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February 27, 2005
Wikipedia — The Heavy Metal Umlaut (or How Wikipedia Pages Evolve)
07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
Jon Udell (writer for both InfoWorld and O’Reilly Network) talks about the evolution of Wikipedia pages here — erhhh, more specifically he talks about the origin of the heavy metal Umlaut page. Paracelsus Rambles did a little writeup on Jon’s work here.
So how cool is Wikipedia?
P.S. Jon talks about the making of his screencast here. This (you’ll need a flash-enabled browser to view the screencast) is a direct link to Jon’s screencast on the Wikipedia heavy metal umlaut page.
P.S.S. More on screencasting soon.
Bluetooth Is like Bacon
06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Mobile
Andy Ihnatko, The Chicago Sun-Times’ technology columnist, talks about how Bluetooth is like bacon. His full — and hilarious — talk can be found here. It’s part of ITConversations’ full series of talks from the recent Mac OS X Conference.
Ok, to be a little more pragmatic, here’s a link to a Microsoft’s Channel 9 video demonstrating a trick little Bluetooth application (Anil Dhawan of Microsoft uses his Bluetooth-enabled phone to control a PowerPoint presentation on his PC).
Jotspot — A Wiki Application Platform
05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
I first heard about Jotspot when I listened to the IT Conversations podcast of their presentation from the Web 2.0 conference. Here’s a few words from JotSpot’s FAQ:
What is a wiki?
A wiki is a website which can be edited by anyone, without knowing HTML. See also Wikipedia’s definition.What is JotSpot?
JotSpot makes simple web applications simple to build by combining wikis and web applications in an easy-to-use hosted service for workgroups. Take the Intro Tour.What is an application wiki?
Most wikis are great at organizing unstructured text: create and edit pages, create links and establish hierarchy, add attachments and comments and basic search. But they quickly reach their limits when you try to add structure. For example, a lot of folks use wikis for a shared task list. How would you assign a due date for a particular item? Can you assign priority? Could you assign a task to a group, not just a single person? Can you flag items for discussion? All of these are possible using our service because JotSpot allows you to easily add structure to unstructured data. JotSpot makes simple applications simple to build using wikis. Take our Advanced Tour to learn more.How would I use JotSpot?
Use JotSpot for all of your wiki needs. In addition, build lightweight collaborative applications using our platform.The JotSpot Application Gallery contains applications you can load into your JotSpot including:
* Event Calendar
* Recruiting
* Task Manager
* Customer Relationship Manager
* Help Desk
* Company Directory
* Issue Tracker
It’s a pretty impressive application… something that makes writing niche, department-level applications possible. To find out how, listen and watch Jon Udell’s screencast (a word so new it isn’t even in Wikipedia yet) of a Jotspot demo (this is a link to a SWF file which playable if you open it in a Flash-enabled browser).
February 26, 2005
w.bloggar — Client Blog-Posting Tool
05:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Movable Type
I just downloaded w.bloggar a client-side posting tool that is compatible with Movable Type. I’m pretty impressed with w.bloggar’s feature set… it supports a lot of MT’s advanced posting features like extended entries, posting to multiple categories, etc. It has a spell checker, a preview window (which renders your post in HTML), HTML tag buttons (bold, underline, links, image insertion, etc.) and lots of other stuff. Pretty impressive.
Oh, I got the tip on w.bloggar over at Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.
February 24, 2005
An Open Letter on How to Design Firefox Toolbars
02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Firefox
This is an open letter to all designers of Firefox toolbars. It’s awesome that lots of companies like Yahoo!, A9 and Google (whoops, why is there no ‘official’ Google Toolbar for Firefox?) are supporting Firefox with their toolbar efforts. However, I won’t use any of them, thank you.
Why not? Because I value my vertical space. You see, as in print/web media, space “above the fold” (as in the fold in a newspaper or on a web page anything you can see without having to scroll) is WAY more valuable than space below the fold. And obviously, space at the top of the page is THE most valuable (why do you think they put banner ads at the top of the page?). That is why I have reduced the top chrome in my Firefox setup to just one line of UI; Because I want to maximize the amount of vertical space for the content. Adding a toolbar uses up one line of the most valuable UI space. No thank you.
However, there is a solution. Companies, please feel free to design toolbars, because there are plenty of folks that don’t mind giving up even three or four lines of UI to toolbars. Rock on. However, please also “part out” your toolbar by designing separate buttons for all of the elements on your toolbar (buttons are things like Firefox’s default ‘back, ‘forward,’ ‘reload,’ etc.). That way I can choose the functionality I want (as in, I really don’t need a ‘highlight’ button, since Firefox’s Find function already does that) while not using up vertical UI space.
One company that gets this is Furl. They don’t even offer a traditional toolbar, just custom buttons that you can add to your existing UI.
OK, so Yahoo!, A9 and others — gimme some buttons, and I’ll add them to my UI. Until then, your toolbars will go unchecked.
February 23, 2005
Now Is the Time to Promote Firefox
03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet & Firefox
Hello leading websites (except MSN, of course). Get a clue. NOW is the time to start encouraging your users to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. Where are the ‘Get Firefox Now’ buttons on your homepages? Where’s the customized Firefox browsers? Come on!!
Why aren’t Yahoo!, Google, Amazon, Ebay, et al. doing this? I donno. I guess they must really like having Microsoft control the key piece of Internet client software.
In a perfect world, these companies would get together and start creating some more mind share for Firefox — especially in the minds of the general public. How about a big PR event announcing their ‘partnership’ to promote Firefox? How about each company kicking in some bucks to buy some advertising talking about the benefits of Firefox? How about a ‘Download Firefox’ day where each site dedicates a big chunk of their homepage to encourage downloads?
Do the math. Longhorn isn’t shipping for years, Bill Gates is scared and Firefox has momentum. If Microsoft maintains its hegemony in browser share, you know who to blame.
February 21, 2005
Yahoo!, Get the Focus On
06:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Brand
Deeeaaamn, I hate it when you go to a site like Yahoo! Finance, and they don’t have the default focus of the cursor set to the search box… you know, like when you go to Google and you don’t have to mouse to the search box, you can just start typing your query. Ironically, it works on Yahoo!’s home page.
Who’s in charge of sites like finance.yahoo.com? Do they think that by not setting the cursor, that I am more likely to look at the ads? I’ll look at the ads if they interest me, thank you, regardless of where the cursor is. Or perhaps — worse yet — do they just not Get It?
Yahoo!, if you are going to have a stand-alone site like finance.yahoo.com — which represents an important sub-brand — then make it work right, or you’re just wrecking your brand.
I Want My WalMartTV
08:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - General
The New York Times today has a piece on WalMart’s in-store TV service (a.k.a., WMTV). Here’s some food for thought from the article:
According to Wal-Mart and to an agency that handles its ad sales, the TV operation captures some 130 million viewers every four weeks, making it the fifth-largest television network in the United States after NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox.
That’s a lot of viewers, which translates into some advertising nice profits for WalMart.
According to Wal-Mart’s rate card, advertisers pay $137,000 to $292,000 to show a single commercial for a four-week period, depending on the length of the ad and the number of stores where it is shown.
However, as Phil Lempert, editor of Xtreme Retail 23, an industry newsletter, notes that just because you have a huge number of customers (i.e., “viewers”), it doesn’t necessarily mean they are paying attention to the programming. The article goes on to talk about how WalMart is upgrading its old-school monitors to 42” plasma screens. Some interesting reading.
I did a little A9ing/Yahooing/Googleing on the web, and found that PRN is the company that creates (or helps create) the in-store network for WalMart (it’s interesting that the NYTs didn’t mention this in their article). According to an old Forbes article PRN started out as music-sampling kiosk distributor. PRN’s current customers include Best Buy, Costco, Sears, Circuit City and Ralphs among others.
This is a link to a two-page PDF that gives an overview of WMTV, and this (warning, 57Mb file) is a link to a MPG file that gives an overview of PRN’s services and finally some statistics from PRN’s site on WMTV:
PRN’s network operates in 2,650+ Wal-Mart Stores
* World’s largest retailer offering a wide variety of general merchandise at everyday low prices
* $158.5 billion annual sales
* 84.1 million shoppers per week
I remember a few years ago that this gas station near where I used to live had several monitors blaring out CNN or something to ‘entertain’ the customers when pumping gas. I found them annoying, so general avoided that establishment. I haven’t been in a WalMart lately to view their media offering, but it would be interesting to see how it all works… definitely some powerful marketing lessons to be learned.
Funny, going to WalMart to watch TV.
P.S. I doubt this would work at your local WalMart.
February 20, 2005
Improved del.icio.us Posting Interface
03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
I found this on a random link on del.icio.us. If you input your user name, it will generate a bookmarklet that greatly improves on del.icio.us’ bookmarklets. It adds a list of your existing tags and some recommended tags to the pop-up ‘add to del.icio.us’ interface.
Click on the thumbnail below to see what this improved interface looks like.
It’s nice to have a list of all of your tags when added a new site. You can also click on a tag in the interface window, and it will add that tag to the new bookmark’s tag list. The site says that it’s experimental, but it seems to work. Sweetness.
Increasing the Dynamic Range of Your Digital Camera
12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Digital Photo
Today’s digital camera’s dynamic range is comparable to slide film or about five F stops. Over at Liminous-Landscape, they discuss dynamic range as follows in their Understanding Histograms tutorial.
The digital imaging chip in your camera is very similar to colour transparency film when it comes to its sensitivity to light.
Like slide film, if a part of the image receives too much light it becomes burned out, and if too little light it is rendered as black. A recognizable image is only recorded if the light hitting the chip falls within a range of about 5 F stops. (Remember — each F stop is a doubling or halving of the amount of light hitting the film). With digital things are much the same and even the dynamic range is about the same as for slide film; about 5 stops. Also keep in mind that the total range of brightness values encountered in the real world is only about 10 stops — from the dimmest light that you can read in to the brightest beach or snow scene in which you might find yourself).
With a potential of 10 F stops of light information and shooting with a camera that can only interpret five F stops means that a lot of shots will have areas that are either under or over exposed. There are ways to get around this problem using flashes or split neutral-density filters, but these methods have their limitations.
Another way to increase the effective dynamic range of a camera is to shoot two or more shots of the same scene, and blend them in Photoshop. This technique works well of a lot of situations, but is rather tedious. Luminous-Landscape has a tutorial called Blended Exposures that walks through this process.
Potentially even better (or at least faster), is to use Photomatix software to blend exposures automatically — and for free (Photomatix Basic). I’ve yet to try out Photomatix, but some of the examples on their site look promising. I’m looking forward to trying this software out.
February 19, 2005
Support Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation Fund Drive)
02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Whatever
The non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation, creators of Wikipedia among other projects, is having a fund-raising drive. If you want to support this awesome web resource, you can get information on donating here. If you have a PayPal account, donating is point-and-click painless… so no excuses.
A9 is Hiring 'Block View Drivers'
01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1) ~ Whatever
A9, Amazon’s search service, is hiring ‘Block View Drivers.’ These are the folks that drive around major cities talking street-level pictures of businesses for A9’s Yellow Page service. Here’s a bit of the job description:
While on the job, you will drive a specially equipped vehicle with GPS, a digital camera, and computer hardware/software to collect geo-referenced imagery. The ideal candidate will have experience with all of these technologies, and will be confident in his or her ability to troubleshoot any hardware and software problems that may arise.
For a little background on how they took these pictures, check out this.
Google recently purchased Keyhole, so I am sure they have something cooking along the same lines. For a ‘preview’ of what might be coming, check out Microsoft’s TerraServer. I’ve noticed that they have updated some of the urban landscape photos recently. Here’s a shot of the Baja Fresh location in Palo Alto, CA. How about a Double-Double from In-n-Out? Some trick stuff is coming…
Favicon Generator and Learning CSS
01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Movable Type
I’ve been doing some revamping of the site this morning. I changed my CSS style sheet a bit to eliminate underlining of links. I found that the links were already distinctive enough, since they are a different color than normal text. A good site for learning CSS is W3School’s CSS site.
I’ve also been playing around with adding a favicon for the site. I thought that Photoshop would support .ico files, but no luck. Alternatively, I felt like this feels like a web ‘service’ — upload an image file, and get it back in .ico format. Indeed, such a service does exist here — very trick.
BTW, I found the favicon site using Yahoo! Search. For some reason, I was having no luck on Google/A9 (which is not to say that you couldn’t find it on Google, just that my query style was more efficient on Yahoo!). Lesson = using multiple search sites pays off.
Update: 2005_20_02
I changed the format for blockquote tags in my CSS file to:
.content blockquote {
line-height: 150%;
border: 0.5px solid #666666;
padding: 5px 15px 5px 15px;
background-color: #FFFFFF
}
This adds a box around the blockquoted text. I found this style here. I’m going to try this out for a while.
Update: 2005_20_02
I changed the css file for the sidebar background color to a light shade of gray to separate it from the main content window.
.sidebar {
padding: 15px;
background-color: #F3F3F3;
}
I changed the banner id’s: 1) background color in the css to C0C0C0, 2) reduced the banner height to 22px and 3) changed the padding to 5px.
And I removed the ‘blog description’ (i.e., <h2><$MTBlogDescription$></h2>) from the Main templates.
February 18, 2005
Some Killa New Digital Cameras
09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Digital Photo
PMA (Photo Marketing Association’s annual show) runs from February 20th-23th, and as DPReview says:
The Photo Marketing Association Annual Show will be held this year at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando between the February 20th and 23rd. PMA is the photography industry’s most important annual event, it’s the place where the new year’s hottest digital photography products are announced.
Check out DPReview’s full PMA coverage here. I’m sure there will be some great, new digital cameras coming out at this show, so be sure to check DPReview’s site if you’re a digital camera geek.
The PMA show aside, I’ve recently been reading about some new digital cameras that either incorporate ground-breaking features, or have been awesomely re-designed or even one that defines a new digital-camera product category.
Leading the way in novel features, is Konica-Minolta’s Maxxum 7D that features the ‘world’s first digital SLR featuring a body-integral CCD-shift, Anti-Shake (camera-shake compensation) technology that combines enhanced picture quality, performance and improved handling characteristics.’ The 7D gets DPReview’s Highly-Recommended stamp of approval in their recent review, so it’s definitely worth considering if you’re new to the DSLR market, or if you are a Konica Minolta devotee.
The new (so new it’s not listed on Canon’s site yet) Canon EOS 350D raises the bar on entry-level DSLR cameras. DPReview has a preview of the camera here. Some of the awesome improvements include:
Eight megapixel CMOS sensor (not same as EOS 20D)
Second generation CMOS (same generation as rest of current range)
DIGIC II processor (better images, faster processing, less power)
Instant power-on time, faster shutter release, shorter blackout time
Continuous shooting speed increased (3.0 fps vs. 2.5 fps)
Buffer increased (14 JPEG frames vs. 4 JPEG frames)
Image processing time decreased (thanks to DIGIC II)
Compact Flash write speed increased
Smaller body (15 × 5 x 8 mm smaller)
Lighter weight (17% lighter including battery)
And defining a new digital camera market is Epson’s new R-D1. The RD-1 is a rangefinder camera, in a similar market as the analog Leica M-series cameras. If the R-D1 wasn’t three grand, I’d be interested in one. However, Epson will face some competition in this market soon, so stay tuned for lower prices and digital-rangefinder selection. Luminous-Landscape’s review of the RD-1 can be found here (btw, they love it).
More on the New Smaller PocketPC Phone
08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Mobile
I wrote about a new, smaller PocketPC phone a couple of days ago here. Since then, I have found another in-depth review on it and a place where you can actually buy one now for about $600.
It’s just a matter of time before they build-in WiFi and add a keyboard (a front-facing one like this or, better yet, a slide-out keyboard like LG’s F1900). With native WiFi support you could use Skype’s PocketPC client, while a keyboard would make messaging, web surfing and email much easier. As soon as a small PocketPC product comes out with these features, I’m on it.
Regarding carriers’ data packages, T-Mobile is pretty much your only choice for a reasonable data package, since they offer an unlimited GPRS-based Internet package for about $30/month. Cingular is NOT an option. Their data service plans are a joke… like $30 a month for 10 Mbs of download. Forgetaboutit. I’m not even going to link to Verizon since their phones suck and all have external antennas, and, of course, their data rates are too high (I think it’s about $80/month for unlimited access). Surprisingly, Sprint’s data plans are expensive too.
Some carriers need a reality check… if you build it and charge too much, they won’t come.
February 17, 2005
802.11n is Here (sort of)
01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Mobile
802.11n is here… well, at least 802.11pre-N is here. 802.11n promises greater throughput (a minimum of 100 Mbit/s) and — probably more important — greater range than 802.11a/b/g devices.
CNet has a review of Belkin’s wireless pre-N router which they give pretty high marks. Of course, as with most pre-specification-finalization devices, you have to use Belkin’s Pre-N adapter in combination with the router to enjoy 802.11pre-N benefits. That said, the Belkin router is backwards compatible with 802.11b/g gear.
The 802.11n specification is due to be finalized by the end of 2005. EETimes has a pretty good article on this process.
A New Spin on Blogging (and launching a blog)
12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
The New York Times has an article today on ThinkEquity Partners’, a boutique investment bank, launching of its ‘research’ blog. It seems likely that ThinkEquity pitched the Times on this story to get some PR — just another sign that blogging is the real deal.
Mr. Moe (ThinkEquity’s co-founder) said he did not see an immediate way to make money from the blog, but viewed it as a way to generate ideas - the lifeblood of research and investment banking.
“Our mission is to identify and partner with the stars of tomorrow, today,” he said.
He said he got the idea from Tony Perkins, a founder and former editor of Red Herring magazine who has started AlwaysOn, which is using blogs to discuss business and technology issues.
Generically, blogging could be a way to make investment banking research more relevant especially after the recent stock market crash where it was found that many investment banking firms were guilty (hey, the top investment banking firms coughed up $1.4 billion in fines) of writing research statements solely to win investment banking business — just a slight conflict of interest.
I’ve read a little of the ThinkEquity blog, and it’s got some good stuff.
Interesting Wireless Infrastructure Articles and Audio
12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Mobile
Recently, I’ve been reading about and listening to (i.e., podcasts) a lot of conversations on wireless infrastructure. The topics discussed have been more ‘WiFi-ish’ (i.e., WiFi, WiMax, et al.) than ‘cellular’ (e.g., GSM, Edge, 3G, etc.) for lack of better terms.
The Economist had a recent article discussing the closed nature of wireless chipsets. Here’s the quote that counts.
Openness is coming to the wireless world, too. Cheap and powerful devices that use unlicensed and lightly regulated parts of the radio spectrum are proliferating. But there is a problem. Though the spectrum is open, the microprocessor chips that drive the devices which use it are not. The interface information—the technical data needed to write software that would allow those chips to be used in novel ways—is normally kept secret by manufacturers. The result could be a lot less innovation in the open wireless world than in the open wired one.
Dana Blankenhorn at Accelerating Change 2004 talks about this lack of openness or lack of a ‘wireless platform.’ By platform he means something you can write to and change (he says we are currently stuck in a world of point solutions… that is, access points). Of course, I am paraphrasing, so it’s probably best to listen to him directly here.1
Also on IT Conversations and also from Accelerating Change is Dewayne Hendricks’ talk on the history of wireless, various non-traditional forms of creating wireless infrastructure (e.g., Amateur Packet Radio) and California’s Gigabit or Bust initiative among other topics. Here’s the audio clip of his talk. Information on the full panel discussion can be found here.
And today in the New York Times, there is an article on the City of Philadelphia’s efforts to blanket the city in WiFi. Philadelphia is hoping that ubiquitous WiFi coverage will attract business and enable Internet access for disadvantaged groups. Naysayers — such as the local DSL and cable companies — argue that the City should not be in this (i.e., their) business. Regardless of the arguments for or against this project, I see it as a great, large-scale experiment in pervasive Internet access. Even if it doesn’t work out as the city would like, I am sure that a lot of useful information will come from this.
1 This link is to a MP3 audio clip of IT Conversations’ recording of Mr. Blankenhorn on the Pervasive Computing Panel at the Accelerating Change held in early November 2004. I used IT Conversations “clipping service”: to excerpt Mr. Blankenhorn’s discussion from the full panel talk. You can make audio clips on IT Conversations by clicking on the Clip link on the detail page that describes the audio. Then simply put in the start time and end time to create a URL of the clip you are interested in. Very cool.
February 16, 2005
Feedviewer — Don't be Afraid of (Most) RSS Pages in Firefox
09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) ~ Firefox
XML RSS pages don’t render very nicely in Firefox if at all. However, there is an extension to solve this problem called Feedviewer. Feedviewer allows Firefox to render RSS pages in a manner similar to Apples Safari browser. Click here for a demo of how Safari handles RSS pages.
Overall, Feedview works pretty well, but I do get some strange behaviors every now and then. This may be caused by how I have my browser set up. For example, when trying to view En gadget’s RSS page the download menu comes up asking me if I would like to download the page… hum. Feedview works on Zoinger’s RSS page, but sadly doesn’t like Zoinger’s RDF page.
OK, not perfect, but better than nothing.
Mapit — A Handy Firefox Extension
09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Firefox
Mapit is a small, handy extension for Firefox that allows you to select addresses from web pages and quickly generate a map by selecting the Mapit menu item from the context menu (right click menu). Through Firefox’s Extension Manager (Tools -> Extensions), can program which mapping application you would like Mapit to use. Several mapping sites are supported from Yahoo! Maps to Microsoft’s TerraServer. Google Maps is currently not supported.
A better UI experience would be for Mapit to allow you to choose the mapping site at the time of selection instead of having to access the Extension Manager to change sites. Context Search, another Firefox extension, allows you to do this based on your installed search plug-ins.
I haven’t thoroughly tested Mapit, but it seems to fine on the few address I did query.
Rein — A Tight Firefox Theme
08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Firefox
I haven’t been looking to switch themes in Firefox, but I ran across one called Rein when reading about the ScrapBook extension I talked about here. Please note that the Rein site is written in Japanese (I think), so may not render very well in your browser. Hunt around the page for find the link for the install. Here’s a link to the Rein page.
According to the site where Rein is posted, Rein means ‘pure’ in German. Rein’s nice because it changes most of the UI elements to various shades of gray… all the way from black to white. Basically, it helps gets the UI out of your browsing way. After all, isn’t that what browsers are for?
February 15, 2005
Podcasting Will Be Everywhere
02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
I’ve obviously been looking at the MSMobiles site lately since 3GSM (one of the larger mobile conferences) is going on.
So, how cool is it that you can be spun directly by the spin masters these days? What am I talking about? Well, MSMobiles has a podcast of Microsoft’s press conference at 3GSM. The audio quality is not that great, but it portends to how pervasive podcasting will be in the future.
HPQ — Destroy Shareholder Value, Get $45 Million
02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - General
What the fuck is wrong with this headline…
HP’s Fiorina Walks Away with $45 Million
and this chart?
Nothing against Carly, but doesn’t it seem like company officers are being rewarded a bit too richly when compared to the value they bring (or in this case, don’t).
P.S. Rest easy, because Carly also gets $50,000 to help her land a new gig.
Interesting New Microsoft Phone Form Factor
01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Mobile
Most PDA/phone combinations (e.g., the Treo 600 or Siemens SX66) tend to be on the large size — large enough not to fit in your pocket very comfortably. Microsoft smartphones like the Audiovox SMT5600 are much smaller and easily fit into your pocket, but run Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Smartphone software instead of Windows Mobile Pocket PC software (nice, confusing naming scheme Microsoft). This means that there currently is a lot less software support for Microsoft Smartphones (since they are relatively new) when compared to Microsoft Pocket PC phones.
However, as reported in The Register, a new much-smaller PDA-based form factor called the Magician has just been released by HTC. The Magician is iPod sized, and is almost as small as the Audiovox smartphones.
| Product | Length | Width | Height |
| Magician | 4.25” | 2.28” | 0.71” |
| Audiovox SMT5600 | 4.25” | 1.81” | 0.63” |
| Treo* | 4.4” | 2.3” | 0.9” |
*Note that the Treo has an external antenna (specifically designed to jab you when in your pocket) not represented in this sizing chart.
Another plus of the Magician is its external SD/MMC slot supporting SDIO (Secure Digital Input/Output), so you could add a Wi-Fi card to the device. The Audiovox only has an internal (you have to remove the battery cover and battery to get at the slot) MiniSD slot… no input/output capability.
Here’s a couple more links on this phone.
MSMobile’s round-up of latest HTC rumors.
Mobile Review’s look at the Magician.
Update: 2005_02_15
Check out this new GPS-enabled, QWERTY-keyboard equipped iPaq Mobile Messenger h6500 at MSMobiles.
Costco for Your Digital Prints
10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Digital Photo
If you haven’t tried Costco for digital prints, you might want to — especially for enlargements which are hella cheap. Although shopping at Costco can be a little like hand-to-hand combat, at least you don’t have to run through the regular checkout lines to get your prints, since they can ring you up right at the photo counter.
Walk-in Service
Now have a use for all of those useless 8-32 MB flash memory cards that come bundled with digital cameras. These smaller cards are perfect for loading up the digital images you want to have printed. My local Costco has a slick kiosk that accepts most memory card formats. Using the kiosk you can self-service yourself, and select the finish, size and number of prints you would like.
A quick search on Costco prints brought me to this post. I didn’t know that Costco supports printer profiles (an ICC color profile) , but they do. Since every digital printer has its own unique way of reproducing color, using a profile when editing an image on a calibrated monitor facilitates closer matching of monitor colors to the print colors. If this sounds a bit complicated, it kind of is, but for some background on profiles, read this.
To find out what printer profile is appropriate for your local Costco, just check this page.
Regarding enlargements, make sure you edit your images so that they map to the enlargement size you are printing to. For example, my 4 mega pixel Canon SD300’s largest image size is 2272×1704 pixels which is a ratio of 1.33. A 6×4 print has a ratio of 1.5 and a 7×5 print is 1.4. If you don’t match up the size ratios, you’re going to get random cropping.
Here’s a list of the print sizes and prices that Costco offers (I found these online, so can’t confirm them, but they do seem in the ballpark).
4×6 — $0.14
5×7 — $0.69
8×12 — $1.99
11×14 — $2.99
12×18 — $2.99
Online Service
I haven’t tried Costco’s online photo service, but it looks pretty good. They support printer profiles and have a several print options (glossy or lustre and with or without a border). However, only three print sizes are supported (4×6, 5×7 and 8×10). Prices for the prints are as follows.
4×6 — $0.18
5×7 — $0.69
8×10 — $1.99
It appears that Costco is OEMing the service from Kodak, since you have to visit a co-branded Kodak site to review your archives. Oh, make sure you read the fine print if you rely on any online photo service to store your prints. Certain sites do delete your archives if you aren’t an active member. Of course, I would highly recommend backing up your archives to a hard drive or CD/DVD instead of solely relying on an online service.
Update: 2005_02_15
Check this page for specifics on how to control the cropping of your images when using Costco’s walk-in service.
February 14, 2005
Scrapbook — A Neat Firefox Extension
07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Firefox
I just installed a new Firefox extension called Scrapbook. It’s really neat. I found out about Scrapbook from a recent review of 15 extensions in PCMagazine.
Scrapbook allows you to capture full web pages and create plain text or HTML notes. To aid with filing of this information, you can create folders that are managed in a sidebar interface that resembles Firefox’s default bookmark sidebar. You can capture sites through the context menu (right click menu) or by drag-and-dropping a page into the sidebar. You can also capture individual images from a page by drag-and-dropping an image into the sidebar. The search interface is pretty trick too.
Man, this is one pro extension.
Updated: 2005_02_14
You can also vote for the feature you would like to see next.
Online Bookmarks — Where are the Majors?
07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
Services like del.icio.us and Spurl.net (and a lot of others) are trying to capture user’s bookmarks online, so where are the majors (e.g., Google, Yahoo!, MSN) in this? The only one that has any such service is Yahoo!. Their Yahoo! Toolbar — formally Yahoo! Companion — has a online bookmark feature (hey, they have a new Firefox version of the toolbar in beta). However, I doubt that Yahoo! has enough users of this feature to really do anything meaningful with the data.
When you think about it, bookmarks are a huge repository of preference information. It’s like PageRank except that the majority of the data are opaque… locked up in a client. Making these data more transparent could increase the relevancy of search and add new functionality to search — like if you added some folksonomy to it, and got this.
So where are the majors?
February 09, 2005
Humpty Dumpty back Together Again — Installed New Laptop Screen
04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Whatever
As I talked about here, I recently broke the screen on my laptop. I found one on ebay, and it’s all good now. So for $170 and a couple of hours of personal assembly/disassembly time, my laptop is back in action. Sure beats $1200 bucks for a new one.
If you ever decide to replace a screen yourself, make sure you look around for the best price. I found that the prices ranged from $170 to around $500. I got excellent service from my seller at ebay… the darn screen got to my doorstep a day or two after I hit the “Buy it Now” button.
Here’s a before shot…
February 08, 2005
Skype Out — Mini Review
07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Reviews
I’ve been using Skype a fair bit lately. More precisely, I’ve been using Skype Out a fair bit lately. Skype Out allows you to make calls using Skype’s interface to pretty much anywhere in the world. It’s a prepaid service where you purchase a minimum of 10 Euros worth of talk time which is deducted per their rates (calls within the US are €0.017, a little over 2 cents/minute). The international rates are great (it’s €0.017 to a UK landline, but calls to UK mobile phones are €0.205). This is a handy service for me right now, because I keep running over my minutes on my cell phone plan (I’m switching plans soon).
The call quality has ranged from excellent to almost walkie-talkie-ish, but almost all calls are pretty clear. And my set-up is not very sophisticated… just an old boom mike and headset that didn’t cost very much.
The two disadvantages of the service I can think of are the lack of DTFM tone support (being able to send touch tones for voice systems) and the lack of an address book for contacts that don’t have a Skype account (this may exist, but I looked for it twice).
Fixed the Calendar Links in Movable Type
03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Movable Type
I hated that the calendar (currently in the top right corner of my blog) links just linked to the first post written on that day. It should link to a page with all the posts for that day. I fixed this by creating a daily archive in Movable Type, and replacing this code in the calendar section of the sidebar template:
<MTCalendarIfEntries>
<MTEntries lastn="1"><a href="<$MTEntryLink$>">
<$MTCalendarDay$>
with
<MTCalendarIfEntries>
<MTEntries lastn="1"><a href="<$MTEntryLink archive_type="Daily"$>">
<$MTCalendarDay$>
The nugget — archive_type="Daily" — creates a link to the daily archive. One issue with this implementation, is that Movable Type has to create individual and daily archives if you want your site nice and neat. Just more storage and CPU overhead (noticeable when rebuilding — regenerating — your site).
Google Maps — Wow!
02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
Check out Google Maps. It’s in beta, but it works really well right now. Maps, driving directions… all the usual suspects. The application rocks because the UI doesn’t change as it reloads data, just like Gmail. Very nice, and how web applications should work.
Update: 2005_16_02
Check this post out for details on how Google coded their maps application.
February 07, 2005
Classic
10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Whatever
More here
Fixing up the Domain Name and URLs
10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Movable Type
I really hated what my Trackback URL used to look like. I mean… it looked like an old Compuserve email address. Something like su1298432.online.us.com. Fugly.
I fixed this by creating a new sub-domain on my host’s control panel for domains and made…
trackback.zoinger.com=su1298432.online.ugly.url
and changed the pointer to the GIPath in the MT.cfg file to trackback.zoinger.com.
However, before I came up with this solution, I had thought I had read that 1and1 didn’t support sub-domains (obviously, I was wrong). In trying to come up with a work around, I ran into this gem of a post by Már Örlygsson. The how-to on future-proofing your URLs in Movable Type. His post is filed under a really trick URL (mouse over the link to check out a future-proofed URL). I’ve implemented a bunch of the URL future-proofing discussed in this post to my site. I like it.
Contained within Már’ post, is a reference to the most excellent Brad Choate and his Regex plugin. You have to download the file and read the readme.txt file if you want to know what Regex does (here’s a link to a local copy of the readme.txt file for version 1.61). I’ll paraphrase a bit from the readme.txt too:
<paraphrase>
Here’s an example (place at the top of your template):
<MTRegexDefine>s|:+D|<img src="/images/smiley.gif">|g</MTRegexDefine>
The above will replace all occurrences of :+D with an IMG tag that displays a smiley.gif instead.
</paraphrase>
So, I guess you might be wondering what the previous post, test was about? I was testing out this Regex substitution. I made an entry that said nothing but :+D in the body, and it rendered as the smiley image. Cool… not the smiley… the fact that you can define your own substitution elements. Gotta work on some of these.
And I obviously got my domain transfered from Yahoo! to 1and1 to fix what I was bitching about here .
test
08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) ~ Movable Type
February 06, 2005
Adding Category Link to Posts
05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Whatever
I’ve been doing some more house cleaning on the site. Today, I added a category link to each post, added the display of the number of posts in each category to the sidebar and added a link to the main archive page just above the footer. Again, all fairly easy to do.
Laptop Screen Replacement
01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Whatever
I woke up this morning, and fired up my laptop only to notice a strange pattern on the display. “WTF?,” I thought. Damn, I had broken the display sometime yesterday when the laptop was in my car. I think I must have set something on the top of it. Lesson number one learned: Don’t remove your laptop from it’s protective bag when transporting it. I had taken the laptop out so I could use the bag for my camera which I was taking some shots with. Ended up protecting the camera, but not the laptop.
I really thought I was out $1500 bucks to buy a new laptop. However, a friend mentioned that you can buy replacement screens for laptops. First, I had to figure out how to remove the screen. Apparently, they use all sorts of different displays in laptops of the same model, so you have to physically remove the screen to find the screen part number. My was a HSD150PK12. With some patience, a small Torx wrench set and some instructions on the web, I was able to remove the screen in about an hour.
I found a HSD150PK12 on ebay for $170 shipped. I’ll be psyched if this all works out. The screen is on order, so I’ll tell ya in a bit.
Top Tip:
I took several shots with my digital camera while I was removing the display — basically, any time I thought that I might get confused on how the parts are aligned. I learned this from working on automobiles (e.g., a carburetor has about 10 trillion small parts and springs).
February 05, 2005
MovableType — Customizing My Templates
06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Movable Type
I’ve been playing around with the files that control the look-and-feel of this site. That is, MovableType’s template and CSS files. I found some easy-to-understand and implement instructions over at a blog called Learning Movable Type of all things. I added a footer at the bottom of all my pages, made the sidebar more modular and added the sidebar and footer to my archive templates. All pretty easy stuff, that didn’t take too long. I’ll be tweaking this site’s look-and-feel more in the future.
February 04, 2005
House Cleaning
11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Whatever
I just approved a bunch of comments. Sorry it took so long. Still getting the hang of MovableType.
February 03, 2005
aacPlus — Audio Compaction
03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Podcasting
I just read Doug Kaye’s blog post (Doug runs IT Conversations) about aacPlus a relatively recent audio codec. Here’s the Slate article that triggered Doug’s post.
Listening to music streamed at 48kbs in MP3 format would sound like… well, sheeeit. However, in aacPlus… deeeeaaamn. Apparently, aacPlus can encode 5.1 sound at 128kbs and CD-quality sound at 48kbs. To test out aacPlus for yourself, I recommend using the VLC media player, and tuning into Groove Salad on SomaFM.
Del.icio.us — Testing Tagging Schemes
12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
del.icio.us I still haven’t moved my bookmarks to del.icio.us as I talked about here. I have added a bunch of new bookmarks exclusively to del.icio.us in order to try and figure out what the best tagging scheme is. I’m still not sure what the optimal number of tags is per bookmark, but at a minimum the tags should allow you to create a logical directory structure using Firefox’s Live Bookmarks. However, even if you use Firefox’s Live Bookmarks to synchronize with del.icio.us, you still have to backup the Live Bookmarks (which are kind of like the directory structure without the files).
Doesn’t it seem like del.icio.us is missing something? If you could add the ability to create and save a directory structure (the tree) to the existing bookmarks (the leaves) you would have a much more powerful product.
February 02, 2005
Firefox — Roll Your Own QuickLaunches and QuickSearches
03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) ~ Firefox & PC - Customizing
Man, just when you think you have everything figured out with Firefox, you learn about something new. In fact, sometimes you feel like you’re the last one to learn about it. What “new” features of Firefox am I talking about? That’d be QuickLaunches and QuickSearches (I sort of made those CamelCase words up).
Creating a QuickLaunch
For sites you visit a lot, it’s great to have an easy-to-remember letter or short word that when typed into the address bar tells Firefox to launch a particular site. For example, I have Firefox set up to launch the front page of Yahoo! by simply typing “yhoo” into the address bar and hitting return (actually, I type “cntrl+L” to set the focus on the address bar, and then type “yhoo” and return — no mousing required).
To set the keyword for a site, browse to that site and bookmark it. Then right-click on the bookmark and select Properties from the context menu. This reveals the Properties menu. Type in the keyword you would like associated with that site into the Keyword field, then click the OK button. Easy!
Creating a QuickSearch
But wait, there’s more. QuickSearches allow you to not only tell Firefox to launch a site based on a keyword, but also automatically search on a query. For example, let’s say that I want to search on the term “whatever” in Yahoo!. I have Firefox set up so that all I need to do is type “y whatever” into the address bar and hit return to load this page.
To set up a QuickSearch, you must bookmark the results page for a search engine, substitute in “%s” in place of the query and add your keyword. If this doesn’t make sense, go here to see how the QuickSearch bookmarks for several common search engines are formatted (and don’t forget the keyword).
I have several dozen QuickLanches and QuickSearches set up in Firefox. This saves me a lot of time mousing around and has just about eliminated my use of the search box (located in the upper right corner).
Tip
Don’t just randomly place your keyworded bookmarks into your bookmarks list. If you do, you’ll lose track of them making it almost impossible to look up a forgotten keyword. To solve this problem with Firefox’s weak bookmark managing system, I created a folder called “Keywords,” and created all of my QuickSearches and QuickLaunches within this folder (even if I end up duplicating bookmarks found somewhere else in my bookmarks list). In addition, I add “(=Keyword)” to the end of the Name field in the bookmark’s Properties menu (e.g., the Yahoo! bookmark name field reads “Yahoo! - Search (=y)”). If I forget a keyword, I can open the Keywords folder to see a complete list of my keywords.
C-Span
03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
C-SPAN has a great web site with lots of archived material going back a few months to many years. So, if you miss something important, you can catch it later on C-SPAN. Here’s their mission statement,
C-SPAN is a public service created by the American cable television industry:
To provide C-SPAN’s audience access to the live gavel-to-gavel proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and to other forums where public policy is discussed, debated and decided—all without editing, commentary or analysis and with a balanced presentation of points of view;
To provide elected and appointed officials and others who would influence public policy a direct conduit to the audience without filtering or otherwise distorting their points of view;
To provide the audience, through the call-in program, direct access to elected officials, other decision makers and journalists on a frequent and open basis;
To employ production values that accurately convey the business of government rather than distract from it; and to conduct all other aspects of its operations consistent with these principles.
And some interesting statistics,
Number of U.S. homes with cable and satellite that receive MTV: 83,400,000
Number of U.S. homes that receive C-SPAN: 85,000,000
MSNBC’s rank among U.S. cable television networks, based on distribution: 34
C-SPAN’s rank, based on distribution: 8
Average weekly audience for West Wing, 2000-2001 season: 17,012,000
Estimated number of people watching C-SPAN each week: 28,500,000
Check it out.
February 01, 2005
RSS — The New Product Registration
02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
Product registration… what a joke. Do you EVER register any of the products you buy these days? Hell no (unless you have to, to take advantage of a product rebate or something)!
The reason why nobody registers, is that it’s a one-way street. You send the manufacturer a bunch of personal information, and what do you get? In the case of a car purchase, it’s a notification in the mail about a recall (or more likely, just some junk mail trying to get you back in the dealership). And if you are like me, you’ve moved eight jillion times since you bought your car, so you’re never going to get a recall notice anyway. Well, that’s all going to change. And soon.
In the future, “product registration” will primarily consist of subscribing to an RSS feed. In this paradigm, the consumer wins because you don’t need to give the manufacturer a bunch of personal information, and it will be trivial to stay up-to-date on your purchase even if you move.
Can you imaging buying something like a computer, reading the manual (ok, you never do that either) and discovering that there are a series of RSS feeds specific to the model you just purchased? For example, there would be a firmware feed, a driver feed, a “tips” feed, etc. So when your computer eventually melts down and you are forced to reload the OS, you can find all the current drivers with a couple of clicks. No more painful searching through lame-ass UIs just to find some drivers.
All companies should make this mandatory STAT. As the Harvard Business Review says,
What sort of information should companies syndicate? The better question is perhaps, What sort shouldn’t they syndicate? (link to full article, subscription required).
Two New Firefox Books Coming from O'Reilly
01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Firefox
O’Reilly is coming out with a couple of new books on Firefox, an “advanced” one called Firefox Hacks and an “introductory” book (calling it like it is) entitled Don’t Click on the Blue E!. I checked Amazon, and they have a release date of March 2005, however, you can pre-order now. Let’s hope they come out sooner.
Here’s O’Reilly’s summary of Firefox Hacks:
Firefox Hacks is ideal for power users who want to maximize the effectiveness of Firefox, the next-generation web browser that is quickly gaining in popularity. This highly-focused book offers all the valuable tips and tools you need to enjoy a superior and safer browsing experience. Learn how to customize its deployment, appearance, features, and functionality.(Full Description)
Here’s O’Reilly’s summary of Don’t Click on the Blue E!:
For anyone who has grown disenchanted with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser, Don’t Click on the Blue E! offers help. It gives non-technical users a convenient roadmap for switching to a better web browser—Firefox. As the only book that covers the switch to Firefox, this how-to guide is a must for all those who want to browse faster, more securely, and more efficiently. (Full Description)