Always

I was updating my son's nano to the latest iPod version so I could set and control the maximum volume. It is a must-have, must-set feature for all children with iPods.

It was just my luck that my computer locked up in the middle of the update. The iPod was in a state where I couldn't do much of anything. All of the songs were gone. The computer would recognize there was a drive in the USB port, but that was about it. iTunes wouldn't recognize the iPod at all.

I went through every debugging technicque on Apple's site. I reset the iPod. I reloaded iTunes and the iPod software. And I attempted a restore (which didn't work). I eventually gave up and called Apple. Luckily I had the one complimentary support call, otherwise I'd be out 50 bucks.

I got lucky. The technician I got was awesome. He walked me through something I would have had no problem doing if the instructions were on the site. He did say they'd be out there eventually but this process was something they haven't tested enough to actually put on apple.com. I'm a little upset because I should have tried this before calling. Here you go. If you want to start from scratch with your iPod this is how to do it:

1. Turn off all running programs on your PC (IE, Outlook, PowerPoint, etc.)
2. Conect the iPod to the USB port
3. Start Disk Manager by right-clicking on MyComputer, select Manage, select Disk Management. This may take several minutes to come up.
4. Select your iPod (mine was D:); right-click and select Fomat...
5. Take most of the defaults. The primary options to select are FAT32 and Quick Format
6. When the format is complete, eject the iPod safely by right-clicking on the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the Task Tray, select USB Mass Storage, and then select the iPod to stop it
7. Unplug the iPod from the computer and start the iPod updater. Start, All Programs, iPod, iPod Updater 2006-03-23, and iPod Updater 2006-03-23.
8. Plug-in the iPod. Once it is recognized by the Updater the Restore button will become active. Click on Restore to restore the iPod to its factory state.
9. When the restore is complete iTunes should start and the iPod should be usable again

Posted by Brian Levay at 3:39 PM | Permalink

My customer brought in Jimmy Wales to speak to a group of their top technologists. For those of you that don't know who Jimmy Wales is, he is the founder of Wikipedia and he is considered the Father of the Wiki. Dave Lemen summed up his presentation well in his Wiki Rock Star post.

As a technologists and an HP'er I was particularly interested when he discussed the software and infrastructure behind Wikipedia. With the amount of data they host and requests they handle, 200 servers spread across the world seemed rather small. He spoke gleefully of Yahoo and the support they have provided with a data center for Wikipedia in Asia. He spoke the exact opposite of the other data centers, one in particular, stating the "slow HP servers" were the current bottleneck in the system.

HP doesn't want Jimmy Wales making a statement like this ever. He is traveling the globe speaking to hundreds of people every working day. Wikipedia is an Internet Top 20 website. I don't know how they got the hardware. I don't know how old it is. I don't think it even matters. We want Jimmy Wales to be an HP evangelist. Come on HP, let's step up and make a donation to Wikipedia! If not for the sake of our own name, but for the sake of the culture that Wikipedia represents.

Update: HP France donated the orignial hardware to Wikipedia. Yeah HP! The hard part now is getting them to do it again.

Posted by Brian Levay at 7:49 PM | Permalink

This is part two of a recurring feature where I share with you some of the The Feeds I Read. These feeds are collected together into what I call a UI and Marketing category:

1. Creating Passionate Users by Kathy Sierra just rocks. If you subscribe to one feed in this list today you need to subscribe to this one. She is a chick that knows Java, which by itself is cool, but she has a ton of good advice on getting the user experience right. By just looking at the layout of her blog and the posts you can tell without even reading that this one is going to be good.

2. What's Your Brand Mantra by Jennifer Rice is a marketing blog written by a long time marketing professional. She hasn't been posting as much lately but if you look back through some of her earlier posts you can see that she dives deep into the emotions that make a marketing effort work. Her posts are thoughtful and a lot of times she is on a level that I have a hard time making it up to. She would have been a good psych major.
3. A little bit of Mark by Mark True is all about marketing as well. Don't let his wild hair fool you. Like Jennifer, he likes to talk about how to build and sell a brand but he goes into the details that need to be focused on to build that brand.
4. Jensen Harris is the man behind the Microsoft Office UI. The stories he tells about all the UI changes made to MS Office over the years and the rationale behind those decisions is just too interesting. The stories about the design decisions behind the next rev of Office are even better!
5. flow|state by Jan Miksovsky is another well crafted UI blog. He too hasn't been posting much lately but the simple UI points he makes can have a big impact on any UI out there.



6. Thoughts From Eric by Eric Meyer is a very good resource for CSS related issues and most recently IE7 rendering changes.

To make things easier for the geeks out there that know what OPML is, you can download the file and import it directly.

Posted by Brian Levay at 9:15 AM | Permalink

I had planned to blog about this whole HP and Fidelity fiasco where every single HP employee in the Americas had their personal information compromised because a Fidelity employee had their laptop stolen. I really don't care what Fidelity thinks, they will be losing my personal business, but I do care what HP thinks so I'll keep my thoughts quiet (this time).

In order to help help protect us from identity theft Fidelity has offered to pay for a free credit monitoring service from Equifax. I have used Equifax before to obtain credit reports so when I went to the site to register for the service they said I already had an account. Ok....... I try to login and I couldn't figure out my password. Enter the secret question/answer! That will help me get in.

I think I was just having a bad day because I couldn't even answer my own secret question!!! I'm such an idiot. How can I not remember the answer to that question.

Needless to say this one is being submitted for the next WTF Pop-up Potpourri.

Posted by Brian Levay at 9:44 AM | Permalink

Did you know that Hewlett-Packard hardware was bulletproof? If not, check out the video on this marketing page.

This could open up whole new markets for us. I'm thinking store fronts in Iraq or kiosks on street corners in the hood. I'm not sure what we'll try next. I'll recommend the submersion test and if it keeps on ticking after that I will really be impressed.

Posted by Brian Levay at 9:05 AM | Permalink