The AX (airport express) is the first device I ever bought from apple.

Usually (like with he mp3 players) I buy things from firms that have functional devices, not the shiny and expensive stuff that apple sells to rich kids. In any case, my girlfriend wanted some music on the top floor of the house, and since we only want wireless devices connected there I thought about buying an airport express.  There were plenty of other devices to choose from, but somehow I wanted to give Apple a chance to give me something functional, fair-priced with a good-looking design.

The device practically invited me to buy it, it was neatly packed, well presented and had all the basic functions I was looking for: mainly joining an existing wi-fi network and play music on some speakers.

Once I bought this product, unpacked it I immediately was irritated.  First of all, there were not cables, no extra’s in the packaging. Fair enough, I bought the AX unit, and nothing more, but for the almost 90 Euros it wouldn’t have hurt to include an ethernet and usb cable.
In any case, I started to read the manual (yes, I read those) and before I knew I was trying to configure this thing.

Apple has a nack (so they say) for giving a very easy way for user to connect and configure their device.  I disagree totally.  The AX was NOT easy to set up.  In theory yes, I only had to plug it into the wall socket, let it boot up and then configure it through the airport express config tool.

I tried to connect to it, but the config utility didn’t find anything.  After plugging it into my wired network I managed to reach the device, but it failed to configure for some odd reason.
It’s also totally unclear WHAT you need to do to get music out of this box.  It took me 4 hours!!! to set the airport express up, just because Apple marketing didn’t mention you needed iTunes to play over the ‘Airport express speakers’ instead of your computer.  For people not familiar with the iTunes interface, it’s nearly impossible to set up this device. I couldn’t play music with winamp over it, I couldn’t make it a client and server at the same time (how should I know this thing can join a network as client, but still stream music over it when you select it as a remote speaker?)µ

Before I knew it the device was playing free wireless hotspot for the whole neighborhoud.
I had to search for a way to reset it to defaults, something the airport config utility refused to do.
Some user on a forum pointed out that there was a small button that I needed to push with a paperclip (thanks again for the almost-zero documentation apple!)
Again, some days the device worked fine.  Until one week later, my girlfriend played some radio station and it sounded awful.
I switched speakers, but it still gave bad sound.  I tried to connect to the AX with my config tool but it failed (error 10057, which is something a lot of users have).
After loosing 3 hours of my time again on this totally overpriced piece of shiny garbage, I tossed it aside.  My first apple device is also my last.

After days of frustration he device was collecting dust.  No one in our home feels the need to boot up a PC, start up the crappy iTunes player, slect a remote speaker, plug in the apple AX and then wait a few minutes before it can stream some music (I put an old laptop with some 20$ logitec speakers in place of the Airport express).

Apple lacks any perspective here, a very simple wireless repeater with built-in outputs for speakers can’t be that hard to manufacture the right way.
Apparently it is very difficult for Apple to get people like me over the line to buy something from them.  I now see why, they’re overpriced, marketing-oriented and most of all technically inferior.  Their laptops for example are a well-known source of horror stories when I judge from what I hear from friends who bought them.

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I’m not going to reapeat what most people already told about Google Buzz.  I’m sure that Google will tackle some main concerns on the privacy front, most of the big issues where already fixed by the time the service was two days old, so no worries there.
What I want to tell you here is why the Google Buzz service on itself is evil, … why the core of it is bad beyond fixable.

First of all, let me say that I was nearly disgusted when I found out about how Google Buzz threw my followed friend list wide in the open.  They fixed that on 10 february, but still: any company that doesn’t even think about such moves in advance ears some big distrust on my side.

The first reason why I hate Google Buzz has also to do witht he hassle you have to go through to really opting out of it.  Like this post from CNET tells us , you have to delete all your posts, unfollow all your following people, block all your followers before disabling the service alltogether.
Wasn’t a ‘totally disable buss’-button too much to ask?! Even Facebook has some way to disable your profile and presence… (and yes, they are evil)

The worst part about Google Buzz is not the obvious privacy issue, but the fact that you’re almost forced into participating into the “social” networking.

They’ve burned it into Gmail, which in itself is very very bad.
If I go to Twitter.com, I choose to go and follow people I like, read their tweets and reply.  I choose to loose time on it, I choose to network through their site.  Same goes for Facebook and so many other networking sites.  If I want to farmville on Facebook or read what parties my friends are attending this weekend, then I choose to do so.
With tying Buzz into Gmail they throw our tiny private island called our inbox, into an ocean of guts and gore.  I really DON’T want people to know what I tweet, buzz or post online. And I certainly don’t want to read their every link and shared item, NOT when I’m emailing, reading replies to serious emails and focus on work.

But the real evil in Google Buzz lies in the core: using gmail aliasses.

Now, not only did they tie an almost viral social network system into our inboxes, Google went so far as to throw our very secret identities around all over the net. It’s like letting everyone who dressed up as batman on a fancy dress party wear a name-tag with their real name on it.

Here’s how: The Google buzz is tied to your inbox AND your gmail address.
If your name is John Connor, and your e-mail is john.connor@gmail.com then maybe you’ll be known on twitter as twitter.com/gearsofwargod99 or something like that.

People tend to obscure their identity over their social networks.
Perhaps this person only wants his gears of war friends to tweet and know his every move online.
Not so with Buzz.  Your social network alias IS YOUR gmail address.

In other words, any troll, spammer, data-miner kan just fire up a web browser and search for names, email adresses at will.  And usually they have pretty sophisticated scripts and servers to crawl this info from all over the net.
One of the main things a spammer looks for is ACTIVE inboxes, active mail adresses, because active mails means an active potential buyer and revenue.

Once a spammer sees any activity on the Buzz page of these people he’ll know that this mailbix must be active as well… hence this mail address is worth some hard cash to spammers, fraudsters and other pests online.  Once they check you on Buzz, you’ll be on their spam-list for ages.
I predict that spam on gmail inboxes will rise the coming months, pure because of Google Buzz.

In other words, it would take a spambot only a couple of minutes to search for people named John and john.conner@gmail.com is in some viagra selling spamlist in no time.

Google also exposes the profile pages of all these people online, like here: http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/sitemap-680.txt
These profile numbers can easily be converted (with a hack I’ll not place here) to real e-mail aliasses.

So the bottom line is: DO NOT use Google Buzz, unless your gmail alias is something totally unrelated to your real name and you don’t use the gmail inbox as your main email account (what’s the use then, you might ask?).
Most people I know though, have gmail addresses that are close to their real names, or at least have parts of it in the address and use their gmail inboxes for calender, email and so on…
Google keeps exposing our email aliasses and addresses to the world, combined with some personal info on the profiles and since a week also on Google Buzz.

I experimented with it and I gathered about 150 active REAL gmail adresses in about 20 minutes.  All from real people, having real active gmail and buzz accounts.
The amount of info I got was stunning:place of residence, their pictures from the seventies, their paypal account names, the name of their pets, … you name it.  Google is helping spammers and scammers is my main conclusion from this experiment. You can easily try it yourself, go into Buzz and type in common first names into the people search and add all people you find into your followers list.

This is a problem that you don’t have on Twitter, where most people are some obscure alias or at least have some control over who follows them and can see what on their profiles.

I’m not a spammer or evil person, so I deleted all this info.  But you know that there are other types out there, people who are gathering massive amounts of date while you’re reading this,… al because Google Buzz opened up a can of worms with burning a social (viral) networking app into gmail.
GOOGLE: Leave gmail alone!  E-mail needs to be e-mail, … nothing more.

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A company that states to ‘reinvent the web’ and sounds like it means business, always gets my attention.
That’s why I tried ‘Opera Unite’, the new service from the Opera Software guys.
Give or take a few quirks, their browser is fast, reliable and totally up to speed with current standards.

Their opera unite idea is also great, only their implementation sucks donkey balls.  Seriously, I’ve installed this unite stuff (along with a buggy version of their opera 10 browser) and immediately found out that reinventing the web was all about putting a steaming media server, webserver and FTP server in my browser.  Not a bad idea, but not new, not really cool, secure or innovative.

So I configured a few songs and some shared directories on Opera Unite and contacted my friend who also loves opera.
I sent an invite (since we both have new nicknames on myopera since a few weeks).
The invite was accepted, but I didn’t find out about that because there was no message or indication of this even whatsoever (opera fail #1).
So she called me to say tell me my friend request was accepted and that she would like to inter my shared unite page.
I think the purpose after this new service is to make people NOT have to call/email/IM each other in order to share files, certainly when they’re already friends and all on their crappy community page (their blog is one of the worst software apps on the web 2.0, opera fail #2).

So I told her to hold on and I checked my myopera page.  Nothing to see, no friends, nothing to indicate she accepted me.
I reloaded the page, still nothing.
Then she foun d out acception a friend request isn’t enough, you have to add them to a list somewhere deep down in the opera-config jungle on your my-my myopera page. (opera fail #3).  Now comese the part that really got me angry: after refreshing, adding each other to the friends list (which was totally lame) she couldn’t find my unite pages nor the shared folders.
The service was running fine it said.  But there was NO Opera unite page to see anywhere.
When you go to someone’s friends page, and that friend is using a non-default layout for their crappy blog, the unite button leading to your services is not shown. (opera fail #4).

So instead of being stuck with a badly reachable FTP¨server and password restrictions in order to share files, we’re not confronted with Opera’s totally unlogic way of making these sharing API’s accessible.
The story continues.

I was mad that this simple task was taking so long, so I spelled out my unite:// url to her over the phone (we’re in the year 2009 people, we’re still spelling UrL’s or URI’s to each other over the phone).
She made a mistake and I got even more angry, so I copy-paste’d the URL and EMAILED it!
The URLs are too long, too crappy.
Image your username is willyb77 and you choose to call your ‘unite’ space willysshare, then the URL will be: unte://willysshare.willyb77.operunite.com/media_player/ for example.  Such things scream for a tinyurl service to step in.
(opera fail #5)
(I also had to change the lay out and code of my blog to make the ‘unite’ button visible, which didn’t worked, after saving the changes the button dissapeared again without any reason.  So no one knows my unite address unless I call them and tell about it, including the crappy long URL and password).

So she reaches my unite page,… and goes to te lounge.  She tries to log in with her newly created nick and password.  Without any indication, she’s refused.  No help, no opera page explaining that she needs to get a password from ME instead of using her own password.  (The page just asks for ‘password’, which usually means YOUR password)  (opera fail #6)
So I give her my password and she enters.  And WOOOOW, she can now chat with me… something we could do over gtalk and msn for ages already without all this crap.

Now, the good part: after 10 minutes of shit we finally were able to download a file and music from each other,… but without any form of QoS I had an awful time with the upload rate (I had to install a bandwidth limiter of some kind to compensate).

Conclusion:  Opera Unite is a nice idea, it ceartainly would help to have a browser-built-in solution for rapidly sharing files.
Only thing is, opera fails miserably in the implementation of the idea by making the myopera-way too difficult and too time-consuming.  On top of that, the “unite://” protcol name is only picked up by opera browsers, which only 0.7% of the people uses,… which makes me wonder why they make a files sharing tool, based on a community, for a browser that no one uses.

There are far more and better and faster ways of getting your newest holiday pics to your friends than this:

1) hey I have new pics of me and my girlfriend sunbathing in Italy, wanna see them?
-yeah why not
2) Good, listen if you want to download them, you’ll need opera
-what?
3) Opera, you know… the browser…?
-eh… where do I get it? It doens’t contain spyware ok?
4) Go to opera.com and download the opera 10 preview, but be careful! You’ll need the one with opera unite ok!
- dude, where are your pictures?
5) trust me, they’re in the browser, just download it.
Ok, installing it now,… so where are the pictures?
6) Ok, wait… aah of course, you’re not one of the opera community yet! You’ll HAVE to be a member man, it’s so cool.
- It’s not… just tell me what to do man.
7) Well, subscribe and active the account through email and then activate the unite service.
- just give me the url of the pics man…
Ok, here goes… eh… go to http://themainman746.myopera.com
-hold on man… eh… don’t have paper here and I can’t type a slash with this phone in my hands… just mail me the damn url
9) ok mailed ya!
- got it… ah ok… I see a crappy page with your blog or something
10) ok, wait you see a unite button?
nope
11) Ok, here goes… eh… go to the unite page directly unite://scrabblefan85.themainman746.operaunite.com/picture_player/
- c’mon man, I need to pee! mail me the stuff
12) Got it now?
- I’m on the unite page, or so I think… I see a picture of a bird.
13) don’t mind that, that’s my avatar, Opera made it for me.  Cool huh?
- Where the hell is that picture man?
14) Just click on the picture player
- waht’s the password I need to type?
15) it’s “iluvopra”
- Ok I’m in
16) You see?  Opera really re-invented the web with this service isn’t it?
- Your girlfriend looks great, but you got fat man…

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How good is the news search engine Wolfram Alpha in predicting the stock?

The WolframAlpha (W|A) engine adds a mathematical prediction for eacht stock quote you look up.
I wondered how accurate these are (knowing they’re just a computer simulation of the known historical prices).
I took screenshots of the predictions of (W|A) a will compare them in the future.

Let’s try it with these four stocks.
LVLT (large volume stock),
AMZN (just because it’s so popular),
MGM (extremely volatile) and
BA (rather stable)

All screenshots were taken on 27 May 2009 at 1:12pm (EDT)
Now, let’s see how well we can predict the future with these:

First one on the list is LVLT:  (google finance, yahoo finance, WA).
Price at that time was: 1.20$

BA (Boeing)
44.28$

AMZN (Amazon) stood at 78.42$

and MGM was at 7.40$

Let’s see in one month how well Wolfram did in predicting these stocks…  (I follow the blue line here, not the negative of positive predictions, just the blue line graph)

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Wolframalpha, the new mathematical search engine, is so much better that google, yahoo and livesearch combined.  Let me show the three tests I’ve done to make clear how cool this search engine is.

First search TEST 1

Situation: I’m looking for the debt of the company level 3 communications.
Here are the inputs I’ve used (so you can compare it for yourself)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Level3+debt
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1W1GGLD_en&q=Level3+debt

So I typed “Level3 debt”

Screenshot 1

Clearly Wolfram wins here, with a clear and fast overview of ALL data I needed, while I still have to wade through some links in google’s mixed search results.

Second search, TEST 2

I typed “how much is 2530 dollar in euro” in both engines.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+much+is+2530+dollar+in+euro

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1W1GGLD_en&q=how+much+is+2530+dollar+in+euro&btnG=Search

There is a clear difference in the exchange rate used by google and wolfram (wolfram seems to use the
most up-to date exchange rate here (1.3471 at time of search, while Google used the Citibank exhcange rate of 1.3474)

Screenshot 2

Then Wolfram beats Google again in this search by giving me more info, and a clear graph of the exange rate, plus a more comprehensive presentation, it answered my questions better that google.

-
Third search, TEST 3:

I decided to put something crazy in to both enignes.
“hello world in morse code” So I want the exact Morse code sequence of “hello world”
I was stunned by the results.
Again Wolfram beats Google to the game… with ease.

Screenshot 3

Conclusion:
Anything mathematical, numbers or conversion thrown at Wolfram gives you better results than google.
I wonder how far they can go with this, they surely have a new fan over here

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Windows 7 RC 1 build 7100 review

I admit it, I’m still working with good old Windows XP.  Like most friends I know. I didn’t switch to Vista for various reasons,… mainly the incompatibility with drivers and hardware (even brand new hardware I bought in 2009!) and some smaller bugs that didn’t get solved, mainly in the video card department.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Windows 7 beta get better reviews and decided to pick up the free Release Candidate 1 May 2009 from the MS site.

It’s always nice to know who writes a review.  I don’t like reading a game review for the Nintendo Wii, written by a total Playstation fanboy.
So let me start by telling a bit about my tester profile:
- I was a test engineer for a few years, mainly on networking products from a large manufacturer, I try Linux now and then but don’t like the time you’ll have to put into that OS before you can actually work with it the way you like it, I don’t like Apple because of the the fanciness and the totally noob-like OS (no offense but the only ppl I know working day-to-day with Macintosh are either trendy teens with freaky haircuts and medical staff).
Am I a microsoft fanboy?  No,… I didn’t like Vista one bit, and I’m still working with XP while waiting for MS to come up with something that is really up to the task of today’s techworld,… which means I don’t like them either, but if I have to choose between and unworkably time-consuming OS (linux) and a trendy fad with dodgy hardware (Apple) or my own Custom PC with Microsoft OS then I clealy choose the latter.
Not that I like it, but it at least allows me to work for 4 years with the same hardware without failing and lets me install something without compiling days in a row or learning 120 commands by heart just to get a simple program to work properly.

The installation:

Windows 7 was installed in a very straightforward way, it’s easy and fast to get this thing running.
Only disadvantage on the RC1 version was that it started to scan my external hard drives before it was even installed… this took about 30 minutes in my first tryout setup process (after re-doing the install without these drives it only took 15 mins for the whole process).
The first impression you get with Windows 7 is that it’s fast.  It boots fast, the menus and processess are sleek, everything seems to run just better and more smooth than XP.

The good:

The best improvement in Windows 7 is definately the Windows Explorer re-designs.  Finally, after 10 years of using Total Commander, I could copy and paste whole directories without having to have the annoying ‘this file already exists’ message, after which the user could go on a hunt for the missing files and already copied files. Those days are over,… it took them 12 bloody long years to fix this and get some decent ‘replace file or skip’ option in place.

Now, if we wait another 10 years I’m sure they’ll introduce some kind of queuing function so I can ditch Total Commander (made in 1998) altogether for large copy tasks!! Please Microsoft, add this functionality because it’s a damn shame a freeware tool from the early nineties (remember, the time we watched Beavis and Butthead?) still beats your top notch OS in copying a file from one disc to another.  It’s getting embarrassing.
MS seems to have no clue that in these times, there are people actually copying 200 GB to 2 TB a day in files.  Copying with Windows Explorer is like drinking a barrel of beer with a straw.
It’s just not up to the task.

Let’s say Windows 7 Explorer is a huge step in the right direction, nothing more, nothing less, but certainly not perfect yet as a file manager (not by a long shot).

Second big improvement is the Home Network system, it finally works fine (on Vista it was nothing more that a good idea). The workgroup can still be used too, but the homegroup really works well.
So you can for example share and stream your fiels over the homegroup, without spending hours and hours fiddling with rights management and firewall settings.  For example: with Vista I never could stream a video to my Xbox360, it connected, but couldn’t play, no matter what I tried.

The bad.

Windows 7 RC1 has it’s disadvantages of course.
Make no mistake, compared to Vista it’s a oasis of good programming. But even then, there are some nasty things awaiting you in this OS.

To not be labelled as a total nitpicker, I’ll only stick to the three main annoyance I’ve encountered on Windows 7. Also, this will alow us some breathing room to accept this new version, instead of bashing it from day 1 like what happened with Vista.

Annoyance 1:
Windows 7 has still the nasty Black & White bug.  When you use an older TV with a SCART cable as second screen (to watch movies etc…) then you’ll be stuck with B&W in most cases.  On XP this worked fine with the same ‘old’ hardware, but on both W7 and Vista this was not the case.
It never got solved, and believe me, I’ve tried every trick in the book to make this work, including swithing the TV on and off after trying each individual dual screen setting for PAL.
This is a total mood killer, we’re in 2009 and I would expect COLOR on a second screen, certainly when XP does it without problem.

Annoyance 2:
When you use Windows 7 in a home network (DSL router or some hubs) you’ll see some very very weird stuff happen on the Network front.
I have 3 interfaces: 2 Ethernet and one wireless built-in. I disabled one Eth and the Wi-fi (built-in crap) to just connect to my broadband router (Netgear).
The weird thing is that windows 7 seems to add an extra 0.0.0.0 gateway at random on top of my real gateway…
Cetainly when you reboot or come back from ’sleep’ mode this causes some headaches.  (It’s easily solved by disabling the interface and enabling it again AFTER you deleted the extra 0 route with route delete in an Admin command line with elevation) eh… this is something A LOT of end users will have problems with.
I did some research and the whole ethernet dhcp part in Windows 7 is ‘dodgy’ to put it mildly.  The DHCP metrics (for assigning priorities for the interface) is messed up.  When I put my eht1 interface on metric 2 to let it have priority over the extra route that was added by Windows, the extra route AND my metric changed from 2 to 14 !
I don’t know what’s going on but DHCP will be an issue soon on Windows 7.  I even wonder if anyone in Redmond (or wherever they test it these days) has even tried it on a simulated home network.

Annoyance 3:
I have 4 internal hard drives and 2 extrernal, they all work fin under XP, but Windows 7 seems to put some of these drives into sleep mode after a couple of minutes.  I found no way to disable this.
The annoying thing is that the ‘data’ drive I used for all my picture and music is put to sleep at random.  So when I want to play a file or open a picture, it takes ofter 10 seconds or longer for W7 to ‘find’ the drive.
This is totally a bummer when you make your desktop picture switch every hour or so. The system just HALTS completel (while gaming, chatting, or opening a programm usually:) to search for the picture somewhere on an idle disc.
After 5 to second the mouse starts moving again, your music starts playing again and THEN the picture appears.
The worst part is, after some time, the Windows 7 Os just gives up waking up the disc and jut DELETES it from the overview in explored.  Just like it never existed. A reboot is required to wake W7 up again after that.
Imagine playing a game and when you’re done, you open one of your discs and it’s gone!

Like I said, I only list 3  points here, but I have a whole list, however the three mentionned items are really bugging me.

For now I’ll stick with Windows XP.  As far as I’m concerned this is the best operating system MS ever released (since SP2).

Conclusion fro now; (8 may 2009)
While windows 7 shows some nice potential, the real big bugs still make it impossible to make this my main OS.

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