Matthew Trump's Paradigm Watch

Sunday, January 13, 2002

Resovled: Radio sucks. This 30-day debate I intend to pursue earnestly must begin with that premise. This thing has to prove itself to me. Like I said, by "sucks" I mean "really sucks", not just "sucks" the way all software "sucks."

Basically the question is whether or not I will purchase it.

So far, how do I feel? Well, there's been no big "aha" where I think "clearly this doesn't suck."

So far, I'm thinking what's the big deal. All this hoopla from Dave and everyone else, like version 8 was the Second Coming. My feeling is that if since version 7 actually drove me screaming away, if version 8 isn't substatiantly cooler, for all hype, then you can forget about my ever trying Version 9.

Too much hype can be a bad thing. I feel like maybe I'm a victim of an Amway pitch here, or something. "Everyone says it great, so it must be great."

30 days. So far, so-so.

10:06:45 PM

Nice. Got the "302 Found Message" and had to reload the page. Obviously this is a bug. I can deal with a bug.

Since I erroneously typed "304 Found Message" in the previous post, I guess I better edit it to "302". My first edit. Wel,l first I have to post this... 9:40:23 PM

O.K. The post worked--sort of. But I have no idea what happened. Did it do something remotely, or just locally. Can people see what I just typed? I have no idea.

Also after I posted, I got 304 Page Found. Wow. That's great. The application is telling me "What a good boy am I."

I had to reload this page and got back to this. Whew. For a minute, I figured all was lost.

This is my new motto: "all software sucks, but some software really sucks. Which is radio. So far, so-so.

I've installed, lots of software on UNIX, Macintosh, and Windows. I consider myself "average joe power user." I can deal with hoops (otherwise I wouldn't use Linux as much as I do) but I can't abide functionality that is completely anti-intuitive. That was my problem with Radio. I'm not a believer yet.

O.K. Trying to post again. Wonder what will happen... 9:37:44 PM

O.K. So far so good. The rocket hasn't crashed yet.

This is my second attempt at Radio Userland. With the new release, I thought I would try it again. I tried version 7 a couple months ago, and well, it completely defeated me.

"We make software that sucks." Well, O.K. But my reaction was "this really sucks" I don't recall ever using a piece of software that was less intuitive as to what it actually did,let alone how to use it.

Nothing would load. I couldn't follow the directions because the buttons I supposed to see weren't even there.

A couple months later, having left the version 7 on my hard drive, I thought maybe I'd been to harsh, so I gave it a second go. After all, those automatically generated calendars were so nice. I wanted one too.

This time, when I launched the application, it gave me a script error right off the bat. Keep in mind I hadn't done anything to that folder (at least consciously) since my first attempt.

So you can understand why I thought it sucked.

Now at least I am about to post. Of course I'll believe it when I see it. I'm expecting to press "Post to Weblog" and have the darn thing crash on me and have to start over. That's what I'm expecting. I should have tried a shorter post first. Here goes... 9:32:44 PM