Month: May 2013

The trouble with version 1.0

Someone asked me today whether the Mail app in Windows 8.1 is going to get a major upgrade. It was pretty clear that my associate didn’t enjoy using that app with his Surface RT.

That conversation inspired me to reread this Engadget review:

There’s no other way than to come out and say it: we are extremely disappointed in the … email app. So much so, in fact, that … mail support may be the largest factor in killing its status as a productivity device. Don’t get us wrong, the application is just fine for anyone who wants to do light email, but it lacks the power and convenience that frequent-emailers require.

That was just one of several “severe issues about the device.” So, which gadget were they talking about? Maybe not the one you think.

Oh well, I’m sure the big update a year after the original release will fix things.

Star Trek: The Complete Original Series, remastered, in Blu-ray

At a little over $100 (and free shipping via Amazon Prime) I am sorely tempted to buy this. The reviews are generally excellent, with especially effusive praise for the new special effects and crisp color.

Star Trek: The Complete Original Series (Seasons 1-3) [Blu-ray]

As usual, if you buy it here through this affiliate link I get a small commission and can keep this site free of ads and trackers.

A puzzling anti-counterfeiting check

Recently I bought a case from Dell for my Latitude 10 tablet (a very nice little device, by the way).

As I was throwing out the little bits of paper that came with it, I stopped at one that had a small holographic sticker affixed to the top of it with a scratch-off label, like a lottery ticket.

The paper included instructions (in 12 languages) telling me to “scratch out the coating to get the security code” and then go to www.t3315.com and input the code.

OK, I’ll play along.

All righty, then.

I think that’s Dell’s way of telling me to step away from the computer and enjoy the holiday weekend.

Get a great deal on a Logitech T400 Touch Mouse

Update May 21, 2013: This deal has expired and the price is now $30. That’s still a better deal than the full retail price, but not as good as yesterday’s price. Thanks and congratulations to all of you who were able to take advantage of it.

I’ve been using the Logitech T400 Touch Mouse for a few months now, and it is, by far, the best I have found for working with Windows 8.

Despite its simple appearance, this little pointing device is able to activate a number of Windows 8 features, making it ideal for use on a desktop PC that doesn’t have a touch screen.

You can customize its settings using this very intuitive app, which Windows 8 automatically downloads and installs after it detects the device.

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And today it’s on sale for $20 at Amazon, which is half its normal price and an absolute steal. I’m tempted to pick up a couple as gifts.

Logitech Zone Touch Mouse T400 for Windows 8 – Black (910-003041)

Highly recommended.

Disclosure: I get a commission from Amazon when you use the affiliate links on this page.

Why are you using an email address you don’t own?

Back before the turn of the century, it was common for most people to get their personal email through an account provided by their Internet service provider. But when you moved, or changed from Qwest to Comcast, or when the ISP was purchased and changed its domain name, your old email address vanished in a puff of smoke and you had to do one of those “Hi everyone, please update your address book” messages to everyone you know. And then, a few months later, you went to visit some website where you really wanted to sign in, but they only had your old email address and they insisted on sending confirmation messages to it.

And yet some people still use an email address they don’t control. Even when it’s from Gmail or Hotmail or Yahoo, it’s not yours. Someone could decide to cancel or suspend your account for a real or imagined violation of the service’s terms. Oh, it happens.

This is why I’m a firm believer in owning your own domain and creating your own email addresses. That way you’re not at the mercy of geography or someone else’s business model.

Over at ZDNet, I have a tutorial on how to connect your custom domain to Microsoft’s free and excellent Outlook.com service. You get to send and receive mail using an address you own, and no one can take it away or force you to change it.

And did I mention it’s free?

Details here:

Why I use Outlook.com for my custom email accounts (and how you can too)

No more ads, no more trackers

You might have noticed that I changed the design of this site a month or so ago. As part of the process, I also eliminated advertising.

That’s the culmination of a transformation that’s been going on since last year, when I removed the Google Analytics code from this site. I shut down my Google AdSense account and removed the code serving ads from the network I was previously part of.

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With those changes, there are no longer any web trackers on this site. I do have the Stats widget (part of the WordPress Jetpack add-in), which counts site visitors and helps me determine which posts are most popular and which search terms visitors used when coming here via search engines. It doesn’t gather any additional information about visitors, as far as I know.

I have nothing but respect for the people who run my former ad network, Federated Media. They’re professionals of the first order.

The advertising industry, on the other hand, seems to be engaged in a race to the bottom. I finally got tired of ugly, misleading ads, which in turn were accompanied by tracking code that aggressively monitors your movements on the web.

So for now, at least, this site is free. If you want to support my work, I hope you’ll buy my books. I occasionally also recommend products here, from online merchants I trust. Those recommendations might include affiliate links. If they do, I include a disclosure as part of the post. (The link to Amazon.com at the beginning of this paragraph is an affiliate link, in fact.)

Ad-supported business models are becoming increasingly less tenable for small publishers like me. And the advertising industry is getting worse, much worse, in the way it tracks us.

I don’t have any answers for fixing the Internet. But at least in this one small plot of online real estate, I can make a statement.

Pre-order Office 2013 Inside Out

We’ve finished reviewing the final page proofs of Microsoft® Office Inside Out: 2013 Edition and the book is off to the printer. Our team did an amazing job, and if you use Office 2013 (either as a perpetual license, a volume license, or part of an Office 365 subscription), I’m confident you’ll find some good and useful stuff here.

It’s available for pre-order from Amazon now, for $29.00, which is 47% off the full retail price. And when you get the paperback you get the e-book version for free, in your choice of PDF, Kindle, EPUB, or other standard, DRM-free formats.

Amazon.com pre-order

Microsoft® Office Inside Out: 2013 Edition

The book has full coverage of the five core applications in Office 2013: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote, with additional material on Access, Publisher, and Lync. We also explain the difference between Office 2013 and Office 365 and help you decide which edition is the right one for you.

Disclosure: I make a small commission when you purchase through the Amazon affiliate links on this page.

Have I mentioned lately that I hate configuring networks?

Ah, the joys of manually configuring Linux servers. If you tried to reach this site over the weekend and got a 404, that’s because I needed to do some manual tweaks in the httpd.conf file for my Apache server. Yay, open source!

The server that runs this site is migrating to new IP addresses this week, so I got to play network engineer over the weekend. Everything should be working OK now. If you see any problems, please leave a comment here, or use the Contact Me form to send me a private note.

“iTunes is the best Windows app ever written”

Of all the things Steve Jobs ever said, this one has to be the most mind-boggling.

That was 2003. We’ve had 10 years to realize just how horribly, awfully wrong that statement was.

Even more comedy gold in that vintage article:

During his presentation, Jobs used Apple’s IChat instant messaging to talk with celebrities around the world, including Mick Jagger, Dr. Dre, and Bono–who drew the largest reaction from the crowd.

“It is a very cool thing for musicians and music,” Bono said in a video. “I want you to know that we appreciate it. Making Apple a crossroads for all kinds of artistic endeavors. That’s why I’m here to kiss the corporate ass. I don’t kiss everybody’s.”

Also, it was a BFD that Apple was partnering with … wait for it … AOL and Pepsi.