Yahoo still really making no effort at all

There's a lot of talk recently about how Yahoo(?!) is allegedly trying to improve, and getting in new managers, and improving processes, and bla bla bla.

Now, for some obscure reason, the iPhone can do push email from Yahoo Mail accounts, but not Google or anyone else free. I thought it would be quite nice to have an email account where urgent things could go, that would update my phone RIGHT NOW, but I'm damned if I'm paying $99 a year for MobileMe, and the less said about Exchange the better. So, I signed up for a Yahoo account. And gave it my normal gmail email as a secondary address. I duly went to confirm this address, and got this:

Er... Duh...

Now, if a website I made, on my own, did something stupid like this, I would be embarrassed, and would quickly fix it. Apparently Yahoo, with its thousands of employees, feels no such shame about giving stupid bloody error messages like this. By the way, I did 'Sign Out & Continue', and got exactly the same message.

By the way, after all that trouble, Yahoo push to iPhone does not actually appear to work. Grr.

In which Google demonstrates that it is better than Yahoo at product names

We all know YSlow, right? It is a Firefox/Firebug plugin from Yahoo!?# which tells you how disgracefully, awfully slow your revolting little website is, and gives you tips on how to fix it. It is actually very useful!

Google has now released their own one. Which is basically the same thing, but is called Page Speed.

See, Yahoo[insert random punctuation here], Page Speed is not a good name. It doesn't really convey anything specific. YSlow, however, is a terrible, god-awful name. Learn from this.

IBM now making chicken-related cartoons

World has gone mad.

State Muffin!

Minnesota has a state muffin. By statute! (It is blueberry.) Note that the page with the important muffin statute is only available by HTTPS, presumably so that someone sniffing your network traffic can't tell that you're looking at something so very stupid. Featured right beside a 'visit Minnesota' link. Yes, visit Minnesota because it is so boring that we have to appoint state muffins to pass the time!

Minnesota also has lots of other state things. Apparently it was the first state to have an official state mushroom. Goodness, I wonder why?

And here are some proposed symbols! There have been laws which attempted to bring in state parasites and reptiles.

I mean, I realise that it's probably rather boring being a politician in Minnesota. This is the first thing I have ever seen about Minnesota in any context other than lists of uninteresting US states. But surely they can find something else to do with their time than appointing state cakes?

Update: Okay, this is apparently a more common problem than I had realised. Four states have state muffins! And two of them are blueberry! Utah has a 'State historic vegetable'! The sugar beet. Has it been eradicated now, or something? Also, everyone's state fruit is an apple, though some go so far as to specify a variety.  West Virginia is clearly identified as an EVIL state, as its state fruit is the horrible, revolting 'golden' 'delicious' apple. About half the state beverages are milk, presumably because just about everyone can manage a cow or two.

Wikipedia also has a state seals page. I had high hopes, given the presence of state muffins, but it's only tedious ol' heraldry. I was expecting something more like this!

Hmm, maybe Ireland needs to start designating national goat varieties and national toasters and so forth.

Google now advertising in Blogger posting interface!

In this week's (literally; this was not here last week) edition of 'You know it's a global economic meltdown when...':

Note that the ads are actually vaguely targeted vaguely at my previous post, about how the Patent office hates gray (or 'grey', as we say in proper English). Google is giving itself unfair advantages here; normal AdSense users have to use hidden text, like common spammers, if they want that sort of result.

I wonder does anyone click on them?

Also, is a global IP leader just like a proper global leader, except more pathetic? Do they wear silly uniforms and threaten the IP UN?

Update: Hmm. This seems to be something they're trialing. The first time I saved this article it didn't show me one at all, then the next time it showed me a smaller flash ad for web design, of all things, in a different position.

Important ridiculous thing

Have you ever seen yourself in a career in intellectual property rights? The thrills, the excitement, the documentation!

That is the trademark application for ImageMagick's wizard thing. Note that it was rejected not once, but twice, for being in gray without mentioning gray. The Patent Office does not like gray!

The process seems to have taken just under two years. I mean, can you imagine?

Worse from the patent office person's perspective, I suppose, having to constantly write tedious missives about the forbidden non-colour.

Monotremes...

Live longer with Calgon!

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

QuickPigeon - Missing the point, rather

As you know, iPhone OS 3 just came out, and has this wonderful instant push notification which barely anyone uses (it's fiddly to implement, and Apple seems to be holding back on approving apps which use it, presumably so that their notification servers, which also operate MobileMe, do not catch fire). One of the very few applications actually available which uses it (along with the Associated Press application, which will send you one piece of breaking news approximately every three days, assuming that you pretend to it that you are in America) is QuickPigeon.

QuickPigeon is a bit of a puzzler. What it does is, you type in a question, and give it an email or emails. It then sends those people emails, which they get whenever they check their email. If they then click 'yes' or 'no' in the email, it sends you a message instantly. Which is all very well, but surely it would be better to just let people send instant messages in the first place? It is Japanese, which goes some way towards explaining it; the Japanese have their own parallel universe Internet, where things are rather different. Look at a Japanese blog-analogue, if you believe me not.

Two terrifyingly stupid Microsoft things

As you know, due to the market finding Windows Vista almost universally resistible, Microsoft is rushing out Windows 7.

These days, people are buying a lot of netbooks. Netbooks are cheap, in part due to their operating system, which is generally Windows XP or a Linux of some sort. Vista never really made it on netbooks. So, Microsoft is releasing a special cheap version, Windows 7 Starter, for netbooks. WinXP will, at least theoretically, become unavailable to OEMs.

Windows 7 Starter users will not be able to change their desktop background. Further, the OEMs won't be able to change it. Yep, that'll endear the netbook users to Microsoft, and not at all encourage them to just buy a Linux one. I wonder what the mandatory default will be like? What image would best say 'Welcome to Windows, poor person'?

Stupid thing the second, then. Here is an article on MSN, syndicated from PC World, on how to illegally install MacOS on your computer. Tune in next week for Apple's article on how to download Windows Vista Ultimate from bittorrent!

iPhone OS 3.0!

Well, I just installed this; by the time I got home from work there was already much talk of difficulty with communicating with iTunes, so I thought it best to leave it a couple of hours.

First impressions: it's brilliant.

• MMS - I must say, I'm not too bothered either way about this feature; I would generally opt for email if sending pictures to someone.
• Safari - The new version of Mobile Safari is noticeably faster than the old.
• Spotlight - This is great, especially for quickly finding media.
• Landscape keyboard - This is nice for writing emails and similar; quite a lot quicker to use than the normal portrait one.
• Youtube account integration - Nice, but, well, look at the dialog box for entering your details. I suspect Apple haven't been sticking to their own UI diktats.
• Push service - There aren't actually any applications using this at the moment, though some are due to show up very soon.
• Copy and paste - Quite nicely done once you get used to it.
• Voice memos - Why? Weren't there already third party apps which did exactly the same thing? And why the picture of the microphone? Weird.
• Improved stocks app - Watch the economy collapse with greater ease!
• Camera - They didn't make a big deal about this, but taking photos is now considerably faster.
• Password autofill - Yay! Why don't they have this in desktop Safari?

Just one major criticism. The launch. They really should have staged it; quite a few people were left with dead phones for a few hours while they were waiting for an iTunes connection to re-activate. Why does it even activate through iTunes, anyway?