Category: Rants

Facebook and Microsoft

~ rbonini

I was tempted to tell everyone who thought 15 big b’s for Facebook was excessive to look at Google’s $100 Billion valuation at IPO.

But then, it struck me, rather forcefully I might add, that Google and Facebook are completely unrelated in terms of price. Google, despite being mostly a search page, actually gets stuff done. Look at Google Earth, Product Search, Their Wifi  work both in San Francisco and with the FCC with regards to buying that spectrum, Desktop Search, Google Co-Op, Reader, Analytics, and, much, much more. The GooglePlex is a daily gathering of the brightest dev’s on the planet.

Google, in other words, has  plenty of reasons to justify its price tag.

What, pray, has Facebook done?

The question stands, but Kara Swisher beat me to the observation already (albeit from a slightly different angle):

Facebook is not Google: Although many in the tech sector make the comparison to the search giant, it is simply incorrect.

Is Facebook like Yahoo a bit? Certainly. A newfangled version of AOL? Absolutely! A very well done media play with all sorts of interactive bells and whistles hanging off of it? Yes, ma’am.

Indeed, it is growing its media business nicely, with $30 million in profits on $150 million in revenue.

But in comparative terms to the search giant, Facebook is a lemonade stand. Google brought in $3.9 billion in revenue in just the second quarter alone and, um, is increasing its dominance over the search sector in a mighty scary way.

Facebook, on the other hand, gets half its annual revenue right now from a sweetheart guaranteed revenue deal with, drum roll, Microsoft. No matter what either Facebook or Microsoft says, it is a money-losing deal for Microsoft so far.

How do I know this? According to many sources, Google is struggling to make ends meet in its own sweetheart guaranteed ad deal with Facebook rival MySpace, which is much larger, and Google has the best monetization engine out there.

Vista Desktop Manager

~ rbonini

Seriously, you have to ask yourself why Microsoft didn’t think of this:

[via Scott Hanselman]

I think its a testament to the legions of Windows developers the world over who wont take Redmond lack of design inspiration for an answer (compared to an unnamed Computer Company).

Get it here. I am so downloading it.

It also shows how much Microsoft left out of Vista (presumably under pressure to RTM it before it was ready).

Earth to WinFS. Where are you????????? 

Windows Home Server UK Retail (Updated)

~ rbonini ~ 3 Comments

Well. I was about to go on buy the WHS OEM and lo and behold Novatech had sold out. 43 are expected in on 25 September.

I’m not in the mood to wait that long so I headed over to amazon.co.uk ( everyone’s favorite online retailer) and still nothing there.  Annoying. Very, very Annoying.  I figure amazon has more clout than Novatech and could get its hands on a nice pile of packs. There is not even a place holder page. So Amazon had better gets its act together.

I headed over to ebuyer.com. As of this writing 18 are on hand. For £40 more. I wont relate the invective now streaming through my mind. Well…

Anyone know where else I can get this without giving an arm and a leg?

Update: Blue Solutions have 16 coming in this week. I’ve already ordered. Thanks Philip for the tip.

Update 2 (27/09/07): Blue Solutions have already sold all their stock. I’m told they’ll be shipping at the beginning of next week. Which means I’ll finally have my hands on the WHS RTM next week.

Dell Laptop

~ rbonini ~ 3 Comments

Here’s what I got:

Inspiron 6400 Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core T2080 Processor (1.73GHz,533MHz,1MB L2 cache)

Wide Sreen 15.4″ WXGA (1280×800) TFT Display

Memory Dual-Channel 1024MB (2×512) 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Hard Drive 120GB Serial ATA (5400 RPM)

Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software, for Vista only

Battery Primary 9 cell 85W/HR LI-ION

Integrated Intel Media Accelerator 950

Dell Wireless 1390 802.11b/g 54Mbps Mini-PCI Wireless Card, for Dual Core Processors

English – Vista Business

English Microsoft Works 8.0 (Word Processor, Database) with Recovery CD

Not entirely sure about the memory. Last time I played with Vista it took 800Mb sitting idle – no programs running.  But hey, operating an a shoestring budget is never pretty. And I can always use Ready Boost if I need to.

Performance isn’t really an issue. I’ve got all the power I need.

And why on earth do OEM’s insist on putting Works on every damned machine they build. I’ve got  Works installed on the Compaq I got 2 years ago and have never ONCE used it.

And I figured that I might as well get Vista since the service Pack is out soon. And I never really got playing around with the beta beyond admiring the eyecandy.

Delivery date says on or before the 26th. We’ll see.

Windows Home Server and SageTv Update

~ rbonini

( You’ll catch the previous installment here)

Well, after carefully looking at the problem that I originally thought had to do with SageTv, I’ve come to the conclusion that it most defiantly isn’t. It seems to be a problem inherent to WHS (to do with opening backup images). So you can rest easy. this should be fixed in the RTM release, but I can’t be sure.

The next thing is finding a backup time so that SageTv will play nicely with WHS and find my PC’s switched on to backup. Still working on that. Its most probably going to be early in the morning.

I created a network share in the console and told SageTv to dump store all its recordings there.

Overall, it’s great.  Having the ability to have TV on my PC is great. I have BBC News 24 running in a window above the system tray – its way better than a news ticker.

Recording is great. I really dig the  intelligent recording functionality – no more missed ER episodes. I tested it with my second favorite US Comedy after friends – Scrubs. You might want to fiddle around with the Video Codec under Detailed setup. The default SageTv codec was,well, dogs vomit. Since I have Intervideo WinDVD installed locally, I chose their codec and  it was perfect playback. I’ll have to look around the forums to see if there is another fix.

Funnily enough watching the video files was impossible with Windows Media Player or Real player before switching codec, but perfect afterwards. I’m not superstitious so I’ll write that off to chance 🙂 .

The Youtube thing failed to play the files for some reason. And the weather, though it got the info, was displayed horribly.

And if you do buy a license, you’ll need a Media Centre license.

Choosing a Laptop

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

Its back to university in a few weeks and I’m needing a new laptop. Currently I have my eye on a Dell Inspiron 6400:

Processor: Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology: up to Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T7400 (2.16 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB & Intel®  Pro/Wireless 3945 (802.11a/b/g) network connection

Operating System:

Genuine Windows Vista®  Ultimate

Genuine Windows Vista®  Business

Genuine Windows Vista®  Home Premium

Genuine Windows Vista®  Home Basic

Chipset: Intel® 945GM chipset (with Intel®  GMA 950TM  integrated graphics)

Display: Choice of 15.4-inch Wide screen displays in WXGA resolution, WXGA TrueLifeTM resolution

Video Graphics: Intel®  Graphics Media Accelerator 950TM  integrated graphics with up to 224MB shared system memory

Wireless Connectivity Solutions: Integrated Dual-Band (802.11 a/b) antenna. Integrated DellTM  Wireless 1390 (802.11b/g) or Intel®  Pro/Wireless 3945 (802.11a/b/g) network connections. The Dell Wireless 350TM  integrated Bluetooth 2.0 wireless solution is available as optional upgrade at time of purchase only

Battery Life: Be productive for up to 5 hours without re-charging your batteries

Design: Artic Silver and Alpine White design incorporating a 5-1 card reader and front-access multimedia buttons

Memory: Up to 2GB of 533 DDR 2 SDRAM provides for excellent overall system performance

Optical drives: Your choice of CD-RW/DVD Combo drive or 8x DVD+/-RW 2(supports double layer technology)

Software: Microsoft®  WorksTM  including Works word processor, spreadsheet, database, calendar and My Projects organiser

Weight: Starting from 2.8 kg (6.18 lbs) with CD-RW/DVD Combo drive and 6-Cell Battery and integrated graphics

QuickSnap Colour Display (LCD) Back: Choose from four different stylish colours to personalise your notebook

Express card slot: Please note that this system has a ExpressCard slot and support the ExpressCard format only. This system does not have a PCMCIA card slot.

The only thing they forgot is the battery time. Since I’ll be using this to take notes, among other things, battery time is very important.

Any other suggestions?

Thinking about Facebook

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

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Above is Shel Isreal’s Friendwheel of his Facebook Contacts . In the interests of disclosure, I’m not on it. In fact I’m not even on Facebook. And I’m exploring why in this post.

The above picture shows a true social network, pardon the term for a minute. Most people who know Shel know others in his contact list as well.

There are a few hundred contacts here, and it is a reasonable number of people to know and be in contact with. See the difference between being like Scoble who has 5000 people who happen to read his blog and having a shortlist of  “real” people that you know personally and do business with?

If you sit down and consider this for a moment, you’ll see the logic of that statement. We all have  lists of contacts, in Outlook, Messenger, in our Mobile Phones or perhaps written in a phonebook. They are there because we know these people personally and communicate with them often.

Now I would not have the email address and phone number of my readers ( assuming I have regulars who read my blog) on my mobile in Messenger or in Outlook ( actually Google Mail, now).

Why should it be any different on FaceBook???? Why do people add contacts that they’ve never met in person?

 (And Scoble, by the very nature of his work, needs to keep a pulse on the Valley – thus his large contact list. I was just using him as an example)

Now I DO concede the point that this is exactly what happens in business – people exchange cards on a whim in the hope of acquiring business or services from someone else.

Which leads us to the next question? What do you characterize Facebook as? Is Shel’s Facebook Contacts made up mostly of froends, ore mostly of people in the same line of work ( I guess its the latter)? In other words, is Facebook a social of a business contact site?

I ask since Facebook was originally a students only site.

So why am I not on Facebook? Simple. I don’t need to be.

PS. I addition to the above, where does Facebook add value? If its business-oriented how does it do this? If its Socially-oriented, how?

Clean Up

~ rbonini

Norton 2007 took an age and half to complete last night. Took 3 hours and found 1 million files. Whew!!!

Which inspired much frustration since getting work done while Norton is running is rather like sitting in a dentists waiting room 🙂 .

It reminded me of this post from Scott Hanselmann where he suggests the following clean up operations:

Check out your own systems…drop out to a command prompt (cmd.exe) and do:

  • cd %tmp% and cd %temp% – You’ll usually end up in C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~1\Temp.
    • At this point, I like to do the equivalent of a deltree and go up a directory and:
      • cd ..
      • rd Temp /s (it usually won’t manage to delete the whole dir. Someone will have a file open and the final directory deletion will fail)
      • md Temp (in case it was deleted.)
  • Everything in %windir%\temp – There’s lots of Perfmon counters in here, so you won’t be able to delete everything. Often you can del *.* and anything that shouldn’t be deleted is currently open.
  • If you are a developer, and have developed ASP.NET for years/months, clean up %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\ <VERSION> \Temporary ASP.NET Files. I had 4 dozens sites in here.

Tidy up, my friends.

And I’m taking a look at Add/Remove programs to see if there’s anything I don’t need.

Just to get Nortons to finnish faster….

Windows Home Server Updates

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

Well, here’s another update.

The extra  1GB RAM is in and is working its magic on server performance (2Gb in total) .

Next, I’ve got to choose a TV tuner card (details here). And then there is SageTv to install and configure.

I also hear that Diskeeper 2007 has a WHS edition.

Diskeeper automatically keeps all of the hard disks (both internal and external) on your home server defragmented to optimise the speed and performance of the server. Unlike the standard Disk Defragmenter application included in Windows Home Server (and other Windows SKUs), Diskeeper runs as a service in WHS, and continually works on defragmenting your disks whilst the server is idle. Access the server, Diskeeper stops. Server idle? Diskeeper gets back to work so there’s no noticable performance hit whilst it’s running. They call it Invisitaksing.

Sweet. I checked the disks yesterday and most had more than 30% file fragmentation.

 I wrote a quick Vb console app to defrag all the drives automatically (using defrag.exe and the task scheduler), but I’m still testing it and I’ll post the code when I’m done. (its a stop gap, I know 🙂 ). So I’m desperate for Diskeeper 2007 to be RTM’d ( that’s Released To Manufacturing).

The homeserver.com domains are being registered. I just checked and swapped my domain over ( thanks to this reminder ).

And we have estimate retail pricing for WHS. Its a rumor that has yet to be confirmed.

I’m not sure weather to belive the £150 price tag. On the one had its rather cheap given the fact that Vista Home Premium is going for £135 from amazon.co.uk ( Home Basic: £79). On the other hand, it makes perfect sense since this is a product targeted at home users and should be in the same price range. On second thoughts, it also makes sense since people who buy WHS off the shelf most likely have spend money already building their server and won’t baulk at the price tag.

Update to the Update: Philip Churchill of the Ms Home Server blog suggests that it’ll go for £88.74 here in the UK.

Cheeky question time: if you’ve built a home server either for yourself or someone else, does that make you eligible for OEM prices? 🙂