Entries for Michael Griffiths

Vista's Natural Language Search is Sloooow [Vista's Natural Language Search is Sloooow]

Michael Griffiths — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:14:01 GMT

A few months ago - in May - I turned on Natural Language Search in Vista.

I thought it was a good idea.

I didn't notice anything initially, just a failure to work very well when I tried things like "all documents created yesterday."

In June, I installed Windows Search 4.0. I noticed no speed up; if anything, the speed was terrible.

Today, once again waiting for the start menu search to respond after 10 seconds, I finally had enough and set out to make search faster. Needless to say, the first thing I did was go and restore defaults.

Which lead me to disable Natural Language Search.

Which lead to Vista's search response time going from 10+ seconds to under 1 second.

I must conclude that the Natural Language Search option is really bloody slow.

Seriously, what kind of parsing is Windows doing? I can think of a few things I'd like it to do - entity extraction in search string matched to entities extracted from documents, common language components, e.g. support for "all," "only", etc - but how on earth does that take 10 to 15 seconds?

Anyone else get the same speed decrease when Natural Language Search is enabled?

in reply to Vista's Natural Language Search is Sloooow

Why can't I fullscreen the NBC Olympics Silverlight Player? [Why can't I fullscreen the NBC Olympics Silverlight Player?]

Michael Griffiths — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:16:58 GMT

NBC's Enhanced Silverlight video player for the Olympics, developed by Schematic, happens to be very nice (whereas the ordinary one is simply ordinary).

The Picture-in-Picture is cool, and allows you to keep an eye on "live" events while watching older videos. The video browser - by popularity, sport, etc - is also well done.

However, I am unable to fullscreen the video player. This rather reduces the quality of the experience for me.

I can only imagine that this limitation is built-in, as every other Silverlight video player I have ever encountered allowed easy fullscreening. Is there some reason for this?

in reply to Why can't I fullscreen the NBC Olympics Silverlight Player?

IE7: Speed & Addins [IE7: Speed & Addins]

Michael Griffiths — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:34:36 GMT

I went in and disabled all the non-Microsoft and nonessential addins that load without permission. Most of them weren't currently loaded.

I had a substantial speed increase in page loading time.

Particularly with Hotmail, which went from being "meh" fast to being practically faster to bring up than Gmail.

So:

1) Is there a bloody better way to manage addins in IE than the terrible dialogue the Internet Options?
2) Why is there such a tremendous speed increase from disabling a bunch of ActiveX controls (none where BHOs)? Sure, I can speculate as to why, but it seems idiotic - IE would slow down the more websites (and stupid "addins) you installed.

in reply to IE7: Speed & Addins

Minor problems [Minor problems]

Michael Griffiths — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 00:38:06 GMT

1) Where is the Quote Button?
2) You need some visual feedback to indicate that thread replies are loading. Initial page loads fast (good), then a 3-5 second wait wondering where the replies are. Not good.
3) Quote design doesn't take advantage of specifying the author - as in quote user="". Put that outside the quoted text, smaller font. Make it essentially a caption (the ability to embed hyperlinks in there is very useful).
4) Changing from page 1 to 2 keeps your current page position... so you end up at the bottom of the page (er).
5) List thread design takes a lot of vertical space, underuses horizontal space, etc.
6) The profile images don't do jack-all. Should be a link to the profile, at the least.
7) The "CHANNEL 9" font in the header is bloody hard to read.

in reply to Minor problems

Microsoft: Fails at Web Design with Live Earth [Microsoft: Fails at Web Design with Live Earth]

Michael Griffiths — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 23:52:04 GMT

Microsoft - or, specifically, MSN - seem to have taken a leap backwards into the Dark Ages for their exclusive coverage of Live Earth.

If you've looked at the main site for Live Earth; it's confusing, busy, ugly, and hard to navigate.

1) The header - all useless logos, brands, and so on - is 187 pixels. That's almost 20% of my entire screen.
2) There isn't a link to the main schedule (here) on the main page. You either have to (1) go into the About Page and then click on the entirely unintuitive "Live Earth Fact Sheet" which is in tiny, 12 pt Tahoma at the bottom of the "Press Releases and Fact Sheets" page. Or (2) you can just fo to MSN.com, where they have a slightly more obvious link to "Full Schedule for Live Earth."
3) There's a lot of advertising masquerading as "information." It's hard to discern what's real and what ...isn't.
4) You have to go to an entirely different site to watch the concerts. Wow. I mean, wow.
5) That site sucks, too. It has a completely different design from MSN Video or MSN Soapbox. It's like an internet video player from 4 years ago.
6) It's in Flash. OK, but... you can't double click to get full screen. Oh, wait, there's an icon to full screen.... no! In fact, it doesn't full screen! It just expands to the size of the 800x600px box that masquerades as the entire page! But no... you can full screen. If you right-click. And it's just does a YouTube-expand-to-browser-window. Yeah, that's cinematic.
7) It's in a what, 250x400px itty-bitty window unless you full screen? Yeah, nice.
8) The video site doesn't even work in anything other than Internet Explorer. Oooh, web-friendly! You can "sort-of"watch the videos in Firefox, but only by coutry. WTF? And it's using the QuickTime plugin? Excuse me? Is this just my installation of QuickTime or is Microsoft defaulting to using Quicktime in Firefox, even when I have (1) Flash and (2) Windows Media Player plugins installed? Huh?

And I can't say I've been impressed by the stability of the stream.

So we have:

I. A bad video experience in IE.
II. A worse (god forbid) experience in every other web browser.

Why didn't they just use the video.msn.com site/tech for this? I mean, that works in Firefox with WMP. And it looks nicer (I wasn't sure that was possible).

Anyone else similarly disgusted?

in reply to Microsoft: Fails at Web Design with Live Earth

The "MacDailyNews Take" [The "MacDailyNews Take"]

Michael Griffiths — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:48:37 GMT

MacDailyNews:Companies Need to Get Ready for the iPhone Onslaught wrote:
MacDailyNews Take: The IT guys are in for a rude awakening and the iPhone is only the beginning. They will have to accommodate the iPhone. Too many important employees will demand it and IT won't be able to stem the tide. The fact is that business people will decide which device they want to carry and their businesses will adapt to it. Just as they did with "Microsoft-incompatible" Research In Motion's Blackberry. Apple's iPhone will be a success with business users whether the IT guy wants it or even whether AT&T and Apple tailor marketing to businesses or not.

Note to CEOs: Who runs the company, you or the IT guy? It's your job to make the decisions and it's the IT guy's job to implement your decisions that relate to technology. Just as with Macs, you need to educate yourself instead of relying on someone with their own, possibly hidden, agendas to make extremely important technology decisions for your company. Most of you could be saving a LOT of money right now, but you aren't because you've delegated an important part of your company's decision-making to people who, frankly, in our experience, aren't capable of making good, sound, strategic, long-term decisions. Most IT guys (and we know many) are not open-minded enough to be able to consider new, better, more effficient, more effective options that would benefit your company. In fact, most IT guys we've met will throw up road blocks and repeat myths until they're blue in the face in order to avoid change. Especially change that might make their department less critical or smaller. Bottom line: most of you CEOs have given the IT guy way, way, way too much power. It's time to take it back.

Are these people for real?

I mean, seriously?

in reply to The "MacDailyNews Take"

Windows XPSP2 mistaken for Vista? [Windows XPSP2 mistaken for Vista?]

Michael Griffiths — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 23:40:40 GMT

As background:

A few days ago, some of my applications stopped working. Of note, I could no longer "Insert" any pre-made templates in Word 2007 (trial version) such as headers, cover pages, and so on.

I got the following error message:

Another program that isn't working is the NYTimes Times Reader software; something I'm rather fond of, this being a Tablet.

It won't even open - but when I report the error to Microsoft, up pops one of those helpful "We have an answer" dialogues. Clicking on that brings me to:

.....which is rather distressing, because I'm running Windows XPSP2 Tablet PC Edition:

On top of that, System Restore doesn't work. I haven't tried to force it manually, but even so....

Any ideas? My only though is that Microsoft Update installed a few things on Thursday (late), and that's somehow screwed everything up.

in reply to Windows XPSP2 mistaken for Vista?

OFFFICE12: Slooooooow [OFFFICE12: Slooooooow]

Michael Griffiths — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 02:02:08 GMT

I've been using the beta version of Office 2007 or the past week or so.

Generally it's very nice. Usability is dramatically improved, commands are more intuitive, and it's pleasent using the programs.

I have, however, have the misfortune of using Excel 2007 - with the new file formats - on a *big* spreadsheet for the last few hours. It's only 8 MB in 2007 (nice size recuction - was a 32 MB xls file), but Excel 2007 can't handle it.

Let me explain what this spreadsheet is. It's a model built by a a guy with no programming experience. It still manages to be completely dynamic: change the source data, and the output changes. I need to get some data off the spreadsheet; make a few PivotTables. Basic stuff.

You get things like 20 columns that all VLOOKUP and calculate some data. VLOOKUPing the concatanated result of two VLOOKUPs, which in turn are VLOOKUPs, whose result is dependent on a cell that manages to be just short of a circular reference. 4,000 (whichis a drop in the pail, really) results, 8 lookup tables, loads of PivotTables.

It takes, when working, around 5 minutes to calculate or save on a 3 GHz machine with 2 GB RAM.

Office 2003 can handle this just fine. It's a pain to save, but it's rock-solid. It's fast, works well, and nothing screws up.

NOT SO in Office 2007.

It can take up to 4 minutes simply to remove a bloody filter on a Table. It's taken over 10 minutes to Calculate. Spent 2 minutes deleting 3 columns from a worksheet.

And it CRASHES. Oh, boy, does it crash.

Want to save? Oh, look, I spent 3 minutes fooling you with the status bar before crashing! But don't worry sir! I can revocer it for you! Do you want to send a report to Microsoft? Yes? Good! Let me spend 8 minutes preparing the report. Whoops, you're not on dialup are you? It's going to take 237 minutes to transfer the report on dialup. You're not? Good! Can I send a chunk of your file along with it, too? Yay! And hey, I've recovered the document. Do you want me to spend another 6 minutes OPENING it after I've so kindly REPAIRED it for you?

On, and on, and on.

Not to mention the fiddling little problems like throwing "cannot access PivotTable data" messages at you. That, yes, apply when you try to make a new PivotTable to replace the one that isn't working.

Not. Good.

On a sour note, it's probably the XML nature of the new file formats. If they is after Microsoft has spent so much time optimizing XML compared to OpenDocument, I'd shudder to use ODF in a similar senario.

I hope the release version doesn't crash as god-damned much on everything but the piddly little everyday files as it does now. Right now, Excel 2003 is leaps and bounds better in terms of stability - and sorry, the new features (like conditional formatting) don't make up for it. If I do no work for 3 hours trying to get a document stable enough to work on (before downgrading), I don't care how many new features there are. 3 hours output in a subpar system is leaps and bounds better than 0 hours output in a new, shiny system.

in reply to OFFFICE12: Slooooooow

WGANotify.settings [WGANotify.settings]

Michael Griffiths — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 03:36:23 GMT

I discovered the file 'WGANotify.settings' in my Local Settings\Temp directory today.

It was created 6/2/2006 - the same day I installed the Windows Genuine Advantage notification update.

Taking a peek inside...

WGANotify.settings wrote:
Show notification for every 1 logins
DaysBeforeBuyNow Unactivated = 31
DaysBeforeBuyNow Nongenuine = 14
Server DisableAll = false
Server DisableVLKID = true
Server DisableGetSP2 = false
User ReducedReminders = false
User ReducedVLKID = false
User ReducedGetSP2 = false
BalloonInterval = 2 hours
BalloonIntervalVLKID = 24 hours
BalloonIntervalGetSP2 = 720 hours

Interesting.

in reply to WGANotify.settings

MSN Messenger: 8 GB Similarity File? [MSN Messenger: 8 GB Similarity File?]

Michael Griffiths — Wed, 24 May 2006 02:23:14 GMT

I remember testing a feature I was rather excited about in an early beta of what is now Windows Live Messenger.

Sharing Folders.

I tried to set it up and share a desktop background. Unfortunately, it never worked.

I didn't concern myself too much, however, particularly as the person I tried it with downgraded rather soon afterwards.

Enter today.

I am digging around my hard drive, attempting to free up disk space (don't have enough to defragment properly). I notice that my Local Settings folder is a gaping 19 GB. Some of those are from Linux .torrents which haven't downloaded in the past six months; I delete those.

That still leaves around 9GB.

Suprised am I to find, in this directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\Michael Griffiths\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\MSN Messenger\0002010000efff20\SharingMetadata

This:

An 8 GB Similarity Table.

Keep in mind Itried to share 1 desktop background of perhaps 200 KB (and it didn't work).

I realize this is probably a bug in the beta that has been fixed, but I still find myself somewhat shocked by its sheer size.

Heh.

in reply to MSN Messenger: 8 GB Similarity File?

W00terz? [W00terz?]

Michael Griffiths — Sun, 21 May 2006 06:23:25 GMT

Saw this review of Firefox 2.0 Beta 2.

Overall, it looks rather good.

On the other hand, most of the new features listed are copied from IE7.

Close button in active tab? Check. Search provider in faded text in quick search box? Check. Move to Opensearch for search providers? Check. Improved dialogue box to manage search engine providers? Check. Improvide feed appearence? Check.

We're told that Safe Browsing (Anti-phising tool) will come in the next, feature complete, beta.

There are some very good (non-IE7 related) improvements which shouldn't be ignored: suggestions as you type (ala Google Suggest) in quick search bar, excellent add-ins manager (something IE lacks), spellcheck, session restore, and the odd "microsummaries."

Objectively, it is a good thing for end users that both browsers to offer fundamentally the same features. Nonetheless, I find the tone of the linked article rather ...interesting.

in reply to Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 (Bon Echo) Review

Re: Ultra mobile PC [NOT] [Re: Ultra mobile PC [NOT]]

Michael Griffiths — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 16:04:02 GMT

Shooby, I think you need to take a break.

Your posts are usually malicious and insulting to Microsoft. But they're entertaining - funny, and more than a little absurd.

This one is just stupid.

Honestly, I think you slipped up here. The objections you raise fall flat, and it's evident that you have somehow completely missed the reasons Microsoft (and its partners) have embarked on the UMPC strategy. It's also somewhat unnerving to notice that you've neglected to bash any of the other companies involved in the scheme, such as Intel, Asus, Samsung, Fujitsu, etc. Moreover, and perhaps more unsettling, it your seeming lack of comprehension over what an UMPC is.

So please, take a break. For your own benefit.

in reply to Re: Ultra mobile PC [NOT]

Re: Channel 9 From Outer Space Hit Count [Re: Channel 9 From Outer Space Hit Count]

Michael Griffiths — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 02:06:05 GMT

It's not "no matter what you type," it's more "the idiotic ramblings that you do do type."

You don't have to love Microsoft here, but you have a hard time if you hate it.

in reply to Re: Channel 9 From Outer Space Hit Count

Cnet Blog 100 [Cnet Blog 100]

Michael Griffiths — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 19:41:25 GMT

http://news.com.com/2310-10784_3-0.html

Interesting list.

Quite nicely put together.

in reply to Cnet Blog 100

Re: A history of Sparkle [A history of Sparkle]

Michael Griffiths — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 07:50:40 GMT

shooby wrote:
I looked at the Acrylic beta -- what a POS!

All in all, I couldnt find an idea not stolen from Photoshop or Flash -- but then, thats to be expected.

Microsoft doesnt create products, it steals them, either outright by snuggling up to the inventors and convincing them that they need 3 or 4 MrSofties to 'help them remain compatible' (who then copy the source, and lead the product 'development' (theft) internally -- like they did with RealPlayer, now Windows Media Player) or they steal the idea and rewrite the function names (like they did with Java, now Common License Runtime -- and dont tell me this didnt happen, the CLR team had every Java book known to man until some suit figured out it didnt look good)

You realize, of course, that Acrylic is basically a slightly updated version of Creature House Expression 3? Microsoft didn't "copy", they "bought."

You realize, of course, that Photoshop and Flash do different things from Acrylic? Acrylic is a bitmap painting and vector drawing tool.

shooby wrote:
But you go ahead, noScuplesIzer, or whatever you call yourself, pitch the company line -- no one listens anyway.

I love you too!

--shooby xx00

The fact that you're listening to him make the above statement rather ironic.

in reply to A history of Sparkle

'Opt-in' DRM ['Opt-in' DRM]

Michael Griffiths — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 17:16:28 GMT

Will Windows Vista allow people to turn DRM "off"?

When DRM is "off", people wouldn't be able to play permium content that was protected by DRM.

Or something similar.

in reply to 'Opt-in' DRM

Re: Top 10 Reasons Operation Re-Org Doesnt Matter [Re: Top 10 Reasons Operation Re-Org Doesnt Matter]

Michael Griffiths — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 13:59:51 GMT

shooby wrote:
Oh, sure you dont need a graphics processor.

But why would anyone pay $400 to upgrade windows XP to look like KDE? Come to think of it, why would anyone?

I sure wouldn't!

KDE looks awful.

Vista, on the other hand, looks pretty nice.

So what add-on to Windows XP is some company selling for $400 to make it look like KDE?

I have to wonder how they're still in business. :P

in reply to Re: Top 10 Reasons Operation Re-Org Doesnt Matter

Re: Does anyone else think that the quality of these forums has dropped considerably since when they were first made? [Does anyone else think that the quality of these forums has dropped considerably since when they wer]

Michael Griffiths — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 22:23:59 GMT

eric_schmidt wrote:
If you can't handle the heat of a mature forum, try a different forum. Don't try to change this forum to match your standards.

I wouldn't call this a mature forum.

in reply to Does anyone else think that the quality of these forums has dropped considerably since when they wer

What is Steve Ballmer's favorite color? [What is Steve Ballmer's favorite color?]

Michael Griffiths — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 18:07:46 GMT

What is Steve Ballmer's favorite color?

Just out of curiousity :-)

in reply to What is Steve Ballmer's favorite color?

Small news: Minor tweaks to MSN.com [Small news: Minor tweaks to MSN.com]

Michael Griffiths — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:27:11 GMT

There have been some minor tweaks to http://www.MSN.com - the bands now no longer stretch across the page, the sign in/hotmail/my MSN/etc are in boxes, the font at the top has changed.

http://www.msn.com/

Minor things. Nice to see some tweaks, however. It looks better, albeit marginally so.

in reply to Small news: Minor tweaks to MSN.com

Search Engine Relavency [Search Engine Relavency]

Michael Griffiths — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 02:45:54 GMT

Here's an interesting study I haven't seen before on Search engine relavency:

http://www.rustybrick.com/rustysearch-results.php

Yahoo wins, MSN loses.

in reply to Search Engine Relavency

Yahoo! Index [Yahoo! Index]

Michael Griffiths — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 02:44:35 GMT

I prefer Yahoo! Search to Google search. One thing that Yahoo! does not do, however, is release how "big" their index it.

Usually.

Yahoo! Search Blog wrote:
While we typically don't disclose size (since we've always said that size is only one dimension of the quality of a search engine), for those who are curious this update includes just over 19.2 billion web documents, 1.6 billion images, and over 50 million audio and video files. Note that as with all index updates we are still tuning things so youll continue to see some fluctuation in ranking over the next few weeks

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000172.html

That seems a lot.

How does it compare to Google/MSN?

in reply to Yahoo! Index

Microsoft Office Picture Manager [Microsoft Office Picture Manager]

Michael Griffiths — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 04:43:33 GMT

I never noticed this...

It's suprisingly good, and substantially before Picassa/etc.

Included in Microsoft Office 2003.

Hmmmmmmm.

in reply to Microsoft Office Picture Manager

Hilarity: One-up-manship [Hilarity: One-up-manship]

Michael Griffiths — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 18:29:54 GMT

MSN has re-done its Shopping site. The new one is, suffice to say, a vast improvement over the old one, providing many more features and a vastly improved UI.

Yahoo! also has an excellent shopping site, and decided to take some of the wind out of the sails of the MSN Shopping Team.

They released the Yahoo! Shopping API. This is a very good move by Yahoo! - Yahoo! is turning each of its services into a platform - but the timing is ...coincidental ;-)

Yahoo! "one-upped" MSN. :-)

in reply to Hilarity: One-up-manship