photo credit: √oхέƒx™

Even on a blog about inelegant solutions, Daylight Savings Time (DST) has a special place. Not only is it an inelegant solution, but it is a bad means to a solution that doesn’t solve its designated problem. It’s a bad answer to a very stupid question.

The idea is simple, in a bid to save energy, make people happier or whatever the logic is this year, we all, save those of us who don’t live in a DST zone, set our clocks back one hour in the fall and then set them ahead that same hour in the Spring. The idea is that, during the months where DST is in effect, we get more sunlight in the evening.

The problem is three-fold. A) For it to work it requires every county in every state in every nation to agree to go along with it, then requiring every person in those countries to successfully set every clock to the right time. B) It doesn’t do the job its advertised to do and may actually make things worse. C) Even if it DID work, there would be far more efficient ways to achieve the same effect.

So let’s take a moment to stop and think about DST for a bit and marvel at its stupidity. If you think it’s a good thing, give me a second and hear me out, you might like my competing solution better.

After all, the true marvel of DST isn’t that it doesn’t work, but that it’s such a horrible way to get to something that doesn’t work.

Does DST Work?

On the surface, even I have to admit that the theory of DST sounds pretty darn good. By giving people more daylight in the evening, they’ll use less lights, less heat and save energy. Seems like a dead ringer.

But in practice it’s not so simple. Does it save energy? Depends on who you ask. According to the Department of Energy, DST reduces only about .02% of our total national energy costs. Sadly, that’s the positive spin. A study in Indiana, which focused on individual household usage, found that DST actually increased energy use by about 1%.

So the best case scenario is that it reduces our energy use by barely enough to move the needle, on the other end, it actually increases it by a full percent. The problem is two fold. First, as the authors of the Indiana study pointed out, “Benjamin Franklin was right about candles… but he did not consider air-conditioners,” meaning that DST does reduce our use of lighting, but increases our use of climate control and other creature comforts.

However, the more obvious problem is that DST doesn’t actually change anything. Moving the clocks doesn’t give us more hours of sunlight, it just moves them from morning to night. Where once you might have woken up in sunshine and came home in darkness, with DST you do the reverse. While this might have been a gain in the age of candles, in the era of light switches, air conditioners and automobiles, there is little, if anything, gained.

But that isn’t the dumbest part about DST. Sure, it has failed in its stated goal of energy reduction, but it failed even more gloriously by being a worse answer to a bad question.

A Different Scenario

Lets slide into an alternate universe. In this one, the government has decided to do something about how much people drive by putting a per mile tax in a bid to reduce oil consumption, lessen CO2, etc. The tax is straightforward, you pay X cents per mile you drive, it’s a flat rate that’s reasonable but still discourages unneeded trips.

However, a few years after implementation, the government finds yet another problem. Despite the tax, people are still driving too much in the summer months. Winter is fine for the most part, but those summer road trips eat up too many miles. The government decides to raise the tax during six months of the year.

They can do this two ways:

1. Simply raise the tax during the summer months so that every mile now costs Y cents
2. Change the definition of a mile, making it shorter so that people will drive more miles at the same rate.

The second way is just plain stupid. It would require everyone to reconfigure their car’s odometer for summer travel, not to mention that it would require road signs and other markers to be altered for the summer months. Insane? Yes. But that’s what happens you start messing around with a unit of measure.

Granted, odometers and signs are harder to change than clocks, but the point remains. There are two solutions, one requires almost no work to implement and can be implemented piecemeal (not every state would need to pass such laws) while the other requires a concerted effort by everyone just to make it work. Why screw around with a unit of measure when there are ways to fix the problem within the current paradigm?

So what’s the solution for DST? It’s rather simple. If you want more daylight in the evenings, if you feel that is better for whatever reason, don’t reset your clocks, reset your schedule. Businesses can change their hours, people can wake up earlier and they can do those things without touching the clock on the wall.

It’s essentially what we’re doing now, the only difference is that we’re pretending it doesn’t exist by changing the clocks to match the change we think we want to see. The problem is that most people don’t want it, it isn’t implemented consistently, even across this country (go to Arizona or any of our islands), and it doesn’t achieve its stated goals.

It is a failure on every front and we are insane for keeping it up.

The Expanding DST

One thing that has changed over the past two years is that DST has grown. Where once standard time and DST enjoyed a roughly 6 month span apiece, now DST covers 8 of the four months, expanded beginning 2008.

This has created two major problems:

1. It sabotages the tools that we used to keep ourselves on top of the time changes. Long story short, we invent our system of time, we invent and implement time changes, many of us get confused by said time changes, we invent devices to automatically update clocks, we then changes times changes to ruin those devices. If there is life on other planets, no wonder they don’t want to come here.
2. It’s made it so that 2/3 the year is in DST, meaning that DST is now the clearly preferred time. If DST is so wonderful that we should have it for 8 out of every 12 months, why not just not bother setting the clocks back one fall and make it 12 for 12?

The simple truth is that we invented our system of time and it is our right to change it as we see fit. However, since it is a unit of measure, we shouldn’t be screwing with it for no reason. If DST is so much better, then it makes sense to set the clocks to it and walk away, rather than going back every few months to the old system. The more you screw with time, and screw with the way you’re screwing with time, the greater the probability for error.

We joke about being late for work after making a time change but the truth is that time is very important and and every time we change our clocks there are some mistakes. Most are trivial, but bigger mistakes can happen and are likely inevitable. Sure, it’s funny and fitting when would-be terrorists get hurt by their own bomb thanks to DST, but what about when something else goes wrong and good people, not bad guys, get hurt? Might be a different story.

Bottom Line

Just to recap. DST is a bad way to arrive at a solution that doesn’t even fix the problem at hand. Even if we assume that there are reasons to want more daylight in the evening, there are better ways to get it. The only time you need to adjust is your morning alarm.

The simple truth is that DST doesn’t work and, if it did, we could reach the same goal without having to play the “spring forward, fall back” game.

This is why I hope that one fall we can just not set the clocks back and finally be done with our long DST nightmare. It probably won’t happen soon, but I can dream.

In the meantime, I, along with most of the industrialized world, will be playing the DST game twice per year, once as we change to it, once as we move away.

However, I’m going to be swearing under my breath the whole time I do it.

As I was writing my column yesterday for Blogging Tips, something dawned on me. That as much as I love Gmail, there aren’t many alternatives out there.

I wondered aloud on Twitter why there were no viable competitors for Gmail and got a slew of good responses. One of the best came from user @lance_ who said that “It takes a lot of market clout or money to get past spam filters. There isn’t a huge market for b2b & consumers already got an address.” (fixed quote for tweet-speak).

Others seemed to feel that the market was saturated while others still were quick to remind me about Microsoft Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, neither of which really hold much of a candle to Gmail in terms of features. When you consider that Gmail, for free, offers nearly unlimited space, free IMAP access, threading, powerful search, good spam filtering and more, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail look like weaklings.

Gmail is pretty much the undisputed champion right now, at least in terms of features and power, and, sadly, there is no real competition on the horizon. Yahoo! and Microsoft seem to have rolled over and other companies, like Zenbe, would rather build off of Gmail than create something truly new.

The result is that Gmail has stagnated. What was revolutionary when it was first created has slowed to a crawl. Most of the “Labs” features are either mistakes that should never have been in Gmail, such as Signature Tweaks, Title Tweaks, etc. or outright catchup with other systems, such as Canned Responses.

Gmail, which is still in beta, hasn’t blossomed and though it seems to announce new features regularly, most seem outright trivial. So where’s the competition to keep the fire hot? Where is the upstart company with a bold new vision and a competing ideal? It isn’t there.

It’s time for some competition. Time for an upstart group of rebels to really attack this issue and see what they can do. Will it be easy? No. Is it impossible? Maybe. But the future of email may depend on it.

Love for Gmail

The main reason that no one seems to have taken on this issue is because most people seem to really love their Gmail. And why not? It’s fast, its search is great, the threaded conversation feature works really well, its spam filtering is top-notch and you even get free IMAP access if you prefer to use Outlook or Thunderbird.

Gmail is, for all intents and purposes, warm buttery email goodness. I use it, my friends use it, most people I talk to use it. Everyone loves their Gmail and with good reason.

But this undying devotion to Gmail is dangerous. Sure, Gmail is great today, but is having only only one serious email provider really a good thing? Sure, Yahoo! and Hotmail both have more subscribers, but among those that take email serious, Gmail is the undisputed king and the devotion, no matter how deserved, is rabid.

To be honest and fair, Gmail got where it did by revolutionizing the way we did email back in 2004/2005. In a time where storage in Webmail services was measured in MB and deleting mail a common problem, Gmail came on the scene with GBs of storage, threaded conversations and a slick new interface. It took our current Webmail services and made them look puny and dated, even before most of us had access to Gmail.

But after its initial innovations it really hasn’t done that much. Most of the changes have been tweaks, fixes and minor improvements. Gmail became famous for its broad strokes but has, in the past four years or so, done nothing but fix some of the details.

The only broad stroke was to enable IMAP access for all accounts, a great feature, but one that has nothing to do with the Web interface. In fact, it was more of an escape for those who didn’t like what Gmail was bringing.

The kick to the stomach there though is that there hasn’t been much good done with email clients in the last five years either. Even Thunderbird has had its development stagnate, especially when compared to Firefox.

As great as Gmail is, if you find yourself dissatisfied for any reason, you’re pretty much out of luck. There are no viable replacements right now and Google is coding like they know it.

The Internet Explorer Problem

Though it is hard to imagine, there was a time when using Internet Explorer was actually cool. When it was first introduced, it was free, powerful and way ahead of Netscape, its main rival. It took market share away, inch by inch, and eventually became a de facto monopoly.

But that was when things got ugly. IE, for the most part, didn’t bother doing anything. It reached the top of the mountain and, since it wasn’t making Microsoft any money, it got treated like an unwanted stepchild.

The result was bad for the Web in every way. Though having a free and powerful browser was, at first, a good thing, it became a nightmare as Microsoft flouted Internet standards, ignored browser innovations (IE: tabbed browsing) and generally made life Hell for developers and users alike.

It wasn’t until a serious challenger, namely Firefox, came along that they began to wake up and release new versions. It’s no coincidence that a two-year release cycle stretched into 5 beginning with the release of IE 6 in 2001, roughly when IE reached the pinnacle of its market share, and that IE7 would be the one to introduce tabbed browsing, years after it had been in other browsers.

The end result was that, by introducing competition, Firefox improved the Web for everyone, including IE users.

Though I’m not saying Google is going to be as flagrant in ignoring Gmail as Microsoft was with IE, but its a simple fact that any company interested in the bottom line isn’t going to spend as much money developing something they already have a solid lead in. If there are no good threats, there’s no motivation to innovate.

In short, Gmail may be so good, that it’s bad for email.

So Where Are the Startups?

So where are these companies that can light a fire under Google? Well, I think the market may be to blame.

The problem is five-fold:

1. Market Saturation: Virtually everyone that wants an email address has one and most of us have several. Any new email system would first have to convince people to move their data over to their service, thus opening up a whole new series of headaches.
2. Startup Capital: There’s a good reason the biggest webmail systems are provided by large companies, it’s because it takes a lot of money to run one. Server costs, personnel, support, spam filtering, etc. It takes a lot more than a good front end to make a good Webmail provider and that makes it costly to run.
3. Poor Monetization: The only way to earn revenue from webmail is to either charge for pro accounts or sell ads. Gmail killed the first business model and, well, good luck with the second, in this economy especially.
4. Email Isn’t Cool: Email may be necessary, but it is so last decade. Developers and startups today want to do rich media, microblogging, social networking, instant messaging and anything with an API. As important as email is, it doesn’t get many people excited anymore.
5. Trust Factor: How is a new startup going to get users to trust them enough with all of their data AND a business-critical application? I have no idea. Any solution will have to come from an established, reputable company.

In the end, it may be that the door has been shut on email-based startups. Though some, like Postbox, are building products and services to work with Gmail, no one seems to be ready to go against it.

It’s a love fest with Gmail and it’s only a matter of time until the big “G” gets bored with the relationship.

Bottom Line

I hope that we don’t have to wait for Gmail to bottom out the way IE did before we see some competition. It would be sad to see that the move to create an alternative would be motivated more out of anger rather than a simple desire for choice.

Gmail is great, but it may be too awesome for its own good. We all need a little conflict to stay on our game and companies need it even more.

Someone out there has to have a great idea for making email faster/easier/better, so I say we hear it. If someone doesn’t try, we may be waltzing right into an email dark age.

Update: See comments below for a response from Omni Group The OmniWeb Web browser is, for the most part, no more. Though the announcement last week highlighted the fact that it was now available for free, the buried lead is that they are stopping active development on the browser. Though they aren’t ruling out future updates, they aren’t promising any either and they didn’t open source the browser. With the browser wars the way they are, that’s as good as a death sentence.

However, most people that used OmniWeb seemed to like the browser. I tried it several times over the past few years, never quite getting to the point where I was willing to pay for it after the trial ended. Sadly though, the browser couldn’t build any real traction. Many Mac users were unaware it was available and, those that did, seemed to always go back to free browsers.

It was, and still is, a fairly innovative browser and one that works fairly well. Based on Webkit, it’s a fast browser with an intersting “tabs on the side” system that uses thumbnails of pages rather than a traditional tab bar. It also has a slew of built-in features, such as ad-blocking, workspaces and individual site preferences.

Yet, the browser is clearly being put into retirement. Where did it go wrong and how can other “deep in the pack” browsers, such as Flock and Opera, avoid a similar fate?

The Business Model

When it comes to determining why OmniWeb is sliding out the exit, many are going to instantly point to the business model for the browser. It was, until the announcement, a paid browser in a field of freebies. Though the price was low, fifteen dollars, it was definitely a barrier to entry.

That being said, I don’t think it’s that simple. In fact, if there has ever been a time for a paid browser to succeed, this is it.

Think about it. The browser is now more integral to our lives than ever. Where five years ago it was a fancy box to look at Web pages, now it’s a mail client, an office suite, a publishing platform and more. Where once a browser was just a commodity, now it is an integral part of our work experience. Where once we could “make do” with any browser, now a good one is a necessity.

The problem with selling a browser is that there are so many good ones out there for free. Between IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Flock and so forth, there is a wide selection of good (or in the case of IE, ‘meh’) browsers that can do what most users need and either come installed with the OS or can be freely downloaded. Furthermore, if you want to sell a browser, you aren’t just competing with Firefox, IE, etc. but all of the add-ons and plugins created for them.

That’s a tough sell to say the least but it can be done. If you can bring something new, powerful and compelling to the table, you can probably sell it. If you can make the browser more useful and more powerful for how people use the Web today, there may be a market for selling copies.

In the meantime though, it seems that the “free browser, split search revenue” model for the browser is going to remain the focus. It’s made the non-profit Mozilla Organization a ton of cash and seems to be keeping Flock afloat, even with barely six million users.

Though the business model may have contributed to OmniWeb’s problems, I don’t it was the sole cause of the browser’s lack of traction. I think the browser had, and continues to have, bigger problems.

The Bigger Missteps

In my experience using OmniWeb, I noticed that I would use the browser almost exclusively for the whole 30-day trial but, when it expired, I could never quite bring myself to turning over my credit card. It wasn’t the price itself that bothered me, just a difficulty justifying the purchase. Thinking back, I see why I had the problems I did.

1. Not Innovative Enough: Though Omniweb did try to bring something new to the browser, its most obvious feature, the tab sidebar, could be easily replicated using a single extension for Firefox. It’s hard to convince me to pay for something that is available for free so trivially.
2. Stability: The Omni Group does a great job building software that doesn’t leak memory or slow down computers. Omniweb is no different. However, it does seem to crash at semi-regular intervals for me. It’s not an “all the time” problem that was a deal breaker, but a few times a week it would go down completely, even Safari 4 beta seems to be more stable.
3. Poor Feature Parity: Though the Firefox extension system is something of an inelegant solution when it comes to adding needed features, some of the extensions do add very compelling elements. Though OmniWeb attempted to add some of the more popular features back in, they were poor substitutes. Ad blocking in OmniWeb, for example, was a poor substitute for AdBlockPlus.

In short, OmniWeb, as a paid browser, did not offer anything that was compelling enough to get me to pay for it. In fact, even with it being free, its unlikely that I’ll use it as my main browser.

How to Sell a Browser

As I said above, it isn’t that I think one can’t offer a browser for sale and make money, it’s that Omni Group didn’t do it well enough. This is largely likely caused by the fact that, by their own admission, they are a small company and didn’t have the resources to really build the browser they needed to. They are right to shift their focus to other, more lucrative, apps.

So how would one build a browser for sale? Here’s my suggestions:

1. Come Packing: If your browser comes with a price tag, it needs to come with some kick-ass features. It needs to be so unique and so powerful that other browsers struggle, through hacks and extensions to get something resembling it. It needs to offer unique, compelling features and be the fastest, most stable browser available. Difficult? Yes. But not impossible.
2. Target Power Users: This may seem obvious, since power users are the ones most likely to pay for a browser, but OmniWeb screwed this one up. Most of the features of OmniWeb were targeted at the ease-of-use crowd and not the “need to write four blog posts and check my Gmail” crowd.
3. Rethink the Browser: As I’ve noted before, the Web browser has not changed much in the past ten years or so. The earliest browsers look and function much like the current ones. If you’re going to charge for your browser, it needs to shake things up and not just follow the leader. Being genuinely better will mean doing something radically different that not everyone will like. However, those who do like it will like it enough to pay you money.

The bottom line is that, if you’re going to charge for a browser, it isn’t enough that it be a solid one, which OmniWeb is, it has to be clearly superior, at least to a certain group, and one that other browsers strive to be like.

Bottom Line

The question isn’t whether anyone can sell a browser and make a profit, it is whether someone will invest the time, resources and energy into making it work. It’s going to take more than what Omni Group was able to muster for its browser. Other companies that used to charge for their browser, such as Opera, have also switched to other business models for much the same reason.

But these failures are not due to a market that won’t pay, they are due to the fact that OmniWeb, like Opera, was never able to distinguish itself clearly enough from free alternatives to justify any price tag. Though many feel OmniWeb was the superior browser on Mac, very few felt it was superior enough to justify opening their wallet.

Anyone who wants to sell a browser has a tall mountain to climb and there’s no shame in failing, Opera has done great things with the free model, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be climbed and, as the browser becomes more and more the hub of all our computer activities, that opportunity will only grow.

Of course, as the free alternatives improve, the challenge of getting consumers to open their wallets will only become greater over the years.

In short, if someone’s going to do it, it is now or never…

Though the Web browser has grown in importance and changed drastically in function since the first version of Netscape Navigator ruled a fledgling Web, its interface has not changed that drastically.

Though tabbed browsing introduced an important new element, most browsers sport forward and back buttons along with stop/reload buttons, an address bar and, more recently, a search box. Most browsers today look enough like Netscape Navigator 0.91 that few would be lost if they traveled back in time.

But lately there has been an attempt to shake that up some. First came Google Chrome, introducing the idea of tabs on top, and now comes the new beta of Safari 4, which adds even more new interface changes.

Though I’m always a fan of innovation, there’s a lot about these interface changes that bug me and not just the new “bug report” button. I’m admittedly no interface designer, but there are a lot of things that I would definitely do differently…

Just to be Clear

I want to make it clear that I really do like most of what I see in Safari 4. It’s a solid browser over all, especially for Mac users. I like how fast JavaScript moves on it, I like the new “Top Sites” feature and the way it is presented, I like the use of coverflow and I like the overall stability and speed. For doing the things that a browser does, it’s great.

The problems I have are isolated with the interface and some of the changes they’ve made since version 3 and even apart from the latest Webkit nightlies. They seem to have taken a serious departure from the standards of browser interface design and, though I have to admire their daring, it seems they’ve made a few missteps.

Specifically, there are two problems that have me unnerved.

Tabs on Top… Way on Top

When Google Chrome introduced the idea of moving the tab bar to top of the browser, it was a controversial move. I, personally, don’t like tabs on top because it is an ineffeciency for me. Look at this example.

As you can see, if I want to get my cursor from where it is locate to click on a tab, I have to go over not just where the tab bar should have been (the red box) but over the bookmark toolbar and address toolbar. This not only doubles the mouse distance for this very short move, but puts my most common mouse action farther away from where my mouse usually is. Most uses, for me, of the address and/or search boxes are through a command+t to open a new tab and then using the tab key to access the needed box.

However, I can’t begrudge Safari that as Chrome did indeed start it and it does have the benefit of giving one more room in the browser pane. Where Safari went wrong was having the tab bar also double as the title bar of the Window in both Windows and OSX. This is taking a weak idea and making it downright stupid.

The title bar is a crucial part of the Window. It’s how you interact with that particular window on your desktop, including minimizing, shading, closing and moving it. Now it also has to play the role of tab bar? This means you have to be able to open, close and reorder tabs tool. That puts no fewer than 7 major functions in one very narrow strip of screen real estate.

To make this work, Safari added a new convention. In Firefox or Safari 3, if you wanted to drag a tab, you just clicked anywhere on the tab and dragged it, easy. With Safari 4, click and dragging a tab blindly grabs the whole window. Instead, you have to grab the three diagonal lines on the right hand side of the tab to move it around. It’s another convention to learn and adapt to.

Is it minor? Perhaps. It isn’t the worst thing I’ve seen (anyone tried using the latest version of Microsoft Office?), but I don’t see any reason to crowd the title bar with tab functions when it hardly saves any screen real estate at all and seems to open the door to a lot of mistakes.

The Reload Button

Real fast. On the screenshot above, find the reload button. Trick question. It isn’t in that screenshot.

The reload button is actually IN the address bar, the same way the RSS icon usually is.

it was bad enough when IE7 moved the reload button to the other side of the address bar, now Safari has to find a whole new place that no one will think to look for it. I grant that it is not a button that is commonly used and I agree with combining it with the “stop” button, if you need one you definitely don’t need the other, but it is it so rarely used that we need to play hide and seek with it?

The reload button is an important part of the browser for many people. I use it refresh statistics of keep on top of Twitter if I’m not in my Tweetdeck or to keep my email fresh if Gmail is acting funny. I don’t use it often but when I need it I don’t want to go hunting for it.

This is another classic case of change just for change’s sake. The nagivation bar has never been particularly crowded or cluttered and moving the reload button to the end of the address bar just necessitates that the address bar be longer and adds more buttons to the end of it, not actually cleaning anything up. Worse still, any gain is lost with the addition of the bug report button at the far right.

Because, you know, there’s a button I’m going to use a dozen times a day. At least I can remove it with “Customize Toolbar”.

Things that Still Suck

With that in mind, there are still a few issues I have with Safari that have been around since version 3 and beyond that I was hoping they’d fix with version 4 but, so far, no luck.

1. One Window Mode: Why is it that I am constantly closing windows when I supposedly have pop ups blocked? Gmail links open in new windows as do any links have that designation. The problem is that, with Firefox, new window secretly means new tab, as it should be. With tab browsing there is NO REASON to have two windows.
2. Tab Overflow: Tab overflow still sucks. You now get a “…” and you can click on that to get the full tab list but you have to close enough tabs to fit in your window before you can rearrange latter tabs. Firefox overflow management isn’t perfect, but a lot better.
3. Favicons: Seriously? No favicons in tabs? You have to be kidding me. It is almost impossible to tell, at a glance, what is in which tab and, when you combine that with the ways tabs get compressed it is a real mess. You don’t even have to sacrifice screen real estate, just make them double as the close buttons on hover.

These are just a few of the UI decisions with Safari that I have a beef with that haven’t been fixed. Though the new version 4 is an improvement in almost every way, it takes the existing UI problems and magnifies them all many times over.

Say Something Nice

Real fast, since my mother would not be happy that I haven’t said anything nice about the new UI, I do have a few words of praise.

Here are a few new things that I actually do appreciate:

li>Tab Highlighting: One of the problems with Safari 3 was that it was almost impossible to see what tab you’re in. All of them looked about the same. With 4 that problem is gone. The tab you’re in has a noticeably different tint to it and the tab itself is wider. A pretty slick way of handling the problem.
1. Top Site Interface: This is a bit of cheat since it is only new because the feature is new, but managing the top site feature is very slick. I ended up making mine all pushpins since my browsing history is too thin to be of much help to it (I switch browsers too often). You can ban sites from appearing, drag and drop entries and doing so automatically makes them “stickies”. Very intuitive.
2. The “Wonder Bar”: The new address bar functionality is simply superb. If you type in a domain it defaults to taking you to the root, not to some random URL on it. However, if you want said random URL, you can always arrow down. It also is smart enough to pull from both your history and your favorites. Though not quite as smart as Google Chrome’s one bar, it is pretty slick and is a huge leap forward.

Though it seems that most of the interface decisions put this new version of Safari back a ways in usability, there are at least some people on the team who aren’t asleep.

Bottom Line

Me, I like Safari. It’s not a perfect browser and the extension junkies are going to always harp on how you can turn Firefox into everything from a Web development client to a blender. I have nothing against Firefox, but it seems to me that Safari, especially 4, just moves that little bit faster, looks a little cleaner and is a little more gentle on my system. There are a few Firefox extensions I love, but, for most things, Safari gets the job done fine and a bit faster.

However, even as I use Safari 4 to type this, I feel like I’m tolerating the interface. Where once it was one of the draws to the browser, now it is a drawback. If it weren’t for the souped up page loading and JavaScript, I probably would just ignore it and go back to Firefox.

For right now though, I plan on using it. I may switch back in a few days but so far I am pretty happy. I just wish they could get these UI bugs fixed. It might make it a little more bearable to use.

Final Note: Share some of these gripes? Fix them using the commands in this video. (Note: The Reload button is NOT in my Customize Toolbar for some reason. I’ve checked repeatedly).

photo credit: phauly

When it has come to operating systems, I have always had a hard time making up my mind. Windows, for me, has been a good choice for my gaming consoles and a reasonable one for work as well. Mac has become my default office system, having used it now for nearly two years as my primary “getting things done” machine.

However, Linux has always been my secret love affair. It is a relationship that has stretched over half a decade. It began with some spare hard drive space and a desire to to see what Linux was all about. Now, it is a relationship on life support.

You see, I’ve come to notice something. After seven years of using Linux, seven different distros, countless versions and six computers, I’ve finally hit a point where I have to admit something. That every computer I’ve had both Linux and Windows XP on has worked far better with Windows than Linux.

There’s a lot of reasons for this, but none of them bode well for penguin.

A Bit of History

Real fast, I want to explain where I am coming from and why I am not some random Linux-hater. I have been using Linux for about seven years. I started in 2002 with Mandrake Linux. I was curious to see what Linux was about and wanted to see if it would work well for me. I first installed the OS in the free space of my Windows hard drive but that went afoul after a few weeks when Windows was nice enough to “fix” my hard drive by removing the partition divide and then erasing my Linux setup.

Still, it didn’t take me long to get back to Linux (I was kind of mad at Windows at this point). When I bought a new system a few months later, I wiped the hard drive and made my former machine Linux-only, giving the new computer to my significant other. I had my Linux comp and, if I wanted to use Windows to play a game I could borrow hers.

Ever since then, I’ve had a constant relationship with Linux. At no point between then and now have I not owned at least one machine with Linux. In the time that’s passed, I’ve had Linux on four different desktops and two laptops. I put it on old machines, I put it on new ones.

I’ve also tried a wide variety of distros too. I started with Mandrake, but I’ve also tried Red Hat, Xandros (both desktop and Eee PC version), Debian, PCLinuxOS, gOS and, of course, four different flavors Ubuntu (Ubuntu, Kubntu, Xubuntu and Easy Peasy).

Though this relationship has been constant and exciting, it’s also been a love/hate one. On systems where I was dual-booting with Windows, it was always a struggle to resist the urge to boot back into Windows. Between problems with the OS, missing programs and inelegant solutions to common problems, Linux always felt like a sacrifice, something that I was giving up to appease the open source Gods.

To quickly explain why, I’m going to break it down into three parts.

1. Major Issues

I was aware that, especially early on, that Linux was an OS for “tinkerers”. I liked playing with computers and learning, so I didn’t mind and even relished some of the fiddling, but there comes a point where I want to get down to work and Linux, at times, seemed dead set against that idea.

Consider the following things that happened to me over the years:

Could any of these things happen on Windows or Mac? Sure. Some people have had similar or worse problems with both. But here’s the deal. Neither have happened to me and no one I know has spent a Saturday with a can of compressed air trying to keep a CPU cool so they can fiddle with Windows options.

Either I have the worst possible luck with Linux, am doing something so obviously wrong that I should hurt myself (like flipping the magic “make Linux suck” switch) or something is wrong.

2. General Laggardness

One of the sales pitches for Linux is that it is supposed to bring old systems back to life, run better on old hardware and move faster, more reliably than Windows.

Bull.

I have to give Linux its credit. It doesn’t hang up, hour glass, pinwheel or do any of the things you see from time to time on Windows or Mac, instead though, every action feels slow. Every time I’ve put Linux on a system that had Windows previously (or even still does) it has moved slower. Every click felt less responsive, every keyboard press a little more delayed. Any gain I got by not being hourglassed every hour was lost by the million or so micro-delays throughout the day.

Applications, for me, load slower. Pages come up with less speed. Clicks take a split-second to respond and my typing often gets more than a bit ahead of the screen. I don’t have these issues with Windows so how is Linux making things faster?

The worst (for Linux) is my current dual boot machine. Here we have a true apples-to-apples comparison as Windows and Linux both run on the same hardware, each have their separate hard drive (of the same size/kind) and I can trivially reboot between the two and try each out in similar situations. Linux boots faster and is ready to work a bit more quickly, but once Windows XP gets up fully, it starts running laps around the penguin.

It’s sad, but entirely true in my experience.

3. App Backwards

Finally, though most major applications have decent Linux counterparts (Firefox is on Linux, OpenOffice is pretty good, etc.) there are some apps that have nothing. What if you want a version of Windows Live Writer or Ecto for Linux? Last time I checked you were out of luck. Most Linux blog editors are like using crayons to do high art.

Even the apps that do seem to have Linux ports don’t seem to work as well in Linux. The last time I tried playing online games on Kongregate in Linux I nearly threw my monitor. Flash, despite being almost almost version-equal, runs like garbage.

The bottom line is that there is almost always some sacrifice when switching to Linux. There is some program that you’re going to have to give up, one that won’t work nearly as well or some other problem that you don’t have to put up with on Windows or Mac.

Excuses, Excuses

Linux supporters and developers are quick to point out that the problems I describe are pretty well-known and are also not their fault. They are quick to blame hardware manufacturers for not release adequate specs and open source drivers. They say they could get more speed and better effeciency if hardware manufacturers would just work with them.

I am almost certain that is true, but that isn’t a problem Windows has. Microsoft is powerful enough to strong arm the hardware companies into doing their bidding. Mac, on the other hand, just controls which hardware they allow their OS to run on, eliminating the problem completely.

Is it fair? No. But consumers don’t care about fair, they want a system that works. Consumers don’t like “evil” and if all else is equal they’ll choose one that is “good”. But if given a choice between an evil system that works and a good one with flaws, they’ll choose the evil one almost every time.

The reason is that open source, though a great buzzword, is no a feature. It doesn’t, by itself, make the computer go faster, crash less or be more productive. Better programming and design do those things. When open source has been able to make better programs, as with Firefox, users have adopted it. When it hasn’t, as with desktop Linux, they won’t.

The major benefit of open source favors programmers and hardcore tinkerers. People who want to buy a CPU and do work on it don’t to choose new windows managers nor do they want to be forced to make such a choice. A computer, to them, should be a like a toaster, fast, efficient, rarely breaking and getting its job done. Free as in freedom, doesn’t matter and free as in free beer only goes so far.

If there is such a serious issue with hardware drivers and support from 3rd parties, and I believe that there is, then perhaps we need fewer Linux-heads coding the kernel and more pressing the flesh and working with these companies. Maybe we need more lawyers working to combat Microsoft’s behavior and maybe we need businessmen bringing in companies to the fold.

A lot more than code goes into making a great OS. Microsoft and Apple both have business partnerships, legal teams and countless other non-programmers helping to build every next OS. Linux can not grow on programmers and fanboys alone.

Yet, it seems like that is exactly what they are trying to do.

The Good News

In all of this I have discovered something. Going back to the “controlling the hardware” issue, in cases where Linux is built around a specific computer, it does seem to work very well. Take my review of Easy Peasy. Though others on different versions of the Eee have had some serious problems, as indicated by the comments, for my laptop it worked swimmingly. I’m sure that, if I installed XP on the same machine, I would be in for a world of frustration.

The Eee PC is an excellent example of what happens when manufacturers use Linux well. They built a laptop around Linux, it works out of the box and it does what it is supposed to do. End of story. Linux CAN work and work very well but it takes more than blindly slapping CDs into drives and rebooting.

Rather than encouraging end users and the uninitiated to download and burn Linux distros, thus putting them on PCs built with Windows in mind, perhaps we should be focusing on getting manufacturers to sell Linux. There has been a lot of push on that front and some mixed success, but it makes more sense than letting install problems, broken drivers and slower computers sour potential customers on Linux before they’ve had the chance to really see it work.

Conclusions

In the end, what Linux needs may not be a kick in the rear, but a change in strategy. I may be done installing Linux on computers that weren’t built with Linux in mind, but that doesn’t mean I won’t buy a Linux desktop if the price is right and my needs are met.

As long as Mac and Windows get to cheat and have assurances the hardware they’re on will work great for them, Linux will always look like a slow, problem-riddled OS. Sure, the open source nature of it may convince the die hard, but the people who are just punching a clock online don’t care enough to make the needed sacrifices.

I know that this is going to get me some hatemail and possibly worse, but at some point I have to face up to reality. Every computer I’ve put Linux on ran better with XP. It may not be Linux’s fault, but the fact remains.

Until that fact changes, Linux will remain the third place desktop OS by a longshot.

You see, Twitter has a pretty strange definition for what constitutes a reply. It is perfectly possible to type @username and not have Twitter realize that you’re talking to that person. If they’re checking on the Web site or a weak Twitter client, they might never see your message.

The “bug” is that Twitter only tracks replies if the message BEGINS with the @reply. So unless the “@” is the first character in the tweet and the username is the first one replied to, Twitter doesn’t see it as a reply.

This set up defies both the way we communicate as human beings and how people use Twitter. That, in turn, has led to some pretty inelegant solutions to get around the problem.

An Example Conversation

Let’s say I’m in a room talking with three other people. We have my wife, Crystal, her friend Liz and my neighbor Tony (why the four of us would be talking could be the subject of many “walked into a bar” jokes). The four of us are all talking at the same time but not necessarily to everyone in the group, we are just in each others presence.

At one point I grab Crystal and say “Crystal, what do you think of my shoes?”

That, in Twitter, would equal this: “@Crystal What do you think of my shoes?” This, in turn, works pretty well, Crystal gets it as an @reply and all works as planned.

But what if I want to ask the question to her and Liz: “Crystal and Liz, what do you think of my shoes?”

Translated into Twitter that would be “@Crystal @Liz What do you think of my shoes?”

This is where the problem comes in. Crystal gets the @reply but Liz doesn’t, even though the question was to both of them. However, as far as Twitter knows, I wasn’t asking Liz anything, but merely referencing her. This would be roughly the same as saying “Crystal, what do you think Liz thinks of my shoes?” which is not what I said at all.

So let’s change the question again, I’m asking Crystal and Liz again, but this time about Tony’s shoes. “Crystal and Liz, what do you think about Tony’s shoes?”

Translated into Twitter that would be “@Crystal @Liz What do you think about @Tony shoes?”

Once again, Crystal gets the @reply, Liz doesn’t, though the question was to her as well and @Tony doesn’t get it either, which is debatable as it wasn’t a question to him, though I think he might have a legitimate interest in the response.

Clearly this system isn’t working. Even when you have just four people talking the system breaks totally down. Never mind what happens when you have millions. There has to be a better way.

Referencing vs. Replying

The problem is simple, for Twitter, if a tweet begins with @username, then it is a reply. If it has the @username anywhere else, it merely references them. To view all of the actual replies you get, you have to either subscribed to a twitter search for @username or use a Twitter client such as Tweetdeck or Twhirl that has worked around that issue and reports all @ mentions as replies.

But even with this hack-ish solution, it is still a broken system, at least when compared to what Twitter thinks it should mean. It either all-on or all-off. Either I reply to everyone, even those that I just want to reference, or I only reply to the first person on the list. There needs to be a solution.

What we need is a way to actually distinguish between the people we are talking to and those we are talking about. Since we already have a hashtag system, why not use a variation of that to distinguish when we are talking about people?

The simplest solution would be to use #username to say when we are talking about someone. However, that will run into problems as there are many Twitter users with names similar to existing hashtags. So, if you had a pretty common username, it wouldn’t work.

Then we have two options, one would be to use another symbol, such as an “&” or “*”. The other would be to use the hash with the @ system. For example, #@username.

The former system would require some re-learning on the part of Twitter users and the latter one would eat up a precious character each time one wanted to do it.

But then comes the hard question. How often do we really reference someone without wanting them to see it? Most of the time it is when we are encouraging others to follow another person or contact them. Is it terrible that they would know about those conversations?

If we assume that, then the simplest solution is to go back to the beginning and just have Twitter acknowledge all uses of the @ symbol as an @reply and then everyone carry on as is. The worst that will happen is that some people will occasionally get replies that weren’t really to them, but about them, and that they probably wanted to see anyway.

Going back to my final example, “@Crystal @Liz What do you think about @Tony shoes?” I think it’s reasonable to say that Tony would be very interested in that tweet (depending on how much he cared about his shoes) and even though it wasn’t actually to him, he would want to see it. As for me, Crystal and Liz, I don’t think any of us should be offended that he did. Not unless we’re talking about him behind his back…

However, that’s what direct messages are for…

Bottom Line

If Twitter is to be our new method of online conversation, it isn’t going to become that by breaking the established rules of dialog. Twitter needs to find ways to adapt the way we talk natural to its 140 character world, not try to redefine everything.

This is something that would, theoretically, be a very simple fix for Twitter to implement and it remains unclear why they have failed to do so. As such, retweets, @replies to more than one person and incorrectly formatted @replies never reach their destination without some hacking.

It’s a simple fix, the question is whether Twitter will actually admit it was wrong in this area…

Now I am the first to admit that blog commenting right now sucks. When a company like CoComment, which does a mediocre job at best, can earn a living just by tracking and seeking updates on the comments you post across the Web, there is a serious problem. Users have a lot of reasons to prefer centralized commenting tools as having two or three commenting accounts beats checking dozens of sites for updates.

But what about bloggers? What do we get out of the deal? Though I’ve kept Disqus here on IS for some time, on PT I’ve been bouncing around from comment solution to comment solution trying to figure out what is best for my blog. I’ve tried nearly every service out there and the only conclusion I’ve reached is that no one, repeat no one, really wants my comments.

That is, at least not bad enough to create a truly compelling service…

Good People, Bad Products

Before I begin the rant, I want to take a moment and say that I’ve had interactions with people at all of these services. Every time I have talked with someone at Intense Debate, Disqus and JS-Kit, it has been a wonderful experience. They have very helpful people on their teams that bend over backwards for their customers. It’s great customer service.

The problem is that, despite all of this wonderful service, the products inevitably fall flat. It’s like having a five-star waiter serve you McDonald’s. No matter how much you dress it up, no matter how enthusiastic your staff and hardcore fans are, it’s still just ground beef.

What are my gripes? Well, let’s take the services one at a time. Each has their own unique pattern of fail.

Poor Disqus. Of all the three I’m mentioning, they seem to be the best right now. Even though Automattic purchased Intense Debate, Disqus manages to both provide the best features and continuously out-innovate everyone else. The problem is that they are victims of their own success. They’ve been bit by the spam bug, hard.

Even though this blog doesn’t get anywhere near the amount of comments of PT or other sites I work for, it gets many times the comment spam and most it is traced back to Disqus’ inability to filter. Though they’ve promised to deal with these issues, there has been a spam problem for a very long time. It has just merely ramped up in the recent weeks.

The biggest gripe is that Disqus will often email you even when it has caught a spam comment, turning comment spam into email spam. Smooth.

ID has managed to keep the comment spam issue under control, but has managed to place head squarely up ass when it comes to customer wishes. Facebook Connect usability is by far the most requested feature on their Get Satisfaction forum, getting more than 2 times the number of comments than any other suggestion. So what do they do? They refuse to make it a priority and instead say that it is “currently not on our dev list.”

Never mind that Disqus, JS-Kit and even standalone WordPress (with plugins) have this ability. ID is now dead last in terms of features (if you value Facebook Connect) and seems content to stay there. Way to listen to your customers…

I could never really get JS-Kit to work right on my site so I can’t offer any good gripes. Importing the old comments required me to email the entire WordPress XML file to them, which in turn necessitated putting it on a hidden URL since it was too big to attach, and the commenting system, once set up, didn’t seem to work right.

Where ID and Disqus are both real “set and forget” it seems JS-Kit takes a lot of work to make it look and feel right. That’s not a bad thing, but the instructions aren’t clear and the speed bumps in getting set up made me wary about investing too much time in the service.

I installed it, set it up, found that the comments did not work anywhere near as nicely as I wanted (though on other JS-Kit blogs it does look better) and turned it off almost immediately. I appreciate the help that they gave me, but it was going to clearly be a long road and I wasn’t ready for it right then. Plus it seems they’ve had some reliability issues lately.

What I Want

I don’t think I’m a hard person to please, but I do have seven things I want from whoever hosts my comments. Some of these are “solved” problems, but others are features no one is offering:

1. Easy Setup: I should be able to install the plugin, provide my login information and have the system up and running with just some minor tweaking.
2. Attractive User Experience: The experience, from the commenter’s perspective, should be very attractive and almost seamless. Bonus points for making me like looking at the admin panel as well.
3. Good Spam Filtering: Give me good spam filtering, hold the CAPTCHAs. I won’t think less of you if you use Akismet. I’ll think you’re smart.
4. Import & Syncrhonization: Your service should import my existing comments and then synchronize everything with my WordPress database. If your company goes under tomorrow, I don’t want to miss a beat.
5. That Includes Replies: Remember, since 2.7 WordPress supports comment replies, I expect those to be imported and maintained. No reason my comments should become unthreaded when I switch systems.
6. Facebook/OpenID Integration: Let me use Facebook Connect to post a comment. This lets my comment form reach a whole new audience and helps both encourage feedback and promotion of the site. Likewise, show some love for OpenID and other login systems.
7. Video/Audio Comments: Granted, no one has actually left a video or audio comment on one of my sites, but it’s a nice feature to have and there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing more of this in the future.

If you can do those seven things, keep your service reasonably reliable/fast and provide some good customer service, I’ll probably jump ship.

I’m not that hard to please, I just want it all.

Bottom Line

Right now I’m sticking with Disqus. I’m sure my readers on PT are tired of the repeat changes and, since IS is already on Disqus it seems like a good place to keep it for now. Though I hope they can improve their spam filtering, at least it has most of the features I need and good reliability.

I don’t know if I’d call this an “endorsement” of Disqus, but it is at least the service I have the least to gripe about.

But be warned, once WordPress gets Facebook integration built in or the plugins for it become a little bit less flaky, I’ll likely be moving back to my own comment system. That is, unless Disqus (or someone else) can really WOW me before that happens…

First, it supposedly features a (relatively) new, ultra-advanced 3D technology that works better than the old red/blue glasses kind. Second, it is the first slasher film to make it into the theaters in some time (even if it is a remake).

Sure, we’ve had our dose of thrillers, chillers and torture porn, but we’ve lacked a good old fashioned slasher and the latest releases of the major slasher franchises have only reminded us how low the genre can go.

So how was the movie? Well, I’m going to break it apart into its two elements and discuss them individually before I try and bring it all together. Hopefully, by the end of it all, we’ll have some idea where the movie stands and whether anyone else should bother seeing it.

The 3D Effect

The Real D technology that My Bloody Valentine 3D used has actually been used on a bunch of other films before. According to Wikipedia, which also has a write up on how it works, Chicken Little was the first movie to use it. If you haven’t heard of or seen a Real D movie, it’s probably because you’re over the age of 12. All of the movies to this point were either animated kid-friendly movies or concert films. My Bloody Valentine 3D was the first R-rated film to use the technology and I would argue the first “serious” movie to try it out and the first to have a large number of 3D theaters to see it in (most have had only a limited 3D release).

My first gripe was with finding a theater close by to see the 3D version. Though every theater was playing the film, none in the New Orleans area seemed to have the 3D version available. Instead, my wife and I had to make the forty-minute drive to Slidell to see it through the 3D glasses.

Regarding the glasses themselves, as I said earlier, they don’t use the standard red/blue lenses. Instead, they look a lot like very lightly tinted, highly unfashionable glasses. If you put them on during the daylight, they make things a little bit darker, but you can still see clearly. However, do read the packaging, it does warn you that they are not meant to be used as sunglasses (not that anyone would want to be seen in public wearing these things).

That being said, the technology was actually very impressive at times. Though we may have sat a little bit too close to the screen (we were about eight rows back), we got the effect nicely and the movie, for the most part, made great use of it. Lots of pickaxes, shotguns and treelimbs protruding from the screen as well as blood spatter, jawbones and other things flying at the audience. The effect wasn’t flawless, but it wasn’t bad either.

The problem with the effect is that they had to use it throughout the entire movie. This meant every scene was 3D to some degree, even when actors were just standing around talking. While that isn’t terrible and does add some depth to those scenes, if your eyes wondered of the focus point of the scene, the screen was blurry. You are almost forced to focus on the center of attention the entire movie or risk getting serious headaches.

In the end, though the effect wasn’t as solid as the ones you’ll see at the 3D cinemas in Disney World, which are simply unreal, it was pretty good and, at times, very convincing.

The Movie

Slashers have to be graded on a different curve than other films. They don’t win Oscars, they inspire people to do great things (let’s hope not at least) and they don’t make people think. Like slapstick comedies, kung-fu movies and action flicks, they’re goal is to keep you entertained for the length of the movie and let you free into the wild.

If we use that scale, MBV3D did a tolerable job. Everything about the film was mediocre, if not outright generic.

The film centers around a small mining community that, ten years ago, was the scene of a vicious murder spree following a mine collapse. Fast forward to the modern day, the killer appears to have returned (magically I suppose) and, coincidentally, one of the people that escaped the first rampage has returned to sell the very mine that started it all.

Yes, the plot is pretty stupid, but it’s par for the course on slasher films. It made sense, gave us a reason to have all of these characters together and… that was about it. The acting, likewise, was only lukewarm. No performances stood out though no one really stunk up the screen either. Once again, par for the course in slasher films, if not a bit ahead of other recent stabs at the genre.

The movie was sufficiently violent and gory but nothing really stood out. It had all of the elements of a standard slasher flick, murderer on a rampage, lots of blame, some creative deaths, a gratuitous nude scene (I’ve never understood this desire to mix softcore pornography with ultra-violence) and tons of blood.

The greatest accomplishment of the flick was avoiding some of the more laughable cliches in the genre. It breaks some of the “Scream” rules but yet manages to keep it generic enough so that you won’t feel out of place watching it.

It’s biggest problem though, is the one it brings on itself. The writers decided that they wanted it to be a bit of a “whodunnit” film too, something that has been a part of a few other slashers with mixed success. Unfortunately, MBV3D pulls it off with all of the grace and elegance of a Ford Pinto crashing through an orphanage while on fire.

If you don’t predict the ending of this movie it is either because A) You’re a moron or B) You did predict it but discarded the correct answer thinking that answer was too obvious.

In short, the movie is a stock slasher film and nothing more. At its best it is a little above average and, at its worse, it’s a little below. Compared to other recent movies like Black Christmas, it’s a good film, but it isn’t going to take a place among the classics.

Bringing Them Together

The final question is whether the 3D part actually helped the movie. I have to say that I don’t know. The pickaxes flying through the screen and other effects were cool, but they didn’t add much to the movie. The 3D elements were one of the most interesting parts of the film and I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much without them.

That being said, the difference is relatively minor in most areas and I’m not sure I can justify both the increased cost (tickets were 10 dollars each) and time to see it in 3D. I’m glad that I did, so that way I’ll know I didn’t miss anything, but I still feel as if it was a dubious trade.

The simple truth is that the 3D effects didn’t really add much to the movie, though they did add some. It gives you something to look at during the short down periods and adds an interesting effect to the action sequences but it doesn’t make a mediocre movie a great one.

In the end, it is a gimmick. Is the movie better with it than without it? Sure. But how much so is highly debatable.

Bottom Line

I don’t think MBV3D is going to take a seat among the slasher greats. Though it is one of the better ones to come out since the Scream trilogy attempted to can the entire genre, we’ve got a long way to go before we have another idea worthy of a real franchise (and subsequent murder by sequels).

Though the 3D effects do add some entertainment to the movie, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a lukewarm film, even in a genre that has never aimed to be more than mediocre.

If you’re in the mood for a slasher film MBV3D will fill the need nicely and, if you can see it in 3D reasonably easily, do so. If you’re not a slasher fan or want to see a truly good movie, then I would steer clear.

If I am forced to give it a numeric score, I would give it a 5/10 for the 2D version and a weak 6/10 for the 3D.

PC World is a magazine I have a lot of respect for. They do a lot of great work in the field of reviewing computer products. But I noticed something when I looked at the bottom of the chart. Trend Micro got the lowest score on the list and their “Bottom Line” review reads as follows:

“Trend Micro’s latest suite fails at the most basic task of detecting and blocking malicious software. Not recommended.”

Ouch, seems pretty scathing to me. But then look at the score. It’s a 74/100. On a regular grading scale that would be a middle “C”. On a 1-10 system it would be a 7.5, well above an “average” of 5.

How the Hell do you say something “fails at the most basic task” and then give it an average or even good score? That makes no sense. The full review isn’t much more kind saying that:

“Trend Micro’s suite has some good points, but there’s no getting around the fact that Internet Security Pro 2009 fails at detecting malicious software, and therefore fails as a security program. We cannot recommend buying it.”

Clearly something is wrong with review scores when a 74 is a total failure of a program. It’s time we woke up a little bit and realized that review scores on the Web are garbage and reliance on them is dangerous, especially when dealing with security software.

However, this isn’t a new problem, it’s been going on for quite some time.

A Bit of History

I’m not the first to have noticed this strange problem. About two years ago, Destructoid made a similar observation as it relates to video games and lamented how many assume anything under a “5″ might as well be a “1″.

Our brains have been trained to assume that a review of a five is a slam, an insult. Even though, mathematically, it should be the most average, non-offensive of the reviews possible. If I give a game/application/movie/product/etc a review of a 5/10, what I should be saying is that it is mediocre, middle of the pack but what I am really saying, at least in most people’s minds, is that it stinks, it’s lousy.

This is part of the reason why RottenTomatoes, according to Destructoid, had to raise their “fresh” rating threshold on video games from 60% to 70%, because too many bad games were getting highly reviewed.

It’s obvious that online reviews are skewed toward the positive, the likely exception being Web hosting (have you SEEN those reviews?), but the real question is why?

Some Theories

As a person who regularly does reviews, I lament and loathe having to give a numerical score. First, nothing is more frustrating than having to condense a 1000 word review into a single digit. Second, I find myself giving average scores with a very high level of frequency. For example, on Kongregate, I find myself giving a review of 3/5 about half of the time with 2s and 4s making up most of the rest (a slight lean to 4 though as I do tend to play games that are already highly reviewed).

So, rather than play the “scoring” game, I usually skip such simplified reviewing. However, the few times I have done so I have noticed a few things.

1. It is Easy to Find Something You Like: Very few things are so bad that you can’t find at least one thing that you like. As humans, when thinking back on something (and all reviews really are reflections) it’s easier to think about the good than the bad. As such, even when we didn’t like something, we don’t want to discredit the good that it did bring.
2. Positive Reviews Get More Attention: If you want to get a lot of links and traffic to your post, you do much better with positive reviews. Sure, snarky over-the-top negative reviews get a lot of attention as well, but positive reviews that make people want to try the product rated generate the most attention overall. Mediocre reviews, no matter how honest, get looked over.
3. We Self-Adjust: Subconsciously, we all know that online reviews are skewed so we tend to skew our own to match. Whether it is an attempt to make sure we are not misunderstood or just mimicking what we see elsewhere, we do it. It’s that simple and it creates the cycle of destruction that we see.

However, why we are where we are is not important. What is more of an urgent matter is what do we do about it? After all, if we can’t stop the spiraling upward reviews, soon we’ll have nowhere higher to go up.

Fixing the Problem

When it comes to dealing with this issue, there are three solutions that I see.:

1. Forgo Any Kind of Rating: This one is simple, you write or produce your review, say what’s good and what’s bad and then leave it there. It’s a system adopted by Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame and works well for many products. The only people that are hurt are those that skim reviews looking for the final verdict. But there’s nothing stopping you from creating a short “Conclusions” section, like I seem to do on every stupid thing I write…
2. Use Non-Numeric Ratings: The whole numeric rating system doesn’t make a great deal of sense anyway. What am I supposed to do with this information? If a product has below a five should I forget it? Five to seven get it on sale? Seven to nine buy it? Nine to ten step over my own mother to get it? Why not do like Screwattacks VGR series and make a real suggestion, they condense every review to “F’ It”, “Rent it” or “Buy It”. That’s useful information. Sure, with no standard system you can’t take an average, but the averages we have today are broken so that’s no real loss.
3. Reset the Scale: Do a manual reboot of the system and check and make sure that reviews are centered on the actual middle of the range that is chosen. It’s not easy and it will make comparisons with old reviews impossible, but it’s necessary from time to time to beat the scores back down before they make like Spinal Tap and take it to 11.

Which of these will work? Probably none. No one seems really convinced that this is a problem worth talking about, but if we continue this current pace, in a few years, anything below an eight will be deemed “bad”. At that point, all credibility will have gone out the window…

Conclusions

The bottom line is this, review scores are hopelessly inflated for most products on the Web and have reached a point where they are meaningless. If you want to know if a product rocks or sucks, the best thing you can do is actually read the review. Most people will tell you even if their scores don’t.

Sure, reading something can be hard when you have a pretty, shiny, simple score to look at, but it really is necessary. Even if the scale is fair, there’s no way to condense a complicated opinion to just a single numerical value.

Trust me, I’ve tried.

The reviewer took the time to write out his or her thoughts and experiences, the least we can do is take the few minutes required to read it.

It at least beats blindly complaining about how wrong the score was.

I love you guys, I really do. Your search is top notch, your Gmail/Google Apps is a killer product and even you Google Reader is the best RSS reader I’ve found, online or off. You guys have a knack for producing exciting, reliable products that change the way we use information.

However, I do have one tiny favor to ask you. One small, minuscule request. Can you please stop buying up companies of products that I use? If so, that would be great. Because I’m really getting tired of you screwing up the things that were going along great without you.

If you have any questions about this request, I politely direct you to the article below. It will answer many of your queries and give my reasons for thinking that the Web would be better off if you kept your pocketbook a little closer to your chest.

The Google Problem

Realistically speaking Google has six products that are widely hailed as good and only two where you are dominant. They are.

1. Google Search
2. Google Ads (Adsense/Adwords)
3. Gmail
4. Google Docs
5. Google Reader
6. Google Maps

The problem is that all of these, with the exception of Google Docs, were developed in house for the most part (some did have add ons and extensions that came from other companies). Google made them, tailored them, made sure they were what the people wanted and put them out there. From day one, they were Google’s babies.

Sure, Google has had a few stinkers, Google Answers, Google Notebook, Lively, etc. but they’ve always been able to pull the gems out of their own work.

Unfortunately, when it comes to other people’s products, the ones that they buy, Google seems to do a great job snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Products that were fine and good before they came under the Google banner suddenly start stinking.

Though some products have done fine, YouTube being an example, it is usually because Google keeps them under a separate banner and just runs them as a silent overlord. You get the revenue, they get to keep on as they were before.

Whenever Google tries to “integrate” a product into their fold, it seems that disaster always follows.

A History of Misfires

Before the pod people chase me down and kill me for not joining the Google cult, let’s take a look at a few examples through Google’s history.

1. Dodgeball: Dodgeball was a semi-promising social networking service that used text messaging. Founded in 2000, it was bought by Google in 2005. Two years later, the founders quit in disgust. In a few months, the service will be closed for good.
2. FeedBurner: In 2007, FeedBurner, a very popular feed tracking and serving service, was acquired by Google. Initially the purchase was hailed as Google “liberated” the pro stats program, making it available for free to all. Integration came slow, but when it started within the past few months, almost immediately reliability issues were noticed.
3. Jaiku: Jaiku was a promising microblogging service that was considered a competitor for Twitter. Though it lagged behind Twitter in users, it had an additional features and greater reliability. It seemed poised to make a solid challenge. Google acquired Jaiku in the latter part of 2007 and promptly sat on it, closing it off to sign ups and then eventually deciding to kill it as a public-facing project.

Of course, these are just the obvious flame outs and misfires. This doesn’t even look at Google’s long history of acquiring competitors just to either A) Gain their employees or B) Put down the competition.

Consider this, according to Wikipedia (the source of all truth on the Web), Google has purchased no fewer than four companies that had their products go into Google Docs (or spreadsheets). This includes two different companies that made online presentation software, one word processor and one spreadsheet.

Though Google Docs is a solid product offering, I even listed it as such, did four companies really have to die to make it happen? The problem is that Google recruits talent like a pirate “recruits” treasure. It boards the ship, takes it over, moves the good stuff over to their boat and sinks the old one.

I wouldn’t mind that so much if Google would retain the sense of innovation and creativity that brought these companies to their attention. However, far too often, Google simply buys the companies, hires the people, kills the product or lets it rot in some kind of purgatory.

It isn’t fair to the people that worked to develop the product and it certainly isn’t fair to the people who used and relied on it. Just think of what these four companies could have done if they were still in business and independent today.

Conclusions

In the future, I’m making it my policy to, if I am using a service that Google is acquiring, to get the Hell off of there before it’s too late. If I had left FeedBurner when they first announced the acquisition, I would have had a clear path to leave. Now, it’s not so certain.

I’ll continue to love Google’s native products as well as any acquired ones that remain separate from Google. But for those that Google tries to “integrate” in with its core offerings, I’m likely going to have to say goodbye until the new product proves to be stable and not shut down.

Google has an ugly habit of buying up good Web services and either running them into the ground or integrating them in such a way that the sum of the parts is greater than the new “whole” produced. Fortunately though, it seems Google has slowed down is acquisitions and it might be to the benefit of the Web that Google is feeling the economic pinch. Small, agile companies will be able to grow their ideas without being bought out blindly by the big G.

Though there is certainly nothing wrong with buying up smaller companies and I certainly don’t wish to equate Google with the Microsoft of the 90s, it is clear that not all of Google’s buys have been in the best interest of the Web.

It is most likely time for us to accept that.