So I was about to try out OnLive this last weekend thanks to a friend giving me his founding fathers key. I was surprised to learn how well it worked! I thought there would be some lag or something – but no, it worked perfectly aside from about one second where there was some freezing during the opening movie of Red Faction: Guerrilla. It was interesting because you could alt+tab out or switch to full screen instantly because the game was not running locally, and my cpu was not being hit hard at all. If you want you can see other people play games live through the OnLive console, which I though was pretty cool – although I doubt I would sit there and watch somebody else play a game when I could be playing one instead

Right now they have about 10 games you can play, and each of these you can play a “demo” – which is the full game but with a 30 minute time limit. At the end of the time limit you have to buy credits in order to play the game. Now here’s where I think they went wrong. The “credit” to play the game, is basically the full retail price of the game. The OnLive service is normally $5/month. So basically you are buying the game like you normally would, and then you have to pay $5/month in place of having your own gaming rig. Another catch – you can only play the game while OnLive is hosting it. Normally this seems to be about 3 years or more, so it’s probably good enough for most games – but then again you just paid full retail price for it. I don’t know about you but if I pay full retail price for a game I want to actually have the game so that I can A) sell it when I’m done with it so I can get another game or B) be able to play the game for the rest of my life if I want to.

Now, I can understand why they want you to pay full price – from what I figure each person that plays the game needs to have a license to play the game legally (just like when you buy a game form the store). So basically OnLive takes your money, and they buy a real license of the game for you. The difference here though is that the games run though the server, so I wonder about the legality of needed a license for every single player, or whether they would be fine with just a license for every single player that is currently playing. For instance: let’s say you have 40 people that want to play Assassins Creed 2. Out of those 40 people, 20 play during the day time and 20 play at night. Instead of charging full price for 40 game licenses, you would really only need to charge for 20 – meaning that the amount each person pays could be halved.

Now obviously you can’t pre-determine how many people will want to play the game and their playing schedule and therefore how many licenses to order and how much people should pay. That being said, this type of approach may not work very well – so let me propose another. You charge more for the service – perhaps $10 or $15/month. Then you charge $20 for new releases of games for the first month or so. Many hard core gamers would gladly pay $20 (instead of the normal $50+) to be able to play the game the day it comes out. After the first month, the game becomes free. What this would allow is any normal user wanting the play a game that has been out for at least a month can play any of the games currently hosted. Now if you only have to pay $10 – $15 a month to be able to play any PC game you want – on basically any device you want – I’d say that would be worth it. I think with a pricing strategy like that, you would be having users flock to you in droves. It would be a service that is better than Steam – since not only would you get a game at discount, but you could play it anywhere after just downloading a few MB client.

Now, my pricing idea might be a little off, and should be examined by an actual legal team and pricing strategist – but at this point I don’t see OnLive taking off without a change such as this. Who will pay $5/month and full retail price for games for a service like that. For that money I would much rather go out and buy a $90 video card and be able to keep the games and/or sell them when I was done with them to be able to re-cooperate some of the cost. If they did implement something like my pricing strategy above though – I could see thousands of people flocking to them. Even me, a guy who is extremely proud of his ‘gaming rig’, would have to consider throwing it out in alternative for a service like that.

I suppose only time will tell how it goes. In any case, I think the OnLive service is an incredible idea, and perhaps even paves the way for the future of gaming, but at this point I think it needs some fine tuning in the finance department before it because the end all be all solution for PC games.

The main reason to point out these errors is simple: Apple is one of those companies who (at least in the public eye) pretty much never admits they are wrong, and pretty much acts like they could never cause any sort of issue or reason for you to dislike their products. On one hand you could judge this as just simple marketing – what company would ever down their own product? On the other hand, there is some merit to a company who can admit they made a mistake. In my opinion this type of “marketing strategy” (if you will) is pretty much just a extension of Steve Job’s egotistical personality, but it seems to be working for them so far. (Note that I do not call him egotistical do to any personal feelings I have, and I could be wrong about his personality if you knew him more on a personal level – it’s just that this is a man who every presentation I have EVER seen him give he acts like he is a man who can do no wrong.) In any case, the point here is that for a company who markets themselves on being perfect, they have made a number of blunders in recent weeks.

1) Delay of the white iPhone 4 and the failure to communicate why
The iPhone comes in two colors: Black and white. While the black one was readily available for shopping on June 24th, the white one was no where to be seen. Nobody seems to know why either – the phone just simply is not available. Thus far, the only comment Apple has offered is that there was a delay in the manufacturing process due to some unforeseen difficulties with building the white iPhone. Now, I’m no genius, but I can tell you that when you are building two of the same exact product except for the color of the plastic casing – there shouldn’t be much of a problem there. In any case, the main issue is that this was a blunder, and while Apple did have many black phone available, they now probably have quite a few people who were bummed to learn they would be forced into getting a black phone if they wanted to be an early adopter. (Not that at the time of this post, Apple says they will be shipping out white iPhone 4′s in the second half of July).

2) The lines on the first day of sales
What company DOESN’T want lines like the ones phone outside Apple stores on July 24th, 2010 @ 7AM? I have waited in many lines (Playstation 2, XBox 360, New rides at theme parks, etc. – NONE of them have come anywhere remarkably close to the ones I saw outside the Apply store the other day. There were literally thousands of people there, and this was just for one store! The lines continued all day long, never slowing down even till 9 PM when the stores closed. If you’re keeping track, that’s 14 hours of having hundreds of people waiting in line at any given point. Now – here’s the problem with that.

a) Regardless of the stores inability to sell phones fast enough to dwindle down such a line, it’s just not good customer service to have that many waiting in line at one specific time. The reason is simple – some people just aren’t going to wait the 5+ hours to get a phone. Sure, they have a good chance of coming back to get a phone later, but lets say they are in an area where no phones will be available after the initial rush, some people might just get another phone instead. Also it aggravates people that they have to wait in line so long.

b) Many phones were reserved – meaning that you were guaranteed a phone BEFORE a person waiting in the stand by line if you came to the store. So what does that make the standby line? As I said above, there was constantly people in the reserve line for the full 14 hour day the store was open. Since those people are guaranteed a phone before stand by people – what’s the point of even having a stand by line? Surely you don’t expect people to stand in line for 14 hours before being told “sorry, we’re closing up shop” (that’s how riots get started).

Apple made an argument that the initial sales expectations were drastically under estimated, but I think at this point that just shows that Apple needs some better forecasting people. This is the fourth iPhone the company has sold, and every year the initial turnout overwhelms Apples forecasts. I don’t know how Apple gauges how their initial turnout might be, but I’m guessing that if you are basing it on having “just a few more people than last year”, you’re doing something wrong.

There are also steps they could take to please people more instead of just letting them wait in line. Many Apple stored had employees handing out food and water to customers waiting in line. Instead, they should have judged how fast they were selling phones, and then given people tickets to come back in a certain time frame where the line would be drastically shorter for that customer. You don’t even have to re-invent the wheel on this one Apple; just ask Disney how their Fast Pass system works – YOU NEED THE EXACT SAME THING. Also, Apple should probably just tell people that you should only come to the store on opening day if you have a reservation, and turn away people who want to stand by (or at least inform them that they have no chance of getting a phone that day) and then announce a different day (perhaps two days later) where stand by orders will begin being taken place.

3) The yellow tinge
Many of the phones bought on opening day came with a yellow tinge or what appeared to be warping on the screen. Now apparently the tinge was due to the type of adhesive that Apple (or more specifically Foxconn) applied when adhering the glass to the device. The adhesive eventually evaporates, leaving the screen crystal clear, but since they were apparently making these phone and shipping them out so quick, the evaporation process was not complete by the time the phones were sold. The initial reaction to this was that many people were livid about their brand new $200 or $300 phone that seemed broken once they got it (especially since they had just stood in such a long line undoubtedly). The problem here is that (as far as I know) there was no specific announcement or in-store advisement that such a problem was existent. Whether this was just due to Apple not communicating the issue or (again) that Apple likes to pretty much deny there is never a problem with their product, it seems like something that Apple should have taken extra steps to make sure people knew that the problem was not permanent and that if the issue was still existent after say 5 days, the phone would be immediately replaced.

4) The “awesome idea” antenna that took a wrong turn
When the iPhone 4 was unveiled, many people were shocked at how the steel casing of the phone was actually the antenna itself. In all honesty it is a stroke of genius as there was just no more room left inside the phone. The problem though is that, while the phone gets great signal when you are not touching it, the second you pick it up the phone will drop to 1 or 0 bars. Let me make it clear: a cell phone – and item that is extremely portable and (at least with my use) is constantly thrown from hand to hand during a majority of its use – that gets bad reception based on the way you hold it, is an utter design failure. How Apple in all their testing did not see this is beyond everyone. To make matters worse, Steve Jobs himself replied in an email to a user who emailed him about the problems with a simple “Just avoid holding it that way.”. (Again, this points to my accusation that Jobs is egotistical. Phones have been around for 150 years, but apparently it took 150 years before Jobs could finally tell people that they don’t know how to hold a phone).

Now, there is a simple workaround solution to such a problem – just cover the steel bar with something non-conductive. Interestingly enough though – for the first time Apple has a protector for the phone called a “bumper”. The bumper, unlike most phone cases the protect the majority of the phone except for any part of the user interface, just surrounds the steel bar – making it the PERFECT solution to the attenuation problem. It leaves the mind to wander though if the bumper was in fact created as a resolution to this problem in the first place, instead of being a protector of the phone. Whether it was or not – it does make Apple lose some goodwill as now peopel might thing Apple is conning them into having to purchase another $20 piece in order for their phone to work. No tons of people are calling for Apple to release the bumper for free in order to fix the problem; what a pain in the neck for Apple AND the consumer.

5) Customer Service
Being that Apple prides themselves on being a “perfect” company (or at least in their minds or marketing approach), the employees at the Apple stored were instructed to give a “no rush” attitude toward potential customers. The draw back to this? Some customers spent an hour of more of an employees time in order to pick out a new plan, have a tutorial on how the phone worked, sign paperwork for a new contract with AT&T, etc. That might sound nice, but when there are thousands of people standing in line, it can make for the line just seem that much longer. Some people merely wanted to buy a phone without a plan, some people already knew exactly what plan and phone they were getting. That being said, Apple could have handled the lines better just by managing the different types of customers they had. Imagine if they had two lines – one for customers who knew what they wanted, and one for people who had questions, needed to know how to work the phone, etc. Better yet, they could have teamed up with AT&T better to just sell the phone first, and then have AT&T agent outside the store waiting to hook the phones up (obviously you’d want to have some police there to handle the people who think they are going to buy the phone for $200 with a two year contract and then get out of talking to the AT&T guy about getting the contract or something – but I’m sure that could be worked out.) Think of how much quicker the lines would have gone, how many fewer customers would have just left the line after seeing how fast it was going, and in the end how many people were less aggravated by the little old lady who spent an hour and 15 minutes learning how to use a device that others had been using for four years.

All in all – none of these issues are that major, I think all of them can be resolved somewhat simply – it’s just that with Apple starting to see the increase of sales in a strong looking competitor (Android), with the “no error ever” attitude they seem to take, and also the amount of good will and amount of additional revenue (I saw people leaving lines by the dozens – will they return?) Apple is losing out on with all this issues, they might want to go the extra mile just to insure that future releases are more clearly communicated and organized. In addition they should have caught the antenna problem in testing and just included the bumper for free (although this would be admitting a mistake with the phone itself – so go figure).

And with this, I’m done “debugging” the Apple iPhone 4 issues. Good night.

After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done, there were 3 finalists; Two men and a woman.

For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun.

‘We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances.
Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair .. . . Kill her!!’

The man said, ‘You can’t be serious. I could never shoot my wife.’

The agent said, ‘Then you’re not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home.’

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes.

The man came out with tears in his eyes, ‘I tried, but I can’t kill my wife.’ The agent said, ‘You don’t have what it takes. Take your wife and go home.’

Finally, it was the woman’s turn. She was given the same instructions, to kill her husband. She took the
Gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman, wiping the sweat from her brow.

‘This gun is loaded with blanks’ she said. ‘I had to beat him to death with the chair.’

MORAL: Women are crazy. Don’t mess with them

Then he decided to write God a letter requesting the $100.00.

When the postal authorities received the letter to God, USA, they decided to send it to the President.

The president was so amused that he instructed his secretary to send the little boy a $5.00 bill. The president thought this would appear to be a lot of money to a little boy.

The little boy was delighted with the $5.00 bill and sat down to write a thank-you note to God, which read:

Dear God: Thank you very much for sending the money. However, I noticed that for some reason you sent it through Washington D.C. and those assholes took $95.00 in taxes.

The next day, Tommy comes in and says “Teacher, yesterday I went hunting and killed 20 ten point bucks all by myself!”. The teacher tells Tommy to quit lying and to go sit down in his chair.

The next day Tommy comes in and says “Teacher! Yesterday I hit 50 home runs….in a single inning!”. The teacher, by now upset with Tommy’s string of lies, tells Tommy to go to the principles office. She then calls the principle and tells him about Tommy’s behavior. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him – I know a little bit about reverse psychology” says the principle.

Tommy comes into the principles office and the principle tells him to sit down. “Tommy”, the principle says, “yesterday I was in the woods and this huge grizzly bear just charge up right in front of me, I mean this thing was as big as a bus! So I ran to get away from him and he just chased after me. He was getting closer and closer no matter how fast I ran. Then, just as I thought that he was going to get me, this little bitty chihuahua came up and attacked the bear and killed him. Then he ate him whole! What do you think about that Tommy, do you believe that?!”

Tommy just beamed and without skipping a beat replied “Of course I do! That was my dog!”

“ZOMBIES IN AREA! RUN”
“NAZI ZOMBIES! RUN!!!”
“THE END IS NEAR!!!!!!!!!”
“CAUTION! ZOMBIES! AHEAD!!!”
“RUN FOR COLD CLIMATES”

Two sides to this, you can either find this hilarious, or find it irritating because the sign is designed to warn people about things…well…real things anyways

Apparently the hackers just broke the padlock and then proceeded to hack the password. Let it be known that MOST of the time, the passwords for these things are written with permanent marker on the inside of the control box, as the construction workers need to change what the sign says and probably don’t remember the passwords for each sign. If it’s not written in marker, then it’s RIDICULOUSLY easy to hack these signs. First off, the default password is “DOTS”. If that doesn’t work, all you do is hold Control + Shift, and then enter “DIPY”. This resets the sign password back to “DOTS”. I’m sorry – to make it that easy to break the password is, IMO, stupid.

In any case, the sign company will undoubtedly be changing this very soon – hopefully removing the “shortcut” to resetting the sign, and making something more complicated instead. The good news is that the padlock will deter most people, that right now is the only real safeguard for these things as I would consider the password to be something my three year old could “hack” if I told him the instructions above.

Anyways, the news report video is below – you gotta see the sign, I think it’s hilarious myself.

I just have to say, you gotta be have some hidden desire to join a cult or monastery in order to wear this thing. The only thing I could think about while watching the commercial was “Hey! all I need now is a cross necklace and to shave my head bald and I got a awesome Halloween monk costume!”

Take a look…

Also, you gotta admit the best part of that video is when the whole family is wearing that OUTSIDE at some sporting event, I mean – do the makers of this thing actually think of The Snuggie as a new fashion statement?! And what’s with the flashlight…I mean I know all of these things have some “call now and you can get this also” type of deal…but a flashlight? Why not something that helps me keep warm like a pair of ridiculous looking socks or something. They should have used some monks chanting as the background music too, would have fit better.

I mean honestly – if you are going to bother to try and get warm, why not put on normal warmer clothes? In all actuality, it kinda bothers me though that somebody out there is giving these people money for this stuff; people will buy anything. *sigh* I’m in the wrong line of work…

The restaurant itself is divided into several sections. There is a prehistoric deep sea section, which contains a large bar in addition to dining. This section features lots of huge jellyfish and a gigantic animatronic octopus. There is a volcano section, where you can see the grill they use to make your food, and it has lots of pterodactyls and spiders. There is an ice age section, which is easily the coolest section of the restaurant. This section showcases dinosaur skeletons encased in the walls, which are stylized to look like ice. To further enhance the ice wall look, there are glowing blue lights behind the “ice” to make the ice, and the entire room (which looks like a cave) glow a bright blue color. Just outside the ice age section is a woolly mammoth and it’s cubs. The final section of the restaurant is like a prehistoric forest – where a majority of the animatronic dinosaurs are located. In this room you can see huge animatronic insects buzzing around on the ceiling. There also some dinosaurs that seem to climbing hills on their way up to the ceiling.

Every 15 minutes, there is a meteor shower event that takes place. The lights dim, and all the dinosaurs begin to moan and bark. Loud deep “crashes” can be heard through speakers, and the forest canopy ceiling of the forest section shows blazes of light and electricity. In the ice age room, the normally blue walls flash from their normal blue to a glowing red color, coordinated with the meteor impact sounds heard through the speakers. It really is an awesome event, although it tended to scare my two year old the first few times is occurred.

I heard many people in line suggesting others to request to sit in the ice age room because it’s environment is the coolest (no pun intended). I can tell you that while the room is very neat, it doesn’t have any animatronics, and very little dino models as well. That being said, I saw many peopel getting out of their seats in the ice age room to go look at the other rooms – especially during the meteor shower. I sat in the forest room myself and not only do you get all the animatronic dino’s, but they even have dinosaurs RIGHT next to the tables (as in – you can touch them EASILY) if you sit along the wall the separates the ice age and forest sections. That being said, I would recommend the forest section over the ice age section any day, especially if you have kids.

The food was really good here as well. I will admit that I’m not exactly a big fan of the Rainforests cafe’s food. Not that it’s not good, it’s just that there isn’t a lot on the menu, and the stuff they do have aren’t really my “type” of food. The T-Rex restaurant had a much bigger menu, and EVERYTHING seemed good. Even the salads looked good in the pictures, and I’m not one for salads normally. I got a nacho platter myself, which consisted of enough nachos and cheese that it really could have been for two people. My wife got a chicken and bacon sandwich thing that was made with pita bread, she said it was delicious. At the Rainforest cafe, the “king of the dessert platter” is called the Volcano, which consists of brownies and ice cream. Not to be out done, the T-Rex restaurant feature the “Chocloate extinction” which is fudge cake, ice cream, whipped cream, fudge and caramel sauce and sprinkled with Butterfinger. They prolly call it the extinction because if you actually ate all of that…well..I doubt you’d make it back to your car

The restaurant also features a store, much like the Rainforest cafe does – this time with dinosaur and prehistoric items instead. Behind the store is a new “Build-A-Rex”, by the Build-A-Bear company. Instead of bears and other animals like in the Build-A-Bear though there is…you guessed it…dinosaurs! While I would attribute the Build-A-Bear to be mostly a place little girls would love to hang out at, I could say the Build-A-Rex is more of place for boys. The layout and details of how the store is done are almost identical to the Build-A-Bear though, except for the more prehistoric environment of the shop.

Anyways, this place is cool. I would definitely want to go here again, and I do highly recommend it over the Rainforest if you are going to Downtown Disney (which has both). While the rainforest only has a few animatronic things and most of them rarely move anyways – the T-Rex is almost completely animatronic, and most everything moves even when there is no meteor shower going on. That plus the better choice in food (in my opinion) causes the T-Rex to make the Rainforest look…well…outdated.

All that changed a couple weeks ago when we went to the store and were looking at toothbrushes (I needed a new one). We saw they had some Wall-E toothbrushes, which Ethan immediately recognized still from our adventure to see the Wall-E movie, and they also had some crayon looking ones. Both my kids needed a toothbrush rather soon anyways, so we decided to go with the automatic ones. I had read recently that automatic toothbrushes do a MUCH better job of brushing your teeth, since they can vibrate the tooth to release food and other stuff.

Man, why didn’t we try this sooner! Not only are their teeth getting cleaner, but they love the “automatic” part of it. I don’t know if it’s the noise, or having to hit a switch to turn it on (we let them push the buttons), and what – but my younger son opens his mouth wide now in order to let us brush his teeth, and my older son not only does the same, but actually seems to enjoy the whole ordeal. Before, we would say “time to brush teeth” and then watch them scurry to the nearest hiding place; now my younger son actually runs to the bathroom and starts climbing up on the sink in order to get his toothbrush down. Also, he still bites down on his brush, but even so the brush continues to run – so it’s still cleaning his teeth (not like you have to move the brush to get it to work like a manual one).

If you have a toddler that you are finding teeth brushing to be, shall we say, “like pulling teeth” – then try an automatic toothbrush. They really don’t cost that much more, and I would say are WELL worth it. Just one word of advice though – the crayon toothbrush we got for my younger son only has a toothbrush head on it that is about the size of the head of a thumbtack, while my older son’s toothbrush head is about normal size. I would recommend getting a toothbrush head that is small until your kid is about three – I know my younger son’s mouth is too small and that if we had tried to use a normal brush size, it would have been much more difficult.

For instance, let’s take the Enzyte commercial’s, you know, the ones with “Smiling Bob” and “the one daily pill for natural male enhancement”. In these commercials, all of the “episodes” show the women trying to get closer to Bob, their eyes opening wide and a seductive smile coming across their face when they hear the news about Bob’s “enhancement”. It also shows other guys looking…disgruntled…with their own selves when compared to Bob. Obviously the message is clear – use their drug and you’ll get more women, and make them happier as well.

Now let’s take a birth control pill commercial for women. It really doesn’t matter which one, they are all pretty much the same. They show a woman who is either having a good time at the pool, or at a dinner with her friends, or opening windows – basically trying to express ‘freedom’. It’s funny because in most, if not all of the commercials, there is no sign of a guy anywhere. An unsuspecting person might think a birth control pill was some kind of “happy drug” for women instead of what the drug is really for – the prevention of babies.

If there was such a thing as birth control pills for men, I’m betting it wouldn’t show scene’s of guys driving a car down the road with the hood down or something, but rather probably guys at a club or something with women all over him. If there was some kind of enhancement drug for women, say for her chest area, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t show other women being disgruntled or guys wanting to fawn all over her, but rather something about a woman having a deliriously good time baking muffins or picking out new clothes (again, no signs of a man anywhere).

Anyways – I just thought it was funny in the marketing approach that these companies have. Check out the commercials on these things (if your Tivo runs out of room anyways heh) if you want to see what I mean, you can get a good chuckle.

For example, on the old page for writing a new blog entry, I would have to write it up top, and then scroll down to select which options I wanted like category, tags, etc.  The new interface allows me to do all of this in one screen, minimizing my need to scroll around the page.

Additionally thee is now a good use of color and just more of a professional feel to it.  You could compare it to staying in a Howard Johnson versus staying at an Embassy Suites, the environment really just gives you a good feeling.

The only thing I didn’t like too much about the upgrade was just how long it took.  The upgrade process is fairly simple, backup you old files, backup your database, then replace the files with the new versions.  The only problem is that it took over an hour to upload the newest versions of all the files.   I don’t blame anyone for this of course, just wish there was a quicker way to get the job done.

I had two main complaints with 2.6 really, both seem to have been resolved.  The first was that I found managing tags to be extremely over complicated.  Basically if i wanted to put a tag on a previous post, I needed to match the name of another tag, but sometimes I forgot how I had spelled them (i.e. – ASP .NET or ASP.NET).  The new one lets you start writing a tag, and then it will pop up a little window with other tags entered that match what you’ve already typed in.  If that does not work, you can click a box to show a tag cloud to chose from.  SO MUCH BETTER.  The other complaint was more of just the handling of the admin application.  If I wanted to delete a post, it would fail to delete because the delete command interfered with some other php that the site used.  I would have to disable some plugin’s to be able to delete the post correctly.  In the new version, that seems to have been resolved, as I can now delete posts without issue.  There are some other plugins I’ve been wanting to try, but they hadn’t worked in the past; hopefully I can get them working soon.

In any case, I’m glad to be on the new version, and can only hope that it will be able to assist me with enhancing the quality of this blog.