The Apple Store is down and we can only hope its to make way for the mighty iPhone 2!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 10:19 am and is filed under New Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

So, since I didn’t really want the Undertow freebie that Microsoft offered to it’s XBox Live Gold Subscribers to make up for the downtime, I thought I would give a call and see if I could get a refund for the downtime or at least get Microsoft to extend my 2 Xbox Live accounts for an additional month.  I paid for this service and Microsoft failed to provide the service I paid for.  Makes sense to me, but I guess not to the Microsoft representative and supervisor I spoke with.

I called and got a rep on the phone.  I explained to him that my service was down for almost 4 weeks and that I would like a refund for the downtime since I paid for something I didn’t get.  He told me that Microsoft’s policy is not to give refunds, but they gave us a free download.  I told the rep that I didn’t download the game, nor did I want it, but I wanted to either get a refund or have my memberships extended for an additional month for the downtime.  Regardless of my argument,   the rep who sounded like a broken record kept saying unfortunately, there was nothing he could do.  I then asked to be transfered to his supervisor.  The first rep was courteous and professional, but couldn’t come to grips with the fact that I paid for a service I didn’t receive and felt I was owed something more than a game I didn’t want.

I then got a cockier version of the rep on the phone who claimed to be a supervisor named Tony.  From my experience with this support call, it appears that to be promoted to supervisor you have to have an attitude about you that you are being annoyed by having to take a phone call from one of those, what do you call em again, oh yeah….  Customers.  Tony, (If that was his real name) then proceeded to explain to me how Microsoft Terms of Use say that the service is provided as is and if the service doesn’t work, then you are just out.  I told him that I paid money to access XBox Live and that I was not able to access it and that I either wanted a refund for the time period or my service extended for an extra month.  He told me they didn’t have to do that because of their terms of use and that the policy was the policy.  I told Tony that I felt like money was stolen from me because I paid for something I didn’t get.  I questioned him point blank saying I paid for a service and you didn’t provide it to me and you are telling me that you will not give me my money back for the service you didn’t provide.  To quote Tony “That’s Right!”.  He said their policy is their policy and there is nothing he could do. I then asked him for the contact information for someone who could help me and he told me that there was no phone number in all of Microsoft that could help me.

The conversation went back and forth for quite sometime, but the end result was that I am just screwed because I was foolish enough to believe that if I paid Microsoft for something I would get the service I paid for.  SO, read your terms of use carefully cause in reality if you don’t get the service you paid for on XBox Live it is your problem not Microsoft’s.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at 12:21 pm and is filed under New Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Mac OS X 10.5.1 Build 9B13 has been release to Developers via ADC Seed. 

 

 

Focus Areas

- AirPort

- Back To My Mac

- Bonjour

- DiskImages

- Disk Utility

- FileVault

- Finder

- Firewall

- Graphics & Games

- iCal

- Keychain Access

- Mail

- Networking

- QuickDraw

- Time Machine

- Windows File Sharing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 3:21 pm and is filed under New Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

So I was attempting to install Microsoft DPM 2007 on a fresh Windows 2003 R2 X64 Server Machine and everything look like it was working fine until I would get to the actual installation part (after all pre-requisites had been met) and I would prompt me for my Windows install CD and it was trying to find convlog.ex_ and no matter what I did, even pointing it to the convlog.ex_ file it would bomb out with error 810.  What it ended up being was that after the OS install I had added IIS via add/remove programs, windows components and browsed out via a UNC to where I had a Windows 2003 R2 X64 install CD mounted.  So even though IIS installed fine this way, when I ran the DPM install it was looking for the original drive letter that was used for the OS install, in this case Drive Letter D:.  So since I was doing this install remote, I changed my CD drive letter of the physical CD drive from D: to another unused drive letter.  Then using MagicDisc, I mounted an ISO for the Windows 2003 R2 X64 OS CD to Drive letter D:.  I then uninstalled IIS using add/remove programs, once this was uninstalled I re-ran the MS DPM 2007 install this time it automatically installed IIS during the install procedure with out prompting me for my OS install CD.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Technical Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I have been more than frustrated today with Dreamweaver CS3 crashing on me. So, I thought back to anything new I may have installed on my machine over the last few days, and about what changes have happened that might have caused some sort of change. I also copied my site files over to my mac, but could not recreate the problem.

While there was a major change over the weekend, I kept thinking to myself that there is no way this is related to the time change. Computers are beyond the point where a simple time change can cause havoc like this, right?

FALSE

It appears that Dreamweaver doesn’t like the Daylight Savings Time change very much. According to an article on Adobe’s site, which strangely enough was just updated today, when you select certain lines of code while in code view in PHP or ASP sites, you may experience crashes. Keep reading for steps on how to solve this issue.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Software News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Microsoft has released a security update and bug fix rollup for Microsoft Office 2003. The office is big enough that they are calling it Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3). Beyond security updates for all of the major programs in Office 2003, there are also some changes that modify the behavior of Office 2003 including:

• Office 2003 can no longer open or save certain file formats. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938810.
• MAPI forms do not run in public folders and user folders. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938816.
• Office 2003 can now be configured to allow or deny specific COM components. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938815.
• Some COM components with unusual characteristics may not function as expected. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938814.
• Changes have been made to the behavior of Microsoft Office Document Imaging. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938813.
• Attachments with the .gadget extension can no longer be opened in Outlook. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938811.
• Access add-ins can no longer be configured for use by all users. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938809.
• The Fast Save setting in Microsoft Office Word has been removed. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938808.
• Documents saved in certain formats no longer contain the version number of Office. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938807.
• Certain macros in older Excel file formats have increased security. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 938806.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 11:25 am and is filed under New Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Apple has finally posted the details of the $100 dollar iPhone rebate plan.  I went through and did each of my phones and it worked perfectly.  You can enter in your $100 credit online or take it to the store to use the coupon for purchasing more Apple goodies.  Not that $100 is going to go a long way at the apple store, but have you ever gotten money back months later on something you purchased because the price dropped.

Thanks Apple for taking care of your customers!  You really are a step above.

Apple iPhone Rebate

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 9:42 am and is filed under New Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Well, it looks like iTunes 7.4 is now available to download this morning. It was one of the things I was looking forward to the most yesterday, but when I visited Apple’s site, I was saddened to see the “Coming Soon” label on the top right hand corner of the page for ringtones. So, I got up this morning to study for my next Apple Certification test like all Apple Fanboys do and decided to check software updates since nothing had popped up when I opened iTunes. Low and behold there it was. Continue reading for more info…

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 4:55 am and is filed under New Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Went to check the status of an iPhone order that was placed yesterday online at the Apple Store and received the following error at 8:53 A.M. EST stating that the Order Status services are temporarily unavailable due to a schedule upgrade to our systems…

Clicking on any of the following under “Your Account” on the Apple Store: View your orders, Order status, Track packages, Cancel items, Return items, Print Invoice brings you to a message saying the store is down pending an announcement later in the day.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 7:59 am and is filed under New Technology News, Apple Computer News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

NBC, in an attempt to strong arm Apple, announced that they would not be renewing their contract with iTunes and Apple when it expires in December of this year proving once again that big media dinosaurs just don’t get it. Apple knows and plays the game better than anyone. They have built online music and media into the market that it is today and it works because of the way they are doing it. Now, the big media dinosaurs are trying to get in on the game and the greedy machine of big media is trying to push Apple into a business model that will fail miserably and rake Apple’s customers over the coals. Apple, indisputably better at the game than anyone else, has decided to take the high road on this one and walk away.

While I will miss my iTunes episodes of the Office and Heroes, I must say that I would rather sit on the sidelines with Apple on this one. It is just another example of a dinosaur media company fighting for their archaic system instead of embracing the future of media and entertainment.

Shame on you NBC

Thank you Apple

LINK TO APPLE PRESS RELEASE

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 1:37 pm and is filed under New Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Apple has seeded Mac OS X Leopard Server Build 9A528a to Apple Developer Connection members for download.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Technology News, Software News, New Technology News, Apple Computer News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Got an email this morning from the company that makes the V3HD Firewire Video Interface that it is finally shipping. This device allows you to connect all kinds of audio and video devices to your Mac or PC through a firewire interface. According to the company it works with Apple’s Final Cut or Adobe Permiere and can capture HD and SD click on the fly.

B & H Photo has it in stock for a price of $2,949.00

More info after the jump…

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 8:35 am and is filed under New Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The update shows “bug fixes” as what it fixes.  It does not appear to really add any new features to the iPhone.  Some users are saying that speakerphone and play back of voice mail through speakerphone are louder.

This update does not appear to fix any Exchange Server email features or problems namely the deleting of emails on the iPhone still only marks the messages as being read in Outlook or Entrourage and not actually deleting them.

Users who have hacked their iPhone may see problems with their update and may be required to restore to factory default and then update.  Make sure to backup your photos on the phone prior to upgrading also as a precaution.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 6:24 pm and is filed under iPhone, New Technology News, Apple Computer News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Round 2 of our VMWare Fusion vs Parallels Speed test kind of surprised me. In Round 1, we pitted VMWare Fusion vs Parallels with Windows XP SP2 for our speed test. Parallels was the victor in every category in Round 1 which wasn’t much of a surprise since it is the more mature product and VMWare Fusion is the newcomer.
In Round 2 of our speed test, we decided to use Windows Vista with VMWare Fusion and Parallels for our speed test. All test were run 3 times and an average of the 3 speeds were used for the results. I must admit there were some really strange results in this test and the ultimate winner was kind of a surprise also.

For this test we decided to give the virtual machine a little more memory. We bumped the memory to 1500mb of memory for the power hungry Microsoft Vista. The machine that this test was run on was a MacPro with dual 2.66 processors, 5GB of memory and 4 500GB HDD configured striped. We ran the same test as we did in round 1:

Time to install from first boot to the desktop showed up for the first time.
Time to reboot with a clean OS install
Time to suspend the machine with a clean OS install
Time to boot with a clean OS install
Time to wakeup from a suspended system with a clean OS install

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Software News, New Technology News, Apple Computer News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

As posted on the HandBrake Website the latest release is available for download now…

“But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

We’re proud to announce the public release of HandBrake 0.9.0.

Download it now.

This is a major release. The changes cannot really all be summed up, but here’s a try:

• User experience is improved through a re-envisioned Mac interface and a Windows interface that’s been rebuilt from the ground up.
• Picture quality is improved through better image scaling, better deinterlacing, new filters for denoising, deblocking, inverse telecine, and new presets devoted to high quality settings.
• Speed improvements due to updated copies of x264 and ffmpeg. This includes improved multi-threaded encoding for the iPod.
• Compatibility is improved through new presets for devices like the iPhone and PSP. As well, HandBrake now supports DTS as an audio source and has limited support for .VOB and .TS file containers as input. Most excitingly, HandBrake can now output to the Matroska (MKV) file container.
• Stability has been improved due to countless bug fixes. (Including audio drop and mp2 issues). Handbrake also has optional support for MP4 files larger than 4 gigabytes.

This is only a short summary of 121 days of furious activity, during which nearly 300 changes were made to the code base. For details, you can see a timeline of all changes.

If you’re curious why this release is being called 0.9.0, please see the FAQ.

Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 at 4:16 pm and is filed under New Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.