One of my favorite activities to do is take one of the kids to Starbucks for hot chocolate. This past week I took my 4-year old son along. I opened the door for him and he ran straight to the counter and put his chin on it. At eye level was a cookie which he stood and stared at until I decided to get it for him. I ordered us both a hot chocolate and we sat down. His small legs dangled over the chair as he could barely see over the table. He couldn’t have been happier as he munched down his cookie. He reminded me several time that this was “his own” hot chocolate and I was reminded how many times Kim and I ask our three kids to share things. Getting your own drink, dessert, or hot chocolate is a big deal to them.

As we sat there at Starbucks enjoying our drink the song “Mad World” came over the speakers. I’ve liked that song for a while but it was a strange time to hear this song. I thought to myself, “No, being around an upbeat 4-year old makes the world feel far from mad”

Dave Winer links to Jeff Bezo’s Wish List which includes a Darth Vader Lamp among a few other interesting items. I wonder if anyone has come across Jeff’s list, felt sorry for him over the Amazon stock price, and decided to pick up the tab for say, the Hullabaloo game? Probably not.

If I were to interview for a job at Amazon I’d try to find out with whom and see if they have a “Wish List”. Could make for good small talk and would no doubt make the interview more interesting. “Hey, I saw you have the Golden Girls DVD set in your Wish List…..”

I started a new blog just over a week ago called BuzzTips. I wanted to see how the search engines had indexed my blog and see how easy that made it for people to get to my site by typing in ‘buzztips’. Here are a few impressions based solely on this one search:

Microsoft Live Search – Does a pretty good job, listing my blog as the third result. Also links back several times to this blog. Not too bad.

Google – Nails it on the first first result and hits my RSS feeds as the 2nd result. Google’s index also seems the most up-to-date.

Ask – Just terrible. Must have a very tiny index since it finds only 2 pages of results, none of which are my blog.

IceRocket – A mixed bag here. The web search does a great job at finding my blog, as good as Google. But their Blog search finds nothing under ‘buzztips’ where I’d expect to find it.

Doing this quick test reminds me why Google still dominates. Their results are presented quickly, neatly, and feel like they were gathered recently. It’s quite clear that Google’s competitors are happy with merely making their search a near carbon copy of Google’s. Google is setting the design for search for nearly everyone. Only Microsoft Live Search felt any different than the others which I see as a good thing.

What search engine do you use?

To celebrate the return of Jack Bauer, here are a few of my favorite 24 related links.

Dave Barry’s 24 Blog – Hilarious, frequently updated on the fly blog.

Day 6 Motivational Posters – New posters are up!.

Summaries from Season 5 – If you need to catch up before starting this season, this guy provides excellent summaries.

If you miss an episodes (maybe you have a cable company provide POS DVR?) my favorite place to grab them is at TorrentSpy.

Past seasons on DVD from Amazon – Season 1 is still my favorite followed closely by Season 2.

I can’t leave off the Fark.com 24 Discussion thread

Excellent article by Randall Stross describes a few of the ways Apple is locking down the iPhone much the same way they have done with the iPod. I’m not all that interested in the phone since it only works on Cingular’s network, although I do own an iPod. I don’t purchase music from iTunes because of DRM and the music just sounds terrible in AAC format. I’d much rather buy the CD and rip it using a higher quality bit rate.

One of my friends purchases his music from iTunes and then copies it to CD where he can rip it into the format of his choice. That seems like an awful convoluted way to get my music in the format I desire. I like the idea of having a backup CD in case my drive were to crash. I assume I can backup my iTunes folders but the manner and strange folder structure they use is far from being user friendly.

The iPod is a great device. Although I have yet to purchase any iTunes music I have purchased several audiobooks from the iTunes store. My rationale is that, unlike music, I listen to the books once rather than time after time. I don’t need to move the audio books around to my other devices nor do I care if they’re backed up. There doesn’t seem to be a “one size fits all” solution to this DRM mess. For now I’ll continue to purchase CDs and do the ripping myself.

I normally default to buying most things online. There are very few things outside of clothing and food that I don’t look online first to purchase. But this week I was reminded how much value a skilled and informed sales person can provide.

I know very little about cameras and even less about photography. I carry around a Canon A80 that I never take off “auto” mode. In fact, I don’t even know what the modes do for the most part. But one of my coworkers is looking to purchase a digital SLR camera and so I tagged along hoping I might learning something.

So we walked over to the downtown Kits Camera location. We were immediately approached by a young man who asked what he could do for us. He listened to all our newbie questions without making us feel stupid. He didn’t try to sell us the most expensive equipment in the store. In fact, he listened to us for the first little while before even pulling a camera off the shelf. He compared several models and discussed several of the features that might interest us. I learned more about cameras in 20 minutes than I came into the store with. He pulled several models off the shelf for us to hold and test.

We asked him what camera he used and he told us why he likes his camera. He also told us about the camera his father uses. The information he gave us that day was more valuable than what I’ve been able to gather on the many photography enthusiast websites like Steve’s. Not that those sites don’t have value but for a person who is new to digital photography the hands on, face to face interaction was a lot more valuable for me.

I’ve been looking at the Nikon D40 as my first DSLR down the road. Even if I could find it at a cheaper price online I’ll be going back to Kits when it comes time to buy.

I’ve been using Windows Vista since the early beta releases and, for the most part, it’s not given me many problems. I normally leave my computer running but needed to reboot it today. I figured this was a simple task. Surely Microsoft would make this very easy to accomplish.

So I click on the Vista logo in the down in the far left corner and am presented with the following screen. (Click graphic to enlarge)

I believe I’m supposed to select one of the three buttons I’ve gone ahead and labeled. Which of these three buttons would chose to reboot your computer? After a few seconds I chose the prize located behind button #1. But when I mouse over it I receive this message from Microsoft: “Saves your session and puts your computer in a low-power state so that you can quickly resume working”. Well, it sure looked like a POWER button but I guess not. I’m not even sure that that sentence means.

Button #2 actually does what you’d think it would; it locks your computer.

Now here’s where things get interesting. When I click on button #3 I’m presented with a menu filled with another SIX OPTIONS! You’ve got to be kidding. (Click graphic to enlarge)

How many meetings within the Vista group did it take to put this work of art together? I can now do the following:

Switch User – Nice, but not what I’m looking to do
Log Off – Is this like reboot or more like shut down?
Lock – isn’t this what button #2 is for?
Restart – I *think* this is what I need?
Sleep – What?? How is this different from button #1and its “low-power” state of slumber?
Shut Down – Whew! By the time you get this far, you’ll probably want to just shut the thing down!

All I wanted to do was reboot my computer.

I just finished reading an article in this week’s Fortune Magazine where Google design guru, Marissa Mayer, is interviewed. She reviews hundreds of new ideas and is responsible for maintaining the simplicity and ease of use of Google homepage. After watching one review she felt the team had some good ideas but was trying to do too much. She remarked: “If you give users more to choose from, they’ll actually chose worse”.

One of my coworkers has a mantra that he’s done using software products that make him “feel stupid”. That’s how I feel as I try to accomplish one of the easiest task an operating system should handle. Do I really need to decide between nine options when it comes time to reboot my computer.

Microsoft, sometimes you make me feel stupid.

I hate it when simple tasks don’t work. Even more frustrating is when Microsoft makes changes to their products that make it harder for the consumer and easier for the large media companies to slip DRM into ever nook and cranny of our lives.

I popped a legal DVD I received from Netflix into my Sony DVD-ROM drive on my Vista machine and it tells me that I need to update my GRAPHICS drivers due to some DRM scheme on my machine. This is really lame. I need to take a screenshot of the exact error message but it did it a few times before I gave up. I rebooted my machine and now the DVD just hangs for a minute and the drive door opens.

I’m not sure what’s going on but if this is Vista’s way of welcoming me into Microsoft’s vision of DRM on the desktop, I’m bailing out very soon.

Update: I’m still having problems but I’m not sure if it’s Windows Vista. I’m still confused by the error message it gave me about having to update my video card drivers which makes so sense. I tried another couple of DVD and did get them to play. This leads me to believe that it might have something to do with the DVD (Netflix supplied “All the President’s Men”).

I experienced three very different ways companies market and advertise their company and service.

Example 1: A radio ad for a petroleum company where an excited guy pitches this company’s products. Everything sounded fine until the end where he lists off a number of reasons to chose this company. One of the reason’s he gives is a “new company logo”. Initially I thought it was a joke but it wasn’t. I dunno but a new logo is about as effective at getting me to try your products as an “Under New Management” sign is. Not very.

Example 2: Another radio ad. This one for Home Depot although it’s sneaky. This time a guy with a very menacing voice (queue the mood music) tells us about a free seminar we’re all invited to to learn more about how to “earthquake proof” our homes. He goes on to explain that this seminar, held at at Home Depot, will show us how to bolt our homes firmly to the ground. The guys voice and the music make it sound like an old movie where you can tell there’s danger around the corner. It’s so corny sounding but I can elderly people freaking out after hearing this ad. Do you think that any of the products you’ll need to secure your home will be conveniently available for purchase at the Home Depot? I want to attend just so I can ask them if the same stuff is available at Lowes.

Example 3: This last example of creative advertising is my favorite. As I was walking near King Street Station in Seattle I looked up to see an older hotel with yellow brick. On the side of the hotel, in huge letters, was the name of the hotel and then what I assume to be the three primary reasons to chose this hotel above all others:

Great Rates
Modern
Fireproof

Huh? The last time I checked into a hotel I remember asking about the pool or gym hours but have you ever asked the front desk if the hotel was fireproof?

These examples reminded me of the the funny ad in BBC comedy called “The IT Crowd” about the new emergency services number. Here’s the clip.

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