So the first 10 years of 2000 are gone and we are on to twenty-ten.  Exciting!

Things I am hoping for or expect to see this year:

1. Great year for our country to get out the mess it is in everywhere (we wont get on that soapbox).
2. Better / improved year for one self — don’t we all pray for this related to #1.
3. Social networking trends become old hat. (Please just make it all stop)
4. Year of Google… Watch for them to take a bigger stake in the world stage.  Remember, do no harm!
5. Microsoft loses even more face; even though Windows 7 bested Vista.
6. Firefox becomes the leader in the browser market.
7. Adobe becomes the most hacked / tool-set leveraged to do damage (PDF, Flash, Flex, etc).
8. Year of storage.  This will be the year that spinning media will start to see real loses to SSD and other tech, which will be good for us all.
9. CPU + GPU will become APU.  Watch for new types of “super” uses of these devices to make things change on the computing stage.
10. AI.  Refer back to #4.

Dec 31, 2010 I want to see what if any of these ideas come true during this coming year.

Lots of hope and prosperity can be there, just if we don’t mess it up as usual.  Right!?  And we say humans are the smart ones!

I have to say that Verizon FIOS is one of the best moves we have made.

Switching from Comcast to FIOS is like night and day. These are our personal experience so far and YMMV.

• Cost Less
• Get More
• Better Service
• HD Quality is incredible (getting HD for less than the cost of SD on Comcast)
• Internet pipe is not shared with my neighbors!
• Incredible net speed
• Really nice router

The last one I have to admit I was shocked about.  I have always had my own firewall and network gear, but Verizon has really done a nice job on their router (but that is another post).

Internet speed:

The tech that showed up to install the service was awesome.   Really nice guy that called before showing up to tell me when he would be there (was 1 minute early from when he said he would be there).  Did everything that I had ordered in a very timely matter and it all just worked!  Took under 3 hours for us to get all new Internet and two TV receivers.  All working better than expected.

Just sweet!

More to come.

It’s always interesting to see what other developers use as their real workspace when they have control over it.  (Unlike cubical heck).

Once such sweet space is something Mitch Haile built.  I stumbled across it in one of me RSS feed consumption extravaganas and have to admit the space is really, really nice, but I have to say the screen real estate and mini server room/closet is very nice for a home build.

Just had to share the nerd eye candy for others to consume!

http://www.biscade.com/office/

Snaps on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bwa32/sets/72157607284828899/

Very nice work Mitch!  Kudos

“Hi, I’m a PC.” “Hi, I’m a Mac.”

Nope, not today. Steve and Bill were quite chummy on stage, but no parody of the mac commercials. Maybe someone told Bill that he might actually blue screen and then everyone would know Bill is not a real human. Instead if is Window BE (bill edition).

what’s the greatest misunderstanding about your relationship with each other? Steve: We’ve kept our marriage secret for over a decade. Nice Steve, Nice.

Steve and Bill married.. talk about dysfunctional family!

D5 — All Things Digital

Well, it never fails when you talk about how you like one service over another, the other service fails!

Apparently Vonage has encountered a serious services outage. Vonage is aware of the problem (as noted by logging into your dashboard — if you can):

At this time some customers are experiencing intermittent issues receiving incoming calls. Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working towards resolving it as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience in this matter and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Apparently around 2ish today the service went back down after coming up this morning.

You can follow the drama over at the Vonage Forum: No Dialtone!! Anybody else having this problem this morning?

Don’t we all love technology. Too bad this one is completely on Vonage side and not a “user config” error.

I love the message is putting out on incoming calls now:

The person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this moment. Please try your call again later.

Please stand by……

UPDATE:

If you can get logged into Vonage dashboard you will now see:

We apologize for any inconvenience, but we are currently
upgrading to provide you with better and faster service.

Better and faster, how about just service in general today guys.

In a post Skype Increases Cost of Calls, Silently? at Chris site, he brings to the front the nice thing Skype is doing to its users.

Chris pointed out Stuart post over at SkypeJournal the entire nastiness in “Skype Raids its Customer Base“.

Pssst, don’t tell anyone (we aren’t — Skype) we are going to tack on a few cents to each Skype call and call it a “connection fee”. No one will notice, since everyone makes long duration calls right! NOT

I guess they figure, someone has to pick up the tab for paying those Oompa-Loompas* to make your connection.

As a Vonage backer these days, I feel two things:

1. Vonage better not pull this trick, good thing I am on the buffet plan.
2. I knew there was a reason I didn’t go with Skype and now I have another.

Skype folks, doesn’t this pretty much steam you glass?

The irony I find in this entire thing is summed up in:
A communication company… has done a very lousy job communicating with their customers! Imagine that?

Skype, I give you a F for today and no star for you and go to the back of the line.

*No, Oompa-Loompas do not work for Skype and none were injured in the creation of this article.