Dylan Greene dot com

I figured out how Microsoft makes so much money: By reusing the same word to mean multiple things. Lower unique word count must mean lower overhead.

I personally think that Microsoft should spend some of it's cash on investing in new words.

Examples of overused words and terms:

• MSN
• Collection of general purpose web sites - Free or Plus or Premium or on your TV
• Popular Instant Messenger Client (Also: Windows Messenger)
• Internet Access Service - for dialup - for broadband - for SPOT watch owners
• MSDN
• Free software development web sites with tons of documentation and source code
• Subscription service where you get tons of Microsoft software and source code
• A magazine for developers to subscribe to - from Microsoft, but not tied to the subscription service
• .NET
• Microsoft's latest framework for developing applications and web sites (.net news)
• Microsoft's name for some of their Web services, such as .NET Passport and MapPoint .NET
• Part of an Internet address, such as www.DylanGreene.net (not a Microsoft technology)
• British magazine about the Internet - (not Microsoft-related)

Various variety and version vexations:

• 95, 98, 2000, XP
• Versions of Microsoft Windows for desktops, laptops, and servers
• Recent versions of Microsoft Office
• 2003
• Latest version of Microsoft Windows - for server-use only
• Latest version of Microsoft Office - for use on all versions of Windows
• Windows
• Windows for the enterprise (2003 is the latest version)
• Windows for consumers like us (XP is the latest version)
• Windows runs on your TV (special version of XP)
• Windows runs on your pen-enabled laptop (yet another special verson of XP)
• Windows runs on PocketPC's (but it can't run software for PC or Smartphones)
• Windows runs on Smartphones (but it can't run software for PC or PocketPC)
• Windows runs in some cars (but only runs built-in software)

Prefixes for products that have nothing in common:

• Active...
• ActiveX - Plugin technology for Internet Explorer
• Active Desktop - Web pages on your desktop
• Active Directory - Software for managing employee security access
• ActiveSync - Data Synchronization software for PocketPC's and Smartphones.
• Intelli...
• IntelliMouse - Microsoft's line of Optical Mice
• IntelliPoint - Software for Microsoft Mice
• IntelliType Pro - Software for Microsoft Keyboards
• IntelliSense - Name of the auto-complete feature in Internet Explorer, Windows XP, and Visual Studio (but they all work differently)
• Direct...
• DirectX - Development framework for optimal usage of today's hardware
• DirectX - Free download for running games that use the DirectX framework
• MSN Direct - Online service for radio-based devices like the SPOT watches

My point is... Stop making the world of computing more confusing by overusing names, terms, and abbreviations. Please start creating new words, preferably words that aren't in our dictionary to make our searches for products, support, and recommendations easier. This goes for everybody, not just Microsoft.

Hey - do you use Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or Outlook? Then do yourself a huge favor: Go visit OfficeUpdate now.

OfficeUpdate will make sure you have all of the latest patches for whatever version of Office you are using. I know it supports Office XP and Office 2003. I'm not sure if it supports Office 97, 98, or 2000, but you should still visit to get the patches you need. WindowsUpdate, which you should also be using to make sure you have the latest patches for Windows, unfortunately does not have the updates you need for Office.

In addition to helping protect you from the latest email trojens and viruses, the Office Updates also fixes problems that could cause Office programs to crash. Office Update is free and easy to use. It doesn't even make you restart Windows when it's done.

So instead of swearing at Microsoft next time your Office crashes or you get another email virus, do something about it now, because chances are Microsoft released a patch for the problem months ago and you just haven't installed it yet.

Office Update: http://www.OfficeUpdate.com (Click Check for Updates)

I don't know of any banks, credit card companies, or utilities that have a secure private RSS feeds would let us know when our statements are ready or bills are due. But almost all of them will send us that information via emails.

The trouble for me is that I don't read my personal mail much anymore. I get over 150 spam mails a day. Even with two layers of filtering (I use a bayesian filter and a human-based P2P filter), junk messages are missed and occasionally good messages are marked as spam.

What if there was an Outlook Plug-in (or is it Plugin?) that uses Search Folders in Outlook 2003 to dynamically build RSS feeds? Bill notifications, newsletters, important announcements, etc would suddenly be available in a more convenient manor.

Ironically, I use Outlook for reading my RSS feeds, so I could just use the Rules Wizard. But that thing is a pain in the ass.

Maybe it's just finally time for the Outlook team to redo the Rules Wizard... And time for banks, credit card companies, etc... to start supporting RSS.

Beyond all of this is security - Bank notices from a secure RSS feed can be trusted. Emails can never be trusted because they can be easily forged.

Some links:

• Using Search Folders, Using Search Folders (video)
• MailBucket - a Public Email-to-RSS Gateway
• Lots of Email-to-RSS discussions - but no Outlook Plug-in

Tim and I are in the process of upgrading this server to Windows 2003...

Update: We're done.

Many thanks must go to Timothy Macrina and QuickMortgageLoan.com for their awesome support for this and the other sites I run. In addition to the OS upgrade, they have added a second processor, more ram, and a larger hard drive, as well as increased the bandwidth to a full T1.

I found out today from Scoble that Microsoft Research having a Social Computing Symposium on March 29 and 30 in Redmond, WA. According to Scoble, "This one is gonna be harder to get tickets to than the Super Bowl."

Scoble has some good info about the symposium on his web site, I can't seem to find any official information about it.

Here's some of the places I checked:
- Microsoft Research
- Microsoft Research News
- Microsoft Research Conferences
- Microsoft Research Social Computing Group
- Search.Microsoft.com for: Social Computing
- Google (for Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium)

Wow - A social computing conference that's publicized exclusively via social computing - brilliant!

Off topic - for a group as influential to our daily computing as Microsoft Research, why is it that they get almost no mainstream press? I'm interested in the NASA Mars findings just like everybody else, but the tools and research done by Microsoft Research are going to have more of an impact on our daily lives than finding signs of water on a distant planet. Among many other things, MS Research has given us: the mouse wheel, instant spell check, instant grammar check, right click menus, and much more. In typical Microsoft fasion, MS doesn't promote what what the research groups have created for us, so maybe MS Research is trying to stay under the radar, just like this Social Computing Symposium.

My dad might have found a bug in Internet Explorer when he tried to copy some photos from our New York trip. What do you think?

Here's two versions of the same photo (my girlfriend, Moby, and me):

Cropped - 211 KB: Cropped JPG - 1781x1103

When viewing the Cropped Photo, I can save it (as a jpg), drag it to my desktop to copy it there, and right-click and choose properties to find out the file size.

Original - 1,631 KB: Original JPG - 2048x1360

When viewing the Original Photo, I cannot do any of those things. I can only save it as a BMP file.

- The original has EXIF data, the cropped one does not.
- The original has not been modified by any program.
- My dad has this problem using IE 6 in Windows 98.
- I have the same problem using IE 6 in Windows XP.
- I deleted the browse cache. Didn't help.
- These were taken using the Canon Digital Rebel 300D in Medium mode.
- Original photos from my Canon Digital Elph 230 work fine.
- Works fine in Mozilla.
- Saving as JPG works when right-clicking on the link.

What's going on here? Is the JPG too large for IE to handle?

Yesterday I posted 10 reasons why RSS is not ready for prime time. Thanks to the many sites that linked and welcome to the couple thousand of new visitors.

Here is my list of things that we should be doing done before RSS becomes as mainstream as browsing the web:

1) Authentication Standard. Today some RSS readers include support for Basic Authentication. There must be a standard - for both the client and server - for secure authentication. All feeds should at least ask for user name. Like FTP, this could be "anonymous" or it could be your user name and password.

2) Query Standard. Today RSS feeds only have the newest 10-20 entries. There needs to be a standard way to query for entries other than those entries. Here are some example queries that should be optionally* supported:
A) "All new or modified entries since [Date Time]."
B) "All entries from categories [X, Y, Z]."
C) "All entries containing [Search Terms]."
D) "All [Comments | Trackback | Referrals | Etc] for Entries [X, Y, Z]"
*These should be optional because they don't apply to all uses of RSS.

3) Content Format Standards. Today some RSS feeds include partial text, others include all of the text, some include HTML formatting, others include no formatting. There should be a standard way when querying the RSS data to specify which version you are interested in:
A) Text only
B) Partial Text
C) HTML - full web page
D) Partial HTML - just the post
The standard must also support unicode characters for internationalization.

4) New Name. The name for the RSS file format doesn't matter, just like HTML doesn't matter. In general we call them "Web pages" not "HTML pages". RSS needs a word like "Web" that can be commonly associated with the purpose of having RSS files. ("MP3" worked because there was free music involved.) Subscribing/Subscription is a common word that would works except most users tightly associate it with receiving newsletters and eventually spam mail. We need a new word, like TiVo and Google (thanks K.G. Schneider).

5) Ad Standard. None of us want ads in the feeds, but they are going to come anyway. We might as well invent a "nice" standard now before companies like Doubleclick invent something we all hate.

6) DRM and Encryption Standards. Another feature that we rather avoid, but it's going to have to happen, and we might as well create it now before we're all forced to install Microsoft or Adobe Reader just to read a blog entry.

7) Attachment Standard. I've never seen attachments with RSS, but I'm sure we will soon. Imagine subscribing to a feed that, instead of listing latest movie trailers, actually had movie trailers included. Or a new music feed that included sample music. Or a radio station that was just an RSS feed with music included. This means that RSS Readers need to have caching, offline storage, and other features to prevent downloading something you might already have.

A "nice to have":
8) Roaming Subscriptions. In 1998, while working on IE 5.0 (I was an intern), I saw an incomplete feature that let you synchronize your favorites with multiple machines over the Internet. I don't know why this feature never made it out the door, but anybody with multiple machines knows keeping bookmarks straight over multiple computers is not easy. RSS must not follow this path. Using OPML makes life a little bit easier, but it doesn't work at the entry level. I should be able to read a bunch of feeds on my work computer, go home, and then continue from where I left off. Feed I read at work should be marked as read at home. This should not require me to use a web-based RSS Reader such as Bloglines or NewsGator Online. Using a 3rd party service to do the synchronization would be fine. I should be able to use a different RSS readers at work than at home, and of course have the option to not bring my work-related RSS feeds home.

I like to list my ideas in groups of 10, but I've found when you ask for too much, too often you get nothing.

While working today I listened to the RSS Winterfest, a free audio-only conference about RSS hosted by many top names in blogging.

Chris Pirillo, aka the Lockergnome, had a comment during the "What is the future of RSS?" session that I strongly disagree with: "RSS is good enough."

I strongly disagree with this comment. While I agree RSS is good, I believe RSS is not good enough to become mainstream. Here are my reasons:

1) RSS feeds do not have a history. This means that when you request the data from an RSS feed, you always get the newest 10 or 20 entries. If you go on vacation for a week and your computer is not constantly requesting your RSS feeds, when you get back you will only download the newest 10 or 20 entries. This means that even if more entires were added than that while you were gone, you will never see them.

2) RSS wastes bandwidth. When you "subscribe" to an RSS feed, you are telling your RSS reader to automatically download the RSS file on a set interval to check for changes. Lets say it checks for news every hour, which is typical. Even if just one item is changed the RSS reader must still download the entire file with all of the entries.

3) Reading RSS requires too much work. Today, in 2004, we call it "browsing the Web" - not "viewing HTML files". That is because the format that Web pages happen to be in is not important. I can just type in "msn.com" and it works. RSS requires much more than that: We need to find the RSS feed location, which is always labeled differently, and then give that URL to my RSS reader. The user should never have to hunt for the orange "XML" button (OT: Why is it labeled "XML" and not "RSS"?) or a link that says "Syndicate This." How subscribing should work: In my RSS Reader I type "dylangreene.com" and I see a list of feeds that I can subscribe to. Each feed has a one-sentence description, and I can preview what I'm going to get by subscribing. Newsgator, a shareware RSS Reader Plug-in for Outlook adds a cool button to IE's toolbar that, when you click it, searches the page for the RSS feed and subscribes you. This is a good step, but the button doesn't always find the feed, and when there's multiple feeds on the page, I don't know which one it's going to choose.

4) An RSS Reader must come with Windows. Until this happens too, RSS reading will only be for a certain class of computer users that are willing to try this new technology. The web became mainstream when Microsoft started including Internet Explorer with Windows. MP3's became mainstream when Windows Media Player added MP3 support. Many don't want Microsoft to control the RSS Reader market, but this is a vital step to gain mainstream usage in a world where most computer users simply don't know how to (or are afraid to) download new software.

5) RSS content is not User-Friendly. It has taken about 10 years for the Web to get to the point where it is today that most web pages we visit render in our browser the way that the designer intended. It's also taken about that long for web designers to figure out how to lay out a web page such that most users will understand how to use it. RSS takes all of that usability work and throws it away. Most RSS feeds have no formatting, no images, no tables, no interactive elements, and nothing else that we have come to rely on for optimal content readability. Instead we are kicked back to the pre-web days of simple text. If you want to see the pictures, tables, and other formatting that makes information on the web easier to read (and often more interesting than the plain-text equivalent), you must click a link to open your browser to visit the web page - bringing you right back to where we are today: a slow-loading web page. Some RSS feeds can render HTML, but not all RSS readers support correctly rendering the content, and most feeds don't even include the formatting.

6) RSS content is not machine-friendly. There are search engines that search RSS feeds but none of them are intelligent about the content they are searching because RSS doesn't describe the properties of the content well enough. For example, many bloggers quote other blogs in their blog. Search engines cannot tell the difference between new content and quoted content, so they'll show both in the search results.

7) Many RSS Feeds show only an abridged version of the content. Many RSS feeds do not include the full text. Slashdot.org, one of the most popular geek news sites, has an RSS feed but they only put the first 30 words of each 100+ word entry in their feed. This means that RSS search engines do not see the full content. This also means that users who syndicate their feed only see the first few words and must click to open a web browser to read the full content. From what I've seen, Movable Type, one of the most popular free blogging packages, only supports small snippets in the RSS feed, again adding to the amount of work required to read the feed.

8) Comments are not integrated with RSS feeds. One of the best features of many blogs is the ability to reply to posts by posting comments. Many sites are noteworthy and popular because of their comments and not just the content of the blogs. The Dullest Blog in the World gets 100-400 comments for every painfully dull post. Comments in Scoble's blog have started movements both inside and outside Microsoft that will effect features in upcoming products. RSS feeds often link to the URL where comments can be found, but the actual comments are not part of the feed, and most sites don't even have an RSS feed for the comments. This means that you have to manually click on the comments link to open a new browser window to see if there are comments, and then revisit that web page to see if anybody replies to your comments. This should be automatic: Entries should show the number of comments, the comments' content, and optionally inform me when replies to my comments are posted. RSS Search engines should also be able to search the content of the comments.

9) Multiple Versions of RSS cause more confusion. There's several different versions of RSS, such as RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and RSS 3.0, all controlled by different groups and all claiming to be the standard. RSS Readers must support all of these versions because many sites only support one of them. New features can be added to RSS 1.0 and 2.0 can by adding new XML namespaces, which means that anybody can add new features to RSS, but this does mean that any RSS Readers will support those new features.

10) RSS is Insecure. Lets say a site wants to charge for access to their RSS feed. RSS has no standard way for inputing a User Name and Password. Some RSS readers support HTTP Basic Authentication, but this is not a secure method because your password is sent as plain text. A few RSS readers support HTTPS, which is a start, but it is not good enough. Once somebody has access to the "secure" RSS file, that user can share the RSS file with anybody. If a site wants to charge for their RSS feed, there is no way to prevent subscribers from sharing the RSS feeds with other people because RSS does not have a standard for encryption, digital rights, or any other modern security features. I think this will hurt commercial uses for RSS.

Again, I am I huge fan off RSS-style technology. This technology is the TiVo of the Web: I only see what I want to see. Every site I ready (except two stubborn ones) I only read via RSS, however I am usually up with the latest technology, and I think there is a ways to go before there is mainstream RSS acceptance and use.

Bush's State of the Union address just ended. No mention of a Moon Base. No mention of a Mission to Mars. No mention of missing Weapons of Mass Destruction. No mention of not finding Osama Bin Laden. No mention of fixing the worst deficit in American history.

So... what did Bush talk about for an hour?

Among other things, he proposed a constitutional amendment to say that marriage is - and only is - between a man and a woman. A direct quote from Bush's speech: "Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage." Mr. President, that's not your purpose - that is encouraging bigotry through a ridiculous constitutional amendment. I even looked up the definition of marriage, and it does not mention man and a woman.

So, check this out: under Bush's proposed amendments, you can be an illegal immigrant, suspected of terrorism, and on death row - and still get married. But you if you happen to be gay you're screwed.

This amendment does not help anybody, straight or gay. No straight person is having marriage problems because gay people want to get married. What's next, will Bush make it illegal for straight couples to get married if either is medically unable to have children?

Bush simply wants to use the United States Constitution to take away the rights of certain Americans, and you know he won't stop with gays. Since he wants to do this to have "dignity and value in God's sight," next he'll want to make being religious and attending church, his church, mandatory.

Don't believe me? His very next topic was that wants to hand out billions to religious groups. My tax money is for this country as a whole, not for religious groups that want free money to put up more "Jesus Is Lord" billboards on the sides of roads in the South. Bush did this to get the Southern vote, where people vote for whomever their preacher says is best in God's eyes, and it was a low blow to everybody else in America.

The people that are doing the terrorist attacks here, Israel, Turkey, and elsewhere are members of extreme religious groups with morals that we don't agree with. And now Bush is trying to turn the US into a country that uses religious reasons for making new laws that we don't agree with.

For the sake of all of our American freedoms, lets not introduce new laws that are anti-certain-Americans, and remember the whole concept of Separation of Church and State when adding new laws.

If you are still at work (like me), you can still watch the live feed of Bush's State of the Union Address, hosted by Whitehouse.gov.

You'll need Windows Media Player 9, which means no "buffer" waiting, it should just play.

What do these guys have in common?

• Better Living Through Software blogger Joshua Allen
• Random Musings blogger Brian Sullivan
• Microsoft E-business Solution Specialist Cameron Reilly
• InDepth Technology Consultant Drew Robbins
• Geek Aggregator (and Microsoft Longhorn Lead Evangelist) Robert Scoble
• Former director/general manager of Earthweb, internet.com, much more Tristan Louis

I found out from this simple page hosted by Dave Winer's Scripting.com. Unfortunately that page is not in RSS so I can't subscribe to it, and it doesn't link directly to those people's pages, so I had to use Google to find their sites.

If you use an RSS reader, the list of blogs you subscribe to can usually be exported as an OPML file. Upload that file to this site and you can see who else subscribes to your site and who the people you read read. (Ohhh.. the same word twice... is that grammatically correct? Oops, back on topic!). Join Share Your OPML! and upload your OPML file. That's it. Of course you're supposed to re-upload it every time you add a subscription, but hopefully they'll automate that soon too.

Who subscribes to DylanGreene.com.

If you still use a Web browser: Leave me a note in the comments here. I'd like to find out who else reads this silly site of mine. Thanks!

Update (Feb 23, '04): I spelled Tristan's name wrong. Oops... fixed!

In what must be the first time in this economy a TV network has turned down an ad (especially for a Super Bowl most-expensive-ads-ever ad), CBS has denied MoveOn.org to show the Bush in 30 Seconds winner.

I guess CBS should stand for Contrived Bush Supporter.

"A judge upheld a jury's decision requiring Microsoft Corp. to pay $520 million on grounds that its popular Internet Explorer browser infringed on a patent. U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel on Wednesday also rejected a bid for a new trial by Microsoft and ordered the software giant to pay more than $45 million in interest."

Okay, there's a company with one employee and no products. It's been around since 1994. It has never built anything, sold anything, or even announced a product. It just has patents.

Judge James B. Zagel has decided that Microsoft owes this one-person company over a half billion dollars for one of those patents. The technology involved is the concept of launching another program from a Web browser, such as launching Flash or Quicktime from Internet Explorer. Microsoft didn't invent the Web browser, and neither did Eolas. The technology of a plug-in has existed for many years before Eolas' patent was filed. Products like Photoshop have had plugins since the early versions. The first version of Netscape had plug-ins too, but for some reason they haven't gone after AOL/Netscape, and for some reason they waited 10 years before bringing this to light.

The funny thing is that every browser has this technology, not just Microsoft. And none of them paid to license it. Probably because they didn't think somebody would have a patent for the idea, it's not that amazing of an idea. Do you research every thing you build to make sure somebody didn't already patent some concept that you just thought was obvious.

Microsoft has already made a change to Internet Explorer to get around the patent. Before something like Flash launches, a dialog comes up. That alone gets around the patent because the patent specifies that it is transparent to the user. After the dialog comes up once, you'll can click to never show it again. So silly.

Here's more information.

Okay, so lets say you are using Microsoft's Media Player to play an online radio station, and you like the song you are listening to, so you click the "Buy It" button. Windows Media Player then opens a browser (Internet Explorer) and lets users decide on what site to buy it from (includes such online stores as Buy.com and CDNow). Got it so far?

The Justice Department decided today that it is not fair that Windows Media Player launches Internet Explorer to let you purchase these songs from the online store of your choice, and is making Microsoft change Media Player to allow any software to be loaded when you click that button. I suspect companies like Real and Apple are going to jump at this opportunity to take the commission MS gets from those sales, basically the only way MS makes money from the free music and video player.

If that doesn't sound crazy to you, let me turn this around: I'm using iTunes to listen to music, and then I decided to purchase a song. But I don't find it fair that Apple requires me to use iTunes user interface to buy that song. I want to use... um... Notepad, so I sue Apple.

I haven't blogged in some time because I've recently received some wonderful comments about the quality of my writings.... to quote Lewis Black: "DO YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF PRESSURE THAT PUTS ON ME!!!" Just kidding, thanks everybody who wrote, called, or quoted me on their blog. I'll continue to write some great stuff, and as always you'll need to read all of my entries just to separate the late night rants from those full of wisdom.

I have so much to blog about that I almost feel overwhelmed... Scoble, Winer, how do you keep track of it all?

Wow, I am impressed with a new software package first reported by Scoble, and if *I'm impressed*, that means a lot, because as you might know from reading my blog, I'm not easily impressed.

The product is called Stereolize Ventuz. It is not just a Powerpoint killer, it should be considered a required purchase for any corporate marketing team.

Why am I so excited?

Download this Ventuz video and you will see.

This video is about 50 megs and you might need to Right-Click Save-As on the link to get it to work.

If you can't get the video to work (you need Media Player), you are missing out. I wrote a long blog entry last night so I'm not going to write another long one today describing what you are missing.

Why am I impressed?
- All of that was rendered live.
- Only standard PCs and laptops were used.
- The presentations were built using a Powerpoint-like drag-and-drop tool, not expert-level rendering software.
- The software is 100% managed .NET code, written in C#, and uses DirectX9, .NET Remoting, and web services.
- The software was created in about eight months by one guy (Ralf Stahnke).

Here are more videos of Stereolize Ventuz in action.

(Important note: I have no idea what the software looks like for building these presentations. I'm assuming it's as nice as the presentations look because I'm an optimistic person. Hopefully Stereolize will put up a presentation of what it's like to build a presentation.)

Also thanks to Scoble for reporting on two of my entries in a single day (Office and XBOX). Makes me feel like a star for the day.

Back in the day... okay, the nineties, there was this concept of the Killer App. The Killer App was this application that was so great, so powerful, so mystical, so wonderful, so... I've got to have it! - that it was the reason to go out and spend $199 on the latest operating system, or $3000 on a new computer, or even go against all that is holy and switch from a Mac to a PC, or other way around.

Back in the day... John Dvorak would write in PC Magazine about then upcoming operating systems such as OS/2 and Windows 95 saying something along the lines of: "yeah, it's nice and all, but without the killer app, who's going to bite? I'll stick with what I have and wait for the dust to settle."

Eventually the Internet became the one and only Killer App to worry about. Actually not really the Internet as we know it today, but real killer app was the easy ability to get on it easily and browse the web with little or no software installs and no major computer science degree required. Netscape, the most popular browser at the time, was far beyond any web browser on OS/2. OS/2 faded into something worse than footnote in history: OS/2 is now just the punch line to geeky jokes.

Fast forward to today. The term "Killer App" is not dead yet but as far as I can see, the concept is.

When the XBOX came out, many were skeptical about its success because of the strong foothold Sony's Playstation already had and Microsoft's lack of game console experience. As ship date approached and Microsoft announced an impressive $500 Million marketing strategy, the concerns moved to the lack of a killer app. "Nintendo has Mario. Everybody loves Mario. What does XBOX have?" Eventually Halo became a reason to own the XBOX, but you'd never know this from Microsoft's marketing efforts. This is because Microsoft's XBOX marketing team is not concerned about the Killer App.

Fast forward even further (TiVo-style, or Media Center-style if you prefer) to today's Consumer Electronic Show product announcements by Bill Gates and the many other electronics companies in Vegas. Some of these new products scream CRAP because they have no obvious Killer App, or what is better written as "Why I've got to have it."

The Portable Media Center (some pictures) is basically an MP3 player with a nice screen. There's a promotional video showing a person using it to watch a movie on the subway. I can see mass-transit commuters wanting to use this device to catch up on shows that they've recorded from the TiVo-like Media Center PC, but that's a hefty investment for what is essentially a way to entertain oneself while on a train. Newspapers, magazines, and even books are much cheaper. Those with money to buy both the Media Center PC and this portable viewing device will probably already have or will be able to afford a laptop that can do everything this device can do but better, except in the size department. I have noticed that it seems like faux pas to take out your laptop and work or play games in the Washington, DC metro system. Nobody ever uses their laptop on the metro. Anyway, back to the point: The intended killer app for this device and the audience for that killer app will rarely meet up because of the barrier to entry - cost and perceived computer knowledge for getting video magically from the TV onto something that looks like Gameboy reject that needs to visit the gym.

The Big Downfall: What I assume Microsoft did here is start with a "cool idea" - a portable viewing device - the MP3 player of the future - and now they are putting it on display for us to figure out why we need to spend money on such a device.

What Microsoft (and others) should have done:

Figure out a problem that needs to be solved. Then design and build the solution to solve that problem.

This is something I feel Microsoft (and many other companies) do not do well enough. Well-selling products typically do not come from cleaver entrepreneurial ideas alone. They solve a problem.

When you solve people's problems, you make people happy to buy your product. If Microsoft released a new version of Windows that was immune to spyware, I'd upgrade right away. For me, that would be the Killer App. I rarely download shareware and freeware apps anymore because so many include spyware and adware.

I feel bad for all those computer users out there that aren't as savvy as me and suffer through random pop-ups, slowdowns, and crashes for no apparent reason that stem from the spyware. For those users, a new version of Windows that blocks spyware would mean nothing, because they don't even realize they have it to begin with. And that's why there's something called Marketing. And Marketing should be promoting the Killer App.

This blog entry was not written to pan the Portable Media Player. Add a VGA and TV out so it can be used as a portable Powerpoint presentation tool and MS might have sales guys sick of lugging a laptop around just to run Powerpoint drooling over this tiny device. Or make it cheap enough that families can send Portable Media Center devices already full of content to grandparents, family members in Iraq and other military locations, or to send to potential clients with photos and videos of property, technology, art, or whatever we're trying to sell.

Many devices suffer from the lack of a Killer App. The Tablet PC is in a ninche market because there is no Killer App for it yet, other than the Cool Factor, and that is not enough of a Killer App to make good money. There's no marketing for the Killer App for the PocketPC that makes the decision "Palm vs PocketPC" obvious to the general buyer. Apple's OS X might look nice in their stores, but there's no Killer App to attract PC users away from what they are used to.

The moral to all of this is: A Killer App will attract buyers. New products need to be designed from the ground up with the Killer App in mind. Once built, marketing should focus on the Killer App. Without a Killer App, you are relying on solely on luck.

The corollary: If your product doesn't solve a problem then it's just going to cause more problems.

I have some Save Game related suggestions for improving the XBOX:

1) Shared Local Player Profiles Across Games: In Halo, I have about a dozen user profiles. When a friend or family member plays Halo on my XBOX, I set up a new user profile for them so that they can customize their player's name, colors, controls, and other settings. The problem is that I have other games too. Why must I set up new user profiles for every game, with the same name and typically same settings? Instead, User Profiles should be shared across all games. Settings such as Inverted Look, Vibration, should default to that user's global setting, but still be customizable on a per-game basis.

2) Associate Saved Games with a Local Player Profile: When multiple people share one XBOX (such as roommates, or when friends come over), they shouldn't ever worry about saving over somebody else's progress, especially in games that only let you have a finite number of saved games. Lord of the Rings Return of the King is a typically offender: It has only 10 saved game spots. After you use all 10 spots, you must overwrite your other saved games. If you and your buddies are taking turns trying to beat the game, how do you know which saved games are his and not to overwrite them?

3) Allow Uploading Local Player Profiles and Saved Games to Live: The primary reason I suggest this is because Memory Cards are a waste of time and money. If I want to continue a game at a friends house, the ideal way to do it should be to load my profile from XBOX Live. This should also be how I get my Local Player Profile onto other people's XBOX. Once I set up my Local Player Profile on my personal XBOX, I should never have to create a new player with my name, controls, and other settings on any Live-connected XBOX.

4) Create a Common Save Game Interface: In Windows, when you save a file, you typically see the same Save As dialog and you know what to expect. On the XBOX, no two games save games the same way, and many games make the process unnecessarily tedious because of tradition from programming for the Playstation 2, which does not have a hard drive and uses slower memory cards with less space than the XBOX.

How saved games typically work today:

• First they ask if you want to save, as if there's ever a time you don't want to save, assuming you can always load up old saves if you aren't happy with this one. Sometimes they ask "Are you sure you want to save?", as if they think you've been doing so poorly perhaps it would be better to just not save your progress.
• Then they ask where you want to save (hard drive or memory card), even if you don't have any memory cards plugged in, so the hard drive is the only option and this question should be skipped.
• Then they ask which "file slot" (of 10) to save to, even though the hard drive has 6 to 10 gigs of space and could hold thousands of saved games.
• Then they ask "Are you Sure?" you want overwrite the previous save, which you have to do after the first 10 saves.
• Then there's a warning message about turning off your XBOX while saving, even though it takes less than a second to save to the hard drive, so there's no way anybody could turn off their XBOX during that moment.
• Then there's a message that says the game has been saved, even though it's pretty obvious that's what just happened.
• Then, if you are playing a rare EA game that allow for saving during multiplayer, it repeats that whole process again for each player!

Games from EA especially, such as SSX 3 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which are otherwise both great games on XBOX, do everything bad that I listed. I'm guessing EA games have this problem because EA also makes their games work on the Playstation 2. The Playstation 2 not only has no hard drive built in, but the PS2 memory cards hold less and are slower than the XBOX memory cards. Perhaps that is why there are so many warnings and limitations, but that is no excuse for the XBOX version.

How saved games should work:

• When you start the game, ask which Local Player Profile to use.
• Automatically save at during game play, but don't stop the game to save, just show "Game Saved" in the corner.
• Allow for saving at any time during the game, such as when you realize you're late for work and need to save it right away.
• When saving, don't ask anything. Just save it. Put a message in the corner of the screen saying "Game Saved" but don't require the gamer to dismiss the dialog or press Ok. Just save it and get back to the game.
• When loading games, show only the games for that Local Player Profile. Allow users to switch Player Profiles at any time since it's nice to be able to switch back and forth. (It can make a boring single player game into a fun race-to-the-finish.)
• List games in save order. Show details for each save, and importantly, a screenshot of what that player saw when that save happened. A date and time is not enough. A level name is not enough. A screenshot is not enough. The Load Screen needs to show all of these details.

XBOX Related News: Bill Gates announced today in his CES keynote address that you will be able to use your XBOX to play videos and mp3s, show photos, and TiVo-style play and pause live tv by streaming the data from your PC using the built-in XBOX network jack or WiFi. Of course I don't know the details because XBOX.com, the offical XBOX web site, makes no mention of this yet. Common Microsoft, XBOX.com should be full of screenshots and videos just seconds after Bill made the announcement. Take a clue from Apple's awesome PR machine once in a while.

I've been holding out blogging because when I have free time and I'm on my computer I usually spend it adding new features to the site. I've been doing a lot of work on the admin part of the site, and I'm just about finished redoing almost all of the photo sorting and manipulating code.

New feature: Using some fancy DHTML I wrote, I've added the ability to easily crop photos while sorting them. You should start seeing some better cropped photos as soon as I get around to sorting and putting them up.