Month: January 2012

The Death Knell of a Contender

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Plancast is a social networking service many expected to become a fixture for those who like to give “friends” opportunities to be where they’ll be and do what they do.

The service has already floundered and is now dying on the vine.

This link leads to a very good analysis of its failure by its CEO, Mark Hendrickson. His timely comments perfectly reflect why I (a very early adopter) couldn’t use the service on a regular basis. As far as I’m aware of this analysis is a first for the social sector.

Also interesting are the comments of people who (as I did) liked/loved the service and honestly tried to use it as much as possible but for various reasons couldn’t. Scoble himself appears to have been  the first to comment.

The article: The Uphill Battle Of Social Event Sharing: A Post-Mortem for Plancast

Why am I sharing this? If nothing else, it provides tangible evidence that “great” ideas must have a viable model and a willing market that will achieve the critical mass necessary for success. Just my 2¢.

The Death Knell of a Contender

The Coolest Social Bio I’ve Seen In A While

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Coolest Short Bio
This is the coolest short bio I've seen in a while.
The Coolest Social Bio I’ve Seen In A While

Special Thanks to Christoper Miller

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… today’s unsung hero. He saved me about half a day’s work trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

I didn’t use his solution exactly, because I was able to get the same effect by using the “USB” menu item on the RDC tool bar to directly attach my external drive. This was vastly preferable as I needed about about 8 GB and the hosting machine only has about 25 GB remaining.

Still, Mr. Miller gets the credit. Here’s his original post: http://anotherlab.rajapet.net/2008/05/ack-windows-installer-does-not-permit.html

-Happy Coding!

Special Thanks to Christoper Miller

#Microsoft, thanks for being vigilant, but please don’t…

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… have me running around like my head’s chopped off because I need to upgrade my Windows Azure OS to one of two specific versions, only to find out neither one is available to me. THEN, don’t make me use one of my 5 allotted support credits to ask you what you really mean because the option you told me I had to pick isn’t on the list. THEN, don’t have me use the only free, real-time support option only to find out the first-tier online chatters are not technically competent.

M’kay? That really sucks.

For those of you who don’t believe me, here’s what they said:

We are sending you explicit notification on this update to our platform because it addresses a publicly known vulnerability that presents risk to customers who have not updated their hosted services. Updates will be automatic for most customers, but certain customers will need to take prompt action. Please read further to determine if any action is required on your part. 

The Guest OS version which includes the security update is:

    • Windows Guest OS Family 1 -> WA-GUEST-OS-1.8_201109-03
    • Windows Guest OS Family 2 -> WA-GUEST-OS-2.8_201109-03

…and here’s what shows up as available for me:

The list of available OS options

I really want to be just as patched as the next guy, but i’m *not* going to “pay” you for the privilege of helping you figure out what you really meant in the first place.

So now I’m stuck hoping that my hosting instance was already set to “Automatic” and that I got the update when they rolled things out. =/

var rantComplete = true;

#Microsoft, thanks for being vigilant, but please don’t…