Category: Uncategorized

Great moments in software history

I heard the hype about AjaxWrite, and decided I must investigate. Alas, when I clicked the AjaxWrite icon, I was greeted with this error message:

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I can’t decide whether this is a work of brilliant satire or just a boneheaded move. Either way it’s hilarious.

Update: In the comments, Pete quotes a post from “ajaxbrian” that says, “YES, we are GOING to support I.E.” No link, so I can’t check it out more fully.

Update #2: AjaxWrite might need a better spell-checker. Look carefully at the screen snippet I posted here. Hint: It’s worth waiting for.

Time flies…

So, what have I been up to for the last 10 days?

OK, let’s see. I waited till a blizzard blew past and then drove eight hours to Arizona. Saw more jackknifed trucks in 200 miles than I had seen in a decade previously. Also saw Barry Bonds hit a home run and sacrifice bunt in the same game.

Flew to Seattle for two days’ worth of meetings at Microsoft with various members of the Windows Vista team.

Did I mention the part where the notebook’s hard drive failed and, after running diagnostics for about two hours, I lost a week’s worth of e-mail and all my meeting notes from Microsoft? Do you mind if I skip that part? It’s still a little painful.

Came home, found the backups, reinstalled everything.

I’m not sure exactly when the fever appeared, but it was sometime over the weekend and it seems mostly to have passed now.

Oh, and in the most delicious irony of all… My co-authors and I finished a conference call this afternoon to finalize the outline for Windows Vista Inside Out. Not 30 seconds after I hang up the phone, Josh sends me a link to this blog entry and this Microsoft press release:

Microsoft Updates Windows Vista Road Map
Business availability for Windows Vista in November 2006, consumer availability in January 2007.
 
Something tells me this is going to affect our publishing schedule. Ya think?

Wireless access anywhere

I’m traveling this week, which has given me a chance to try Cingular’s Broadband Connect service.

So far, so good. I’ve had reliable service in every location where I tried it, including some where my mobile phone could barely get a signal.

The best use so far? This past weekend we drove from New Mexico to Arizona on I-40, into what the National Weather Service described as a “severe winter storm.” I checked the forecasts and satellite images before leaving home, but things can change during an eight-hour drive. We were prepared to stop halfway and spend the night if necessary. Instead, I was able to monitor the weather ahead in real time (from the passenger’s seat, of course) and determine that we could safely press on.

For the next few days, I’ll get a chance to try the service in airports, hotels, and office buildings.

I will stand in line for this movie

Philip K. Dick is, bar none, my favorite writer. His books and novellas have been made into movies before, some brilliant (Blade Runner), some flawed but worthy (Minority Reportand Total Recall), some hideously unwatchable (Paycheck).

In Dick’s dark oeuvre, it’s hard to imagine a book that’s more paranoid and inaccessible than A Scanner Darkly. So I’ve been awaiting its movie adaptation with some dread.

Based on this trailer, all I can say is, whoa. This looks good. Really good.

(Thanks to Prof. Froomkin for the pointer.)

The switch is complete

Thanks to everyone for your recommendations. I’ve switched to a new hosting company, and it appears (knock wood, salt over shoulder, fingers crossed) that everything went well.

I’ll explain why I chose the hosting company I did in a follow-up post. Meanwhile, if you see any odd site behavior, leave a comment or send me email (ed-blog AT bott DOT com).

Help me choose a new hosting company

My current hosting company had my sites offline for eight hours today. Router problems, they said. Yeah, right. This is at least the fifth lengthy outage since the beginning of the year, including one all-day outage when they decided to move my sites to a new server without notifying me (and screwed everything up in the process).

So, they’re fired. Can anyone recommend a reliable hosting company?

Those fabulous 1990s

As part of a consulting project, I’ve been going through old issues of PC Computing from 1992 through 2000. Here’s my column picture from July 1993:

ed bott pcc column photo jul 1993

Here’s a different shot, from the June 1995 issue:

ed bott pcc column photo jun 1995

I think I look younger now, without the beard.

It’s been fascinating to revisit the period before the launch of Windows 95 and compare it to the buzz around Windows Vista. More thoughts on that topic later.

Update: Just found this ad in the May 1998 issue. Look familiar?

iomega ad from pcc may 1998

That’s definitely not me.

Yes, the Office 12 NDA is lifted

An update on the earlier confusion about the Office NDA.

Robert Scoble has the definitive answer. Robert has left several comments in response to my earlier post, and he wrote this summary on his own site:

I checked with the folks who know over on Office 12. Here’s the deal:

Press (which include bloggers) are allowed to write about client apps – specifically Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Visio, Project, OneNote and InfoPath. Products still under NDA include Groove and all our server products.

MVPs might be getting other rules, but here’s the person in charge: Sandhya Thodla. sthodla@microsoft.com. Anyone else trying to make NDA rules up should be sent to Sandhya. If you aren’t clear on any of this, please ask Sandhya before writing about Office 12.
Is that clear enough?

By the way, Frank Shaw is president of Waggener Edstrom in charge of the Microsoft account. Translation: if he says something is OK, it’s OK.

Thanks, Robert!