order to do this I had to go to the registry department, hand over a card with the event number on it, wait for a print out, decide what I wanted to buy, go to the floor, purchase the item and then return to the registry to tell them what we purchased so they could cross it off the list.

a) Why did I have to go in to Myer to get the list?
b) Why can’t I tell them what I want and organise them to get one from stock and wrap it once I’m there?
c) Why, if I follow their plan do I have to return to the registry department to tell them what I purchased? If I have to go to the department myself why can’t I show them the event card and have them mark the gift as purchased?

or most sensibly

d) why can’t I log on to myerregistry.com (don’t bother, it’s not there), enter the event number, select what I want to purchase and press the ‘Buy, Wrap and Send’ button.

Coles Myer, move into the 20th century at least before trying to catch up with your 21st century competition.

As it is, my nephew will be getting something that doesn’t come from Myer.

Windows permissions

In an effort to secure my home computers, I have been setting up accounts for my kids on both of them. Very easy. They get to play around with their favourite screensavers and wallpaper settings and so on. And I’m making them regular “users”, not “power users”, so they can’t “accidentally” install anything they find on the Web into the Windows directory or Program Files. (The school computers are riddled with stuff found from some super-dooper smilies and “mini games” web sites).

It’s times like these that you begin to understand why it’s so handy to have the Documents And Settings directories and the Registry, which have areas writable by all users. And you also begin to wonder why some software writers (including Microsoft) ignore them.

Example 1: Midtown Madness 2 (which my son Jeremy loves) needs write access to its own directory, for storing player data and some other guff. Easily fixed, but WHY?

Example 2: the DVD player software that came with one of the computers obviously wants to do something in one of the verboten directories and gracefully crashes and burns when it’s not run as Administrator. Haven’t had time to sort out why, exactly, yet. Must upgrade to PowerDVD — I wonder if it does that.

This is pretty basic stuff. Software authors really should know better.

More briefs

“You people should be ashamed of yourself! I did not ask to have 3 pop ups come across my screen when I visit you. I do not visit singles sites, and I don’t want to add 4 inches to my penis. As a matter of fact, I don’t use any of the services that pop up on my screen. I think it is disgusting that you money hungry bastards have infringed on my computer for your own selfish gain. From this moment on, I am boycotting you, and I am advising EVERYONE I know to do the same thing. Down with you and your pop up ads.”User quoted by Jakob Nielsen (who it turns out probably had spyware on his machine. Umm, the user that is, not Jakob.)

This sounds pretty cool: Do you regularly rebuild your PC? This site has a guide to creating the ultimate Windows XP installation disk, with all your favourite applications, patches, settings and hacks built-in. (via David).

I used to wonder why the WinAPI GetTickCount() call always gave back a value that was a multiple of 55ms. Now I know why.

MS hits blogging. The blogosphere hits MS for its limitations. Oh well, that’s classic MSN… they do consumer products, not power tools. The whole censorship thing seems a bit drastic though.

These friendly freebie web hosters (Boss factor: risque, and note the URL) have a page where they expose people who abuse the facilities.

Dave’s quick guide to converting LP to CD

A number of comments

  • First comment – allow LOTS of time to convert.
  • I won’t speak of legal issues… (It should be noted that this is not legal in Australia without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. This is something that damn FTA should be made to fix… but probably won’t. — Daniel)
  • The end result will never be as good as a properly mastered commercial CD, but that said, the end results are still very acceptable.
  • If the LP is of Val Doonican or the Bay City Rollers, then… just don’t bother. 🙂

Now a few more specifics
Continue reading

Quickies

Sick of that stupid “Open With” offering to find you a web service? Me too.

Oh great: MPs will be not only allowed, but funded to send SMS spam.

Most musos say the Net has increased incomes for their work, inspite of P2P sharing and piracy.

More on EA’s exploitation of programmers from the spouse of an EA employee. (via Bleeblog). Jeez. Should we started boycotting EA’s games?!

“A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.” — Emo Philips.

Winhelp vs HTMLHelp

Popup helpI know the move from the ol’ Winhelp to HTML Help was meant to be a good thing (and at the time made my life easier, as I could re-use HTML formatted text more easily), but the loss of the very handy “What Is?” help originally trumpeted in Win95 is a shame.

Nowadays if you click the question mark on Word 2003’s options screen, for instance, it just chucks you onto a help page which covers the entire dialog. Doesn’t even open the bit that talks about the tab you were on. They really should have ensured that all the functionality of Winhelp 4 (that fine granularity of context-senstivity) was available in HTMLHelp. (Is it? Did the Word 2003 people just get lazy?)

In fact, I reckon what they should have done was improve the help development tools, but leave the underlying technology alone. Winhelp4 worked well for users, but its authoring was a real pain. That’s why tools like RoboHelp won sales. If MS could have come up with a way of easily developing your help in HTML, but having it compile into Winhelp4, they would have been onto a winner. In the days before everyone had IE, it would have got around the issues with poor Win95 users having to install HTMLHelp (and thus, IE 3+), and suffering the performance hit of having to load up the browser just to look at the help.

Of course, at the time MS would have been trying to entrench IE’s hold on every desktop. Which I guess explains why they did it their way.