Year: 2008

If you haven’t read about Google Chrome already, I hope you’ll take a look! This is the project I currently work on at Google.

Features:

• Open source browser based on the Apple Webkit Rendering Engine.
• Multi-process browser.
• A fast JavaScript engine.
• Minimalist approach to user interface.
• “Incognito Mode”, a private browsing interface.

Rather than blab about it – I’ll let you go try it out.  The Google Chrome Comic is a much better description of the product anyway.  Let us know what you think.  We wouldn’t release it if we didn’t think it was quite solid, but please remember it is in beta.  If you have any questions, please ask!

P.S.  Some may notice that this is not the first product I’ve worked on called Chrome!

I’ve noticed that I lose track of a lot of messages people send me, and the problem is getting worse.  Over the last few weeks I’ve realized part of what is going on.  The problem is GMail’s threaded message views.

Before I prove that, let me say that this is somewhat un-intuitive to me.  I’ve always used products that allowed me to thread my messages.  And I complained when I didn’t have these tools at my disposal.  The basic argument in favor of threading is that when you look at a large number of messages, if half of them are related to one topic, they shouldn’t dominate your message list.  This seems logical, and is also usually right.  With products before GMail, the products were primarily message based, and I used threading to keep my inbox small.  With GMail, you can’t avoid the threading; its there and you can’t even turn it off.

The problem, however, is that people write emails, and people do not abide by the strict topic of an email discussion.  A discussion with Joe may be titled “I will be out on Thursday”, and then digress into Joe’s work and whether it will be done before he leaves.  It then may digress into a technical thread about that work.  You’d think that search would save you – just search for the topic of Joe’s work.  But, if you get enough email from Joe which is all about Joe’s work, this fails.  The search result which reads, “I will be out on Thursday” will be the last result you click on.

So, the problem is that computers are too good at threading.  You tell them that this message is about “I will be out on Thursday”, and they diligently file it away as such.  Unfortunately, humans are not good at keeping on topic, and it makes threading fall apart.  The inability to break apart the thread manually and file two messages into different places is the final straw which makes keeping organized in a threaded and search only interface difficult.

I think I still like threading better than non-threading.  But, when I have action items or take-aways from email, I need to be able to extract those action items from the thread and store them elsewhere.  This is a time consuming task I don’t do well.  Maybe I’m being stubborn.

Anyway, if you are sending me email, try to stay on topic.  It helps me 🙂

Well, I finally turned of UAC on my machine.  I must say, I’m quite a bit happier.  I’ll go into the details below.  But what I’d really love to see from Microsoft is proof (or non-proof) that UAC works.

The assertion from Microsoft is that you’ll be less vulnerable to attacks with UAC.  This is a nice claim, but lacks data.  A nice report would be really good.  I’m not talking about UAC on corporate accounts where they lock down the desktops.  We already know there it helps (and you could do that prior to Vista anyway).  I’m talking about UAC for home users.  Are home users with UAC hacked less often then those with UAC off?

The gripes which led to disabling UAC were these two things:

1) Macromedia Fireworks doesn’t work with UAC
In order for this program to run, you have to run it with “Run As Administrator”.  That is annoying, but doable.  But I want it to be associated with viewing all PNG files on my system, and when you double click a PNG, you just end up with a dialog box from Fireworks about not being able to load due to some whacky error.

2) Microsoft Visual Studio Is Silently Broken with UAC
If you do development of anything that uses COM, Visual Studio auto-registers components for you.  To do so, it needs to run as Administrator.  However, if you accidentally run as a non-admin, everything *appears* to work; except when you go to run your program, it doesn’t work right; or it gets an old version.  You end up spinning until you finally come to the realization that you just forgot UAC again.

So, Microsoft is right, most apps work under UAC.  But not all.  And the ones that don’t make it time consuming.  UAC off is better.

As reported this week on TechCrunch, The Funded has been sued by EDF Ventures.  EDF is upset because someone anonymously wrote something bad (heaven forbid!) about them.

Fortunately, The Funded shares my views that websites should log nothing, and hasn’t been logging for quite some time.  As such, EDF’s subpoena is worthless.  This will save a lot of people a whole lot of time, grief,  and money in avoiding the courts.  I hope the major online sites follow suit before this gets really out of hand – because that is where it is going.

As for EDF – I hope they learn something from this.  If nothing else, they should get thicker skin!

As you know, I’ve been a Vista fan for a while.  I run it at home, and really like it.  It’s much better than XP, despite the awkwardness of UAC.

Despite my praise, I’ve been surprised to hear my colleagues and also the press in general describe Vista as a catastrophic failure.  At first I thought it was Microsoft bashing, but the bashing was so consistent and so prolonged that I believed it.  Although I liked Vista – most people apparently did not.

Microsoft was naturally frustrated by this.  I know they do a lot of usability studies there, and it had done well in studies.  Why did it “fail” in the market and press?

Hence, Microsoft Mojave was born.  This was a user experiment where Microsoft recruited volunteers who had never tried Vista to check out Microsoft’s new OS, “Mojave”.   Only after demoing Mojave and getting rave results from those same users did Microsoft reveal that Mojave was actually just Vista.

Anyway, if Microsoft is to believed on this (and don’t forget Microsoft has been caught lying under oath in the past with forged videos), it confirms my thoughts on Vista.  Vista is actually pretty well liked; just hated by the press.

Icahn has been talking with Microsoft.  Both sides have agreed to issue statements (here and here) that if the Yahoo board is fired, Microsoft might offer another bid to purchase Yahoo.

This is easily translated, of course.  It is estimated that Icahn paid ~$25 for his shares and he doesn’t want to lose the money he’s already lost.  Icahn tried to get a Microsoft transaction going in May.  Icahn disastrously failed.  Now he’s looking for Yahoo shareholders to bail him out.

Yahoo is in a tough spot already.  Electing the Icahn board means that you’ve got Yahoo in the same tough spot it’s already in, plus a board that has publicly said it has no intention to do anything with the company other than sell to Microsoft.  This is a horrible negotiating position.

Microsoft could walk in and buy what is left for far less than $20/share.  Fortunately for Yahoo shareholders, I don’t think Microsoft would do this.  Out of “good will” and the interest of avoiding competing bids, they’d offer more.  But if you were an employee at Yahoo, and this all happens, what are you going to do?  You’re either going to quit (because the management team has publicly stated doesn’t care if you succeed or fail – they just want to use you to sell to Microsoft), or you’re going to stick around to see if you don’t get that bonus along with your pink slip.

Either way this is a bad deal for Microsoft (they pick up a bunch of assets with a completely uninspired and burned out team) and its a relatively bad deal for Yahoo shareholders.  They sell out for far less than they were worth just 6 months ago, and if Microsoft really wanted to be brutal, they could end up selling for a small fraction of what they are worth right now.

The only winner:  Carl Icahn – the businessman that builds nothing, takes everything, and doesn’t care about people -who makes a few extra short-term dollars per share for himself.