Kyle LeBoeuf

Before I say anything about Safari 4, I just have to say that I’ll use just about any browser before I use ANY version of Internet Explorer.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, I’m sure some of you may be wondering about my impressions on the new beta for Safari, Apple’s web browser that has  been available for the past few years in both Windows and Mac flavors.

For starters, the beta is far from perfect. This post is actually being written from within the browser…and when I tried to create the “Safari” shown in the previous paragraph, my page was just darkened, and I could not actually click on the window that pops up and allows you edit a hyperlink. Interesting.

Before I get further in depth about this browser, I have one caveat that I want to get out now: this version is ugly. Really ugly. It looks like a hybrid between IE8 and Chrome. It lost it’s distinct Mac feel. I liked the look of the previous versions, since they looked more their Mac counterparts.

Screenshot:

(Click to Enlarge)

And I don’t have a screenshot at the moment, but the Windows XP version (in my opinion) is even uglier.

Besides that, the browser’s performance is on par, if not faster, than that of Firefox 3. In loads a lot of different pages faster, and runs javascript a lot better (it also does not hog anywhere NEAR the amount of memory that Firefox does).

But alas, it will not replace Firefox for me. Why? It’s all about the extensions

Overall though…good browser. Just wish it would look less ugly (on Windows).

THIS IS FOR LOCAL LISTING ONLY! WILL NOT SHIP

Ultraportable Dell laptop for sale, with a bunch of extras.

$550, non-negotiable price
Ultra-portable Dell Latitude D420
12.1″ Widescreen display
Intel Centrino 1.02 GHz processor (single core)
60GB Hard Drive
1GB RAM
External DVD-RW Drive
Windows XP Professional Edition (Retail copy, not OEM)
NEW battery! (6 cell, 3-4 hours battery life under certain conditions)

Extras:
Microsoft Wireless Optical Notebook Mouse 3000
Microsoft LifeCam NX-3000 (webcam)
Wenger (Swiss Army) Backpack w/ Laptop Sleeve (valuable, expensive backpack. excellent condition)

All products are used unless specified.

Notes:
Laptop has noticeable cosmetic blemishes on top surface (opposite side of the display) and bottom surface, but otherwise runs great. Notebook mouse and webcams are both less than a year old and work great. Backback is blue and black, made by Wenger (swiss army gear), with a ton of pockets and a laptop sleeve that is more than adequate in size to fit the laptop.

I purchased the laptop for it’s size, but I am involved with a lot of media and big files/programs so I need something that’s faster.

Laptop does not include any of the original boxes or CDs and is sold “as-is” I would rather sell it to someone here in Lafayette before I listed it on Ebay.

Contact me by email at leboeuf.kyle at gmail.com. Please indicate “Laptop purchase” or something similar in your subject and state clearly who you are.

Thanks in advance!

Kyle

Imagine this scenario:

You are part of a multi-billion software company, with your software being used on anywhere from 90-95% of all computers in the world. Now, imagine that you are working on the next highly-anticipated iteration of your flagship product. You announce that you will be distributing a free beta of this new product to the public, to folks who offer good feedback on your product for free, on top of allowing consumers to get used to the product and getting to see it in action.

Now, imagine that after building up anticipation for the release of this beta, you launch this product using servers designed to handle a small fraction of this expected demanded. Your servers crash, leaving millions of customers (and writers) frustrated, for something you should’ve been prepared for in the first place.

Yes folks, this actually happened. That company’s name is none other than Microsoft! They announced that 2.5 million downloads of the Windows 7 Beta 1 would be available to the public, and the story was picked up by tons of different blogs and publications. The publicity surrounding this beta was extremely high, especially following the Microsoft Keynote at CES and the flurry of coverage surrounding the operating system at that time.

So, you’re Microsoft, and you see that everyone knows about the download you will be posting, and what do you do? In this case, Microsoft decided not to prepare for the surge in traffic. Their reward? Server crashes and lot of upset folks. They were forced to pull down their servers while they upgrade the infrastructure and prepare for the traffic (WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!).

Here’s an image, for effect (click to make larger):

From the Windows 7 beta download page:

“Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal — we’re in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand. We’re sorry for the delay and we’ll re-post the Beta as soon as we can ensure a quality download experience.”

Gina Trapani, top editor for the blog Lifehacker, shares my sentiments.

Come on Microsoft. We all know that you’ve got a ton of cash laying around. Invest in the hardware, spend the money, and don’t disappoint your market.

Kyle

If you read this blog at all, then there’s a real good chance that you don’t live under a rock; but just in case, you should know that there were a series of high-profile security breaches on various high-profile web properties between this weekend and Tuesday.

Beginning on Friday, many users fell prey to a phishing scam on Twitter designed to automatically gain access to accounts. It took quite sometime for Twitter to gain control of the situation. Shortly afterward, a hacker had managed to give access to 33 high-profile Twitter accounts to various people, who immediately began posting various remarks and comments under the Twitter user’s name, including President-Elect Barack Obama, celebrity artist Britney Spears, and Digg Founder Kevin Rose. The Twitter support team got around to this trick much quicker, shutting down the hole used to gain access and restoring the accounts to their proper owners.

The last high-profile attack occurred yesterday on Macrumors, a popular site that aggregates and comments on rumors related to the mysterious corporate practices and developments of Apple, Inc. While live-blogging the Macworld 2009 keynote address by Apple exec Phil Schiller, hackers gained access the admin interface used by Macrumor’s writing team by exploiting the mistakes made by the team in securing the interface. Once they were in the system, the hackers began spamming the feed with vulgar remarks and explicit images. The site was taken down before the conclusion of the keynote.

Now that we understand what happened, we can discuss it. Personally, I think this demonstrates to everyone that even the major sites and services can be attacked or taken down. A large portion of internet users out there are completely oblivious to the dangers that are present even for the major, high-profile sites.

Let this be a lesson to bloggers and web developers everywhere. Make sure that you secure your stuff! Use secure passwords. Let’s not be idiots here.

Kyle

In case you live under a rock and missed the news, check out Apple’s Press Release (read: note from Steve Jobs). Steve Jobs is going to be OK. So all the Apple fanbois around the world can breathe sighs of relief and watch as Apple’s stock price shoots up.

The blogosphere is, for the most part, reacting as expected to the news. Everyone’s Twittering about it, and some people are have some quite humorous commentary on the situation.

John Biggs from Crunchgear has a hilarious article published on the news that’s well worth the read. He voices my exact opinions on the situation. Apple will continue on and make great products, with or without the direction of it’s much-worshipped CEO. Financial analysts (read: idiots) need not get their panties in a twist when an over-zealous (read: stupid) blogger speculates on his health (or anything related to the man’s personal life).

Steve’s here to stay, so go ahead and feel stupid about getting everyone worked up over nothing.

Kyle

Most of you who know me pretty well or at least check this blog every now and know that I am a huge fan of Twitter. A large chunk of time in my day is spent using the service, either through the web portal, my blackberry, or several different clients that I use to access it, including TwitterGadget (Twitter client in a Gmail gagdet) and TweetDeck (Adobe AIR-based Twitter client).

Although I use the service a lot (posting a lot of updates on a regular basis, usually around 10 a day), I don’t have very many followers. I’m not a hugely popular blogger, entrepreneur, or writer. I just use the service because it’s fun, and occasionally I encounter someone who is humored by my updates, which are usually about the random things I encounter in my day-to-day life.

So you can imagine my shock when I open up gmail and see a huge influx of emails detailing information on some new followers.

While 12 in one day does seem like a big deal to most of you, it is a big deal when you only had 65 when the day started. I’m trying to investigate the cause of the sudden influx of followers…but I have no idea where to start.

If there is anyone who has a deep knowledge of the Twitter community, drop a comment here or email me: kyle (at) kyleleboeuf(dot)com

Posted by Kyle

I like checking Twitter Search to see what’s trending. Today, of course, most of the stuff that is trending revolves around the Christmas holidays (Merry Christmas, by-the-way), but I saw something else that caught my eye.

Apparently, a really popular Twitter client called TweetDeck pushed out a major update recently, and there were a ton of people that were excited about it. Being always curious about trying out new applications, I decided to take it our for a spin.

TweetDeck is built upon Adobe’s AIR framework, and thus can run on multiple operating systems (at this time: Windows, Mac, and most Linux distros). TweetDeck differs from other Twitter clients in that it seperates tweets into columns based on predefined categories. By default, this is a “All Friends” category, which is basically every Tweet from the people you are following, “replies”, which is self-explanatory, and “direct messages”, which is also self-explanatory.

I’ll embed a screenshot (click to enlarge)

TweetDeck screenshot

TweetDeck uses a fancy mutli-column layout that lets you seperate general tweets, replies, direct messages, and tweets from different individuals. The whole thing works really smoothly and looks great.

I’ve switched over to this application almost entirely for my Twitter usage. I love it.

Kyle

I was browsing my feeds on Google Reader and this popped up thanks to Digg.

A kid flips out Nintendo 64-kid style on a new Wii.

Enjoy

It really irritates me when a couple of analysts post on a few blogs about the potential connections between any Apple decision and Steve Jobs’ health.

Give the man a break, he is human. One day, he will die, just like the rest of us, and the company will learn to live without him.

Steve Jobs is not the only employee of Apple, Inc, nor is he the only innovative employee at Apple. There are quite a few other people at Apple who can continue the Steve Jobs way at Apple, with or without the presence of the charismatic CEO.

posted by Kyle

kyle at kyleleboeuf dot com

Usually, by this time of the year, Apple and IDG have already announced Steve Jobs as the opening keynote speaker of the Macworld Expo, as he has done for the past several years.

But it seems like times are changing, as Apple recently announced that not only is Steve Jobs not delivering the keynote (Phil Schiller will be delivering the keynote instead), but that this will be the last year that Apple exhibits at Macworld, marking the end of an era.

This is likely to have a significant impact on the attendance and importance of the Macworld Expo, since most of the biggest Apple hardware and software developers would take advantage of the masses that are present to see the “Stevenote”. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the Macworld Expo decrease in size and importance, as different companies scale back their presence at trade shows in an attempt to stem the tide in the economic downturn.

Steve is likely to continue presenting keynotes at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and at exclusive press events.

Wow. This is going to have some big effects on the industry.

kyle [at] kyleleboeuf dot com