Silicon Valley Technology Commentary & Archives · Est. 2006 3,034 Posts · 2006–2026

March 11, 2007

March 11, 2007 · 1 MIN READ · BY LOUIS GRAY

Tidbits from the Link Blog: March 11, 2007

Tidbits from the Link Blog: March 11, 2007

I hadn't intended for today's collection of links to be all on Apple and Microsoft, yet that's what's happened. While some thought the OS wars were over in the 1990s (and Windows won), there is significant momentum at Apple's back, and it's getting people thinking of how the company can move further into the enterprise and leverage its success with iPod, iTunes and increased market share.

Meanwhile, Microsoft certainly isn't winning over fans with the continued mediocrity of its products. Six months after the debut of Zune, Engadget's Ryan Block says the device "still sucks", while Chris Pirillo says people are completely disillusioned with Vista. A friend I spoke with Friday says that if you launch Microsoft Visio twice in Vista, the system is a guaranteed hang. Wonderful. Can you feel the "Ow"?

Applepeels: Is the biggest challenge to Apple in the Enterprise still the IT Director?
Chris Pirillo: Windows Vista Help
Ryan Block: Zune at the 6 month mark — it still sucks
Wall Street Journal: Music's New Gatekeeper

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March 11, 2007 · 1 MIN READ · BY LOUIS GRAY

ANtics Episode 3.05: Safety First

ANtics Episode 3.05: Safety First

Cross-Posted on Athletics Nation...

The last two seasons have seen the A's suffer their unfair share of injuries, and 2007, regrettably, appears to be on the same track. As players go down and others are getting hit while at bat, some A's are taking a new approach to safety. The ANtics checks in.


Click to See Larger Comic


All Comics

March 8, 2007

March 8, 2007 · 1 MIN READ · BY LOUIS GRAY

Daylight Savings Shift to Strike Our TiVo?

Daylight Savings Shift to Strike Our TiVo?

When news of how Congress' plan to move up Daylight Savings Time would impact the IT community first came to light, I rolled my eyes. Apple issued an update to patch Mac OS X to deal with the change. Microsoft did the same. BlackBerry even issued a patch so my handheld would accurately display meeting times, and e-mail would show with the correct time stamp.

But I didn't anticipate what could be the biggest problem of them all. My TiVo. Today, TiVo helpfully sent an e-mail warning me that for three weeks, my TiVo will likely show the wrong time, and that manually recorded season passes will record the wrong shows for a while, unless I go in and make changes. This means that instead of recording ER every Thursday at 10, we might end up getting an episode of Scrubs instead. That'd be a calamity, of course. (More Details at TiVo.com)

Yet, TiVo doesn't seem all that concerned that there would be just as much drama away from the set as on the set. Couch potatoes everywhere apparently won't suffer too poorly. They promise that Season Pass programs and Wish Lists will continue without interruption, after all. But no patch is coming. We just have to wait this one out, and maybe by next year, they'll have something resembling a solution. Until then, we will be caressing our remotes, and patting our TiVo every morning in hopes they cooperate.
March 8, 2007 · 2 MIN READ · BY LOUIS GRAY

My Technorati Link Stats Make No Sense

My Technorati Link Stats Make No Sense

Looking at one's Technorati ranking frequently is well-known symptom of "Egotistical Blogger Syndrome" or EBS, for short. Comics have been made about bloggers needing to get their Technorati ranking fix, and others, like Guy Kawasaki, have made very public campaigns about their quest to reach the top 100. But for me, a small speck in the blogosphere, I don't see that my numbers add up, as Technorati's database often loads slowly, loses items and simply doesn't project consistency.

For more than a year now, we've dabbled in this blog, and while it does cover technology news, sports buzz and the occasional political rant, it is by and large a personal blog. For much of the time, it's gone largely unnoticed. More recently, some of my observations around Google Reader, Digg and timing for blog posts have gotten a wider audience, sending more readers my way, more frequent comments, and, best of all, some external links. After the weekend's activity, which saw links from Steve Rubel and Robert Scoble, among others, today we landed on TechMeme again for our comments on Digg reaching 1 million users, and the well-respected Mathew Ingram noted the post on his blog and in a follow-up for WebProNews.

Yet, for some reason, as Technorati tries to tally the external links to my blog from others, the needle doesn't move. In fact, in some weird blip, many of the weekend's links were erased from my blog's summary page on the site over the last two days, and as more links came in today, both my ranking and the total number of external links stayed the same. So, if I were the obsessive type with EBS, and I were to value myself by my low-low Technorati ranking, I could potentially get annoyed.

Is it a database refresh issue, in that Technorati will update the ranking every 8 hours, or 24 hours? And if it were, at what time would that happen? And should I expect those external links that were there a few days ago to ever come back, or is that data lost? Is that why my ranking is staying static, even as more blogs point my way? I wonder if I will ever know.