Recent Posts

24951

Living Room / Re: Seriously, wtf is going on with Apple's Mac vs. Pc ads?

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 10:54 PM »

If Apple made lamps instead of computers, the ads would be making fun of the chandelier with tons of bulbs, crystals, and the dimmer with the timer...telling people that they need a disposable one with a single lightbulb and a simple push button on/off switch, blaming the chandelier for being crappy because the user didn't read the instructions and can't figure out how to set the timer, clean the crystals, change the bulbs, etc.

I think Apple makes some good products, and I think some of their approach to and focus on usability is very helpful.  Their approach with OS X seems particularly smart.

But their marketing approach seems focused on invoking an emotional reaction against their competitors, and towards some lifestyle that their products will somehow magically impart to you.  Their commercials are either like perfume or clothing commercials where they are selling popularity, or like political commercials where the game is to scare you away from buying the competition.  Features and facts are unimportant -- the important thing is to instill a strong emotional reaction. Of course Apple is just one of many advertisers who take this approach -- and clearly it works.

I guess what's so interesting to me from a marketing and psychology standpoint is they really seem to be pushing the idea that there is some "cool" in-group clique of kids, which are the ipod/iphone/mac users.  And the other people are pathetic losers.  The commercials just have that "mean girl" feel.  I would just think they would want to put out a more inviting, inclusive vibe.  As was mentioned before, these commercials really have the flavor of negative political ads.

I suspect this "mac vs. pc" commercial series won't last much longer -- it's probably gotten its maximum appeal and i suspect they are getting some blowback from it.  I'll make a prediction here, that by January we won't be seeing these much any more.. Let's see if i'm right.

24952

Developer's Corner / Nice Blog Essay and Site for Freelancers: 10 Absolute "Nos!" for Freelancers

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 07:29 PM »

Nice looking site and some nice tips on succeeding as a freelancer.

When I first started freelancing as a college student, I was eager to do any website and would say "Yes" to anything, regardless of my skill set or the time involved. It was just nice to know that someone needed me for a skilled task. Unfortunately, I quickly found myself working all the time, eating Ramen noodles, and not getting anywhere in terms of paying off my wonderful college debt. To make things worse, these people were also giving my contact info out to other such people (you know, the lady who has been thinking about selling dog sweaters online and has a $100 budget for an e-commerce site, 1000 brochures, and a guranteed #1 Google search result for the "dog", "sweater", and "love").

Anyways, now four years later, my world (AND financial success) now requires ample use of the answer "No." And here are ten questions I nearly always answer "No" to:

http://www.wakeuplat...for-freelancers.aspx

from http://www.veign.com/blog

24953

Find And Run Robot / Re: [feature request] When adding Alias from FARR, assign an icon automatically

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 07:22 PM »

what aliases are you creating that you need to specifically add icons for?

24954

Living Room / Seriously, wtf is going on with Apple's Mac vs. Pc ads?

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 06:33 PM »

We've talked about this before, and my general feeling is just mild annoyance at the cult of apple stuff and the emphasis of apple on marketing and "image".

And unlike some other apple products imho, i think OS X is a quality product.
Furthermore, i do not like MS Vista.

But the latest apple ad i saw was, except for the briefest of mentions, a commercial dedicated totally 100% to making fun of VISTA (and even going so far as to basically recommend XP!).  There was a total lack of any mention of positive features of Apple's product.

Which i found kind of shocking.. Even as someone who dislikes Vista this really took me aback, like wtf is the aim of this -- just to try to increase negative feelings of your competitor?  I have a hard time thinking of other "attack" commercials that didn't at least make a cursory attempt to promote the companies own products..

I really wonder if these ads aren't on one hand really working for Apple, but on the other hand really cementing and increasing an anti-apple feeling in another population of users...

The commercial i'm talking about can be watched on youtube here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0GWYaviIzCU

note: i don't want this thread to turn into an anti-apple fest, i'm just responding to the oddness of this one particular commercial which i think is different from the other mac-vs-pc ads, which make fun of windows but while playing up the beneficial comparison to apple features, something notably lacking from this commercial. furthermore, i'm not complaining that the add is "unfair" -- i'm just struct by it's unusualness.

24955

Living Room / Re: Finally I tracked down my wife!

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 06:01 PM »

this is a joke site, that is "Not Suitable For Work" (or children).
please if you post such sites, mark them as NSFW -- just so people who object to such things can know to avoid them.

24956

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New C# FARR Plugin: FARRAltTab

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 05:53 PM »

wow it's fast now.. actually instant.

24957

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Post your FARR v2 Plugin Idea Requests Here - Plugin Writers Read In

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 12:49 PM »

Another idea: FarrTimer

Basically the idea here would be that you could add and manage timers from farr.

So if you time:

ftimer

you would see list of all current timers set.
(it would be nice to support countdown timers or preset time alarms, or maybe even countup timers?)

then you could type:

ftimer down 4

to add a new countdown timer that triggers in 4 minutes

or

ftimer down 2:30

to add a countdown timer that triggers in 2 hours and 30 minutes

ftimer alarm 2:30pm time to go to dentist

to add an alarm that triggers at 2:30pm and shows the message "time to go to dentist"

you get the idea.

to delete a timer maybe the best way to do it is, when you click on a timer after listing them all with: ftimer
then you get a dialog where you can edit or delete a timer.

bonus options:
1. options to show the countdown on screen (always or only when nearing alarm time)
2. ability to set alarms for specific days, or repeating alarms, etc. (ie every thursday at 5pm, or jan 24, 2008 at 9am)

24958

General Software Discussion / Re: Going back to XP

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 11:36 AM »

with the cheap price of hard drives these days, a good strategy for you might be
either buy a new hd and swap your current one for it, and install xp on new hd.  if problems persist and you want to go back to vista you can just swap the vista formatted hd back in.

OR,
make a backup drive image of your vista install before reformatting so you can restore it and go back if you want.

24959

General Software Discussion / Re: Going back to XP

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 10:34 AM »

Personally i'm not a fan of vista and i prefer XP.  However, until you confirm the bluescreens etc. dissapear when you move to XP, you might want to hold off on your blame of Vista for those troubles.

24960

Living Room / Re: Amazon's Kindle eBook Reader

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 10:00 AM »

I think i'll wait for the next generation, but i love that amazon is reviving and advanced the ebook device status quo.

24961

Living Room / Re: Procrastination Flowchart

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 09:49 AM »

hahahaahahah. 

24962

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR C# SDK and Documentation (plus little something for all Plugin developers)

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 09:44 AM »

By the way, even though I wrote "C#" in the post, any .NET language can be used instead with this SDK. From VB.NET to J# so truly anyone can now write a plugin!

 
COOL!

24963

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR v2 PLUGIN CREATOR (SDK/API) INFO THREAD

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 12:41 AM »

Updated info with link to vitalyb's C# plugin code.

24964

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New C# FARR Plugin: FARRAltTab

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 12:39 AM »

In case anyone missed the significance of this I just want to reiterate that, while it's nice to have and alt+tab plugin, what is really great about what vitalyb did, is that he made a wrapper for FARR Plugins so that plugins could be written in C#, which was not possible before now.

Much like Okke did for Delphi, this really opens up FARR plugins to a new set of coders. 

24965

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR C# SDK and Documentation (plus little something for all Plugin develope

« Last post by mouser on November 24, 2007, 12:00 AM »

Awesome!!!!! 

I will post all the updates/fixes for now to the SDK in this thread until it is deemed stable and can be merged with the main SDK.

sounds good 

24966

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New C# FARR Plugin: FARRAltTab

« Last post by mouser on November 23, 2007, 07:44 PM »

I think now I'll setup a macro to invoke FARR with #Tab,  sending "tab\s" as you suggest.

no need - FARR now has it's own hotkey system.. you can add the hotkey from farr to launch with tab\s

24967

Activation/License/Language Help / Re: About signing up to download freeware license keys - READ IN PLEASE

« Last post by mouser on November 23, 2007, 03:28 PM »

Ralf is joking in case you can't tell.

But the post by howardb is serious and seems like a show stopper.
I haven't tried FARR on windows98 since a long time ago -- i will try it again in the next week and see if i can't spot anything.

howardb -- feel free to email me at [email protected] and we might try to figure out what the problem might be together.

24968

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New C# FARR Plugin: FARRAltTab

« Last post by mouser on November 23, 2007, 03:26 PM »

A config window to tell the plugin to ignore certain windows or to show some windows that don't appear on task bar.

this would be very nice.

can i also request:
option to ignore (not show in list) any windows that are not minimized.

24969

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New C# FARR Plugin: FARRAltTab

« Last post by mouser on November 23, 2007, 02:43 PM »

YES!!! VERY COOL!!
 

I will be posting the C# SDK itself along with the code of this plugin soon too.

that's the greatest part of all!!

24970

Living Room / Re: Printing postcards

« Last post by mouser on November 22, 2007, 10:59 PM »

When i want to send a postcard, i get out my 4x6 glossy photo paper sheets and just print out a photo on my beloved Canon IP4000 (i highly recommend getting one of these canon PIXMA models as a holiday gift).

Just a stamp and address on the back and you have a postcard.

24971

Find And Run Robot / Re: plugin problems

« Last post by mouser on November 22, 2007, 09:45 AM »

alessio, let's hope so regarding ff.

zajc, thanks for the locate issue fix!

24972

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« Last post by mouser on November 22, 2007, 09:33 AM »

Yeah Comodo is looking really good lately, and more importantly it looks like they are really working continuously on making it good.

24973

Living Room / Re: Tower Defense games collection

« Last post by mouser on November 22, 2007, 03:28 AM »

Report on Wicked Defense:
it's not quite for me -- but it's very beautiful and psychedelic, and i can see some people loving it.
just a bit too abstract for me to really get into.

ps. Curator Defense is still one of my favorites, if not my favorite of all:
http://www.davidbhowe.net/cd/main.htm

24974

Living Room / Re: Tower Defense games collection

« Last post by mouser on November 22, 2007, 03:01 AM »

Wicked Defense videos look very cool -- it's $10 commercial product with free trial download..
Anyone tried it yet?  Seems like a nice indie game project.  Ticcer if you are involved in the project tell us more.

24975

Find And Run Robot / Re: plugin problems

« Last post by mouser on November 22, 2007, 01:01 AM »

member vitalyb may have found the cause of this while working on his c# plugin.
i'll have an update in next day or so -- let's see if that fixes it.