By the time this goes live, I’ll be at a special event that I was asked not to speak about before hand: a lunch with Jim Allchin and members of the Windows Vista team. The invitation was a bit of a surprise, but it’s an honour and I hope I get some face time with the man who drove the Good Ship Vista over the past few years…especially since Allchin has said he’ll be leaving Microsoft after Vista ships. I was initially hoping it would be a really intimate event – half a dozen of us blogger/media types – but I’ve been told it’s more like 25 people coming. Still, that’s not too bad and hopefully there will be an opportunity for some good conversation about Vista.
Why Vegas Causes Me Brain Damage
Las Vegas is, in every way, a trap. The strip and everything on it has been designed to confused, defeat, and ultimately break down everyone so they give up on life and plop themselves into a chair in front of a slot machine. Last night I saw the Bill Gates keynote live, which was pretty cool, but it was also running at the same time as Digital Experience, a special press-only event that I wanted to attend. So, along with Stephen Hughes (and another guy who’s name I’m afraid to say I just can’t remember) we leave the keynote a bit early to get to the Digital Experience event. We were at the Venetian, and the event we were trying to get to was at Cesars Palace. Long story short, it took us around 90 minutes to get there, and we walked. We got lost, turned around, given bad directions, lacked good information from the event planners, and arrived around 9pm hungry, tired, and irritated. I only had a chance to speak with a few vendors, which really ticked me off – this was the ONE event I was really looking forward to because it was so great last year. This year it was much bigger, which made it harder to get through everything…I met a few people and made some good contacts with Sharpcast, Kensington, iGo, HTC, and others. There’s a similar event tonight, dubbed ShowStoppers, that I hope will be just as good – because I’m going to arrive on time and work the room like a PR master!
Youtube Video Test
I’m just testing the combination of Windows Live Writer and a plugin made for it that allows you to easily plug in a video clip from YouTube, MSN Soapbox, etc. It works amazingly well – I had to install the .Net 2.0 framework, which was a faily slow process, but once I had that installed the plugin worked really well – I simply pasted the URL of the YouTube video and this tool created the embedded video quickly and easily. Nice!
Sometimes Things Are Just Too Hard
As much as I love WordPress, I’m stunned at how some of the simplest things don’t seem to work properly, and how no third party developer has stepped up and filled the gap with a simple tool. YouTube videos for example: when I embed them directly into this blog using the code provided by YouTube, the layout breaks and the videos don’t work. I tried one plug-in, and it didn’t work at all. I tried another plug-in, and it worked, but also pulled in all of my recent videos instead of just displaying one. Finally, I looked at this one and it seemed very promising. I installed it, then discovered that my server doesn’t have Curl installed – I use Cpanel, and it’s all automated, so I’m not about to install something new on my server just to use this one plug-in. Why is this so hard? It’s the WordPress plug-in design schema so difficult that no one can create a simple, flexible tool to accomplish this one thing?
Vegas 2007: Day 2
Day two in Vegas was a busy one – here’s my write-up of the conference I was at, and here’s a video clip of what we did for dinner…time to go to sleep for me! The day starts at 7am tomorrow…
Vegas Needs a New Slogan
You know how Vegas has their “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” slogan? Well, I’d like humbly suggest a new slogan: “Vegas: It Would Have Been Better an Hour Ago”. So much of Vegas is buffets, and so many of them are luke warm. In fact, Vegas itself has that luke-warm, re-heated in a microwave kind of way. A bit sad, a bit soggy, a bit re-used. But if you’re drunk, you probably don’t know the difference…
Ticketmaster: What a Scam!
I ordered some tickets for Ashley and I go to see Switchfoot in February, and I was happy to see that the tickets were only $25. I’ve never seen them live, but I dig their music, so it should be a good show. When ordering the tickets, I looked at the price breakdown: the ticket price is $25, but there’s an additional $12.70 in extra charges from Ticketmaster. That’s just over 50% of the ticket price for such dubious things as “convenience charge”, “building facility charge” and “order processing charge”. What a scam. Now I grasp why Pearl Jam went to war with Ticketmaster – they’re truly the mafia of the ticketing industry. I’m all for businesses making a buck, but there’s something very wrong when a ticketing company is charging 50% of the price of the whole damn show we’re going to see. In this era of online orders, PayPal, and other fast and easy methods of transactions, why are bands still using Ticketmaster? Are they really providing that much value? I suspect not.
Vegas 2007: Day 1
Off I go! When waiting in line at security I realized that I had forgotten to leave my Swiss Army Knife USB flash drive at home – I had data on the Flash drive that I wanted to keep, but I knew I couldn’t take the knife with me. So I broke the USB drive portion off the knife, and handed the security guard the knife and asked him to throw it in the garbage. He looked a bit puzzled, and had to go ask his supervisor for instructions. Amusingly enough, the knife is what I received from the last Vista Lab – so maybe I’ll get another one this year. 😉 I initially thought the knife/flash drive combo was a silly idea, but I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve used the pocket knife portion.
I arrived in Vegas a bit later than normal (WestJet was slow tonight, but they’re fun to fly with) and the flight was rocky – when the plane was landing the rear end felt like it was fish-tailing. The airport was dead – hardly anyone was there. The Orleans, the hotel I’m booked into, is so far off the strip that none of the shuttles go there. A $45 town car ride later, I arrived (good thing Thoughts Media is paying for this). A few pictures of the outside…
The hotel is surprisingly large and the room is clean and spacious – and it’s only $100 a night! I guess there are some good deals to be had in Vegas if you’re not convinced you need to stay right on the strip. Tomorrow the Vista Lab starts, and it should be interesting!
Please Dell, Have Mercy on Me!
In my continuing monitor saga, I needed to order two more monitors – earlier in the evening I checked Dell.ca and confirmed that they were still being offered for $699 CAD. At 10:17pm last night, after trying to get that pixel un-stuck and packing up the two defective monitors, I went to order two more. Guess what? The price had jumped back up to $899 CAD! I actually burst out laughing, because it was so comical that after all my efforts that night to salvage one more of the three monitors, I was rewarded with a price jump. It turns out the Dell Web site is on Eastern time (I should have known that, Ontario being the center of the universe in Canada after all) – so 10:17pm my local time was 12:17am Dell time, and the $200 discount was over. Of course, I won’t be defeated that easily! This morning I called Dell to arrange the return of the two defective units – zero hassle. Dell is really great about accepting things back when you’re within those first 15 days. Then I called Dell Online Sales, which is their call centre in India. I spoke to a fell named Abdul, who listened to the basic story (nine monitors ordered in five months, only one good one found) and said he would review my case and phone me back. So I sit here, waiting, hoping that Dell Online Sales will have mercy on me, a poor fool who didn’t realize that on Dell’s Canadian Web site, when it hits midnight at their headquarters in Ontario, that’s the end of the day all across Canada. 😉 I’ll update this after I hear back. Even if Abdul says no, I’ll ask to speak to his manager and continue escalating this.
And for those that are wondering why I haven’t just gone elsewhere for my monitors, the main reason is that I like Dell monitors. I have four Dell monitors in my house now, and with the exception of this ridiculous experience, I’ve had really good results from Dell with their monitors. The $699 price point is also tough to beat – at my local computer store they only have one other 24″ monitor that’s close in price, an Acer that’s $799 CAD. The BenQ is $869 CAD. So for $699, these monitors are impossible to beat. Lastly, at this point my desire to get three perfect Dell 2407WFP’s has attained the status of a holy quest – it’s just something I have to do. And the cynical side of me wants to see how many monitors I have to go through to get three of them that are flawless.
UPDATE: After waiting four hours, I decided to call Abdul back. Turns out he was busy with incoming calls, and when they have a lot of incoming calls, they’re not supposed to call people back. A bit strange. At any rate, he honoured the price of $699 per monitor, I just had to also pay $15 in shipping per monitor. Not a big deal – I’ll pay $15 to learn my lesson of ordering things the second I think I should. Now I wait and see if, when the two monitors show up, they’re actually any better than the others. Come on lucky #10 and #11!
SWAGWATCH: Wine and Dash
Today I received two packages: one was a couriered bottle of wine from my friends at Vaja (that’s a twist tie stopping it from rolling off my desk if you’re curious). Yes, they really are that friendly – they sponsor contests for us all the time, give us anything we want for review, and are amazingly supportive partners all around. And as a Happy New Year gift, they sent me some wine. This particular swag will be opened and consumed at a dinner with friends.
Next we have something on the other end of the scale: it’s not food related, and it’s all gadget goodness. This is a T-Mobile Dash from a press release event that Janak Parekh went to in New York – I was invited, but I wasn’t about to fly down for one event, so Janak went instead. They gave him a Dash to keep, but he didn’t want to use it and switch back to GSM, so he reviewed it for Smartphone Thoughts then sent it to me. Janak doesn’t like lines, so it took him a couple of months to get it in the mail to me. 😉 But now that I have it, I’m pretty excited because I haven’t used one extensively before – and it’s also my first Smartphone with a keyboard (that’s right, I’ve never owned a Motorola Q, Samsung i320, etc.). It’s SIM-locked to T-Mobile’s network though, so I have to get it unlocked – and all before Friday night when I leave for CES.