Monthly Archive for April, 2006

Windows has departed!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/4/2006
in Technology
. 8 Comments

Windows has departed! A departures screen in Cork Airport displaying a Windows error message

It is a good thing Windows isn’t used for any mission critical systems, isn’t it?

Spotted in Cork Airport departures lounge yesterday.

Enterprise Ireland Web 2.0 event

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/4/2006
in Web 2.0
. 1 Comment

I’m off to hear Marc Canter, Jeff Clavier, Judy Gibbons, et al speak at the Enterprise Ireland Web 2.0 event tomorrow (Thursday Apr 27th) - if you are going to be there, please introduce yourself, I’d hate to be the one sat in the corner with no friends!!!

China blocks Technorati

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/4/2006
in Search Engines
. 30 Comments

I received an email this morning from Ken Carroll of ChinesePod telling me that China has blocked Technorati at the great firewall - it would appear that Technorati will no longer be available to anyone to use in China.

Co-incidentally, when I interviewed Technorati’s CEO David Sifry on the PodLeaders show a couple of weeks back, Ken submitted the following question for David -

Do you have a China strategy? What do you foresee there in terms of blogging and blog search?

Does this mean Technorati isn’t censoring search results into China like Google, MSN, Yahoo are? And if this is the case, will Technorati now have to start doing the Chinese government’s censorship job for them if they wish to be seen in China once more?

I have posted about this topic in the past and, in my naive opinion, unless all the search engines come together to formulate a common China strategy, China will continue to pick them off one by one.

UPDATE:
I see the Mad About Shanghai blog is also reporting that Technorati is being blocked in China.

FURTHER UPDATE - it looks like a couple of sites are now reporting that Technorati is available once more in China - can anyone else confirm that?

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 to be abandoned?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/4/2006
in Browsers and Windows
. 3 Comments

Microsoft has announced today that Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 is available for download.

In the Microsoft announcement, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer development at Microsoft, said the timeline for further releases is:

Windows Vista Beta 2, and then Beta 3 of IE7, release candidates, and then a final release before end of year.

In a review of IE7 Beta 2, Mich Arrington of TechCrunch pointed out that:

The key features are tabbed browsing (including “Quick Tabs�, a way to see multiple web pages on a single tab), a continuation of the minimalist approach on the UI and toolbars, and enhancements to the RSS reader built into the browser. The team says they’ve made significant improvements in CSS rendering as well, a problem I noticed in the previous beta version.

Co-incidentally (I think!) John C. Dvorak has an article in PC Magazine today where he calls on Microsoft to abandon the browser! John reckons that:

All the work that has to go into keeping the browser afloat is time that could have been better spent on making Vista work as first advertised.

All of Microsoft’s Internet-era public-relations and legal problems (in some way or another) stem from Internet Explorer.

John’s solution is that Microsoft should:

pull the browser out of the OS and discontinue all IE development immediately…. Then, Microsoft can worry about security issues that are OS-only in nature, rather than problems compounded by Internet Explorer.

I wonder if Dean Hachamovitch and the IE team are worried about their jobs now that John has put that sugestion out there. Somehow I doubt it! John’s idea, while superbly timed and very well argued is destined to be ignored by Microsoft. Giving up and conceding defeat is not the Microsoft way.

IE7 Beta 2 caveats - According to Microsoft’s IE Group Program Manager, Tony Chor,

there is no supported way for IE6 and IE7 to install side-by-side

IE7 is beta software - install it at your own risk!

Google Maps rolls out new old data

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/4/2006
in Technology
. 3 Comments

I spotted that Google Maps satellite data was updated today so I decided to check it out. You still can’t see our new house in Rushbrook (built in 2004) but our old house in Bracken Court is clearly visible and you can easily make out Pilar’s white Micra in the drive (which we sold recently) - new data for Google Maps, but old data for us!!!

Our old house on Google Maps

GarageBand 3.0.2 update - are they watching me?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/4/2006
in Podcast
. 0 Comments

Apple announced an update to GarageBand 3.0.2 - this update:

addresses issues with video handling, podcast exporting, and importing QuickTime markers. It also addresses a number of other minor issues.

This is amazingly co-incidental timing. I run a podcast for IT@Cork and this morning, when I was trying to edit one particular podcast which I needed to publish today, GarageBand kept crashing on me. If I tried to listen to the podcast through my headphones, it crashed. Several other operations also caused it to crash. I dumped the preferences file, I started the Mac from CD and repaired permissions and repaired the disk - all to no avail.

Then I hear Apple have released an update which “addresses a number of other minor issues”.

It is a good thing I’m not paranoid!

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