Good bye Switzerland

by on February 6, 2006

My LIFT experience has, alas, come to an end. Now I am getting on a plane in the Geneva airport. I’m on Continental, if you wanna track me as I fly across the world. Flight 81 from Geneva to Newark, NJ. Then on 1681 from Newark to Seattle.
But, one quick link before I get on the plane. Check out the MSN Gas station price comparison. Very cool.

  • In his post at http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/02/googl...

    Nick Carr was promising auctions between gas stations on the new onboard VW dashboard within cars as a new advertising service

    Microsoft can probably propose this mashup as a first step to the solution for this real time auction.

    This new 3D dashboard is detailled at http://www.autoblog.com/2006/02/03/vw-to-use-go...

    or on my blog (in French) at http://media-tech.blogspot.com/2006/02/google-v...
  • I would have to drive so far to get the gas. If I input route first instead of zip first then zip that would be real cool.
  • MJ
    *groan*
    Feature Unavailable
    This feature of MSN Autos is not available on this Web browser

    Okay, so not supported on Safari. Debug menu, User agent, Windows MSIE 6.0

    Works fine.

    Well done to Microsoft. Yet another lock out. This kind of crap is not really endearing me to Microsoft.
  • *sigh* I also use Safari.... but I am not that bothered. Live in UK and I think I would have to travel rather far for cheap gas... and it would cost a lot more getting there than the savings on gas.
    P.S Hope you have/had a gd flight :D
  • hugh macleod
    Lovely seeing you again, Robert... have a great flight...
  • Pierre
    It was a nice week end, just for the record the bottle we had was an old armagniac, (slightly different than cognac in the way it's done to last longuer I think)
    I think we also made the villars hot tub record (8 at the same time, 8 guys thought...)

    Have a nice and safe return.
    Regards

    Pierre
  • Paul
    Works fine in FireFox.
  • Dear Robert Scoble,

    when will you talk to us about those "little" tricks that M$ uses for guarantee their monopoly over the market?

    I'm not saying that because I'm some kind of *nix geek user (that most of the times hates M$ for obvious reasons), but when I bought my last laptop (from Acer) I get pissed off about M$ because Acer used M$ DSDT Compiler in order to compile the DSDT (it's a table that BIOS passes to OS, containing information about the ACPI). And guess what? If I reverse the code generated by M$ Compiler and try to re-compile it on the same compiler (but from Intel, that was the company that first develop ACPI specs) I got lots of errors. Then I had to correct those errors one by one and apply a patch to my OS of choice so when the kernel starts to boot, it overrides the original DSDT from BIOS and uses then one of my on (the fixed one, I mean).

    Do you have any idea how much time I spend fixing this kind of thing? I'm not talking about little monopoly tactics here like "I'm unable to close my MSN when I open my Outlook". I'm talking about things that most of people simply don't know. They buy a new pc (sometimes without Windows), install whatever OS they want and then the hardware does not work properly because the manufacturer and M$ made a deal to broke ACPI using M$ Compiler.

    It's widely known that M$ broke the ACPI Protocol when they build their DSDT compiler, it's also widely known that ACPI is an OPEN protocol that should be followed by the book. Instead, M$ just make little changes on it that only Windows can recognize (sure, it's undocummented) and give to the hardware manufactures a broken compiler that will make those computers unable to run with ACPI enabled on other SO than Windows.

    How about that? Could you please tell to us when M$ will stop thinking about the users like stupid people and respect them by not trying to enforce their software using those kind of tactics?

    PS: sorry but English isn't my native language ;)
  • Aaron
    MSN needs to add Safeway, Costco, more Arco's, etc. What good is it if it doesn't show all of the gas stations?
  • RLP
    I get "Feature Unavailable" when using Firefox on my iBook. Oh well.
  • Would be nice is there was an RSS feed for these gas prices.
  • Sash
    Admittedly, this is a useful tool. However, the mapping feature is terrible. It centers the map around the worst price (what sense does that make?), and even worse, it doesn't even show all of the gas stations that it includes in the list.

    This is from my experience for zipcode 48105.

    (Not spoken to bash MS, as a former intern.)
  • Switzerland is a great place.. And not a bad tool dude, seriously it's not very new but still......
  • I am just down the road at the UW when you get back.
  • Another thumbs down for MS on this one.

    "Feature Unavailable
    This feature of MSN Autos is not available on this Web browser."

    *sighs*
  • Flightaware is a much better tracking site:

    http://flightaware.com/live/flight/COA1681
  • It was a pleasure to meet you Robert, greatly enjoyed your keynote which really did well to tie together themes of the conference. And i hope, i trust that cory gave you a hard time about those signed drivers on Vista...

    perhaps we'll catch Amina in some microsoft pr someday soon? ;)

    safe travels.
  • Jim, that's cool, thanks!
  • alas, don't worry, there are even more good moments to come.

    enjoyed meeting you there. remember you are always welcome in switzerland.
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