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Super, I’ll take that new computer with little-to-no functionality

Today, Google finally announced on their blog that it will be going to war with Microsoft, Apple, and Linux by releasing their own Operating System. There have been rumors and speculation about Google building their own Operating System for years now, so this in not really any big news.

What actually is news (to me any way) is that they are basing this new Windows/Mac killer on their Chrome browser. This had to make the folks in Redmond and Palo Alto breath a sigh of relief.

What exactly is the selling point of this new OS?

• We have nearly no features
• New computers, now with half of the usefullness
• Computer – Functionality = Elegance

Thanks, but no thanks. Have you seen the Chrome browser? What does it do that’s any good? It doesn’t any of the cool features that Firefox fanboys brag about. None of the cool ideas that Opera features right out of the box. It doesn’t have the polish or flair of Safari on a Mac. Before you say, “At least it’s better than Internet Explorer”, that’s almost a moot point. First of all, I’m not convinced of that (I.E. 8 any way). Second, anyone who is either too lazy, in the dark, or boring to still use Internet Explorer will NEVER switch to some bleeding edge operating system.

What is the hallmark “feature” of a the Chrome browser? Simplicity, cleanliness, speed? What does all of that crap even mean? It doesn’t have extensions. I know, I know it sort of has some jive-ass extenstions that are a headache to hack together. I mean real extensions that just install in a few clicks and provide “real” gamechanging enhancements.

Is this what their operating system is going to be like. None of the ubiquity of Windows and none of the polish of MacIntosh. Buying and renaming a rabble of applications (Picasa and Google Earth), and services (Blogger, YouTube, and Voice) is not the same as building an integrated, useful operating system. Microsoft, Apple, and Linux have been at this thing for decades and there are a million annoying things about each of their offerings. How exactly is Google’s product going to be a usable computing experience?

Devil’s Advocate

First of all, I use and love a ton of Google’s products, so I do think that they can build, buy, and/or steal some great stuff. Second, I can see a way in which they can possibly make a thin client that floats on top of a linux kernal. They could bundle some of their existing and future desktop applications with the build. Then, they could embed heavy hooks into their own (and other people’s) web applications and services. If anyone can tie this all together into a usable, if not minimalist package it just might be Google. But I would bet against it.

One More Thing

The previous scenario that I just mentioned already exists. It’s called an iPhone. If Apple get’s a hint of any possible success for this type of thing, they’ll slap a keyboard and bigger screen on an iPod touch in about 10 seconds.

Prognosis Negative

In summation, starting from scratch with a small toolbox and trying to take down three goliaths who have decades of experience, millions of hours of code, and about a TRILLION dollars of a warchest does not seem like a recipe for success.

Miscellaneous Ramblings, Web Surfing apple, chrome operating system, Google, google chrome operating system, google operating system, google os, Microsoft

The Best Music Services Part 4

One of the things that makes online music services more interesting and useful than your iTunes library is the aspect of a Music Community. Not only can you hear good music, but you can connect with friends and others who share your tastes. This allows you to socialize about your favorite artists and see what others think and listen to. I get a lot of suggestions for new music from the people in my online music communities.

This is the 4th article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services
5. BBest Third Party Integration among Online Music Services

Let’s take a look at the types of community and social networking that each of these services offeres. (P.S. If you are interested in sharing musical selections with me, there are links at the bottom of the post.)

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Media, Miscellaneous Ramblings, Music, Product Reviews, Technology, Web Surfing community, last.fm, Music, music discovery, music services, music streaming, pandora, slacker.com

The Best Music Services Part 3

This is the 3rd article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services
5. BBest Third Party Integration among Online Music Services

If I want to hear all of my favorite songs, I can just listen to the “My Top Rated” playlist in iTunes. One of the real values of a good online music service is the ability to turn you on to good new music that you DID NOT know about.

These days I find just about all of my bands from suggestions on my favorite services. Let’s take a look at how our players stack up on the issue of Music Discovery.

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Media, Miscellaneous Ramblings, Music, Product Reviews, Technology, Web Surfing last.fm, music discovery, music services, music streaming, pandora, slacker.com

The Best Music Services – Part 2

This is the 2nd article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services
5. BBest Third Party Integration among Online Music Services

The best reason to use any of these music services is to have them send you great music. There are many different ways of determining what “you” will like. They all seem to straddle the line between art and science with a touch of voodoo thrown in. I have spent a lot of time trying to get a stream of good music out of all of these services. Let’s take a look at my mixed results. (Don’t forget to give your feedback in the pole and comments below.)

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Media, Miscellaneous Ramblings, Music, Product Reviews, Technology, Web Surfing ilike.com, last.fm, Music, music services, pandora, slacker.com, survey

Separating the Contenders from the Pretenders

There are a bazillion services out there that will stream music to you over the interwebs.  A few are amazing an then there are well…”the rest”.

Loading up a few hundred thousand songs and streaming them is not really that big of a deal. The “special sauce” is what adds real value to these services.

Let’s to take a look a some of the major players in this space to see how they all stack up.

The Contenders

I will be evaluating the following seven music streaming services.

iLike.com -enables fans to discover and share playlists, new music that matches their personal tastes, and concerts by their favorite artists. iLike offers retail links to iTunes and Amazon to purchase music, Ticketmaster to purchase concert tickets and Thumbplay for ringtones.

Jango.com  – Jango is a social music service that lets you create and share custom radio stations. It’s the easy way to play the music you want online, legally and free.

Last.FM – Last.fm is a music service that learns what you love.
Every track you play will tell your Last.fm profile something about what you like. It can connect you to other people who like what you like – and recommend songs from their music collections and yours too.

MusicStrands.com – MyStrands’ Social Recommender is capable of automatically learning people’s tastes and how their preferences evolve over time. It can be used to generate real-time music recommendations.

Pandora.com – Together, ateam of fifty musician-analysts has been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound – melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics … and more – close to 400 attributes! They continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country.

Shoutcast.com – SHOUTcast Radio offers thousands of free Internet radio stations from DJs and broadcasters around the world.

Slacker.com – Slacker is what radio was meant to be: personal, portable and free. Slacker attempts to deliver free personalized radio that is customized for everyone. Slacker combines the knowledge of the nation’s leading music experts from every genre and your own personal tastes to create the perfect radio stations for each and every listener.

If there are any that are missing, add them in the comments and I’ll try to cover them in a subsequent article.

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Media, Music, Product Reviews, Web Surfing ilike.com, internet radio, last.fm, music services, pandora, shoutcast, slacker.com

Sharing the Best Tutorials on Twitter

If any of you are Twitter users, you’re probably aware of the #followfriday phenomena. The original theory to tell the people that you follow about other Twitter users who regularly post interesting, useful tweets. This is a great concept that helped me find a bunch of good people to follow.

Recently #followfriday seems a lot more like an artificial, obligatory way for everyone to pump up each others follower counts.

I still do post the occasional #followfriday tweet using the following guidelines:

1. They are someone whose tweets regularly add value to my experience.
2. I can provide a reason for why I’m recommending them. (for example, #followfriday @abc123 They have the best information on #letters and #numbers anywhere on the web)

This serves two important purposes: It lets you know why you might care and the #tags give a little “twitter-wide” credit to the person being recommended. (Help the follower and followee; good idea, right?)

My Variation on the #FollowFriday Theme

VitaminCM.com is all about helping you learn how to do things. So I came up with the a twist to the original idea that will hopefully help pass on useful information. I’m calling it #TuesTorial.

During the week, I’m going to bookmark any good tutorials that I come across. Each Tuesday I’ll tweet the ones that I think are particularly helpful. If you would like to see my suggestions, just follow me on Twitter.

They will also be posted here in the sidebar widget.

Here is the format that I will be observing:

#Tuestorial – Great video showing how to do #XYZ – link.url/12345

I promise not to shamelessly promote any of my own articles, just other people’s work that I think is excellent.

If you want to see my suggestions follow me on Twitter. (They will also appear in the Twitter widget to the right.)

Your Call to Action – Please Join In the Fun

If you really like the idea of sharing helpful tips, please join in. I really want to see the tutorials that you recommend, so put your @Twitter name in the comments below so that I can follow you.

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Productivity, Software, Tutorials, Web Surfing followfriday, social networking, tuestorial, tuestorials, Tutorials, twitter

My Favorite Places for Tutorials and Instruction

VitaminCM.com’s goal is to help people get more from their technology. I want to help and inspire people to do more fun and useful things with computers, the internet, and gadgets. This help is provided via detailed written and video tutorials along with News, Reviews, and Surveys.

I would like to share several invaluable resources that I use for information, instruction, inspiration, and tips of my own. This is my list, I would love to hear where you go to learn new things. Please include any relevant places in the Comments below.

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Productivity, Tutorials, Web Surfing how-to, reference, resources, tutorial

A Look at the Past, Present, and Future

I was looking at some information in my site’s dashboard the other day and noticed that I was at my 99th post. Well, that would make this my lucky 100th article. I started VitaminCM.com on May 16th, 2007 while I was away at a Training & Development convention. That makes 21 months, which equals 4.7 articles per month or 1.1 per week.

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Personal, Productivity, Web Surfing blogging, stats, writing

See How You Can Bring the Web Operating System to Life

Every so often I read about the Web OS or the Cloud OS, "When are we going to see the Web OS arrive?" In my mind, it’s pretty much here (with a few caveats).

 
A Web Desktop or webtop is a desktop environment embedded in a web browser or similar client application. A webtop integrates web applications, web services,  and applications on the local computer into a "desktop-like" environment. Web Desktops provide an environment similar to that of Windows, Mac, or Linux systems. It is a virtual desktop running in a web browser where data, files, configuration, settings, and access privileges reside remotely over the network. Much of the computing takes place remotely and the browser is primarily used for display and input purposes.

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Gadgets, Media, Miscellaneous Ramblings, Podcast, Productivity, Software, Technology, Tutorials, Web Surfing igoogle, integration, tutorial, web applications, web desktop, web operating system, web os, zoho applications

GM and Ford can use Palm’s Simple Plan to Save Taxpayers $30 Billion

I saw all of the videos from CES of the new Palm "Pre" phone this week. I was pretty impressed, to say the least. I was discussing it as a challenger to the iPhone (don’t say killer) with a friend at work.

We both came to the same Earth-Shattering conclusion. (more on that later)

First, a little history on Palm Inc.

Palm completely owned the PDA market space to the point that they were as synonymous with PDA as Band-Aid (brand) was with adhesive bandages. Windows mobile made a better OS and HP made a better device and there went that market.

Then, they came out with the Treo and single handedly created the "Smart Phone" category. It did so many things, but had so many annoyances at the same time. Even after a few iterations they still have not ironed out the dings that make the Treo annoying. Along comes Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Symbian and again, they’re an also-ran. These phone/OS combinations were tough enough competition, but then the iPhone comes out and destroys everyone.

So Palm has been scuffling around for the better part of a decade running a household name into the ground. They have not adapted or innovated their products in any way that keeps up with the pack. How many times have they been on the brink of death in the last few years alone?

What does Palm do in the face of this? Well they grab themselves a JesusPhone and a few of the Apostles that helped create it. Next they just break out the photocopier. They build something that appears to capture all of the splendor of the iPhone experience. That alone would have been a small miracle, but they didn’t stop there. They took a look at a few of the tiny knocks on the iPhone.

• Apple’s ridiculous closed platform (links to articles)
• Camera with no Flash or Video
• No physical keyboard
• Poor multitasking / task switching
• No copy and paste

They came up with reasonable solutions to these problems.

Read more…

Gadgets, Miscellaneous Ramblings, Movies, Product Reviews, Web Surfing auto bailout, bailout, Ford, GM, iPhone, palm, palm pre