Where Is My Trashcan?

Today is Vista day - yes you read correctly, I installed Vista (Business Version) on one of our QA Testing PC's to see if our games will make it or not. First of all I must say, the installation process was a bit weird and when I am not a technical guy - I am sure Vista would not work now. Microsoft has many problems in telling the user whats next or whats happening. They simply show a black screen or they even dont tell me if I need to remove the DVD or not. When I first put in the DVD and start my PC it took a really long time to show this new blury backdrop from Vista. But than... nothing.. no "please wait", no sand clock - only this screen with the nice arranged pattern in green and blue and a lonely mouse pointer. Even my harddrive was not working or the DVD LEDs. This is not customer friendly - it is simply crap! After another wait for about ca. 5 minutes or so - the DVD woke up and the first Vista Screen appeared... I took a look at the clock to see how long it will take til the end. One hour later Vista was installed without any problems - ehhh? No problems? Well, what a surprise - there were no single problem during the installation - this can't be ok, or?. Ok, the sound driver was not working - but after a first automaticly update - Vista installed the driver in the background without any trouble.

Than I start playing around with the new interface - neat - clicking here and there - and drag my Trashcan to the bottom right corner - as I do it on all my machines. Why in the bottom right corner? - well - don't know why - I simply do it - but I know that only 1% of the Windows Users does it - because it is normaly a Mac position for the trash. Well perhaps this is the reason why Microsoft didn't test it. Because I found a crazy bug. You all know that Vista has this nice sidebar with this widgets things. When I draged my Trashcan to the bottom right corner - it was placed inside or below the sidebar - I didn't thought about that this could be a problem - but it seems a problem - because from now on - I couldn't move the trashcan and the worst scenario - MY TRASHCAN HAS NO ICON MR. GATES! I bought a new product and there is no Trashcan Icon in this Version of Windows Vista Business - I can't believe it. Even a restart didnt change anything. See the image below - *note: "Papierkorb" is the german word for Trashcan :)

btw. the best error message so far: "Please make sure that you use Internet Explorer 4 or above!"



windows vista trashcan

150K

I can remember when I send Mike Arrington an email, congratulating him for his 50K readers on his blog TechCrunch - this was on the 5th May 2006. Now only 8 month later he has tripple the amount of readers! Congrats again Mike! I wonder if it is a cash counter for online ads too ;)

mike+arrington techcrunch 150k

Tags For Windows Vista On Amazon

Today I got another newsletter from Amazon to buy Windows Vista! Well I don't want to do it because I heard only negative things about it. Anyway, Amazon get me to click on the link again and I took a deeper look at the product page of Windows Vista Home Premium Edition - yes, the one in the green stylish box with the round corner. I scrolled down - and searched for Customer Ratings but couldnt found any - in Germany there are very funny cusomer ratings about Vista. Than I found the tagging feature of Amazon where customers can tag this product - want to know which tags are listed for Windows Vista? Here are the tags - enjoy :)

defectivebydesi gn (14) drm (7) overhyped (2) overpriced (2) defecivebydesig n (1)

defective by design (1) garbage (1) junk (1) make it big (1) rugbyfan (1)

trash (1) useless (1) vista (1) windowsvista (1) yuvi (1)

Google To Sell E-Books

According to the Sunday Times, Google is working on a plattform for selling E-Books to customers. Jens Redmer, Director of Google Book Search in Europe says, that Google is working on a system that makes it easy to buy complete books or only some parts of a book to use it on a PDA or Personal Computer. He also says that it will be possible that you can rent a book for a limited time - ex: travel books. The Plattform is planned as an add on to Google Book Search. Publishers like Penguin, HarperCollins, Oxford University Press und Simon & Schuster are participate on this project.

google book search ebook e-book websquirrel

Google On Their Way Into new AdSpaces?

Is Google interested into AdScape Media a company that is offering ads in video games? According to an article in Wall Street Journal, Google is in talks with Adscape Media Inc., a San Francisco company whose technology allows for the delivery of advertising over the Internet and placement within videogames. Sources say, a deal could be reached as early as next week. An acquisition could allow Google to offer the hundreds of thousands of advertisers who currently buy online ads through its system to also buy ads that appear within games.

google adscape ads games videogames

Is Your PC Ready For Windows Vista?

I don't want that this blog will be an Apple vs. Microsoft blog - but when you read my blog on a regular base you know that I like Apple and more and more dislike Microsoft and my PC - because I have a lot of problems with my baby. Ok, as some of you also know - I am running a game development company and thus we need to manage to get our games running on the new Windows Vista - we need to install and work with Vista on our testing PC's - because you can't install simple apps on Windows Vista - no,no. Ok, today I took a look on what version we need for our testing PCs. When you want to buy a new OS from Microsoft you can't simply buy "the" OS - you need to decide which OS version you want, need, can get. Is it the basic version or basic N or Business or Business N or Home Premium or even "ULTIMATE"? - I ask myself: what could be bigger than Ultimate - perhaps Power Ultimate? Don't know.

Do get a simple overview what you need for a version - Microsoft has a small software - called "Upgrade Advisor" - that do a scan on your local harddrive and checks all software and hardware - and than show you a summery (In my case a big problem summery) - what hardware you have, what hardware will not work with the new Vista, what software needs to be removed before you upgrade, what software you need to upgrade before your install Vista and for which hardware the test couldn't find any information.

My summery on my first PC, where I did run the "Upgrade Advisor", was really sad and disapointing. I have one device that will not work with Vista, 9 devices that will probably not work or couldn't gather any information about - means "we can't garanty anything" and 4 programms that will not work with Vista or must be removed before installing Vista (one of these is "MSN Explorer" and "MSN Messenger" - isn't that from Microsoft?).

I can't wait to install Leopard!

Be Prepared!

Today I got a funny ad from a very famous book online retailer that you can interpret like you want. It says "Be prepared for Windows Vista" and list a number of books to get started with Vista. Well, isn't it a bit weird when you need a bunch of books for running a new OS?

I can't wait installing Leopard!

windows vista leopard books

A Closer Look At Apples iPhone

Mike Top, Paris Catch Up, Robert Flop

Remember my post about BuzzVote the day before. Today I took a look at the results of my created poll and it seems that Mike can beat Paris with some thin percent and Robert will loose the race. :) I am interested how the poll will perform the next weeks.

Wanna vote to turn the results: click here.



mike+arrington robert+scoble buzzvote

Why I Like The New iPhone

As I heard a year ago that there are rumors about an Apple iPhone something - I was impressed and lucky. Because I knew that it will be a ground breaking thing and it will be different than any other device on the market. Since 2002 I am working in the mobile game business and I know a lot of mobile devices, new models, what are there advantages and what not. Since mobile devices getting bigger attention I am looking for a device that really helps me to manage my every day work things when I am not in the office. This is of course mainly mail including opening documents and contacts as well as calender. I looked at a lot of phones out there and we have hundrets of phones for testing in our QA department to make our games running on all those babys. This range from the small ones up to the bigger ones. But when I make a summery on all those phone capabilities I agree with Steve Jobs that they are not that smart and also not that easy to use. Especely when it comes to mail, some phones only allow one email account, the other phone doesnt allow to download only the headline - so you get a 3MB email on your phone - very nice, other phones have a crap mail configuration - when you dont have a business line phone, other phones took really long to start the mail app, not every phone supports IMAP and so on... Overall - every phone that I tested failed in some part. There are sometimes really small things that make me unhappy on a phone. Ex. my Nokia that can be closed by a slider don't lock the keypad automaticly when close the slider - I ask me "why that"? You need to setup it on two different menus to make it working - bad idea!
Apple is doing again a step into the right direction - knowing what customers want and knowing how much they want to be a tech geek or not - I am a developer as well but when it comes to all day usuability of technical things that I need for my work I want it easy and super simple to work. I think we are all tired of technical devices that I need to configure 2 hours before I can start. The ideas that Apple put into the new iPhone are simple when you look at them in a single view - but overall put together they make a perfect device with a fantastic user interface - and thats whats importand.

apple iphone steve+jobs websquirrel

What Do You Like?

I recently stumbled upon BuzzVote, a little nice free Web Application where you can invest hours and hours of your free or work time to vote for things that you like or not. You can vote for your favorite stlye of peanut butter, you decide wether you like ice cream in a waffle or in a cub or decide if you like Porsche or Mercedes . BuzzVote lets you easily create your own votes with an easy setup. You can sign up in less than a minute and you don't even need to provide your email address.

After sign up you can start with the creation of your own vote by providing a question, type of poll and some privacy setting. You can choose between public, members or friends only to see your vote. The type of poll ranges from single items (simply yes or no), multiply positives (which one do you like most) or multiply negatives (which one do you hate most).
After choosing type of poll and privacy you can upload images or search for images in the database of BuzzVote for images that you can use in your poll. Depending on your poll type you need to upload different images and need to add different result types. The all over process is very easy to handle and its lots of fun. I got my poll designed in 2 minutes. At the end you get a link to your vote that you can send to your friends. BuzzVote is really fun and worth a try!

Wann see my own created BuzzVote - you can see it here :)

Btw. the best thing I forgot - you can put your poll on every website either in a flash or javascript version.

buzzvote, vote, poll, websquirrel

There Is One More Thing...

Oh my god I am nervoes - only some hours to go to see the keynote from Steve Jobs at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. I whish I could be there but I can't - so I can only wait for a livestream somewhere - does anybody know if there is some livestream available - please drop me a mail - or I need to wait until the Apple folks put it on the Apple Website - which can take some time - as I saw it last year. Ok there is still a solution by reading live bloggers - but I think it's better to see it instead of reading it and hit the reload button of your browser every 10 seconds to grab the next piece of text the editor types in...

The Application Browser

Before all that Web2.0 things started and techcrunch.com was an available domain name - I said to a friend of mine that it would be cool to have a sort of application browser with all your software that you need for your all day work or free time. What is an application browser? Well, my idea was that you only have a computer with a fast internet connection and a small browser with only some bookmarks and a url. Not like the browser that we use today - something different. Than you can enter a url or name of software that you want to use and a software package that you want to use - or parts of it - will be downloaded and start on your computer so that you can work with it. Instead of downloading HTML and stuff - the application browser is downloading small code segments and starts the application or parts of the application right after download. Also your complete data is on a virtual harddrive somewhere. I know applications in a html internet browser are very popular at the moment but I think there is a next step and we will have applications that will completly start and run over the internet and you will start them by simply clicking on an icon on your desktop.

Google Docs & Spreadsheet Still Not Working

Ok, today we have Monday, announced on Google Spreadsheet Group as maintenance day. I still can't save my documents - it says "Saving..." but nothing happens - wonderful! My lost document is still lost and the best thing - I see a document on my dashboard that is not a document from me - what the hell is that? Is my missing document now at someone else Docs & Spreadsheet dashboard. Wouldn't it be great to close the service during maintenance and display the Google Pac Man Game - but I think I repeat myself. To be continued...

Screen Names Make Me Go Crazy

Today I signed up on 2 different services which I wanted to test. At the end it took me half an hour to find a free screen name for one of the services. No, there was not suggestion button and I always needed to type in the "Are you human?" crazy numbers in the colored image. I typed in nearly 50 or more different names including number and letter combinations and none of them was available - some names were that weird that I can't understand why they are always taken. What we all need for all those nice services on the web is a global screen name system incl. a password remember database. How many passwords and logins do you have?

Google What's Up?

I know, updates are a must to applications and web applications can be updated as often as you want. But what I see at Google at the moment don't make feel good. Today I can't work with Google Docs & Spreadsheet - I can't save documents and I lost one of my documents because the saving did not work. There are many others on the Google Groups Page that have similar problems with the service. I know it is a beta service and I know that there is a need for updates but what I also know is, that it is easy to create a simple html page that says: "Sorry, we are in maintenance mode - check back soon"! I don't like it when they are working on things in the backoffice and I try to work on my docs. I had the same problem with Gmail and Blogger some days ago. Google: Why not put a simple message screen on the site to say that there is a problem and you will be back at a later time - why not create a service shedule where everbody can see when you do a maintenance break - it's damn easy. The result out of this is that I am not feeling good anymore when I edit a document in Docs & Spreadsheet and I think I am not the only one!

UPDATE: I know there is a maintenance post in the Google Groups - but it says Monday Evening - do we have Monday evening already?

And Booom....

I Am A Switcher!

I have two PC's for my all day work and I have an iMac - the older one - and a newer iBook - which is usualy used by my girlfriend. I am using my iMac around 30% and only for some small coding and iTunes. Now the new year has arrived I made a decision to switch for 100% to a Mac because I am not interested to install Windows Vista and to invest into a new PC with Ion Power Supply to run it. I am also not happy with Microsoft anymore, their software isn't innovative, there product policy is not acceptable, I don't like IE7 and the fact that it will be installed by default when you run update, I don't like that FireFox can't be turned as default browser on Vista and I don't like it when I install a new Software and after the installation I got an error box that it can't run because there is a file or something missing - I have that a lot of times and I hate it - I wan't to work with my Computer and don't want to be an expert in Computer Technology. I also will switch to OpenOffice instead of purchasing the newest fresh fantastic MS Office Premium Ultra something - yes, the one that runs only on the Ion Power Supplied PC with a ton of Ram - man, I only want to write a letter and do some Sheets - btw... I hope Steve will tell us something about Sheets on his upcoming Keynote.

First of all I thought - I can't do it - because some software is not running on a Mac. But than I made a list of software that I use on my PC and at the end I saw that only the Accounting Software is not available as a Mac version. All other Software can be replaced by either open source software or 100% Mac Versions of the PC Version - ex: Photoshop. I am very happy about that because now I can switch :) I also found out that coding with XCode on a Mac is great fun and easy - I love it. So, please prepare for some Mac Apps coming soon ;)