MS Word on Mac Fundamentally Broken
One of my main clients has insisted that we use Microsoft Word for project document collaboration rather than my strongly preferred Google Docs. But of course the client is always right, so I'm adapting.
But tonight I spent an hour longer than I needed to spend editing a document that required substantial modifications. Word on Mac OS X just seems to lose its mind from time to time. I lost substantial work three different times when all of the menus in Word -- dropdowns and ribbon-based -- just started showing blank contents. All other apps running at the time were fine. I'd try Command-S to save a document and get an absolutely blank dialog box in the middle of the screen. It was just plain weird.
On other occasions, text entry slowed to an absolute crawl. I'd be typing 5-10 words ahead of what was displaying on the screen while the disk thrashed.
I've been avoiding using MS Office products as much as possible for the past several years and now I understand why. They just don't work reliably.
Tim Thomas is a Jerk
Yeesh. My headline expresses my thoughts but so does this parenthetical remark by the writer:
(Is it any wonder that the country is so politically fractured when a bunch of guys can't agree to just get together and talk sports?)
Life is Easy and Light
Check out this delightful video of a TEDx presentation from a guy who speaks from the heart about the equation between simplicity and freedom, and between freedom and the easy, light life.
Blazing Fast Worldwide Internet on Near Horizon
The UN body responsible for setting standards for the international use of the radio spectrum has signed off on specs that promise to create a whole new Internet experience. The new standard, dubbed IMT_Advanced, is commonly discussed as "true 4G". It provides the bandwidth and protocols to support data transfer at 100 times the speed of today's fastest 3G systems.
Speculation is that it will take two more years for this new standard to reach deployment to the consumer. It's likely to happen much faster because one of the cell phone providers will jump on this with both feet and start implementing and deploying it, forcing its competitors to accelerate their plans as well.
Supporters say that this speed is so high that there will be literally no visible delay from the time of requesting a Web page and having it show up on the 4G-enabled device.
Hey, Apple! Give Me Back My "Save As..."!
Sometimes I look at a user interface decision someone's made and scratch my head, wondering what in the world they were thinking. On rare occasions, that "they" is Apple.
My case in point today is Apple's TextEdit, the free generic text processor Apple includes with every Macintosh they sell. It's a far-above-average text editor and processor with some pretty nifty features packed into its small, free space.
But with one of the recent upgrades -- I think it came with Lion but I'm not 100% sure -- Apple removed the "Save As…" file option. It used to be that I could save a copy of an existing text document by selecting "Save As…" from the File menu and giving the file a new name and optionally a new location.
Not any more. In the latest revs of TextEdit, the old "Save As…" option has been foolishly replaced by a "Save a Version" choice. Selecting this option saves the current document with its current name in the folder where the original is stored. But despite its tantalizing promise of version control, this option simply overwrites the older version. In other words, it's identical to "Save".
Meanwhile, if I really want to save a copy of the file under a different name, I can't use "Save As…" (not available) or "Save a Version" (overwrites the current copy). Rather I have to take the non-intuitive step of choosing "Duplicate" from the File menu. This creates an identical copy of the present document in a new window. At that point, TextEdit will allow you to "Save…" the new document but it's at the expense of extra mouse-clicks and/or keyboard presses. Not at all intuitive.
Apple? I want my "Save As…" back.
Amazon's New Auto-Scaling DB Solution Looks Hot
Amazon just announced its new DynamoDB Web service that claims to enable database back-ends to Web apps to scale rapidly and smoothly, which, if true, would solve a problem a great many developers face.
This could be a very important development. I have at least two clients who will be taking a very close look in the next few days.
Eli Manning Has the Flu. Bad New for Giants ((tag; Sports, Football, 49ers))
Press reports indicate that New York Giants QB Eli Manning left practice early today with the stomach flu.
If that's true -- and I don't put anything past NFL owners and managers -- then Manning will be debilitated and either missing practice or working an abbreviated program for two or three days. This is Wednesday. If he doesn't recover much of his strength before Friday, this could really hurt him coming into Candlestick Park for Sunday's NFC Championship game.
I never wish ill or injury on anyone and this is no exception but a tiny corner of my mind licks its lips in anticipation of any reason the Niners can get to support optimism before the big game Sunday.
No, the Problem Is You Have a Cause Nobody Supports!
I get such a chuckle when knuckleheads issue press statements that confirm what they're trying to deny or, worse yet, just miss the point.
Today comes this gem;
“The problem for the content industry is they just don’t know how to mobilize people,” said John P. Feehery, a former Republican leadership aide and executive at the motion picture lobby.
No, Mr. Feehery, the problem is that your cause is one nobody is going to mobilize around unless they are content providers interested in maintaining archaic ideas about how to do business in an Internet-dominated 21st Century. It wouldn't matter if your clients were the most savvy social networkers on the planet; those who are fans of their products are not going to support things like the two ridiculous bills pending in the U.S. Congress these days to protect their intellectual property. And that audience will never be a fraction as large as the number of Internet users who see their freedom as of overriding importance.
The answer isn't to try to figure out how to mobilize millions of supporters. The answer is to figure out how to publish and price your content on the Net with a win-win model. You're the creative ones. Figure it out.
Wikipedia Blackout Ill-Advised, Wrongly Targeted
Wikipedia has announced that it will black out the English-language version of its hugely popular site tomorrow in protest of pending legislation in the U.S. Congress that would, in their mind and the minds of millions of others, open a wide door to censorship of the Internet.
I am in complete agreement and sympathy with Wikipedia's position but I think they could and should have found a smarter way to demonstrate their opposition. By blacking out the site, they inconvenience millions of users, a minuscule number of whom are government employees of any stripe. What makes them think the firmly ensconced, well-trained corporate cronies who occupy legislative seats in D.C. will notice or care?
Instead, they could have:
- rerouted all incoming traffic to a page explaining the pending rules and why they oppose them, thus educating without interference;
- replaced the top half of all pages with an explanatory black banner (larger than the one they have on their site today to warn of the blackout) so users would get the same message but still be able to scroll to their content;
- selectively blocked only DC-area IP addresses (I know that's not 100% feasible or effective, but I bet they could figure out how to have a big impact that way on folks who are actually the idiots making the decision).
In addition, several of the 6,000+ comments on the Wikipedia page announcing the blackout suggested that Wikipedia needs to deal with the real problem: an increasingly restrictive U.S. government that seems to be operating more and more from fear and which might well impose well-intentioned more draconian measures in the future. Wikipedia needs to divorce itself from the United States and its rapidly disappearing ideals of freedom.
I'm sure there are many other ways they could have found to make their feelings known without cutting out millions of school kids, college students, researchers and journalists who rely on Wikipedia to do their work. (Oh, and I'm not one of those, so this has no real impact on me personally.)
Adobe Provides Worst Technical Support Ever on Overpriced Software
Adobe behaves inexcusably in what they jokingly call "support" and should call "interference and obfuscation."
This afternoon for the first time in some time, I tried to run Photoshop Elements 6. On launch, it gave me an error message that said my licensing had stopped working for this product and I needed to restart my machine. That made no sense but I did it anyway. Re-launch. Same issue. So I go to my Adobe account, find that app, redownload it, uninstall the original and re-install fro the new DMG file.
Launch. Same issue.
At 3:45 p.m., after an hour of fiddling, I finally called their support line. After going through all the ACD steps, I was asked to request a callback which would stake place between an hour and three minutes and an hour and 22 minutes.. I waited until 5:40 and tried again. This time I was told the wait time would be 31-42 minutes and was placed on hold with no option of a callback (which is just as well, obviously).
While I was on hold, I did some rummaging around their support forums and found that this kind of issue can be fixed with an app they have called something like LicenseRepari. I downloaded the app and followed the instructions (which included -- are you ready for this user-friendly idea? -- launching Terminal and running a Python program!). No matter what I tried, the Python app refused to run or give me any feedback.
At 6:30 I didn't have a response so I hung up and went home, thinking this is the worst support for an overpriced (i.e., Adobe) product I've EVER experienced.
Two hours after my original call, I got a callback but by then I was no longer in my office. Still, I tried to see if the support person could help. After arguing with me about what should work, he asked me what OS I was running. I told him Mac OS X 10.7.2. He says, "Photoshop Elements 6 doesn't work with Lion."
So Adobe gives me an absolutely bogus error message, sends me down a two-hour rabbit hole chasing a solution that wouldn't have worked in the first place, and then provide garbage support as an added bonus.
I'm done. I will never buy another Adobe product and I'm going to start now searching for replacements for the crap I already own from them. They've bilked me out of thousands of dollars over the years but this ends it.
