Robert Accettura's
Fun With Wordage

Google Zeitgeist 2006 is out. Along with an explanation on how the data is compiled on the Google Blog:

…we looked for those searches that were very popular in 2006 but were not as popular in 2005 — the explosive queries, the topics that everyone obsessed over….

It always proves to be an interesting bit of year-end data to look at. Yahoo on the other hand keeps things a little more up to date with the Buzz Index, also a very good read. For example the impact of President Ford’s death in searches. Very cool data. Hopefully one day Google will do something similar. I’d love to see how their audiences compare on current events as they happen.

I noticed this a few months ago, but never gave it much thought until recently. My Laptop has a Intel 2915 A/B/G Wireless Card, more commonly known as the wireless portion of the Centrino package. It’s pretty decent in regards to power consumption, and performance is typically not to bad. But I’m growing rather tired of it’s antics (took me a little bit to ID this one).

I can wirelessly download a file from my local file server on my LAN at approximately 19Mbps. Yet I can’t seem to break 10Mbps WAN even though Comcast supports “PowerBoost” (traffic shaping) in my area to burst downloads. My Mac Mini G4 with it’s built Airport Extreme, which is really some Broadcom chipset (not sure which exactly since no specs seem to be available) does get as much as 20Mbps bursting on WAN traffic. This leads me to believe the issue is somehow related to the Intel 2915 card.

The access point itself uses the TNETW1130GVF chipset, which is actually used to certify 802.11g devices.

I could always witch to Lenovo/IBM’s 11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Adapter II, which is based on the Atheros AR5BMB-44 (apparently in the AR5004 family). The only downside is the lack of EAP support. Not that I employ EAP, but you never know what you run across or end up needing in the future.

Downside is having to open up the laptop and remove the keyboard/palmrest to reach the wireless card, not to mention the $70 for the card itself. This isn’t really something that seems really worthwhile at the moment.

The question of the day is why does Intel still can’t get it right. The web is littered with reports of connection problems. Thankfully I don’t get disconnects. I just don’t seem to get the performance I should. For having “Excellent” signal quality rating in the Connection Status Window, I’d expect more performance.

I just recently made a purchase using Google Checkout. As a disclosure this was my first and only one so far. I base my observations on that purchase and that purchase alone. I did it with Buy.com, and got $20 off my purchase. After all, how can you pass that up? I also qualified for free shipping. The process was extremely simple and strait forward as Google services typically are. However I did notice a few minor quirks:

• Confirmation emails from both Google and Buy.com, which is really unnecessary and should be avoidable.
• Two different order numbers is confusing when you check your status. Go to Buy.com and you now have to select which order type: Buy.com, Google Checkout, or PayPal to view the status. That’s an extra step that really shouldn’t happen. You can also check the status from within Google Checkout, but no tracking number.

The real advantage to Google Checkout was the discount ($20 off my purchase with no questions, rebates, coupon codes). Other than that, it’s just a way to keep all your online purchases in 1 easy to read place. I wonder how many really need such functionality? I almost never have more than 2 or 3 things (and even that is very rare) on order. Even in those cases I get emails when they ship, and can check the status easily. I never feel that it’s disorganized or I could loose track of things. Even when everything is from different places.

So what’s the incentive to use Google Checkout? There are some for merchants, but really no clear advantage for consumers when purchasing with larger retailers. The only real place where it would be helpful is with smaller sites where you may not want to give the merchant your credit card and feel better with Google mediating. Ebay would be another place, though not allowed. Most mainstream merchants will likely still process payments themselves, I don’t see the Amazon.com’s, Buy.com’s, Overstock.com’s, etc. using Google Checkout exclusively. So why not just use the billing system they provide?

So what’s the incentive to use the service now that the savings are done (the promotion ended on December 26th)? Does anyone see a real advantage of the service when using popular merchants? I personally don’t. I wouldn’t have bothered to use it if it wasn’t giving me a discount. Google claims:

Stop creating multiple accounts and passwords.
With Google Checkout™ you can quickly and easily buy from stores across the web and track all your orders and shipping in one place.

How many people regularly shop from more than a handful of retailers? Is this really such an issue? I’d guess most people tend to use the same username/password on multiple sites anyway (or a variation, or a password manager), or use SafePasswd.com to help them generate passwords they can remember (hint, hint). Browsers also remember login credentials for users. Amazon goes as far as keeping users logged in and offers “1-Click” purchasing.

Shop with confidence.
Our fraud protection policy covers you against unauthorized purchases made through Google Checkout, and we don’t share your purchase history or full credit card number with sellers.

Most credit card companies offer the same fraud protection. Purchase history? So they will ship my package and not record what went where? How is that audited? My guess is merchants know who bought what. I do believe they keep your credit number away from sellers, but do you often buy from someone you don’t really trust (besides Ebay, which doesn’t allow Google Checkout)?

Control commercial spam.
You can keep your email address confidential, and easily turn off unwanted emails from stores where you use Google Checkout.

I’m not sure about anyone else, but the sellers I buy from don’t spam me. I just choose not to receive promotions from the ones I don’t want.

Perhaps I’m a stubborn person for not purchasing from just anyone with a website (since I know they aren’t that difficult to make). I tend to buy only from reputable merchants with a proven track record. I know offers too good to be true, typically are. I wouldn’t walk into a shady store with 0 customers in a bad neighborhood either. Maybe that’s just me.

So what’s the killer feature of Google Checkout? What does it offer?

Every self respecting Mac user knows Clarus the Dogcow. Well here’s a great little background on Clarus. More can be found here.

Happy Festivus!

Just in case anyone was wondering, I made the Festivus Pole in this post using Inkscape, which did a pretty good job at making it easy enough for even me to do silly little work, and I’m far from an artist. It even lets me output SVG, though I uploaded a PNG since not all browsers support SVG at this point. Thankfully I didn’t have to draw any tinsel, but as we all know, that’s not allowed, since it’s distracting.

For those who are interested in the real thing, there is a video about a company who makes Festivus Poles.

As usual the web has quite a few things out there about this amazing holiday. Just search Google News this time of year, or check Wikipedia’s Festivus article.

There is even a new book on the holiday: Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us.

Frank Costanza: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.
Cosmo Kramer: What happened to the doll?
Frank Costanza: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!
Cosmo Kramer: That must’ve been some kind of doll.
Frank Costanza: She was.

Now that the Wii Browser is available, I’m really thinking I should check it out. It’s based on Opera. In my mind they needed to have a few things in order for this to not suck:

• Fairly good HTML/XHTML support - Opera has that
• Good support for CSS - Opera has that as well, but available for all small-screen versions
• JavaScript Enabled - Opera has pretty good JS support, but not always available for small devices.
• Support for Macromedia Flash - Especially with the popularity of YouTube, it’s needed

Apparently it meets these requirements. I really need to check this out. As a web developer, seeing something like this after years of crummy non-PC based browsers could be impressive. Screenshots so far have not disappointed.

Over the past few days I’ve made about a dozen small changes to this blog, including code cleanup, slight layout tweaks, optimization, etc. I also managed to cut page size and requests down a little bit, which is always welcome.

Every once in a while it’s necessary to stop developing and just cleanup after yourself. Overall, while most of the changes should be pretty transparent it resolves some of the rough edges that have been around for way too long.