Code and Coffee

I was introduced to spicypage a couple days again, and for some reason I was immediately drawn in. The site is designed very well, and is easy to use. spicypage takes the idea behind Digg, and applies it to actual websites. At first I thought it would be a have for spam submissions, but after a half hour of browsing I found out I was wrong. spicypage was faounded in September of 2006 but launched on January 6th of 2007, and appears to be attracting more users every day.

SpicyPage lets you post, comment on , vote on, share your favorites sites or blogs with your friends and others like you. SpicyPage is a new way of web-ranking solution to determine the best sites or blogs, 100% powered by its members. Discover and bookmark the new and the best sites/blogs out there and connect with people of the same interest as you. 

No, I wasn’t impressed with the Macworld announcements this year, but one thing that had me blown away was the technology behind Steve’s keynote. Apple has an unbelievable ability to make products attractive to users, make products easy to use for users, and put on a show. Take a look at the video of the iPhone demonstration during the keynote, I’ll wait… notice anything remarkable? The most impressive thing I noticed is the seamless display between the phone that Steve has in his hands, and the projection on the stage for the audience to view. I have no clue how they are doing this, but anyway I can think of it’s really impressive.

For starters, we can rule out a camera. The iPhone on the projection has no background on it, it’s a crisp and clear interactive view of the iPhone. One way they could be accomplishing this, is by faking the display that’s shown to the user. Not sure, but even if they were doing this they have the timing down perfect and they must have rehearsed it a thousand times. They could also be using a demo unit, that has some extra code to send the signal to eventually be show on the projection. I can only imagine the extra work that was put into the keynote, if that’s how they are doing it.

No matter how they are accomplishing this, it’s impressive because it worked. At least from all of the videos that I saw there were no errors or blue screens, similar to those that have shown up in some keynotes from Microsoft. Speaking of which, take a look at the keynote from Bill Gates at CES, see the difference? Apple puts on a show, and you have to admit it’s impressive.

Yeah Macworld is over, and Apple users got a really expensive phone, and iTV Apple TV. I am not an Apple hater, in fact I was looking forward to what Steve had to announce, but I wasn’t impressed with the announcements.

The iPhone, aside from the fact that the name is a Cisco trademark, the thing is unbelievably expensive. In true Apple form the thing looks very slick, but lets not forget it’s a phone. The same phone that you will be throwing in your pocket and in four months (out of your two year Cingular service contract), it will look like crap; full of scratches and chips. iPod users were complaining about their Nano’s being scratched mere weeks after they were released, I can only imagine the madness that is going to come when the iPhone is released, if it’s released under that name.

Apple TV was actually something I was looking forward to. I am at the end of my rope with my cable DVR that has had NO improvements over the last two years. I have been looking for a HD DVR solution for a while now, and if it means switching to downloaded content – so be it. The reason I will not be getting the Apple TV, 720p. Seriously, 720p??? I hate to say it, but I believe Apple got beat by Microsoft and the XBox 360 on this one. So on to my backup solution, a Series 3 Tivo.

As far as the one thing I was hoping for coming out of Macworld, iTunes fixes. iTunes for the Windows is plagued with bugs. Yes for Windows, but it was Apple’s idea to expand their market reach on to the Windows platform. Podcasting has allowed people to quit their day jobs and do what they really love for a living. But every time I update my podasts at least one or two podcasts come with that little explanation mark because the file was never downloaded correctly and moved to my library. With as many computers that iTunes is installed on, that’s a lot of reach you are loosing out on.

I hate to be negative about the whole thing. I honestly thought this was the Keynote that was going to make me a full time Mac user. After viewing the Keynote video online, I got the feeling that Apple was late to the market, and Steve knew it. Why else would Apple go against tradition and announce the iTV early? Now it;s really early, because the Apple TV isn’t even available for another month.

Here’s hoping that the next keynote from Apple comes with the jaw dropping announcement that has me heading to my local Apple Store to make the leap.

I am proud to be accepted into the BlogBurst network. Along with working hard to bring good content I have been making a lot of changes lately to Code and Coffee: tweaking settings, and trying new things. Hope they are noticeable improvements. Don’t forget to subscribe below, thanks all!

Sysinternals was created by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell in 1996 and was a geeks dream land of utilities and information for Windows. In July of 2006 Microsoft acquired Sysinternals. Since then Microsoft has slowly been migrating Sysinternals tools and website over to the new Windows Sysinternals which is now completed. Most everything made the transition, but I can’t seem to find the source code that was previously available. When Microsoft announced the acquisition of Sysinternals, many raced to archive the website and source code which are now widely available on Torrent sites. Keep on eye on the new Windows Sysinternals for what I am sure will be a lot more cool utilities and information.

If you want to learn a thing or two about Windows, head over to Mark’s blog; it will not disappoint.

Bloglines, Rojo, NewsGator, FeedDemon, the list goes on and I have tried them all. It seems like very service has good features, but no one has it all. Google Reader by far has been my favorite, with it’s AJAX goodness and ease of use interface. There are several setbacks to online readers vs. desktop readers, including easy one-click subscription, and notifications. Well thanks to the wonderful community of Firefox, these problems are answered.

One-Click Subscriptions

Firefox has a great options that allow you to customize your RSS subscription preferences. By default, Firefox also has Google Reader included in the option. Under the “Options -> Feed” you can select Google Reader as your feed reader. Now when you click the RSS icon in the address bar, you will be directed to Google reader to subscribe to that feed. Easy enough!

Notifications

So what about notifications? If you are like me, you can almost guarantee that you have new articles by the half hour. On the other hand, if you do not want to be launching the Google Reader site every so often, you can just download and install the Google Reader Notifier Firefox Extension. This extension is simple yet effective. Just give it your login information, and it will sit in the status bar (see screen shot below) of Firefox and at a regular interval check for new feeds. You will get a neat littlepop up when new feeds are available. The extension has some great customization features, that allow you to tweak it to your liking. I have been using this for little while now, and noticed that is seems to be checking on a more regular interval than what I have set. I am still tweaking with it, but it might be a bug. Non-the-less, it’s a great little extension that will give you the latest on your RSS subscriptions.

(P.S.: It’s cold!)

Confirming the rumor from Valleywag, Forbes has just confirmed Yahoo’s purchase of MyBlogLog for $10 million. Mashable states the future of MyBlogLog as a part of the Yahoo Family:

Bradley Horowitz, VP of product strategy at Yahoo, said that MyBlogLog would remain a separate entity (much like their other social acquisitions) , but you’ll be able to register with your Yahoo ID. The MyBlogLog communities will also be integrated with Flickr and Yahoo Answers, although Forbes isn’t at all clear on what that means.

I signed up for MyBlogLog about a month ago, and in a shameless self plug I would appreciate you joining the Code and Coffee community. Congratulations to MyBlogLog!

If you run a mail server of your own, you probably know that people like slick looking and easy to use mail services. A lot of hosting companies provide basic mail services that usually consist of open source mail software like Horde IMP. While these solutions are OK, they certainly are not comparable to commercially solutions like GMail, or Yahoo Mail. So what are your options if you host a mail server for yourself, family, friends, or clients? Hope comes in the form of Atmail.

For some time, AtMail has been providing an all around mail solution for corporations of all sizes. They even offer an all-in-one turn key appliance. AtMail also offers just the webmail side of their solution, which is great replacement for default webmail software that is provided by hosting platforms. With AtMail’s full mail server solution features such as spam and virus filtering, Outlook synchronization, an extensive administration control panel, full POP3/IMAP/SMTP support, and more.

Currently AtMail is developed in Perl, which is much harder to deal with that other web languages. The company is currently in development of a PHP version, which the company states is 90% completed. The PHP version will make the solution easier to use, including installation, and I believe will provide a much larger audience as PHP is installed by default on most all Linux based web hosting solutions.

I am looking to do dive in further on the installation process of both the Perl and PHP versions.

Made some changes and updates to Code and Coffee today, they include:

• Changed the default read more text
• Removed categories and added tagging support (guess now I am officially web 2.0)
• Added Technorati tags
• Other minor formatting changes

Netflix is in trouble, and I think they know it. Not only are new online rental services ramping up their offerings, but more and more content download services are showing up. Most recently at CES, Microsoft announced IPTV coming to the XBox 360. Additionally Blockbuster has been ramping up it’s online offer, to one very sweet package that has resulted in me dropping my recently new Netflix account.

Until most recently, I didn’t have the need for a subscription service like Netflix or Blockbuster Online. With a new HD theater in my house, staying home for movies is just much more appealing. The setbacks with Netflix’s have always been known by me.

• You are stuck with what you have out right now, there is no way to get a “must see” movie immediately on a Friday night.
• No support for video games, and for a modest gamer like me a subscription service like GameFly is not feasible.
• Even with a distribution center twenty minutes away, movies still take two days to get here.

Blockbuster, most recently answered a lot of those problems for me, which is why I switched.

Background

I have never been a Blockbuster fan, they have always gotten under my skin with their ever changing late fees, schedules, rules, prices, selection, and the list goes on. They have ridden the video rental wave way too long, until Netflix came up in the rear view mirror. Instead of innovating themselves, or acquiring Netflix like most would have done; Blockbuster just went and played copy-cat, which in turn got Netflix to sue. Even with this deep hatred for Blockbuster, they still won for one reason: They have stores all over the United States.

Why I switched

Blockbuster just played their trump card again Netflix, by combining their online offerings with their store offerings in one big package. The break down is, Blockbuster offers a very similar online service as Netflix, and it’s compatible in most every way, with the exceptions of some setbacks listed below. So let’s take a look at how Blockbuster combined the online service with the stores:

• When you get your movie rentals in the mail from Blockbuster, you can do one of two things with those once you have watched them: 1) You can mail them back, standard procedure. 2) Or you can take them to your local Blockbuster store for a free rental. Your next movie from your queue is still mailed out to you, but you now have an immediate free rental.
• In addition to the above free rental, Blockbuster online gives you one free printable coupon a month which is valid for a free in-store video or game rental.
• As if that were not enough alone to sell you, Blockbuster has also teamed up with the Post Office to speed up your next movie delivery. When you send you movie back and it gets to your local Post Office and is scanned. Blockbuster gets an email from the Post Office and sends out your next rental immediately instead of waiting until it actually gets to Blockbuster. This can increase delivery time by a day in some cases.

What Blockbuster did is perfect for a lot of people, including myself. Now if Friday night comes along and I wanted a certain movie now, I can take in any of my already watched movies to a Blockbuster store and get a free rental. In addition, I get a free video game (or DVD rental) a month, which is perfect for me to try out new games before I purchase them.

What I Do Not Like

Aside from my past hatred for Blockbuster, there are some dislikes that I have already spotted with Blockbuster online. For one, their selection in HD-DVD movies is far less that what Netflix offers. The good news here is I know this will be changing soon, as HD-DVD or Blu ray is the future. Second, their online user interface is harder to use than Netflix. The layout needs to be redone, and it lacks features like “Format Preference”. With Netflix I can set my format preference to HD-DVD so any new movie I add to my queue I would get HD-DVD format by default if offered, otherwise I would just get regular DVD. With Blockbuster online, you have to specifically search and select the HD-DVD format which makes searching and adding movies to your queue a little bit harder. I wrote customer service and let them know about this, I can only hope that they change this soon.

Conclusion

I will continue to update with anything else I find with Blockbuster online, but until then I am fairly happy. On the other hand, Blockbuster has screwed me over before so I can only wait and see.