Logitech Harmony Remote 688 reviewed

Logitech Harmony Remote 688 reviewed - Engadget - www.engadget.com Everyone needs a solid universal remote these days.

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Google's Price Absurd, but Business Model Has a Long Tail

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Google's Price Absurd, but Business Model Has a Long Tail Dan Gillmor rightly points out that the stock price of a company as great as Google is getting downright bubblicious. The concept of marketing to the tail is very compelling... but not that compelling.

RED HERRING | Give me Firefox, or give me death

RED HERRING | Give me Firefox, or give me death Update: Steve Ruble interviews the PR man behind the Firefox ad, Rob Davis.

When people spend $250,000 of their money at $20 a pop for the sole purpose of taking an advertisement out in the New York times to tout the superiority of Firefox over IE, look out! This many people this impassioned is sure to have an impact.

I will say that after having used Firefox for a number of weeks now that it is indeed the superior browser. At the same time I still need to keep Internet Explorer on my machine as certain sites don't operate correctly from time to time with Firefox -- a small annoyance but well worth the trouble.

Hopefully Microsoft takes this threat very seriously and makes some much needed improvements to IE. On the other hand... how much money do they really make on IE anyway? Try to go after the Office cash cow monopoly instead and then you'll see the real fireworks.

Cake and Ice Cream

Lichtenstein

Lichtenstein's at the MOMA. Too bad I can't bring my camera in the MOMA. Looks like I'll be missing that exhibition.

Nine Thirty in the Morning, Crocket, California

When you walk around Crocket at 9:30 in the morning you are struck at how closed everything is in the town. There is a donut shop and a little market that are open that you'd expect, but then there are the two town bars, Toots and Club Tac that are also open. It's unusual in a quiet little town that could be more of a throwback to rural America than 30 minutes from San Francisco. I'm not sure if it's just the night shift getting off from the local plant in town or it's just everyday business in Crocket.

Staring at the Sun

Google Guru Shares Business Wisdom

Thoughts on technology and business from an early Google Investor, Ram Shriram, who owns almost $1 billion of Google stock.

MCE PCs are ready for Living Room

Addicted to Digital Media - BusinessWeek: MCE PCs are ready for Living Room After giving the extenders a lukewarm reception last week, Businessweek has a pretty positive article on the Media Center PCs out this week. From Sean Alexander's Additcted to Digital Media.

Orale Orale, Everyday Downtown Mexican

Orale Orale is fine everyday Mexican fare in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Although the food is nowhere near the spectacular food you’d find at Cactus Tacqueria in the East Bay, La Morena in South San Francisco or La Tacqueria in the Mission, Orale Orale is in my opinion the best Mexican for the Downtown San Francisco at present. I particularly enjoy the flautas which are served best crispy and come covered with sour cream and guacamole with rice and beans on the side.

There is always a line at Orale Orale so you’d be advised to get their early if you want to get a seat. Fortunately I eat at 11:00 every day and it’s never a problem then – but by 11:30 you will be waiting. The service is quite good and fast at this busy restaurant as they are eager to get you out and the next paying customer in your seat. They are also very good at making sure your chip basket and salsa are refilled promptly as your table empties them.

See Thomas Hawk's Complete Bay Area Restaurant Guide for more reviews.

Matches

Seattle Was Another Girl Who Left Her Mark Upon the Map

Palace Hotel, Late Afternoon

The Chancery Building

JKLMN

Locked Out

Hunter S. Thompson: Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004

RollingStone.com: Politics - Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004 Hunter always has a way with words.

Whatever Happened to Slashdot?

It seems that Technorati recently has redone their Top 100. After holding the #1 spot for quite a while Slashdot now seems nowhere to be found on the Top 100 list. Doc Searls was commenting over at his place that there is a new #1 in town at Technorati, but according to Technorati's own search of Slashdot.org it seems like it should still rank higher than Boing Boing both in terms of blogs and links. Anyone have any ideas?


Technorati Top 100


Slashdot

Miles

SFPD

Anxiety

A taxi driver is questioned after an accident with a bicyclist at the corner of First and Market.

Hewlett Packard Makes a Play for your Living Room PC

Yahoo! News - Hewlett Packard Makes Play for Living Room PC HP's out touting it's new MCE machines again. For what it's worth, I think Hewlett Packard is one of the worst computer companies for making Media Center PCs in the universe. As an owner of a HP 873N (the first Media Center PC to market a few years back), I have been enormously disappointed with HP -- mind you with HP and not as much with Microsoft who makes the software on the box.

The customer service is terrible (even after paying $99 for a warranty upgrade that supposedly gave me a special tech support number). The upgrade paths with the product have been downright juvenile and completely unacceptable, error prone, and quite frankly, I'd think, embarrassing for a company that promotes itself as a technology company.

The PC itself is riddled with crap software designed to cross sell and market other products -- pure clutter. And at every turn modifications have been made to create a more HP centric interface while impairing important and needed resources of the PC and operating system functionality.

I cringed when I realized back in 2002 that I'd be forced to buy a HP in order to get the MCE software. I'm much more of an individual who prefers more serious computer manufacturers like Dell or, even better, a custom built box.

Although Microsoft has remedied this situation for now by allowing any OEM the software to build a MCE machine, it still sticks in my craw that I'm stuck with this crappy HP machine and especially bothers me any time I see them trying to promote their brand as a "beefed up PC" or "media center."

Take my advice as someone who has put these MCE machines to serious tests. The HP machine is not the one to buy. The MCE software is fantastic and I completely recommend it to anyone looking to expand photos and music into your living room, but there are many providers better than HP.

Some specifics on my problems with HP:

1. After purchasing a $99 upgrade for lifetime telephone support on the product, every single time I've phoned them after one year rather than route my call to a tech support person, once I enter in my serial number or product model number I am instead routed to an upgrade sales department where I am told my product is out of warranty. This takes more of my time and is inefficient on their part. Typically I have to argue with a salesperson about having already purchased an upgrade. Frequently I am required to sit on hold for lengthy periods of time prior to getting this upgrade sales department -- an unnecessary step prior getting to tech support. On more than one occasion I've had to actually talk to a supervisor to get my call routed on. Really bad for a technology company and completely inefficient. They have all of my data including my purchase in my record tied to my serial number.

2. The hold times are longer at HP than other technology companies, including Microsoft, that I've worked with in the past.

3. When I upgrade with HP it is not necessary to not only have my serial number, but to also be required to submit a "PC System Number" (whatever this is), my "Microsoft Product Identification Number (it would be better to call this an activation key). This information should be retained and tied to my serial number and record with HP. Further, it seems like bad programming for the upgrade site to not recognize a valid US postal address in the city of San Francisco and prevent you from upgrading because their faulty software doesn't recognize a valid address. Further, when being unable to upgrade I was told that my "PC System Number" was invalid. After crawling around the back of my PC with a flashlight and checking and rechecking and rechecking and re-entering, I was later informed that (even though their upgrade system was telling me the product number was bad) that it was in fact that the variation of my first name did not match what they had on their system. So it seems that if you had previously registered under "Tom" then "Thomas" will not work, but rather than tell you this, the upgrade site tells you that your PC system number is invalid. Good thinking guys. To make matters worse there is no telephone support for the upgrade process unless it is during regular business hours when I am at work.

4. I have had calls into HP tech support before where the individual on the line did not know what a media center PC is -- literally. The quality of the first line tech support is absolutely horrible. Some of the second level tech support individuals are better but there can be an hour wait on hold to get to them typically. There have been times in the past when I've been "accidentally" disconnected after a second level tech support rep could not fix a problem. When this happens it is frustrating to have to go through all the steps all over again: call in, be told my product is out of warranty, have someone try to sell me a warranty I already own, argue with a supervisor, wait on hold, get transferred to a first level tech support individual, be put on hold, be transferred to a second level tech support individual over an hour latter.

5. In terms of specific functionality impairment. When I open up Windows Explorer on a folder, I want my subfolders in the left pane, not a bunch of HP wizards, it's annoying to have to go to "view" "explorer bar" and change the pane view to folders. HP wizards should not be the default and it should be customizable by user.

6. After spending many hours with HP tech support on the inability to watch television on their machine, they concluded that I needed another TV tuner and said that they would send me one out. The problem later that same day was fixed by me after online investigation. I called the tech support guy back who was dumbfounded that he had not thought of that. I wanted to make sure that they were NOT going to send me a tuner card and would cancel the order. He agreed and confirmed with me that it had been cancelled. Well it sure had. I never received it, but I did receive a charge for it on my Visa bill three weeks later. After calling HP I was told that this was a mistake and that they'd reimburse my Visa which they never did. Afer disputing the charge with my credit card company it was reversed. After it was reversed HP recharged my card. I called and explained to HP that not only had I never received the product that their tech support person assured me that the order had been cancelled. They said they would take care of it again and never did. I had to go through a lengthy process including defending my challenge to their charge in writing with my credit card company before finally getting it resolved.

Although I don't own a Dell MCE machine, I will say that as an owner of another Dell PC the support has been dramatically and seriously much much better. Even the ACMA box which as a white box manufacturer is far better. The support I get from IBM on my Thinkpad T40 is outstanding in comparison to HP.

Falling Numbers at the San Francisco Fed

Yahoo home page redesign

Geeking with Greg: Yahoo home page redesign So Yahoo! has redesigned their home page. Looks like one big advertisement to me. I would have thought they could do better than that.

Simple Thoughts on Market Street

Six Parnassus

Jesus Christ is the Answer

Bay Bridge Sunrise, #2

Bay Bridge Sunrise

This morning there was one of the most amazing sunrises over the Bay Bridge. In case you missed it, here's the photo.

Why Matt Goyer is cancelling his Napster subscription

Matt Goyer 's blog - A completely egotistical storyline of my life Matt Goyer gives a pretty detailed reason on why he is cancelling his Napster subscription over at his blog. I have to agree with Matt. DRM is just not worth the hassle. This is the attitude that more and more consumers will take and why the legitimate online music services will eventually fail. It's refreshing to see this level of honesty from a Microsoft blogger.

Bill O'Reilly, producer of his talk show agree to settle harassment, extortion suits

Bill O'Reilly, producer of his talk show agree to settle harassment, extortion suits Looks like O'Reilly and Mackris have patched up their little differences. And in other news, looks like the executives at Oracle are next.

The bets are in--Bush to win

The bets are in--Bush to win | CNET News.com: If you follow the money instead of the pundits and polls, it looks like George W. Bush just may get re-ellected next week.

New Net domains near approval | CNET News.com

New Net domains near approval | CNET News.com It looks like we may very soon see the .travel and .post domain names. Still not sure about the eight other top level domains including .xxx, .jobs, and .asia. Still wondering who the lucky lottery winner who first registers sex.xxx is going to be.

Armari PC Media Centers

Armari PC Media Centers - Engadget - www.engadget.com Not sure on pricing, specs or availibilty or if they include the OTA HDTV card but these Armari MCE machines look slick.

Photo Story 3 for Windows

Addicted to Digital Media - Wednesday, October 27, 2004 Haven't tried it yet but very cool in concept.