Everybody's playing Pokemon Go, except not

Saw this interesting article today. Sometimes it seems like everyone is a gadget obsessed 20-something who's online 24/7. Except half the world isn't online at all.

I'd like to see some more stats about usage in various countries.

More than half the world is still offline While it may seem like half the world is chasing Pokemon right now, the other half is not even on the Internet. About 3.9 billion people, or 53 percent of the ...

I feel, uh, not so fresh

I just watched a supposed demo created by a young, pretty songwriter, using Sway, which is Microsoft's new, I dunno -- millennial diary platform.(?)

I feel dirty.

It's one of the more phony, manipulative, grossly slick marketoid demos I've seen in a while. I guess it's targeted at kids who think they're all gonna be singer-songwriters and make tons of money while keeping it real. Or maybe it's smarter than that, targeting very savvy marketers who need tools to make fake demos to appeal to today's 20-somethings.

The girl in the demo? She's soooo cooooool. Her name's Daria. She's writing down bits of lyrics at three in the morning. Now she's in the studio laying down some tracks. She's using her Surface Pro (I assume) and Office 365 to show her fanbase the doodles in her Moleskin. Ha! So, apparently, she's just spent like $25k on an evening to indulge her creativity. That's what all the kids are doing, right?

I love this kind of marketing. The special effects are better, but it feels as sickly pandering as when GM or Dow Chemical tried using groovy marketing to sway flower children in the late 60s. Lay it on me, man.

Hello, It's Mr. Writer Guy

(With apologies to Dave Barry, whose "Mr. Language Person" always made me laugh a lot and sometimes cry a little inside.)

It's time to discuss some current writing issues — er, problems. Annoyances. All right, things that drive me a little crazy. They are all somewhat related to technology, because they come up in tech writing, and also because everything is about technology now, right?

Trying to do two things at once

You hear it all the time now:

"I'm going to try and (do something or other)."

"Try AND"?! How the heck did that get started? Doesn't anybody realize how dumb it sounds, and how can we stop it?

In case you're confused, I'll be specific. What I'm talking about is a new, very widespread bad-grammar trend that has to do with infinitives after the verb "try."

As you probably know, in English, an infinitive is two words: The word "to" and the root form of a verb: To go. To be. To get. To whine like a little girl.

Now, a lot of sentences include phrases that combine "try" with an infinitive. You know, in this form: I'm going to try...to do, to go, to get, to be. I'm going to try to inherit a large fortune. I'm going to try to cure this fungus between my toes. I'm going to try to get that job. Why don't you try to get your ass off the couch for a while? 

These are things we say and write about every day.

But now I hear everyone, everywhere replacing the "to" in the infinitive with the word "and."

I guarantee you have heard and seen this abominable construction. I notice it every day, in casual speech and in newscasts and advertising and in many places where people should be a little more careful with the language.

"I'm going to try and find a better job."

"The Teamsters are going to try and get a better contract with the school board."

"The president is going to try and prevent World War III from breaking out after he barfed on the prime minister's shoes."

Try AND? It's horrible, it's nonsensical, and it's also becoming ubiquitous, so that grammarians are probably going to have to start allowing it. 

Just try and stop it. I mean that. Try, and also, STOP IT.

Surprise! Online retailers show bogus price information

Amazon isn't the only e-retailer showing completely fake "list prices" and "discount" amounts, according to a New York Times article. But it is the biggest e-retailer, and when the actual manufacturer sells something for much less than Amazon's "list price," something is wrong. Not just in a user-friendly way, but in an unethical business practice way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/technology/its-discounted-but-is-it-a-deal-how-list-prices-lost-their-meaning.html?_r=1

Quote:

"But with many products online, you could not pay the list price even if you wanted to. That is because hardly anyone is actually charging it. It is a sales tactic that is drawing legal scrutiny, as well as prompting questions about the integrity of e-commerce. If everyone is getting a deal, is anyone really getting a deal?"

Images from NYT article below.
The manufacturer of the skillet sells it online for $200. (top image)
So does Amazon, but only Amazon claims it's giving you an amazing $60 off the List Price. BTW, the yellow boxes appear to be added to the screen shots by NYT to highlight the prices listed.

What do I do with a pencil?

Anachronicons

This is a new word that I'm coining. It's pronounced, anna-kron-ickons

These are all the button symbols that confuse even old people like me, who are old enough to know that a letter goes in an envelope, a column (blog post) is written with a pencil, or on a typewriter, an ellipses (...) means "more" (actually, it means less, but whatever.) I don't know if they're cute or ironic or unimaginative or brilliant. But I do not associate "Pencil" with "new blog post." I get confused when I see a file cabinet with envelopes flying out of it (this is a button in Outlook). What do kids think when they see an icon labeled with a dial-phone, or a phone book, or a newspaper? Or a phonograph, for Pete's sake? They've never seen those things. Or a checkbook, a stamp, a letter opener, a calendar, or a post-it note. All that paper, pre-internet stuff.

(These are actually really cool retro icons, that I haven't seen in a current app. I found them here:
http://rypearts.com/portfolio/icons/index.html)

Sorry, high-tech designers. You're trying to supplant every actual thing that we formerly had contact with as part of work and home life. You're putting everyone out of business -- bookstores, banks, stationary shops, hardware stores, newspapers, bars. Yet you continue to plaster buttons in your apps with the simple little symbols that signify what everyday items mean, or used to mean. 

Write. File. Call. Drink a martini. Take a taxi. Play a song. 

You think a magnifying glass means "search." I think it means "make this larger so I can see it, or burn ants in the sunlight."

When everyone's got VR goggles strapped to their heads 24/7, it'll be so quaint to reach for the virtual phone and virtual typewriter to communicate with the other humans that we can't see standing two feet away.

Quick hit

You no longer support what?

So, trying to use the Sony box the other night on the bedroom TV. Click the Youtube app, and a somewhat startling message comes up, to the effect that "Google no longer supports the YouTube app on this device."

What.The.Brick?

This is a SONY streaming box. I was not aware that Google could decide to stop "supporting" an app for YouTube (which it owns) and therefore cause my Sony streaming box to became a brick as far as use for watching YouTube. 

Thanks a lot Google.

Is this some strategic competition move? I know there's already a lot of shenanigans when it comes to Google and Amazon and streaming and apps on different devices (can't use the Amazon app on my iPhone to stream to Chromecast on the living room TV, for example).

I'll post more if I find out anything, other than, "too bad Mr. Consumer, thanks for playing."

A sitemap generator

A quick shout-out to a free online website site map generator:

https://xmlsitemapgenerator.org

I did a quick Google search, found this site and tried it. In no time I had a nice HTML-based sitemap page of a company website, which was just what I needed. No signup required. I'm going to dig into the code while I prune the sitemap a bit. I'll post any additional findings.

Tid Bits

Pushing a driver to disable counterfeit chips. Again:

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ftdi-abuses-windows-update-pushing-driver-that-breaks-counterfeit-chips/

An interesting strategy. The article doesn't like it.

Musings

A designer has strong feelings about Muse — it's wonderful, the sites using it look cool, it's easy to use. I suspected there was more to it. And there is. I gathered some criticisms, which are along the line I expected (make messy code) and more far-reaching (will ruin developers and the web by ignoring standards, accessibility, and responsive design.)

A designer who's not thrilled:

compassdesigns.net/adobe-muse-youre-not-helping/
Excerpt:
What kinds of sites can you build with a static tool like Muse these days? Only the very simplest and most basic sites, the 5-page mom-and-pop sites that are nothing more than, well, the tri-fold brochure in electronic format. And what happens when the client wants to update the site on their own? Presumably they can, if they own their own copy of Muse… but would the print designer allow them to have full editing rights to the site? The client is frustrated because everyone else they know can edit their own website, so why do they have to go through the designer for everything? Muse is blamed for making a bad tool.

Discussion at Designers Talk:
http://www.designerstalk.com/forums/web-design/64498-adobe-muse-thoughts.html

Discussion on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/2rge23/what_are_your_thoughts_on_adobe_muse/
An excerpt: The problem: The underlying code it generates is a psycho mess! It will be a horrible experience if you ever have to customize the code by hand. You can never use this if there is a development team involved. If you think your Muse created web page will be handed over to another developer, or will need to be hand edited for ANY reason...then stay away from Muse. I use Muse from time to time for one off pages that I do not need to hand edit (it is fast).

Sneaky? Deceptive? Dumb? All of the above

Why does Amazon show me movies on its Free-with-Prime movie page that are not free-with-Prime movies. Could it be because they want you, me and everybody to sign up for Prime, and they don't care what kind of deceptive advertising they use to do it? No, that couldn't be it. It must be a mistake in their page-display code, right? Right.

Here's what happened. Let's say I was home, and I really wanted to see a particular movie, and so I searched to see if the movie was available on Amazon's streaming service. Now let's say I checked the free-with-Prime movies and saw the movie I was looking for. Would you assume then that the movie you wanted was available free with Prime? Of course you would. But you might well be wrong.

It's pretty clear that Amazon was slapping an image of the movie I wanted on the free-with-Prime teaser page. But if you dig deep enough, you find out that the particular movie I wanted actually is not free with Prime. (It's free through Amazon if you have a subscription to a particular pay-movie cable channel, actually).

I don't care how the code works that puts movie posters on the page. Don't show me an image of any movie as a come-on to joining Prime if that movie is not going to be available on Prime once I join.

I do have to say, however, that I didn't get screen captures of the pages that I was searching, and I can't now reproduce exactly what I was seeing then. Maybe Amazon just confused me with images of one movie on a regular purchase page, not a free-with-Prime page — but that's what it seemed like at the time. And as I said, the movie (Maleficent) is free if you have a Starz! subscription and sign into that on the Amazon movies page.

Amazon has had some other complaints about their Prime marketing. Specifically, the UK Advertising Standards Authority charged Amazon with misleading direct mail advertising that touted a free Prime trial, because Amazon automatically bills you after 30 days if you don't cancel the service.

I like that the UK agency was enforcing the idea that "free" can't mean "not free unless you cancel a service you didn't know you had signed up to pay for."

Watchdog bans misleading Amazon Prime 'free trial' ad

Ugly Adobe Splash Screens

The Really Ugly 2015 Adobe Splash Screens
(I know, it's subjective)

What has happened to Adobe's taste in illustration?

That is the difficult question one must ask after looking at the splash screens for most of the Creative Cloud 2015 applications. (I know I'm a little late on this. Some of the images have been improved for the latest editions.)

Adobe's packages used to have some really attractive images, that showed off the product capabilities and were a pleasure to see over and over.

Now, I want to close my eyes when the programs start up. And I'm not the only one.
(I did a web search for "Adobe CC Splash Screens Suck" to start this post.)

Oh God, my eyes!

I found this site that shows all the screens and has some comments. Now, I know I shouldn't take some negative comments found on the Internet as proof of anything, except that at least some people agree with me: 

---

Ugh…I just hate them. Hate them, hate them, hate them.
The AE one is cool, the Photoshop one is barely tolerable, Illustrator turns my stomach, and I would consider not updating Dreamweaver just to avoid looking at that mess. WHAT were they thinking? Trippy LSD-induced art is something everyone would love? Just. Plain. Awful. (Brandon)

bethsays:July 15, 2015 at 12:32 pm

How do you change them?!

Marcussays:
Illustrator splash screen brought me here, after nearly vomiting. Found switching instructions before the app even finished loading. 

bailsonesays:

October 6, 2015 at 3:30 pmThe most awful splashscreen Series by Adobe. Especialy Photoshop with that super ugly 25 years anniversary. using adobe for 15 years now cant remember a more awful splashscreen except for beta releases ^^ Someone must be able to change those pictures. help Pls. 

---

So, back to the original question: What happened to Adobe's Taste in Illustration?

I included "Subjective" in the title above because, hey, I get it. Visual art is very hard  impossible to assess objectively. It's pretty much all pure gut reaction, personal associations, visual appetites. In many cases, art might as well be perfume, in the way people either like or don't like a certain scent, and you can't really argue with each person's preference.

That said, these splash screens are the equivalent of someone wearing a whole bottle of cheap cologne. They're just...too....much. In fact, it's almost like they were chosen by a very smart art professor who wanted his class to think about how technically competent, colorful, imaginative images could also be, well, ugly.

Dreamweaver splash screen. Swamilicious?
I even hate the colors.

Again, nothing against these artists. Not saying I could do better; I couldn't (well, I could make some innocuous abstract color-field images that I don't think would be as ugly.) These are definitely "creative" images. Was Adobe going for a more international feel? A younger vibe? Showcasing somewhat "unusual" personal perspectives? Or trying to signal that LSD is back, baby.

Adobe Illustration splash screen. Post-apocalyptic seashells?

One of those insanely complicated doodles done 

with a Bic pen during sophomore Algebra?

You also have to say something about the typography on the Photoshop splash screen. The "25 years of Photoshop" type is just another head-scratcher. Retro, mixed up, cliche, stupid, and ugly. Mixing beveled, chromed, multicolored (bruised) lettering with a 70s rounded retro balloon script is either incredibly sophisticated in an ironic, piss-off kind of way. Or really, really lame.

Maybe these images are, more than anything, an indication that Adobe software is making computer art too easy. That would be one hell of a smart marketing message by Adobe, in a way.
says:

Adventures in Windows 10, part 1

Adventures in Windows 10, part 1

Quick summary: This week, I finally figured out how to put Windows 10 on my desktop PC without removing (upgrading) Windows 7. Then I dealt with Wifi issues, as in two Wifi adapters wouldn't work with Windows 10. Then I ran into activation issues. Some of the information here might help others in their Windows 10 adventures.

Installing Windows 10 to dual boot

I had previously downloaded Windows 10 from Microsoft and put the image on a 32GB USB stick. This copy worked for upgrading -- a colleague used it to upgrade his home PC. But when I tried to run the setup program on my machine, I couldn't figure out how to do a clean install on another partition. The setup program only wanted to do an upgrade, as far as I could tell. 

After a lot of searching online, I ran across a post (sorry I didn't save the URL) that explained how to run another setup program. It seems that you have to go into the SUPPORT folder and run the setup.exe that's in there; there are several programs that have setup in their names, but only one that is named just "setup.exe." Running that gave me the option to choose a partition. I was able to choose the new SSD I had installed and never used, which was what I wanted -- a clean Windows 10 installation running on an SSD. 

When the entire setup was done and I rebooted for the last time, after seeing the hardware start screen, I got a Windows boot screen that listed both Windows 10 and Windows 7. I was able to choose either one and boot into each OS. Great!

Just one problem: In Windows 10, I did not have a network connection through the Wifi adapter plugged into a USB port on the system.

Getting Wifi to work

So again I started searching online, and found many posts about Wifi adapters no working after Windows 10 upgrades. That wasn't exactly my situation, since I had done a clean install for dual boot, as described above.

Here's some of what I tried, and what happened:

Downloaded the latest drivers for the Netgear RangeMax Wifi adapter, model 111 v2. But there was no Windows 10 driver, and on the Netgear support page I found out that very few of their Wifi adapters had Windows 10 support. Bummer. The adapter I was using is relatively recent -- it support 802.11n after all.

Tried installing the drivers several (many) times, in different ways. In each case, the drivers installed, but when the installer asked me to insert the USB adapter, it never detected it. Here are things I tried:

• Device Manager showed a USB lan adapter -- but not its full name.
• Using the Update Drivers command in Device Manager didn't work, probably because the setup program was a full executable, and didn't have an MSI or INI file that the update dialog box could read.
• Deleting the adapter in device manager and reinstalling didn't work. The setup program always failed with the adapter not detected.
• Trying to reboot Windows without the drivers installed, hoping that a Windows generic driver would be used automatically, didn't work.
• Another Netgear Wifi adapter had the same problems. This one is a micro adapter, WN1000M I believe. It also had no Windows 10 drivers available.

So what finally worked? I really wanted to play around with Win10 and the new Edge browser, so I moved the Wifi router closer to my desktop, ran an Ethernet cable to the PC, and booted Windows 10. Of course I had network then. But I also had 2 Wifi adapters installed. And I could connect to them and get to the internet. (!!)

Yes. Simply using ethernet for a minute somehow (and I mean, how?!?) made windows recognize 2 wifi adapters that were still plugged into the PCs USB ports, recognize the drivers, and WORK. 

The last thing to do was unplug the Ethernet cable and make sure everything was still all right with Wifi. And it was, and is.

STRANGE but true. 

A little more detail: I can't remember every place I checked, but when I did the Ethernet cable, I first noticed that the Wifi adapters had appeared in (I believe) the Networking (?) panel in Win10. 

Wherever it was exactly, I new something different had happened because their full names appeared -- brand, model, etc. I checked Device Manager and they were there under Network Adapters, again, with full names. In the Connect window (clicking the network icon in the system tray), my Wifi network name was available, and I clicked "Connect" there. It asked for the Wifi password, which I entered, and the connection was successful.

Chasing network settings

Windows has always been tricky with its networking settings seemingly scattered among multiple dialog boxes, control panels, windows, commands, etc. 

There's the network explorer view, there's a "Network and Internet" control panel, there's the Network and Sharing Center, there's the command prompt tools (ipconfig, etc.). There are the properties dialog boxes for the adapters. There are connection properties (where are those now? I forget). 

Even now, after years (since Windows 98 or so) of working with Windows networking, I often can't find the dialog box or panel that has the feature I want. And I end up in the same wizard or properties dialog box over and over again, trying to make the magic happen.

It's no wonder I sometimes long for the days of AppleTalk. Having a bunch of Macs get together on a peer-to-peer network as easily as plugging in a cord was amazing.

#technostalgia

So I have a new, Windows 10 Wifi adapter getting delivered today from Amazon that now I don't need.