Now Google is saying that they want this to happen in their eternal quest to become carbon neutral. Yes, this makes sense. A recent study found (and Google confirmed it on their blog) that each Google search that you make uses about 7 grams of CO2 or about the same amount of energy as boiling a cup of water. Now that may sound minimal, but when we notice that 91,000,000 Google searches are preformed on average per day, it starts to raise some serious eyebrows. Google uses A LOT of energy!

This new permission granted by the FERC will allow Google to erect solar panels and wind turbines to offset this energy, but it also gives them the ability to sell the access energy to us like any other utility.

Now this is great and all, and I am sure that Google is doing this with the best of intentions, but I couldn’t help but think when I first read this article: “This seems a whole lot like ENRON”. The good news is that Enron already made their mistake once, and if another gigantic company tries to do the same, someone will be watching. I just could help but humor myself with the idea.

With Google, this is a big deal because…. well, it’s Google. The largest internet company is finally saying

“Goodbye IE6! We think it would be best if we stayed friends and remember our good times together, but we can’t support you anymore, it is time that we both move on.”

Now that Google has finally embraced the truth, many more will follow suite. Once the big dawg gives the OK to let it go, no one else has a reason to keep it up, and soon, IE6 will be dead.

This is a nice early retirement for IE6 since recently Microsoft claimed that they would support IE6 until 2014. The reasoning behind it is that 20% of users still only use this browser. It looks like the developer community has put a harsh foot forward and decided to halt support for this outdated browser.

Watch this video and tell me what you are watching.

Is it a terrorist attack?
Is it a Bombing?
Is it an earthquake?
Is it a swine flu outbreak?
Is it the second coming?

No, none of this. It is actually just a bunch of dangerous shoppers on Black Friday in walmart. What is our country coming to?

Posted via web from jacurtis’s posterous

So, as you may know I have been launching a new site lately called The Mac Coach. This site was designed to help new mac users get going with their macs and help older users gain a deeper understanding of the software they already use. It officially launched a few days ago, and I was really excited. Well something I quickly noticed was that my site doesn’t seem to be compatible with Internet Explorer. In most cases this would be a bummer, as IE holds a large majority of browser usage demographics. However since my site was pretty much designed with Mac users 100% in mind, the IE market is rather miniscule.

Since IE was butchering the design of my beautiful website, I decided to simply add some code so that when an IE users logs onto The Mac Coach, they will be redirected to another page that informs them of incompatibilities and recommends that they install another browser. I feel that I can handle my own when it comes to HTML and coding, when i get the proper help. So I scoured the web for some hints. Unfortunately all that i found were some hit or miss sites that only partially explained it. My purpose today is to pass the knowledge that I gained onto my readers, so that it will be easier for the next guy to do this.

There are multiple ways to do this. I found many. However I will explain to you the easiest that I discovered. It is one line of code that you throw in the <meta> tags.

First of all, you need to quickly design a page to redirect these Internet Explorer users to. I threw a simple one together in about 5 minutes. I didn’t worry about fancy colors or any of that. I made the page as simple as possible to ensure that it was IE compatible. You can view my redirect page here: http://www.themaccoach.com/ie.html

In fact, I give anyone that is reading this, permission to use the redirect page that I created for FREE, no strings attached. (right-click and “save linked file as…” to save the HTML file and load it onto your own server) or (just link to that exact web address on my site). In return for using my file, you can just tell more people about my blog, The Mac Coach, or subscribe to either.

Now it is time to insert the code. Add this line of code to your <meta> tags . If you already have meta tags, then add it as the first meta tag, on its own line.

<!–[if ie]><meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0;URL=http://www.themaccoach.com/ie.html”><![endif]–>

This is a conditional statement that only IE will read. To all other browsers it will look like a comment and get ignored. So it does absolutely nothing to your site if they are not IE users. Plus, it is only one line of simple code and it won’t affect load times since it acts as a simple comment.

To customize this statement you can (probably should) change the web address to your own redirect page. Also where you see the “0″ before the “URL” you can change that to the time in seconds that you want to wait before you redirect. With 0 set, it will happen near-instantly. However, there is some delay still.

So that is all there is to it! Now there are other ways to do this same thing that you might know. If you would like to share, you can post it as a comment below. Also, let me know if you use this and it works for you.

After doing the standard reboot multiple times to eliminate the possibility that it was a fluke, I eventually turned to xbox.com for support. I discovered my problem, in the support home page under “most common problems” column. I found it as the first item in that column. There I clicked, and was taken to a surprisingly short troubleshooting page. The page consisted of the following advice

1) Reboot
2) Check for a red light on the power source
3) If, it still doesn’t work and the power source has a green light, then you will need to send in your console for repair. Click to continue.

More  or less, that was it. Now, I have already had my power supply fail twice, and needed a replacement so I wondered if that could (hopefully) be the problem. Unfortunately the light was green, indicating that all was good. Which meant the solution that I dreaded the most. I was going to need to replace my console. I clicked the repair icon and inserted my console serial number to begin the repair. The next screen proceeded to explain how my console warranty was out of date. I will need to pay for my repair. The repair will be $99 to fix, plus parts. “Noooooo” I screamed, “Not now”.

I guess the sad part was that my xbox didn’t even get used for a year (I was living in europe, my xbox was living in Wisconsin). Which meant that there was a whole year where no wear and tear was put onto it. I left that site sad and depressed that night. The way I looked at it anyway, was that I might as well just replace the console than to pay to fix my 3 year old one.

A few weeks passed, no xbox (and consequently, no Netflix Instant Play movies). I could have sworn that I bought my xbox within the last 3 years, but I couldn’t quite remember. I just remember it was about this time, 3 years ago. I must have just missed it. Then, while investigating my problem further on xbox.com one day, I typed in my gamertag and discovered that you can see pretty much everything online. Including any medals that you earned or gamerscore points. I was drawn then to an arcade game that might save might xbox. Hexic HD.

For those of you that have heard this name before, you know what i am talking about. Hexic HD is a game that comes on your xbox when you buy it new. It is like bejeweled, only made by another producer. Just a small mini game (xbox arcade) that everyone gets on their xbox. Now I can not speak for the whole xbox community, but for me, I played that game the first day I got my xbox and not a day since. Which meant that the dates for the achievements that I earned on that game would be the date that I got my xbox. I was presently surprised to see that it was mid-march, 2007. This means, I still have warranty left. I was so excited and I immediately called 1-800-4-MY-XBOX to resolve this issue. I tried to navigate the menus for a while, but quickly realized that these menus where designed to keep you from talking to a real person. They took me in circles, and I never found something that could help me. Being a tad bit frustrated, I resorted to the old operator trick. I clicked the “0″ and “*” keys a few times each, which almost always end up sending you to an operator, no matter what. Sure enough they did.

Finally a real voice (I can’t say that it was an American voice, obviously outsourced, but then again, what did I expect). I explained my situation. How, despite the fact that I am within the 3 year warranty, online it says that I am out of warranty. This guy then proclaimed that the 3 year warranty is an extended warranty and that is what I was seeing there. I have the opportunity to only pay $99 to repair my xbox, thanks to this warranty.

Well, I have to say, I felt honored. What a chance. My operator made it sound like I had stumbled across gold in California, oil in Texas, or that I had Just discovered a cure for cancer. He made it sound like I couldn’t possibly ask for anything greater in my life than the occasion to pay these 99 dollars and repair my xbox while it is under warranty. I waited for him to get it all out, then I sat in a stupor of thought for a second. I pinched myself to make sure that this wasn’t some kind of nightmare. I thought this through again, sure that some how I must have missed something, that my money would be refunded, or that this was actually a joke they like to play on customers to “break the ice”. But no, this was far worse than any joke. This was real… He was serious…

After thinking about this for a second I replied back, “So if i understand you correctly…” and then spited out what I understood up to this point. He said “Yes, that is correct”, and then had the audacity to say, “Is that all that I can help you with today?”. I said, “wait buddy, I don’t know what kind of stunt you guys are trying to pull over there, but giving me a ‘coupon’ to only pay $99 for an xbox repair, is by no means a warranty”. I explained to him that there is no way that under a warranty you are going to still expect me to pay you for the fact that your company sucks at quality control. Well, for one reason or another, we started to have language barriers and I was sent to his supervisor, who hooked me up with what I wanted… A free xbox repair under the 3 year warranty.

Sure enough I printed out a pre-paid shipping label that day, threw the xbox in a cardboard box and shipped it off to xbox repair HQ. They tried to fix it, but ended up replacing it, and shipped it back within about 7 business days from when I sent it. I was happy to get it back, complete with a letter explaining that they needed to replace the console and that I was issued a 1 month xbox live extension to cover not having my xbox.

I was excited to once again, rock out to Rock Band, shoot ‘em up in Call of Duty 4, watch movies with Netflix Instant Play, and it was all just in time for Halo 3: ODST. Thank you Microsoft (xbox division) for helping a brotha out. I still think you have many issues, for example if you could bring the number of consoles that require repairs to under 50% or eliminate all that garbage about the $99 warranty special repair, or even fix your website so that if you do actually have warranty left, it reflects that (instead of saying that it is expired when it isn’t). But I don’t want to ask too much of a multi-billion dollar company. So keep on going. I will defend you by saying that xbox 360 is still the best console ever (repairs, warranties, and quality control aside), and that xbox live is amazing. Plus I am super pumped about Twitter and Facebook support coming next month, and I already love watching Netflix movies on demand from my xbox. The games seem to rock as well, and Project Natal looks sweet. You are doing many great things, just meet us (the consumers) half-way with this repair and warranty junk, and it will save both of us a lot of head aches.

Plus stay tuned for my next entry (hopefully tomorrow) about an article I discovered in gameinformer, comparing video console repairs and breakdowns. We are going to learn a lot. See you then. The graph above is a sneak peak from that article, that we will discuss next time.

Anyone else had xbox problems? Go a head and vent below… leave a comment. Keep it clean.

In addition, I have actually been working on two other posts that are still not complete yet. You have those to look forward to also. One about screen recording software, and the other about xbox fail rates. Anyway, stay tuned, and don’t lose faith in me.

I have owned a mac for 3 Years and 1 Day. I got into the Mac world by buying a small 13″ white macbook as I entered college. I stand before you today to proclaim that it was the best investment I have ever made. I could not be more happy. I love using my mac, and will never go back to using windows, at least for my personal computers (where i still have a choice). I could go on about why I am so happy with switching to mac, but the greatest reason I am so happy is that I am currently writing this post on that same mac, and it still runs and functions like the day I bought it.

I have made many, many upgrades to my mac over these past 3 years and 1 day. I have upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, and now to Snow Leopard. I have upgraded from iLife ’06 to iLife ’08 and to iLife ’09. I have done the same with iWork ’06, ’08 and ’09. I have ordered countless other programs to run on my mac and increase its’ functionality. I have been running Adobe Design Premium CS3 on it for nearly 3 years now, and now I even run Aperture 2.0. My mac has been my sidekick, as I attempted to start a business (which only ended because of personal life circumstances). All of these are wonderful upgrades that have added a ton of value to my mac, but none of those compare to the upgrade I am most satisfied with, Applecare.

Applecare has received a lot of bad press, and I am not sure why. I was told that it was a waste of money when I first looked at purchasing it and so, I initially didn’t.  I was told that it was overpriced, and didn’t cover anything that made it worth investing in. Every new mac already comes with a 1 year warranty. This warranty covers virtually all problems that happen with your computer, except probably accidents (although i have no experience to say). When I was reaching the end of my 1 year anniversary of my mac, and thus the end of my warranty, I had just encountered one of my first problems with my mac. The edge of the plastic covering, where your hands often rest while typing, had come off. It was chipped away, and looked very ugly. I was surprised when I took in the computer that they replaced it without a question asked. Something I honestly considered wear and tear, which I assumed wouldn’t be covered by a warranty, especially a warranty that came with the computer. Recently after that, my friend took in his computer for a hardware malfunction. Again, the genius bar was rather helpful in solving the problem and in the end, fixed it with no further questions. Only weeks after that, my hard drive failed. It simply gave up the ghost and died. With only days left in my warranty I quickly took it in to get it fixed under the warranty. Of course, no problems, it was fixed.

I started questioning the mac genius at this point to see if it would be worth investing in the Applecare at this point, or even if it was still a possibility. I found out that it was still doable up to a year into your first warranty. I also discovered that it was only $149 for a student discount (this is back when apple actually gave students decent discounts). I thought about it overnight and ended up purchasing applecare on my last possible day, thus extending my warranty by another 2 years.

I went home that day with a nice square little box that said applecare on the box. Having just paid such a large some of money, I guess I was excited to have something tangible that came from my investment. In fact, I was excited to open the box, like I was getting the chance to unpack my warranty. Sadly, there wasn’t much inside that little box except some booklets, and a CD. The CD actually had a nice utility for running diagnostics. So I felt pretty good about my purchase, but I was still afraid that nothing would happen to my computer and then all that money was essentially a waste.

Well, in addition to my own purchase, I was also close to 2 other people that bought macbooks at the same time as me, who didn’t buy the warranties. During the two years that followed I watched as thier laptops had serious, expensive problems, from LCD replacements, battery replacements, power cord replacements, keyboard replacements, superdrive deaths and more. Plus my friend’s macbook had the same problem as mine did where the corner of the housing chipped off where you rest your hands while typing, but he couldn’t fix it like I could, so he ended up taping it closed. My macbook has had that happen again, has struggled with power issues, required a new battery, and also received a whole new logic board. I haven’t paid a single penny in repair or hardware upkeep in a whole 3 years, and now my computer is as good as new. It has a new trackpad, keyboard, casing, hard drive, logic board, battery, and charger. I haven’t had to stress a single day because of it. I could never be more happy with my Applecare. What is the price that you can put on peace of mind? I have had enough repairs that would have cost the price of a whole new macbook, plus some. But I haven’t paid a thing.

I love the genius bar (the place where you go to get repairs). I take it in, they diagnose the problem with all their gadgets, give you some cool tips every time, and then fix your computer and send you out with a new computer. What more could you ask for. I have even gone in without an appointment many times, and they have always fit me in. The time I went in to get a new battery they were packed until the end of the night, but some of the salespeople there, gave me a completely new macbook battery off the shelf ($129.00) and gave it to me for free. (I didn’t even expect batteries to be covered in the warranty). I have sat at the genius bar and seen many people come and go in my time as a mac customer and I have never seen them turn down a customer with their warranty. I am a happily satisfied customer.

This brings up the next issue, are the macbooks built with good enough quality control if they need all these replacements. Initially I would probably say no. However, if you look at other laptops, you will notice the same thing. It seems like all computers today (mac or windows) just don’t hold up as much as we would hope. I haven’t ran any conclusive studies, but I have to say that in my experience, I have seen more PC laptops with patches and limps than my comparable mac buddies. Yeah, they have their problems, but I am satisfied with the knowledge that no matter what happens, I can get my computer fixed FAST, if it has a problem. That is more than most computer users can say.

Applecare will be a standard upgrade on all future mac computers that I buy. I cannot encourage someone enough, that the seemingly steep price for Applecare is well worth it. Imagine using your computer for 3 years no worries. Insuring your investment will last three full years, at which point I would recommend upgrading your computer.

My macbook is 3 years and 1 day old. My warrenty expired yesterday. 4 days ago I got my top casing replaced one last time and received a new logic board. My invoice for the repair came to $897.00. Of which, I was required to pay, $0.00. It was fixed in an hour and a half, and now my computer is posting this post. The days until I upgrade to a new macbook are few, but one thing is certain, my upgrade will include Applecare.

A subway map of Google's Acquisitions.

It was interesting for me, as I studied this article that I found through Digg. It was about Google’s Acquisitions over the years. We hear about them all the time, it isn’t anything new, but I guess what shocked me is how many of them that we haven’t heard about. And on top of that, how many of the technologies that Google has, have come directly through these acquisitions. I always assumed that Google was actually developing these technologies (silly me). This makes Google more of a holding company than anything else.

On top of that, when you look at the history of Google’s hiring and they have been known to sort of “buy out” the best in the industry. Everyone has heard about their wonderful accommodations and the benefits that their employees get, but does anyone ask why? It is to buy these wonderful brains out of the competitors using money and this infinite list of benefits to not only draw them there but to keep them busy while they die. Many Google employees have said that they often don’t have work for what they were hired for, but instead they are given the resources to accomplish some of the personal projects that they have always wanted to complete. Google just kind of keep them busy until they want to retire.

Now the pivitol question. Is this a good idea? I am not saying either way, except that it is unique in the industry. It would take a company like Google that could do it. Let’s be honest. Google has more money than they know what to do with. Half of the services that they offer, actually cost them money and bring them absolutly no revenue. They throw money at thier employees and they throw goodies at their employees until the employees can’t handle anymore… simply because Google can. Think of another company that has these kind of resources. It would take a Google to be able to do this, and I don’t know who else could.

Related to that note of having too much money, is why they seem to buy every company with two legs in cyberspace out. This is why they acquire so many companies. They find these start-ups like feedburner for example (most recent acquisition), and instead of wasting all the money to compete with them, they hand over a huge wad of cash (100 million in this case) and just take over what is already there. The biggest example of this is with YouTube. Google had tried for over a year to be successful with their Google Video application, competing with YouTube, but eventually bought out YouTube for $1.65 Billion in stocks to eliminate the competition.

This graphic shows just that, what they have acquired and where it came from. So my next question or rather my point: I guess from all this you only have to do one of two things to be successful in life.

1) Build a working internet business, and wait for Google to buy you

2) Become the best in your field and wait for Google to hire you

Throughout the second season, Robin and Ted date, but eventually end up breaking up as we go into the third season. Marshall and Lilly end up moving out and blowing their life savings on a crooked apartment. At the end of the third season Barney decided that he has fallen in love with Robin. But he struggles with this fact for an entire season (season 4). At one point he even confesses his love to her, but then when she “admits” that she loves him too, all is well with him until he finds out that she was saying that to keep him away, then all his feelings come flooding back.

Now, Season 5 of How I Met Your Mother has finally arrived. What is in store?

!!!SPOILER ALERT!!! (Continuing On Contains Spoilers for Season 5)

So here we are, season 5 has begun and the first episode ran last night. It looks like Robin and Barney are, like we all wondered and hoped…Dating! It has happened, well sort of. I guess they are having troubles defining the relationship. Are they dating? Are they friends? They don’t really know and every time they think about discussing it they push it off and start making out. It looks like Lilly is having a hard time dealing with this situation also. She wants them to admit that they are together, which we all know they are, but both of them refuse to do anything that might push it into something serious.

Meanwhile, we have the hilarious story of Ted as he begins his work as an architecture teacher at a local university. He struggles for weeks leading up to his first day about what he is going to say on his first day. Then, as he shows up, he goes to the wrong room. But despite the efforts of his students, he refuses to answer questions that would have tipped him off (a suggestion of Barney). Luckily after 20 minutes, and when the whole class gets up to leave, the correct teacher comes in and tells Ted that he is in the wrong class.

It turns out that Ted ends up at that point sharing his true feelings to his students and gets across to them rather well.

So now the questions remain. Will Ted find success in his new job? How long until Robin and Barney are “official”? and, What’s up with Marshall and Lilly? What are they going to do this Season? Post what you think here in the comments and go out and watch the new season of HIMYM.

It wasn’t about some new technology that they had invented. It wasn’t about how they were going to trash the competition with some new service that they will offer. It wasn’t about how wonderful their job is at the Googleplex , and how they get paid 6 figures for dinking around at their computer. No this article was from a Google employee, high up, that was leaving and actually expressing relief and discontent from the company. Maybe the days of Google Bliss are gone. Or maybe they never existed. One employee of seven years finally tells us the true story from the inside.

I really could relate with this guy. As a designer, we sees the world different than others. As he talks about in his post, when you get a group of engineers running a company, every buisiness desicion becomes an engineering decision. Where is the data? Does it compute? But with that, the design is lost. It is funny how he descirbes these little design solutions, ran by people that are used to running data.

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

It is an interesting dilemma. Where is the line between engineering and design? Where does one stop and the other begin? It is a fine line for sure, but is it relative? does it change? As I mentioned earlier, I feel as though I could relate with this guy. I have struggled with many of the same things as I worked. I have had an innate design philosophy on life since before I can remember. I guess it was a gift, but I have felt its cursing attributes as well. I have listened to employers, my boss, my teachers, my leaders and have felt a constant disagreement and have fought the mental battle on where that line was. Internally it ate me up. I noticed these details. I saw things as more simple than many of these data crunchers, or textbook lemmings. Which is better? I guess it depends. I guess it is a happy medium. The person that discovers this answer will become an instant Billionaire. He will have solved the problem that every group of people around the world faces. He would change the sociology textbooks.

However, moving back to the story of Google. These decisions affected this man so much as to cause him to leave. Although he didn’t just get up and leave, he looked for something else and left without a second regret. This isn’t bad. He revealed to the world that the Googleplex isn’t the nirvana that everyone makes it out to be. I guess it also shows that no matter how many benefits you get, you need to love your job, or they won’t be worth it.

I’m thankful for the opportunity I had to work at Google. I learned more than I thought I would. I’ll miss the free food. I’ll miss the occasional massage. I’ll miss the authors, politicians, and celebrities that come to speak or perform. I’ll miss early chances to play with cool toys before they’re released to the public. Most of all, I’ll miss working with the incredibly smart and talented people I got to know there. But I won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.

All in all, You need to love what you are doing. Google isn’t the answer for everybody. Which means in turn… Google needs to change it’s framework in its’ quest to conquer the digital world.