Insanity Part 2.0

Is it just me, or does Lewis Black’s new show, “the Root of All Evil” use a laugh track?

It’s not that funny of a show (contrary to the show name, it’s two comedian guests who do most of the talking) to begin with really. What’s more, if you look at the audience in the background while the comedians are delivering their bits, it doesn’t seem like the audience is really reacting all that much. As in, there’s no where near the amount of hooting, hollering, or even laughing compared to what’s playing back on the audio.

Anyone else notice something like that?

Apple Developer Connection – iPhone Dev Center – iPhone Developer Program Details

Start your development today with the free iPhone SDK and the iPhone Dev Center. Apply to the iPhone Developer Program and gain access to test your code on iPhone and distribute your free and commercial applications on the App Store.

The iPhone Developer Program provides you with the ability to develop directly on iPhone or iPod touch. Build, test, and optimize your application to get the best performance possible, exactly as your customers will experience it.

The wording seems pretty clear to me: software iPhone emulator for free SDK members, hardware testing only after you’ve paid to join the iPhone Developer program.

Store and share documents online with Office Live Workspace

Microsoft just released their new Office Live Workspace web app today. It’s a new type of collaboration tool but meant for the small business and average folk, as opposed to the more enterprise-oriented Sharepoint Server. If that doesn’t make sense to you, think of a Microsoft take on Google Docs. Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of trouble dealing with it.

Uploading a document is pretty easy. In a workspace (you can have multiple ones) click on the big “Add document” button the toolbar. It’s pretty straightforward – use the file selector to upload some file.

What if you’re editing a file locally and you want to upload a new copy to the server? This is somewhat less than intuitive – this option is buried under a big “Versions” button as “Upload and overwrite file.” A sensible title except for being stuck under Versions: versioning is far more Computer Science-y of a concept than I think most people are used to.

In the end it doesn’t really matter anyway because on Firefox 2.0.0.12 (that’s the latest version, for those keeping count), the “Upload and overwrite” menu option doesn’t even work! That’s right, you can click on it all day and it won’t do a damn thing. The same is true if you use Firefox on either Windows or OS X. Move over to IE7 and it works just fine. It’s bizarre how Firefox is on the supported list of browsers and I can’t do something as basic as upload an updated file copy.

Another pick – on OS X most Office documents come with file extensions (e.g. the .doc, .docx, .xls variety) but some do not. If you upload a file without an extension, Office Live is not smart enough to determine what the file is nor is it smart enough to warn you about the missing extension. This is somewhat important, because if you upload a file without an extension you won’t really be able to do much with it. I couldn’t even upload a new version of the file because they said it didn’t match the same type.

This brings me to a final point. Google Docs lets you edit the file within the browser, which means it works on any OS that runs IE, Firefox, or Safari. Best as I can tell, Office Live doesn’t let you edit any Office document over the web, and instead you must download the file and edit it locally, which still requires a working copy of Office and is less convenient. To their credit, they do have an add-in that lets you open and save the document directly from the webserver.

Long story short – only usable on Windows in Internet Explorer, and even then not all that usable.