See One, Do One, Teach One

The journey starts off innocently enough…

To: “David Kirk”
Subject: Lap Top
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:41:18 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0

I am going to get a laptop. I need your help on what and where to get .

Dad

My father wants to get a laptop. I have that feeling that a parent gets when a child asks for a car or a bike or whatever. What appears to be a simple task is really a challenge to find the perfect fit.

photo credit: Andrew*

Easy answers exist. If I were a zealot one way or another, then I would tell him to get whatever is my favorite device of the moment. I could be lazy and just send him a bunch of links and then hope he figures it out all on his own. Easy answers would lead to confusion and frustration for both of us — especially with parents living 13 hours away.

Dad is currently running an XP box with broadband, printer, scanner, and a couple of digital cameras. He learns well through step-by-step directions but can stumble if new obstacles are thrown his way. He transitioned away from AOL easily enough. However, storing, editing, and retrieving photos in an efficient way still seems challenging.

Just when I think Dad’s system is running well, he wants a laptop. Of course, he does. Everybody wants a laptop. My desktop is used less and less since I started with my laptop. My wife is the same way. A laptop, however, introduces a whole bunch of new challenges.

To work well, a laptop needs a wifi network. To exchange files between a laptop and desktop is not painless or intuitive. Using a scanner and a printer with a laptop has unique challenges too. To top it all off, I have to decide if now would be a good time to introduce Dad to the world of Apple and OS X.

I wanted Dad and me to sit down over some adult beverages and discuss this; however, he is excited to get started. Anxiously, I have been pondering my plan, and I hope I have found the correct path. I am going to tackle each potential decision as a separate blog post. I will try to weigh the strengths and weakness at each step to help Dad make his choice. Hopefully, my blog readers will chime in with additional information as well.

Here are a few examples of planned posts:

• Laptop versus desktop
• Apple versus Microsoft
• Save or ditch the desktop

I will start each post from a beginner level and expand into our normal geek territory. If interesting comments appear, I will amend and edit my posts to reflect new ideas as well.

My father was key into getting me into computers. I get my technology-loving side honestly. Help us find him the best system.

I will blog these entries as computer4dad if you want to keep up with the series.

Technorati Tags: computer4dad, laptop vs desktop, os x vs vista

When we look back on 2007 in a few years, these ten topics and companies will be the milestones that will be referenced and debated:

• 1. Google Pushes Its Power
• 2. Aggregators Polluted by the Mobs
• 3. Mobile Web. Why?
• 4. User-Submitted Profits
• 5. Apple Leaps
• 6. Microsoft Tumbles
• 7. DRM. Die. Die. Die.
• 8. Main Stream Media Invasion
• 9. Politics’ Internet Fruitfulless
• 10. Social Network Assimilation

1. Google

Google is currently the most powerful technology company in the world. With dominance in search and advertising, profits and stock prices have been impressive.

This year will be remembered as the point that google starting flexing its power to change people’s actions on the internet. Matt Cutts confirmed that google would punish people buying and selling links to influence search engine placement.

Google decreased the clickable adsense area which decreased some publishers’ income by well over 50%.

Google has openly started attacking social networks such as Facebook by joining the smaller networks through the OpenSocial API and by socializing Google services such as Google Reader. This dilutes the power that any one social networking system has. Google’s purchase of Jaiku is a direct competitor to IM candy Twitter. Google’s Android dilutes the potential power of a cellular network as well.

Wikipedia and squidoo will soon be feeling the google crunch next. Collaborative content is one of the most amazing products being created and delivered on the internet. Google’s Knol wants to compete here as well. Like many others, TechCrunch is worried about the conflict of interest:

Google says that Knol pages will be indexed into their search engine but will have no special ranking. That’s a little bit untrue, since they’ll be hosted by Google and will have the advantage of Google’s hefty PageRank to lift them in search results. And since no one will be auditing Google to ensure that Knol pages are treated just like everyone else, there are bound to be claims of conflict of interest.

This first started by competing with Microsoft through online services. Is Google’s strategy to dilute any potential collection of power?

2. Web 2.0 Aggregators

Digg and Reddit have moved away from tech. Sad.

Mob Rule. Tyranny of the Majority. Ochlocracy. Whatever you call it, these sites are the weak, fluffy versions of what they used to be. As the less-geek have moved in, the content of these aggregators have followed. Even the creators cannot control the sites anymore.

Unless you have a large social connection within these sites, you have no chance of getting an article viewed… (unless you pay for it.) Socializing is more important than quality.

Although I view both of these sites on a daily basis, they are frequently gamed, overcome with political manipulation, often filled with spamish links, and are utterly unrealiable as news sources.

What’s the alternative? You can always read what the A-List boys’s club is echoing about on techmeme. Or you can watch the main stream news… which is frequently gamed, overcome with manipulation… You get the idea.

3. Mobile Web

The mobile web is growing and growing. However, unless you are selling ringtones, nobody has figured how to make money from it. Even mobile web experts are puzzled on the exact nature of making money through mobile devices.

Plus, does there have to be a special “mobile web” anymore? The iPhone displays regular web content through a cell interface. Instead of manipulating content to look pretty on tiny browsers, manipulate the cell web browser to view existing content well on the cellular interface. When was the last time you remember visiting a mobi site?

4. User-Submitted Profits

Everybody is making money on the back on the users.

NewsVine, Squidoo, Wikipedia, Digg, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook. If you really think about it, none of these companies would work without the public building content for them. You are building content for them. Congratulations! When do you expect your check?

Even blogs and forums get boost from comments and discussions created within their communities. (Please comment, please, please, please…)

How long will people continue to sow content in the sites of others for free?

5. Apple

I personally believe that this was an amazing year for Apple. Apple stocks are certainly booming.

The iPhone has changed the cellular landscape that parallels how the iPod changed the portable musical player market. Apple’s commericals are painfully clever in their attacks against Microsoft. Leopard’s problems have been far less damaging than Vista’s which has helped as well. Overall, more and more people are considering moving to Apple’s platform.

Apple has shown areas of weakness, however. The AppleTV push has really died for the general public. With an anorexic iTunes movie selection, the AppleTV has little appeal to the nongeek. iTunes itself is having growing pains with content providers. NBC/Universal have decided to play hardball with TV shows and music. It’s difficult to know how it is going to play out. Apple is understandingly becoming weaker and weaker for DRM as well.

Being less ambitious than Vista has played well for Leopard. However, the new OS X is still causing growing pains for a lot of people. Feeling the vapor, we are still wondering where the much promised ZFS is?

6. Microsoft

As a one time Microsoft zealot, I am pained to see what has happened to Microsoft this year. Vista is failing because it has taken users too many steps as once. We all had to throw away most of our old hardware when XP rolled out. Most of us accepted this because the pre-XP experience was so unstable. XP was the successful promise of easy usage and stability. I wanted to install XP for my parents because I knew it would make things easier for them.

Today the market is different. Things worked pretty well before Vista. People do not want to sacrifice most of their hardware to get things working correctly. Plus, now we have 32-bit versus 64-bit discussion and “ultimate” products that add little except confusion.

Away from the OS, Microsoft’s search engines and ad networks are stagnant, and Microsoft certainly seems to be trying to kill html email usability. From my experience at FOWD, Sean Siebel is not an impressive “User Experience Evangelist.” At least Scoble tried.

Microsoft has made a few positive steps this year. The Microsoft Home Server is a new idea for a new market. If done well, it could be an essential box in every household. IE7 is a large improvement over IE6. Microsoft is investing in Facebook. Even the second Zune release (and the free software upgrade to the first version) is finally generating a little positive Microsoft buzz. Silverlight and Surface are sexy and innovative.

7. DRM

Could 2007 be the year that DRM finally starts to die?

Die. Die. Die.

Shawn Fanning’s original idea of drm-free Napster could exist in several different forms over the next few years. iTunes Plus and Amazon’s DRM free shows that the big guys are creeping into this direction. Steve Jobs thinks this way, too.

Radiohead’s In Rainbows “pay us what you want” experiment is exciting. Saul Williams and Trent Reznor are doing something similar.

Give them the music for free and sell them on the other stuff. It’s coming.

8. Main Stream Media

How about give them the content for free, too?

The New York Times is finally free. Online circulation is having to make up for the dying dead trees distribution:

Nationwide, average daily paid newspaper circulation declined 2.6 percent in the six months that ended Sept. 30, compared with the previous year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, an independent organization that monitors the industry. Sunday circulation dropped 3.5 percent nationwide during the same period.

As the main stream media looks to supplement eyeball views with online content, their articles are appearing more and more in news aggregators. How long until we figure out that some of digg’s top users are on the payrolls of popular newspapers or public relations companies?

As advertising dollars move from TV and newspaper to the internet, the main stream media is following. How much this will drown out the current boom on citizen journalism is unclear.

9. Internet and Politics

Howad Dean’s success and subsequent failure seemed to grow from within communities within the internet. Was online activism a good idea too early? Will the traditionally nonvoting, young, internet crowd actually play any role in the upcoming elections? These are the questions that campaigns are asking .

Campaigns are on MySpace, FaceBook, and YouTube. You can not read digg or reddit without reading about Ron Paul or Kucinich. Of course, strike911 received active buzz throughout the internet without getting support from the general public or receiving any real main stream press.

This campaign cycle should be a great test to see if online voting and protesting will cause any offline results.

10. Social Networks

Online social networks have continued to grow throughout 2007. The large players like MySpace and Facebook are ubiquitous. How they are changing our interactions with our personal worlds are staggering. The influence and entertainment role of TV is being largely supplanted by these social networks. For many, offline social interactions are first initiated and planned online. Small niches of personalities and beliefs can find like-minded partners.

The success of YouTube and Flickr is obviously dependent on their social interactions. Digg and reddit are driven by social interactions. Dating networks are thriving.

As more of our social lives are played out online, more of our personal information is accessible online as well. More of our personal actions and characteristics are targeted by advertisers. More of our actions can be collected and used against us. Will an insurance company be able to find out that you are a member of a tobacco social group or a Huntington’s disease facebook group? The ultimate balance between profit and privacy will be difficult.

11. Memes?

Oh wait.. I left out lolcats. I am not sure if that’s a trend or a plague, but 2007 is certainly the a year of it. Or maybe it’s not a trend, maybe it is a meme. Who knows anymore…

Conclusion:
As I reread my article, my overall feeling is that our experience on the internet is becoming more complex. The name “google” no longer gives most people warm and fuzzy feelings. Digg and reddit are often manipulated more than main stream media. Facebook is looking to trade privacy for profits.

The idea of a “do no evil” company is more likely an untruth than an oxymoron. Previously, we thought it was possible on the internet. No more.

Of course, I would not want to do without Facebook, Digg, Reddit, or Google. We all benefit from the battles between Apple and Microsoft. Companies need to make money to survive. The balance is tough.

The real world continues to invades our idealist internet utopia. “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” but I would rather be here than anywhere else.

Let’s get ready to rumble in this upgrade battle. XP to Vista versus Tiger to Leopard.

The weekend that Leopard was released I decided to upgrade both my systems at once. I upgraded my MBP from Tiger to Leopard at the same time that I upgraded my windows desktop from XP to Vista.

Purpose–

My wife wants to upgrade to Leopard. My father wants to upgrade to Vista. The purpose of this experiment was to see if I should recommend these upgrades to my family and the tech-recipes audience.

Background–

In the OS X corner, I have my Apple laptop that is used for most of my day to day work–browsing, photo editing, blogging, programming, and such. It already has Vista installed on it in Parallels. It was running tight without obvious problems prior to the upgrade. In the XP corner, I have my trusty desktop system that is used mainly for audio/video editing, gaming, and Office. It too was running well prior to the upgrade. The XP box did contain an elderly ds2416 audio mixing card that can be flakey. I removed it completely prior to the upgrade because I have not researched drivers for it yet.

Both systems received adequate back-up before the upgrade. Despite my personal preference for wipes and fresh installs, I purposefully decided to do straight upgrades on both systems for this battle.

I enjoy using both windows and OS X systems and frequently write tutorials regarding both. (I got no agenda/prejudice.)

Leopard Install–

I started the installation disk, answered a few questions, and let it fly. Like in Tiger, .Mac is thrown in your face. I did not time the process but it seemed to be about an hour. The system requested an update of the OS over the internet soon after the install completed. The update process took just a few minutes. No error messages or difficulties during the install.

The transparent menu bar, 3-D dock, and the new folder styles are immediately noticeable. However, clicking around yields no real surprises. For the most part, the basic functionality is consistent from Tiger.

Vista Install–

I started the installation disk and was asked to pick the flavor of Vista that I had purchased. I used the traditional x86 version (as everybody probably should be doing.) The deferral of the serial number and activation process was a nice change from XP’s installation. The install process updates itself over the internet prior to the actual act of installation which is really smart. Unfortunately it did not prevent a IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Stop BSOD error. I tried to do a repair install as suggested by the installation wizard without success. Eventually, google helped me find the issue, and the installation proceeded successfully after I pulled out a couple of sticks of memory to get below the 3 gig limit.

After installation, the new windows eye-candy interface Aero was not enabled for some reason. Aero was manually enabled without difficulty. Trying to go to the control panel caused explorer to die probably from an incompatible .cpl file. I updated Vista through Windows update. The downloading and installing of those updates actually look longer than the entire Leopard install did. Some of the updates did not install correctly. My Microsoft bluetooth mouse and keyboard would not work.

Most programs worked as expected; however, explorer and other windows processes would die unexpectedly. Here is my favorite error message out of several: Microsoft Windows Operating System has stopped working. Nice.

Many core aspects of navigation within Vista has changed from XP. Aero is certainly a beautiful and striking change from XP. The Start Menu changes are powerful but will be confusing to the average upgrading user. Navigation through Explorer with breadcrumbs is more radical than Leopard’s Breadcrumb navigation option.

Post-Installation Problems–

My Leopard install does not browse my network. I cannot see shares. iTunes does not see my AppleTV. My wife’s Tiger box browses it without difficulty, and I can directly connect without problems. Firefox, Cyberduck, and Adium are less stable or have annoying superficial changes after the upgrade. The fact that the Documents and Download folder icons are indistinguishable is annoying to me; however, that’s a OS X style issue more than a problem.

I feel no speed difference between Tiger and Leopard. I am currently using the Leopard upgraded box as my main laptop and see no reason to do a clean or archive type of upgrade at this time.

My Vista box continued to be very unstable with random crashes. I made a rough estimation that it would take me longer to debug the crashes than to restore my data from a clean installation. My clean installation of Vista worked much better. Even after the clean installation, the new Aero interface caused a slight, but detectable, drag on my system. A moderate upgrade of the video card helped make the system more brisk but not quite to XP levels. Copying and moving files is obviously slower. Running some programs required ‘Run as Administrator’ type of work-arounds.

Conclusion–

My Leopard installation went smoothly. Having never done an OS X upgrade before, I was expecting absolute perfection. Q always tells me that “OS X just works.” Things were not perfect, but the issues were minor.

My Vista upgrade was a disaster. Even if you ignore the show-stopping BSOD during installation, the upgraded product was ultimately unusable. The complete fresh install of Vista is not perfect either, but most of the eye candy and advancements are impressive. The Vista to XP jump is a much more ambitious step for Microsoft than the safer Tiger to Leopard jump for Apple.

My goal for this project was not to recommend one OS over the other. I use them both regularly, and the zealot fanboy arguments between the camps are silly. I wanted to contrast the upgrade experience between Leopard and Vista. This little experiment certainly answers many questions for me.

Once a patch is released to fix Leopard’s network issues, I will recommend that my wife upgrades her MBP. I will plead that my father not upgrade to Vista. The installation issues and the change in the user interface would challenge his (and thus my) sanity. As a lifelong windows user, I was appalled at the disaster that was the Vista upgrade process. For people purchasing top class windows hardware, I would be willing to recommend a Vista clean install. I do not believe that a clean install on older hardware is probably worth it.

My Personal Leopard Grades:

- Installation Process: A. Perfect.
- New Features: B. Time Machine, Stacks. (Techrx Tutorials)
- New Bugs: C. Network browsing.
- Consistent/Familiar User Interface: B.
- Eye-Candy Improvements: C. Changes can not be easily enabled/disabled.

My Personal Vista Grades:

- Installation Process: F. BSOD. Unusable upgraded product.
- New Features: B. Sidebar. DirectX10. Better security. (Techrx Tutorials)
- New Bugs: C. Slower copying.
- Consistent/Familiar User Interface: C.
- Eye-Candy Improvements: B. Up to OS X quality but customizable. Slows system.

Technorati Tags: os x, vista, apple, microsoft, versus

via gizmodo

Of course, any computer could be used to display the iPhone video loop. It just cracks me up that this AT&T store decided to use XP for the job.

Although windows boxes do require rebooting more the OS X boxes, this is evidently just a restart after power was lost to the display.

Today, Apple released its first public update to the iPhone OS. Although other small issues are fixed, this is primary a security patch to lock down multiple holes discovered in Safari.

By releasing its patch prior to a public exploit, Apple keeps its device as one of the theoretically most secure smartphones. Will Apple use this to position itself as a player in the smartphone enterprise market? Is security vital in the smartphone market? Will the first smartphone exploit come through the browser?

I am not suggesting that Apple is security perfect. In fact, there is an active OS X Samba exploit now. Generally, Apple has done a much better job in security that Microsoft. In fact, insecure Microsoft has been in the enterprise smartphone market for quite a while now. If there were going to be large security issues, would we not see them by now?

The Unimportance —

Like OS X, smartphones in general are receiving some security shielding from the fact that windows boxes are a huge, target-rich environment. Spyware makers and password stealers target the biggest and easiest cash crop available. Black markets exists for the following current targets:

• credit card numbers
• usernames/passwords
• spyware installations
• botnet systems
• harvest of private information for identity theft

Most of the windows systems are exploited through the browser, downloaded software, or email. With this wealth of black-hat money to be made in razing windows boxes, it is not surprising that most computer criminals are avoiding other platforms including smartphones.

Why might smartphones be a target?

If one looks over the current markets for computer criminals, many of them are not viable on smartphones. Botnets, spyware installation, credit card numbers, and username/password harvesting — all are much less likely on smartphones. Installations of malware are likely to be noticed quickly and login/payment options are rarely stored and used from a smartphone.

Smartphones typically do contain a lot of personal information about a lot of people. If obtained in huge numbers, this information would be very valuable information for spammers and other forms of ethics-poor marketing. As a whole, however, a routine computer criminal is going to be much happier gaining control of an XP box than a smartphone.

Corporate espionage with spying and stealing of top secret company information is a very sexy idea. Realistically, this type of targeted attack is best reserved for mail servers or network penetration. Invading a random smartphone or two is unlikely to provide much juice. Plus, holding a large server hostage or blackmailing a company with a large security breech is going to yield much fatter dollars.

How will smartphones be exploited?

The first widespread successful attack on smartphones will likely be through an email and browser combination. Here is how I believe it will occur. You receive an email from a colleague that says “Look at this link.” The link opens the browser to a site that exploits a security hole in the browser itself. Your system then mails out the “Look at this link” email to everybody in your contact book. The malware sends whatever it harvests back to a server through the web or email.

The browser will always be an attackable point in any operating system. Computer users just expect IE and firefox to release security patches on a regular basis now. Apple releasing Safari patches for the iPhone reinforces this fact.

Is Smartphone Security Important?

Security is always important. Right now, however, the yields from attacking smartphones are just much lower than easier targets.

More importantly will be each smartphone’s security reputation. Who will be the first company to have their network clogged with exploited systems sending emails and data to god knows where? As competitive the smartphone market is, the first smartphone to have a major security breech maybe the first smartphone company to die. Businesses have tolerated large-scale Microsoft problems because of their market dominance. Smartphone businesses will not have that protection.

The ultimate goal of Windows Home Server (WHS) is to provide users with an easily expandable network storage device for their media and backups.  Sharing media across a home network or restoring a dead system has been made as simple as possible. 

The beta version is now out so I took it for a test drive.

Installation:

The most important part of the installation is that eventually there will probably be no installation for most users.  WHS will probably ship preinstalled on a small cube computer-like device that only contains a motherboard, memory, hard drive, and connectors for external additional hard drives.  Video, audio, mouse, keyboard, and other such input/output devices will not be needed.  All control of the box will be though other devices on your network.

For now, the software installs like most other windows software.  Full erase-your-drive installation is the only option. 

As the installation quick camera picks show, the software is based on a locked-down version of Microsoft Server 2003.

This beta installation required at least 32 GB for installation.  The minimum recommended amount of space is 80 GB.  I bumped heads with this early in the installation process.

After switching out the hard drive, the server installed without an issue.  The server also requires a Ethernet connection to your network

I will be writing some tech-recipes about hacking and customizing this installation later.  One nice hint to remember is during the lengthy driver installation, the “lock-down” of the server has not yet be enacted.  If you hit cltr-esc during driver installation, you can access the normal start menu and control panel.  This is nice if you want to change the power settings for a laptop serving as your server, for example.  After the installation is completed, the server is locked down and accessing these settings will be more difficult.

Client:

Installation of the client is straight forward on any windows box. 

A wizard will walk the new user through making user accounts.

Having the same user/password combinations between the client computers and the servers keeps things simple.  This combination allows each client to seamlessly connect to the shares on the server. 

Luckily, the windows client will walk the user through making any changes that are required.

 The console on the client gives a view of all the computers on the network.  This also includes a warning if one of the computers has not been backup recently.  Here you can see that my computer is currently in the process of being backed up.

The backup is very efficient.  My home computer contains gigs of information that was backed up in a few hundred megabytes.  WHA also has snapshot capability; therefore, users can recover files from a previous point in time.  The backups occur automatically at night.

A whole mirror or a few files can be recovered from the backups on the server.

What boxes will connect to the server? XP, Vista, XBOX 360, Media Centers, Windows Mobile devices, and Zune music players should all connect. 

The following screenshot shows the various aspects of server control…

• Computers & Backup is the main screen that I showed before.  It shows all computers on the network and their backup status.
• User Accounts allows for the creation and editing of user accounts.
• Shared Folders allows for the editing and permissions of what folders are actually shared with whom.
• Server Storage shows the current status of the amount of storage available on the server.  If more than one hard drive exists in the server, files can be mirrored on both to protect against data loss.
• Network Health gives a warning if issues are detected.  This would warn me about backup status at this time, but enhancements that keep antivirus/antiviral software up to date across the network is a natural extension.

Here is a compressed version of the Computers status screen…

Here is an example of how the server allows you to limit certain shares on the server to certain users/accounts:

Clientless:

If you have your accounts setup correctly on the server, you do not need the client to access the shares.

Here is a connection through explorer in XP:

Here are connections through finder in OS X:

The server always contains a copy of the client and a restore CD.  This would allow a crashed computer with a back up computer to get back online quickly.  Here is the typical scenario…

1. Hard Drive fails on one of the computers in the network
2. Replace hard drive and connect to the network
3. Boot from the generic restore CD.
4. The dead computer’s virgin hard drive is rebuilt from the server’s backup.

Media streaming will be available to a wide range of devices including XBOX 360 and the large numbers of devices that can utilize Windows Media Connect.

Remote Access:

The most nerve wrecking thing for me is that the user will be able to access their WHS from outside their network on the internet.  This is done through a web browser.  By purchasing the client users will be eligible to sign up for a free microsoft redirect to their home server (useraccout.HomeServer.Com).  The remote access will be through IIS 6.0. 

Conclusions:

The remote access makes me really nervous.  When a flaw for IIS 6.0 is found, any domain on the HomeServer network would instantly be at risk.  If the home server is hacked, any computer is the network is also owned.  It could be very ugly.

For most homes with an existing network, this will be a dream.  Buy the box, plug in the box, walk through a couple of wizards and all the boxes on the network are backed up and protected.  This will give all the boxes on the home network the ability to easily see and stream shares of music, pictures, and video. 

By bundling the software with the hardware, Microsoft becomes more apple-like.  By trying to keep it simple, even more so.  Good choices all around.

For now, I will use my home server as an essential part of my internal network.  The remote access will remain off… for now.

One thing that has impressed me with Vista is Microsoft’s lack of pushing of their own IM client.  With XP, one of the first things people did was to figure out how to uninstall MSN Messenger.

Now in Vista, users have option to download the new Live messenger client, but it does not come preinstalled and in your face. 

Hat tip to Microsoft.

Google is preparing a web-based powerpoint-like tool. 

ZDNET –

Simply put, Google is a fly on the elephant that is Microsoft right now. But all Google has to do is make Microsoft defend the Office business. If Microsoft has to respond to Google Docs–it doesn’t yet–the software giant won’t be able to focus on search and keyword advertising. Even a company with Microsoft’s cash pile has limited resources.

Fly on the elephant?

Yes, it is another example of Microsoft playing chess while Google is playing go.

Imagine if your map program (or website) actually had a physical picture of the intersection at which you were suppose to turn. That idea merges new technology with your uncle Bill’s method of “turn right down yonder at the K-Marts on the corner.” It’s a great fusion.

How do you get that information? You drive around in a van that is equiped with 4 directional cameras mounted to the top. Tie that to a computer-video recording system and a gps, and you are golden.

How do I know this?  Because I spotted this dude outside a coffee shop and pointed Garrett his way.  You can view his video and read about it as well.

Microsoft has killed the photo sharing project called Codename Microsoft Max:

Starting today, we will be disabling all downloads from our website. In the next week, we will be shutting down the Max services and our team forums. At that time, you will no longer be able to sign in to Max or share lists of photos with your friends. You will still be able to read news and browse the lists you’ve already shared and received.

I had said long ago, that Max missed the boat in its current format.  People trying to uninstall Max may find a load of hurt facing them…

Is it dead forever or will Microsoft bring it back as a part of a different system?

I think, for once, that I am actually the first one to break this…