Shazam is a great app that promises what it says it does. It has been out for a while and I have used it on other phones but for the iPhone it hasn't let me down. When I want to know what song is playing at the bar or in the Volkswagon commercial I simply fire up Shazam and in 12 seconds it lets me know.
Yesterday Netflix announced that it was discontinuing the Profiles feature that allows users with one account to keep separate queues and ratings of movies and tv shows. This absolutely sucks. I have come to rely on this feature and will be looking for alternatives to Netflix before the feature is eliminated on September 1st. I will look at DVD by mails services like BlockBuster or Intelliflix as well as on-demand services like cable/satellite providers or Apple TV. And yes I would switch regardless of the fact that it is likely that no other service offers this feature, just because of the way this has been handled.
What is even worse than the dropping of this feature, however is the way Netflix has handled it. Today I received this email:
We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.
Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.
While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.
They aren't giving any indication as to why they are pulling the feature, just vague allusions to making the site better.
While discontinuing the Profiles feature is not desirable for the passionate folks who use it, the decision will ultimately benefit all Netflix members. By discontinuing the feature, we will be able to put more focus and resources site and service improvements that benefit everyone, consistent to how we have grown the service over the years.
Netflix makes it sound that only a few passionate users will be affected by this and perhaps the feature was under-utilized. And maybe the folks who use that feature and will be pissed off by this are not the most profitable customers for Netflix (i.e. they watch more movies and so cost Netflix more money) but they are forgetting an important thing here. These customers are the Netflix evangelists. I have told countless people about how I love Netflix since my membership began in August of 2000. I know I have been responsible for at least a half dozen people signing up and who know how many people have read my write-ups here on Alt Text.
Netflix is making a big mistake in killing the Profiles feature but are stepping into an even bigger blunder with the patronizing messaging around the decision. Read more on MetaFilter.
I finally got around to uploading some photos from this year's minnebar (un)conference. I didn't take most of these as I was running around from place to place in between presentations and panels. Many didn't turn out because I didn't have the right lens. There are many more photos tagged minnebar up on Flickr. Luckily my awesome wife rectified that situation on for my birthday this year and got me this 50mm f/1.8 lens I have been coveting for years.
It's not too late to come by the Refactr offices tonight for the Groovy/Grails Users Group meeting. It's at 6pm and you can learn about some sweet technologies, if you are into that sort of thing. Get the details at groovy.mn.
Come out to O'Gara's tonight for the 3rd installment of Minnesota's Demo Camp event, MinneDemo. As word of these events has gotten out the past two years attendance has been steadily rising. We might need a convention center for next spring's MinneBar event. Seriously, I am getting worried :) If you know of some space we can check out for next year's (un)conference please let me know by emailing me (ben ut alttext dat com) or posting in the comments.
There are plenty of iPhone reviews out there. This is not another. This post is just an observation as to why the iPhone is so different and inspires such goodwill from those who use it. It is simple really, but Apple has taken tasks that on most (all?) other phones are cumbersome, non-intuitive, and often just plain crappy and made them a joy. I am not really over stating this, the iPhone is really fun to use. Browsing the web is not reminiscent of the "real" real web, it IS the real web (ok a web without Flash - for now). Google maps works just like Google maps should. Email is great, not some crippled version, and the phone, despite what some have said, is very nice too. Almost all the interfaces are easy to use and it is easy to know where to go and what to do to make things happen. My previous Windows Mobile phone and my Palm PDA phone before that, took a while to master and it was only because I learned their backwards way of doing things was I able to manage on those devices.
This should serve as yet another lesson from Apple that design matters. Make interfaces (both physical and virtual) that are fun and intuitive and people will enjoy using them and tell their friends.
A couple other observations - No wonder there is a 10% restocking fee if you return an iPhone. With the amount of plastic they use - wrapping everything multiple times in their way. It would take a while to wrap all that stuff back up, I imagine. And what is up with the industrial glue used on the bags they put the phones in when you buy them. Not sure if it is the same at Apple stores but at the at&t store the clerk put the phone in this bag and then pulled away a strip between the two insides and the bag sealed up tight - had to use keys to rip a hole in the bag to open it. When we asked him about it, he said Apple was making them do that. Think different, I guess.
By our count nearly 350 geeks and "geeks at heart" converged on the Railroader building in downtown Saint Paul this past Saturday and I think most everyone has been very positive about the result. I believe that number (or any number over 300) would make minnēbar the largest barcamp outside of India (Barcamp Bangalore 3 - just a couple weeks ago - drew over 500 people!). I know that barcamps are supposed to be about local community and ours was no exception, but it was still nice (and a little amazing) that we had quite a few people drive or fly in from New York (at least 2), South Dakota (at least 2), Wisconsin (6 or more), and Chicago (at least 1). Knowing that this event is worth someone's Saturday is one things, but also worth a six hour drive, or several hundred dollar plane ticket? That is awesome.
I am very happy with the way the event turned out. I think the sessions, by and large, were first-rate. The special guests such as William Gurstelle and his excitement for making things that go Whoosh, Boom, Splat as well as the Scout Robots from the University of Minnesota gave a nice real-life tech component to the day. Of course David Heinemeier Hansson was a highlight as he was his usual witty and charming self. I have had lunch with him before (at Etech last year) and have seen him present, but he seemed even better in this setting. All his answers came very freely and he didn't really seem to struggle with any of the questions. I am sure he had been asked about such things time and time again. Even so, I thought Jamie Thingelstad did a very good job with his side of the interview, as well.
I was very worried that the size of the crowds would really take away from the intimacy and sense of participation that is crucial to barcamps, but I don't think these fears turned out to be warranted. Plenty of people talked between sessions or headed off to an "ad hoc session room" to discuss this or that and the sessions (with a few exceptions) never got too full. I still believe that the 50 minute session length is good. It is not so much that it can get too detailed so people really have to know their stuff. I spoke with Shourya Sarcar, one of the planners of barcamp Bangalore, and he said that one of the differences between the Minnesota and Bangalore barcamps was that their sessions are 30 minutes and that they "vote with their feet" meaning they leave a session if it is no good, or not what they had hoped. Minnesota "nice" retards that practice a bit, but there was still some wandering between sessions.
Jesse is presenting some ideas surrounding until testing using Groovy and Grails tonight at the 2nd meeting of the Groovy Users of Minnesota. Stop by at The Coffee Grounds in Falcon Heights at 6pm.
iPod, phone, camera, computer running OSX, bluetooth, wifi, and no buttons*. I am glad my Cingular contract is up in May, just in time to pony up for this amazing phone.
* A fact that I am sure will get a whole cadre of usability professionals crying foul, but you know what, its all about sexiness and by and large buttons are not sexy.
I cannot believe how easy the transition has been for me in my switch from Windows-based computing to my new Mac. I admit I was apprehensive and had a lot of worries that I wouldn't be up to speed as fast as I needed to be, but those fears appear to be unfounded. Sure there are a couple keyboard commands I am retraining my fingers on and there are a few Firefox extensions that don't work well, but all in all I have been pleasantly surprised by the ease of the switch.
I am sure it will take a couple months to erase some of the muscle memory of hitting ctrl + c and v in favor of command + c and v and I there are no doubt countless little things I will find in Photoshop that could slow me down (like the save for web keyboard commands, that is an awkward hand contortion). I picked up the new wireless, Bluetooth Mighty Mouse too and have adopted a wait and see approach there. It is a great mouse in many ways but it seems a bit small for my hands and I can't quite get it configured how I want (though the SteerMouse software I downloaded is helping by allowing me to set additional preferences and per application defaults). The Tabbrowser Preferences extension (does anybody else hate the change to the word "Add-ons"? I wonder if it has legal reasons) is something I cannot really live without and a couple others would sure be nice to have on the Mac side of things.
But let's talk a bit about what I am impressed with. First off, and it really does strike you before anything else, is just how physically well-made these laptops are. There was a tremendous amount of thought put into the closing mechanism, the placement of ports, and the power supply. The keyboard has a great tactile feel and the back lighting and lighted indicators for num and caps lock are great..
Inside, the operating system is intuitive and clean. It responds quickly (even with only 1 GB of RAM. There were a couple things I altered right off the bat to make it feel better to me (adjusted the font smoothing down to 6 from 8; turned on full keyboard access for all web form controls (like check boxes), and adjusted the settings for Dashboard, Expose, and the Dock.
Third party software (while I lament the dearth of free options, has impressed with the overall level of quaility in the interface department. Almost all of the applications I have downloaded (TextMate, Transmit, and Parallells), very nice and tied closely to the look of the OS.
There are still some things I would like to figure out, like how to efficiently use Dashboard and iPhoto, or how to get my Google Calendar to load into iCal like it is supposed to, but all in all I already feel very comfortable with my new Mac and am dreading going back to work in the morning and booting up my Dell.
The Java Developer's Journal has published the results of it's end-of-year poll of various Internet technology players which makes for some good reading. Here are a couple I found interesting:
Jason Bell, Editorial Board Member, Java Developer's Journal:
Incremental mainstream adoption of Ruby on Rails
It's going to happen, isn't it? Keep an eye out for Sun's offering of JRuby. Whether this is the death of other open source scripting languages like Groovy remains to be seen. Ruby has been a wake-up call and has now drawn the line dividing serious scripting languages from "hobby" languages (ones that wouldn't see enterprise adoption). For me, my job just got a whole lot easier, a whole lot quicker.
David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of (Ruby on) Rails:
2007 will be the year where LAMPers finally decide to stop being neutral about the WS-* mess and pick the side of REST: the next wave of Web APIs will stop supplying both a SOAP and REST API and just go with the latter.
Gary Cornell, Founder & Publisher, Apress:
-IE 7 will have a fast adoption curve and so Firefox will cease gaining market share.
-The AJAX bandwagon will gain even more speed.
-Ruby's momentum will slow down as Python and PHP frameworks to combat Rails grow in popularity.
-The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#.
-Apple will no longer gain market share for its desktops and will stabilize at its current meaningless level.
-Ultra lightweight notebooks based on flash memory with instant on/off will start coming out in large numbers.
I agree that so-called dynamic languages and frameworks will make big gains in '07 but feel pretty optimistic about the prospects for non Ruby on Rails flavors too. Groovy and Grails is primed to be pretty big and while I don't think it will overtake RoR in the next year, there are significant advantages that make the prospects for Groovy and its framework Grails to become very mainstream, look very good.
Ruby on Rails is hot, but it seems that more recent noise from the Java community has been focused on Groovy and its framework, Grails. Taking inspiration from innovative frameworks like Ruby on Rails, or the likes of Django or TurboGears, Grails makes simple things simpler, harder things possible, and brings back the fun of creating web applications. Continuing to affirm the hype, Guillaume Laforge and Dierk König, remark "Grails definitely has an ambitious name for being the Holy Grail all application developers have sought so far. But more than a mere ambition, Grails fulfills its promises by letting you be more productive than you could have ever thought possible."
The Grails Framework is an open source, lightweight, agile Web development framework that leverages Groovy, an open source, lightweight, agile and dynamic Java-based scripting language, and complements Java web development. Grails is the ideal framework for developing in the web tier for Java developers and exemplifies the power of the Groovy language and its APIs.
I for one believe that there are too many Java developers out there (their community still dwarfs the next largest one) that are very interested in lightweight frameworks and rapid development but are not too keen on "throwing out" years of experience with the most popular language out here. Groovy in combination with the Grails framework offers the best of both of these worlds and I think people are just waiting for someone to really take up and champion Grails as David Heinemeier Hansson and 37signals have done for Rails.
The web has come a long way baby. You don't need "fancy" software from Microsoft or OmniGraffle to make flowcharts, diagrams, and the like. Now you can use online tools such as the Flash-based Gliffy or the css and html, ajaxio. Both are very cool.
An old post at Slashdot resurfaced, for whatever reason, and caused quite a stir about how non-compliant (with CSS standards) Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 browser will be. People can split hairs about this or that relating to IE7's standards compliance but when it comes down to it, it either will be or won't be.
In a good conversation with Chris Wilson, Group Program Manager of the Internet Explorer Platform team at Microsoft, Richard MacManus at ZDNet asks some pointed questions about IE7's plans for CSS compliance and gets some honest answers.
The bits about standards compliance versus backward compatibility were interested, and there are suggestions that the IE7 team is prioritizing standards compliance ahead of backwards compatibility. I also thought Wilson's characterization of many (most) of IE's user base as 'non-enthusiast users' was dead on (and funny).
I think backwards compatibility has always been a big challenge for us and certainly today it's a huge challenge. Particularly for IE, as we have a lot of what I'd term 'non-enthusiast users' - my mother is always my canonical example here. And for my mother, if I automatically upgrade her machine [its IE browser] and suddenly one of her sites breaks or looks a little funny, she's going to be upset about that. On the other hand if she were to install an alternative browser, and it looks different in that browser - she could probably understand why that would happen, because it's a completely different product.
Luke Francl and Dan Grigsby have done a great job in putting together a follow-up event that plays off the success of minnebar and the strength of the Minneapolis / Saint Paul web and software communities. I think that minnedemo will be a huge success and can hopefully be replicated a couple times a year to show of some great work people are doing and to keep the momentum going in between annual minnbar events.
The new improvements made to the Flickr UI are great and well worth the wait. When you go, what you won't see are drastic changes to colors or brand, nor should you. What you will see are subtle enhancements (except for maybe the more radical improvement of the Organizr) that shouldn't confuse veteran users too much and should allow for new users to more quickly utilize many of the more powerful features of this great social photo sharing application.
Some stories are coming out that point to Microsoft attempting to purchase large amounts of Yahoo! stock. The spin on this is that Microsoft wants to compete head to head with Google more effectively. This logic strikes me as a bit, well illogical. I can see Yahoo! wanting to secure the financial wherewithal to compete with Google on a larger scale but Microsoft has always had the option of doing as much or more than Google but has seemed content (until recently?) to not really get into Google's core businesses of, information, search and advertising.
Some ideas have Microsoft spending nearly $2 billion in the coming fiscal year toward building an ad-supported online service business, or selling its MSN network to Yahoo! for a minority stake in Yahoo!
This type of a merger makes a lot of sense, though I don’t think I would like to see it be more than an infusion of cash into Yahoo! or an elimination of MSN (in favor of Yahoo).
I have put the new Google Calendar app through its paces and like many people, have found many things to like (invite features are looking good. I think evite is in trouble and Skobee is likely DOA) and some to dislike (still very buggy with refreshing itself after certain actions and there are some issues with duplicating entries for the same shared event). The purpose of this post, however, isn't really about those things. It isn't really even about Google Calendar. It is about what's next for Google and the glimpse they have given us within this new application.
It is obvious that they will soon integrate their calendar and mail apps. My thought is, though, that they will not stop there. I think the time is ripe for them to unleash their first version of an integrate office style suite containing search, mail, calendaring, and word processing. I mocked up some screens as to what I think it may look like when it comes, posted them as a Flickr set and added notes to them as well. Here are some thumbnails:
With 90 participants as of about 5 minutes ago, minnēbar is really gaining momentum. Now I fear the venue will not be able to accommodate this mass of geeks, hipster designers, and open-sourcers all in one place. I think all this pre-conference excitement will really boil over to some great discussions at the conference. I hope everyone can check their "Minnesota Nice" (aka introversion) at the door and really participate.
The idea for a Fall event has already surfaced, this time with a focus on open source and open solutions: OpenBar. I will keep people updated on the event status and will post a review and such after the event. But with less than one month to go, I just hope I don't have to turn anyone away.
Let's find a place that can accommodate 200 next year. Any ideas?
Daniel M. Harrison at blogcritics has been all over the potential sale of Sun to Google and what it might mean. He, along with some others, have proposed a Google move into the financial services and healthcare industries.
"Google is going into Financial Services and Healthcare!" he exclaimed over the lengthy conversation. "This is the last stage of the Java project!"
This could also be the true start to the "G-drive platform" or GO-OS (Google OS) and could also mean the open sourcing of Java? This last part is intriguing especially as other platforms and languages gain ground* on the reigning king of the enterprise application.
Here are couple quick observations from the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2006:
1. Don't wear your goddamned bluetooth ear piece the whole time - not sure why I get so irrationally annoyed with this, but I do.
2. Newsflash: Apple overtakes PC laptop market with strong 70% share - or so it would seem by the looks of things here.
3. There is nothing sadder than a bunch of full-grown "hard-core" programmer types forcing themselves to fake their excitement about now doing JavaScript coding.
I had the good fortune to accidentally sit down to lunch at a table with David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals and lead developer of Ruby on Rails and Rich Kilmer of RubyForge who had begun a discussion of the things you might expect, Ruby, Rails, AJAX, and the like. Then Phil Windley (who has some excellent posts about a coupletutorials here at eTech) and Rohit Khare of CommerceNet Labs added to the mix some discussion of microfomats, JavaScript, and some ideas that definitely push the envelope of what those things have traditionally done such as, mini-ml and some JavScript talk during which I was treading water so it wouldn't go over my head. Finally, fellow Minnesotan, Dan Grigsby of SiteGoFaster infused some more energy into the ruby on rails discussion as it eventually turned to a preview of David Heinemeier Hansson's tutorial about how with Rails 1.1 (coming this weekend?) you can create great AJAX apps without writing a single line of JavaScript.
I have been playing around with Google's new chat in Gmail (surely in beta) this morning and I am pretty impressed with some of it's features. Google always suprises me when they release new features and products for which, seemingly, no one has asked.
Maybe this will be another way to pull users toward Gmail from the likes of Hotmail and Yahoo. It could work. I am looking for anyone out there who wants to switch and chat with me.
The Korean company, Gamepark Holdings, makers of the GPX2 probably did not know that their product would catch on, as it has. Because it runs Linux, it is easy to customize, add to, and hack. And despite a slew of shortcomings (no wi-fi, lack of mainstream games, less-than-stylish design, and short battery life – rumored to be fixed), the GPX2 can do many things that the more popular Nintendo DS and Sony PSP cannot (support for many common file types – mp3, mpg, DivX, bmp, jpg, etc, the ability to emulate classic games) - all because it is open.
When will device manufacturer's learn that opening up their products will make them infinitely more attractive to, hackers and developers at first, but then later, as more hacks and mods are available, to the mainstream market? Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, and mobile phone makers should be embracing freeness and openness as a means of being more profitable. Stop the arrogance (of thinking you can do it better) and start the acquiescence (and yield to the open movement).
Just completing a couple days in Chicago meeting with users of the products I help create. It has been very useful and I have enjoyed my time here, despite being wiped by travel and "glad-handing". I am going to suggest to the “higher-ups” at my company that we hold online product-specific user sessions a couple times a year to solicit direct, actionable (I do have a business degree) feedback that we can use when defining and designing new products and features. Another clear theme I heard was a desire to have software tat is simple. Perhaps 37Signals is on to something; of course they are. Maybe I should look Jason and the boys up while I am in town. Simple, Powerful, Accurate. It may not make for a particularly original idea for developing software products but it is most assuredly what I will be looking for on each screen of future development work.
Many seem to think that the U.S. give aid to the world but receives no love back. Those people are wrong. Unfortunately, our lack of organization in these times of disaster is causing millions of dollars of aid to be turned away.
Writely looks promising as a collaborative writing tool. Remote saving of files such as word processor documents and spreadsheets will become more common and just begs for what some are calling the web OS - but because that is really a huge misnomer I prefer something like web application and storage technologies esuite or WASTE.
I can think of a lot of reasons the Bush administration should shy away from its recent mantra of personal choice. I am sure many women can too.
The idea of a global city is interesting to me. There aren't too many cities (45) that get the distinction. My hometown, Minneapolis manages to sneak into the lowest tier. I am sure the art and culture here have a lot to do with it, but having an international airport and the hub of a major carrier helps.
I really need very little reason to post a link about Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael Jason's post/mini review of it seems like reason enough. I have been thinking more and more about these issues lately. These things go in cycles.
If you saw any of the following: Hollow Man, Vertical Limit, A Knight's Tale, The Animal, or The Patriot in a theater you may be entitled to your money back (pdf). Looks as though Sony used a made-up film critic named: David Manning to hype those films. God, if I could just get the same deal for: American Psycho, Blade, Congo, The Haunting, Malibu's Most Wanted, and Mr. Deeds.
Snopes' list of unanswerable questions they have received that have a sense of urgency to them. Some favorites include mention of: Cat's eating a dead person's face off, hickies, penguin eggs, bananas, witches, and Corona among many other bizarre requests. Some of the requests however really give Snopes a lot of credit. Here is my favorite:
if anyone understands what im (sic). saying please e-mail me at this e-mail adress (sic).
does anyone here bilieve (sic) that there are aliens in other planets? who really made us is there really a god? im not saying there isnt (sic). but who made god? seriously please answer back at me
Great looking photo of Toronto skyline - not only is this a great photo but all the photos on the site are - and the best part is he shares his secrets of how they are made in many cases.
PostSecret - send in your secrets in the form of postcards. Some of these are very poignant.
Fad Watch: Video Googlewacking with salacious videos like this one.
Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on a single defector: 100; Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents: 0
Number of merit badges in Safety awarded to Boy Scouts since 2001: 15,417; Number of badges awarded in Shotgun Shooting: 65,249
Year by which every U.S. nuclear weapon will have reached the end of its original design life: 2014
If Fiona Apple's new video (click free link) is any indication of her new direction, I am thinking the Free Fiona campaign may free her from any future record deals once and for all. I am a Fiona fan but if her new sound is 20's retro, I won't be listening to much of it.
I have been pretty busy lately and now I can finally post about some of the work I have been doing. I have co-authored 3 white papers centering around Extreme Programming and web services. Here they are for your review. As you will see I had some well respected help. And I guess some help that is not as well respected.
UPDATE: In case you haven't guessed by now these are fake, they are generated by a little application that turned out at least one that has been accepted to a written publication. Ha.
In a deal that will have huge impacts on the web design and publishing industries, Adobe to buy Macromedia. How can two companies who pretty much control most of the design software industry merge. This basically means we are losing half our options. I want to think that this could be good - less but more powerful software to buy, etc. and I think it may work that way in the short-term, but the long term benefits of two companies competing against each other would (and has) benefit the consumer more.
"Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, which supports certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies. Click here to get the latest version of Internet Explorer.
We do not support Mozilla or Netscape. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."
Is this a Microsoft partnership deal? They do only use Windows Media Player format.
Shoddy technology decisions aside, this is just a poor business model from beginning to end. They claim they are modeling the service after iTunes, but it is really not anything like it except that it is distributed online. Most movies I saw were downloadable for between $4.49 and $4.99 (though they claim there are some for $1.99 I didn't see any that low). The thing is, this just buys you a viewing - and you must complete that viewing within 30 days of purchase and within 24 hours of beginning to watch the film.
Who do they think their audience for these things is? Anyone who is downloading movies to view on their computer is or would be a Netflix or similar service subscriber before they would do this. With Netflix you can keep a movie forever and can start watching a movie in 2001 and complete in 2005 if you want. AND you can easily watch it on your TV.
Maybe they think their market is people who normally get pay-per-view movies. They are delusional if they think this is smart. Pay-per-view movies are available immediately in most cases without waiting 30 to 90 minutes to download, they usually cost between $1.99 and $4.99, and they too can easily be watched on TVs rather than computer screens.
Here's an idea for Movielink, given free of charge. When people pay for and download movies from your service, they should either pay a bit more ($12.00) and own them just as iTunes users do or they should pay less ($2.00) and be able to watch them for a specified period of time.
TurnItIn.com - teachers and parents are submitting student papers on this site to check for plagiarism. It gives an aggregate score for the % of original content and annotates the parts as to where the text was from. Here's a sample image if report results (gif). I wonder if Google scanned books will be incorporated at some point?
Fox Blocker blocks the Fox News Channel before it even gets to the TV.
Death sentence overturned because jury consults Bible. - The court said the Bible passages, including the verse that commands "eye for eye, tooth for tooth," could influence a typical juror to vote for death instead of life imprisonment. Ironic that they used the old testament to make their decision, 'cause Jesus didn't know shit!
Backpack - another product from 37signals I'll probably be using soon.
What a beautiful website! I have always wanted to do something with leaves on Alt Text but it always seemed hard to get good images. Looks like John found a way - create them.
Synthetic Biology - "specifying every bit of DNA that goes into an organism to determine its form and function in a controlled, predictable way...The goal...is nothing less than to "reimplement life in a manner of our choosing. And some potential applications? "building organisms, like supercoral that sucks carbon out of the biosphere and puts it into building materials, or an acorn programmed to grow into an oak tree - complete with a nifty tree house. And there's the opportunity to add new chromosomes to the human genome, ushering in a panoply of human augmentations and enhancements."
Yahoo! buys Flickr - doesn't this seem like a defensive move for Yahoo! It's like they said, "If we don't, Google will." I wouldn't be surprised to see some shadow business models of basically, let's build something cool that these two behemoths will get in a bidding war over.
Why doesn't Picasa w/Hello (from Google, sort of) work more like Flickr? (or perhaps Flickr is solely for the moblogger and not the traditional photo sharer) Is this in the works? Sure sharing photos easily with one or a couple other people has its place but if Picasa could publish photos to the web and network them for sharing purposes you would think that would be much more in line with the rest of Google's offerings?
Many of you may know that I have started a new job this year, indeed a new twist in my career. Because my business cards now say designer on them I can finally enjoy all the perks those prima donnas have been wallowing in for all these years. One such perk is a fantastic workstation setup currently consisting of a Dell Inspiron 9200 laptop with a great 17" screen with a wide aspect ratio (1920 x 1200 native resolution). It has wireless and Bluetooth built in, is fast as all get out, and even has a friggin' subwoofer built-in! What better monitor to accompany this fine machine than a 23" Apple Cinema Display with the same native resolution. If there is a better feeling in the world than looking at this screen all day, I don't want to know it.
Today I received an email from Netflix inviting me to a sneak preview of their new "Friends" feature. Now it isn't what I had in mind - as my idea focused on sharing a DVD with people who are not Netflix members.
You've been selected to participate in a special preview of our Friends feature that will give you a new way to discover great movies. You'll be able to check out what your Friends think of a movie, exchange movie suggestions with your Friends, and leave your two cents worth on a movie for your Friends to read.
I don't know how valuable this new service will be, it does show that Netflix is trying to improve their service all the time. I will be checking it out in the next few days and reporting on it here.
I think a great feature to add to the Netflix service would be a Share With Friend feature that would allow me to send a DVD directly from my Netflix queue to a friend I think may enjoy it. Netflix could wrap the DVD in a special envelope directed at converting those who try the service (through sharing) to becoming members.
Of course there would be some restrictions to curb the potential for abuse. I can foresee three basic rules: 1) Members can only share with any given friend (address) once per year. 2) Members can have only one movie shared at a time. 3) Members are responsible for loss/damages of any shared movies.
With these rules in place and a willing user base this new feature could be a boon for Netflix's existing viral marketing efforts.
I came across something weird with Firefox. Whenever you click a malformed link or mis-type a URL by typing http// without the colon, you are delivered to the www.microsoft.com homepage. It doesn't seem to happen in IE and appears to be the default action in Firefox 1.x Preview Release. Weird.
Personal Democracy Forum - "A hub for the conversation already underway between political practitioners and technologists..." - this shoud be discussed more but I have no time now - though I will be watching this project closely
"Bikes Against Bush is a one-of-a-kind, interactive protest/performance occurring simultaneously online and on the streets of NYC during the upcoming Republican National Convention. Using a Wireless Internet-enabled bicycle outfitted with a custom-designed printing device, the Bikes Against Bush bicycle can print text messages sent from web users directly onto the streets of Manhattan in water-soluble chalk."
This is one of the coolest uses of wireless technology I have seen.
Here are some of the sayings I want to see on the streets of new York:
This morning (yesterday I guess) as I made my rounds on the web and came to Jason's site I was once again amazed at the amount of time that boy spends on his site. Now gainful employment has its perks, but the ability to post dozens of links and make several planned out posts has got to take a serious chunk out of your day. I would bet Jason spends 3-4 hours of time in his site or on other sites finding links for his site each day.
I may be wrong. Maybe Jason is some kind of webloggin' idiot-savant.
If he does spend that kind of time, however, we really ought to find a way for him to earn some cash. I started thinking about the idea of selling ad space as some weblogs are now doing but the idea seems to make me ill, plus it really clutters up an interface. Then there is the selling of the wares. Jason could sell T-Shirts and mugs, perhaps Silkscreen can become shareware?
Then it came to me — product placement. Maybe Jason could write about his walk home and how he got a craving for a Chalupa from Taco Bell. Perhaps he could tell the world that he just bought a new Trek mountain bike. Each time he would make one of these posts, even if the product is only mentioned in passing, Jason could make some dough. So why not take a little cash on the down-low for a quick word about a sponsor's product?
In fact, I suspect that this is already the case in the "blog community". I find it interesting that 95+% of the personal computing market consists of PC users, yet, I challenge you to find a non-Mac user on Jason's link list. Most of my friends in the web design/development industry have "switched" to Mac after being PC zealots.
Maybe this is not a coincidence? Maybe it is part of a grander, more sinister plot by Apple to "infiltrate" well-visited weblogs and buy their support with shiny new titanium iBooks and iPods — an elaborate campaign that uses the influence of culture creators at the grassroots level.
Though I have not upgraded to Firefox 0.9 yet (actually I have but have found it very buggy and less stable) I do want to take some time to sing the praises of 0.8 and some if the great features of this browser.
First off let me start by saying that I am not a Microsoft basher by any means and have never had problems with Internet Explorer since version 4.x except of course for the security issues (which I believe have less to do with inferior code than with the desire by many to "take Microsoft down" and of course Microsoft's insistence that the browser is integral to every aspect of their OS — but that is another post).
I have used IE exclusively (except for testing) for several years now as both Netscape and Mozilla (and Gecko) all proved to have issues and problems that IE did not have. Furthermore IE was fast AND (not to be too hypocritical) I liked the seeming "integration" IE enjoys with Windows and how many of my web-based tools (Movable Type as the most notable, used the DOM of IE and Windows to provide additional control over things, such as allowing me to highlight a word and add a link to it or format it how I see fit.
A couple things have changed in the browser world however — the biggest of those changes are tabbed browsing as I have become sick of window pollution for various browser windows. A natural progression for me was to try a IE based browser variant with tabbed browsing. I chose Avant Browser and thought I had found the solution. Well, Avant proved too buggy for me and soon outlived its welcome on my desktop.
Just about this time a nice little browser called Firebird. I had heard some about it but after having tried Mozilla, the new Netscape and Gecko I was not impressed — at least on a PC. In addition, I did not (nor do now) understand the convoluted development roadmap at Mozilla and how every initiative fits together. But I like to try new things and Firebird (previously Phoenix and now Firefox due to legal issues) sound like just the thing.
So the, very well spread, rumor is that on Monday Apple is going to hold a press conference to announce iTunes Europe. Where it gets interesting, is that it has also been rumored that Steve Jobs is going to announce that he bought the rights to the Beatles songs and he is going to announce this in London on Monday. I would guess that Apple is really only getting the online distribution rights to the songs, if that. I don't know if Michael Jackson can afford to sell all the rights to the Beatles songs any time soon.
An interesting side note from this Reuters article is that Apple has been embroiled in a legal dispute with management for the Beatles, Apple Corps. since September.
The Beatles, who formed similarly named London-based Apple Corps. in 1968 to manage its business interests and act as its music label, have accused the computer manufacturer of violating a 1991 agreement specifying it could use the Apple trademark for computer products only.
The Beatles management have said Apple Computer broke the agreement when it used the logo and trademark to promote its iTunes online music store, the most popular Internet download service in the world.
You won't have to guess which side of this I am coming down on. Even if its only Paul and Ringo, I'll take it over Steve.
