Apple are just living great times now, perhaps their best ever, no question about it. New Touch-Screen iPods coming on the way, Apple dominating over %60 of the MP3 Players market share, iPhone have sold over 1.5 million units, and with their super deal with AT&T for $18/month for each unit, that means extra monthly income, Leopard 10.5 is released with 300+ new features that reviewers say easily out beats Vista. All that and more have pushed the Apple stock price up more and more, and now for the firs time in history, Apple is worth officially more than IBM!
I my self have no problem with that at all, I’ve never been an IBM fan, and Apple products don’t really suck. Well they suck a lot of money, but that’s most of what they suck. I’ve got an iPod and am waiting for right time to get a Macbook as well. If I was in the stock market business right now I may be holding some Apple shares as well. I was few years back and had my eyes on them anyways. However one thing keeps concerning me every time I see them moving forward. They are still a one man show company. Microsoft started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The latter resigned after suffering some disease, and Bill is about to leave full time job. However both have been away from the real work for quite long time, and while the company haven’t been moving as fast as it was in the old days, it’s still in a steady state I believe.
Apple however is different. Apple have lost, well gave away, Steve Jobs for over a decade and Apple almost went bankruptcy. Steve Jobs came back in 98 to shake things up, and in less than a decade, he made Apple larger than IBM. So who could replace him, not only as a technical brain but also as a figure that is worshiped y many, if it’s right for me to say it. He’s got the marketing skills, and as some call him, he is a deal making machine. He has the ability to reach strong deals, like the iPhone and AT&T. If such figure is lost, one has only to wonder what would happen to that company. First thing to do is to let go their shares until things settle down a bet I’d say.
There was a study more than a year back about the Future of the company, and who could take up the role of Jobs later on. In a nutshell, the study points out Apple have reported they have successor plans but are still confidential. If that is true, I hope there are preparations already taking place. You never know when you could lose a person you know. Even if such successor plans are in place, I think a wiser decision was made here by Bill Gates to step down and watch how the ball rolls without him. That way he can assist from far away until things are settled. I am not saying Apple can afford to do the same thing right now, but at least they can give some space for new comers. I mean come on, when was the last time you saw a new product presented by anyone other than Steve Jobs? I don’t follow all Apple events, but whenever I see one, it’s Jobs in the picture.
I am full of hope I’ m wrong here, but it’s something that keeps me worried.
Usually, Google are faster and smarter in closing up deals with new comers, and this is for several reasons. 1) Google are the giants of the web. 2) Microsoft have failed or on purpose buried down many companies they have acquired over the years. I am not saying Google is completely the opposite here. Some bad notes have been taken on them. Nevertheless, the Facebook founder and guru have decided to go with Microsoft this time surprisingly, giving Ballmer for once the upper hand over Schmidt. The deal gave 1.5% of Facebook shares to Microsoft in exchange of $240 million dollar. I heard reasons behind the choice was that Microsoft have stronger global marketing than Google does, which is something true obviously.
The joke made by CNet people was that there are still shares left, and Google could get some of it and set near to Ballmer on the same table. non-sense however, we all know it. Microsoft wouldn’t allow it to happen, and neither does Google want. The war already seems to have erupted as a reported video leak from inside Google have revealed plans by the web giants to build a massive giant social community called Maka-Maka, what kind of name is that?, over it’s broad of services, and mainly the online RSS Reader as it seems. If the news is true, and the execution is done properly, then Microsoft’s worst nightmare was a true prophecy. Microsoft have enjoyed the privilege of dominating the OS for home use, and thus manipulating everything that goes on top of it. They didn’t take good care however of the risk of the net. They underestimated how far it can go, and that in a way, it would be something that replaces desktop apps. Google started with their search engine, best so far, and then kept taking on new grounds. Google Groups, Google Reader, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Desktop which made Windows search a complete joke, Gmail which quickly became something like default for many, online Google Docs, which feature editing, sharing, collaboration, rich graphs. All that was faced by simple view only Live Office so far. Google also controls big chunk of hte blogosphere with their Blogger. The list goes on and on . If you take a look at the Top Ranked sites at Alexa, you would see they are mainly search engines, or community sites. Almost nothing else. Google has the search engine world firmly in its hands, you can see their stock price stroke $600 and now is less than $2 from $700!. And now, Google wants a share of the community world. Serious one. The possibilities with what they have right now are endless, which is why Microsoft wants to stop Google from taking up new companies like DoubleClick. I am again wondering, shall Google really take bandwidth license and get into telecom, release GPhone, and probably Google OS as well. How much flexibility and on the go services they can give, all bundled under one sign-in. It will be The One Account for all.
I still wonder though how did the video find it’s way to the public. I double checked it’s not April 1st.
To have a successfully good selling product, you must have mainly two things:
A Good Product
Good Marketing of that Product
Some other non-encountered for factors happen however even in the largest companies. I have read Bill Gate’s book about Business @ The Speed of Though, it was a pretty good book actually, even though a bit old. He talks about the digital nervous system of the company, and how all information should be digitized, accessible easily with click of a button. How a problem is quickly reported and reflected in the system for appropriate action. It’s a pretty insightful book I recommend reading. But it’s funny how a company that big, and with such genius brains running it still manages to fall into such loop holes.
The story here is from a potential Eurpean customer for Microsoft Expression, who was pleased with the trial version and wanted to buy the license for it. Going online to buy it, he found out he cannot get a legitimate copy inside the UK right now! So he was happy to find the Product Manager for Expression at The Future of Web Apps show. Hear that, Product Manager. So he asked how he can get a legitimate copy of the software. The product manager proudly said, yeah sure you can. Went into Amazon.co.uk, searches for product, and no items in stock! Goes to many other sites searching for it only to find it from one unknown reseller!
Now if the product manager can’t manage to get a copy of the software in Europe, who can? And how come the product manager is so ignorant to the European Market? It’s UK, not a small island in the middle of the Caribbean. And how come you don’t know when Amazon UK runs out of copies? Amazon has the best APIs to use, let alone your strong relationship with them as primary merchants. And where are the sales people from this? Shouldn’t there be a report of the software sales. How many we shipped, how much did we sell. If none is selling, something is wrong. If they know they sold out, they need to be shipping more. But never you should reach a stage where a whole nation can’t manage to get a single copy. And it gets even worse when the guy asked the Manager to buy a copy from him now since it’s not available anywhere, and the product manager responded NO in kind. There is nothing I can do to help now! I can only feel sorry for the long nights those programmers spent on their software to end up like this.
Isn’t it annoying when something goes wrong with your beloved computer? Be it software or hardware. One should always take care in buying robust stuff that doesn’t wear out quickly. But how can you tell? And how possible is it for a piece of hardware to crash in few years time, after which, the computer is going to be replaced anyways! In my experience with ATI Radeon X600 PRO 256 MB in less than 3 years, 3 out of 3 have crashed! I should be fair and note, they were all using the same PC brand, HP Pavilion, but I don’t see how the box can relate to this type of failures.
First, my PC started rebooting and was not able to run for more than 10 minutes. I did all types of update, followed all Windows advise until they suggested Disable 3D Graphics to fix the problem. Thanks! So I tried to contact ATI Radeon. First register, then specify the problem in very detail. I went through a hell lot of questions, it was like interrogating. The type of questions that tells you go bother someone else. I am talking about questions like:
What were you doing when problem happens? (Playing game)
Game from which manufacturer? (Umm… actually it’s more than one game, but I selected one for example)
What is the name of the game? (Ahhh… I can see where this is going)
Did up try to update? (YES I Swear)
And the list went on and on. At the end, I explained I did all kind of updates, read all articles and knowledge base, etc etc. and the problem is happening with more than one game so it’s not game specific. Submit. Soon after, I got this polite reply:
“Greetings!
Based on our experience, games issues are usually due to improper system configurations, driver issues, faulty hardware or a known issue with the game and the hardware or drivers that you are using.
First ensure your system meets the minimum requirements of the game and that you have any patches from the game vendor installed.
If your computer meets all of the system requirements, please check our Knowledge Base and the release notes of the driver you are using to see if there are any known issues or solutions for the game you are playing. If you are unable to find information on the specific problem you are having in our Knowledge Base, please check with the software vendor for any known issues or problems. If the problem persists, review the full details for trouble shooting game related issues at the link provided below:
If these suggestions don’t help to resolve your issues, please respond to the ticket and one of our qualified support representatives will assist you. To respond to this ticket you must visit http://support.ati.com and login to My Support.
Thank you for choosing ATI!”
Obviously, they did not take care to read any of all the information they asked for, or else, they chose to pretend not to have read. All the hardware specs were there, it’s not bad at all, and if you are not gonna compare it to game specs, why did you ask for the game name then? Also, I did mention I updated to latest driver and gave them the driver version so there is no way to be wrong about it. I already went through your knowledge base as well, I couldn’t find any information that helps and that’s why I am contacting you. But they have to jump and blame the game manufacturer first, who were so kind and offered a compensation (hear that?) instead of reaching out for help. When the level of support reaches that level, I can hope no more and find my own way out. As one guy said “When there is something that is bad, don’t take the time to see how bad it is”. I took out the video card and later found out the fan is completely jammed and does not move a bit. Blame it on someone else! So I got my self an nVidia wonderful 512 MB Video card with HDMI output and it’s working just fine.
Few months later, my in-law had problem with a similar HP PC and he couldn’t resolve it. Taking it to the store they said you have to replace the video card! (That’s # 2). Then just last week, my family started facing restart problems with a similar PC. Now I’m smart and for once do not have to blame Windows for it. Do you want a new video card I said? Again they went through all types of troubleshooting, and for few hours the game went on. I told them you’re gonna need a new card, and the next day, they did. Problem came back and it’s obviously the same problem.
So that’s 3 failures out of 3. I have another friend with a similar PC but I don’t know if it still works or not. I will just use my logic and assume not. Or else, if he is reading this blog, give us your thought about it. With that rate of failure, and the terrible level of support they have, any PC that comes with ATI, and ofcourse Vista, now is not an option. Is it gonna be hard to pick my next computer then? Hopefully not as MacBook Pro comes with NVIDIA I’m happy to say.
As I was searching YouTube aimlessly trying to please my kid with anything I could find, I was searching for intro clips I some how dropped by the Mafia 2 Game trailer, which was announced to be in development two months back.
*** MAFIA I SPOILER WARNING ***
To those of you who don’t know, Mafia is a third-person shooter game that was released back in 2002 by Illusion Softworks. The game was so successful from many aspescts. Game play, sound, and the best part was the story script. It was something so original that reminds you of GodFather story. A decent Taxi driver gets dragged unintentionally into the mob business, raise higher and higher against his well, until he becomes the most wanted, try to sell his Don out, manage to live few good years with his wife and daughter, until he get shot dead infront of his house.
*** END OF SPOILERS ***
Immediately after the game end, many people started asking for a sequel, even though the ending of Part I does not leave much space for extension. News rumored also about development team leader leaving the company, bringing down all hopes of a new game. Now, this trailer came out of no where after years of wait. I doubted they would dump their best selling game ever. A game that have sparked idea for clones, ever since then we saw GodFather the game, and heard of Sopranos game as well. Nevertheless, they seemed to have made a good decision and started the story all over. Trailer does not show any link to Part I, and even shooting style seems different. Target locking seems to have been added, even though the FREE style shooting added some taste to part I, and made GodFather game so easy.
Anyways, this is a game I’d definitely be waiting for. The first part got me on the edge of my chair.
I was surprised to read this story about Google running black page for a day for San Francisco users. The idea is to increase awareness among people for power high consumption. But why? Is San Francisco, home the Silicon Valley of technology at power crisis just like Kuwait is? Are they gonna run multi-million dollar campaigns asking people to go easy on power consumption, and suggest PSP instead of PS3? The dazzle was gone few moments later. Google’s efforts are part of the Lights Out San Francisco campaign that invites all San Franciscans to use one fluorescent light bulb and turn off all unnecessary lights at the night of March 29, 2008. But why? This is a call by San Francisco that should be heard by the whole world to protect the planet from the on going increasing effect of the climate crisis. An issue that’s been raised and discussed frequently those days.
I guess the guys at the ministry would be happy to add this fact to their campaign. Instead of finding solutions to their short-comings. But over there, it’s quite the opposite. They are finding a solution to a rising problem as opposed to our awkward way of enforcing less consumption to avoid the shortage of power generation caused by year and years of lack of planning and improvement.
Anyways, having the search engine giants join in this simple black background and one extra page most have had a great effect and delivered the message to most San Francisco by now. Smart move!
During the gather and build of my Q8Ba7th index, and the new Phone Search that was recently added to it, I stumbled upon very different, funny, weird, and amazing stuff. One of them was this site. Now at a first glance you may say this is just an ordinary tour operator called Caribbean Dream. Now look at the url clearly: http://www.idb31kuwait.gov.kw/index.html.
Going through the site, it has not relation to Kuwait at all. Yet, it has the word Kuwait in it’s domain name. But that’s alright. Anyone can register just that domain name by it self. What I really can’t understand is how it has the domain under Gov.KW??? .KW domains are only given to Kuwait sites, and you have to contact them and provide some form details and physical documents to get it. On top of that, .GOV it self is supposed to be reserved to Government domains only as far as I know. Any person can register a domain with word Kuwait in it. With some links, or being inside Kuwait, he probably can get around the .KW thing. But reaching the .GOV! :).
Further searching have revealed it was listed by Kuwait-Info previously as Annual Meeting of IDB Group in Kuwait. Which made some sense. But somehow the domain was directed to non-related site and this is the net result.
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