Caught this article about the first year of IE7 in one of the feeds I read. Nothing like a sneaky plug by a Microsoft employee on a Microsoft product. Stuff like this is what flame wars are made of.

Well, played.

1. Google Image Search - Are they ever going to improve it? I’m hardly using it anymore. Why? Because it’s crap. I want to search for images by size. AltaVista’s image search is much better. Sorry, but the Image Labeler isn’t going to make it better.
2. Google Notebook – I use this quite a bit with the Firefox Add-on. How about some way to move or delete notes in batch. The one-at-a-time thing is killing me.
3. Picasa Web Albums – I’m sorry but Flickr has them beat. All of my photos were migrated from Yahoo Photos to Flickr two weeks ago. It’s really my first in-depth use of Flickr. It’s been great. I’ve uploaded several hundred pictures to Picasa web albums. Ho hum. As for the Windows version of Picasa, I do a fairly good job of organizing my photos and I’m a big Irfanview fan, so the basic image touch-up things are really of no use to me. Now if it could sort images by dominant color (or something cool like that) then I might reconsider.
4. Gmail – I generally like the new contact manager. However, if I have one contact with a work e-mail address and a personal e-mail address and I want to add them to a group, it will only allow me to use their primary e-mail address. The whole multiple contact records for one person thing just doesn’t make any sense to me. And why again can’t I search my contacts from the main search box? Does it bother you that you that there’s not an easy way to backup your Gmail data? Have you ever had to migrate e-mail to Gmail? Ugh.
5. PR for Larry Page and Sergey Brin – One major personal-life slip from either of these guys and it could be huge. The more I read about their social lives, it makes me more, well– unsettled, maybe–that these two young guys have so much power and influence. I watched the feature demo of Android — the gPhone development platform–and I’m like, dude, comb your hair and put on a nice shirt. (Oh and Steve Horowitz, taking a swig of water before a presentation will help with that dry mouth thing.) It’s almost like they’re too laid back to be taken seriously. I kinda feel the same way about Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

According to David Thorpe Yi’s the best rookie in the league so far.

That’d be nice…except it’s subjective.   (Here’s some further analysis)

You all know I’m not a big Durant fan — or players like him for that matter.  Aaand, I’m a little biased since I’m a Bucks fan.

At least let me be excited that he’s: 1) a rookie, 2) doing well and 3) playing for the Bucks.

Rare combination I know.

For the record: I’m not completely sold on Yi.   If it starts going badly I’m going whip out my Eduardo Najera smirk comparisons.

I’ve been playing Yahoo! Fantasy NBA for years now–well–since 1999 anyway. Yahoo’s Fantasy NBA hasn’t really changed that much over the years.

The new drag-and-drop roster change functionality implemented this year is good.

What has improved it the most, however, is the onset of Firefox and Greasemonkey scripts. Those two things allow us that are inclined to interject HTML and AJAX pieces into the FBB pages.

I developed my game log link script not long after Greasemonkey came out.  It’s now been morphed into several other scripts by several guys more talented than I am. One script in particular is quite good: Yahoo Fantasy Basketball. It incorporates my game log link as well as live stats, etc. Very nice.

So, anyway, Yahoo’s Fantasy NBA is pretty stagnant, even compared with their own fantasy NFL system. Here are some things that I think Yahoo can do to improve it:

1. Implement the Talk Smack box like in Yahoo Fantasy NFL. I know the NBA season is longer, but the more interaction between the players, the better, IMO.
2. When a trade is being proposed, make the comment box text appear on the site and not just in the e-mail. Sometimes I want to make my case for the trade stat-wise, and unless the person reads their trade notification e-mail, they’ll never see it. Why not display it after they click the link to the view the trade proposal on the site?  I think it would make for more and better trades.
3. Please implement a Flash-based version of the StatTracker. The Java-based one is visually atrocious compared to it’s NFL counterpart.
4. Make the news icons next to the player links mean something.   The yellow post-it-note on fire means too many things.  It could mean they played a good game or that they are out for the season.

Looks like Dial wants you to buy less soap, literally.

I noticed the same thing with Kingsford charcoal a while back. They were decent enough to post somewhat believable scientific reasoning on their website.

Same thing with Tires Plus (no links for crappy companies), recently. We bought two new tires after a scary blow out up in MN. Their literature says “Free lifetime tire balancing.” Is it free? No, apparently we didn’t purchase the “Premium wheel balance.” How is that free again? Too bad the marketing isn’t true. Tires Plus won’t have to worry about me being a lifetime customer.

Yes, I really did want to explain to my 11 year-old daughter that sometimes companies use vague and deceptive marketing to up-sell you on something.

/rant

This makes me giddy. I want the Bucks to have more games like the one last night.

60.3% from the field, 31 dimes

D. Mason 10 for 10, 21 pts
Yi, 12 pts, 4 rebounds, 3 blocks
Redd, nearing a triple double, 17 pts, 7 rebs, 6 dimes

Hey, Coach K… Keep Charlie V. and B. Simmons on the bench.

Commentary: Bucks unleash hell on the Raptors, Bucks deliver easy win

Oh and how about Chris Paul’s 21 assists last night.  A thoroughly dominating performance over the Lakers last night. That’s always good.

(BTW, no doubt Peja is a good shooter.  I hope he plays in more than 13 games this year.  After all, I did have him on the second team of my Charity Stripe All-Star list.)