Kyle LeBoeuf

I made a comment this morning on Twitter about an article on Techcrunch on Twitter Search. Robin Wauters of Techcrunch makes comments on some of  the (ridiculously stupid) trending topics on Twitter Search. When Twitter Search debuted in its current form last year, it was deemed by many as one of best and quickest ways to get breaking news information, since normal, everyday people on the scene of a major event can tweet just like the journalists and the mass media.

As Robin points out, trends in Twitter Search are quickly becoming overtaken by corny internet chain-letter-style memes (Like “3 Words After Sex“). Some of you may wonder why this is such a big deal, but bear with me for a second.

Think back on when E-mail first started becoming popular (seems like forever and a day ago, but its not that far back). It was orginally seen as a way of communication between friends, family, co-workers or clients/customers. Fast forward 15 years or so later, and everyday I am emptying my inbox of corny, annoying chain latters that contain jokes, funny pictures and videos, or petitions for me to sign and pass on.

Lets look at another popular internet service: Facebook. When Facebook debuted, it quickly became popular among college students as a way to keep in touch in more interactive ways than just e-mail. It wasn’t over-crowded with your entire family (even your grandma), and it was easy to find your friends amongst the riff-raff. The interface was simple, straightforward, and it worked. Go figure. Fast forward a few years later, and guess what? Facebook is packed with all kinds of people, welcome (your classmates, old friends) and unwelcome (your mom, your boss). Not only is it packed with all kinds of people, there’s also companies who on Facebook that are always in your face about getting you to “become a fan” of their product, and they spam with you stuff. Also, as Facebook adds more features and changes things around, it begins to lose the simplicity that was one of the service’s biggest appeals back when it was the newest web trend on the block.

When a service breaks into the mainstream, companies usually try to change the service around to meet the needs of the mainstream user. Most of the popular websites of today (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) have become a victim to this.

Twitter is already showing signs of this, removing some features that might actually be useful to some folks but may be too complicated for the mainstream attention the company is starting to gather.

Is breaking into the mainstream a bad thing? For the companies, not really. Mainstream attention can turn into a hefty profit, but it usually sucks for power users, because the services lose a lot of the funtionality that attracted attention in the first place.

My official designation for mainstream is Oprah. When Oprah joins your service, your doomed.

Kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com

So, as most of us know, the Palm Pre officially drops June 6th, and the blog world is buzzing about it, but I think deep down inside, we all know what will happen to the Palm Pre.

Yes. I will be destroyed by the Apple iPhone monster.

I am making bold claims, I know. But think about it. Neither Sprint nor Palm has the brand awareness of Apple. One of the biggest reasons the iPhone sold so well, was that it was leveraging Apple’s brand awareness brought on by the success of the iPod.

There’s also the bit about the Pre being able to sync with iTunes (possibly even paid content). That’s not going to last. I seriously doubt that Apple gave Palm the permission to do this. Either someone is going to get sued, or the Pre is going to be locked out of iTunes with an update that’s not too far down the road (or both).

Either way, this thing is going to be a dud. Palm is going to release next Saturday and it will then be completely dwarfed by the release of a new iPhone.

Mark my words.

Kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com

Hey guys,

Over the past week, I’ve been working on implementing a new look for the site (if you are viewing this post in a feed reader or email, please go here and see the new design for yourself). After a few hours of tweaking code, I have finally finished and activated the new design.

I received inspiration for the look of the site from Ryan Block, former editor-in-chief at Engadget and co-founder of a new gadget review site (appropriately named “gdgt“). I began to look for a theme that had a single column for content and a wide sidebar but couldn’t find anything I really liked until I came across Grid Focus, a three-column website designed for publishers seeking a minimalist theme that is easily customizable. Having found my perfect theme, I then messed around with it bit, removing one of the columns and widening the remaining two, as well as adding my own buttons to the navigation bar.

So, have a look around. This is the new Kyleleboeuf.com. Hope you enjoy it

Kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com

Working on fixing a problem I’ve been having with the website,

As a result, you may see some downtime. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Kyle LeBoeuf

UPDATE (10:25 AM): We’re back. That was a lot quicker than what I thought. The ad code is apparently embedded deep in the files somewhere, so I had to reinstall the theme. Thanks to Daniel Weber and Ben Spell for helping me solve the problem.

I just discovered this



This morning I sent my 2000th Tweet. Holy cow!

Here’s the proof (Click for full size):

Maybe I tweet too much?

…nah.

As it turns out, it runs great. Its snappy, it doesn’t take long to boot, and I can go pretty fast even with all of the eye candy running.

(It’s still not as good as OS X)

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the ads that Microsoft recently released, targeting what tech-pundits call the “Apple-tax”, or the high premium on Apple products when compared to products from other companies that are released to the same markets. 

There clearly is a premium involved when purchasing Apple products, but the problem with accusing Apple of jacking up prices for better margins is that most people are aware of the premium for Apple products.

Something that many tech-pundits and big tech companies do not understand, is that the customer is always right.

Always.

People pay a premium for Macs because customers of Apple products claim they are a superior product. If someone wants the reliability that a Mac affords, they are going to pay the premium. Someone buys a Mac because they are willing to pay the price what they want

These ads make it seem like the premium a veil before people’s eyes. It isn’t.

Hey Microsoft: how about working more on making your product not suck, instead of wasting marketing dollars on crap like this? Someone in Microsoft forgot about the EPIC FAIL that is Windows Vista.

This ad from Apple says it all:

disclosure: I am an Apple Certified OS X Support Professional 10.5 and am employed by an Apple Value-Added Reseller and Authorzied Service Provider.

So as of Friday, I’m officially an Apple Certified Support Professional.

Problem is, I do not have a Mac.

I work for an Apple Authorized Service Provider (and Value Added Reseller), and am hoping to move up in the company. figured that would be a good way to start.

Funny isn’t it?

Update (4-6-09): Yeah I definitely did not proofread this post before I threw it on here. My apologies.

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).