Monthly Archive for November, 2006

Soapbox - Microsoft’s YouTube killer?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 22/11/2006
in video
. 5 Comments

Following on from YouTube’s success in garnering audience, Microsoft have rolled out their own video sharing site called Soapbox. Right now, the site is in closed beta but I applied for an account and had one on a couple of hours!

The site runs out of Flash which means it looks very well, but it can take some time to load up initially. An idea might be to have a “Loading…” image appear at this point ‘cos several times I thought there was nothing happening and I was about to click away when it opened (and I’m on a relativelymfast broadband connection!).

Soapbox

For some reason Soapbox has an upper limit of five on the number of tags you can use to tag a video. I’m not sure why this is but it seems a silly restriction. Removing this restriction would seem like an easy way to quickly improve on the service.

As a quick comparison of the services, I shot a quick video on my cameraphone and uploaded it to three video sharing services (Blip.tv, Soapbox and YouTube).

Of the three, Soapbox has the furthest to go in terms of adding Social Networking functionality.

One other issue Microsoft need to address is Licensing - on Blip.tv I can add a Creative Commons License to my videos; YouTube has a share or private option, however with Soapbox, you agree to make your videos completely open. I don’t know that I’d want that. I think the Blip.tv option is best on this score.

Soapbox:

Video: View from our balcony


Blip.tv


Click To Play

This is a short view of the view from our balcony shot with my camera phone (hence the poor video quality!).

YouTube

So overall, Soapbox is not bad for a first attempt but there’s plenty more work to do to bring it up to its competitors.

Komplett drags its feet on returns

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 21/11/2006
in Technology
. 4 Comments

I bought my dead on arrival Western Digital My Book Pro II from Komplett.ie. I ordered it on November 2nd. It arrived on November 17th. Dead. I applied for an RMA yesterday (November 20th).

I still haven’t received the RMA over 24 hours after applying for it. There is no reason whatsoever why the RMA couldn’t be issued immediately on application (particularly if Komplett or Western Digital were using a SaaS returns application like myRMA.net - Philips use it, as do Tyco, so you know it is enterprise class).

I wonder will the RMA take as long to process as the original order?

[Disclosure - I used to work for the company which developed myRMA.net back in 2002-2003]

I love iRed Lite!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 20/11/2006
in Technology
. 1 Comment

Who said I only write snarky posts?

I came across a free program (I can’t remember where I saw it first - I thought it was on Chris’ site but I can’t find any reference to it there now) called iRed Lite and I love it!

The idea is very simple - take the IR control which ships with all new Macs and is only useful for Frontrow, and add extra functionality to it so it can actually be useful, day-to-day!

I decided to use it in conjunction with Keynote, Apple’s presentation software, when I was giving my talks to Microsoft Belgium last week.

Previously I had used my bluetooth mouse to move the slides forward but I found this to be flaky (didn’t always work) - using the IR control was flawless.

Thank you iRed Lite

Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II sucks!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 20/11/2006
in hardware and review
. 416 Comments

I bought a Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II external hard drive recently. This is a 1TB external drive. It wasn’t cheap.

It was delivered last Friday and I went about installing it on Saturday.

It doesn’t work.

The lights come on when it is powered up but it doesn’t appear on the computer’s desktop, nor does it appear in the RAID Manager software which ships with the product (or in my Mac’s Disk Utility program).

It doesn’t seem to matter whether I try to connect using USB or Firewire - I get the same results. Swapping the cables which came with it for USB and Firewire cables which I already own make no difference either. My old La Cie external has no problem showing up.

The support documentation which comes with it doesn’t list any contact details for Ireland and the Support site has no useful info on this drive.

And it is Monday.

Not happy.

A-list blogger

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 20/11/2006
in Blogging and Technology
. 5 Comments

It appears I am an A-List blogger! Just goes to show they haven’t set the bar very high, have they?!!!

A-List Blogger

Via the blog friends I met at the Brussels blogger’s dinner.

I see Pat Phelan blogged about this too.

Microsoft Belgium gigs

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 17/11/2006
in Microsoft and Web 2.0
. 3 Comments

The presentations I gave to Microsoft Belgium this morning went really well and I received tremendously positive feedback. I have been asked not to talk about the content of the talks so I can’t say anymore about those.

I met some cool people there. Dave and Tom organised the event, and ran it really smoothly, despite Aer Lingus’ attempts to sabotage it by getting me there late!

I also caught up with Dirk (thanks for the ride from the airport) and Hans, both of whom I met originally in Burgenstock in September. And I met and had a great chat with Chris today at lunchtime. Chris uses WordPress.com so he can’t be all bad!!!

Tom Raftery’s Social Media is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!