WTF – Stop with the image verifications!

Can you read that? I can’t.

.NET vs. J2EE – Butter or Guns?

This post is now available on my new blog The IT Report:

http://theitreport.com/entries/project-management/net-vs-j2ee—butter-or-guns

My Suggestion To Microsoft To Make Windows Suck Less

Give me a real shell.

No.

Yes.

Why Starbucks IS The Undisputed King of Coffee

Apple fan-boys, suburban hipsters, and even my fellow friends alike may disagree with me on this one, but when it comes to coffee + productivity, the 800 lb gorilla takes the bananas.

The company recently announced they will be providing FREE wi-fi to anyone with a Starbucks card.

This is huge. The sole reason why many college students don’t study at Starbucks is due to the fact you need an expensive T-Mobile Hotspot account to get online. $6 a day my ass, thats two, five pump light ice white mochas.

Now, I’ve always been happy with Starbucks, maybe because I’ve been pampered with my company footing my wi-fi bill, but aside from the technology, Starbucks has refined and solidified customer service.

Let me tell you a story about a local coffee shop in my area, no names will be mentioned, because despite the horrendous customer service, I still have my support for budding entrepreneurs.

I have been going to my local start up coffee shop, since high school for about seven years. They catered to the young crowd with contemporary paintings on the walls and the soothing electronic sounds of new-Radiohead while serving coffee on double punch Tuesdays.

All was well until poor customer service took its toll.

I remember an elderly lady walked in with a Starbucks travel mug and wanted to fill up with some good local coffee. What happened next? She was refused coffee and service because she was sporting the Starbucks brand. I understand that brand awareness is key, but c’mon, your local coffee shop will never make it big like Starbucks so why not go for the quick buck at least? The woman obviously enjoys or would like to try your coffee so why not use that to win a returning customer. Minus one for poor service.

My friends and I, who had been loyal customers for 6 years got the boot when a few additional friends dropped by for no more than 10 minutes without ordering a drink. I understand they are trying to prevent the “what would an indian do” scenario but returning customers who have brought in additional friends to drink sub-par coffee, equivalently priced with Starbucks’ premium offerings, should not be treated like that. Minus two for poor service.

The final draw came last year. Starbucks was closed late at night, and my local coffee shop offered extended night hours. I had to crank out some code over coffee so I figured I’d take advantage of the free wi-fi. The oh-so-not-beloved coffee shop decided it would issue a password to get online, printed on the receipt of my purchase, cool. While sipping on my white mocha for a few hours and doing my work, I was interrupted by the barista to be informed that I needed to make ANOTHER purchase because I had been using their wi-fi for over two hours. This wasn’t stated anywhere on my receipt, or anywhere inside the shop. Minus three for poor service. I decided this was the last time I would do business with them.

Now that Starbucks offers free wi-fi, coupled with great coffee, and excellent customer service, there is no need to support the local coffee shop. All they had going was customer service, and when you lose that – you lose the relationships that keep change in your pockets.

PowerPoint isn’t just for presentations

I’ve found time and time again that Powerpoint isn’t being used as just a presentation medium. Have you ever thought about using Powerpoint to prototype your software or a webpage? Maybe create flow charts?Let’s face it, there are prototyping software out there, but it costs a fortune, and there is always a learning curve. I think Powerpoint sucks as slideshow, but when you want to rapidly mock up diagrams its pretty simple out of the box. Some may argue, “thats what Visio is for” but when your company only has an Office License (Visio doesn’t come standard) what are you going to do?Next time you open up Powerpoint, rethink what you can do with it. 

SharePoint Sucks.

This post is available on my new blog The IT Report:

http://sheehan.viviti.com/entries/opinion/sharepoint-sucks

How To: Keep Your MacBook Looking New

 

The white MacBook is notorious for picking up dirt. I’m pretty anal when it comes to washing my hands when using any of my stuff whether its my iPhone, laptop or guitar. The folks at the Apple store seem to refer to all things Apple as “brand spanking new” so I thought I’d share my tips on how to keep your investment clean.

 Use Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser

That is all. Your laptop will look like you just opened it out of the box. Magic Eraser’s can be used multiple times so do the world a favor and clean your laptop and maybe your kicks while you’re at it. 

Hands on with Android: XML Parsing

This post is now available at my new blog The IT Report:

http://theitreport.com/entries/programming/hands-on-with-android-xml-parsing

Network a Mac with Windows

Recently I decided I would connect my external hard-drive to a PC in my house so that I could access my music over the network as opposed to connecting it to my Macbook everytime I wanted to access music or movies. Lucky for me it’s incredibly easy to share files over the network between Windows and OS X:

1. Enable Windows Sharing on the Mac Apple > System Preferences > Sharing > Check Windows Sharing
2. Share a folder or a drive in Windows by right clicking > Properties > Sharing > Check Share Folder
3. On the Mac, open up Finder and click on Go > Connect to Server…
4. Enter smb://<your windows pc hostname>
5. Now you can connect to any shared folder on your Windows machine, but how do we make sure it stays mounted? Simply go to Apple > System Preferences > Accounts > Logon Items > Add the shared volume

That was painless. For all tech readers this isn’t because Mac’s rule, its because of the Samba protocol which enables you to network different operating systems. Samba is now a part of Apple, but lets not forget its open-source roots.

appleopolis – Great iPhone Apps Launcher

Sure there are plenty of iPhone web-apps you can visit through Safari, or even bookmark so you can visit them later, however navigating through bookmarks doesn’t really fit the UI flow of the iPhone.

Let me introduce you to appleopolis.

appleopolis is an iPhone launcher that lets you add “widgets” to your dashboard. It’s UI is similar to the Home screen and thus visually appealing. The real kicker is that it launches your favorite bookmarks while keeping it real with the iPhone’s user interface. I’ve got Digg and Meebo for sure on my dashboard – what do you have?