Powerpoint holds an interesting position as the most popular yet hated presentation software. Of course, the reasons for being hated have nothing to do with the software itself. They’re caused by PowerPoint abuse: using a great tool to create awful presentations. Just like a hammer, PowerPoint can can make something beautiful or ugly.
With this in mind, I noticed the following photo in Steve Rubel’s Flickr photostream from his recent visit to Microsoft’s HQ for Microsoft MixNMash 2006. I figured the people working for the company that sells PowerPoint would be PowerPoint masters:
The body language of Niall Kennedy (and I believe Jeremy Zawodny behind Niall) [Update: That's not Jeremy - according to Jeremy.] shows illustrates how engaging the content is to audiences. If I was to guess, Kennedy and Zawodny probably read the slide at a much faster rate than the presenter presented it, then went back to work on their laptops while the presenter caught up.
How could this slide be improved?
Alan F. Shugart passed away on December 12th of complications following open heart surgery six weeks earlier. He was 76 years old.
While he has not been active in the disk drive business for several years his footprint will last for decades. His most visible legacy today is Seagate Technology which he co-founded with Finis Conner in 1979 as Shugart Technology, later to be named Seagate Technology. We know Seagate Technology today as the largest producer of disk drives in the world.
A few months ago we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the disk drive. Alan was an engineering member of that first development team in San Jose, California. We were colleagues in San Jose during the 50‚Äôs and 60‚Äôs, Alan was on the disk drive side and I was responsible for systems development. Over this period the disk drive moved from an interesting concept to a fundamental, integral part of every new computer system. We worked closely together to insure the proper trade-offs as we integrated this new medium into an on-line facility. When the IBM S/360 was announced in 1964, after only 5 years in the marketplace, the disk drive had transformed the concept of a modern computer system forever. The success of the early disk drives was due, in no small part, to Alan‚Äôs skill, stubbornness and determination. He was known for speaking his mind and not being afraid of whomever he expressed his opinion to. In the end, it was this characteristic that ended his IBM career in 1969. Before he left, however, one of his pet projects was the development of the 8‚Ä? floppy disk drive. It was designed for loading microcode into the S/360 mainframes. He knew that there was a much larger potential for this device so he took the idea with him and as the PC business started to emerge he re-incarnated it as the 5.25‚Ä? floppy that became the backbone of the early PC products.
Alan Shugart was a true pioneer. Unafraid of the unknown, full of self confidence and a tough task master. His name does not appear in the lights of Broadway but his legacy lies deep within every single disk drive that is produce today.
I shall miss him.
After a few days with the relatives, I’ve had a chance to reset my tech-centric self with a good dose of real-world tech use. There were no conversations about RSS, the intricacies of Google’s search algorithm, blog platforms, Web 2.0 business models, JavaScript, or PHP. However, there were plenty of tech-related conversations. Here are a ten that come to mind:
2. Explaining the value of upgrading beyond 512MB RAM for a college student’s computer. Well worth it, and the RAM is on the way.
3. Discussing the photo quality of small digital cameras. I’ve been impressed with my new Canon SD 600.
4. Explaining Net Neutrality after seeing the misinformation commercial I wrote about last week running on Comcast cable.
5. Explaining the benefits of PCs vs. Macs for a college student in a band. Sticking with the PC for now, but will probably buy a Mac next.
6. Showing someone how iMovie works after showing her a video I made for Christmas. It’s on her Mac but she hasn’t tried it yet.
7. Showing someone my Flickr photos. Realizing that Flickr’s interface is painfully hard to use by people with less than 10,000 hours of touch pad or mouse experience.
8. Explaining the difference between RAM and a hard drive.
9. Receiving a dead iPod as a non-gift giveaway because the hard drive stopped spinning.
10. Showing someone how to navigate their very first iPod.
How about you? What sort of tech questions or conversations do you encounter while visiting friends and family that differ from your everyday life?
When the vast majority of emails I receive from MySpace are spammy friend requests, I’m not happy. For example, here is a group I received this morning:
At this point, I still see enough value in MySpace in the form of reconnecting with friends from college and high school that I’m willing to put up with the junk. However, it’s really a shame that a MySpace email in my inbox is no longer something to look forward to.
Why doesn’t MySpace hold friend requests for a few minutes to an hour to look for friend request spam pattern before sending? That would improve the user experience for most users without causing too much pain to heavy users.
When the vast majority of emails I receive from MySpace are spammy friend requests, I’m not happy. For example, here is a group I received this morning:
At this point, I still see enough value in MySpace in the form of reconnecting with friends from college and high school that I’m willing to put up with the junk. However, it’s really a shame that a MySpace email in my inbox is no longer something to look forward to.
Why doesn’t MySpace hold friend requests for a few minutes to an hour to look for friend request spam pattern before sending? That would improve the user experience for most users without causing too much pain to heavy users.
When the vast majority of emails I receive from MySpace are spammy friend requests, I’m not happy. For example, here is a group I received this morning:
At this point, I still see enough value in MySpace in the form of reconnecting with friends from college and high school that I’m willing to put up with the junk. However, it’s really a shame that a MySpace email in my inbox is no longer something to look forward to.
Why doesn’t MySpace hold friend requests for a few minutes to an hour to look for friend request spam pattern before sending? That would improve the user experience for most users without causing too much pain to heavy users.
I created a quick little video tonight for my family based on some holiday cooking that took place earlier today, then loaded it to Revver.com so I could embed it into my blog. Then I waited . . . and waited.
Then I signed up with Blip.tv, loaded the video, added my personal blog’s settings into my blip.tv account, and published the video to the site.
And Revver is still processing the same video.
I wrote last week about how Revver (and Blip.tv) are beating YouTube with video publishers due to revenue opportunities and better video quality. Now looking at Revver and Blip.tv head to head, blip.tv has the edge for my own personal video blogging due to publishing speed.
Blip.tv’s blog integration also beats Revver.
I haven’t had a chance to compare the revenue generation potential of the two services yet. Blip.tv offers more ad format options, but that alone is no guarantee that they manage to make video bloggers more money for their content. What has been your experience?
I keep an old Dell laptop around the house for random chores where a PC outperforms a Mac, and as a guest computer. Some people have special towels for their guests. At the Kohler household, you get a computer to use (and towels).
However, the Dell has had a problem for a while with the hibernate pin. I don’t know if that’s the technical name for it, but what I’m referring to is the small plastic pin that, when compressed, tells the computer that the lid is shut. Around a year ago, I managed to shear the pin down to half its normal size which led to the pin often becoming stuck in the computer. This was a problem because the computer would get locked in hibernate mode. Digging the pin out of the hold with a fingernail each time I opened the lid was becoming a major pain.
My pin related pain became much worse yesterday when I managed to push the pin deep into the computer, making it impossible to retrieve.
The pin was obviously a liability. I could decide for myself when I wanted the computer in sleep mode if I could only get the pin out of the picture. So, I decided to open up the laptop one screw at a time to go after the darn thing. This turned out to be a bigger pain than I imagined as I removed screw after screw after screw only to find out there were still more screws holding it together.
Only then did it occur to me that I OWNED this computer and had no plans to ever sell it. In fact, selling it would hardly be worth the effort since it’s three years old. That’s when I realized I should stop being so delicate with the thing and start cutting.
I drilled a few small holes, then used a scissors to snip out a piece of the case to gain access to the pin. Problem solved. It looks like my F4 key has taken a beating from Alt-F4′ing so much.
Here is the removed sheared pin:
The guest computer is back from hibernation with three months of winter left to go.
Jeff Sandquist is from Microsoft and works on channel9.msdn.com. He was on a panel talking about evangelism success stories at GnotE. He talks about birds eating and elephants pooping. If you want to know what that means watch the video.
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Randy Thom, a sound designer for Skywalker Sound, made an interesting statement at the LA Film Fest back in June (covered by PodTech.net):
Are you someone who uses technology purely to get things done, or are you someone who enjoys technology just for technology’s sake? I think Ben and Ro would be the latter: Ben, because he’ll buy things like XBox 360 gaming systems even though he’s not a gamer. And Ro, because he must have the incrementally latest and greatest GPS system for his car.
How would you rate yourself compared to Randy Thom, Ben, or Ro?
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