All my blog posts and articles
I just updated this site a little to have some more up to date information about my consulting business. Yes, you know about this blog, and you know about BlogBridge, but perhaps if you ever clicked on the links on the right of this you will have noticed that they were old and decrepit. Well, they are new and much nicer now. Still nothing profound, but at least informative if you are looking for me to do work for you!
Technorati Tags: Consulting
In the continuing efforts to rid my house of junk, we are donating a whole bunch of nice Tchotchke briefcases. For the heck of it, and to expand recent innovations in “laundry blogging” let me introduce you to Tchotchke Blogging.
Here you see a selected history of the computer industry in the last 15 or so years. Also, you see the evolution of my interests and attention. Let’s see, there are several Demo bags of cours...
This is not about patents, it’s about technology. In Google’s recent patent application they reveal some interesting and possibly surprising tidbits of how they rank your web site. (via Sadagopan’s weblog on Emerging Technologies,Thoughts, Ideas,Trends and Cyberworld)
“How many years did you register your domain name for? If it was only one then Google could hold that against you. Why? Because the majority of Spam websites only register a domain name for one year. A domain name registered for a longer period implies that the owner is more likely to be legitimate and serious about their web site.” (from Buzzle.com)
Technorati Tags: google, searchengines
All software has bugs, no doubt. So pulling out one story to make a point isn’t really fair. (Especially recalling the story about stones and glass houses.)
But if I looked I know I could find story after story, including some that I could write from first hand experience, about the terrible rough edges on all the software on which our much beloved blogosphere runs. And from that observation and those stories comes the premise of this post. Here’s one of the stories:
“It all started two weeks ago when I undertook the “drop-in” upgrade from Movable Type 3.14 to 3.17. Well, “drop-in” is not really the word. I had made some changes to my server configuration that I thought...
If you, like me, are a space buff, you will find these pieces about space-shuttle safety very interesting (and follow the links too.) So check these out:
“They’re going to kill more astronauts” (from Terrestrial Musings) and “Nobody’s Perfect” (from Tech Central Station.)
Another excellent Peggy Noonan column:
“How exactly does it work? How does legitimate self-confidence become wildly inflated self-regard? How does self respect become unblinking conceit? How exactly does one’s character become destabilized in Washington? …”
“…What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No. 1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them? “ (from Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal)
I always love her stuff!
This is commonly accepted wisdom: When I download and install an application on my computer (any platform) it is a accepted wisdom that if the application is signed with a recognized and valid certificate, I am practicing safe download and my computer isn’t going to be damaged.
This belief is so entrenched that I will probably be labelled as “just doesn’t get it” by the cognecenti for saying that the emperor has no clothes. In many cases for most users, there’s no additional safety.
When users download an application that is not validly signed, they get various forms of ominous warnings about their computer being exposed to grave danger. So far so good.
However if the certificate ...
Aren’t you glad, since every other blogger is blah-blah-blah’ing about it? But here is a linkwith some really insightful posts about it.
You can do your blogging by typing into a web browser form provided by the Movable Type service. But boy is that clumsy and awful.
So for a while now I’ve used so-called “blogging clients” which provide a nice rich interface to write and edit the posts, and then use the server’s APIs to actually send the update or change up to the server.
On Mac, I use the fairly wonderful Ecto for OS X – Recommended!
On Windows, I tried all the free ones that I found recommended, and only w.bloggar was stable enough to actually use, although I didn’t like the user interface. I also tried tried ShartMT and Ecto for Windows.
Despite my best efforts, neither one was stable enough to use. In the end, I found and am now using the BlogJet– Clean and simple.
What a difference this conference is from the ones I usually go to. Ten thousand or so fairly hard-core Java programmers, more or less around the clock, learning about Java in all it’s mysterious variety. 
We get to learn how Sun thinks about its stewardship of Java We get to see the latest new features, concepts, directions of all the multitude of parts of the java universe We get to dive deep, really, really deep, into many nooks and crannies of the technology platform
About 3 months ago I subscribed to Atlantic Magazine, which I really like, by the way. On a lark, I gave my name as “Pito Atlantic Salas” because, well, it amused me.
It’s taken about 3 months and I’ve received my first bit of Atlantic generated junk mail today:
Just in the unlikely event that you didn’t pick it up, a couple of days ago we released BlogBridge 1.8 as a weekly release. The major new thing is SmartFeeds, which I describe at length (or ad nauseam) here, here and here. Check it out!
Technorati Tags: blogbridge, del.icio.us, feedster, findory, RSS, technorati
I have IM accounts on Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Actually I use the AOL by far the most, but I have an occasional correspondent on Yahoo and MSN. By the way, on Mac OS X, I use the terrific client “Adium” which talks all those protocols, and is free. It is a nice UI on to the well known GAIM (GNU AIM) open source project.
Almost daily I get one or two new IM pings from unknown people, or more likely, robots, with some kind of a spam element, which I have to block to stop.
The weird thing is, the IM Spam is always from Yahoo, never from AOL or MSN. Are they doing something different?
Just a final follow up on this interesting story (actually more of an event than a story because it was over so quickly:)
Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine has an interesting view on why the Wikitorial experiment (seems to have) failed, and how to do it differently:
“The LA Times didn’t understand what it was doing and made three criticial mistakes. […] 1. Collaboration vs. argument […], 2. Care and feeding […], 3. Newspaper ego […]” (from Buzzmachine)
I came across a good story about ModestNeeds.org from Deborah Finn’s blog, where she says:
“In other words, although philanthropy no longer looks like it did in the time when most people lived in small towns and interacted on a face-to-face basis, it is an activity and a spirit that is alive and well. I would love to see John and Paul deploying their skills as researchers to document the ModestNeeds phenomenon and its implications.” (from Deborah Finn)
Check it out: ModestNeeds.org
Technorati Tags: philantropy
I wrote a few days ago about the coming LA Times initiative to create something they are calling “Wikitorials.” Well they’ve done it, and the results are quite interesting:
Someone going by the name Hank Ramey (a real name?) does a complete ‘rewrite’ of the LA Times Editorial. A really provocative idea. However it’s not at all clear what was rewritten though, so the effort is kind of loss.
For the more sophisticated Wiki user, a little digging reveals highly sophisticated edit trai...
Francois, reacting to something written by Jason Calcanis, makes a very good point in this discussion about feed and blog aggregators needing to have a way to make money:
“A number of people have asked me how I handle folks lifting our RSS Feeds and putting advertising against them. The first step I take is sending an email like the one below letting people know what we allow and what we don’t allow. I always CC our legal counsel and include a screen shot.”
...
Not computer service providers, but folks like carpenters and plumbers….
I came across ServiceMagic, which is a pretty cool site for locating and hiring people to work on projects around the house. I needed three doors repaired and on a lark I posted the project on this site. I had a phone call in 5 minutes, and 2 more within the hour. I chose one of them to come by and give me a free estimate in 2 days.
So that’s pretty impressive, considering usually you don’t even get a call back. Now lets see the quality of the service!
Technorati Tags: home, useful, recommended
Ok, but, unlike Simplebits, this picture doesn’t horrify me 🙂
Technorati Tags: funny
A couple of interesting related articles on facts and non-facts:
“Wikipedia is one of the Web’s most popular sites. I asked a teenager if he understood that it carries a disclaimer; Wikipedia “can’t guarantee the validity of the information found here.” “That’s just so that no one will sue them,” he shrugged. As to the content: “It’s all true, mostly.” (from: New York Times)
And in a related story, the LA Times is turning their editorial page into a wiki. As Jon Stewart would say: “Huuh?”:
“• Watch next week for the introduction of “wikitorials” — an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editor...
