I mentioned in the last post that Anna’s company had bought us a new bike. They had actually commissioned eight hundred and fifty of them (Munich has its 850th birthday this year), and they’re pretty cool bikes.   They were made by a local company who were about to close down due to competition from the larger companies (damn you Raleigh). We took ours home on Saturday and I’ve been out on it a couple of times.  It is actually a lovely ride for a “Town Bike” – seven gears with a fairly large ratio difference from top to bottom, and hub as opposed to derailleur gears. It also has an alternator instead of a dynamo, so power to its comprehensive LED lighting system  is effortless.

It did in all fairness need a fair amount of tightening up, particularly around the stem and brakes.  Still, that’s all done now and it is really nice.  If nothing else, it makes the local Rewe supermarket very accessible. By foot it would take about twenty minutes to walk there, but by bike its more like five or ten so its no big deal at all.

Somehow I never realised that my host has servers in Europe. Maybe its a new feature, but they never told us.  Bah, blaming them isn’t really the right thing to do – they have servers in Europe (London I believe), and I’ve just signed up for one. The transfer is already done and took about an hour to complete. So now I have IIS7 running in London, and its fucking fast!  The speeds are awesome : 3815kbps (EU) versus 1915kbsp (US) download speeds and 1338kbps (EU) versus 1221kbps (US). That’s about twice the speed to get data from the server than it was before.  Nice!

Anna’s old Dell laptop stopped working over the weekend. Back in November, I had replaced a faulty motherboard in it with one I bought from eBay. I thought after that episode that we would get another couple of years out of it, but it seems I was wrong.  The monitor died, leaving us with a machine that boots up and works, but can’t be seen.  I checked the cables and there were no obvious breakages, so the problem was in something that I couldn’t easily diagnose.  I know that the graphics system is still working as it functions perfectly when plugged into an external monitor. There was no picture from the screen though, so I figured we’d get a replacement (eBay again, this is a very nice chassis for a 12.1” sub-notebook). Unfortunately the cheapest screen I could find on ebay was almost 400€, which was almost the price of some new laptops.

So, we looked around the web to find her a cheap laptop. Something cheap, which basically functioned as a player for downloaded TV programs.  I had a couple of pre-requisites that I wanted filled too.  It had to run Vista, and run it well. I wanted the build quality to be good enough that it would last for several years.  This also meant that it would need to be as powerful as possible within the budget we had set.  I took a look at some Dell machines, and we had almost settled on one of their Inspirons, with a pretty design for the lid.  Then by chance I took a look at Sony.de to see what kind of prices they were offering.  Sonys are typically much more expensive than Dells, and that price increase is reflected in the build quality of the machines.  I have one, you’ve either seen it or read about it, and I love it.

In all my years in AOL I played with a great deal of laptops.  They were typically loan machines from the different OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) which we used to test with AOL.  I’ve been through Medion, Dell, Compaq and HP, Toshiba, Lenovo (IBM), Fujitsu and Sony.  By far the Sony’s impressed me more than any other vendors.  There’s something about the quality of the hardware that you don’t get anywhere else.  Its maybe not a fair rule to apply to a purchasing decision, but it has worked for me so far.

So, we bought her a new Sony Vaio. In the vein of that first post, here’s the specs :

I think this will work out for another five years, which is about how long she had the Dell!  Anna of course has a problem with that, wondering why they can’t last forever.  That’s the fundamental difference between us I guess, these are all ephemera to me. I’ll get some more details on it later in the week.  In typical Sony fashion, it will be bogged down with bloatware and need formatting as soon as I create the rescue discs.

This blog entry was dictated using windows speech recognition.  This entire blog entry was dictated using windows speech recognition.  The implications of this concept are saying really mind blowing. I have to say however, that the implementation doesn't match the implication.  That last sentence was originally dictated as "I have to say, for the invitation doesn't match the locations"  It is certainly very cool, but I'm pretty sure I could type it faster than I'm speaking right now.  Actually, I am completely sure that I could have typed this faster.  The problem with Windows Speech Recognition at this point in time seems to be that I simply haven't been through the voice training fully.  However, when I have my speech slowed down to a point where I am talking very deliberately and clearly, then it mostly seems to work.

Microsoft have just released a program called Windows Speech Recognition Macros (WSR Macros). This builds upon the windows speech recognition system supplied with Vista and allows you to programmatically control Windows.  The concept is fantastic, but even though I have been through the entire training program, I find that I could have typed this faster.  The problem seems to be that rate of recognition for many of the words I speak is hampered by something.  I think it may possibly be the level of the built in microphone on my laptop.  I have been tweaking the volume all throughout the duration of time it has taken me to write this post, but so far I still find it very inaccurate.  Some sentences are very well recognised and quick to dictate, but some are seriously slow.  There also seems to be a lot of crossover between dictating and using the system commands (e.g.: Dictating the word "delete" causes this application to the try to delete an existing post).

There is hope, however.  It is very possible that if I were to use an external microphone that the rate of correct word recognition would be greatly increased.  I do have an external Logitech USB headset around here somewhere that I could use for this very purpose, and as soon as I find it I'll give it a try.  Interesting stuff however, with a lot of potential. If I can sort out the accuracy then there's a good chance I would use this a lot more.

Its very interesting to me how our obsessions with technology become so all encompassing.  I should probably re-phrase that: I sometimes wonder just how obsessive I need to be to keep up with things that are happening on the Internet.  I find the rate of development and change sometimes to be too much to keep up with.  Let me share with you a case in point, and the trigger for this post.

I use Twitter, which is a very popular micro-blogging service.  It allows me to write concise blog entries in a very short format (like text messaging on phones).  Twitter limits you to posting no more than 140 characters, so you sometimes have to be creative to limit ideas to such a concise format.  You also get to see the entries (tweets) of people you have chosen to follow, and these networks of followers can rapidly get pretty big.  Keeping on top of it all sometimes is harder to do than you would think. There's a lot of noise on Twitter, and not much decent signal.  However, there are some excellent sources of information on there if you search hard enough. 

Twitter has an open API which allows developers to build programs that interface with Twitter. I use a couple of those to keep track of what is going on : WittyTwitter, and Twhirl.  WittyTwitter is a program I have done some development with, and have submitted a couple of bug fixes to the code.  I'm not all that active in developing it, but I use it a lot and follow its development closely.  For the last two days I have been getting errors with Witty.  It can't log in to Twitter, probably because of a bug in the Twitter API endpoints.  I also haven't been in front of my PC as much as usual.

This means I have actually missed some information that has been disseminated over Twitter for the last couple of days.  It wasn't much, but there was one product announcement that interested me, and it is something that I need to be aware of from a development perspective.  Here's the catch.  At the end of the second paragraph I went to grab some lunch.  I have returned now and I can't even remember what the product was that prompted me to write this post.  The concept remain the same though.

The interesting thing is that tools like Twitter can exert such an unconscious draw on you (me actually). I wonder what would happen if I were to stop using Twitter for a while?  Someone I follow (a gifted and popular cartoon artist called Hugh MacLeod) decided to stop using Twitter recently, and discovered that too many of his customers actually RELY on Twitter for their business communication. It doesn't say much for the state of a business that relies on something as ephemeral as Twitter.  I'm also not sure about the wisdom either of using such a public forum for business, and certainly not one like Twitter where you have no oversight of the content nor control over its maintenance etc.  However, I could see tools like Twitter becoming more and more used by business as time goes on. After all, many businesses now have a presence in Second Life; the trendy virtual world operated by Linden Labs.

According to a recent post on ReadWriteWeb, a couple of Gartner analysts have pronounced the death of Windows.  Its an interesting read, but not anything I think of relevance to us in the real world. I believe this is the fourth or fifth or millionth time that the desktop has been pronounced dead, and yet it still lives on.  There's an awful lot to be said for being in an office where your connection speeds are high enough that you would predict the death of the desktop in favour of internet apps (or cloud computing as we call it these days). The thing is, outside of our cosy existence with fast broadband links, there's a lot of reason why it just doesn't work. 

When I work on entries for my blog, I do them offline.  I used use notepad, and while that served me well for many years, I have started to use Windows Live Writer more and more.  It allows me to write a post for this blog offline and do it in a WYSIWYG manner.  I'm sure we have a more fashionable name for that too.  Anyway, there's no reason why I couldn't do this online with the exception for my fear of a lost connection.  While I was using the online editing page of my blog for posting, if my network went down then I would have lost this post.  However, now I don't worry about it anymore.  Actually there's a three hour gap between the second last and last sentences.  Try that with an online service. Sure, some of them could handle it, but not all.

Next other reason is the interface. If I should accidentally close this window, it will prompt me to save my work before exiting.  My browser won't do that.  It also won't present me with the slick experience I get with this offline app.  Its not that it can't, its just that it doesn't.  Most of the web apps I have seen where there is a "user input" type area tend to suffer a little from lack of love.  They tend to be functional rather than beautiful.  Me, I like the beauty.  I have a PC that is powerful enough to be able to present me with beautiful things, so why the hell shouldn't I use it to do just that?  To hell with web-apps and their inherent minimalist approach to doing things.  I want the fat client experience!

Awesome!  OneCare 2.5 just hit public beta, so you can download it from Microsoft Connect.  Details here on the Windows Experience Blog. OneCare is an all-in-one security suite that does Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Backup and Firewall all in one program.

"There is a growing consensus of opinion forming that Windows 'Seven' will be 'modular,' the concept being that you buy the core OS first and then add to it individual 'modules' with logically distinct units of functionality".  That was a quote from a perfectly logical posting on Ars Technica. It links to another Ars Technica article which in turn points to a ZDNet blog by Mary Jo Foley where she proposes the whole idea.  I was about to tear the whole idea down for being baseless speculation until I read that she had ben in touch with contacts in Microsoft who said that this was how it was going to be.  I started to get interested then so I opened up my newsgroup reader and went to the MS Beta newsgroups.  The idea is floating around there too. In fact, it seems like everybody is talking about it, but I still can't find an actual source of concrete information other than Mary Jo Foley's "contact" in Microsoft.  I wonder if the 'softies are all having a laugh at our expense, or if Windows 7 really is going to be modular and possibly subscription based.

Lets take a look at the idea of a modular Windows for a minute.  One of the reasons that there are so many vulnerabilities in Windows has to do simply with the amount of applications that come with it.  Each of those applications, even something as simple as Notepad, is a potential attack point for viruses or hackers.  The more applications there are in Windows, the higher the "attack surface".  Wikipedia has a nice definition of the attack surface of a piece of software being "the scope of functionality that is available to unauthenticated users. In other words, how much can a piece of software do in its default configuration by unauthorized users". I don't know how large (wide / broad / high / bumpy?) the attack surface is on Vista, but I would hazard a guess that there's a lot that could potentially be hacked.  Whether it actually can be hacked or not is not the question, its more about the potential for being vulnerable.

It would of course make sense that the next version of Windows has additional applications and programs in it, which would in turn increase the attack surface and make it more vulnerable to hacking.  So, from a desire to decrease the attack surface, Microsoft could potentially be removing many of the usual applications from Windows 7 and providing them only as add-ins.  I've heard that programs such as Windows Mail and Windows Photo Gallery could very well find themselves transitioned to the Live team.  There they could follow an evolution separate from that of Windows itself and at the same time naturally decrease the attack surface of Windows itself, thus rendering it more secure. 

It makes sense, doesn't it?  We'll have to see how it pans out in the long term.  Very early leaked copies of the operating system don't have any of the usual applications removed, so its entirely possible that all this conjecture is just that.  Maybe Microsoft is having a laugh at our expense?

The other idea (which I find far less likely) was that they could lease the software to end users.  So, you would for example, pay Microsoft €200 per year for Windows 7 Premium and €300 for Windows 7 Ultimate. I personally don't see that happening.  Microsoft have a program called WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) which is responsible for handling tracking of pirated copies of software over the internet.  They have come under increasing press scrutiny and scorn for the WGA system failing too many times over the last few years. 

Lets be absolutely sure what we're talking about here.  If I lease Windows from Microsoft, I do not want it shutting down for any reason before the lease period ends.  To do so would require that I start having to calculate how much Microsoft owes me for the "downtime" I suffered.  Microsoft in turn would potentially have to build out a massive new infrastructure to handle this.  I can't see the benefits to be honest.

Who knows what's going to happen in the future.  We're just going to have to wait I guess.  Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for my invite to join the Windows 7 beta.  I've heard they aren't ready yet and that invites haven't been sent. I just hate not knowing though...

I spent eleven years of my life working at AOL.  That's just a little under a third of the time I have lived.  In all that time, we made some pretty cool things.  We made some pretty shit things too, and I helped to make a lot of them.  The mail guys from Dulles went and build a version of AOL Webmail using a technology called SilverLight.  SilverLight is a Microsoft product that is roughly equivalent to Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash.  It allows rich Internet applications that typically run in a browser.  It is cross browser and cross platform compatible, which means it should provide an equal experience on all browsers and all operating systems.  It has just hit version 2.0, and while the first was very limited in what it could do, the second seems to be awesome.  I'll be playing with that a bit in the near future I think.

This product was demonstrated at MIX08, and you can view that presentation here.  You should be aware that this is a very technical demo, with only a few minutes close to the start where they show you the new UI.

A couple of months ago my Pocket PC crashed when I was updating it.  It is an HP iPaq hx4700 and I've had it for a while, but it has always served me well.  It has some irritating points, like the damn buttons at the bottom always getting stuck, but overall it has been a good machine to use.  Anyway, I was updating something or another and it crashed during the ROM update.  That typically means the unit has to be returned to HP for... some kind of black magic that us mere mortals cannot perform.  That was going to be a lot of hassle to organise, so I put it off until today.  I googled for a way to get it out of without having to send my PPC away, and eventually found something that worked.  Basically I had to use Anna's laptop to send a raw image down a USB cable to the PPC.  It doesn't seem to work on Vista, only XP, which is why I had to use Anna's laptop.  Hassle, but all in all I got my PocketPC back. 

I had just about installed it when I discovered the update that broke the damn thing.  I discovered it by installing it and bricking the damn iPaq again.  So the original ROM is being downloaded to the iPaq again as I write this.  It takes about ten minutes to complete and then you end up with a completely fresh iPaq.  Now, I wonder what I can do about those buttons...