February 29, 2004

10 Reasons to Shop Online

Bruce Tognazzini lists 10 Reasons to Not Shop Online on his personal site. I agree with some of the points he makes, but he seems to just be complaining about a few experiences he had at a few online stores.

Anyway, I hold the opposite view… I love shopping online, and if at all possible will shop online rather than at the store in most cases. Here’s why:

1. No Lines
We went to Target last night and bought a cartload of stuff. It was an hour before they closed, so they only had about 5 registers open. We stood in line for at least 7 minutes waiting for a free register.

2. Fast checkout
When we finally got to the checkout, it took another 5 or 8 minutes to get everything checked out and rung up. Sure online you have to enter your shipping info, credit card info, etc, but it’s still not going to take you anywhere near 5 or 8 minutes to fill out a shopping cart checkout page.

3. Little/No human error
Our cashier scanned a few items 3 or 4 times on accident during the checkout. Luckily he caught it and removed the duplicate items from the total, but what if he hadn’t? Or what if he charged twice on purpose? When you’re standing there 8 hours a day getting paid $6.00 an hour there is little motivation to take your job seriously. Online you can see exactly what you are being charged before you enter your credit card info. If there is an error, it’s most likely your own. The computers could still make mistakes due to bad programming, but I still trust a good web site more than some teenager at a checkout line.

4. Faster than going to the store
Bruce says it’s faster to drive to the store, hunt for what you want, wait in line, checkout, load your car, and drive back to your house than to just order something on a web site in your own living room. What? I don’t think so. We were gone shopping for 2 and a half hours the other night. I could have accomplished the same thing online in less than ten minutes. This isn’t counting shipping time of course, which is the only bad thing about shopping online, no instant gratification.

5. Easier to not over-spend
My wife and I got to the checkout line and decided not to get 3 of the items we had in our cart because the total was coming out to be a lot more than we anticipated. Most online shopping cart systems have a real-time total displayed showing you the total of all the items you currently have in your cart, so you know exactly how much you will be spending as you add items to your cart. Also because you’re going to have to wait at least a day to get the item, you don’t buy things on a whim as easily. For instance the candy bars, sodas, and cheap DVD’s they put at all the checkout lines at Target. If a web site offered you a similar item, you wouldn’t buy it because you might not want that item in 2 days. Now I know candy bars and sodas aren’t offered on many web site checkout systems, but similar impulse buys are easier to avoid online in my opinion.

6. No traffic
You don’t have to deal with driving through crowded streets and packed parking lots, hunting for a space, then walking half a mile to the store. Sit in your own house in your own office in your own comfortable chair and order whatever you like. Then it’s delivered right to your house in a few days. You don’t waste gas, don’t have the stress of overcrowded streets, etc. You also don’t have to walk a 5 mile marathon to find stuff like you do in any of the thousands of enormous Wal-Marts out there.

7. More information available on the products you are buying
Bruce says he thinks there is more information available in the store, which seems completely backwards to me. All you have in the stores is what’s printed on the box in most cases, and that is 90% marketing drivel written by the manufacturer, so how useful is that? Ask a salesman? Yeah right. 95% of the sales guys out there will just pick up the box and read you the bullet list of features if you ask them for help. Most electronics stores have a bullet list and short description of the product printed on the price tag on the shelf, but frequently these are out of date, inaccurate, or not even for the right product.

Online there is usually a similar bullet list of features, but with a quick button press or two you can search for reviews of the product in question and find dozens of objective user reviews from any number of sites. Some e-commerce sites like Amazon.com even have a review system built-in, so it’s like asking 20 other customers in the store what their experiences were with this product before you spend your money on it. You can also access the manufacturer’s site with a click or two and most likely download electronic versions of the manuals, find any support issues in their knowledgebase, etc. Look up their number if you need to call them to ask a question like Bruce says you can do with a cellphone and the number on the box.

8. Easy to find the products you want
We spent 5 minutes looking for a Bill Engvall CD last night on Target’s cluttered shelves. We looked in all the categories, under the B’s, under the E’s… etc. We asked an employee for help, and he said without looking up, “Look under the E’s. Should be there”. Gee, thanks buddy! I didn’t think to try that! Alternatively, I just found every Bill Engvall CD available on Target.com in less than 15 seconds. Sure most searches on web sites could be better, but it’s already a whole lot easier than searching high and low on shelves in different parts of a store for the item you want. And what if someone picked up the last copy of that CD you wanted, then decided they didn’t want it when they were in the clothing section, so they just threw it behind some t-shirts? Now you can’t find it or buy it, even though the store has it in-stock. Online you know if the store has something in-stock, and you know it’s sitting in a warehouse somewhere, categorized and ready to be put in a box.

9. No Salesmen to Pressure You
Every time I walk into Best Buy or Circuit City and just want to look around to kill time, I get hassled by 3 salesmen in every department asking if I need help finding something or have questions. If I stay there for 10 minutes or more, they ask me again, and again, and again. Of course if I actually have a question, they are nowhere to found. Online you can spend as much time as you want looking at things, researching them, etc. If you need help there is usually a 1-800 number you can call for the store itself or a manufacturer. Sure you might have to wait in a call queue for a few minutes, but it’s worth it to me.

10. Don’t have to deal with the other customers
Another plus of ordering online from your own home. You don’t have to dodge other customer’s buggies, listen to cellphones going off, try to tolerate some kid screaming in the next aisle because his parent wouldn’t buy him the latest Poke’mon toy, etc.

I could come up with a lot more, but I think I’ll stop at 10. :)

Now maybe some of these reasons aren’t valid for everyone, I’m aware of that. I generally don’t like crowded areas, they really stress me out and put me in a terrible mood. So perhaps the more extroverted people out there actually enjoy being out and mingling with other people. But not me.

There are definite advantages to shopping in a physical store though. Instant gratification, like I mentioned before is one. And trying items before you buy them is another. But even then I will frequently run into a Best Buy and try something out, then go back home and purchase the item online either from bestbuy.com, or from another cheaper retailer I found online.

E-commerce is not without its problems, but 9 times out of 10, I will still enjoy the online experience a lot more than the brick and mortar method.

QotD: Camera Phones

Question: Does your phone have a camera?

My Answer: No, our phone is 2 years old. And it has been chewed up by the dog, dropped dozens of times, and run over by a car, so it might be time for a new one when we can afford it. We can get a free one when we renew our contract with SprintPCS, but we have to pay full price up front and wait for a rebate to come in a few weeks. And we don’t have the money to pay full price for a phone right now. Ours still works though… The screen is cracked and ruined though, so we can’t see our numbers or anything else. Just dial out blindly and answer it.

QotD: Recent Movies

Question: What’s the best movie you’ve seen in the past week?

My Answer: Probably The Man Who Wasn’t There with Billy Bob Thornton. It was a black and white film noir type thing. I liked his character a lot because he’s very similar to me… Very quiet and laid back in person. He referred to everyone else as “gabbers” because they talked too much and about pointless things. That’s exactly how I feel. :)

Cheap Dog Treat Idea

Dog treat prices can get pretty crazy, depending on where and what you buy. They have the ones that look like bacon, the ones that look like two tubes twisted together, the ones that look like steak chunks, etc. You’re likely to pay $2 - $4 per bag, just for the cheap stuff. That can get pretty expensive, especially when you are trying to train your dog, like we do. So instead, we started using something else for treats.

Hot Dogs

• Buy the cheapest hot dogs you can find. We got turkey ones because my wife refuses to feed our dogs any pork product. :) Anyway they were about $1.99 each, for a pack of 8.

• Cut them up into little tiny pieces, about 1/8 - 1/4 inch thick.

• Lay them all out flat on a cookie sheet and bake them. We put it on 300° for about 15 minutes I think. But you can bake them as long as you want, in order to dry them out. Just don’t burn them. Dogs don’t like burned hot dogs. If you leave them in long enough though, they start jumping around like little jumping beans! Try it!

• Refrigerate until you are ready to give them to your dog. Even though they are cooked they will still spoil pretty quickly.

Our dogs love them, and don’t even care about regular treats anymore.

String Cheese

Another cheap idea is to buy packages of String Cheese, and keep them in your pocket, breaking off small pieces as you need them. Or you can cut them up ahead of time for quick access. The dogs love those too.

There may be some dog treats out there cheaper than this, but the dogs definitely won’t like them as much, since they are processed or hard and crumbly. Ew.

February 27, 2004

QotD: Devil’s Advocate

Question: How often do you play Devil’s Advocate?

My Answer: Not very often that I know of. I have enough trouble defending my own opinion at times, let alone one I don’t really have!

Poor Rye…

Our little dog Rye has had a lot of bad luck for the past couple of weeks. She’s a half Doberman, half Border Collie mix, and has a bit of trouble with her hips. She’s slow to get up after she’s been laying down for a while, especially after long runs. We’re pretty sure she has hip dysplasia in at least one of her hips. Up until now it’s just been an irritation to her, but a couple of weeks ago we think she injured it somehow, and she started limping and refusing to put any weight on one leg. After a day or two we realized it wasn’t just a sprain or thorn in her foot, and took her to the vet. She was x-rayed and examined, and the vet discovered that she had torn some ligaments in her knee. So we sent her in for surgery a couple of days later. The x-ray also confirmed that she has hip dysplasia.

She came back with a large incision in her knee about 5 inches long, all stitched up. She was very excited to see us when we picked her up at the vet’s, because she was there overnight in a little wire cage and was probably very uncomfortable and lonely. We helped her up into the Element (this was the first time she had seen the new car, and it posed a challenge for her to jump up into it with her bad leg, even with our help). She was used to simply stepping into the car, since she grew up with the Integra.

She was supposed to be separated from our other dog Max, because he plays very rough and could hurt her leg more while it heals. But when we brought her home he was surprisingly calm and gentle with her. Jenee’ says she read somewhere that dogs can sense when other dogs are injured, and will behave more calmly when in the presence of one that is trying to recuperate.

Rye was well on her way to recovery until a few days later when she started licking her side constantly. For a while we didn’t pay much attention to it, and thought maybe she was just giving herself an extra long and luxurious bath. But then we looked closer at what she was licking and noticed that it was a wound of some kind. It didn’t look bad, not much worse than what she gets normally running in the woods or playing, so we left it alone for a day. She continued to lick it however, so we looked again and it seemed much much bigger and all of the hair was gone from the area. The hair was gone from her licking it so much, but the wound seemed to spread because of infection. It also started to smell absolutely terrible. It smelled like she was rotting, immediately filling any room she entered with a terrible stench. So we took her to the vet yet again, and they discovered that she had been cut pretty badly somehow, and it was infected. We don’t know how it happened or when exactly, but it seemed to go all the way through the skin, exposing fat or muscle or something underneath.

We were instructed to give her some antibiotics to help with the infection, and soak the area with water 5 times a day for 10 minutes at a time. She also has to wear one of those funny lamp shades on her head (my wife says it’s technically called an e-collar) to keep her from licking it and making the infection worse. Surprisingly they didn’t tell us to bandage it or anything, so she has been walking around with an open wound on her side for several days. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but it’s pretty disgusting none the less. Against Doctor’s orders, we’ve been putting bandages on it once a day anyway, to hold on a charcoal poultice that we made. My mom is into natural remedies, and puts charcoal poultices on everything, or in you, if you are sick. So we are following her example I guess. Supposedly it draws out the poisons and bad stuff, which is good.

So anyway, poor little Rye is looking pretty rough at the moment. Her hind leg is still shaved from her surgery, and her side is shaved from when the vet examined her wound. She has stitches and a large incision on that same leg, and a huge gaping wound on the other. She keeps her spirits up however, as long as we are sure to give her the attention she thinks she deserves.

Here are some pictures of her wound if you are interested.

Warning, they are very graphic and disgusting, so view at your own risk

February 26, 2004

QotD: Fish

Question: What’s your favorite fish to eat, if any?

My Answer: None. I’m a vegetarian. Never tasted fish in my life, never will.

Microsoft Knows Best

A client asked me to send all of their web site files to them in a zip file this morning for their files. They use Windows, I use a Mac. So I right-clicked on the file and chose to zip and compress it as a Windows-compatible archive. They should have been able to double click the .exe file and uncompress the archive, even if they didn’t have any compression software like Winzip installed and were using an older version of Windows. And I created this on my Mac and sent it to their Windows machine.

But of course in the Windows world it just can’t be that easy.

No, instead of just double clicking the file and getting back to work, Microsoft Outlook decided that because the file ended in .exe it must be some sort of evil virus, so it helpfully deleted it and wouldn’t let the client open my attachment. I had to rezip everything as a plain zip file and send it to him so that his email program would give him permission to open the file that I sent him.

Come on people… Why still use Windows? It’s crazy! Not only is it crazy that the computer tells you what you can and can’t open or do, it’s crazy that the security is so bad on the system that you need a feature like that in the first place. Macs really do Just Work. And they really do let you just work too, rather than messing about with the innards of the computer and always second-guess installing anything for fear of filling your computer with viruses, trojans, and spyware/adware.

Before some smart ass Windows geek points it out, I’m aware that it was probably a virus scanner that deleted the file from Outlook, or a setting in Outlook that could have been disabled, but that isn’t my point. The point is that I was sending the guy a legitimate file, and the computer wouldn’t open it without a manual override of some kind. Therefore wasting more of his time, and my time, in order to send a file that wouldn’t send off all kinds of alarms. Plus I don’t like Windows and this is my blog. :)

February 25, 2004

What kind of Designer are you?

Keith has a sort-of poll on his site that asks what percentage you are of two opposing trends in web design. It’s sort of like one of those silly “What Dog food are you? What comic book character are you?” type things I guess, only this one is a bit more realistic and useful. Here are my answers:

Designer/Developer: 90% designer. I can read a little PHP and modify scripts a little, but I really have no interest in programming whatsoever.

Form/Function: 75% function. No point in having something be pretty if it doesn’t do anything. (aside from art, etc, which is all form) But at the same time, you could have the most functional site in the world, and if it’s butt ugly, people will most likely not utilize the site/thing to its full potential because it’s just so ugly or hard to use.

Front-End/Back-End: 75% front-end. This is basically the same as the first question, but in my own mind I include things like MovableType in the back-end category, and I do know a bit about MT and enjoy making it work. I just don’t like flat out programming or scripting.

Print/Web: 100% web. I don’t do any print stuff at all unless it’s my own business cards or something similar.

Web standards/Not-Web Standards: 75% web standards. I try to always do CSS layouts and make everything with standards, but I’m not a freak about validation. If the site doesn’t validate but still looks good in all the major browsers, I’ll probably not spend a ton of time making sure it validates.

Minimal/Lush: 95% minimal. This goes along with the second question a little bit. All of my designs are minimal. If it’s an e-commerce site it’s usually especially minimal, because I believe the site should focus on the product, not on the fancy graphics or animations. After all, that’s why the person is there, to buy something, not to be wowed by jpegs.

Content/Presentation: 65% content. Content is by far the most important, but presentation can have some effect on how that content is received. It can also make the content more or less trustworthy and/or interesting, depending on how it is presented.

CSS/Tables: 100% CSS is what I’d like to do, but real-world it’s probably more like 75%.

Flash/HTML: 100% HTML. I have never had a use for Flash and probably won’t any time soon. It’s great for games but I see little use for it in web sites, except as maybe an application of some sort where the Flash is tied in to a nice back-end. But I’ve only seen that done well a couple of times.

QotD: Obesity

Question: Is obesity a disease?

Answer: No, it’s being lazy and having no willpower. I’m about 25 - 30 pounds overweight for my height, but I sure as hell don’t go around telling people it’s because of some pretend disease I have. It’s because I’m lazy and don’t eat right or exercise… It’s not a very complicated concept. I do drink about 90 - 100oz. (3 litres) of water a day though, so at least I do that right. :)

Fun Safari Tip

Here’s a fun tip for Safari users that I learned by reading my new OSX book…

If you are several directories down in a site and would like to go “up” a few levels, instead of deleting text from the address bar and pressing enter, just hold Command (the Apple key) and click on the title bar of Safari (at the very top, where it says the name of the site). It will show you a list of of the different levels of the site hierarchy like you see in the screenshot.

Take a look at the screenshot for an example of it in action, it’s kind of hard to explain.

This also works in the Finder and several other apps, and is quite handy.

February 24, 2004

QotD: Cook

Question: How often do you cook dinner for yourself or others?

Answer: I generally don’t cook much of anything. My lovely wife will usually make something simple like pasta or some sandwiches. If I’m on my own I make macaroni and cheese and hot dogs and cereal most of the time. Occasionally we’ll cook together if we are planning a spectacular meal like a pizza twist and salad. (Pizza twist is a twisted up pizza… You use french bread dough and wrap it around cheese, olives, mushrooms, whatever you put on pizza. Then twist it up, bake it, and pour pizza/spaghetti sauce on it. It’s awesome)

Question of the Day

I’m going to start answering Erik’s Question of the Day on here because I’d like to post more, but don’t always have anything to say. So this way I’ll always have at least one post per day, and maybe that will help me find other things to talk about as well.

February 19, 2004

Random iPod Playlist

This has been going around on a few blogs lately (I found it via Blue Plaid Shirt)… You put your iPod on Shuffle (I always do anyway) then make a list of the first 15 songs, no matter how embarrassing! I don’t think much of my music is that embarrassing, but we’ll see what happens….

1. Cautioners - Jimmy Eat World
2. Holiday - Weezer
3. Lucky - Radiohead
4. Paul - Eminem
5. Magician Manor Mod - Some random techno I downloaded from somewhere
6. Nothing 2 Proove - Roger Sanchez
7. Exchange - Massive Attack
8. Ocean Avenue - Yellowcard
9. Aurora - Foo Fighters
10. Across the Night - Silverchair
11. Here’s your letter - Blink 182
12. O Girlfriend - Weezer
13. Don’t Leave Me - Blink 182
14. You Wouldn’t Believe - 311
15. Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World

There we go… That wasn’t too bad. I actually have 1,500 songs on the iPod, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the “randomness” of the shuffle mode. It always seems to have a preference for Blink 182 and Weezer for some reason. Strange. It picked a couple great songs for that first 15 though… I really like that Silverchair album, Diorama. Good stuff. Then the new Blink 182, which was probably my favorite album from 2003. I really like their newish style. And of course some oldies but goodies like Weezer and Radiohead. :)

Feel free to post your own 15 in the comments or on your own blog, if you are so inclined.

February 17, 2004

OneWord: Switch

My wife’s parents came down to visit this weekend, and her dad helped fix the lighting in our kitchen/dining room. For around 6 months we haven’t had light in either room except for the light above the stove. Turns out we just needed to replace the lightbulbs! Actually one of the lights really didn’t work. But we bought all new lights anyway (the existing ones were old and brown and ugly) and installed them. Now we have so much light we went to buy a dimmer switch so that the light could be adjusted, because it’s just too bright. But it didn’t work, even after trying to install it in every possible way for about an hour. But it is really nice to have all the extra light now… We can actually see what we’re cooking!

February 13, 2004

Honda Element

My wife and I picked up our new car yesterday, a 2004 Honda Element 2WD EX. It’s our first ever brand new car, so we’re pretty excited about it. We traded in the other two, as both had high mileage and were requiring a lot of repairs. Especially my wife’s Jeep, which had major transmission problems. So we figured we may as well get something new and nice that will be very dependable and last a long time.

We wanted a Honda because they last forever and are reliable. And we wanted an SUV so we can haul stuff around for the house, as well as have an easy way to take the dogs everywhere. The Element fit that description the best, as the CR-V isn’t as versatile, and the Pilot is too expensive for us, and too nice to haul stuff in anyway.

The Element has rubber floors and water resistant seats, making it really easy to clean up. I don’t know why more cars don’t have rubber floors… What’s the point of carpet? You always have your shoes on in the car anyway unless you’re on a long trip, so why not have something easier to clean than carpet.

We got the black one like you see in the picture, except it’s the EX model so we have alloy wheels instead of the ones pictured here. I’ll post some pictures of it when I have a chance to take some.

The interior is nice as well. It’s got power everything, keyless entry, cup holders all over the place, cruise, a/c, etc. It has a built-in CD player with a 7-speaker sound system. (a speaker in each door, two tweeters on the dash, and a subwoofer between the front seats, on the console). The sound is pretty good for a factory sound system. I had the volume up all the way the night we got it (the warranty covers blown speakers) and it only had a little bit of distortion. One of my favorite features is the Auxiliary Input on the dash. I can plug in my iPod directly to the audio system, and sit it in a little cubby hole in the dash. Then I just press the Auxiliary button on the CD player and it starts playing the iPod through the speakers. I had this feature in my Integra as well, thanks to an aftermarket CD player, but this is the first car I’ve seen that comes with it standard.

The rear doors open backwards, so they have no center pole between the front and rear doors, which really gives you a ton of room to get in and out of the car with. The only problem is you can’t open the back door without first opening the front. You also can’t close the front without closing the back. But that’s really not that big of a deal, considering the advantages of having all of that space.

The rear seats are removable, or you can fold them up on the sides of the car, kind of hanging them from the ceiling. This blocks out your blindspot almost completely though, and still takes up a big of room. You can also fold down all of the back seats so they are perfectly flat, making a nice bed area for long trips. You can also fold down the two front seats, making the entire interior of the car a bed. It would be great for camping, especially with the extra tent thing you can get to put on the back of the car.

It was raining yesterday so I slammed on the brakes on our street to test out the anti-lock brakes and get a good feel for the car. I could feel the ABS working, and the car didn’t slide at all. Cornering is good as well, I never felt like I was even close to flipping it over.

Overall we’re extremely pleased with it. A lot of people seem to think it’s ugly, but I like it, and even if I didn’t the functionality of it would more than make up for its boxiness. The black makes it look a lot more normal as well. The contrast of the silver (or other color) and the grey plastic panels make it look like it was pieced together from a junk yard.

Of course we’ve only had it for 2 days, but knowing Honda, I don’t expect any problems out of it for a long time.

Update
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention the Honda Owner’s Link web site. You can go to their site and enter the VIN number on your car, and it will tell you all about the specifications of it. It also gives you maintenance tips, a maintenance schedule, a way to contact your dealer, pay your bill online, etc. You can even log every bit of maintenance you do on the site. Every time you get an oil change or tire rotation you enter it on the site, and it keeps a running maintenance history of the vehicle for you. It also emails you with reminders to get oil changes, tire rotations, and more. I think it’s a great idea, and it will definitely help me to remember to do all of the maintenance that needs to be done. The site itself is really well done as well. It’s in tables, but it’s very easy to use and very helpful. Way to go, Honda!

OneWord: Breathing

I love the little pulsating light on my Macs that lets me know they are sleeping. It makes it look like they are calmly breathing as they sleep, all happy and cozy… :) Yes I’m aware it’s just a computuer, but Macs are a whole lot more personable than a Windows machine. You can’t really describe it until you’ve used one for a while. They become little buddies rather than just a computer. Maybe Apple should make a furry model with eyes to make people like them even more. The FurMac.

OneWord

February 11, 2004

OneWord: Late

Late fees are a thing of the past now that I use Netflix, just like the marketing says! It really is quite nice to just queue up the movies you want to watch and have them delivered a couple of days after you send one back. Then you can keep it as long as you want before sending it back for another. There is even a cool little OSX application called Netflix Freak that lets you do even more stuff with your queue and movie renting strategy. If you rent quite a few movies, give Netflix a try. We rent about 3 per week, which would come out to around $54 a month if we rented them from Blockbuster or some other ripoff video rental chain. Hooray for the internet.

February 10, 2004

RSS Feeds

If you happen to subscribe to my RSS feeds, you will notice that I changed it to include the full entry, because it seems like the cool thing to do these days. So sorry if you just got all excited because there were suddenly a dozen new entries in your Newsreader, only to find out you’ve already read them all.

OneWord: Bike

The first bike I remember having was one that I got in Florida while my family visited my grandma. I think she bought it for me. It was a white and red and black BMX bike. I learned to ride it on the flat roads of Florida after my dad put on the training wheels. I rode it a lot, crashed a lot. Had that same bike for years and years until my dad got me a Bridgestone MB6 mountain bike, which was pretty nice. Until it got stolen out of the fenced patio of his condo a few years later. I missed it. Haven’t owned a bike since then. I just can’t bring myself to replace my old MB6… Sniffle… :)

OneWord

February 09, 2004

Firefox 0.8 Released

Mozilla Firebird has been renamed to Firefox, due to trademark conflicts, and updated to version 0.8. They’ve filed their own trademark however, so hopefully this will be the last name for the browser. I downloaded it for OSX and am quite impressed. The new theme is beautiful, very minimal and it really looks like a real Mac application now. It seems a little slower to me than Safari, but is still quite speedy. The download manager is nice, as is the bookmark manager.

The Windows version also now has an installer, which should help a lot with people switching to Firefox from IE. Before you had to manually unzip all the files into a directory, find that icon, make your own shortcuts, etc. Now that it has an installer it will be a lot easier for newbies to switch over. Firefox still looks the same on Windows though. I much prefer the OSX version.

Though a very nice browser and much better than IE, I will still be sticking with Safari on OSX for my browser of choice. The main reason being the Bookmark syncing with my .Mac account. I have an eMac and a 12” Powerbook, and use both quite a bit. With iSync and .Mac I can sync my bookmarks, address book, calendars and todo lists, etc with a single click. Before this I never really even bookmarked anything because I would end up reinstalling Windows or use another browser, and I could never keep track of them. But now I always have my bookmarks with me, so I bookmark everything I think I might want in the future. I can even access the bookmarks from any computer with web access by going to mac.com and logging in (though they aren’t integrated into the browser like with Safari, I just see them on the screen like a web page when I view it from a different browser). If there was a method of bookmark syncing that was that easy with Firefox, I might be more inclined to switch, but for now this feature alone will keep me using and loving Safari.

However if you are using Windows, be sure to download Firefox as it is easily the best browser for that operating system.

February 05, 2004

iChat AV 2.1 and AOL IM 5.5 are friends

Finally, Apple and AOL have both released updated versions of iChat AV and AOL Instant Messenger 5.5, and the video conferencing features of both are compatible with each other! To my knowledge, before today the only instant messenging app that supported cross-platform video conferencing was Yahoo Messenger, and the quality was pretty bad. Besides that, no one uses Yahoo Messenger anyway, so if you wanted to video chat with a Windows user, you had to both download Yahoo Messenger for that purpose alone. Now it’ll be a whole lot easier since iChat users can video chat directly with AOL IM users. I hope the quality is as good as iChat to iChat videoconferencing, which is very very good.

Download the new iChat

Download AOL IM 5.5

Update
I installed the new versions of each software on my Powerbook and the Windows machine here at work and tried it with my USB Webcam, and the quality is definitely not as good as iChat to iChat conferences. It’s not as good as Windows MSN to MSN conferences either. But it’s better than nothing, and it’s nice to have another way to video conference with Windows users at any rate.

OneWord: Formal

I’ve only warn a formal tuxedo 4 times in my life, which might actually be more than a lot of people now that I think about it. One was my mom’s second marriage where I walked her down the aisle. Then I wore a tux to two “banquets” at school (it was a religious private school, so we didn’t have a prom, just a banquet), and once when I got married. I found them to be pretty uncomfortable. It also takes a really long time to put them on and take them off. You have the cufflinks to deal with, then the weird buttons on the shirt, the cummerbund, the weird buckles on the pants… Phew. Glad my normal clothes aren’t so complex.

OneWord