This is true if you are on Windows. If you are not on Windows, or are someone (like me) for whom your OS is not always consistent, then Quicken/Money are not really options (if you can figure out how to run Quicken/Money on Linux/Mac, then you can figure out GnuCash). Moneydance is more for Mac users as well as casual Linux users - for example, there are some people for whom I am able to either replace or put together a small, cheap Linux machine that they can surf the web and read email from, and that's all they need... but sometimes they want to be able to write a document (OpenOffice/Abiword) or track their finances (Moneydance). For Mac users, I've heard that Quicken for Mac is horrible, in which case Moneydance would be the clear winner.
The appeal of MoneyDance is: it works, and it is relatively simple.
There are many people, at least in my sphere of influence, who only really need a computer for websurfing and email. Those two things can easily be done with Linux, and as long as I set up the plugins for them so that Flash and RealPlayer and all that work, they don't even really realize that they're not running what everyone else is.
However, for many people this falls apart when you get to money managing. Most people know about Quicken, and would like to be able to track finances that way. These people just want some simple application - they really don't care about double-entry accounting, they just care that the interface is clean and easy to understand. Moneydance delivers. It also lets them download bank and credit card statements, and it even has a lot of the bells and whistles that a more advanced financial person uses.
I initially looked at both Moneydance and GnuCash, and at that point Moneydance was far more user-friendly, both from a setup/maintenance and usability standpoint. Plus, I've been able to keep the same program as I had to move my primary computer from Linux to Windows to Mac.
So if you're a hard-core Linux/Open-Source geek, then sure, Moneydance doesn't hold a lot of sway over GnuCash. But if you're a more casual user who just wants to know how much money they've got to spend on Guitar Hero II, then Moneydance rocks.
Nice, but where are contact groups?
on
Gmail Gets RSS
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Not sure I'll use the new RSS feature, but it's nice to have. I was more interested in the "shortcuts" on the side, where Gmail tries to identify things in your email like addresses or tracking numbers that it can give you links to.
What I can't understand is why they haven't yet implemented contact groups. The single major stumbling block that most people I try to convert to Gmail has is that is is missing the (I would think relatively simple) ability to define a group of two or more contacts to which you can easily send a message. Heck, they could even make this Google-y and allow you to define terms with which to build a list, or label contacts as "Personal" and "Business" and then make a group from that. But the base functionality is so stinkin' simple, I just don't know why they haven't done it yet, and it's getting annoying to hear people I've referred to Gmail come up and say "I really like that new Gmail thing, but how do I send a message to a list of people?"
Consumers who choose to receive MP3 files in addition to replacement CD(s)
Why the heck would I bother to download their "MP3s" -- especially after the fiasco with the CDs -- when I'm supposedly going to get an unencumbered CD in the mail in a few weeks and I can rip it into whatever the heck format I want?
I'm curious: how do you contact Microsoft's site for Windows critical updates with Firefox?
I haven't used Windows Update in ages. I've got the little Automatic Update service running, and it handles any critical updates to the OS. Anything else on Windows Update, like Windows Media 25 or like, I don't care about.
So when people say Firefox is being downloaded onto people's systems, that's true, but IE is also on those systems.
For me, my parents, my grandparents, my sister, my in-laws, and anyone else for whom I've ever set up a computer, IE is effectively not on the system. Oh sure, the executable is on there somewhere (what does "iexplore.exe" do?), as are all the other 1s and 0s needed to run the program, but as far as the user is concerned, they can't find anything about this "Internet Explorer" thing. No icons, no shortcuts, no nothing. Or, in some rare cases, there IS an Internet Explorer icon, but it doesn't look like a doofy E - it looks more like a cute little curled up red fox.
In one extreme case I did rename the Firefox icon 'Internet Explorer'
I did this for my dad a year or two back. He hates change, so I installed Mozilla, then installed the "Internet Explorer" theme so that all the icons looked like Explorer. Then I renamed the icon to be "Internet Browser" and he barely noticed a difference. Thus I have slowly weened him off of both IE and OE, and my parents have lived happily ever after since.
Actually, I think more than that their answer would be "What's a web browser?"
At any rate, if that is their answer, it's rarely the truth. The only reason they might answer "works fine" is because they don't know any better. It's the same as with having to restart Windows all the time (and even after 8 months at a new job in an MS environment I am still getting used to "reboot" being an acceptable if not recommended troubleshooting method).
In my experience, a lot of people would answer "Yes" to that question - they just don't know they have an alternative. I recently fixed a friends computer that had tons of spyware and regenerating links for viagra and sex videos. He thought he was getting bad stuff from the educational games he bought for his kids. He had no idea what IE even was, and was quite surprised when I told him I could give him a way to surf the internet that wouldn't make his computer into a steaming pile of crap.
So yeah, maybe it would have been better to say something like "Are you fed up with your Internet surfing experience?" or something other than using the word "browser."
Being shameless promotion: I recently got a job working for Regal CineMedia, which handles the digital distribution for all of the pre-show advertisement. So instead of just seeing slide shows of trivia and celebrities, you see moving pictures trying to get you to buy things.
The good part? With slight exceptions, it's all done BEFORE showtime. Oh, there's still a minute or two of "buy concessions in the lobby" and you still have to watch the previews - but we're talking 10 minutes compared to 25+.
I did do a Google search, and waded through all sorts of possibilities at Sourceforge, HandyAudio, and Download.com, but I didn't catch that Foobar2000 did conversion. I've used that on the Windows side, so that might fit the bill nicely over there.
For anyone else who may not be familiar with Foobar2000 and its syntax, I went to Convert->Settings and checked the "Create Subdirectories" box, then set my output format string to be the following so that it put things in the appropriate artist/album heirarchy:
/%artist%/%album%/%_filename%
Seems to work nicely. Thanks! I'm sure I can easily adapt any of the other scripts posted for my Linux needs.
Hmm... I hadn't thought of that. I was considering setting up an old box as a file server in my basement, so this might be just the thing. I'll have to look into it.
Ok, so this is only one instance, but mine comes from when I bought two Sprint Samsung phones for my wife and I. I almost never get the PSP, but since this included my wife, I figured I'd suck it up so that she could just come back and get it taken care of if she needed to.
Lo, about a year later the screen went dead. I took it back. Problem: they no longer sell this model of phone. No problem, I'm not surprised, just give me the comparable model phone.
Well, apparently, the comparable model phone - which, I'll admit, had a color screen which mine did not - was $250, whereas mine was originally $129. Even worse, the absolute CHEAPEST phone they had was $149, and it was way more sucky than the one I already had.
Nope, sorry, they'll only give me the retail price on the phone in exchange - I'll have to pony up at least $20 to get a crappier phone, even more if I want something the wife will accept.
Thppt. Circuit City has paid for their transgressions with DivX, I'll give 'em another shot.
why does google engender a warm fuzzy feeling of trust whereas yahoo, hotmail and the rest "feel" like corporates out to make a quick buck?
I don't know about everyone else, but for me it's little things Yahoo! does that are deliberately obtuse. For instance, I can't watch any videos from their "Launch" service because they do a browser check and won't allow anything other than IE or NS4.x. Absolutely stupid, but they refuse to change it.
Other stuff seems less evil - I use their email service, for example. But it's just the difference in attitude that helps to elevate Google above the rest in my mind.
Install Firefox or whatever alongside IE, and explain that they can use either program to surf the web, but that Firefox is safer.
This is a big point. At one point in my lesser intelligent days, I would try to erradicate MS from a family members' system. They would invariably just get annoyed when some things didn't work as they expected (even if what they expected was wrong).
However, in the last year or two, I have taken to the above approach - install Firefox, show 'em how it works, etc, and even take the IE shortcut off the Quick Launch bar but make sure they know it's available via the Start Menu. Every person has all but completely given up using IE and turned exclusively to Firefox for their web surfing needs. Plus, when they do go back to IE for some reason, they get frustrated and annoyed that IE lacks the features they are used to (pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing being the two main ones).
All evangelists of any type need to learn this. If your software isn't good enough to stand up against the competition, then you're wasting your time promoting it. Let Firefox (or whatever) speak for itself, and it will do just fine.
In my most recent experience, the generic branding helped TiVo. See, my wife was initially hesitant to get a TiVo, feeling that it was too much of a yuppie-geek item to own, and that it would admit that she valued TV too much. And in my discussions with her, I used the term "TiVo" to mean mostly "DVR/PVR."
Well, after a while, the VCR failed her on a couple of separate instances of trying to record Dr. Phil. Now she wasn't so opposed to a TiVo anymore, and thought we could get one! So I started looking around, and was actually leaning toward a ReplayTV, as our house has no land-line and ReplayTV is already set up for broadband access.
But could I convince the wife that a ReplayTV was the same thing (and in some instances better) as a TiVo? Nope. Gotta have a TiVo. TiVo is what I kept telling her we needed, so by golly we'd better get a TiVo, and nothing else!
Most people hate the viewing habit feature on a TiVo.
Actually, we were just talking about this today, and a co-worker of mine recounted an instance where an individual decided to give up his TiVo because it was too good at finding stuff he liked - he found he didn't have much of a life anymore besides catching up on all these cool TV shows he didn't know existed!
They "owned" the education market for a long time.
Yup, I remember that. I grew up in that. And I, ever the agent for change, was one of the principle students actively working to break the Apple monopoly and get Windows computers installed as well, mainly because at that time Windows tended to piss me off just a little bit less.
Now, of course, I am learning that life has a wicked sense of humour, and have spent the last 5 years or so prying the beasty Microsoft fingers from my family and friends, mostly in the area of moving them off IE/OE and onto Mozilla, or maybe even off Office and onto Abiword or OpenOffice.
And of course, I am still personally a bit of a geek - my entire music collection is in Ogg Vorbis, and I usually run some distro of Linux on my home box. But I'm much more even tempered - I keep Windows and Office around for my wife's grad school studies, because that just makes more sense, and try to stick with the battles that win themselves (Mozilla vs IE/OE) rather than those that are uphill (Linux vs. Windows) with others.
That's not entirely true. Yes, MP3, AAC, and WMA are the big buzz words, but a quick look at the hardware FAQ shows that there are quite a few major players, including Rio and iRiver, that now support Vorbis.
I know there's a lot of poo-pooing of Vorbis advocates, and sometimes with good reason, but I for one wouldn't mind having the benefits of both an open sourced, cross-platform codec for my own personal collection as well as something nifty like AAC to listen to DRMed music from an online music store.
That and, of course, the Linux sync situation is rather good with positron or the Java NDBM.
Honestly, I'm surprised the Linux geeks don't hail this more than they do. A lot of the Neuros stuff is open, such that a completely independent project like the NDBM is possible. So if I, the loyal Slashdot geek, don't like a particular feature of the sync manager, or wish there was a particular super-cool option like playlist rating - do it!
No need to whine to the company and hope, blessed hope, that they hear your pitiful cry and find a big enough business case to pay attention to it. Just do it yourself.
Do any other portable media projects have this? Ogg or otherwise?
Troy, who's still wishing for a PDA+20/40GB hard drive...
These things are all true, but I think the point is that other players do them almost as well (or better, sometimes):
Firewire connection
This is nice, but most of the other players out now have USB2.0 support at least. I know, it's probably not as good as Firewire, but USB2.0 still has a bigger market share, so for most people they're effectively the same thing.
Small and light.
What are the comparisons here? I was under the impression that they were all pretty "small and light." Plus, if you really want small and light, isn't that new RIO with 1.5GB card a tempting prospect?
AAC support
I'll give that one to you, as having AAC is the best way to implement iTunes. It *would* be nice to have Ogg support, tho, especially as more and more other players are supporting it.
It can double as a portable Firewire/USB2 hard drive
They can pretty much all be used as a removable hard drive.
Price. For once, Apple is not selling the most expensive product on the market.
Seriously? I got my Neuros 20GB player (with Ogg) for under $300. And every other player I've seen is either even with the iPod, or the same price (often with a bigger hard drive capacity).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the iPod - I think they're great. I just don't think the reasons you gave adequately answer the question of "why is the iPod so much better than any other player?"
I usually install Zinf, formerly known as FreeAmp. It's pretty similar to WinAmp. I can't speak to all it's features, as I only use it to play my Ogg files, but I've never had a problem with it.
Troy
The whole point of diamonds is their expensiveness itself.
Exactly. All the diamond cartels have to do is start marketing "organic diamonds" or some such thing, and continue to charge the outrageous prices. Who cares if the $5 jewelry is synthetic, whether it's actual diamond or not? I can tell you that very few brides are going to want a rock on their finger that only cost their man $25 to get!
What *we* should be looking at is becoming the certifier or diamonds. Create some company, call it TrueDiamond(tm), and charge ridiculous amounts of money to verify that the diamond did, in fact, come from a big whole in the ground after having been pressed for thousands of years. We make lots of money, diamonds are even *more* expensive, and their desireability skyrockets.
Slashdot Mirror
This is true if you are on Windows. If you are not on Windows, or are someone (like me) for whom your OS is not always consistent, then Quicken/Money are not really options (if you can figure out how to run Quicken/Money on Linux/Mac, then you can figure out GnuCash). Moneydance is more for Mac users as well as casual Linux users - for example, there are some people for whom I am able to either replace or put together a small, cheap Linux machine that they can surf the web and read email from, and that's all they need... but sometimes they want to be able to write a document (OpenOffice/Abiword) or track their finances (Moneydance). For Mac users, I've heard that Quicken for Mac is horrible, in which case Moneydance would be the clear winner.
The appeal of MoneyDance is: it works, and it is relatively simple.
There are many people, at least in my sphere of influence, who only really need a computer for websurfing and email. Those two things can easily be done with Linux, and as long as I set up the plugins for them so that Flash and RealPlayer and all that work, they don't even really realize that they're not running what everyone else is.
However, for many people this falls apart when you get to money managing. Most people know about Quicken, and would like to be able to track finances that way. These people just want some simple application - they really don't care about double-entry accounting, they just care that the interface is clean and easy to understand. Moneydance delivers. It also lets them download bank and credit card statements, and it even has a lot of the bells and whistles that a more advanced financial person uses.
I initially looked at both Moneydance and GnuCash, and at that point Moneydance was far more user-friendly, both from a setup/maintenance and usability standpoint. Plus, I've been able to keep the same program as I had to move my primary computer from Linux to Windows to Mac.
So if you're a hard-core Linux/Open-Source geek, then sure, Moneydance doesn't hold a lot of sway over GnuCash. But if you're a more casual user who just wants to know how much money they've got to spend on Guitar Hero II, then Moneydance rocks.
What I can't understand is why they haven't yet implemented contact groups. The single major stumbling block that most people I try to convert to Gmail has is that is is missing the (I would think relatively simple) ability to define a group of two or more contacts to which you can easily send a message. Heck, they could even make this Google-y and allow you to define terms with which to build a list, or label contacts as "Personal" and "Business" and then make a group from that. But the base functionality is so stinkin' simple, I just don't know why they haven't done it yet, and it's getting annoying to hear people I've referred to Gmail come up and say "I really like that new Gmail thing, but how do I send a message to a list of people?"
Consumers who choose to receive MP3 files in addition to replacement CD(s)
Why the heck would I bother to download their "MP3s" -- especially after the fiasco with the CDs -- when I'm supposedly going to get an unencumbered CD in the mail in a few weeks and I can rip it into whatever the heck format I want?
I haven't used Windows Update in ages. I've got the little Automatic Update service running, and it handles any critical updates to the OS. Anything else on Windows Update, like Windows Media 25 or like, I don't care about.
For me, my parents, my grandparents, my sister, my in-laws, and anyone else for whom I've ever set up a computer, IE is effectively not on the system. Oh sure, the executable is on there somewhere (what does "iexplore.exe" do?), as are all the other 1s and 0s needed to run the program, but as far as the user is concerned, they can't find anything about this "Internet Explorer" thing. No icons, no shortcuts, no nothing. Or, in some rare cases, there IS an Internet Explorer icon, but it doesn't look like a doofy E - it looks more like a cute little curled up red fox.
I did this for my dad a year or two back. He hates change, so I installed Mozilla, then installed the "Internet Explorer" theme so that all the icons looked like Explorer. Then I renamed the icon to be "Internet Browser" and he barely noticed a difference. Thus I have slowly weened him off of both IE and OE, and my parents have lived happily ever after since.
At any rate, if that is their answer, it's rarely the truth. The only reason they might answer "works fine" is because they don't know any better. It's the same as with having to restart Windows all the time (and even after 8 months at a new job in an MS environment I am still getting used to "reboot" being an acceptable if not recommended troubleshooting method).
In my experience, a lot of people would answer "Yes" to that question - they just don't know they have an alternative. I recently fixed a friends computer that had tons of spyware and regenerating links for viagra and sex videos. He thought he was getting bad stuff from the educational games he bought for his kids. He had no idea what IE even was, and was quite surprised when I told him I could give him a way to surf the internet that wouldn't make his computer into a steaming pile of crap.
So yeah, maybe it would have been better to say something like "Are you fed up with your Internet surfing experience?" or something other than using the word "browser."
The good part? With slight exceptions, it's all done BEFORE showtime. Oh, there's still a minute or two of "buy concessions in the lobby" and you still have to watch the previews - but we're talking 10 minutes compared to 25+.
Is that a manual distinction (single vs. compilation), or can Foobar detect this automatically (assuming the cddb info is correct)?
For anyone else who may not be familiar with Foobar2000 and its syntax, I went to Convert->Settings and checked the "Create Subdirectories" box, then set my output format string to be the following so that it put things in the appropriate artist/album heirarchy:
/%artist%/%album%/%_filename%
Seems to work nicely. Thanks! I'm sure I can easily adapt any of the other scripts posted for my Linux needs.
Hmm... I hadn't thought of that. I was considering setting up an old box as a file server in my basement, so this might be just the thing. I'll have to look into it.
Lo, about a year later the screen went dead. I took it back. Problem: they no longer sell this model of phone. No problem, I'm not surprised, just give me the comparable model phone.
Well, apparently, the comparable model phone - which, I'll admit, had a color screen which mine did not - was $250, whereas mine was originally $129. Even worse, the absolute CHEAPEST phone they had was $149, and it was way more sucky than the one I already had.
Nope, sorry, they'll only give me the retail price on the phone in exchange - I'll have to pony up at least $20 to get a crappier phone, even more if I want something the wife will accept.
Thppt. Circuit City has paid for their transgressions with DivX, I'll give 'em another shot.
I don't know about everyone else, but for me it's little things Yahoo! does that are deliberately obtuse. For instance, I can't watch any videos from their "Launch" service because they do a browser check and won't allow anything other than IE or NS4.x. Absolutely stupid, but they refuse to change it.
Other stuff seems less evil - I use their email service, for example. But it's just the difference in attitude that helps to elevate Google above the rest in my mind.
This is a big point. At one point in my lesser intelligent days, I would try to erradicate MS from a family members' system. They would invariably just get annoyed when some things didn't work as they expected (even if what they expected was wrong).
However, in the last year or two, I have taken to the above approach - install Firefox, show 'em how it works, etc, and even take the IE shortcut off the Quick Launch bar but make sure they know it's available via the Start Menu. Every person has all but completely given up using IE and turned exclusively to Firefox for their web surfing needs. Plus, when they do go back to IE for some reason, they get frustrated and annoyed that IE lacks the features they are used to (pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing being the two main ones).
All evangelists of any type need to learn this. If your software isn't good enough to stand up against the competition, then you're wasting your time promoting it. Let Firefox (or whatever) speak for itself, and it will do just fine.
Well, they are spelled slightly differently, and they both put their logos on the front of the box.
Plus, she likes the little logo dude for TiVo. She's artsy.
Well, after a while, the VCR failed her on a couple of separate instances of trying to record Dr. Phil. Now she wasn't so opposed to a TiVo anymore, and thought we could get one! So I started looking around, and was actually leaning toward a ReplayTV, as our house has no land-line and ReplayTV is already set up for broadband access.
But could I convince the wife that a ReplayTV was the same thing (and in some instances better) as a TiVo? Nope. Gotta have a TiVo. TiVo is what I kept telling her we needed, so by golly we'd better get a TiVo, and nothing else!
Ordered it earlier this week.
Troy
Actually, we were just talking about this today, and a co-worker of mine recounted an instance where an individual decided to give up his TiVo because it was too good at finding stuff he liked - he found he didn't have much of a life anymore besides catching up on all these cool TV shows he didn't know existed!
Troy, who finally ordered his TiVo this week.
Yup, I remember that. I grew up in that. And I, ever the agent for change, was one of the principle students actively working to break the Apple monopoly and get Windows computers installed as well, mainly because at that time Windows tended to piss me off just a little bit less.
Now, of course, I am learning that life has a wicked sense of humour, and have spent the last 5 years or so prying the beasty Microsoft fingers from my family and friends, mostly in the area of moving them off IE/OE and onto Mozilla, or maybe even off Office and onto Abiword or OpenOffice. And of course, I am still personally a bit of a geek - my entire music collection is in Ogg Vorbis, and I usually run some distro of Linux on my home box. But I'm much more even tempered - I keep Windows and Office around for my wife's grad school studies, because that just makes more sense, and try to stick with the battles that win themselves (Mozilla vs IE/OE) rather than those that are uphill (Linux vs. Windows) with others.
Perhaps... perhaps not:
Google Directory
Troy
That's not entirely true. Yes, MP3, AAC, and WMA are the big buzz words, but a quick look at the hardware FAQ shows that there are quite a few major players, including Rio and iRiver, that now support Vorbis.
I know there's a lot of poo-pooing of Vorbis advocates, and sometimes with good reason, but I for one wouldn't mind having the benefits of both an open sourced, cross-platform codec for my own personal collection as well as something nifty like AAC to listen to DRMed music from an online music store.
Troy
Honestly, I'm surprised the Linux geeks don't hail this more than they do. A lot of the Neuros stuff is open, such that a completely independent project like the NDBM is possible. So if I, the loyal Slashdot geek, don't like a particular feature of the sync manager, or wish there was a particular super-cool option like playlist rating - do it!
No need to whine to the company and hope, blessed hope, that they hear your pitiful cry and find a big enough business case to pay attention to it. Just do it yourself.
Do any other portable media projects have this? Ogg or otherwise?
Troy, who's still wishing for a PDA+20/40GB hard drive...
Firewire connection
This is nice, but most of the other players out now have USB2.0 support at least. I know, it's probably not as good as Firewire, but USB2.0 still has a bigger market share, so for most people they're effectively the same thing.
Small and light.
What are the comparisons here? I was under the impression that they were all pretty "small and light." Plus, if you really want small and light, isn't that new RIO with 1.5GB card a tempting prospect?
AAC support
I'll give that one to you, as having AAC is the best way to implement iTunes. It *would* be nice to have Ogg support, tho, especially as more and more other players are supporting it.
It can double as a portable Firewire/USB2 hard drive
They can pretty much all be used as a removable hard drive.
Price. For once, Apple is not selling the most expensive product on the market.
Seriously? I got my Neuros 20GB player (with Ogg) for under $300. And every other player I've seen is either even with the iPod, or the same price (often with a bigger hard drive capacity).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the iPod - I think they're great. I just don't think the reasons you gave adequately answer the question of "why is the iPod so much better than any other player?"
Troy
I usually install Zinf, formerly known as FreeAmp. It's pretty similar to WinAmp. I can't speak to all it's features, as I only use it to play my Ogg files, but I've never had a problem with it. Troy
Exactly. All the diamond cartels have to do is start marketing "organic diamonds" or some such thing, and continue to charge the outrageous prices. Who cares if the $5 jewelry is synthetic, whether it's actual diamond or not? I can tell you that very few brides are going to want a rock on their finger that only cost their man $25 to get!
What *we* should be looking at is becoming the certifier or diamonds. Create some company, call it TrueDiamond(tm), and charge ridiculous amounts of money to verify that the diamond did, in fact, come from a big whole in the ground after having been pressed for thousands of years. We make lots of money, diamonds are even *more* expensive, and their desireability skyrockets.