Flock Flop 1

Update on my Flock trial. I had downloaded the 1.2 version to try on the Mac while trying  the beta on Windows. I've given up on Flock on the Mac. It refuses to connect itself up properly with FaceBook in spite of my repeated attempts. It never seems to feel it is really logged in and repeatedly tells me so :-(

I'm having a bit better luck with the beta on Windows. I'll see how that goes before deciding whether to try the beta on the Mac.

Have to say the fact all the setup info and data can't be kept on a cloud seems like a real feature miss. A  real pain having to configure this on each computer.

iPhone 3G - small things matter

Having blasted a few aspects about the iPhone and MobileMe I thought I should add a little balance and add some things I really like. I'm going to start with a few points that show why Microsoft and their Windows Mobile just don't get it. Today's two points talk about what to me were major annoyances with WM 5 and 6.

First, in WM if you hit the volume key on the phone/PDA it is ambiguous exactly what volume is being adjusted. It depends on the "mode" the phone is in as well as the handset vendor's implementation. You might be adjusting the ringtone volume, key click volume, speakerphone volume, earpiece volume etc. On WM there is absolutely no visual feedback on exactly what is happening. One of the first things I noticed about the iPhone is that when I hit the volume keys it shows a speaker icon, shows the resultant volume setting, and also has some text below the speaker icon telling me what volume is being adjusted (e.g. ringtone). Some people may not care but I really appreciate these user friendly touches.

A second "small" item is one that caused me problems on a regular basis with WM's email client. Like most people even with 3G service I don't normally download entire attachments when looking at email messages. I regularly get attachments that are >1MB and especially on the small WM screens there is no point in trying to view them. However I routinely need to forward the message on to someone else - to hand off a issue, or pass on an FYI, etc. Now, in WM if you don't manually download the entire attachment before forwarding the message it will send it without the attachment. I got numerous "there was no attachment" responses due to this silent decision by WM. The iPhone, blessedly, handles the situation properly. When you forward a message that has attachments it asks you if you want it to include them. Wow, imagine that - letting the user decide what to do.

These small touches, which are a couple out of hundreds, that Apple includes in its products are why it is kicking other technology companies' butts in consumer products.

Flock

One of my favorite low-volume bloggers is Bryan Frank, a broadcast news photographer and all-around good guy in LA. I've been a reader for years and recently noticed his posts were made by something called "Flock". Being the curious type I clicked the link and found this Firefox/Mozilla browser called Flock that provides some cool "hooks" into your online presences (like Google and Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Flickr, Blogger and so forth). I'm sure I've seen mention of it but I'm so inundated with innovations, gadgets and new tools/sites it takes some effort for one to break through into my consciousness.

I decided to give the Flock 2 beta a try and this post is coming from Flock's built in blog creation tool Hope it works :-) I'll give Flock a couple of weeks of play time before deciding if it can earn a place in the starting line up of browsers (I sometimes have 3 different browsers running...). BTW Flock is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Well, this post should have had a tag line of something like "posted by Flock". You'll note it doesn't because it refused to post to my Blogger account. Filed some feedback on that. I'm using a beta version so I'm not going to ding Flock for now over this. Though the fact this is failing really undermines the value. I might have to forgo the beta and drop to the current stable version.

It Truly Is My Lucky Day!

Well, I snagged the Wii Fit via Amazon right before lunch so decided to browse the local Best Buy for games compatible with the balance board. Didn't notice much but saw - to my amazement - that they had several Mario Kart's on the shelf. I had been keeping an eye out for those in the local shops as well as online stores like Amazon but hadn't found any. Checking around just now Amazon itself still has no stock, nor does GameStop or Target show stock. Wal-Mart does list it as in stock.

Anyway, I grabbed one along with an extra wheel. We're gonna be busy with the Wii over Labor Day - that's for sure!

Wonderful if I'll win the lottery today too? ;-)

Hearting Amazon - the Wii Fit Chapter

I've liked Amazon from the beginning but as it expanded its offerings and services I came to totally love it. Innovation and value is a combination I can't resist!

Latest example is my purchase of a Wii Fit - without needing to spend a lot of time checking retailers or paying some "middle man" markup. When I checked Amazon.com awhile back I noticed that even though these were out of stock there was a link to have Amazon notify me via text message when stock arrived. Had never noticed this before but since I knew Wii Fit was hard to snag I signed myself up. Sure enough I got text messages on my iPhone when they were available. All I had to do was respond with "buyfit" to snag one. The first time I wasn't near my phone and they were gone by the time I responded. Twice more I missed out. I think once because I had a typo in "buyfit" - these things sell out nearly instantly.

However today I saw the message right away and had no typo in my "buyfit" response. Very soon I got a confirmation that I had snagged one to be shipped two-day for free (I have a Prime membership). I feel all lucky and proud today :-)

MobileMe does NOT do Windows

MobileMe has gotten a lot of bad press since it's introduction. Initially over service unavailability and instability. I never had too much trouble in that regards. But it's claim of working with Outlook on Windows is very nearly unfounded. I'm not saying it is impossible to get it to work but it is improbable for a tinkerer to get it working and impossible for the average "Joe/Jane". This is one of the latest threads over at Apple documenting the mess.

I'm a software R&D guy myself so I am familiar with the many challenges in producing large scale commercial products. For this reason I am often a lot more tolerant of issues I see. But in this case I can only conclude serious irresponsibility or incompetence was at play.

First, MobileMe on Windows will not work through a standard company firewall. At all. Now, there is nothing in the docs to say it will work. But that is no defense. Any use case around Outlook has to assume the user is on a corporate network. Now, I'd be willing to work around this but for the even worse defect - even on a completely open internet connection MobileMe syncing from Windows just DOES NOT work. Worse yet there are no error messages or any other helpful feedback on what is going wrong and/or why. This is a feature that is claimed to be supported. Worser and worser is Apple's silence about the problem happily letting its customers thrash around wasting time and energy on what is documented as a simple "for the rest of us" feature that is an unmitigated disaster. If you poke around the support threads you will see a few people say they "finally" got it to work (without a firewall/proxy) but there is always a caveat like "except for calendar syncing" or some such. You can be sure that if any of the kludge solutions posted was fully functional Apple would long ago have published a FAQ or Knowledge Base article with the solution.

Very hard to take Apple seriously in the enterprise software space given the severity of this issue and their response - or rather complete lack of substantive response. I still love my iPhone and am using MobileMe from my Mac. But I am completely warning my Windows-using friends away from MobileMe.

N.B. I am using Google's calendar sync app for Outlook as a kludge solution for calendar access. This has a lot of failings but at least it does allow me to view my work calendar from my iPhone...

New Favorite "Lay me Down"

On a very short road trip this weekend I think we found a new fave hotel chain for those family "lay me downs". The accompanying picture gives you a glimpse of why - a 42" plasma flat panel TV in the room. You can't see it in this image but there is a very novice friendly connector panel that makes it trivial to connect a laptop, game system etc. to this TV for your work or play pleasure. Just plug in the cable and hit the button and off you go. In addition to this sweet bit of tech the room was a bit larger than normal and the sitting area is separated from the sleeping area (even though this isn't billed as a suite style hotel). The sitting area has a generous sized and comfortable sofa plus a - yes - generous sized ottoman for your laziness pleasure. Rooms included a cordless phone, wireless internet, fridge and coffee maker.

The lobby area was contemporary but with warm colors so it didn't feel unfriendly or cold like some do. Well trained staff. Continental breakfast on the house and cooked items available day and night in exchange for some dinero. This chain includes a pool and a wine/beer bar as well. The price was very reasonable too.

Move over Hilton Garden Inn. Hyatt Place now owns us.