Cool Stuff from This Past Week

Microsoft updated (fixed) Live Hotmail to work with Chrome again.  It was broken (yes, "Broken") from their last site update with respect to not allowing you to compose, delete or manage email from Google Chrome.  What's weird is that it did work fine when they did the major site overhaul earlier in 2008, but then went back and tweaked the site again in late 2008 and broke it.  But now it works, so that's all that matters to me.

Google has updated quite a few apps, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, and Earth.  They've also done some major work on Google Apps for mobile devices and updated Picasa as well.  The separate Picasa for Linux program is progressing along nicely as well.  I'm very pleased with how that project has been moving along and gaining features.  For a long time it was lagging behind the Windows implementation badly.  Now it's effectively on par.  I'm still hoping to get into GDrive soon though.

Amazon has already leaked information about Kindle 2.0, which has found its way onto Engadget and Boy Genius Report sites, among others.  I'm stoked.  I saw a Kindle 1.0 model a while back and it was really cool.  The whole approach is so Apple-ish in many ways, which impressed me.  They thought of just about everything you could think of.  The only complaints I've ever heard were regarding the package form factor design and the placement of the control buttons.  Looks like 2.0 will address that, and then some.  If the price is good, I may try to get one with my tax refund this year.  After I catch up on bills of course.

My email to Ralph Grabowski (UpFront eZine) appears to be spot-on.  I'm getting some indication that some long-time good-guy vendors gone-bad may see their long-time relationship with some major customers vaporize by the end of 2009.  I think that's going to be a huge shock to those vendors.  I really don't think they see this coming, even though they should.  The behavior I've seen from some very well known vendors has really amazed me (in a bad way).  Rather than striving to improve their customer cohesion, they've turned ugly and obstinate.  It's going to be bad for them.  Ralph is a great person.  If you deal with the CAD industry, in any shape or form, I strongly urge you to check out his site and consider supporting his efforts.

Mark Russinovich has updated some of the Sysinternals PSTools suite to work with Windows 7.  Very nice (and handy) indeed.

Have a good weekend!