Google Contacts why doth thee suck so badly?

It has to be said the #1 worst part of using Google for all my PIM (Personal Information Management) needs is their contacts functionality. Right from the web UI to the lack of attributes to the lack of integration with external source (like Outlook) it is just the weakest, even substandard part of their PIM offering. When I got my G1 Android based phone I finally had to abandon Outlook which I'd been hanging onto for its contacts/addressbook functionality. Hands down Outlook has the best address book I've used and that's why I reluctantly hung onto it.

Migrating my 200+ contacts to Google was painful and lost a lot of meta-information that I had to dump into "notes" for each contact, perhaps in the hope that one day Google will support things like anniversaries, birthdays, and relationships between contacts. And now I've migrated to Google contacts the worst part is that to maintain it I have to deal with the crappy web interface they have tacked onto Google Mail, so tacked on that its kind of an afterthought, not only difficult to use but also just plain ugly. In fact its so bad that I actually tend to do this stuff from my phone if possible - at least it is easy to find there! Yes, yes, I know all this stuff is free so I shouldn't complain but really since Yahoo and Microsoft managed to do so much better why should Google be happy with coming a distant third? And lets not forget that there really is no such thing as a free lunch - Google actually provides all this for a reason and that's to establish brand loyalty and keep users on its web site, using its apps and seeing its customers adverts.

Given that Google is trying to push into the social networking world with its OpenSocial API you'd think that by now they would have created some kick-ass addressbook-on-steroids that left Facebook and others in the dust. If you think about it my interaction with email, chat, groups and other apps that are inherently social apps should begin and revolve around my contacts - not be some lackluster add-on feature that time (apparently) forgot. Lets just say I'm still waiting for something kick-ass in this department but not holding my breath. Maybe in 2009 Google? Are you listening? Please? Pretty please? Thanks!!!

G1 Episode 3

I just returned from a few days in the United Kingdom where I can report my G1 worked just fine using a UK T-Mobile Pay-as-you-Go SIM but most importantly it required no unlock code. I was pretty happy about that because my unlock code ordered on the Saturday before I left did not show up until 10 days later, just as I returned. It would also seem that since the T-Mobile UK SIM never triggered a request for the unlock password I don't yet have a way to enter it.

I'm also happy to report that T-Mobile UK no longer charges for SIMs - you just have to purchase a minimum of GBP 10.00 of minutes (about $15 right now) - its a good deal for travellers. They also come with 5 days of free web browsing which I didn't discover until after I'd added another 5 to my plan for GBP 2.50. The big problem with Pay-as-you-Go SIMs is that the credits expire after 6-months so if you do not use them the go away and the SIM is deactivated so you'll also lose the phone number. The only away to avoid this is to make a call with the SIM but doing so will probably eat up your minutes as most plans have an upfront or minimum per-day fee.

Finally I was also able to use 3G networking in the UK although it was not as fast as in the Bay Area where I get 800kbps on a regular basis, instead it came in at more like 200kbps down and 25k up - but given that T-Mobile doesn't offer EDGE in the UK it was a lot better than GPRS speeds. I did get the impression that my G1 was eating up more battery than at home even with 3G off, but I couldn't be sure.

G1 Episode 2.5 - SNAFU

What, you may ask, happened to episode 2? Well I was in the process of writing up my reflections on a week of T-Mobile G1 ownership but didn't finished before my G1 started experiencing loss of web browser connectivity. I first noticed it this morning but figured it was something to do with me being in the middle of the San Francisco Bay which is a little odd because I had plenty of bars of signal and to all intents and purposes email seemed to be working just fine. I was very busy at work today so didn't have time to play with my phone but on the way home noticed the same problem again - all I would get was a hung browser followed by a "cannot connect with server" message.

After a couple of turn-off, turn-on cycles, some experimentation with WiFi connectivity I eventually decided it must have been something I installed on the phone that did this (which should really be impossible since 3rd party apps are all Java and supposedly can't trash the phone). So reluctantly decided to do a factory reset - if anything it would prove that I could really recover all my email and contacts easily. Fingers crossed.

So I did it... I was surprised how little resistance it put up in the way of warnings - one warning and then I had to put in my visual "join-the-dots" password. After that it took just a few seconds and it was all over, my phone was back to out of the box state.

Unfortunately this did not cure my problem. Although emails started showing up on the phone pretty quickly as it resynchronized with my online account pulling up the browser had no effect, I was still getting the failed to connect error. So I decided to dial 611 and called T-Mobile support. Even though it was 9:45pm Pacific time I was soon talking to a real person and I noticed I had been connected straight to Blackberry and PDA support which hopefully meant I'd skipped up a few levels on the food chain. I was quickly able to relay the nature of the problem and indicate that I'd done a factory rest at which point I was told this was a "known problem" and that "a lot" of pre-purchase users were experiencing this issue. Hmmmmph!

So I asked about the various firmware updates that were available and if I could get one sooner since I was having problems. No such luck, the support person said they were unable to control distrubtion of the updates. I then asked if my lack of web browsing connection might mean I would not get the update - no answer, but a good question she admitted. She then had me check my phone's data connection configuration (APN) and it was the correct one. Since I had already done a factory reset there was nothing else she could suggest for me to try other than wait for their engineers to try and fix the problem.

As it happens about a half hour after I got off the phone with T-Mobile while I was checking to see if my contacts had be synced yet (they hadn't) I discovered the web browser connection was working again. Hmmm - coincidence or did I get a secret helping hand from T-Mobile after I was off the phone?

Oh well, now I have to go off and recustomize the phone all over again which is mostly re-downloading a whole bunch of apps from the market. Grrrrr.

UPDATED: I found out from the T-Mobile G1 forum that this is indeed a known problem - so known that they should have been able to tell me on the phone that it was caused by my account being misconfigured with a trail 7-day only data plan that just expired. I guess while I was on the phone they fixed that without telling me. There is also some discussion that this could be caused by using an existing SIM instead of a new one. As far as I can tell I didn't get a new SIM with my phone so it wasn't my fault.

G1 Episode I - The Android Attack Begins

Well I did it, I finally cemented my status as a Google fanboy by dropping $179 to pre-order a brand spanking new Android powered "G1" phone. It took a while to fight through the T-Mobile website issues - it seems they either completely screwed up launching the pre-ordering web pages or were suffering from horrendous website overload. Either way by 12:30p, several hours after the press-release event in New York was over I was finally able to go all the way through the ordering process and make the commitment. But that was after a couple of hours of trying - it took so long that I almost changed my mind at the last minute having learned there is a decent list of "obnoxious flaws" in the product.

I have to say that the lack of stereo bluetooth audio (A2DP) strikes me as seriously obnoxious. I have taken to using my existing 3 year old Windows Mobile phone (also by HTC) in my car with my Motorola bluetooth handsfree speaker phone, it plays tunes nicely and satisfies the California handsfree requirement. But now without stereo audio my G1 will be a pretty poor mono-audio player. I'd have to get a second FM transmitter or radio with an audio in jack (not possible in one of my cars that has a Bose factory radio I can't really replace). But I've tried to rationalize that A2DP must be in the hardware and a future software upgrade must surely support it especially given that Amazon is now the music store of choice for the G1 - anything that hampers the phone being a great music player has to be fixed.

Other obnoxious flaws bother me less lie lack of a video player other than YouTube at the moment (I'm going to assume you can play embedded video on a web page though) because I seldom do anything with video on my phone now and expect that there will be decent 3rd party apps later.

The lack of a standard headphone jack requiring a USB adapter which is not even supplied is a pain but I hardly, if ever use plugin headphones with my phone now - but given the lack of stereo bluetooth audio this becomes more important - I'll need that output to connect to an FM transmitter in my car. Then again my current WinMo phone has a non-standard 2.5mm jack that requires an adapter for most headphones so its not really a step backward - but they really could have done better. My guess is headphone jacks eat up a lot of internal space and cause issues with dirt and RF intrusion.

Lack of multi-touch is surprising but I've lived without multi-touch all my life and I'm sure I can continue to do so. Lack of an on-screen keyboard seems surprising - I don't much like them and have big fingers that usually require me to use a stylus with my WinMo device but sometimes its handy to have as a fall back. I don't much care for the iPhone on-screen keyboard BTW - the letters are still too small for me so perhaps there wasn't much chance I would have been happy with one anyway. Since this device has a real keyboard which I very much desire in a smartphone I think I'll be pretty much happy with input methods.

Locking to T-Mobile I wont care too much about until I need to go to Europe which I do at least once a year - I haven't seen any information about whether the phone supports the world GSM frequencies, given who makes it I'd be very surprised if it didn't although I know its probably not going to be compatible with most other 3G service frequencies. My experience is that T-Mobile is very good about unlocking phones for its current customers and since they are imposing a $200 contract break fee (how long can that last legally?) I would really hope that the G1 will be no exception. If not I'll be unhappy and have to bust out my WinMo phone - kind of defeats the point though... I wonder what AT&T iPhone customers do anyway - do they just suck it up and pay those usuary international roaming fees?

Being able to tether the G1 to my laptop would be nice - I can do it with my WinMo phone right now but again on reflection almost never actually do it. Part of the idea with a phone like the G1 is that its web and online experience is so good that you don't actually need to use a laptop 99% of the time unless it is for work. In which case your employer should be busting out a WWAN card for you to use. In the last year I've found this to be true and do much of my email reading and sending from my current phone - that should be much, much easier from the G1 especially as I've become far more Google-centric with use of calendaring and such in the last year.

I also realize that the lack of tethering has enabled T-Mobile to offer that $25 "unlimited" (I've read elsewhere its not actually unlimited - after 1GB of transfer in a month they reserve the right to dial down your bandwidth) data plan which is only $5 more than I pay right now. And that data is much faster than my current Edge service so it will be far more useful to me. Given that the $25 a month plan includes 400 text messages it will actually save me money since my current plan doesn't include any and costs me $.20 a pop - so 400 would cost a fortune. I couldn't really see me getting through more than 400 messages given the G1's enhanced email and chat facilities. The whole point is email more text less...

Lack of multiple Google account support as I do have a number of Google hosted domains each with its own Google account. But 95% of what I do now goes to a single Google account and I have webmail available for the others - there is after all the Google online web access too. Basically Google doesn't have a very compelling story for accessing multiple accounts anywhere, let alone on the phone - you still have to log out and in again and often times it doesn't get that right. I'm expecting when they do find a decent solution it will come to the G1.

If T-Mobile drags its heals over getting software updates to the G1 I'll be very upset, it took them a long time to release the widely available firmware updates for my WinMo phone. Eventually they declined to release the WinMo 6.0 upgrade for it, presumably to encourage people to upgrade to the virtually identical replacement phone they had for it. However I can't believe that Google would let them get away with that - lets hope the upgrades are relatively painless!

One final thing I really, really want to see is caching of maps with the mapping/GPS application. I travel out of cell reception pretty frequently and T-Mobiles network is pretty sparse anyway. So if all that GPS and mapping goodness is useless without a network connection it will be a serious drag. I experience this with Google Maps on my WinMo phone and it is the one thing that starts me thinking about buying a dedicated GPS - something I shouldn't need to do. With the amount of storage you can add to a G1 via a memory card you should be able to pre-load or pre-cache huge amounts of map data and then travel all over. I know that's not how Google Maps is designed to work but it is a must have for making the G1 an extremely useful utility that actually saves you money by not buying other devices. With Google's traffic and search facilities it will always be far and away more powerful than simple GPS - while you have the network connection that is!

Overall pretty much everything can be fixed in software so I really hope it happens. If I was to make my top 3 must have software upgrades for the first firmware rev it would be:

1. A2DP stereo bluetooth
2. Map and POI caching for Google Maps
3. Multi-account support

Mostly for me the "G1" is not about being a fanboy - its more of a technical investigation and I'll also use it as a development platform for apps. If it turns out to suck I will either wait for the next device which I guess will be the "G2" or end up selling it or moving onto some other platform such as a Symbian Linux tablet or the next big WinMo device (the latest HTC sliders are real sweet but way to expensive if purchased unlocked - and T-Mobile just doesn't get the cream of the crop, they always go to AT&T). Lets hope Google and T-Mobile got it right though, and they will continue to improve the device after the launch just as Apple and other have always done.

UPDATE: Apparently after howls of protest across the inter-webs T-Mobile has relented on their 1GB per month cap and promised to come out with a revised usage policy based on fuzzy "don't harm the network or other people's use of it" criteria.

Web 3.0 /= Web 2.0++

A couple of years ago when Web 2.0 was really getting going I told some people that I thought Web 2.0 was pretty much the end of the line for web applications. Web 3.0, I said, would actually be a trend back to desktop applications using the Internet for data delivery. Think more like virtual machine based apps like good old Java applets that never really went anywhere back in the early days of Java.

Lets just say I got some incredulous stares back then, like I might have been from a different planet and next thing I would be predicting $5 a gallon gas or something crazy like that.

My rationale was that JavaScript in an of itself was the major vehicle for web applications these days, at least portable ones that is. But it seemed clear to me that JavaScript is just not a good language for delivery for major application functionality. While its a powerful dynamic language it has many issues and is distinctly married to the web browser. As applications get bigger and bigger large volumes of JavaScript get harder and harder to manage. While there were some promising movements towards standardized JavaScript libraries for app development they were too big and too slow for efficient delivery of an application in a standard web page.

Hence I saw that there would ultimately arise a class of standalone applications, probably still delivered via a web browser initially, that would get their data via standard Internet HTTP protocols, perhaps incorporating JavaScript, perhaps not and they would run either connected or disconnected. Stuff like AJAX would be utilized to deliver application and data updates on the fly. All in all we'd see application logic migrate more and more to the client side and due to the bifurcation of client platforms into Windows, Mac, mobile devices (Windows, Symbian and other) and also eventually Linux that would necessitate some cross platform operating environment on those clients - something like a virtual machine or cross platform sandbox seemed an obvious requirement.

So I guess I feel somewhat vindicated now that we have a burgeoning set of development platforms like Adobe AIR, Google Gears, and now even an "application centric" new browser from Google called Chrome. Not to mention other efforts by Microsoft (Silverlight) and Sun (JavaFX) that have yet to see significan't uptake for client side application development.

So if Web 3.0 really is a revolutionary take on the web and certainly more than an incremental twist on web 2.0 then what might web 4.0 be? I'm afraid I don't have any early insights on that, but trust me I'm trying to get my head around it even as I type.

Blu-ray for G33 chipset motherboards under XP

I've just finished getting Blu-ray playback working on my Intel G33 chipset based motherboard running under Windows XP (SP3). I initially thought this would be a slam dunk - add blu-ray drive, install PowerDVD, slam in a Blu-ray disk and off we go. I knew I wasn't going to be getting digital high def audio (24 bit/192khz) from my system - this much I uncovered while investigating HTPC for a friend. That prompted him to go off an buy a blu-ray player instead of the HTPC route - even though he didn't even have HDMI audio on his high end Cambridge Audio amp.

Anyway during investigation I found that for about $150 I could get a Pioneer BDC-202 blu-ray drive offering 4X read-ony blu-ray plus standard DVD/CD read/write. That was below my previous $200 threshold where upgrading to blu-ray seemed to be "no-brainer". So off I went and ordered one from Newegg along with a copy of Blade Runner "The Final Cut" a five disk blu-ray extravaganza. I also stuck the first disk of "Planet Earth" on our NetFlix queue. Well that was the easy bit...

So when the drive arrives I install it with not much ado, and happily remove the last clunky IDE cable from my motherboard (the new drive is SATA 2.0) and disabling IDE support in the BIOS as I go. Then I go to download the Cyberlink PowerDVD trial but as I'm reading on the download page I notice it says under a section called "Not supported" G33 video playback. But my Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H motherboard is based on the Intel G33 chipset which is supposed to support HDCP HDMI output, MPEG2 acceleration and even has a Realtek ALC-889A D/A chip with a protected audio path (PAP) that Cyberlink were about to add support for (to give analog conversion of the high-def audio streams). I download their handy app that tells you if your system is blu-ray ready and sure enough it is flagging my graphics drivers as not blu-ray ready.

Further investigation on AVS Forum leads me to conclude that I'm pretty much screwed unless I upgrade to Windows Vista or get a discret video card. For some reason the HDCP support in my video drivers is noew good enough for NetFlix video HDCP playback but Intel pretty much refuses to bring out G33 drivers that support blu-ray under Windows XP. Grrr.

So I start looking at Vista which I've staunchly avoided for a couple of years now because I just didn't need it and all my other systems are XP and they didn't need it. Eventually I really don't want to install Vista just to get blu-ray.

So then I look at video cards which doesn't make me happy because when I bought my system I deliberate picked one with integrated graphics so I wouldn't need discreet video. I don't do gaming on it and I don't need the extra 30W or so of power consumption even when the system is idle - let alone all the heat and noise when its not. But the good news is there are some fanless sub-$50 video cards, something like an nVidia 8400 or 8600 based card which will give full high-def video acceleration and come with nvidia drivers that support HDCP/blu-ray. At that price I figure I can get it, wait out Intel for G33 drivers or whatever happens next (maybe I upgrade to G45 or the next round of Nehalem or post Nehalem motherboards after that).

As I explore the AVS Forum a bit more I start to see people say that PowerDVD just doesn't do blu-ray under XP period. Then I see people saying it does, or that if you use ArcSoft Total Media Theater (TMT) you can have blu-ray under XP - its not an XP limitation. So just for giggles and kicks I download TMT and try it out but bizarrely it doesn't even read the Planet Earth disk, its as if it isn't there. I start to wonder if the drive is fried but find that it works fine with DVD or CD. So I start to wonder if its a firmware issue and upgrade the Pioneer drive to the latest 1.07 firmware - still no change. Then I experiment with all kinds of BIOS settings, moving the drive to a different SATA port, turning on IDE emulation mode etc. etc. Still no joy - put blu-ray disk in and it just doesn't show up. Some people on AVS Forum suggest that maybe the disk is dead - it does look a little strange so I resolve to wait for my Blade Runner disks to show up.

Blade Runner shows up and I stick one of the disks in and low and behold TMT fires up and starts playing the disk. Yay I think and promptly declare the system working without stopping to think how practically impossible it is that the system really is playing a blu-ray disk. Nonetheless I plonk in the Planet Earth disk in the drive and it doesn't play, just like before, so I happily declare it a bad disk, put it back into its NetFlix envelope and send it on its way.

Well it didn't take me long to try another disk from the Blade Runner pack and hmmm, seems to be a problem - it isn't playing. I switch to the other disk - fine. Then it dawns on me - the disk that plays is actually a DVD - two of the disks in the five pack are actually DVDs, not blu-ray. Doh! So realizing I've probably just put a perfectly good disk back in the mail to NetFlix I get back on the case of the unplayable disk.

Some more posts on AVS Forum lead me to the conclusion that even if the graphics drivers are bad, even if the player software doesn't like my system the files on the blu-ray disk should show up on the filesystem but that is not what I'm seeing, I'm seeing nothing, I mean nuttin! I boot up my system under Linux and see the same problem - DVD good, Blu-ray bad. But under Linux I'm able to peruse the system log and get some error information that the file system on the blu-ray disk is not supported. After reading more Linx posts (Linux posts - for a Windows problem???) I discover that blu-ray uses UDF 2.5 file system and this is only supported under Windows Vista, not Windows XP - strike #2 against XP I guess. Funny how nothing that came with my shing new Pioneer drive mentioned this...

I wonder if there are drivers for UDF 2.5 that work with XP and eventually find out from the Digital Digest website that there are drivers out there on the grey market of downloads from obscure places. They were ripped from the Xbox 360 software that supported HD-DVD which also required UDF 2.5 support. Somewhat sceptically I download the files, unpack them and install - after rebooting my system (essential) I stick a drive in and go explore the drive. Lo and behold it worked, I can now see files on the drive even with blu-ray.

I fire up TMT again and it starts doing something - I hear audio but get a black screen where the video should be. I then install WinDVD but that doesn't work at all (in fact it doesn't even install barfing at the point it needs to load some C runtime libraries). I go back to trying PowerDVD (this is the third reinstall of that software) but on trying to play the disk it just tells me my hardware is incompatible and stops. Back to square one, well maybe square one and a half - at least I now know my drive is just fine and almost certainly the Planet Earth disk was not faulty at all.

So I post again on AVS Forum (about my tenth post on the subject by this time) and quite by chance someone says it sounds like all I need now are "Japanese beta video drivers" for TMT. Huh? No more information than that but its enough to get going so after many forum searches and Google searches I finally find a thread that mentions yes there is some beta version of TMT from 2007 that apparently worked with the G33 chipset and its GMA 3100 graphics processor. More searching leads me another AVS Forum post that has a link to a download that contains two magical driver files which I duely copy into the appropriate TMT program directory. One more reboot, fire up TMT, fingers crossed and boom - Houston we have blu-ray! Glorious high def Blade Runner playing right there on my XP machine with the supposedly unsupported chipset.

So yes, it can be done but it took me virtually a whole day of trial and error - install, uninstall, reboot, search, re-search, tearing out of hair. swearing, pounding of keyboard, and frustration. So now I have this whacky Frankenstein blu-ray system with unsupported drivers from an xbox-360 and Japanese beta graphics drivers - but it works with no Vista and no extra video card.

I have a feeling that anyone with a G35 based system with XP can probably use the same combination of hacks, just follow the links above. Hopefully G45 users will find things a lot easier since Intel is supposed to be supporting HDCP blu-ray even for XP, and maybe eventually they will go back and fix their G33 and G35 drivers - now other have shown them it is possible (apparently). My two remaining questions are:

1) Why the heck don't all blu-ray drive manufacturers provide drivers for UDF 2.5 under XP just like USB devices come with drivers for pre-XP versions of Windows. And why the heck hasn't Microsoft produced official drivers for download?

2) If I buy the official TMT product will it work without driver hacks? Or will it perhaps break a some point with the drivers I have already? By all accounts a bunch of people are also using these Japanese drivers so ArcSoft should really be sorting this problem out. I guess I'll find out when I purchase TMT since there are no other alternatives for G33/XP/blu-ray at the moment.

Development ate my OTA broadcasts!

For a couple of years now (at least) I have been enjoying glorious high definition TV completely for free thanks to "over the air" (OTA) which will in 2009, as most of you should know by now, completely replace the old interference ridden low-res analog transmissions. At the time I set this up I was somewhat surprised it worked at all since I live in a concrete building that is by necessity filled with iron rebar - exactly the kind of stuff that will block a TV signal, or pretty much any radio signal - hence poor cellphone reception and room to room WiFi reception inside concrete buildings. However with a modest indoor directional antenna mounted inside my unit near the ceiling everything seemed to work out - the only thing I couldn't get reliably was the KTEH PBS station that is transmitted from a location 90-degrees from where my antenna is pointing. Since I already get KQED that hasn't been a big problem for me.

Unfortunately in the past few months a new condo and parking garage have risen from the dust right between my home and the where the TV signal is coming from. Both being concrete buildings and full of rebar it seems that they have knocked the signal strength of some of my channels below the acceptable limit for my tuner. If I'm lucky I get audio with interrupted video, if I'm not I get nothing at all. While access to the sun is protected in California for solar installations access to free OTA transmissions is not. Just when analog transmissions are going away I'll find myself cut off and looking at having to resort to cable. Basically I wont do this - I've survived significant portions of my life with no TV at all.

I could petition my building to install a big-ass TV antenna on the roof, it will be hard to do, cost a lot and probably wouldn't be that effective (because of the long cable run required). Considering 22 out of the 24 units already have cable I won't hold my breath waiting for that. Or I could install a much bigger antenna in my unit - its feasible but not exactly attractive, they really aren't designed to look nice. Right now I have a DB2 bowtie with 11.4 dBi gain combined with some low-loss coax which is probably the most compact and highest gain option there is, the next step up provides a couple of extra dB (not quite double the signal strength) but is twice the size and too big for indoor use IMHO. I can always think about using an amplifier - but I'd rather not since they can also amplify out of band interference and make things worse.

My solution for now is to get a new ATSC HDTV tuner card - one of these bad boys from DVICO: Fusion HDTV7 dual-express. Many of those using it have commented it has significantly better sensitivity in the receiver which will hopefully bring my weak channels back to within acceptable limits. Fingers crossed...

Firefox Download day? What download day?

Today is supposedly "Download Day" for Firefox 3.0 and they are trying to set a record for the number of downloads of a software product in one day. So this morning before work I fire up Firefox and tell it to check for updates - no dice, it thinks it is up to date. Well I do have one of the release candidates installed so perhaps it doesn't think the official release is any different from what I have.

So then I go to the SpreadFirefox.com download site to do my bit and low and behold I get some Drupal default installation page. I figure their site must be so overloaded with downloaders it has crashed. I start searching Digg, SlashDot and others thinking there will be a story about it but there isn't. So then I go to Mozilla.com and low and behold it is still proudly proclaiming Firefox 2 as the latest and greatest. On the right hand side there is a little "Firefox 3 Sneak Peak link" but that is it.

So I surf over to SpreadFirefox.com again and this time the page loads with normal content, perhaps last time I just got bounced to a new machine in a cluster that hadn't yet been set up properly. But the site looks just like it did yesterday still asking me to pledge to download. There is a download button which I click and it takes me to a Firefox 2 download page. At this point I figure 95% of people who came here to download Firefox 3 on "Download Day" will give up - they don't need FF2.0 and they don't need a wild goose chase trying to find FF3.0. And even if they do download something it really looks like it may not count for the record (there's no count of "Downloads Today" either).

One possibility remains - they changed the date on me. It's not actually obvious from the website when download day is - they don't have a countdown or even the date in a big font right up there. But I eventually find that by clicking on the "Pledge Now" button it takes me to a page that clearly says

"The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008. Join our community and this effort by pledging today."

I then actually go through the pledge process and there is never any mention of a time, either local or UTC based - I would have assumed I could have started at 00:01 June 17th local time, or maybe UTC time. Finally I double check the date on my computer... June 17th.

Sorry but my guess is download day will probably fail to live up to expectations at this point since by anyone's calculations June 17th is pretty much over for most of the world and a huge percentage of the pledged downloaders. It may be 8:30am here in Pacific Time but over in Europe its already getting into evening and Asia is now into night. I wish them luck but I don't think I'm going to be wasting much of my time at work trying to chase down FF3.0 - I'll probably get it tomorrow or whenever it prompts me to download now.

It seems like as America wakes up and goes to work (at least on the West Coast) someone really wasn't ready on the infrastructure side. Trust me we'll hear more about this... Plus I really question the wisdom of basing a WorldWide product release with so much fanfare on Pacific Time!

Update 9:00am: I've since found a story on Digg by someone who says they found a note saying they wont be ready until 10:00am Pacific Time. But I don't see that anywhere. Plus now when I go back to SpreadFirefox.com I'm getting more and more connection errors and Drupal database errors which doesn't bode well.

Update 10:30am: All my efforts to reach spreadfirefox.com are now resulting in connection timeout errors - not Drupal or other server side errors, it is just plain not responding.

Update 2:30pm: Finally able to get to the SpreadFirefox.com website (on the second browser reload - it is still getting connection errors sporadically). The site is still looking like it did yesterday but the download link at least takes you to a 3.0 download. The Mozilla.com home page is dedicated to 3.0 download. Also when I did an update on my Ubuntu box it also found the 3.0 package in the repositories - so I've kicked off two downloads, one for Windows and one for Ubuntu.