William M. Hartnett

There’s some pretty cool stuff in the just-released version 4.3 of Google Earth, just as there were lots of interesting treats rolled out last week in the latest version of Microsoft’s Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D. Without a doubt, though, my favorite addition to Google Earth is the inclusion of imagery acquisition date. Just [...]

Granted, the difficulty I have finding street addresses of newspaper buildings while working on Paper View Monday updates doesn’t exactly top the list of life’s great injustices. It is, however, incredibly annoying in a low-grade way that, like so many things I complain about in this space, is almost certainly unique to me. Nearly every [...]

From the Department of Minor Complaints: Why the heck is “Delete Sketch” directly above “Finish Sketch” in the ArcView editing menu? This one has bugged me for years, but it’s only today, having mistakenly selected delete instead of finish three times in a row, that I’m finally flipping out about it. (Maybe I should just [...]

What is the logic of the “time remaining” bar in software installation windows? I’ve been staring at “Time remaining: 3 minutes” for exactly 11 minutes while waiting for a software update to install. It is literally impossible to overestimate how immensely annoying I find this. Now it’s counting down individual seconds from 45, except each [...]

How could I possibly hate Wachovia more than Volkswagen, for which I have a long-running, well-document hatred? Because Wachovia charged us a $10 fee after a refund check from a company that overcharged us for a painting bounced. Only after strenuous complaint and repeated threats to immediately close our account, which has been open for [...]

What a day for my stupid 2001 Volkswagen Jetta. First, the trunk wouldn’t open. The last time this happened was in a parking garage at Miami International Airport, when I had a trunk full of luggage for a two-week trip overseas. It was similarly packed today. Five hours later, while proceeding northbound on Interstate 95 [...]

Difficult though it might be to believe, BellSouth-is-now-the-new-AT&T (more commonly known as BSINTNAT&T), my home DSL provider, isn’t being all that sympathetic to my need to waste time online without paying ridiculous fees for basic services.
Our new house is comprised of what only someone inclined to incredibly strict technical interpretations of building plans might describe [...]

Put this in your Philosophy 101 pipe and smoke it: If bandwidth at your office is so choked by co-workers watching Possessed Demon Cat on YouTube and bidding on Bob Dylan memorabilia on eBay that normally fast-loading web sites time out or are rendered as unstyled HTML, and even the site that tests your bandwidth [...]

Three things currently burning up the tech, pop culture and media sections of my Google Reader, and which I’m incredibly tired of hearing about:
> UNRELENTING IPHONE INSANITY
It debuts June 29, has only one button and instantly makes my WinMo Moto Q, iPod, Volkswagen, coffee grinder and every computer I’ve ever owned stupidly obsolete. It’s a [...]

Oh, Google Analytics, I love how kooky you are. At the moment, for example, you’re showing me data from today, but nothing for the last nine hours of Thursday. It’s so fun and unpredictable!
What I really love is the way you’ve communicated absolutely nothing to your users throughout this whole week of sketchy performance. Very [...]