What is all this Twitter about?

Everyone is talking about Twitter lately so I thought I would check it out. So far I don't really see the appeal but I'm willing to keep trying. If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, it is an online community (like Friendster or My Space) that basically revolves around one question - what are you doing? Yeah, that's it. People just login and state what they are doing (i.e. Watching TV, checking my email, brushing my teeth). This leaves me with two questions of my own. The first is why isn't everyone's explanation of what they are doing just say "I'm wasting time on Twitter narrating everything I'm doing"? The second question I have is WHO CARES? Seriously... who really cares what I am doing right this second? Unless of course you are a stalker, I mean a "Follower" as they call it. If there are any Twitter fans out there who have a more positive spin on the site, please leave comments.

Why do we put up with Hotmail?

I know that I am way behind the ball in admitting that hotmail sucks - but I have finally come around to admitting it. So do you want to know what pushed me over the edge? It's this... The (relatively) new (and definitely not improved) file attachment interface. The thing that I don't like about this is that they put the buttons in the wrong order. You have to browse, then see that the file name is correct, and then push attach. It is such a simple thing, why did they put the buttons in the wrong order? I'm 90% sure that they did this just to annoy me. The only other reasonable explanation I can come up with is that they are dumb asses. What do you think?

Things that are better in Japan

This summer I was in Tokyo. As our plane was leaving the gate at the Tokyo airport, the runway workers who has just helped us reverse all stood in a line alongside the airplane and as we turned to taxi towards the runway they all bowed to the plane and then waved. It was such a lovely send off! Why can't they do that everywhere?

Who ever invented Spell check is my hero

Who ever invented spell check is my hero. I don't know how I could live without it. Let me amend - I would cause myself further constant writing embarrassment without it.

According to Wikipedia, spell checker have been around since the first mainframe computers in the 1970's but didn't become universally accessible until they were incorporated into word processing packages in the mid 1980's. Now, thank goodness, spell check is becoming standard on most email and internet based programs as well.

Most recently spell check programs have started to include algorithms for context sensitive spelling advice. I will be so happy when grammar checking gets to the same level.

I still don't know who invented spell check but who ever you are, you are my hero.

Products that make me happy - Timex Alarm Clock

I recently bought this Timex alarm clock from Target. I don't want to say that this alarm clock makes me happy because I'm not a morning person and no alarm clock has ever made me happy. I was however pleasantly surprised when I pulled this alarm clock out of the box to find it already set to the correct time and date as well as preset to the local radio stations. Now that is a good out-of-box experience. Sure it is a good selling feature to say the clock is preset but this isn't exactly a top of the line alarm clock, in fact it was one of the cheapest I could find ($30).

The other feature in this alarm clock that makes me happy is that it it automatically switches to battery power when the main power is lost. This means I can unplug it and plug it back in somewhere else if I want to without losing the time settings. I never have to worry that a storm will knock out the power in the night and I'll be late for work (cause I worry about these things). Plus, if the power does go out... this is one less clock I have to reset.

Timex, thanks for the great out-of-box experience!