An easy way to see what happened in tha past years is to use google trends, which I did. You can see what I’ve found by looking at the picture below:

It’s pretty obvious that the crysis is affecting Black Friday Sales, but at a less level than how it affects daily online sales. Now the tricky part is to guess how sales will go this year. My take on this is that if the crysis begins to end sales will go up a notch, but if not expect another 20-30 % decrease during Black Friday.

Then, with time you start feeling the negative side and start wondering: if I had three monitors will I work more, and how more, or what to do to keep focus and not be overloaded by the information displayed simultaneous to me. Then you find yourself watching a movie and reading the news at the same time (yes, it happened to me a few times) si you ask yourself if that is normal.

Well, I don’t really think so. If initially it seems more space, more freedom, you see more distractions, more stimuli which overload your senses. My conclusion is that more visual space is better for productivity, but that’s true till a certain point, a point that depends on people’s way of doing things. I encourage you to try and find your point, not run from it. You may discover that you need a bigger screen of that two monitors are too much. So, what’s your take on this?

Josh Brolin, the actor that impersonates W. does a very good job at mimicking the President. The whole movie tries to unveil the history behind the worst President of USA (as a lot of people say), how he got the power and what he did with it. It’s a highly recommended movie.

Needless to say that all my Seagate drives (I have two, by the way) were targeted as affected by a firmware problem that could cause data to become inaccessible upon system power up. I got a little scared and thought to update the firmware from Seagate’s website.

I don’t know why, but I didn’t, I said to myself that it can wait a few days to see what others say about the issue as it didn’t seem too widespread to be a really concern. And boy was I right as it seem the guys at Anandtech updated the firmware on two of their drives which become unusable.

Besides the fact that Seagate really screwed things up I learned that it’s not always good to be an early adopter and sometimes is best letting others take the first step. What about you, any troubles with your drives?

I don’t want to write a preview, but just to make a short list of the ups and downs I’ve found for the Nokia Tube, as it was called before any official announcement, when was seen in the Dark Knight movie.

Pros

• Nice interface, intuitive, 95% of buttons are easy to press with finger, no need for the included stylus
• Fast for a touchscreen smartphone. It seems faster if you made the switch from Windows Mobile
• Nice audio quality and you can use your own headset
• Included web browser supports flash
• Various input options
• The included 8 GB microSD card will make you forget the need to free up space
• Ours came with included music files, around 300 MB

Cons

• A little big on the bulky side
• Not much software applications at this time, but will surely change in the future
• Way too little options for the home screen
• Touchscreen not very responsive
• Plasticky feel and build materials are of questionable quality

That’s it for now. I will update this post with future impressions of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Till then here’s a short video done by my colleagues.

Also in the era of RSS, constant good writing makes people subscribe to your feed. All sounds pretty easy to follow, but what do you do when inspiration is lost, as you can’t have good days every day? There’s a solution for this too: make a draft every time you have an idea, writing down a few words to remember you what the original idea was. This way you have  a buffer of future articles that you can write and program to appear on your website on regular intervals.

Once you have your buffer of articles already written you have the freedom to take a few days of pause, especially useful when you plan a vacation, a short trip of just don’t feel like writing. That’s not a technique invented by me, everybody successful with their blog does that, and sooner or latey you’ll get it too, if you didn’t already.

This is a low cost (or no cost) solution to ensure a constant flow or articles. Of course there are more elaborate solutions, like paying someone to do some writing while you can’t, but if you have money to hire someone you wouldn’t be reading this post in the first place, wouldn’t you?

PS. Expect regular articles on JohnPopes from now on, as I’m trying to do what I’m preaching

Congrats Matt, but that’s not what I want to write about in this post. I want to write about committing to do something right. I’ve been familiar with Wordpress since version 1.something (1.3 or 1.4 I believe) and it was not my first CMS to use (PHP Nuke was the first one). I’m mainly a content guy, meaning that most of the websites I’ve created or worked for were  content websites or websites that used content in a significant percentage.

Committed

Wordpress was by far the most efficient, optimized, bug free and simple to use CMS. It was also flexible trough plugins and that’s one thing that matters. Trough time I saw the Wordpress team listening to users and implementing features that some used trough plugins and also offering excellent documentation and support for free.

Wordpress is now more than a CMS, it’s a real platform that can adjust to different website profiles, not just hard-core content.

Not Committed

One example of not committed, at least for me, is Microsoft. I can’t look at Vista and not think that they didn’t solved problems years and years after being discovered. Even now windows animation for minimizing and maximizing is activating itself for no reason.

Rockstar is also one such example, not being able to solve disappearing textures in GTA and managing to make the game run smoothly on mainstream PCs.

Wordpress is the example that with committment and dedication you can build big things with little help. Congrats again!

I, for myself, an early Vista adopter (since Release Candidate 2, if I remember well), as I’m always liked new things and as Windows XP was on the market for a long time I’ve wanted something else. But even now, after two years of using Vista I’m still confused sometimes when faced with simple tasks, like File Sharing without a password, which I needed a few days ago and just yesterday I’ve managed to do it right.

So, let’s see what I wanted to do and what stopped me: I have a desktop and a laptop and I was trying to share some files in order to copy them from one PC to another. I’ve browsed to the folder I was going to share, right clicked on it, selected Share and added Everyone as a Reader to the permissions list. Nice and easy, but when I tried to access that computer I was prompted for an user and password, which I didn’t set up anywhere else so end of the road for me.

Yesterday I’ve had a breaktrough, and let’s see what I did in a few easy to follow steps.

Step 1. Left click on the network icon in System Tray (highlighted with red) and you get the picture below.

Step 2. Select Network and Sharing Center, that opens the picture below.

Step 3. Select Passwork protected sharing (underlinded with red in the picture above) and turn it off. That’s all. 

What it does it allows users to connect to your folders without requesting for an username and password. If it’s turned on, in order to view/modify files in shared folders you have to know an username and password that has rights on the computer that shares the files. Usernames with blank passwords don’t work, as the system requires a password.

A few years ago I wouldn’t dreamed of the Internet being so big and overwhelming sometimes. In it’s childhood we needed search engines to find information on Internet, not we need sorting websites, that bring in front of our eyes news that matter to us, not a pile of information.

Unfortunately I can’t seem to find a good website that puts together multiple sources of the same subject, with highlighted catch phrases. At least I can’t seem to find a website that does that efficiently and that can be trusted not to miss something important.

If in the past we feared not being able to find something now we fear missing something important or getting lost in a sea of garbage (that’s the truth, Internet is 99% garbage and 1% reliable, quality information). But that’s the price of free (or almost free).

What’s your method that helps you put aside garbage and clears the big picture? For me is scanning Google Reader for titles and pictures that seem to repeat on multiple websites I trust. If it’s everywhere it’s news, that’s the truth.

Last winter holidays netbooks sales skyrocketed (on Amazon.com 17 of 25 bestseller notebooks were sub 500$ netbooks). Everything seems good but I think I’ve spotted where all this thing is going.

But first let’s remember the times where 12 inch notebooks were called ultra-portables and were about 2000$ at least. That’s a lot for a less powerful computer with less features, smallish screen and cramped keyboard.

Netbooks will go slowly towards bigger screens: 12-13 inch and will add up performance, but not too much as they will trail regular laptops in performance figures. What makes me say that netbooks will transition towards bigger screens? Well, size matters, smaller it better in laptops but to a point where it’s hard to see fully fledged websites without horizontal and vertical scroll.

Also typing on a small keyboard is no joy, even if you put a high price on portability. That’s why netbooks will retain their 1-1.5 kilograms weight but in a slimmer package thanks to bigger screens. I’m pretty sure that in the next 12-18 months we’ll see netbooks as half size/half price notebooks.

In past people who knew how to install a program, archive some files and copy them in volumes on diskettes were little gods for those who looked at PCs like a new music trend, destined to disappear in a few years. But that didn’t happen and computers become mainstream and few people don’t use them today.

The problem with mainstream is that now few people are really experts with computers and some of them have bad intentions, which poses big risks to all the others using computers as a way of life, which, just like LIFE itself isn’t fair sometimes.

Few people understand the risks and know how to protect themselves and that’s the biggest problem this days: the ignorants and the ones that fear too much and prefer not to use PCs for things they think are dangerous. First there were the viruses but that’s hardly the issue it was a few years ago. Internet scams are now “the big thing” as a lot of people are weak enough to believe what other are saying. The difference is that the Internet offers greater protection for thieves and allows someone with basic skills to conceal their identity to the victim.

The solution as I see it is not to try controlling the Internet too much as it will lose the most important thing people love about it: freedom, but to try and educate consumers more plus enacting stronger organizations (like local militia) with stronger tools to help them fight online crimes.

That’s vague, I know but if any of you with above average online security knowledge teaches a few friends about security basics maybe people will avoid rookie mistakes and make online interactions more secure. Am I wright or not?

Next year seems that will be a decisive one for Formula 1, as Honda announced its retirement from this sport (lack of money and results is the main problem here) and new rules about engines that now should last a few races have made things difficult for teams and pilots, that now feel this sport is not about competition anymore, but just a way to spend/earn a few bucks.

I do feel the same too, as 2009 seems to be the first year with tho teams, McLaren and Ferrari, lining up 3 cars (now every team has 2 cars) because sponsorship and television rights contracts were signed for 20 cars on the starting grid, not 18. For me that’s pure nonsense: how can the constructors title be called fair if some teams have 50% more chances to gain t, thanks to one additional car? Will they multiply the points gained by other teams by 1.5? I don’t think so.

Too bad that Formula 1 was a sport for the brave and now seems more like chess. What do you think? Where F1 will go in the next few years?

I’m a really big fan of SF movies and I always look for new ideas, that make my mind dream, but unfortunately the past years thing got nasty in Hollywood and movies become worse day by day (that or I’m getting too old for the same turnovers and happy endings you see in movies today).

That’s why I really appreciate movies by their ideas, not special effects or blockbuster characteristics (except Dark Knight this year, which was a really good movies). Time Crimes is one such extrordinary movie, that managed to pun on film a very interesting idea about time travel and its negative effects . I’m not gonna tell you more, but I highly recommend the movie. And if you’re passionate about low bugdet SF time travel movies I also recommend Primer.

That’s for me the worst part of piracy, but it’s not worse than buying software and games that don’t live up to expectations. It’s like buying something that doesn’t has the features listed in the shop, features that made you decide to buy that in the first place.

Now, to strengthen what I said above I’m gonna tell you a story that happened to me this month, when GTA 4 appeared. I’m a big fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, which I’ve played since it’s made the move to 3D. Now, I live in part of the world where piracy is over 90% in households (business piracy is a little lower, but not that low) and I’m a part of the problem too, but at least I’m trying to cure myself. 

The GTA IV story

Back to the story, starting December I was planning to but GTA IV, but I couldn’t wait for it to hit shelves in Romania, that’s why I’ve remembered I have  a STEAM account (which I’ve made because I’ve had an OEM Half Life 2 Licence that came with a graphic card I’ve bought) and I thought I should give it a try. 

That being said I’ve logged to my STEAM account and saw that GTA IV will be available starting  December 3rd starting 00:00 GMT midnight for European users. I bought it with my credit card and started downloading. GTA 4 occupiexs 16 GB installed, so that took a whole day, but that was not a problem because I have to work during the day.

Till here everything ran smoothly and I was really enjoy going legit (hey, you have to buy things for Christmas, so why not make myself a small present). I really thought STEAM was a valid and nice distribution platform (which it is). Problems started after I’ve run the game for the first time. I have a pretty powerful PC, a bang for the buck system: 3GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 4850 graphic cards and two 17″ monitors.

Well, it seems it’s not enough for GTA IV, as I am only able to play it on medium settings with frame rate hovering around 25 FPS, but that’s not the biggest problem, as the game sometimes crashes, textures are not displayed properly and a few other graphic problems. Now when I spend 1000$ money in a PC and 60$ for a game I expect it to run smoothly plus I expect a good story (which fortunately GTA IV has) or I’ll think I made the wrong investment. 

I can only imagine what people that constantly buy games of software feel when the product they spend their money on is crappy. GTA IV looks to me like a game that was barely optimized (and I’ve played it on Sony PS3, and it was crappy there too), but gets saved by gameplay and story, which are truly exceptional (not at the level of Mafia, but close).

Future premises

It seems that software and games industry is following the path opened by crappy Hollywood movies that made people stay home and download movies instead of going to cinema and spend a few bucks on tickets and popcorn. This is happening to PC games these days and if game studios won’t do something to increase the quality of their products soon. You can say that consoles are the future, but I’ve played this year with Xbox 360, PS 3 and Wii and I don’t see myself buying them as games are completely different that on PC (I love strategy games a lot and those are not too well represented on consoles because of control methods).

What do you think, should piracy be legal or should producers spend more time polishing their products?

Below you can find the list which, of course, is opened to suggestions:

• even if you are the boss, the owner can always come and tell you what he wants and pretty much all you can do is obey
• after a good year the boss gets a hefty bonus while the owner gets a new Ferrari or a new house
• if things get a little tense the boss can always change lanes to a new job, while the owner is stuck in the same company (supposing it doesn’t have several businesses and can afford to let go some of them)
• the boss can always delegate tasks while the owner usually is guided by the motto “if you want something to be done, do it yourself”
• finding good bosses for your business is not always a piece of cake as you’re getting caught between finding someone smart enough to run your business but not smart enough to run its own business

Did you have other reasons in mind why it’s best to be the boss or the owner? Please share them if you do.

What strikes me about websites today it that usability is only done by following a few guidelines, but no real standard about how a site should look like and work like. Everybody pretty much does what he thinks is best, putting a logo somewhere in the header along with a search box, a terms and condition link in the footer and the all mighty content between them. That’s all.

Now why would it be nice to have standards for web sites concerning interfaces and user interaction? Think at this in comparison to the car industry. How would it be like to get a new car (same class as you had before, let’s say for the sake of argument an SUV) and find out that you have to get in the front seat trough the back of the car, or that the steering wheel controls the gas and the brake/accelerate pedals control steering. I’m pretty sure that you’ll end up confused,  to say the least.

Now this is what an average Internet user feels like when he jumps from website to website. Thanks to WEB 2.0 era things got a little easier thanks to blogs, but not every site is a blog as not every car is an SUV.

I think web should get a little more organized, but not too much that we won’t feel it’s the free medium of information and communication that charmed us it he first place. What do you think? Should we tighten the bolt or loosen it even more?

Even I thought that Nokia was a little behind of the times, but that last 6 months proved me wrong and, sincerely, I don’t regret it. It seems Nokia had aces in its sleeve, and I’m not talking only about the touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic and the recently announced N97 Communicator.

Nokia realised that you can’t just win with great hardware products. Without software and fans (see Apple here) to support your products, you can’t ever hope for world domination (or survival, in the context of the actual financial crisis).

Nokia truly made its first steps towards the “Life Connected” principle, some kind of Web 2.0 for “Nokia Connecting People”. Nokia had pushed the right buttons and now’s waiting for the people to come (a kind of “build it and they will come”, but more aggressively marketed).

Apparently Nokia is a good listener and watcher, following the footsteps of Google Earth, with Nokia Maps 3, that integrates web services from Ovi (Nokia’s social headquarters that allows file, contacts, calendar sharing plus games and music store - a sort of contender for iTunes + Apple Store + MobileME). Add to this Nokia Messaging and you have a solution that fits also businesses.

To keep it clear, Nokia want’s its smartphones to be really smart, to become the mobile cloud computing center of our social lives, seamlessly integrating fun with function. I do think they’ll be the next No 1 in the mobile world if Google doesn’t do something about it. You can count Android as “something” but I think Nokia has the upper hand, as it dominates in the OS+phones sales numbers, at least for now.

What do you think? Will Nokia hit the Jackpot or Mr. Do No Evil will win here too?

Now that’s what I call a bad title, as it doesn’t tell you anything about what’s inside the article, but since I’m no targeting any SEO keywords here please bear with me and listen to what I have to say. I love gadgets, I love IT&C and that means I love two of the fastest moving industries around.

But this year was worse than the others as the rhythm seems to get faster. Remember the time they announced a new thing, you prepared for it, saved some money and just bought it the first days it was available. Now this year showed me how it’s like for something new to be announced just before the previous best thing was about to hit stores.

Now I have two examples for you that will make clear what I want to say: HTC Diamond -> HTC Touch PRO -> HTC Touch HD and Nokia E71 -> Nokia 5800 Xpress Music -> Nokia N97 (the most recent must have). In both cases the second product was announced just before the first one hit the shelves and the third one was announced again before the second had appeared.

For me, a gadget freak, that’s just torture as all year I’ve been waiting for the next best smartphone to buy and finally I got stuck with an “intermediate” Nokia E51 that I got when my beloved Windows Mobile PDA Phone broke (who could imagine that a gadget would eventually break after repeatedly hitting the concrete kitchen floor).

Now how about you, are you still living with past century gadgets or you’re waiting for the iPhone 4G?

You just keep hearing that Video is the next big thing on the Internet. Just looking at Youtube, video comments and vBlogs you can see why people are saying this. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I’m sure it’s not totally true either, and I’m gonna elaborate on this with my own example.

So, I’ve got last month a Toshiba HD Camcorder (actually I’ve won it at a contest. Thank you Toshiba!) and I’ve just started my spielberguesque career. From what I see daylight videos are pretty amazing, while medium and low light shots turn pretty pixelated/grainy, which means you’ll never shot indoor without proper lighting, but I’ve got it for free, so don’t forget that.

Now, to get to the point, the camera saves files in MP4 format using AVC1 codec, which you guessed right, it’s not very common, so I was able to play it only with VLC Media Player (a nice player indeed, as it has all codecs embedded, so no need for search/install/try on Internet).

Now it doesn’t seem such a big problem, but what do you do when you want to edit the video, split it or reconvert it (1 hour of video takes about 10 gigs, so you’ll run out of space on the camera or your PC pretty fast). Sure there’s SUPER video converter that can convert pretty much anything to everything but the end result it’s not great and I’ll tell you why:

The steps that must be done to edit, convert and store an 88 MB, 48 seconds video:

• Copy video from camcorder (takes a few dozen seconds)
• Convert it using SUPER (I only managed to convert it to MPG, not AVI) in a 2000kbps 14 MB file
• Edit it in Ulead VideoStudio (a pretty simple and straight forward video editor) in a few minutes
• Export it from Ulead, which did take ~30 minutes (I’ve managed to watch the last episode of Californication during this time) in a 55 MB file
• Upload to Youtube which isn’t ready after one hour (I have a pretty good Internet connection, but I’m not living in US…)

Now that’s a lot of time (over 2 hours) for just under one minute video file. What’s worse than that: the end result, a file that doesn’t seem HD at all and it’s just slightly smaller than the original one.

What I’m saying is that Internet is not the answer (maybe yet) for storing your digital media library, which is supposed to be done without loss of quality as you might want to show your youth adventures to your grandkids later in your life when Super Mega HD or whatever is mainstream then.

But let’s not freak out for just a few cases when Internet can’t provide you with a sollution and do something about it, even if it doesn’t prove intuitive or great (just like my case). By the way, any suggestions for editing AVC1 MP4 files out of the box are welcome.

I’ve just finished wathing a documentary about Albert Einstein on History Channel. I’m deeply moved by this man’s ambition and perseverance to seek the one equation that will describe in a scientific manner god’s work: the Universe.

I knew about Albert Einstein from a young age what everyone else knew back then: it was a brilliant scientist of the 20th Century, an unconventional guy with big white hair, which discovered the General Theory of Relativity, that overturned Newton’s Theory of Gravity.

Now, after 90 minutes of very insightful information and testimonials from fellow scientists I know that Einstein was a man with a goal, which he pursued most of this adult life, becoming obsessed by it. You might think that’s not worth it, to live a life with an obsession, as Einstein spent often days sitting and thinking about his theories, but the great physicist managed to have a quite intriguing love life, proving you can live a normal live along with pursuing your ambitions.

The documentary hit me in the right spot and at the right time, as my online projects (all but one actually) were not doing too well and future prospects didn’t show certainties, but only new paths to try. Now I feel focused and motivated to pursue my own little dreams. I highly recommend searching and wathing the documentary.

Time travel - one of the possibilities of Einstein’s Theory

And I’m not talking about chineze dual-sim replicas, but products build by big brands like Nokia, ASUS, Antec, Sony, Nikon and such. What happened with the build quality? Well, I’ve got a theory on that, of course: the more the price race speeds up the less quality components are used, to keep price down. I’m not saying they’re using components with shorter lifespan that the one of the product, but when you build something made of 100 bit and pieces of low value eventually one will fail, breaking your beloved gadget.

Everybody is praising that consumers are the one who have to gain from the price war, but I’m pretty sure consumers don’t like to RMA their products and be deprived of them a few weeks every year. I’m getting this sense after my second phone broke this year. First my beloved ASUS P525 begun to shut itself down when a SIM card was inserted then my “like new” Nokia E51 begun to have problems with its ear piece, which can’t get the volume high enough to make a call possible in noisy places.

It seems that everyone puts a high price on functions and not quality, knowing that they’ll eventually exchange the product for a new model sometime soon. I agree with that, but I don’t like being forced to buy a new gadget because the last one broke.

What about you, do you think that cutting corners (in manufacturing process) is only for F1 drivers or you do think that I’m talking nonsense?

Easy you say: use the retrieve password by email function provided by Wordpress! This should always work, but there are some situations when it doesn’t: your email account cannot be accessed for some reason, you changed the username and don’t remember which is it, you gaved admin rights to a guest blogger and it changed your password (that’s a really silly thing to do).

So, let’s see the “magic” method I’ve thought of. First you have to have access to your SQL database, with admin rights. Now let’s see the steps:

1. Create another Wordpress blog (on a subdomain of the original blog, on shared hosting account or even on your local PC)
2. Create an account and set a password
3. Login to that blog’s SQL database (you can use PHP MyAdmin)
4. Browse the wp_users table and look for the user_pass field corresponding to the admin user. You won’t recognize the password you typed as it’s encrypted.
5. Copy the string
6. Login to the SQL database (usually your host provides access to PHP MyAdmin) of the blog you’ve lost the password
7. Browse the wp_users table and change the user_pass original field to the copied value at Step 5 (at this step you’ll also see the username/usernames accounts of the blog)
   
8. Go back to your blog and login with the username to which you’ve changed the password (use the clead password, not the encrypted string).

The wizard above can also be applied to any website that uses MySQL to store users and passwords, provided that you duplicate the platform (so that the passwords are encrypted the same way).

If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me.

If you find yourself in one of the situations described above you start searching the Internet, like I did. And below are the websites I’ve found that seem reasonably good for what I needed.

• http://www.mandolux.com/ - very abstract website, but very good wallpapers
• http://www.dualscreenwallpaper.com - easy to navigate but not the best dual screen wallpapers out there
• http://www.dual-display.com - very good wallpapers, but they are not sorted

And because I know you don’t have time to search I’ve put below a few wallpapers I currently use for my dual monitor setup.

 

Yeap, that’s right, it folds 3 times. The first part has the 3 inch touchscreen, the second the QWERTY keyboard and the third part has dedicated keys for games and system keys. All this makes the IcePhone a micro-notebook, at least according to the manufacturer. And not forget the dual-SIM capabilities

When you hear that it triple folds you expect it to be thick, but at just 23.3mm the IcePhone seems almost normal. If you check the video below you see that the built quality seems OK, and it should be, because the price is the most unexpected surprise: 1000 $ it the amount you’ll have to spend on a micro-notebook, but that’s in the range of the Nokia Communicator so the targeted consumers won’t feel such a big difference.

A short list of specs (detailed specs here):

• GSM Quadband 850/900/1800/1900, GPRS/EDGE
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA UMTS 2100 connectivity
• Freescale iMX31 532 Mhz CPU
• 3″ 240×400 px 65K color transflective TFT touchscreen
• Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro OS
• 3.1 mpx camera with autofocus and LED flash
• Built-in GPS
• Wi-Fi b/g
• 1250 mAh battery
• Dimensions: 127×60.8×23.3 mm
• Weight: 210 g

Oh, and the IcePhone is presented as a accredited medical device but I don’t think people will buy if for that.