Ramblings of a CTO

WOW, kids pick up everything

My 3 year old daughter was spending time at her Grandmothers house.  While they were playing in the living room, my daughter stated "I need to check my EMU". (Kid translation, EMU = email.) Yes, my 3 year old daughter wanted to check her email.

She then proceeded into her Grandmothers office, sat on the chair by the desk, and began to type away on a calculator. This lasted a couple of minutes and then it was back to playing.

An hour or so past when my daughter stated again "I need to check my EMU on the COMPILLER". (Kid translation, I need to check my email on the computer.)  It was back again to the office, at the calculator, typing away. Apparently this happened several times through out the day.

So what is the moral of the story? Having two techie parents has scarred our three year old?  We check our email too many times when our three year old is around?  Maybe it's simple - checking our EMU on the COMPILLER is not so important... maybe as parents we need to focus on more important things, and get down on the floor to build up that tower of blocks, just so she can knock it down. Just a thought!

Rent Books Netflix-style with Online Book Rental

My wife reads almost 2 books a week. I'm not joking. We have our membership to Netflix and love it. We talked about how it would be great if there was a Netflix for books. With a simple Google search, we found one. It's called www.bookswim.com.

BookSwim is the first online book rental library club lending paperbacks and hardcovers Netflix-style directly to your home without the need to purchase. All it takes is a monthly fee. This service is great because it saves you money, trips to the store and space in your home. It is also a very green thing to do. Just think of all the trees you will save.

To start, you put your books in a pool (queue). Get it, book swim, pool! They are then shipped directly to your house. My wife gets three books at a time. She reads two, then returns them, and while she's reading the third book, the next two books in her pool are sent to her. So she always has a book in hand.

They are a young company so you will have to go through some growing pains. Twice, books were shipped late because they never got our return package. But their customer service rectified the situation quickly. Aside from those instances it has been a great service. I like it because it saves us money and I don't have to find room for all those books.

Give it a try.

www.bookswim.com

Green Tip #2: Kill Weeds With Water

Here is a quick and easy tip to kill those pesky weeds in your yard without chemicals.

• Boil some water in a tea kettle.
• Poor the hot water on the weeds.
• Wait a couple of days.
• Watch those weeds disappear.

I tried it and so far so good. It's better than using chemicals. Weed killer seeps into the drinking water and is really bad for the environment. This tip not only saves the environment. It will also save you money!

Try it out.

Netflix Partners With Microsoft. Blockbuster this should have been you!

Announced at last weeks E3 video gaming conference.... Netflix will be providing streaming movies to the XBox 360. This new feature will be part of a fall software update. The Xbox 360 is not only a video gaming device, it also provides users with downloadable TV Shows, arcade games and movies. It also acts as a Media Center Extender - something that I use it for often and have written about in the past.

When I saw this partnership, which is a brilliant idea by both Microsoft and Netflix, it made me think about Blockbuster Video. Do you remember them?

Years ago, they were such a dominant force in the entertainment industry, I remember going to Blockbuster almost every week for movies and videos games. I also remember their late fees. I can probably say I've paid over $200 in late fees over my lifetime.

But when the internet came about, the suits at Blockbuster made a critical error, for which they will never recover. They ignored the internet and kept focusing on business as usual. Instead of using their vast wealth to create something online, they choose to build more stores.

Then, an online DVD mail rental business, Netflix, came out. Solving a minor need for consumers by mailing the DVD directly to their homes, bypassing the need to go to a store. As Netflix began to get traction in the marketplace, mostly powered by the geeks, as usual, Blockbuster finally woke up and realized their business might be in trouble. To combat this new threat to their monopoly, they decided to be just like Netflix. Blockbuster figured they'll try to undercut Netflix and drive them out of business. That almost worked.

While this was going on, I do remember thinking about switching sides and going back to Blockbuster. The one thing they had over Netflix was the ability to drop off their movies at any store. A quicker turn around time was a nice feature. But I also remember those late fees I paid in the past. I hated them for that and felt I needed to support the small online business against the big greedy ugly business. Remember, the customer never forgets.

While Blockbuster was trying to beat Netflix and run them out of business, Netflix decided to start thinking about other offerings they could provide their customers. Netflix soon gave its members the ability to watch movies on demand, on their PC's, as part of their subscription. An expensive proposition to create for Netflix but one that makes total sense. As home connections to the internet are getting faster, the market is moving towards downloadable content instead of DVDs. Netflix creates a new business model and Blockbuster is still stuck on their old one.

Within the last year, Blockbuster has backed away from trying to undercut Netflix. They actually charge more now for DVD mail rentals; move that a lot of insiders took as a Netflix win and a very bad defeat for Blockbuster.

Then comes the Microsoft/Netflix announcement and the only thing I could think of is... this should have been Blockbuster. It could have been Blockbuster. Why wasn't it Blockbuster. To answer the why question we need learn from Blockbusters mistakes.

As a business owner you must always do right by your customers. In this day and age, information and opinion travel at the speed of light. I can tell you that with little effort I convinced some people to not switch to Blockbuster. They hated their late fee system from the past as well and felt no need to support them. Netflix is viewed as new and up and coming. Blockbuster is view as old and outdated.

The next lesson applies to any business. Continue to try new things and innovate - don't be just like your competition. Successful companies are always the ones that innovate, refine their process and move into other areas of business. Look at all the coffee shops that were trying to be like Starbucks. They are screwed now. Starbucks is closing over 600 stores.  Guess what will happen to those copycats. They will soon be closing too. Always strive to create something new and not copy something that has been done.

Netflix solved a simple problem in the market place - convenience. With that action and their business approach, innovation, they single handily took down a company that once was considered unbeatable.

If you are not innovating, solving a problem or trying something new, if you are not doing the right thing for your customers, even if it might mean lower profits, then you are only living on borrowed time - which is exactly where Blockbuster stands today.

Auto Archive SourceSafe 2005

I needed a way to back up SourceSafe 2005 automatically.

I found this link http://getacoder.cn.googlepages.com/Backup-SourceSafe.html but made some modifications to the code to get it to work. I was getting an Invalid DOS path error when trying to run the .bat file. Windows didn't like how the date portion of the file was being created.

@echo off
@title Backing up SourceSafe databases
  
set SsPath=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual SourceSafe\
set BakPath=D:\backups\sourcecode\
 
"%SsPath%ssarc.exe" -d- -s"D:\Source Code" -i- -yadmin,password -o@"%BakPath%Backup-output(%date:/=-%).txt" "%BakPath%Backup-Database(%date:/=-%).ssa" $/
 
echo Finished backups
@echo on 

Also putting "pause" at the end of this file will help you view the command window before it closes.

Green Tip #1: Recycling Just Got Easy

Here is a tip to make recycling in your home more efficient and easy.

Most people store their recycling bins outside or in their garage.  Instead of carrying items like cans or bottles out to your recycling bin, why not put a brown paper bag from the grocery store right next to your garbage can. Try it in your kitchen or office.

Right next to our kitchen garbage can, we have two paper bags. One for cans and bottles. The other for paper, small boxes and junk mail.

Try it! You wouldn't believe how much more recycling you do. This saves the environment, less garbage in landfills and saves you money! More trash in a recycling bin means less need for plastic trash bags.

No DirecTV Vista Media Center Till 2010

Enagadgethd.com  posted this terrible and horrifying headline.

'No DirecTV HD for Vista Media Center until 2010"?

"The testers we've talked to have reportedly been told that H.264 and DirecTV support have been pushed to Windows 7, which would mean it'll be 2010 before we see it."

Sometimes I feel like supporting Microsoft these days seems to get harder and harder. I hope this is not true, but it probably is. Who are we kidding.

Apple TV anyone?

DirecTv Tivo Update has arrived

Well, it finally happened. We got our notice from DirecTv to download their software update for our DirecTv Tivo. I've talked about this software update in a previous post.

We downloaded the software update and didn't really notice any difference. My wife noticed that there is now a 'Deleted Items' folder. Which is OK, but nothing earth shattering. I would have been surprised if people were asking for this type of feature.

The main feature of this software update is you now have the ability to schedule TiVo to record programs online. Now that is something to be excited about. I tried it and it works fine.

My only question is why this big hype from DirecTv? First, they wanted to phase out the DirecTv Tivo and have their customers switch to the DirecTv DVR. Then good old Rupert Murdock sells DirecTv and now they seem to be revising their stance a bit. But still no talk of a new DirectTv Tivo. It's like they are telling their customers, here's a little something but not really. Without a new DirecTv Tivo in the future what's the point of this exercise. You may be asking, what about the DirecTv DVR?

From what I hear from friends and what I've read on forums is that the DirecTv DVR stinks. It's buggy and slow and most people who have it, hate it. Especially if they come from the Tivo background.

So again, back to my question. Why did DirecTv hype this software update? Were they afraid people were going to leave for cable? Is there something new coming from Directv and Tivo? Don't get me wrong, I love a good software update, but where do we go from here?

NBC Chooses TVTonic to Provide Downloadable Olympics Coverage

TVTonic is partnering with NBC Olympics to bring the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to Windows Media Center. Congrats to TVTonic for this big announcement. I use TVTonic all the time with my media center to watch downloaded shows like. DL.TV, Cranking Geeks, and Revision3 content.

"In partnership with Wave systems’ Wavexpress, a provider of broadband media technology and services, NBC Universal will be able to offer viewers the option of watching the games on the go. Through Wavexpress’ TVTonic IPTV service, users can essentially set up a TiVo TiVo -like service that will automatically download content which can be watched at a later time. "

More of this story

Bring a bag, Save the world

Obviously, I am making a reference to the Hero's TV show "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World" phrase from the first season. If you haven't watch the show you should. It's a favorite of mine.

Anyway, we were in a Giant Supermarket the other day and we decided to bring our own bag from the Common Market, another store where we shop. Every member gets their own grocey bag. So I figured lets just bring it to Giant. I can put more items in it and we already have a ton of plastic bags at home. Which is something we have been trying to avoid by getting paper bags when we can. Plastic bags are not only bad for environmental reasons, but they are like ants. They just keep multiplying and never stop.

When we were at the self checkout, something I always do because I like to do it myself. The cashier who was monitoring the stations asked us how many bags we brought? We said 1 bag and she took off 5 cents off our purchases. You get 5 cents off for every bag you bring in. What a great idea! I thought I was weird for wanting to bring my own bag. But I was rewarded. Now I'll do it every time. Do all grocery stores do this?

Speaking of these bags. If you become a client of CM3 Solutions, we send you one of these bags for free! Just trying to do our part to make a difference. For more information about these bags head over to our website www.cm3solutions.com.