Blog Posts

April 2007

• 2007-04-20

  Steve Balmer read my blog (in my dream)

  I’ve been setting up a new Windows Vista notebook over the last few days for use by a non technical user. What a basket case. What a disaster. And I am referring to Vista not the user 🙂 I’ve been mentally working on a blog post titled either “Has Microsoft Lost its mojo” or “Has Microsoft Jumped the shark”?

  I have encountered multiple absolutely shockingly and incomprehensibly bad usability issues. I am making a mental list as I go along. Joel on Software found one and wrote about it extensively: read about the design of the “Start menu” and what it takes to shut down a Vista computer. But just to give you a taste, all the documenta...

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• 2007-04-19

  Really interesting story about why good used cars don’t sell

  Ok it’s not exactly about that, but the answer to that question is answered. Check out this post from Schneier on Security: More than a year ago, I wrote about the increasing risks of data loss because more and more data fits in smaller and smaller packages. Today I use a 4-GB USB memory stick for backup while I am traveling. I like the convenience, but if I lose the tiny thing I risk all my data.

  (from: A Security Market for Lemons)

• 2007-04-14

  Jeff Jarvis on the whole Imus situation

  Check out this post from BuzzMachine: ** "[snip…]At the Online Politics conference a few weeks ago, Joe Trippi said, “Every one of these candidates is going to get caught in a macaca moment.” They will mess up. They will say something in an unguarded moment. Yet we want them to be unguarded. We want them to be human. So when they are human and they do mess up, we can’t demand their scalp for every screwup. We have to judge whether this was merely a mistake or whether it revealed a fatal flaw in their character. And we need to be make that judgment ourselves, not under the threat and deadline of the press-conference piranha. We cannot run politics and the nation by the tyranny of the gotcha moment. I will also warn of the danger of life in the age of offense.[snip…]"

  (from**: On Imus)

  #politics
• 2007-04-11

  From Lifehacker, for TV Addicts, this is just too good.

  Check out this post from Lifehacker: TVShows offers a Mac-only take on the previously mentioned, cross platform TED (Torrent Episode Downloader), but with a somewhat improved and simplified interface. If you want to turn your computer into your own little cable box, TVShows looks like a simple way that anyone could manage.

  (from: Download of the Day: TVShows (Mac))

  #apple
• 2007-04-11

  interesting stuff in the paper today

  Here are some random goodies that caught my eye this morning. Don’ t count on my being your clipping service from now on, — these just caught my eye 🙂

  NYT Editorial about the Rutgers team and Imus The best commentary that I’ve seen yet about the Imus comment Interesting juxtaposition of the Cold War with Global Warming

  #politics
• 2007-04-10

  Vista is out-of-sight (not necessarily in a good way)

  I just had the pleasure of going through the initial set up of Windows Vista on a brand new HP notebook. Here are some of my impressions:

  It’s pretty, with translucent window title bars and colors. Somewhat mac-like, but really the Windows XP influence is just below the surface. Listening to Microsoft’s stories, I guess I conclude that they spent lots and lots of time on the kernel and system services and maybe less on re-inventing the user experience. The out of the box experience is so – so. They have lots of OEM partners who have installed a whole bunch of stuff that jumps in your face asking to ‘help you’, register you, etc. And the problem is that they are not all that coordinated with...

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• 2007-04-05

  [GEEKY] Domain specific languages in Ruby

  This is a topic that I’ve gotten somewhat interested in. If you search for Ruby Domain Specific Languages in google, you will find a ton of hits. Here are two that I particularly liked:

  Building a DSL in Ruby, Part I Building a DSL in Ruby, Part II

  #ruby #programming
• 2007-04-05

  Craigslist’s Dirty Little Secret

  I love Craig’s List. If you’ve heard of it (!) and are interested in online factoids, you’ll may be interested in this post from Compete Blog: ** "Analysis of eight major American cities shows erotic services consistently garners the highest number of individual visitors for February – almost always twice as many as the next ranking category, averaging 265,000 people per city."

  (from**: Craigslist’s Dirty Little Secret)

• 2007-04-02

  A great look back at Napster’s history

  Today we hear that EMI is going to sell DRM-free music over the iTunes Store. I haven’t studied the fine print yet, but it’s clearly a big deal no matter how it reads. Here’s an interesting look back at Napster who in a way started it all. Check out this post from Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: ** Shawn Fanning created Napster in his dorm room at Northeastern. It was the fastest-growing application in the history of the Internet. We changed the world but failed to achieve business success. Here is a glimpse into the inside story of Napster, and at the end, some lessons learned for entrepreneurs.

  (from**: How Napster changed the world – A look back 7 years later)

  #music
• 2007-04-02

  glenn is going to be a dad

  Read this essay describing the feelings of someone who will soon be a first time parent. It sounds like many of the things I was thinking when I was in the same boat. Check out this post from furia log: ** [snip…] Nothing is ending. Or a thousand things are ending, both huge and trivial, like they do while you’re waiting for anything new. It’s weird that we’re in charge of picking our daughter’s name at all, weird that we’re going to be making command decisions about another person’s life, weird that it will be so long until she has the powers to which she’s inalienably entitled. [snip…]

  (from**: The End of the Sky(e))

  All the best, glenn!

  #personal
• 2007-04-02

  The *myth* of multi-tasking

  I sometimes feel like I don’t multi-task quite as well as "everyone else". So I was interested in this post from 43 Folders:

  Yesterday’s New York Times front page ran an article pulling together the results of several recent studies looking at how interruptions and attempts to multitask can affect the quality of work as well as the length of recovery time.

  [snip…]

  My own feelings on the myth of multi-tasking are well-documented, but it’s fascinating to see research interest focused in this area — although it’s certainly not s...

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• 2007-04-01

  Most memorable, interesting ETECH talk

  I don’t want to label myself as a fuddie-duddie. I keep thinking back to this talk at ETech. Quinn Norton is a engaging and funny speaker who talked about “body hacking” (click to see the slides) I learned things like what “Furries” are, that people (including Quinn) have implanted rare earth magnets into their finger tips, literally trying to get a sixth sense, what provigil is, and lots of other wonders. As I said, a memorable talk.

  I learned new things. If that makes me a fuddie-duddie, so be it 😉

March 2007

• 2007-03-28

  Use Google to enhance your conference experience

  I’m at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, aka “ETech”… really interesting. One ‘trick’ that just occurred to me is working well. When confronted with a series of sessions in the same time slot, instead of just going by the title of the talk, a quick google on the speaker is a great way to select which session to go to. For example, the next time slot has 5 presentations by people I didn’t know: Gil Penchina, ...

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• 2007-03-28

  Bush on TV, quoting two blogs

  Is this a sign of the times? President Bush is on TV right now giving a speech about why he’s right about Iraq. To bolster his case, he quotes two bloggers located in Baghdad! (Jokingly: “yeah, they have bloggers in Baghdad too, heh, heh”) Of course he doesn’t cite the sources or the links so I can’t tell anything about where the flowery quotes come from. Still it’s a sign of the stature that blogs are getting in the public discourse.

  #politics
• 2007-03-23

  See you at ETech! Also, BlogBridge 5.0 almost there

  Look for our BlogBridge Release 5.0 in the next several days. You will get automatically updated, so just sit back and enjoy it. When we actually release it we will also post to this blog with some pointers to the highlights of the new release. Also, I will be attending O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (aka “ETECH”) in San Diego (USA) next week and will be getting together a meetup or BOF of BlogBridge users and others with an interest. If you want to join me in San Diego, please send me an email, and I will get in touch with the where and when.

• 2007-03-22

  Congratulations Antonio, Ned, and the rest of the Tabblo guys!

  I just stumbled (get it?) across this: “Hewlett-Packard announced Thursday that it plans to acquire start-up Tabblo, citing an interest in the photo-sharing site’s technology that facilitates printing from the Web.” (from C|Net News)

  Nice going guys!

  #business
• 2007-03-20

  Put Down Your #2 Pencils And Use Your .EDU Email To Get Free TimesSelect

  Check out this post from Consumerist: Use your .edu email to access TimesSelect, the subscription section of the New York Times. It’s free for students and teachers. Yay!—MEGHANN MARCO

  (from: Put Down Your #2 Pencils And Use Your .EDU Email To Get Free TimesSelect)

  Note to you old folks: you probably have a .edu account from your Alma Mater’s alumni office. Just go onto your university’s web site and look for Alumni email. Of course you probably can afford to pay for a New York Times subscription 🙂

• 2007-03-20

  Interesting: Best Buy Still Using Its Secret Website

  Check out this post from Consumerist: uy has confirmed the existence of a second "secret" website that looks identical to BestBuy.com, but has different prices and is only available inside Best Buy stores. This misleading website has been shown to customers who come into Best Buy stores looking to price match a product seen on the website. Best Buy is currently under investigation in Connecticut, but it seems as if at least one store is still showing customers the "secret" website instead of the real one

  (from: UPDATE: Best Buy Still Using Its Secret Website)

  #business
• 2007-03-17

  Interesting ideas about using iTunes more effectively

  Check out this post from Apple Gazette: TUAW points us toward a really cool iTunes plugin that does something very simple, and very well. This is really useful.

  (from: DockArt – Change your iTunes icon to Album Art)

  #apple
• 2007-03-16

  [GEEKY] The Most Popular Anchor Phrases for Your Site

  Useful and interesting information from Google for Webmasters. Chec out this post from Google Operating System: Google Webmaster Central shows the most popular 100 phrases used by other sites to link to your site. If you go to Statistics / Page analysis, you’ll find a list of anchor phrases, obtained by removing punctuations. Google’s algorithms use those keywords to understand a page better.

  (from: The Most Popular Anchor Phrases for Your Site)

  #technology