I’d heard that there could be more than a few versions of Microsoft Vista, but really hope this isn’t true because it’s just ridiculous. I can’t possibly see the point, unless they want to alienate every single Windows user who wants to upgrade because they won’t know if they should get Starter, Basic, Pro, Premium, or Ultimate. What a joke.
Blizzard is looking for more than just your $15/month. I’ll have to say this really surprises me. I’ve always thought Blizzard was a great company that made great games. I understand them wanting to combat piracy and cheating, but this is out of line.
Duh.
If you’ve ever heard of the game World of Warcraft, you know that it is an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). It’s one of those games that can consume your life if you’re not careful, which is just one excellent reason I’ve avoided it (others would be the cost, and limited free time now that I work 40+ hours per week).
Recently something pretty cool happened in the world of the game. Blizzard, the game maker, introduced a new area with a new boss. When players got there, a spell called Corrupted Blood was cast upon them. Here’s where things get interesting: when players returned to towns in the game, they brought the disease back with them. The result was a virtual plague that quickly spread throughout the game. It was strong enough to kill low level characters and must have been a serious pain even to those at higher levels.
The fact that the whole thing was never supposed to happen doesn’t really matter. The plague spread in a very “natural” way, imitating a real life scenario. I’d say that’s both really cool and pretty scary at the same time.
From the WSJ:
Windows is broken and Microsoft has admitted it.
For once it sounds like they’re actually taking the right steps to fix it. This is the best news I’ve heard about Windows Vista yet.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Apple recently (and quietly) changed the functionality of iTunes. Instead of allowing 5 people at a time to stream music from an iTunes share over a LAN, only 5 people per day can listen in. Wolffe over at iPodlounge had this to say about it:
I don’t get it. What difference does it make whether 5 people are listening to your music or 10… or whether 3 people listened to your music that day or 20. What difference does it make if I burn 10 CDs versus 7? If I can burn 1, I can burn a million. Then again, if I really wanted to burn a million I wouldn’t be using iTunes.
Did somebody actually crunch some numbers and come to the conclusion that allowing people to burn their playlists 7 times instead of 10 actually affected the bottom line?
I’ve pretty much converted from Winamp to iTunes as for playing my music. I’ve even bought some music from iTunes. I’d probably buy a lot more if I had more money, but I tend to agree with this guy. What does changing limits like this really accomplish? There’s always another way around and if people really want to find it, they won’t mind spending a little bit of time to do it. You can read the rest of this comment and more at iPodlounge.
Currently Playing: Family Guy
Microsoft’s New Search Engine Falls Flat
“No one even comes close to matching Google’s ability to bring the most relevant, quality search results.”
MSN Search Test Finds Some Flaws
MSN Search often lived up to the task, but none of its features made me want to beg off my search engine of choice, Google. Results often paled next to Google and Yahoo.
None of this surprises me too much. Still, I think Edward Baig sums things up nicely at the end of his article:
MSN Search is not flawless, but I welcome Microsoft’s push in this area. Added competition moves us closer to where answers are fast, reliable and at our fingertips.
Currently Ignoring: Ethics Lecture
Can Microsoft rival Google in the world of search and information organization? I’d go with no. Microsoft is a huge company, but that also means they have a much broader one focus. They have an operating system, web browser, and all kinds of side projects to worry about. Information and organization just screams Google. The phrase “web search” has been replaced with “Google search” in most people’s vocabulary at this point. I probably use Google at least 50 times a day (and that’s definitely on the conservative side).
I had a conversation over the weekend about Google and their rigorous hiring process. It sounds like it would be basically impossible to get a job with them unless they already knew who you were. Still, they must be doing something right because they have continually shown me they are a company that makes quality products and actually cares about the impact they have on the world.
Let’s review: Google went public last year and if I’d had any money at the time I would have bought stock in a heartbeat. They’ve created one of the only browser toolbars I would ever put on any computer. Forget Yahoo!, MSN, and (god forbid) MyWebSearch or any of it’s duplicates. Now Google has started to branch out by acquiring existing software and expanding it’s own services. They were the first to come out with a desktop search that is incorporated right into their typical web interface. Other companies like Microsoft are following suit (see first paragraph). These services create an index of everything on your hard drive and search that index instead of looking at every file in order to cut search time dramatically. Granted, I haven’t used any of the other options, but Google was on top of their game getting their version out so quick.
Over the weekend I downloaded some software called Picasa 2 (powered by Google of course). It’s for organizing and editing pictures, and so far it’s really freakin’ sweet. When you download any new piece of software the installation usually finishes by asking if you want to view the readme file. I almost always decline, but for some reason I decided to take a look this time. It’s probably because I didn’t really know what Picasa was all about. Anyway, the first thing I noticed is that it wasn’t the typical “how to” with a features list and troubleshooting. It started out by explaining how it’s been a long time since the software was updated, but part of the reason was because they took so much user feedback and worked hard to incorporate it into their next release. It goes on to explain the many features of the software as if it was a casual conversation. Call me crazy, but that’s a lot more interesting to read than a typical technical document.
At this point I’m not sure anyone is still reading, but I still haven’t gotten to the thing I think is the most impressive. Here’s an article about how Google is actually improving the quality of the web through the algorithms they use to list relevant search results. Considering the amount of junk out there about the time I was in high school, that’s definitely a plus. I can remember when finding internet sources were discouraged because accuracy was always called into question. In the last year or two ,I’ve regularly heard teachers say that one of the best places to go for sources is the web, with most naming Google as the easiest place to start. Obviously their method isn’t perfect (this is called Google-Bombing), but nothing ever is.
I look forward to the future from Google. Considering they just snagged one of the chief Engineers of Mozilla Firefox, it really makes one wonder what’s next.
Sometimes the littlest things seem to be the most important. Why can something so insignificant make such a big difference?
Edit: Penn State tells students to dump Internet Explorer. It’s about damn time.