My less sure predictions include a mobile browser (mobilesafari if Apple continues domination of smartphones like they did with PMPs) surpassing a 10% usage share, and that Google will not continue their partnership with MoCo (it ends in just one year). I can’t say for sure, but if things continue like they are now, Google Chrome should be the browser that surpasses Firefox. It’s too simple, doesn’t require a reboot for addons (something jetpack is attempting, but will likely fail at, much like personas), and has great sandboxing.

The real brains behind Firefox are now behind Chrome, and Google has the balls to throw money behind R&D, whereas Mozilla has more money than they know what to do with and they’re hoarding it (as far as I can tell). With government organizations, for example, if you don’t spend your allotment, you lose it. This encourages departments to spend all their money at years end, usually on upgrades for various things, which keeps them up to date and helps the economy. Mozilla’s just sitting on a nice pile of cash and not acquiring smaller companies which could benefit them. Hey guys, CoolIris is neat, buy the damn company. Google’s smart enough to do it, Apple’s smart enough to do it, Microsoft’s famous for it.

Buy Opera Software ASA, they’re only worth $392 million USD on the open market.

However, one interesting feature is the ability to ‘sync only checked songs and videos’. That’s handy for iPhones and such which will likely not contain songs you wouldn’t wanna come up when you hit “play” and ignore it, due to their small storage space. As far as the “movies” tab goes, they presume you’ll have more movies on your computer than your device, so you can individually check them off as being loaded to the iPhone or not in that tab. These checks are DIFFERENT than the checks in your Movies library. However, they do not OVERRIDE those other checks.

Let’s use The Dark Knight and Up as example films. You don’t want TDK to come up randomly in your video jukebox as it were, but you do want Up to. However, you want to watch TDK later on your iPhone. As a result, the video is unchecked in your Movies library, but checked in the list of movies that you explicitly WANT synced with your iDevice. If you check the box saying “Sync only checked songs and videos”, iTunes decides that although you explicitly want that movie, it’s not checked, and thus shouldn’t be synced.

This is ridiculous. If I had the option to “Sync all movies”, then of course I really mean “sync all checked movies” if I’ve also selected the “sync only checked…” option. Yet if I select them individually, that option should be ignored in this case.

At the very least, Apple, you could pull a really dumb workaround and split the “sync only checked…” item into a series of sub-checkboxes, or just two very similarly named checkboxes wherein the only difference is “songs” on one and “videos” on the other. I’d prefer you to realize that explicitly requested videos should sync regardless of their preference in the library.

I got a call about going over 250gb with comcast, and was informed that the person calling had talked to a customer who bought the 50 megabit downstream and got in trouble after _using it_ for two days.

Let’s do a little list of how long it would take to saturate your downlink with comcast (these numbers are grossly inaccurate, there’s overhead wherein your computer uploads “I got it, thanks, send another” type responses back to the net, so take this with a grain of salt). Also, Comcast isn’t super clear about their speeds, they only list the powerboost numbers. I think the 20mbit connection is a sustainable 16mbit, but we’re going with their numbers for now.

• 1.5 megabits – 15.8 days
• 20 megabits – 1.2 days
• 30 megabits – 19 hours
• 50 megabits – 11.3 hours

One might notice that this is insane. The best way to make sure your family doesn’t go over comcast’s limit is to buy their cheapest plan. Sure, downloads may go slower, but you have less of a chance of being cut off completely. Also, we can see clearly that Comcast is engaging in deceptive advertising. For the 50megabit plan, it’s noted as “The fastest download speeds around – incredible speeds for households with several computers, hard-core gamers, downloading HD movies and more.” which is true, there’s incredible speeds.

So incredible that you can burn through your monthly allotment in half a day. This is great news for Netflix and Hulu. ComcastCares Frank Eliason claims that exempting intranetwork traffic, such as that to comcast.com/net and the like, from being counted against your monthly limit is not net neutral, whereas the On Demand content on your comcast box utilizes the same type of cable coax bandwidth and isn’t counted against your limit. That sounds non-neutral to me, you’re just changing how you describe the medium so that you can pretend it’s legit.

On Verizon FiOS, I once had to backup a remote server which I wasn’t going to be paying for anymore. Over the years, I’d accumulated a large quantity of data on the server, about 500gb worth. That’s twice my monthly allotment from Comcast! I downloaded it in about 2 days on FiOS, and didn’t hear a thing. As well, on Verizon all your on demand content comes through your modem, which is why if your internet’s down usually your on demand is too. Verizon just centralized the network reception in that modem, whereas Comcast basically has mini cable modems in each box. They work in the same way, they pull data through the local (well, metropolitan type local) network and display it on your TV, but while both that and comcast.com are intranetwork traffic, only the web traffic is counted towards your limit.

That’s not net neutral, Frank.

Also, the person who called me agreed that there should be tiered service, so if you pay more, you can transfer more. You already have that tiered service, you just decided to make it speed-wise instead of transfer-wise. Now just make it both. And I’ve got a great solution, too: calculate how much one could transfer on that line in a week, solid, and you’ve got a reasonable amount for a month. Yes, the 1.5mbit line would transfer less, but the other lines would ALL gain. Besides, do you really want people getting the same amount of internet at $20 as you do for $100?

Dear Verizon,

I miss you. How are you doing? Are things going well? Do you think you’ll expand to other major metro areas? Atlanta’s pretty interested in an end to this monopoly.

Yours forever and ever,
Tom

Sites that have thought about this already:

• Mint.com, a perfect banking use case for OAuth
• Banks and OAuth support
• Banking 2.0 at SXSW

It seems Mint isn’t interested in it because they’re scared users will get confused about an “OAuth company” in the middle, which is not true if they design the flow correctly. Sure, it could be done haphazardly and just suck, but when users are told “This way we don’t know anything beyond what you tell us, and you can revoke our ‘special password’ at any time from your bank’s site, so if you don’t trust us, you don’t have to panic and change your main password” (in slightly better wording), they will appreciate the security features. In the meantime, like this comment on the mint blog to show your desires.

I threw the original PPC build into the DMG along with the new x86 build. Go ahead and download ToneTester UB for your intel based mac.

Finally, the complete DARIA in an officially sanctioned box set. It’s the answer to every diehard fan’s dreams. Which, given the makeup of diehard DARIA fandom, means it’s an opportunity for them to kick off a raging, decades-long debate over the collection’s merits and, by extension, each other’s validity as human beings.
     So let’s answer the big question right away: 99 percent of the music has been changed, because the cost of licensing the many music bites we used would have made it impossible to release the collection (and for many years did). So no, these aren’t the shows as aired, but more like one of those astronauts in a TWILIGHT ZONE episode who returns from space and his wife can’t figure out what’s changed about him, until it slowly dawns on her that instead of a cool song from 1997 playing when he walks into the room, it’s some tune she’s never heard. Yeah, it’s just like that.
     To put it bluntly, replacing the music had to be done. Does that mean this box set is compromised? Season I Daria would have said, “Yes.” Season V Daria would have said, “Shut up and pass the remote.” Let the raging begin.
     What this collection does have is all the episodes, in the highest-quality, most complete versions that could be found, the two movies; extras like the “Sealed With a Kick” animatic, the “Freakin’ Friends” video and the Daria Day intros; interviews with some (but by no means all) of the people who contributed to making the show so much fun to create and watch; and a bunch of other things of interest to the uber-fan. Casual fans and DARIA first-timers can ignore the extras. There will be no quiz.
     Finally, many thanks to the people at MTV Home Entertainment, who worked long and hard to dig up and assemble the elements necessary to make this package possible. I’m looking forward to watching these shows again, and I hope you are too.

GLENN EICHLER
Show Creator

P.S., users report the Daria movie Is It College Yet? has been censored.

Blogging is dead. Long live blogging.

• Your credit card expires in February
• Your Xbox Live account comes due in September
• You purchase an Xbox Live Gold card from Amazon for $25, half of what Microsoft charges
• Microsoft tries to debit your expired card in September anyway
• Microsoft fails to charge you, and immediately cancels your Gold account
• Microsoft refuses to allow you to use your Gold card because you have a $50 payment overdue, despite the fact that you never received the service you didn’t pay for in the first place.
• You are basically dealing with the TSA agent here who refuses to realize you have a point.
• You get bumped up to a specialist who very quickly realizes you have a point and waives the fee so you can type your Gold card code after being on the phone for over a half hour. Woo!

God, I love Microsoft.

So, Bing.com’s results still suck, but you can cash in on the instant rebates pretty easily. So, let’s say you see a Buy It Now auction on eBay that catches your eye. Wanna save some money, usually ten percent (sometimes more, sometimes less)? Here’s the trick.

1. Open a new tab and search Buy It Now on Bing.com.
2. You should see some sponsored links at the top, and at least one should be for eBay, and have the words “Bing Cashback” next to it. Click that.
3. This starts a new session with MS’s Bing Cashback cookie. You now have 60 minutes to make a purchase using eBay, PayPal, and the Buy it Now feature.
4. Reload your Buy It Now tab, and you should see this image at the top: If so, you can save whatever percentage it says on your page.

It’s simple to follow their instructions on getting the money, and they walk you through it easily. Use a real email address, though, because they will send a verification link to that address.

Go shop, save money, and cost Microsoft money that they should have spent on improving their search engine.