Jeff Makes Software

For reasons no one can explain, iTunes asks me to authorize my music about every other time I try to play songs. I have no idea why. I've got my tracks on no more than three machines, and I get five.

So I fired off a support request to Apple, which after three go-arounds resulted in little more than an explanation that I could only authorize five machines and that further support could only be achieved via a fee-based call. In each case it was clear that these were copy-pastes, not an effort to try and diagnose the problem.

Using support scripts like this, handled by support drones making minimum wage, might appear good for business in that it keeps costs down, but at what cost? How many customers will just say "F' it" and move on? Probably not many when it comes to Apple stuff, but it's still not a good front for developing further business.

Isn't this the truth: What corporate America can't build: A sentence

It's staggering to me that we have this technology that has become a vital part of life in less than ten short years, yet people communicate more poorly than ever. I've seen it everywhere. I get e-mail from recruiters all of the time that look like they were pecked out by a 14-year-old crack addict with hands too unsteady to type the right letters. In my big corporate jobs, I didn't see it from other code monkeys that often, but from outside departments (help desks, HR, etc.).

If you've been to any online forum that covers something you're interested in, you've seen the worst of it. If you like video games, you're really screwed, because I can't remember the last time I saw a coherent video game forum.

I have a strict grammar and spelling policy for my sites. It really pisses off some people, but they leave, and that's fine. I just refuse to allow my little corner of the Internet to be over run with what we like to call "brain-dead AOLer speak."

I'm in the process of reviewing the copy edits made to my book before it finally goes off to production. I can honestly say that I've never done anything more tedious.

Granted, the editors didn't make a ton of changes (I guess that degree in journalism counts for something after all), but it's enough that you have to read very, very carefully. Looking at these Word documents with all of the changes tracked and comments hurts the eyes. Last time I did something like this was in college circa 1993, when we didn't have Word and you still had to paste together the newspaper. (We didn't have instant messaging or the Web either. How the hell did we survive?)

Aside from looking at the final proofs, this is essentially the end of the project for me. My wife Stephanie keeps yelling at me for blowing it all off as something anyone can do, but I never wake up and think, "Holy crap, I wrote a book and it was published!" I can be an arrogant bastard about a lot of things, but for some reason I tend to understate my professional accomplishments. I couldn't tell you why.

I've got a lot of little projects to start, finish, or think about, but I've also got that question in my mind about whether or not I should write another book. From proposal to publication it will take about 15 months, so if I want to take a stab at supplementing my income in a serious way, I can't wait forever to do it again.

Any seasoned authors have advice?

It didn't take me long after playing with the trial for SmarterMail to see that it was a really good Web application (and it's even a .NET app) and server product. The navigation is ridiculously clean, and honestly you could probably use it as your mail client, and never ever use a desktop client again. Best of all, it's catching far more spam than IMail ever did. I guess after using IMail for six years, I didn't realize how much it sucked (and went relatively unchanged).

On the other hand, I decided to take advantage of an Overture promo ($100 credit) to try and generate a little traffic for my volleyball site. I've used this service on and off all the way back to the days when it was GoTo.com, and honestly I'm astounded by the way it generally isn't well designed. Aside from being slow, the UI is pretty bad and the navigation isn't logical. There are several pages where you try to update something and there's no explanation as to why it didn't save. Oh, and naturally the promo credit wasn't actually applied until I complained. Google's AdWords, by comparison, isn't perfect, but it's quick and straight-forward.

I guess when I stop to think about it, there aren't very many really good Web applications that I encounter. When I did Weight Watchers last year to shed a couple of pounds, that one was pretty good. Bank One is pretty good too. (Is it coincidence that these are .NET apps?)

Any other examples that come to mind of really good online applications? I'm really curious to know if anyone has extensive experience with SalesForce.com what they think about it. That should've been my millions...

IPswitch just sent me a reminder asking if I wanted to renew my service contract for IMail, and truth be told, I'm not really that satisfied with it. The Web interface isn't great, it's expensive, and frankly the spam filtering isn't as good as I suspect it could be.

I launched my volleyball site today, VolleyBuzz.com. This one is probably not much of a commercial venture because I'm not sure how big the audience is. Still, as I found when writing my ASP.NET book, writing about things makes you think more critically about them, and I hope to apply that same discipline to coaching volleyball.

Flat-panel TVs can't topple tubes--just yet

There sure are some problems with this article. First it says that, "LCDs are great as desktop PC monitors because they don't have to refresh pictures rapidly." This implies that TV's must refresh faster, which is not even remotely true. My computer LCD's here run at 72 Hz. Even the fastest HD standards top out at 60 Hz (or frames per second).

The article also implies that the quality isn't as good, which I also tend to disagree with. I'll give that LCD's don't do black as well as CRT's do, but in terms of overall sharpness of picture, especially a digital picture, it's like night and day.

The system is down, yo.