A little video that literally changed my life

This has got to be one of the most career and life changing moments I have ever experienced.
It’s honest, raw and great all at the same time.

Just watch it. Nothing I say will have a greater impact than you pressing play. 

 

…Final(ly) Cut Studio 2!

What can I say. No wonder Final Cut Studio is the ultimate editing, all-in-one solution for every film maker out there. My relationship with it has been similar to, when you have some girl you can start dating but in the meantime you’ve been looking at her for almost a year and haven’t said a word.

I had Final Cut Studio 2 laying around for almost one year. Bought a Canon HD camera in Japan (half the price is always good) and shot my whole honeymoon. Bought a new hard drive, which I called “Final Cut Scratch”, downloaded the whole 180 clips from the honeymoon and they’d be laying low in my special hard drive for almost 6 months. Today I said to myself “ENOUGH!”, so I started using it around. At first (and my usual impatience doesn’t help one bit) I started to imagine what I’d like to do with it, but I was getting frustrated because I was still discovering things by myself, but then later and after some patiently researched documentation, things started rolling smoothly. After a couple of hours I was already using Motion and Final Cut Pro comfortably.

Now, and as a little kid, I’m off to bed and can’t stop thinking about finishing editing the whole honeymoon. 

I guess I deserve to watch it decently after 6 months.

Thank you Apple

 

Macs are computers… PC’s are typewriters…

Nice video worth  checking out!

http://www.thestreet.com/video/index.html?bcpid=1078966384&bclid=1137812485&bctid=1517472316

If the whole world used Macs, what would happen to the IT business?

Well, I just got my hands on a Sony Vaio VGN-TZ31VN, straight from one of the top execs of a company I come to, every now and then. He asked me to get it up and running for him. The list of tasks he gave me is pretty short:

Install Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat Pro 8, add the PC to the domain and install Microsoft Project 2007.

It has now been 2h15m since I’ve been working on this machine, and guess what I’m doing? That’s right, I’m still uninstalling the crappy pre-installed software… after 2 HOURS!
Got rid of the typical Norton product, the Office 2007 trials, and SQL Server, even Google Desktop, Google Toolbars, and lots of other small tiny crapware.

It’s so sad to know that there is something much better out there and yet, people and big companies still rely on MS Windows and their buggy OS to base and trust their professional lives on.

I’ve been and IT guy for quite some time, and I am even a MS Certified Systems Engineer and Admin (MCSE, MCSA) and each new day, I dislike Microsoft more and more.
Lets face it. I work in IT and I have a Mac . There’s only one, out of all the companies I work for, that actually owns a couple of Macs, and guess what. They never needed any tech support, more than creating a couple of aliases on the desktop

If the whole world used Macs, what would happen to the IT business?

My guess would be:

- Helpdesk IT centers would cut off 60% to 70% of their spending.
- User satisfaction would increase exponentially. Users would now be able to use their computers in the way computers were designed to do. Make our lives easier and improve our productivity.
- Users would gladly pay for software. Lets face it: people hate to pay for software because most of the times it’s buggy and eternal beta software. Why would anyone want to pay 500 euros for a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate? To get their PC’s filled with spyware, viruses and need a 200 euro upgrade so that their PC can run Windows, and even after that they’d have to consider reinstalling every 6 months in order to keep their computer in nice shape?

Just check the comparison below…

Do yourself a favor and check out an Apple Store or authorized reseller and travel to the future without the need for a Time Machine. Oh wait… you’ll get a Time Machine with Mac OSX!

PS: I’m just a MCSE and MCSA who fell in love with Apple and their Think Different and Just Works philosophy. Would love to work for Apple and leave everything Microsoft related behind!

(Not so)TechDays 2008. Why Microsoft is slowly losing their game.

Ok. So I went to TechDays 2008 in Lisbon.Nice and all. Nice reception, average lunch, but kind of crappy on what concerns the actual reason to go there.I went to 3 presentations:

- System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007

- MS Exchange 2007’s Service Pack 1 features.

- Modelling and Composing Software for today and the future.

The first one was ok I guess. Nice explaining and all, but the software was just not user friendly. Typical Microsoft MMC based application, with dozens of tiny small items all over the screen, menus and sub menus. Nothing is clear and easy to use. All in all the only advantage I saw was the fact that it doesn’t need VPN connections in order to monitor a clients system. Other than that it seems Microsoft is trying to play catch up with all the other different software makers, only that they should be the ones leading software development in the world. Besides the OS’ there’s nothing great about Microsoft nowadays except maybe for the XBOX 360.

On the second presentation about the SP1 for Exchange 2007, things were worse. The lady giving the presentation was supposedly one of the top Exchange 2007 experts at Microsoft. Well, her presentation sure didn’t impress anyone. The Demos didn’t work, she kept losing herself in her speech, and people were rather confused by the time they ended it. Round of questions and everyone had one… obviously. As I saw her effort to answer the questions, I realized she was nervous, or maybe she wasn’t as good as they had put it.

As for the 3rd presentation, it sure was the most professionally presented, but the topic of discussion, “Modelling and Composing Software for today and the future”, wasn’t so apparent. The german presenters were very professional, but I was hoping the discussion would be less focused on technical aspects, but hey, maybe it was just me and the other guys leaving halfway through the presentation.

Anyway, this was a clear proof that Microsoft is way behind their game right now. They’ve lost all the WOW factor for the past years and it’s no surprise people are turning to Mac OSX and Linux as their saviors.
Computers are supposed to be a tool for a greater good, but users are tired of blue screens of death, viruses, complicated to use Operating Systems and constantly solving problems, instead of enjyoing that experience.

It’s sad but hey… at least they made me get a Mac!! Thanks Microsoft.

If I had to end this with a personal note would be: Get a Mac. You’ll love it, won’t get enough of it, and actually start doing something useful and productive.

Music Industry: The next step

This year the MP3 will turn 11 years old. I still remember downloading a Winamp version that wasn’t even a 1.o. My first MP3 had nothing to do with my music taste but it had some good sound effects and the fact that it had only 4.3 MB was amazing! Only 45 minutes to download a song seemed impressive.

11 years after that, here we are. There’s iTunes, Apple’s big, record companies are struggling to survive and people got tired of paying 15 euros for a CD with 2 good songs. So the music industry is going through a totally different scene as we speak. But do the people in charge know what they’re doing? Or does it take a 53 year old computer geek and one of the brightest minds in the tech world, to show them how its done? Steve Jobs, saw the opportunity and knew what approach to take. Sell a fantastic multimedia player and a kickass music store where people could buy songs individually. He might not be 100% right but he’s the closest one without a doubt.

Why do old people, no disrespect, run major media companies? They’re not up-to-date with anything because all they care about is making money and wonder off in their private jets, stepping on everyone as they pass. Someone needs to grab the music industry by the horns, and only someone with a notion of future, where music came from, and where it’s headed will be able to make things work for the music industry.

One of the best models in my opinion would be to create a music service where you pay a small fee per month, and we’re talking millions of users, and be able to download the albums you want. Obviously there would have to be limits or else you’d have the typical guys who download just for the “fun” of it.

People wouldn’t mind paying 5 euros a month to download up to 20 albums, now would they? Just do the math. In a universe of 10 million hypothetic subscribers you would have 50 million dollars a month! We’re talking 600 million dollars a year, and we all know there would be well more than 10 million subscribers a month, if this thing were to be well publicized.

So my advice to the music industry is:

Change your board of directors and replace those with money hungry ambitions and absolutely no clue of what people want, with youngsters who understand what’s happening.
Maybe hire musicians for your boards, since they’re the ones one the road gathering people’s opinion on what’s wrong with the music industry, and what solutions they’d like implemented.

Freedom Through Music Integrity (FTMI)

Still remember when MySpace was fun? Facebook them…

Well, what can I say. I heard rumblings that there was a movement going on, inciting people to close their MySpace accounts.

I had been thinking about it for sometime now and finally did it today. All I got from MySpace for the past months were Spammer’s Friend Requests, Spammer Comments, Spammer Messages and the list goes on.

Social networking should really open their eyes for the whole Facebook revolution and how they managed to come up with a whole new way of approaching social networking. Facebook is clean, nicely designed and most importantly, has unlimited potential. It is without a doubt the perfect solution for social networking and the antithesis of MySpace.

The whole Facebook revolution has three major advantages over MySpace’s

1. Applications:
   • With the introduction of Applications people’s connectivity reached a whole new level. You can now add any application you want that gives you the possibility of interacting with different people over different topics, may they be Politics or funny stuff. Also the power of Applications reaches a totally different level once you use them to interact with different people, for example, add Video or other apps capabilities, to Wall posts or PM’s
2. Clean and fast profiles:
   • One of the most important aspects, is the fact that you can easily browse other people’s profiles without the annoying : “look at my pimped up profile, full of songs, videos and slide shows, that is barable surfable”. You can easily access other people’s profiles and their Apps blazing fast due to their magnificent Web 2.0
3. No Spam
   • MySpace’s spamming was getting unbearable. 90% of requests, messages, or comments are SPAM. Well, when you have spammers taking advantage of a platform like MySpace’s who should you blame? Spammers or MySpace? I would say MySpace. People SPAM because the platform allows them to. You even have Windows Apps like MySpaceFriendBlasterPro that allows you to add millions of friends (supposedly).

So, follow the advice given by Wired and close your MySpace account.

You can’t just get rich with a great Web idea and then just leave it dying without improvements, bad management and bad future plans.

I rest MyCase…