iTunes Requests

October 2, 2006

A couple of days ago I mentioned some necessary changes to iTunes. It took a day longer than expected but I did get them submitted and we'll see what happens. The trigger that reminded me to do it was an email from NAVTEQ following up on a map error I reported in July.

We are pleased to inform you that our investigation of your reported Map Feedback has been completed. Here is the detailed resolution from our database tracking system:

Upon field and source verification, the street name was changed to ....

Very nice. And nice that they sent an email instead of depending on me to keep visiting their site.

End of an era

October 1, 2006

Last week there was an article in CIO Today about bad press for Microsoft as it appears Redmond is shutting out other security software vendors in favor of their internal software.

"Security software vendor Symantec claimed this week that Microsoft is withholding information about its new Vista operating system in an attempt to create an unfair advantage for its own security Relevant Products/Services from MessageLabs software," the article said.

The first few months of 2007 will be a tumultuous time in the tech world for sure. It seems Cupertino's Apple Computer is well suited to make leaps and bounds gains on its Redmond competition. Vista, which Microsoft now says will ship in January 2007, will ship years behind OS X which already has a far more complete feature set and the power of being UNIX-Based behind it. Long-time Windows will be faced with plenty of hardware that doesn't work and the need to upgrade.

When they go looking they'll find that the same company that makes their iPod has a great new operating system all their own with a lot of great features and the ability to keep running Windows XP or Windows Vista at the same time. The real question will be, can Apple keep up with the demand?

Phantom - The Las Vegas Spectacular

October 1, 2006

We went to see Phantom - The Las Vegas Spectacular last night. It is an outstanding Las Vegas show. The quality of the music, signing, dancing and music is fantastic. And it is Las Vegas. That is it's somewhat like restaurant chains in Las Vegas - take the best restaurant chain in the world and put one in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas version will be more expensive, not as good and you'll feel rushed. That describes Phantom in Las Vegas. It is a great production of a great show, but it's been cut down and lost some of its beauty in doing so. With many scenes cut in half, and some cut all together it becomes more a frantic race to the end. Gone are the moments to pause and catch one's breath and really enjoy the show.

This comment may seem a little odd at first, but one of the things that I didn't care for was a little too much detail and not enough left to the imagination. With the exquisite theater built for the production and the fantastic special effects, combined with the speed of the show, it's tougher to get to a place where the mind is completely carried away into the fantasy of the show.

There are much better productions to be certain, but this one is pretty good. It would be helped greatly by adding the Overture back in to the production. WIthout the intermission it's a little tough to add the Overture to the second act back to the score but at least the Overture to the first act would help a lot. It is also great to see a new show in Vegas that has live music.

MAMP

September 30, 2006

One of the brilliant people I talked to this week turned me on to MAMP. The MAMP software makes it incredibly easy to experiment with different settings and have several test environments on a computer at once.

Invigoration

September 30, 2006

Two days in I'm already breaking with my pledge to get to bed at a better hour. Too many ideas running through my head to do otherwise though. I spent the backend of the week at a briefing at Apple Computer. What a brilliant group of people they had to present to us.

One of the reminders I got was about submitting feature requests and bug reports. All too often it is very easy to see how we as users would like things to work and forget that in addition to posting them on our blogs (which we hope the right people are reading or at least scraping for terms like iPod) we need to make sure Apple's aware of the request. On tomorrow's list will be a feature request to change how iTunes handles the absence of podcasts (i.e. prompt me instead of deleting them all first). Another huge feature request will be answered with IChat 4, the ability to sign in to multiple AIM accounts at once. Yea!

Signs

September 28, 2006

Traveling today for a vendor demo. McCarran is a great airport in so many ways. Free wireless, a great new terminal and even long security lines seem to move quickly. There is, however, one major gripe. There are no signs as you enter the check-in area stating which airlines are in either direction. Inevitibly I'll go the wrong way. It would be very straight forward to fix which makes the problem all the more annoying.

And another thing... Why play a message telling passengers not to check-in bagage from people they do not know once they are in the gate area and no-longer able to check bags?

Burger Joint

September 23, 2006

New businesses should make sure their phone numbers are readily available online. Especially if they depend on call-ins for any portion of their business. Such is the case for Down-N-Out. burger in Big Bear, California. It would have been a lot easier if we'd known their phone number was (909) 584-1300. Fortunately the folks at the pizza joint across the street were nice enough to give it to us.

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