re: The 15 Most Useful Technologies for me in 2006

Very nice site! — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:22:24 GMT

Very nice site!

re: The 15 Most Useful Technologies for me in 2006

davidmeyer — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:20:17 GMT

I have to give a plug to MS Communicator! We used that at my last company (CA) and we absolutely loved that it integrated with our Outlook Calendar, etc. Really made life easy when you had a meeting and people wanted to IM you...but they saw that you had a meeting. Really kept the interruptions to an absolute minimum. Great technology!

re: The 15 Most Useful Technologies for me in 2006

hypovex — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:36:05 GMT

your helmet with the beer can holders and straws didn't make the list?

re: The 15 Most Useful Technologies for me in 2006

fluke — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 22:22:02 GMT

I would like to provide some additional information about some of your picks:

The Sonos music system does not support several online store purchases do to DRM issues. It didn't surprise me that Apple's FairPlay encrypted AAC files are not supported. But it was interesting to see on their website: "PlayForSure -- Microsoft's DRM does not currently support a multi-room architecture." I have also run into several online debates about what "PlayForSure" means since the release of the Zune (some go as far as to refer to it as "PlayForUnsure"). Maybe someone from the Zune group needs to read "Shipping Containers and Standardization"?

GShock Watch vs. Daylight Savings Time -- While the GShock FAQ states that some models support "Auto DST" to automatically correct for Daylight Savings Time, I can not find anything on the GShock or Casio website that states which models honor the US Federal "Energy Policy Act of 2005" as to when DST occurs. You might find that on March 11th that your GShock is "perfectly" one hour behind. Keep in mind that the NIST WWV only broadcasts the time in UTC. It is up to the watch to correct for local time and DST (and know when DST occurs).

Alienware PC -- Alienware = Dell! I have heard several stories of really horrific experiences with Dell. Yet, several of my friends that look down on Dell still speak highly of Alienware based on the company's past before it got bought out. It seems to me that now that Dell owns Alienware that it is only a matter of time until Dell style policies are applied to Alienware customers as well. Based on what I have heard directly from Dell customers, it is not uncommon for Dell to continue to scape-goat on supposed malware issues even after a clean re-install of Windows. It remains to be seen how much longer Alienware continues to do a better job than Dell at honoring warrenty issues with actual hardware replacement instead of following Dell's policy of scape-goating.

Xbox 360 @ HD 1080p -- I am noticing that as more people game with 16x9 displays that there is more complaints of motion sickness. Adding to the issue of motion sickness is that fact that if you get a display that supports 1080p today then it is probably over 36" diagonal. Aside from keeping a barf bag at your side while gaming, the recommendation I have heard is to sit farther back from the display/tv. But then how far back can you sit and still be able to really tell a difference between 720p, 1080i and 1080p? Can you really appreciate the difference and concentrate on the game? At the end of the day, the only real improvement to a gaming experience might be how good the dashboard and cut scenes look with the rest of the "improvements" going unnoticed/unperceived.

AdvantBrowser -- In addition to AdvantBrowser, you might want to look at the Firefox Add-On called "IE Tab." This extention allows Firefox to do what AdvantBrowser does. In fact, I have successfully run Windows Update from Firefox by using this extention.

Parallels Desktop -- it is unclear how successful this company will continue to be. Microsoft has declaired it a violation of the EULA to run Vista Home Basic or Premium inside a VM such as Parallels. Instead, future users of Parallels will be required to pay out for the additional features of Ultimate while having to accept that those features are either duplicates of things that Mac OS X already provides or are features that don't work well inside a VM. To date, my technical challenge to hjanssen still goes unanswered. It is unclear what *technically* Ultimate edition provides to make it a preferable VM guest OS instead of using Home Basic or Premium.

Motorola Q -- bluetooth phone without full bluetooth support? Several cheaper Motorola bluetooth phones will act as a wireless modem so a laptop can get internet access via them. The Palm Treo 680 and 700p also seem to have this functionality. So why do reviews of the Motorola Q indicate this feature of bluetooth is crippled on the Q?

Microsoft Office 2007 -- Well, in regards to this there seems to be bad news, worse news and "good" news. In a ComputerWorld interview with Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, he says during the discussions of the Novell/MS deal that it was stated that Microsoft Office will *NOT* be made available for Linux. Macworld has stated that MS Office 2007 for Mac will be without any VBA support at all. This article from Macworld continues on to explain the snowball effect of problems that results from Office for Mac being crippled from running VBA scripts. It leads up to "for that reason, I truly believe that the removal of VB support from Office marks the beginning of the end for Mac Office." But in the good news, Bill Hilf says that "the new Office 2007 UI is awesome." Great! *cough*

Windows Vista -- One of the things I have learned to take for granted in GNU/Linux is that a file that is in use can still be deleted. Windows XP seems to be "protective" of keeping it's malware. As long as a virus, trojan, spyware, etc is running the exe can not be deleted or replaced. So, how does the Vista make this issue more intuitive and better? Based on my evaluation of Vista Beta, it appears that it does not address the issue at all. Files that are in use on Vista Beta was still "protected" from being deleted or replaced. Another non-intuitive XP issue I have noticed was the functionality of the start-up folder was duplicated by the registery keys under Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion. The desktop explorer would treat them similar to being in the start-up folder but not expose their presence to the end user when viewing the start-up folder. Hence, this has provided a safe haven for malware to use to be launched. Taking a look at Vista beta, this issue also was not resolved. Vista still has several application or thread launch points that are not exposed by the UI to the end user.

I think it should also be noted that not a single project on CodePlex made the cut of the 16 (or 15 1/2 depending how you count it) most useful technologies. Well... maybe next year.

re: The 15 Most Useful Technologies for me in 2006

davidmeyer — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:31:07 GMT

Great stuff Bill. I checked out a few of these things on your list. I'd be curious what your 15 most Useless Technologies list for 2006 would look like.

Dave