Goodbye, AdSense

There are some things in life that are really, truly, just plain inexplicable. I'm not talking about philosophical ponderables ("Why do bad things happen to good people, and vice-versa?") or manifestations of chaos theory ("How did Ron Paul raise that much money?") . What I'm referring to is something that is just so plain weird that you find yourself scratching your head.

Such as Google advertisements appearing on this blog for, shall we say, alternative lifestyle products and blogs.

Whether or not you've noticed them, I've had two little Google ads quietly sitting on the page since I started the blog earlier this year. I don't think I've ever had anyone click on them, nor was this the point. I was curious to see some of the mystical process of internet advertising at work, based on the blather I slap up here from time to time. Over the past few months I've seen ads on the blog for lots of electronic gear, a cheap tickets to Vietnam, statistical analysis tools, and more electronic gear. And, as of this afternoon, other topics which have no bearing whatsoever on anything written here.

Perhaps there has been a glitch in the Adwords logic, or maybe some clever juvenile delinquent figured out how to game the system for fun (if not for profit). Whatever the cause, the result was the instantaneous banishment of AdSense from the blog. I've decided I rather like having absolute control over every pixel here, at least for the time being.

Swift Kids

I usually don't link to Karla's blog because most of you came here by way of there, or at least you read them both. But on the off chance that you haven't seen it, I invite you to check out the Swift Kids video linked in her recent post; it is by far the most clever political ad we've seen this season (it certainly beats Rudy trying to be funny). Enjoy.

I've seen the future, and it's solid

Solid State, that is. Wired gives us a blurb about a new a 100 GB solid state disk drive recently released by a company called Buffalo. No moving parts for much greater durability and reliability, like one hundred of those little 1GB USB thumb drives all packed into a box the size of a deck of cards. Of course, for $950, you could probably buy a hundred thumb drives, but that, as Al Sharpton would say, is only a temporary situation; prices will fall, and when they do, these puppies will replace the crummy laptop drives that have been giving me so much grief lately. Not to mention replacing the SATA drive in our home computer, which sounds vaguely like a little sewing machine when accessed. Ah, to have the blessed silence of electrons doing their thing, no spinning platters required.

Time-waster for a good purpose

We all have our favorite time-wasting websites. The guy who sat the next row over from me throughout two years of business school was a regular patron of mlb.tv, and more than one member of that same class sneaked a quick visit to addictinggames.com when a lecture got particularly bad. (I admit nothing, but I will say that Managerial Accounting in the Winter of 2004 was particularly awful, so who could have blamed me?)

My wife knows of my long-standing relationship with Desktop Tower Defense (still can't get to level 100 on the challenge mode!) but I don't get a chance to indulge the little critters at work; you can't have them breaching your defenses, sending you clicking madly, while simultaneously running a conference call and three instant message sessions with team members in Atlanta. So it was that I was pleased to see a time-waster that you can feel good about: freerice.com. It's a vocabulary builder; each time you select the correct definition, 20 grains of rice are sent by the sponsor to the UN's hunger-alleviation efforts. That's a lot of clicking to donate enough rice for even one meal, but I imagine it scales to quite a bit of rice being donated when you factor in everyone taking part. Plus, the vocabulary exercises are interesting. Certainly yet another example of new and innovative ways that ad-supported websites are changing the world. Long live new media. Now, if they can get that Facebook travel quiz applet to do the same thing, I'd be hooked.

2007 International Adoptions

The New York Times has a piece up on the United States finally ratifying the Hague Convention on International Adoption. The result should be more regulation and less corruption, though the short-term affect may be longer waits to adopt. The regulations of the convention will be in effect after April 2008, though of course we are already seeing the effects with the new US regulations that have delayed our own adoption process. I thought the graph was very interesting.

Testing the Content Filter Workaround

Blogger has been blocked by my employer's web filters.  Instead of my blog control panel, I am now greeted with a cheerful screen, decked out in company colors, informing me that the requested site is a threat to my security, productivity, and way of life.  (Blogs hosted on Blogger are still available for viewing, at least for now; only the editing function is blocked.) 

I am in favor of Internet filters; there is nothing quite as nasty as an email or web worm shutting down thousands of an organization's computers.  But this seems kind of extreme, and also pointless, since I am still typing this message from the office and sending it to the blog via email. 

The argument of lost productivity is a valid one, but I'm sure they lose far more productivity to espn.com and other sites that remain open.  Not that I'm rationalizing; I average less than two posts per week on this blog, and I usually make them while I'm sitting on massive, stultifying conference calls ("Thank you for joining the call.  You are the… 34^th … participant") or viewing vendor presentations over WebEx.  My recent change from selling technology back to buying it has reminded me how little the customer really cares about 99% of what the IT sales team is saying.

So this is the latest post, brought to you via email, right out the company's front door.  I'm curious to see how it works.

Computer Counsel

An inevitable side effect of working in the technology industry is the stream of requests for advice or assistance from non-techie friends and family. I don’t mind this at all; few of my family members or friends ask for anything terribly complex, and I am happy to help should a big problem arise. One topic that frequently comes up is my preferred brands for desktops and laptops. My long-standing recommendation is to buy an Apple Mac (either iMac or Powerbook). I know this doesn’t work for some people, and so I have previously recommended IBM Thinkpads as the most reliable laptops for those who must run Windows. For desktop users who need Windows, I have recommended the PC with the best warranty and support options, typically Dell and (more recently) HP.

The past few months have caused me to revise some of these recommendations, due to recent developments at Microsoft, Apple and Lenovo.

Microsoft’s release of Windows Vista has been a debacle. Not only does the product run more slowly, less secure, and less reliably than XP, but it is also not backward-compatible in many cases. The new camcorder we purchased three weeks ago is not compatible with Vista, nor are many other products people expect to use with their computers. If you must buy a Windows PC, make sure you get XP. (Dell, Lenovo and others now offer XP as alternative to Vista on many of their new computers.)

Meanwhile, Apple continues to churn out beautiful desktop and laptop computers. Ironically, folks at PC World that have tested Vista on Apple’s latest Powerbook laptop found that it runs Vista better than any competing laptop designed specifically for Vista. The fact that Apple pulled this off on a machine designed to run a completely different operating system is a testament to their engineering acumen. The same holds true for their software folks, as the Apple operating system, OS X, is rock solid and easy to use; it also works with my camcorder and just about every other peripheral out there.

But the fun doesn’t stop there for Apple. You can purchase a software product that enables you to run Windows applications on your Apple desktop, seamlessly and without disrupting the Apple operating system in any way. Sure, you have to pay for the Windows software, but there is no reason to purchase a separate Windows PC (or reboot your Mac to run in full Windows mode, which is still supported) if you have a Windows PC primarily for one or two applications that are not available in Windows.

The final development that affects my advice is IBM’s sale of their laptop business to Lenovo. I use a new Lenovo laptop at work, and I assumed it would function like the previous T-series Thinkpads used by me and several members of my family for years. This is not the case. In just six months I have had a complete hard drive failure as well as numerous blue-screens related to the wireless and other issues. This regrettably puts Lenovo Thinkpads in the same bin with Dell and HP, whereas previously they had been exceptional. Too bad.

So how does this affect the advice I give to friends and family? If you can possibly afford it, buy an Apple Mac (either desktop or laptop) – prices are still high (over $1000) but much better than the price you’d pay to run a new PC capable of running Vista. If your budget is still south of $1000, make sure you get an HP or Dell machine with Windows XP.