Alex Dunne

Stacy, my boss, just told me about Animoto. You can upload photos, select a soundtrack, and it generates a nice slideshow that’s sync’d to the music. Here’s an example using Interop Las Vegas pics:

The thought that ISPs may start charging users based on the bandwidth they consume each month really pisses me off. Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T are rolling out trials of systems that would allow web users a certain amount of data that they could consume each month. If users exceed it, they pay more.  The caps vary.  It’s certainly going to cause people (including me) to think twice about what I download, and will crimp efforts to distribute video and music online.  Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube — they and others like them are all in serious jeopardy of having their traffic cut substantially.  And what about rich media ads that will count against your bandwidth cap?  Those will be really welcomed when metering begins.  Just when the web was getting competitive with TV and terrestrial radio. Grrrrr….

Our company recently moved from Lotus Notes over to Outlook 2007. While Outlook is better than Notes 5 (my God, Notes 5 came out in 1999, what took the company so long?), there are a number of things that stink about Outlook 2007. First and foremost is that it hangs when checking mail on the Exchange Server. I use a dual-core Lenovo T60 — a fast machine. But when Outlook polls the server, it hangs my computer for anywhere from seconds to minutes. I’m looking into what could be causing this lag, but according to Computerworld, I’m not the only one frustrated by Outlook’s performance. I uninstalled Xobni (which, despite my initial enthusiasm, turned out to be not much more than Outlook eye candy), but the problems persist. I don’t have Instant Search enabled in Outlook, so the hanging isn’t being caused by Outlook indexing my email. It’s just slow to check and syncronize with the server. Interestingly the lightweight Outlook web client I use (under Firefox) is snappy. But I shouldn’t be forced to use a web client from my desk at work. I long for Thunderbird, or even Microsoft without Exchange - that worked fine.

On a sidenote, I recently discovered how to fix something that has been bugging me for about a month in Outlook 2007: the prompt at the top of my inbox that asks me to install Instant Search. It got so irritating that I finally gave in and installed it, only to uninstall it about a day later. (Google Desktop search is so much better.) But then Outlook continued to prompt me to install Instant Search again.

Here’s how to remove that annoying prompt.

In Outlook 2007, go to Tools>Options, and click on the “Other” tab. Under “General”, click on the “Advanced Options” button. On the subsequent pop-up window, about halfway down, there’s a checkbox that says “Show prompts to enable instant search”. Uncheck it.

Whew, doesn’t that feel better?

Today I installed Xobni, an add-on for Outlook that helps you manage your email. (Xobni backwards is “inbox”.) Xobni has been talked up quite a bit, and I was curious to see if the reality matched the hype. I’m still too new to it to say whether it’s everything it’s cracked up to be, but after my first day, here’s my reaction.

It’s cool to see who ranks as your top email contacts. Everyone in your inbox is automatically ranked based on how many emails sent and received from that person. Linda was #6. Marco was #10. Stacy, my boss, was #4. Strangely, it ranked me as #1 - I don’t send myself emails very often from other email accounts, so that was odd. I still haven’t figured out who ranks as #2 and #3.

Each time you click on an email in your inbox, you get instant access to any files that were sent or received from that person via email. That’s great for me, since sometimes I lose file attachments.

You also see email stats about your contacts, like how many emails sent to/received from that person, what time of day you most often get email from them, and it even tries to assemble contact info (address, phone) for people based on data contained in their emails. (It wasn’t so successful with that - it assigned Linda a cell phone number for a contractor who’s phone number she was emailing me.) Possibly the best thing about Xobni is its interface, which is contained a vertical pane added to the right side of Outlook’s interface. It’s attractive and functional.

Good stuff overall, though. Check it out if you use Outlook.

After returning from Interop Las Vegas last week and doing my customary mega-load of laundry, I discovered that my 2GB Memorex Traveldrive flash memory stick went through the washer and dryer — it was hidden in the pocket of some pants. I thought for sure the thing was going to be useless after being submerged in water and tossed around in high heat for 60 minutes, but lo and behold, it still works!  Granted, it had a little protective plastic cap over the part that inserts into the computer, but I didn’t think the thing had a prayer.  Way to go, Memorex.