His most recent public community given title, ‘VP of Screw Ups’, Phil O’Shaughnessy created quite the shit storm for Creative to deal with today. Friday morning, he posted a warning on the Creative customer forums that told programmer Daniel_K to stop writing his own drivers for their X-Fi sound cards. After a year of it’s release, the sound cards still will not work on Vista because Creative hasn’t released drivers for them. According to Mr. O’Shaughnessy, Daniel_K is “stealing” from Creative by making the cards work.Over the weekend, Creative’s forums exploded with posts from angry customers who have sworn to stop buying their products and it seems there’s already a boycott site up at boycottcreative.com.

A Creative Forum poster named “youAREkidding” summed up Creative’s stupidity quite nicely -

Imagine what would happen if 10%, just 10% of the people who will read about this, be in a store somewhere, see someone about to buy a Creative Labs product, and say to that potential customer. “If you have Vista, Creative has non-functioning drivers for it, there was a guy who created a Modified driver, but Creative made him stop distributing it, and there are still no workable drivers for Vista.” Some people might laugh at him, but the majority of computer peripheral buyers don’t know squat, and if they hear it from someone who presents themselves in a knowledgeable manner, they may actually think twice about it. Creative loses another sale.

So, yes, Daniel may very well have stepped on some copyright rules, and Creative had the lawful option of doing what they did. Score 100 on the law, score minus several millions for not doing the job themselves in the first place, and putting someone like Daniel in a position where he had to do what he did, just to get the customers of this company happy.

And here is what created the beginning of a very bad week for Creative:

Daniel_K:

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don’t have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.

Phil O’Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.

Read the customer comments and the forum post on this over at the Creative Forums.

Sigh. Why…why…why?!?! A few months ago I made a post titled “Cool Tech Toys for the Ladies“. I’m always on the search for cool tech toys and gadgets and get easily frustrated with the things that I find geared towards women. Several months later and I’m just browsing around online again, looking for cool stuff and I stumble upon this pitch towards the ladies regarding Samsung’s new G600 cell phone -

Samsung’s “for the ladies only” burgundy G600 comes with free matching nail polish

Now, before I read any further - I keep re-reading the title of this article, blank faced, blinking stupidly. After I snap myself out of the “oh my god, I feel just a little bit dumber after reading that” mode, I then read on to find -

What a better way to entice women to buy their mobile phones than to release something that would suit every woman’s fancy. Samsung seems to have a woman adviser in their manufacturing division to have come up with the pretty cool idea of releasing a new burgundy colored version of the previously released SGH-600 mobile phone.

What the hell? You mean to tell me…wait. OK, had to take a breather for a second before I said something I shouldn’t have. Now, I realize that there are a lot of “girly-girls”, but will these women _really_ go out and buy the $$$ cell phone because it comes with matching fingernail polish?? Apparently Samsung missed the boat, forgetting about the high-tech, savvy women out there who want functionality, ease of use (especially when you’re in a hurry), and something that just works, not giving a damn what the color is or how cute it is.

But what’s even more interesting is what Samsung did to make the G600 really appealing to women, Samsung partnered with Nails Inc to release the burgundy colored G600 with 3 bottles of nail polish that are included inside the phone’s box. And mind you, those 3 bottles of nail polish are not just your ordinary nail polish, they are color matched with the G600 itself.

“Oh…my…gawd! Jenny look at my new nail polish! It matches my phone, my car, my earrings, my bra, my….isn’t it just fantabulous?!??! I only had to pay $$$ for the phone and $50 a month for 2 years!! And it came with THREE bottles of polish, can you believe it?!?!!!” *blink*blink*blink*sigh*

For women, this might be the answer to their lifelong prayers. A mobile phone that matches the color of the clothes but the color of their nails as well.

Lifelong prayers. I’m not sure about other women, but I can say with certainty that my lifelong prayers have nothing to do with praying for a cell phone that comes with matching nail polish. And here folks, is where I had to stop reading the article.

If any of you are like me when it comes to e-mail, your inbox looks like a never ending nightmare. I have multiple e-mail accounts that I use for various activities - junk/online crap, bills, personal, etc., and each account has an inbox full of e-mails; a minimum of 250. Why? Because I get so much e-mail and spam to each account, I rarely have time to read it let alone actually sort through it.

Thanks to one of my favorite websites for social networking - Twitter, I stumbled upon a post from Chris Brogan who shared his tip on how he tamed his inbox. Since I’m at work right now, I won’t be able to get this going, but you can bet your ass I’ll be implementing his howto tonight.

Thanks a million Chris, I’m sure this will be of much help to many people!

Well, my little 13.3″ MacBook finally gave up on me. Generally, I upgrade my laptops once every 12-15 months but I enjoyed my MacBook so much I kept it until it finally gave up on me. I am by no means an Apple fan girl at all but I will give credit where it is due whether it be Apple and Mac OS X, Dell, Windows (ok, that wasn’t fair - I have much respect for this OS :)), various other names, or Linux.

I primarily used my MacBook for work, carrying it back and forth to the office every day, traveling across North America with it, and of course using it at home. After about a year, the case began to crack (along the front left and right side by the trackpad) and the battery stopped holding it’s charge (to the point where I couldn’t use it without charging it for longer than 20 minutes) - the well known problems. Here I am 19 months later and I finally had to retire my little 13.3″ friend. Yes, I could’ve replaced the battery and probably will eventually.

Now I sit here and type this post from my new MacBook Pro. Because I have tiny hands and I’m just really not a very big person in general….this is going to take a lot of getting used to. Almost half of my forearm rests on the wrist pad and my hands look incredibly little on the keyboard. I look like a child using it and I’m finding myself making typos more often than before. Aside from having to get used to the size, the weight is hardly noticeable and I’m loving it, along with Leopard.

There are quite a few new things to learn in Leopard, but so far I’m liking it all.