I was perusing around bing and came upon, what I consider to be a phenomenal feature. It’s called mall maps and if you navigate to a mall* from bing maps you will be presented with just about everything you would want to know about the stores, ATMs, exits, bathrooms, including multiple floors.

I took the liberty of checking to see how the same experience is handled on Google: 

I think it goes without saying… Bing wins!

*At the time of this writing only a preview set of malls in Seattle, Boston, and NY metro areas. As stated on the bing blog they will continue adding new malls regularly.

Cross posted from brianreisman.com.

The benefits of this kind of delivery model are plenty not the least of which is the fact that as a customer of the software I can deploy fixes to the software without introducing the new features which are likely to contain their own set of bugs. Where the lack of this model makes me angry is demonstrated in the following scenario:

On February 18th, 2009 you purchase a 1-year subscription to a product named hubu. The version of the software at the time of purchase is 1.35. Throughout the year you have received updates to the product including new features and bug fixes and you are generally happy. The last version of the software you were eligible for was 1.75. It is now March 1st, 2010 and the current version of the software is 1.87; there were significant fixes rolled out on February 21st 2010. Based on the most of the subscription models you aren’t eligible for the latest updates unless you renew your subscription (Which may or not be the same price as buying the entire product again).

Do you see the problem with this? The quality of the product you purchased is at the mercy of when the developer discovered, fixed, and released the update. I understand upgrade protection but this is more like extortion. Imagine if the same behavior existed in other industries, or even if Microsoft provided service packs along these lines.

I understand the desire to make money but I believe if a customer purchases v1.x of a product they should get ALL fixes for v1.x. If a subscription model is to be used it only makes sense for new features and functionality that are distributed separately (plug-ins) and it is those that you would be subscribing to.

Just my two cents.

cross posted from brianreisman.com

Short List:

UpdatePatrol by Bitberry Software.

WebSite-Watcher by Aignesberger Software

Copernic Tracker by Copernic Inc.

Next Review: MissionKit 2010

cross posted from brianreisman.com

UpatePatrol

Altova MissionKit 2010

JetBRAINS Resharper 4.5 & 5.0

PreEmptive Solutions dotFuscator

DevExpress DXperience v2009

and more…

crossposted from brianreisman.com

This week Altova released the latest version of its flagship product, XmlSpy. I’ve previously blogged about it being the de facto tool when it comes to working with XML tools. In my opinion the coolest new feature is the auto-completion of XPath expressions. Most of the more technical features are only available in the professional and enterprise versions of XmlSpy (Not included in the standard version). I’d recommend purchasing the MissionKit which bundles several of Altova’s products into an affordable and complete suite of XML and related tools. My suggestion hasn’t changed: if you work with XML, this product, and if possible the full MissionKit, is a must-have. Additional benefits of the suite include other products: StyleVision a graphical stylesheet designer, DiffDog an XML-aware diff merge tool for file, folder, and directory differencing, DatabaseSpy – multi-database tool, SQL editor, query tool, database design tool, and database table comparison tool, UModel – UML tool for software modeling and application development, MapForce – graphical data mapping, conversion, and integration tool, SchemaAgent – Graphical XML Schema, XSLT, and WSDL file management and modeling tool, and more.

I’ve been looking for a solution for a long time to be able to watch DirecTV when I’m not at home. I’ve tried many things and all with different pros and cons. Having just discovered a free way to host a small little web server from home and still be able to change the channel and stream to any internet connected device; namely my phone and my work pc. It’s still rough around the edges mind you but a wonderful start.

I’d previously purchased the Hava Titanium HD device, which is a competitor to the Slingbox HD. The Hava has a bunch of really awesome features but its blocker, at least for me, is the inability to connect directly to home Hava device without going through their peer to peer server. Among it’s most notable features:

• Windows Media Center Integration
• Windows Mobile Support (Beta Client Application)
• Schedule record to external USB hard drive.

I’m hopeful that Hava, released by Monsoon Software will update and modify their software even more to enhance its usefulness.

Cross-Posted from brianreisman.com

WebGuide – Streaming TV, Remote Scheduling and Media Sharing for Windows Vista and Media Center

Cross-Posted from brianreisman.com

By clicking on the text button it will load the content of the page without leaving instapaper.com’s site… in addition you can subscribe to your list using any RSS reader.

Cross-Posted from brianreisman.com

prompt%userdomain%\%username%$son$s%COMPUTERNAME%$s@$s$t$_[$p]$s$m$_$g$s

You can create your own using the syntax defined here and make it always the use your prompt be defining an autorun command or script for your command prompt for any user who uses this computer or for the current user only by replacing HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE with HKEY_CURRENT_USER:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor]
"AutoRun"="prompt %userdomain%\\%username%$son$s%COMPUTERNAME%$s@$s$t$_[$p]$s$m$_$g$s"

You can save the text above into a text file and save it with the .reg extension and then you can apply it by double clicking on the file.

Cross Posted from http://brianreisman.com/

Check it out.

QuizoApps: QTTabBar