Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

I’m not sure why, but I’ve grown to dislike the www. in front of websites. I think it’s because it’s pretty superfluous now. Sure one could just type coreygo and press CTRL+Enter and FF or IE adds everything in. But it’s nice to have a bit more control server side and ensure that everyone goes to the same URL. It’s also nice to prevent double entries in search engines and all that that entails.

If you’re using some LAMP type set up you could always just use mod_rewrite with .htaccess  and just do:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

IIS7 can actually import a .htaccess file and does a good job of converting them over. However if you just want to do the same thing from scratch the quickest way is to pop open the web.config for the website (you can create one if it doesn’t exist) and add the rewrite rules. Here’s my complete web.config as an example:

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system .webServer>
        <rewrite>
            <rules>
                <rule name="Redirect www." stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^(.*)" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
                        <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" negate="true" pattern="^$" ignoreCase="false" />
                        <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" negate="true" pattern="^coreygo.com" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Redirect" url="http://coreygo.com/{R:1}" redirectType="Permanent" />
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
    </system>
</configuration>

Just replace coreygo.com with your own domain and that’s it. I’ve got the bindings set up for this site so there’s just www. but this would also redirect blogs. if that was included as a binding. There’s a way to make exceptions and such but for that head over to IIS.net .

Below is an email I sent that I’ve modified just a bit to fit a discussion that’s been coming up pretty regularly. This email was in response to a thread that was started about how the Apple TV is doing, it was sent before the Boxee / Hulu removal announcement though that news doesn’t really change any of this post for me.

FWIW, I honestly think a lot of the sales this quarter were thanks to Boxee Alpha/Beta which quite frankly rocks on the Apple TV. I wouldn’t buy an Apple TV, but would now thanks to Boxee even in its early stages.

While Apple TV may only have ~400-500K units, I’m pretty sure every one of those users is using it as intended with a TV. On the other hand, Media Center has shipped what? 20M+ units last I remember seeing from the banners… But that’s just counting SKU’s that contained Media Center correct? Microsoft shouldn’t be concerned with that number when comparing, Microsoft should be looking at the number of users actually using the app and using TV. Usage data for the number of WMC PC’s connected to TV’s? Data for the number of unique guide downloads… IIRC it’s a heck of a lot closer to 500K than 20M .

Personally, when I moved to West Seattle I completely dropped all cable services and vowed not to pay Comcast again [except for my business Internet]. OCUR was great, it really was. Despite the royal pain the setup process was, thanks to Comcast’s inexperience with the technology, afterwards it was great and ran smoothly for me. At the end of the day though it just wasn’t worth the monthly service fees. And heck, I could only do OCUR because I was internal, not because I spent another $1K+ on a brand new PC. So the fallback would then become a tuner with NTSC/ATSC/QAM… Like many OEM’s are doing, I personally skipped over the TV Pack and went right to 7 so it’s only now that I could get digital content easily. Up until now though if I wanted to use Media Center as my TV source, as a normal consumer, I’d have to be using two clunky STB’s in combo with a dual tuner and the IR blasters and all that other junk. Not very elegant…

So like the growing few, I dumped the cable and bumped up my business Internet service speeds. $65/mo for 12/2Mbps… I use Hulu, Netflix, Joost, network sites, MTV, you name it. Combine that with P2P and there’s really no need to ever go back to cable. The one thing that makes me sad, really sad, is that Media Center doesn’t fit into this new TV ecosystem. It’s only now with 7 that it’s becoming a bit more compelling for users who don’t use tuners. Internet content through MSN and such is great but where’s the MCML from Hulu, Netflix, and all those? Where’s the rich metadata for my downloaded content? Where’s the social aspects as well?

One thing Boxee has done and done really well is create an experience around the way people use downloaded and online media making it incredibly easy to dump the wire. What really got me was when I loaded up Boxee the second day. I went in to watch some of the Arrested Development that auto downloaded via RSS. It parsed the share and sorted each show, then under that each season, then under that each episode. What’s more the thumb for every episode is perfect (see screenshot). Going to more for the episode pulls up complete metadata. All it had to go on was TVArrested Development310 – Fakin’ It.avi there’s no other metadata, no XML files, no album art in the folder. It does this for my MKV movies too, MoviesWALL-EWALL-E.mkv and sure enough it has the art and metadata, no DVDID.xml, no pain.

Yes Boxee is Alpha, no, it doesn’t have any of the amazingly hard work that went into making it compatible with the multitude of tuners. It has a lot of usability and stability issues, it’s not gone through as many iterations as Media Center so it’s not as refined. But man, for an Alpha it’s bloody awesome, I highly suggest getting the Windows Alpha asap and give it a honest go, set up uTorrent with RSS, see if you could make the switch to a cableless life and live on the bleeding edge.

Honestly, I’ve loved Media Center since the days when it was only Freestyle. I supported it as a MVP for 6 years, 3 years on the eHome beta team, and will continue to support it. I’m just a bit bummed out by the fact that Media Center has failed to deliver on features that have been asked for since 2002. What is Microsoft going to do to remain competitive when Boxee goes mainstream and releases STB devices like the Apple TV? I’m happy to see the start of Internet content via MSN but where are the third party deals with the providers that people use now?

When I was sitting for 4 hours in Las Vegas International for Snowpocalypse 2008 to allow my plane to arrive; I busted out the iPhone, connected to the free WiFi, downloaded Joost and started watching The Fifth Element for free. It wasn’t a big TV and it wasn’t HD, but honestly it didn’t matter. I had the content and the experience was awesome and easy. How is Media Center going to deliver that same grin on people’s faces when the predominant source of content is the Internet and third party services?

So there you have it… My little rant about why Media Center doesn’t fit me anymore. Writing this and discussing it further later made me realize that there’s actually nothing really wrong with Media Center at all, for your every day average person it’s great. Sure it could be a little simpler to get going like TiVo but as far as the ultimate experience, Media Center is definitely it. This will continue to be true so long as TV and movies continue to be delivered the way everyone has received this content for years. However I personally believe that as more people realize that dumping the wire is easy the trend to only use the Internet will continue. Plus to make things more interesting, analog broadcasts won’t necessarily continue from all the cable providers. They could very well move them over to encrypted QAM as far as I know. If this were to happen you’d need to rent a fugly STB for each tuner you planned on using. Even less elegant.

I realized that I’m just way ahead of the curve. I was watching TV on my PC with an old BT848 Hauppauge tuner back in 1997 then tried but failed to use WinTV. Then I used Media Center before it was Media Center, then OCUR came and went. Now I’ve completely ditched TV altogether and only stream with the Internet. If the past is any indication the wave should finally catch up with me in another 3 to 5 years, what I’ll be doing at that point is anybody’s guess.

Taking my last post a bit further… Sure any smart phone can pull up bus times. But had we tried this with my old BlackJack II with Windows Mobile 6.1 we probably would’ve been waiting till 9:45 for it to return the same results. Either that or I would’ve gone down stairs, waited for the laptop to come out of standby and then pull up the same results. I really loved my old Windows phone, but it just didn’t work the way you’d want it to. I could start the GPS at home, get to work and it still wouldn’t have a lock and that was with Google or Windows Live. I don’t think we would’ve even had been able to pull up the King County Metro site on that phone thanks to Internet Explorer.

Microsoft is really playing catch-up now. How the mobile team got so stagnant is beyond me. It really seems like nothing major has changed in their product for years. Unlike the Internet Explorer stagnation though this one goes way beyond that. Why? Well Windows Mobile has sold millions upon millions of units and gained a lot of market share. But for some crazy reason they’ve just let that go to waste and have let Apple jump ahead and lead the innovation party. Heck, it’s gotten so bad HTC has had to come up with UI to hide Windows to make the phone desirable. Of course there’s also Google now with Android, but I doubt they’re too worried about it. You know, at least not until more manufacturers jump from Windows Mobile to Android then Netbooks start shipping with WiFi and 3g with Android, then thin desktop clients…

Apple really does the entire end to end solution really well. Sure they force the Apple way or the highway but usually Apple’s way is pretty damn good. Google really does cloud services amazingly well. Sure they only really make money on the advertising but they’re not stupid. They’re building each piece of the puzzle little by little. At some point soon, they’ll be set to complete the picture and deliver something amazing that could potentially deliver a massive blow to Windows, Office, and Microsoft cloud services. Google has been combining pieces that’s just amazing.

The key difference between Apple, Google, and Microsoft? Honestly, I’m not sure, culture maybe, age in the case of Microsoft and Google. A dictator in the case of Microsoft and Apple. Who knows.

The thing I notice about Apple and Google though is that while Microsoft may have better business models to make more money on more things. Apple and Google are necessarily spreading themselves thin. Apple delivers a small product line really well and concentrates on a few things it can really deliver 100% on. Google makes strategic choices on where to concentrate resources to connect things. Neither company seems concerned with delivering products and services it really has no need to.

I mean I don’t see Apple going out to make their own maps service for the iPhone or their own stock service or their own search. Instead they partner with Google and Yahoo. When searching Google you’ll get links to 6 different services when searching for “stock MSFT“, you’ll get linked to a third party flight tracking service when searching for “BA49“. Or when you search for Led Zeppelin you’ll get an album listing with ways to purchase from multiple online stores and when you go to the song listing you’ll get linked to multiple lyrics websites.

When Microsoft does the latter what happens? Well first you go to live.com and get normal search results, if you click the first link for xRank you get to see some useful information and some search volume indicator thingy. Next if you want to dig further you click on the album but now you’re no longer on Live Search (or is it Windows Live Search), you’re on MSN Music (hello Mr. Butterfly). The option is presented to buy and download from Microsoft Zune which is good and multiple options are given to buy the CD from various online stores, also good. There’s even an option to compare prices. If you go to the track listing you can even hear samples, sweet… So what’s so bad about this?

Well, immediately this tells me there’s a lack of focus and execution. There’s a total of 3 products and services involved with that entire process, Live, MSN, and Zune. They all feel different and don’t share a seamless experience. Why is MSN Music delivering content that should be delivered directly by Zune?

There are so many places where efforts are duplicated, clear vision is lacking, and the execution is 20% off target. It’s frustrating to me as someone who really honestly cares and desires elegant perfection.

Microsoft has every piece of the puzzle needed. It can do amazing things when it needs to and definitely isn’t dead. What’s needed is a bit of a reset really. Time to refocus, clear the air, and start executing and connecting everything together in the right ways. I really just hope that it’ll happen soon.

MSFT has been flat for 10 years. What the company needs is a real renaissance and to deliver 100% on its innovations. Microsoft has been ahead of the curve thanks to many products that were ahead of their time and thanks to MSR. Microsoft has many times entered new markets and gained popularity only to lose them later by the lack of follow through and evolution.

The software Microsoft makes is amazing, there’s no reason why that can’t continue.

It may only be Alpha but it’s got everything that’s missing from Media Center. I can browse and use all the online services that Media Center ignores. It works with EVERY file format that I care about, it takes in every format I care about. It automagically gathers metadata for every format I care about. How I’m not quite sure. At any rate, I’ve got my media organized as such: \RELATIVITYMediaVideos under that there’s TV and Movies. Under that I’ve got each movie in its own folder. I also have each TV series in its own folder with episodes titled 101 – Title.mkv as an example. In Media Center I have to have an xml file for each along with a Folder.jpg for things to appear right. In Boxee it just greps the folder and file to figure things out and pull the data.

Does this work? Yes. Is it perfect? No. However it’s exactly what I’ve been feeling like I’ve been missing from Media Center. I gave it every network path to all my media and it’s all in there and it’s all quite fast. Every movie has album art and reviews and more. Every TV series shows all the episodes I have along with the art, the episode name, synopsis and more.

Going to the Internet content for Music or Videos that’s even more amazing. It has access to most of  the sites I use, Hulu, MTV, Joost, NPR,  Last.fm. Content is actually easy to find and obtain the experience is pretty damned seemless between each service. I don’t even know where or how it gets all this, in the first 30 minutes I don’t even care, it just works.

I need to get to bed now, but let me just say this. Boxee isn’t perfect, it lacks the Microsoft and Apple quality and management control, however this also opens and frees it from those controls and allows it to be so much more than either company could allow. The fact it works with so many online services and works with P2P content natively is a testament to this fact. The downside is that there are bugs left and right at least while running the client on build 7000 of Win 7. The user interface controls are clumsy and nowhere near as refined or intituitive as Media Center in 7. That being said it’d be a toss up between the two as for which one I’d use on a 10′ level. Why? Despite the effortless use of WMC it doesn’t work entertain me the way Boxee does. I installed Boxee and only Boxee, gave it my paths and it works with 100% of my content the way it already existed. I didn’t need to conform to its standards.

Now the part the folks in WMC should be worried about… Boxee may only be Alpha  and is super buggy, but it delivers on many fronts. And get this, it’s based on XBMC. XBMC was included in  Google’s summer of code for 2008, it may be a stretch, but Google is indirectly helping fund the progression of this project.

In my personal view it is a leap ahead of WMC. Why? IMHO, broadcast TV services like Blu-Ray will succumb online distribution. It won’t happen in the next 3 years, maybe not even in the next 5 but combined with online advertising and the continued shifts in the marketplace it will become more and more mainstream. Sites like Hulu, NetFlix streaming, and YouTube all show people care less about the HDness of their content and more about the ease of access to the content they care about. Not to mention the fact I doubt many people could tell NetFlix and a SD DVD apart viewing it side by side on a 40″ LCD. At any rate, I digress. The point of this paragraph is to say that TV tuners and the technological understanding required by WMC thanks to TV standards and digital TV requirements make it difficult choice for any geek requiring that GFAF/WAF.

Boxee does cater towards those that don’t bother with Comcast or DirecTV and instead choose free and legal Internet sources along with legally questionable P2P sources. This is something that Microsoft will never do at least with regards to the latter option. I think usage statistics will show the latter option is important to the masses including Mom’s and Pop’s.

Anyway, I guess that’s it for now. There’s more digging to be done. And damn it, I keep hitting the key and Boxee keeps pissing me off. Where’s Win 7 WMC usage when I need it.

Since my warranty was already void as of 12/07, and because I already swapped the 30GB HDD for a 60GB HDD, I ended up opening the Zune, then reseating the cable from the battery to the main board which resets the Zune (it’s the little brown plastic piece on the right in the attached photo, the one with the long cable going to it over the hard drive).

It seems as long as the Zune isn’t sync’d again with the software open it should function. I’m still in the process of testing this but I’m guessing jumping the clock forward to Jan 1, 2009 may let things pass over fine. But then again I don’t really suggest doing this after you get it working .

Of course, I don’t suggest voiding the warranty by opening up your Zune either. Hopefully you won’t.

UPDATE: Now that we’re in good old 2009 the Zune has righted itself thanks to the infinite loop ending. All is right in the world and the final FAQ regarding the Zune resurrection has been posted on the proper Zune support site.

UPDATE: Gizmodo posting first on the reseat fix though I don’t believe you need to unplug the hard drive so I advise against that. I also suggest waiting for the official solution to come from Zune support.

UPDATE: From the Zune forums:

Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used).  The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year.  The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009.   We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on.  If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.

Customers can continue to stay informed via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).

We know this has been a big inconvenience to our customers and we are sorry for that, and want to thank them for their patience.

Q:  Why is this issue isolated to the Zune 30 device?

It is a bug in a driver for a part that is only used in the Zune 30 device.

Q:  What fixes or patches are you putting in place to resolve this situation?

This situation should remedy itself over the next 24 hours as the time flips to January 1st.

Q:  What’s the timeline on a fix?

The issue Zune 30GB customers are experiencing today will self resolve as time changes to January 1.

Q:  Why did this occur at precisely 12:01 a.m. on December 31, 2008?

There is a bug in the internal clock driver causing the 30GB device to improperly handle the last day of a leap year.

Q:  What is Zune doing to fix this issue?

The issue should resolve itself.

Q:  Are you sure that this won’t happen to all 80, 120 or other flash devices?

This issue is related to a part that is only used in Zune 30 devices.

Q:  How many 30GB Zune devices are affected? How many Zune 30GB devices were sold?

All 30GB devices are potentially affected.

UPDATE: Over at ZuneBoards.com, a moderator has posted up the source and analysis for the cause of the bug on the Zune 30’s. Pretty interesting. In the end a minor mistake and a missed test case causing a major headache. Likely a simple firmware update will prevent the problem again next leap year. Granted I doubt any Zune 30’s will even be able to hold a charge by then:

year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */

while (days > 365)
{
    if (IsLeapYear(year))
    {
        if (days > 366)
        {
            days -= 366;
            year += 1;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        days -= 365;
        year += 1;
    }
}