Natali Del Conte

Natali,

Great post! I haven't used MobileMe, but I hear you on Wave, Windows Mobile and the Nook. I'm getting the same point with Facebook, but I don't think I'm in danger of not being able to add new friends. HA!

Tech letdown for 2010? The iPad and 3D televisions...Just my guess.

You rock Natali, you really do. I just agree with all of that. And Facebook in particular. It's become a planetoid made of crap -mostly. I'd like to tear it down like Tallahassee with a Zombie in Zombieland

Natalie, always enjoy your broadcasts on the today show. Intelligent information delivered in a pretty package. Kudos to you, keep it up.

Hi, Natali!

Double congratulations on both Loaded's second birthday and you chairing CEA LineShows this year. It's always a pleasure to watch your work and get your thoughts on the tech scene.

You are always welcome to guest on Tomorrow Will Be Televised, and the CEA LineShows role would be a nice inflection point to a show segment in June. Please keep that in mind.

Celebrate your accomplishments this week to the max, and have a wonderful weekend!

All the best,

Simon Applebaum
Producer/Host, Tomorrow Will Be Televised
(Mondays/Fridays at 3 p.m. on BlogTalk Radio)

So, your list would be more accurately titled your 2009 list of iPhone grievances for Festivus...plus a few non-iPhone items for kicks.

(My sentiments exactly on MobileMe. BusySync is great and all, but why in the hell do I have to pay another $50 to finish Apple's job? And why hasn't Apple just acquired BusySync already?)

Facebook: I find it very creepy the way FB goes through your email address book and "suggests" who you should be friends with. It keeps telling me I should befriend my ex-girlfriend and that is not going to happen. It's just none of FB's business and I want this to stop.

Oh, come on... Apple rumours are what give meaning to life... ;)

Happy belated Festivus Natali.

1) Batteries/Electric Infrastructure: I read about breakthroughs all the time out of MIT, Lawrence Livermore, etc..., but little has changed after the most recent energy crisis. Where is our government?

2) Home/Kitchen/Surface Tech: I see amazing demos from Microsoft labs about technology integrating into everyday surfaces, but it all seems like vaporware so far.

3) Tech Time to Market: In general, so many concepts are shown, but very little seems to ever materialize in the marketplace.

4) Discs: Why can I digitize my music collection, but not my movie collection? Why are we still using discs at all?

5) Netflix streaming: Why doesn't Netflix have every movie available for streaming yet, in HD too.

6) Repealing/ammending DMCA: When is fair use going to be fixed?

7) Natali Del Conte: I wish we could really hear Natali go to town on issues, like a good Molly rant, or Rafe, or Cooley, or even Tom. Maybe she's just too nice and polite and professional, but it seems like she holds back her personal point of view most of the time on substantive stories and policy discussions and such. When it's "just the facts", it's like we get to smell something good cooking in the kitchen, but the chef doesn't want to bring out the main course for us all to sink our teeth into and enjoy the wonderful dish. On the positive side, of course you're an exceptional journalist with terrific charisma and personality. And like John Travolta says in Pulp Fiction, "personality goes a long way." =)

Anyhow, onto the feats of strength!

Hope you have a really happy New Year, and wish you the very best success in 2010. =^)

The earbuds gripe is the most interesting to me of the list. If you're thinking it, a lot of other people must also be thinking it; I am certainly thinking it.

My New Year's resolution is to never pay more than $20 for a set of earbuds, since they last no more than 6 months whether I pay $20 or $220.

Now, will earbuds become to Natali what printers are to Molly?

-Google Wave: Agree entirely. Boring!

-Earbuds: Have become a commodity rather than a luxury purchase. Been through 4 pairs of headphones in a year - cans, small speakers, apple buds and in-ear buds all got destroyed from wear and tear. Probably cost me about $300 US!

-Facebook: I've fallen out of love with it too - it's so full of spam it's ridiculous. The last straw came when I noticed that my sister had posted a message on my wall and I missed it for a week because of all the crud that gets posted. And the layout changes drive me crazy!

-Apple rumours: Glad to hear your opinion, I like Apple stuff but it's the one thing about Buzz Out Loud that bores me to tears is the endless reporting of Apple rumours. I know you gotta do it and people want to hear it, but I don't!

Hope you had a great holiday season and a happy new year to you!

I can see Mr. Kruger enjoying the list as he chugs from his flask....Wave will be good once it integrates with Youtube, Docs and Video, sucks now though you're right...AT&T is miserable but the new Google phone is better so you can switch carriers, but you know that....Gotta put up barriers on FB and good luck getting away from Apple "rumors" aka "we want our stock to jump and have Jim Goldman help that happen"

And to think I posted many moons ago about how you were just going from strength to strength as a tech journalist and then I go and read this. I'll put this down to a festive glitch.

Oh, Facebook. Double-plus on that ungood. Social networks are supposed to allow its users to communicate more effectively with each other, yet Facebook hasn't been so useful on that front. Some wall posts don't show in the livefeeds, while some posts in the feed don't show on their respective walls. Confusing! Moreover, I have a thread in my inbox that's been temporarily unavailable for the past month. I'd be better off corresponding via the seemingly archaic IM, or email, or phonecall....

OMG. My favorite is the Apple Rumors. I totally feel the same way!

Natali, such language! But i don't blame you.

Any post that combines the purchasing of saffron with the implied dropping of the f-bomb is hilarious in my book. In all seriousness though, tech support for parents should be a reoccurring line item all by itself.

What you have done with your rant today is International Standard. Brava!

For the sake of global colloquialisms:

In England, you have "Thrown the toys out of your pram", You have the hump".
In Australia, "You're throwing a mental." CRIKEY!

Many other available. Those I the ones I know best.

Best wishes,
Marcus

Love it Natali. At&t sucks. I got it because I hated Sprints network. I got Google Wave but it's not what I wanted.

The whole AT&T wireless hate just baffles me. I've used it in Dallas, Washington DC, Nashville and Charlotte among other places and it's been fine; 3 or more bars nearly everywhere and no problems with data or voice dropping. I guess I just got one of the good iPhones?

Pretty much agree with everything on there, except I just didn't think the Nook would be good to begin with. You really, really need to start some sort of podcast/vlog where you rant like this every few weeks, it's awesome (I hope you don't mind me saying that I love the BOL episodes where you're grumpy the best!).

1. Apple App Store approval process. Oh suuuuuure they are still looking at Google Voice....how many months later and
nothing/nada/zip?

2. AT&T wireless and those clueless folks running it. Seriously just gives me more reasons to jailbreak my iPhone, and
pay the "early term fee" if/when the iPhone is on another carrier.

3. Adobe's purchase of Omniture: They lied to us and said it would work out great, but most of us got screwed and then "downsized". Death to Adobe!

I feel your pain!

Natali, doesn't it feel great to just vent sometimes? I felt better just reading your post. Keep your head up tho, 2010 is gonna be a wicked year!

Good post :)

The more time goes by the less I want a smartphone. I have a Sony Ericsson W880i that has lasted me nigh on 3 years now. It has bluetooth for hands free, it makes phone calls, sends text and MMS Messages, and it has a calendar. It's also tiny, thin and can last up to 5 days without recharging (assuming I get no calls, which now I've ditched the landline at home rarely happens.) I brought the phone with me to Hawaii when I emigrated from the UK, and switched onto a good contract with T-Mobile. It just works for me all the time. I've yet to go out of signal, and now T-Mobile has rolled out 3G if I really want it the data network is out there.

A few years back my job started involving On call weeks when I might have to log in to servers and fix them remotely. I bought the newly released Nokia N810 internet tablet as it met all my needs. Good keyboard & screen, something I can type on for an hour without getting finger cramp. For those few occasions when I'm out and about and I really want some data from the web all I have to do is get it to connect to my phone by bluetooth and jobs a good'un. All these "There's an App for That" stuff seems nice'n'all but being pragmatic about it there really isn't much I'd want from them that can't be achieved through a browser anyway (which coincidentally is what Steve Jobs has been wanting for people from day one anyway.)


On the subject of universal chargers, as I see it with the way the global economy is you're in luck. Thanks to Europe passing such legislation, the US will follow suit without having all the nitty gritty hassles of passing the legislation themselves. No phone company is going to waste time designing two separate power sockets & infrastructure on the phone when they can get away with just one. Plus you can probably bet good money that at least some of them will try and make a big deal of it in the US as if it was an altruistic move on their behalf!

Twitter Lists - I've found fantastic people to follow on twitter, mainly through careful web-searching and blog-lists. So why would I just trust someone's favorite 100 twitter people? How the heck does following 800 people on twitter work anyway? (I do give credit to twitter for addressing it's scalability issues, great strides there)

Netflix - +1 for sending me a disc so that I can watch streaming media on my PS3. That accomplishment cannot correct two other glaring bits. One - when I watch streaming media on my laptop, the quality is lower and the buffering is annoying (even though similar content viewed through Hulu comes across at HD levels). Two - on demand is great, but what about when I'm flying? I love to catch a flick on my laptop, yet you offer me no way to do this (even though I can via iTunes).

Guitar Hero - this game totally sucked me in when I first tried it. However, I've realized that the long term strategy is to slowly release more games instead of releasing lots of new content (songs) that I'd be willing to purchase. I don't wan't another flippin' version of GH. I want more content.

Car Tech - even though they put great tech into cars, they frequently miss the mark on making said tech usable. See the infiniti g35 climate control system for a infuriating demonstration of why the A/C turns on even when it's below zero and snowing.

The brick & mortar/online mismatch - How many times have you gone online to view a restaurant/store/service providers info and offerings, and yet when you arrive at the physical location - they don't have what your looking for. There is no reason your inventory system should be 48 hours behind in 2009.

Yahoo! - They've done some amazing things (Yahoo Answers, the YUI framework, UI design patterns), but this year has been chock-full of nothing. A once favorite web-destination has now turned into a B list attraction.

Regarding Netflix / iTunes / Hulu - Have you seen reports of the hassles that both Netflix and Apple have had with media companies and getting them to use their service. Hulu even had to do the utterly ridiculous and block Hulu being streamed inside Boxee, even though the media was effectively being consumed the same way, with the same ads etc, because the media companies that provided them with content were insisting on it and threatening to remove their content from the service.

Now imagine how those companies that are still struggling to adapt to the modern world with concepts like Streaming would react if you told them people would be able to download their movie for playing later. All they'll see is Piracy. Apple have had a few advantages because Steve Jobs is the majority shareholder in Disney, so they've been able to put content in to iTunes to demonstrate that it can actually work, won't result in massive piracy, and can be done in such a way as to make a profit from it.

Good points, so how did Sony manage to do the same thing as itunes? On my PS3 I can download movies for later viewing.

We can always find reasons for why we "can't" do things. Apple and Sony have paved the way, and frankly - Netflix is one of the most influential organizations in it's space. This should be a no-brainer. If I can go to any local gas station and buy a DVD that expires seven days after the package is open, and I can do the same via Sony/iTunes downloads - Netflix just needs to catch up.

It just seems where you live AT&T has the worst problems new york & San Francisco. Why don't you try to transfer to socal there very little trouble with iphone here. Wish you have loaded 5 days. Happy holidays.

I mainly agree with your grievances, too.

iTunes, it's horrible on a PC. I became so frustrated with iTunes that I canceled my AT&T account and gave my iPhone to my son, and got a Droid Eris.
AT&T, also, did not help in my decision. Here in the LA area there are a lot of pockets of no service.
Google Wave, I was so happy when I got my invite, then I didn't know what to do with.
Facebook, I just don't get it.
MobileMe, I only used it to forward my Gmail to MobileMe to get push email, for $100 just did not make sense.
Windows Mobile, agree with the same.

Happy Festivus!

"...wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven and the dappling of things and the lark and Hurrah for Karamazov and kindness."

It's true, we all feel badly about certain things at one time or another. Have faith. The sun shall rise again and offer new light.
Have a Happy Holiday and Happy 2010! :)

From Chris: "LOADED: Why can’t I get loaded on Fridays? Loadedaholics need a fix for the entire work week! We also need to stay informed on how long her hair is." Haha! I'm sure you can wait until Monday to see how much it's grown over the weekend. Sheesh! My only real grievance is the Snow Leppard update installing EVERY printer driver known to man on my Macbook. There were over 6,000 files in the printer folder before I tossed it! I then installed the only driver I need for my Epson printer. Also, Firefox and Snow Leppard don't play nice, Firefox did not like the update, I get crashes daily.

As far As face book you can add a fan page,and link from your face book,that will allow you to add more people.(like your mother did). I-tunes you can always help your mother over Im or at her fan page,how hard can it be? Here Natali I hope you have a Merry Christmas
http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=...

Wow, I have never seen you THIS grumpy! After reading yours, I have lost the will to complain for the rest of the day. I am sure every thing is going to work out with the exception of all the Apple rumors, will they ever end?

- I hate how Facebook and Twitter are always experiencing tech difficulties.
- I hate Traffic, I wish I lived in a city that had mass transit.
- I hate how this economy keeps sinking to new lows month after month after month. Even worse than that is how the Gov't keeps telling how much better it's getting.
- I hate how neither of my smart phones are able to sync with anything ANYWHERE near reliability.
- I am sick of how this weather keeps changing so drastically. I wish it either stayed hot or cold, but quit moving 60 degrees either way on a seemingly daily basis!

Yikes! Actually it's better to just let it out. But that's not advice, and I didn't email you it :)

Things that pissed me off this year? Number 1 Evernote Mobile. Err it's not Mobile if it doesn't f*cking work!! OMG you can't even search your notes while it's busy talking to the mothership. WTF? I have to go into Airplane mode to find a note?? It refused to upload any new notes I added on the phone, and until I deleted them, it would give me 9+ popup alerts every time I opened the app and it tried to sync. Then all I could ever see was the 6 most recent notes on the phone, and the table view would just cycle through those 6 and not bring up any of my remaining 1800+ notes. And to top it all off Evernote asked me to vote them as the best mobile app! I went beserk on thier ass over that in my twitter stream. I wish I could vote them worst mobile app. Why? Because I'm a premium member and pay for their sh*t service.

Earbuds are on my list too. I've gone through about 3 pairs of expensive Sennheiser in-ears and after exactly 1 week, the sheath around the jack and the cable comes loose and I spend the next 4 months trying not to rip the cable right out the jack. Great audio quality, sh*t construction.

MacBook Pro 2008's "4 hour" battery life. In the entire time I've had the MBP, not once did I ever get 4 hours of anything out of that battery except lifelessness. I go sleep dreaming of a new MBP simply for the "7 hour" battery life they come with now, in the hopes that I'll actually get 4 hours of life out of it! Maybe iPhone development is hard on the devices internals, but I'd expect to get more than 1 hour 20 out of it. Total and epic fail. Plus the battery's lifetime is only good for 300 full discharges. WFT? What am I supposed to do with that? My train journey into London everyday is 1 hour 10. I discharge my battery twice in one day. So I have to buy a new battery every 6 months?? ugh.

Windows XP. It's Windows, I hate it, and I have to use it at work everyday. Just searching for something is a nightmare. I feel like I'm forming a relationship with the OS it asks me so many questions about what I'm looking for. Do I want this search option, do I need to search only the current folder? Am I looking for an image? Is it trying to bond with me? Will it be offended when I finally throw it out the 3rd floor window on the BMA courtyard below? Do I care? I take my personal MBP in and spend as MUCH time as I can on it.

Twitter. God, what do Ev and the gang do all day? F*ck Me. It's still shit, lists are shit, and the API is practically useless now for clients that support lists, because 150 API calls a minute just isn't enough. I find myself having to go to Twitter.com just to post and update cause the damn API won't do it. List's were totally overrated, just like Google Wave. I really don't know why everyone was so excited about Google Wave. It's a collaboration tool for producing content. That's it. I don't need it. And I don't know anyone else who does. It's realtime "see what the person on the other end is typing to you this very millisecond" was maybe, just maybe over-hyped.

This is what I'm talking about: http://grab.by/1Ck4

I'm now sans stereo using my Sennheiser in-ears. Luckily I still have my Sennheiser HD 25 II reference headphones.

Freaking hilarious! Why The face! Slightly unladylike but incredibly appropriate... Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

This is soooo good. And honest. Kind of sums up every tech persons nightmares. Like the nightmares before Christmas...uh, Festivus, I mean.

I loved your Festivus Grievitus. I agreed with it and at the same time learned that the Nook was a letdown and the Google Wave isn't going to be essential.

I'm still waiting for Tweetdeck or some other program to implement email and RSS feeds. I'm still grieving about having to go to many sources to collect all my various "feeds."

wow... this felt like a vlog as I read it. I could hear your grieve stricken tone. It was kind of a cool (because you let it all out not because I enjoy others' grievances).

Gotta agree with most of this.

Social networking in general. Everyone seems to be using something different, and if you want to share, you have to join in on it.

Palm Pre. Not a huge grievance, but I was hoping they'd be further along by now. I'm getting a bit frustrated with the lack of any real speed improvements.

I hear you on wave. I *want* it to work, but it's... pretty messy. And not everyone has it, so it's hard to do. I'm better off setting up a private forum or something.

Netbooks. Why are they still $500 for the "high end" ones? They should have capped off at $350. And with this, had ION. And the GPU enabled Flash should be pushed out fast. And Pine Trail looks like a huge disappointment. Sure, greater battery life, but you're suppose to couple that with performance improvements, too.

If you install logmein on your mom's computer it'll be much easier to give her tech support since you'll be able to see what's on her screen, and control her computer too

What you said about Facebook is too true.

Good list. In addition to the annual "predictions" episode of BOL, I think there should be an episode for the airing of greivances... although Molly might take over that whole episode.

Happy Festivus! Hope the rest of your holiday weekend is a little more relaxing...

JOB HUNTING: I have 2 degrees, but I think my MBA might be scaring off potential employers looking to use the recession to hire the cheapest talent available. Job hunting just sucks!

GOOGLE WAVE: I have 15 useless invites to give out but as I don’t know what the point of Wave is, I don’t know why anyone would want one. (also, why would Google not just open this up and not have people hunting around for useless invites??)

MICROSOFT: Windows 7 parties? Seriously? Those video clips were so incredibly lame, come on!

FACEBOOK: Come on just let Natali have more friends already!

LOADED: Why can’t I get loaded on Fridays? Loadedaholics need a fix for the entire work week! We also need to stay informed on how long her hair is.

CANADIAN TV: We have had to endure months of ANNOYING ads from Cable and Satellite companies asking us to “Stop the TV Tax” and local broadcasters replying with their “Local TV Matters” campaign. We all know the consumers are going to get screwed in the end (pun intended) so stop adding to our end bills by wasting so much money with all the ads!

TV: Why can’t I watch the “Festivus” episode on the holy day of Festivus? Why is this not mandatory programming on this day just like Christmas Vacation on the 25th!!

FAVICONS: why doesn't every site have a cool and amazing favicon (next to the url on the address bar up top) like Natali's?? I wonder who made that for her?

SHAMELESS PLUGS: Not enough people visit my web site at www.chrismclachlin.com and write me about exciting job opportunities!

OK, here's one...for such a useful service...why does the web based Twitter interface suck so hard? I mean you really have to use something like Seesmic to make Twitter work as it should! Also..."Loaded" is dark on Fridays...arrrgh! :) Happier tech 2010 Natali!

Besides burping in your year-end blooper reels, when have you ever acted un-ladylike? :)

No Apple App Store approval process hate?