One of Gmail’s strongest features is its conversation-style e-mail threads. E-mails with the same subject are grouped onto one page and listed back-and-forth like an instant message conversation. Other steps are taken to make this presentation very friendly and simple such as removing all e-mail headers by default and displaying a person’s proper name rather than their e-mail address.

One problem is in how it addresses you. Or me? Or the reader? E-mails you receive are labeled “Al Pacino to me.” I’m going to say that using “me” is wrong. It should be “Al Pacino to you.” Gmail should be addressing me. When I read a novel written in first person, I don’t think that the main character is me. I think that someone else is telling a story. When you read my website, you are not fooled into believing that you are reading your own journal. Thus when Gmail uses the word “me” to address me, I wonder whose e-mail I’m actually reading.

I will save for later my problems with ATM machines referring to themselves with “I” (Especially the one in Times Square with the message, “Sorry, I’m out of money! It’s been a crazy day!” Not made up.)

Tags: computers

Much like any computer snob, I crave speed. Gigahertz is a point of pride. When I got my first G4 tower three years ago, I had the fastest machine in the known universe. 733 MHz G4. This status held for several months and I definitely walked a little taller back then. But this story is an old one, and my CPU ego fell sharply over the last three years. By the time I watched Garrett cart home his new G5, I was feeling a bit ancient. The real kicker was when I bought iLife and noted that the minimum processor supported by iDVD of all things, was a 733 MHz G4. iDVD! The program that first shipped inside my computer! My computer, the first computer in the known universe to ever ship with a DVD burner!

*The known Macintosh universe that is.

Post continues, click to read more...

Tags: computers

Just got this fun little e-mail:

“GOT YOU”

If you were dumb enough to open this email then you will find a WORM has executed itself through your mailboxâ? and by the time you read this into your hard-drive. This is PAYBACK for the Virus you disguised in the email you sentâ? 
to us recently which destroyed our hard-drive and back-up system. This costs us thousands of dollars and we lost a lotâ? of irreplaceable files on our system.

Now it’s your turn to have your computer infected. This WORM it is undetectable by AntiVirus software and it willâ? drive your computer crazy because it’s always hiding and causing havoc in your system. Using your computer recovery disks will not remove the problem cause it still stays on your computers Motherboard. This will proabably cost you a new computer and I sincerely hope this teaches you a lesson not to send peopleâ? nasty viruses again.

—+Start=AutoExecute+WORM--

If this is somehow real, they’ll be happy to know that I’m running OS X. If it is not real then it’s a pretty lame attempt at spooking the computer illiterate. Neither of which work on me, thankfully, though they will be pleased to note that I felt quite spooked by the terrible grammar. Shudder. Mission accomplished, guys.

Tags: computers

It’s official.

QuarkXPress: Worst. Program. Ever.

*It should be noted I’m a few versions behind on Quark but still. Christ almighty it blows.

Tags: computers

I have no idea why anyone would think you are entitled to free Wi-Fi. As if because it’s free of wires it should be free of charge. I think it’s fantastic that Starbucks is offering the service in the first place. Starbucks decided that it wanted to offer Wi-Fi in its stores. It went to T-Mobile and said, let’s make this happen. Do you think T-Mobile gave them all of the gear for free? No way. Adding Wi-Fi service increases their overhead. It costs them money. If they did give it away for free the price of the drinks would have to go up.

If they had determined that offering free Wi-Fi would draw enough people such that they’d make enough extra money to cover their costs and increase their profit, they would have done so. But think about the kind of people bringing their laptops to Starbucks. They buy one coffee for $2.00 and take up a seat for two or three hours. If the service were free, all the seating would be taken up by people who are not buying much, if anything at all. That just doesn’t work. Not to mention that they’d be providing free Wi-Fi to the stores adjacent to Starbucks. Maybe I’d prefer to use Starbucks leaked Wi-Fi in the restaurant next door and give them my business.

The market determines prices. If a competitor started offering free Wi-Fi then Starbucks might too. The free Wi-Fi you are seeing popping up here and there is being paid for by someone. The free Wi-Fi I experienced was a trial, determining whether they could make money charging for access.

The future will bring changes, though my theory is that those that predict Wi-Fi will spell the end to paying for the internet are wrong. Rather, getting free Wi-Fi now is similar to downloading MP3s in 1996. Once it becomes more widespread, business models will change. ISPs will wise up. Wireless will cover the whole country, but you will pay for it. Rather than pay such and such a month for internet at home, you’ll pay that same fee but be able to access the internet anywhere.

Bottom line is that I don’t understand the hostility towards Starbucks. Why should they give you anything for free? Because they make money? So doesn’t every other business. Nothing is free. (Except for napkins and extra whiped cream.)

Tags: computers

So I’m sitting outside the Fox News Building while waiting for a meeting. I have my laptop with me so I take it out to do some writing. On a lark I check my Airport menu. I do this all the time and nearly never find local wireless networks but voila, there they were, three wireless networks. So I chose one. It actually routed me to a webpage that explained why this particular group of people were offering free internet. I accepted some terms and conditions that I didn’t read, which probably gave them the right to photograph me and sell it to www.hotshavedheadandgoateeaction.com, and I was on. Wireless internet sitting on your couch is one thing. Wireless internet sitting on the side of the street is, how do you say, a whole bunch cooler. I am probably spraying my MovableType password all over Manhattan, but so be it. It could only produce more frequent posting.

I suppose this will get more and more prevalent, but for now it’s a novelty that I will share. Now, what the hell? This guy just sat next to me on the bench. A whole god damned bench and he’s practically sitting on my lap. Why oh god why?

*Wardriving is the term for cruising through a city, seeking out public and private wireless access points.

Tags: computers

My heavens I have a new toy. Painter 7 by Procreate. It arrived today and I’m only just now installing it and giving it a spin. Perhaps you are asking yourself, “Why would Shawn spend $400 on a piece of software that is for no other purpose than messing around?” Ah ha! Good question. My tablet came with Painter Classic, a fine free program but very limiting in it’s brush options. Not being able to have pressure affect size was a really huge drawback. I would hold Painter at the Apple store, hugging the box and drooling, checking the price tag ($400), hugging some more, rechecking the price tag (still $400). It was a trivial gizmo I knew I couldn’t afford. Long story short, a month after acquiring the tablet I discovered a flyer in the box advertising the full version of Painter for $150 if you owned an Intuos. Five minutes of contemplation and a slightly larger credit card debt later, Painter 7 was on the way. I really can’t even afford the reduced price tag for something that is mostly useless in any practical sense, but the savings alone just called to me. I finally understood some womens’ rabid addiction to clothing sales. It’s not the actual price it’s how much you save.

Anyhoo, enjoy my first five minutes with the program [dry media 1, 2 - watercolor] – It should be noted that the stylus/Painter combo does not help you to be a better artist, as I am equally inept at watercolors in Painter as I am in real life.

Tags: computers

The buzz going around is that Intuit’s TurboTax installs spyware that doesn’t allow you to pirate a copy of TurboTax, and as a result can cause the software to stop functioning even if you’ve done nothing wrong (here and here and here for more info).

This might cause some to consider TaxCut. I will recount for you my experience with TaxCut from last year.

Around the beginning of 2002 I started thinking about how I would do my taxes, 2001 being the first year that I made enough money to be taxed. The hip thing to do seemed to be to use TurboTax but no, I wanted to be a little different. A little hipper a cat than the rest. Considering a glowing Macworld review and a $10 cheaper pricetag, I bought TaxCut.

What a steaming pile of vomit it was. One of its big highlights was being “The First OS X native tax program!” Apparently the programmers didn’t have a working copy of OS X or any Macintosh whatsoever to test it on. It felt like a bunch of Mac hating PC nerds bought a copy of some O’Reilly “Carbon is Easy!” book, slopped some code together and sent it directly to the duplication house. There was no way this software had been beta tested. This was pure prerelease alpha.

Every interface element was drawn incorrectly. Clicking a radio button, for example, moved said radio button about a centimeter to the left and drew it in a completely different style and size (covering important text while it was at it). Tabbing from field to field didn’t work. Oh, and also, it notoriously crashed. About halfway through a section, it would just *blink* disappear. Crashed. Ho ho! No autosave feature either! Another cool feature was that every time I saved, a save dialog came up. Typically this is only needed after the first time, but no, good ol’ TaxCut let me choose a new name and destination each time. Yay! (and yes, I’d have to tell it to replace the old one).

The funness continues! Once you’re done with the tax form, TaxCut checks it for errors. Oh, it would show you where the errors were all right. But you couldn’t change them! No matter how many times I entered a value into the “2001 income” field, it would forget it. Maybe if it were “business expenses” or “property taxes” I could have let it just slide, but my feeling was that the IRS probably cared to know my annual income.

Mind you I was using the most up-to-date version on April 14th. Finally I said “Fuck You” to TaxCut, kicked something and used Ellie’s PC running TurboTax to flawlessly complete my taxes in about 30 minutes.

So I don’t know where that leaves me now. I certainly won’t ever buy TaxCut again (and I urge you to avoid it as well) no matter how good they may make the 2003 version. I don’t like the idea of spyware, though perhaps this might be a case where Mac software negligence becomes a benefit (does the spyware app run on a Mac?)

No, this year I will pay someone to do my taxes. Though I don’t believe I should have to pay anything to do my taxes. If the government feels it necessary to take my money without asking, they should cover any expenses incurred in completing them. “Why don’t you just do them yourself?” The idea of spending even a second figuring out how much money the US government should steal from me this year makes me nauseous.

Tags: computers