Brandon Live!

Dave Barry’s 2005 year-in-review is now online.

It’s a great read, especially if you’re a Dave Barry fan as I am. The Xbox 360 even gets mentioned in the November paragraph:

. . NOVEMBER . . . Americans find themselves heatedly debating a difficult question: Is it truly in the nation’s best interests for its citizens to be fighting, and suffering heavy casualties, to achieve the elusive — some say, impossible — goal of buying a laptop computer marked down to $300 at Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving? For many Americans, the answer is a resounding “yes,” as they observe the official start of the Christmas shopping season at 5 a.m. on Nov. 25 with the traditional Trampling of the Elderly Slow-Moving Shoppers, while the mall p.a. system interrupts “O Come, All Ye Faithful” with urgent requests for paramedics. The season’s hottest gift is the Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming system, which is in big demand because (a) it’s really cool, and (b) Microsoft apparently made, like, three of them.

Also heating up in November is the debate over Iraq, with even Vice President Dick Cheney joining in, fueling rumors that he is still alive. President Bush makes a series of strong speeches, stating that while he “will not impugn the patriotism” of those who oppose his administration’s policies, they are “traitor scum.” This outrages congressional Democrats, who respond with a two-pronged strategy of ¹ demanding that the troops be brought home, and ² voting overwhelmingly against a resolution to bring the troops home.

I’m interested to hear what my readers think of the new layout and theme since moving to this site. Do you have any problems? Suggestions?

Post a comment and let me know.

Chris pokes fun at those of us who pretend to have a crystal ball.

Apparently Samsung is getting ready to release an updated version of the i730 Pocket PC Phone called the i830. What’s most interesting (aside from the rather high price tag) is that it will be a Verizon phone, but with both CDMA and GSM radios.

How is that useful? Well, if you want the best coverage in the US and high-speed data (which means Sprint or Verizon), but you also travel overseas where GSM prevails - you can now have the best of both worlds.

Sadly this phone runs the old Windows Mobile 2003SE operating system and not Windows Mobile 5. And they also had to rip-out the mostly useless WiFi radio from the i730 instead of fixing its problems (like not being able to receive calls while using the WiFi connection). So the phone itself isn’t going to win much praise from me. But the idea of supporting both CDMA and GSM standards is something I whole-heartedly support.

Now I have to wonder how long until this becomes standard on business phones/smartphones. I know a lot of people that love my Sprint PPC-6700 and cheap EVDO connection, but have reservations about buying a phone that won’t work in Europe. Maybe this is the solution?

Niall Kennedy has news that Google will be publishing a Feed API.

Robert wrote today about that and about why Microsoft should buy Newsgator.

I wrote a post over a year ago called “How to make MSN cool” before I worked here (and before I knew that such efforts were already underway!). The focus of that post was a suggestion that Microsoft/MSN should buy Newsgator.

I still think that’s a great idea, though now there are some additional reasons.

It’s not too late to donate to one of 21 different Children’s Hospitals through the annual Penny Arcade Child’s Play charity. It’s as simple as clicking that link, choosing one of the hospitals from the map, and purchasing a toy from the registry set up at Amazon.com

You can read all about the charity at the site. One of my favorite things about donating in this way is that there are no “administrative” cuts or other nonsense. Whatever you order gets shipped straight to the hospital of your choice for enjoyment by children in need.

Since everyone else is doing it…

1) Intel will make a comeback in the CPU arena when they finally ditch NetBurst and start shipping Pentium-M based desktop processors with 64-bit support. They may even integrate a memory controller before the end of the year. The Apple partnership will help this.

2) Newsgator will get bought by, or closely partner with one of the major search/portal/blog players - or by someone that’s trying to become one.

3) The Windows Live brand will help some recent MSN products succeed in markets where they previously hadn’t.

4) The third-generation of search engine will emerge (Gen 1 was pre-Google, Gen 2 started with Google).

5) Google will struggle with their UI designs and look outside the company for help.

6) Hailstorm will reappear in pieces (and not all from the same place). But it will be given friendly names like “RSS”

7) The Playstation 3 will launch in Japan with huge success. There will be supply shortages but they won’t be as bad when Sony launches in the US several months later.

Sony will try to create an Xbox Live-like service for free with minimal success.

9) Soon before the PS3 launches in the US, 2 major titles (on the Halo 2 and GTA level) will launch exclusively on the Xbox 360 - which may even see a price drop at the same time. Sony’s US launch will be a painful experience for them.

10) Sony will put Europe last and Europe will put Sony last.

11) Internet Advertising will surge. TV advertising will take the brunt of the assault.

12) The TV industry will blame piracy for lost revenue. But they’ll adapt faster than the music or movie industries to changing demands.

13) Microsoft will make a strong bid to catch-up in the online music business, meanwhile missing out on the emerging online TV-show downloading business that Apple is already getting a head start on.

14) Being one step ahead as per the above, Apple will continue to dominate with the iPod - much to the dismay of those who want it to be an open platform.

15) A new kind of business will emerge, and Google started it. This new business model isn’t about Search though. It’s about tying content with advertising. For example, instead of advertisers going to TV stations, both the advertisers and the TV networks will turn to companies like Google, Apple, or Microsoft who will deliver both - and profit from both.

16) Companies like Comcast and Sprint/Cingular will show signs that they’re becoming more comfortable with the fact that they’re simple data pipes and that people want bandwidth, not bundled content or services that only work with “their network.”

So those are my predictions for 2006. Everything here is speculation and nothing more. If I think of any more tonight I’ll add them. Otherwise you can check back in 12 months and see just how right or wrong I am.

Last night I was on my way to pick up my sister and mother at SeaTac airport. At about 6:30PM a small blue vehicle with plate number 825 TJU struck my rear bumper at considerable speed on I-405 south between exits 2 and 1, and then sped away. It was too dark for me to see the color, make, or exact shape of the vehicle - but it appears to have left some blue paint on my bumper which I didn’t notice in the dark last night. I only got a glimpse of the license plate but the gentleman behind him pulled over and gave me the full plate number that he wrote down, 825 TJU.

I immediately informed the police that I was the victim of a hit-and-run, and about an hour later I heard from a trooper that said he was going to look into the matter and that he would be calling me back around 9 or 10PM. Well, I never got a call back. I left a message at the number he called from, but so far nothing.

If you see a vehicle matching that description (or with a similar plate number - it’s always possible in the dark the man behind him misread a number or letter) with damage to the front right side of the vehicle, please let me or a policeman know.

Not paying attention or losing control of your vehicle is one thing (it was a large merge in the right-most lane and everyone had plenty of time to see that traffic ahead was stopped). Had this person pulled over I would have been understandably upset - but I’d had this happen once before a few years ago back in Rochester and the man who hit me then was apologetic (he’d been talking on his cell phone and not paying attention to traffic) and took care of the damage he’d caused.

In this case however, this scum of the earth waited until I’d pulled over and then sped away into traffic. I don’t know if he or she had been drinking, was carrying something illegal, was in a stolen vehicle, or just panic’d. All I know is that I hope this person is caught and dealt with appropriately by the law.

How come everytime I e-mail someone with an @aol.com address, I get a message back saying “Delivery of your message was probably delayed.” Every single time. Do their servers send that message automatically? Do they have no hope at all of delivering the message in a timely fashion?

Or am I the only one that experiences this?

Sanaz has written a post about how the Live.com search experience has received a facelift and some much needed features!

Among them is proper support for back/forward navigation in the browser. This is what makes searching there actually useable for me.

So what’s so great about searching on Live.com versus, say, search.msn.com? Well for one thing, the results come back FAST. Like, lightning fast. Second, the whole layout and the ads are much cleaner.

In fact, I’d say it’s the best search UI of the top engines right now (previously it was Google) - except for one thing that I hope is fixed soon. The first page of results is still missing the page number and “Next page” links at the top right. Every page except the first one has them in the right spot.

It’s a small gripe, but it keeps it from feeling really “complete” to me. If they fix that, I’d say it’s a great 1.0 - anything they add after that is just gravy.