Category: Technology

Categories
Technology

My precious

I wasn’t expecting any Christmas presents, as we had all agreed we wouldn’t exchange any this year. It was both a surprise and delight, then, to get a box of chocolate covered cherries (a favorite) in a pretty Christmas bag with a card containing a check to be used for an iPod.

My finances are such that I would not have bought an iPod for myself, but I have been lusting for one. There are other music players that cost less and probably have wider functionality, but I’m fond of iTunes (yes for all its evil copyright ways) and I loved the integration between the two. Besides, Dave Winer’s had such troubles with his–I wanted to be helpful; to be able to tell him what he can do with his iPod.

One problem to work around is the new, fifth generation iPods ‘recommend’ USB 2.0 and all I have on my laptops (PC and Mac) is USB 1.1. After considerable research, I found this thread at the Apple forum that talks about USB 2.0 cards, and decided on the Belkin USB 2.0 notebook card. I bought it at the local CompUSA and tried it out last night with my Nikon D70 (sort of a USB 2.0 device), and it seemed to work fine. Time, and a *first synch between computer and iPod will tell.

It was interesting reading through the thread at the forum. Many loyal Apple customers feel burned by the fact that 5G is USB 2.0 rather than the ubiquitous Apple firewire:

From someone who doesn’t understand any of this: Is the bottom line that even with a newer operating system, my iMac800mhz (no usb 2.0) -a mere 2 years old- is not compatible with the 5th generation video ipod? This is how Apple rewards product loyalty?

Many seem to see it as a form of Steve Jobs megalomania:

Here’s something to make you just a little more angry: I was told that the only reason for the removal of FireWire from the 5G iPod is that the internal connector was the last obstacle to shaving a few extra millimeters off the thickness of the case from the 4G models, and Steve Jobs was adamant about making the “it’s smaller than ever!” claim at his last keynote. Thus, screw us. (Caveat: I can’t prove this accusation is true. It may be apocryphal, but I have to admit it sure sounds like a Steve sort of demand, and I’ve been unable to come up with any other logical reason why FireWire support should have been yanked in the first place. Even USB 2.0 is objectively inferior to FireWire in a whole host of ways.)

> This is how Apple rewards product loyalty?

You probably didn’t see it, but not long ago Saturday Night Live aired a skit where Steve Jobs held a keynote and introduced three new iPods in the span of about a minute and a half. Each of the new iPods made the one introduced seconds earlier an utterly obsolete technological dinosaur, and the last one was was literally invisible, yet somehow managed to hold five million songs and every photo ever taken by mankind.

(Apple’s obsession with minute tolerances extends even to packaging–the box the iPod came in, this morning, was an amazing example of packaging.)

Steve Jobs is just reflecting the behavior we see in other geeks who made it big in the last few decades: so how do I top the miracles I’ve produced in the past? It must be dehumanizing to continually have to pull miracles of technology out of one’s pocket.

Anyway, I’ve never been one to be over loyal to any vendor. I was disconcerted when I realized my new iPod wouldn’t work well with my older Powerbooks, until a friend pointed out about adding a USB 2.0 card (Note: I forgot the card slot even existed). However, I never expected that Apple would adjust all their ancillary gadgets to work with my machines. If the company released a version of the operating system that wouldn’t work, I would be peeved, as my machines are not that old. But I gather there were people with B&W G3’s questioning how to get the iPod to work with their machines–leaving the rest of us asking how they managed to get OS X 10.4.3 working.

But I digress. I went back and forth on color when ordering: black or white. White is traditional, but I’ve been around the block for a while and white didn’t seem to fit me. Besides, there’s something sleek and panther like about the black. iNoir.

I also debated with myself whether to pay the extra 100.00 for another 30GB of space. In the end, needing to purchase a USB 2.0 card and a separate power adapter convinced me to go with the smaller. Still, there was this inner coder in me that had a hard time letting go of the extra 30GB.

I mentioned my dilemma to my roommate. He asked do I really need to carry 60GB of songs around with me.

“Spacesss. Ssshhelleee needsss spacessses!”

*look*

“How many songs do you have in your iTunes now?”

“203″

“Taking up how much space?”

“900MB”

“Does that include any video? What if you exclude the video?”

“700MB”

“How many songs can the smaller iPod record?”

“About 7500.”

“You don’t have that many songs. How many does the larger iPod record.”

“15,000″

“15,000! You really think you would record 15,000 songs?”

“I might.”

*look*

I started to say I could fill the space up with podcasts, but stopped myself before I was completely lost; realizing that I was under the effect of the iPod.

I bought the smaller. However, since Apple provided the option, I did have it engraved. The end goes something like…

…one to bring them in, and in the music bind them.

My holiday treat. My iPod. My preciousssss.

*Update: Just before I posted this, the friendly FedEx man delivered my iPod. It was ordered on Christmas Day, and shipped (for free) from China. I guess it was not a slow boat after all. I plugged it in, it synched in what seemed like seconds, and now I’m listening to “In the Year 2525″. Anyone remember that song?

Dave? Dave? I’m ready to help you now, Dave.

Categories
Web

Web 2.0

Jeneane Sessum is writing on Web 2.0 stuff. To her I say Blog! Oh, geez that felt so good! But I digress.

Jeneane writes about Web 1.0 and 2.0 terminology and says you can’t have consensus on the web. That’s an excellent point. We had agreement about the web. We agreed on the tech, the naming schema, the hardware, the protocols, and the languages–but that’s primarily because a couple of big players Pushed Their Weight Around at Strategic Times. But web and consensus–would this be the same consensus that rules at the Wikipedia? There is none. When there is, you’ll know because the Wikipedia will look like one great big Power Point presentation. Same with the web, only much bigger.

As for Web 2.0, I don’t care much now about what people use. After recent events including the disappointment about the SxSW panel, I lost a lot of my pugnaciousness when it comes to tilting at windmills. (More on this, later, in a separate post.)

No, the only thing I have against Web 2.0 is some of your crappy Web 2.0 code is getting mixed up in my web page, and I want you to stop. This all isn’t a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: I’m not peanut butter, and your misuse, abuse, and over use of technology just cuz is not chocolate; these do not work great together. Pretend for a moment that you want people to use your code, and for goodness sake, beta is not a permanent state: release something!

Speaking of releasing, Jeneane also writes about being able to Shuffle our bits about; by this she means being able to grab her Blogger entries and move them elsewhere, or as Doc Searls mentions, being able to upload photos to many places. (Question: why?)

When Jeneane had asked my opinion of BubbleShare, I replied that a drawback I saw to the service is it doesn’t have an API. Without an API, tools can’t interface to it, photos can’t be moved from other services, and we can’t move photos from outside this service. I would never add or upload to a centralized service that doesn’t give me an out.

But to focus: this is about Web 2.0. This is about a vote on not using this term anymore–which is about the most silly ass thing I’ve heard all month, even if the purpose for the vote is introducing yet another piece of ‘code’ to clutter our pages. We need our terms, Stowe–if we don’t have our terms, how will we separate the cool kids from the hacks with money? So, if Web 2.0 is now contaminated with all the ‘built to flip’ nonsense about, what about another name?

What about Web2.0? The Web, squared. Or even Web3.14159265–the Web, raised to the power of Pi? Maybe Web0, for Web, Sub-Zero. Too much like a superhero? Wait, don’t go! I have a million names! There’s…

update

But at least we can validate the Web 2.0 with the Web 2.0 Validator. Be brave, add your own rules. After all, this is Web 2.0–the read/write web.

Thanks to Zo for the link.

Categories
Web

Web 2.0 and hamster wheels

Dare Obasanjo wrote a post about flipping your Web 2.0 startup and gave three reasons why a bigger company would gobble up a startup: users, technology, and people. Paul Kedrosky replied that Dare was wrong, wrong, wrong and that building companies to flip is also wrong, wrong, wrong.

I happen to agree (agree, agree) somewhat with Mr. Kedrosky, in that I wish technologies weren’t being built for the express purposes of flipping (i.e. quickly going from VC funding to purchase by a Player), but, as Dare writes, it does happen. Where I disagree with Dare is in his list of reasons why a company would buy a Web 2.0 startup. He left an important one off the list: image.

One week the web is full of talk about Google, the next Yahoo, the week after that might be MSN (though it is falling far behind the other two–Ozzie just doesn’t have the 2.0 stink; maybe it can buy wordpress.com); then the cycle continues anew. How these companies make money is as much image as software provided. It’s important to all three search engine companies to be seen as the company that’s the leader into a whole new version of the web. However, this doesn’t mean that each company is going to change the way it does business.

Google bought Blogger years ago, and I remember we talked about how this would change Google searches, and we discussed what this purchase meant. Now we can see that it didn’t mean anything, other than Google bought into the hip 2.0 kid at the time–weblogging. Blogger hasn’t changed all that much, other than new features to keep up with other tools; Google didn’t change at all.

When Yahoo bought Del.icio.us, I read comments here and there to the effect that this is going to change search dynamics and the old algorithmic approaches will soon give way to new tagging ones. Yet the statistics don’t support this. Delicious has, what, 300,000 users? Out of how many billions of web users? The number of people who tag–which is really what the Del.icio.us tech is all about, tagging and storage–compared to those who don’t is so skewed as to make tagging a non-starter.

(Not to mention that no one has effectively explained how tagging is going to make for more accurate searches.)

But Yahoo’s buying of Del.icio.us put it into the front page of many publications. It kept it even, or barely even, in the fight with Google for being the ‘hip’ company — the one that people will use for their searches. The site where advertisers should place their ads; the place to connect for other companies pushing themselves as Web 2.0.

Both Yahoo and Google made a lot of money selling space for ads; enough so that they can afford to invest a few millions in small startups that could add to their web 2.0 goodness. Heck, Google just plunked a billion or so into AOL, and we all know that’s an elephant bound for the graveyard. Until it ambles its rattly bones in that direction, though, it still brings an immense number of eyeballs to Google–eyeballs that Google would rather have then concede to Microsoft (it’s competitor in this deal).

Besides: investing money is a good corporate move at tax time. And it doesn’t hurt when investors see these companies seem to diversify — there’s been a lot of talk about bursting bubbles this year.

As for the technology, most of the Web 2.0 startups are based on copious amounts of data stored, accessible via search and subscription, tagged, and wrapped in an API. None of the companies are based on what I would call revolutionary uses of technology. Much of the early popularity of the companies is because the services each offered was free. Oh, and the fact that we have, personally, come to know the folks behind the companies. This then leads to the question: do companies benefit from bringing in the people behind these acquisitions?

Of course they do. After all, the folks behind Flickr and Del.icio.us and Bloglines and so on were the originators of ideas that took off –if I were Google and Yahoo, (eBay, Microsoft, and so on) I’d rather have these people on my team then on the competitor’s. But as we’ve seen with Google/Blogger and Yahoo/Flickr, the startup seems to benefit more from the new association than the other way around. Storage costs money, scaling isn’t cheap. Or easy. (Maybe Microsoft can buy TypePad.)

Before we make an assumption that Google and Yahoo, in particular, are going to throw out their web 1.0 cash cows in favor of shiny new web 2.0 branded calves, the evidence of our eyes does not support the what ifs generated by our fevered imaginations. Disappointing, true; but it is fun to watch each company take a turn on the hamster wheel each week. (Saaayyy, that’s who Microsoft can buy….)

More on Google and AOL.

More on Yahoo and Del.icio.us.

Categories
Technology

Different buttons

I love the magic corners on my PowerBook. I love the fact that if I send my mouse to that corner, all instances (windows) of whatever application currently have focus get displayed in bitty windows, but if I swing it over to this corner, everything with an open window gets displayed. And lets now forget that down here, the windows are swept out and down and I have direct access to the Desktop.

With Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), I have this Dashboard stuff, so swooping my mouse over to the top-right opens up the Dashboard, and if my iTunes is playing, the little Dashboard widget shows what’s currently playing — not to mention what the weather is outside, and so on.

I was playing with this today when my roommate came in to drop something off and asked me what I was doing. I showed him, swinging my mouse around as things opened and closed–asking him isn’t it the coolest? He looked at it, nodded indifferently, and said, “Sure”.

I looked up at him for a moment, and then opened up this site that Joseph Duemer pointed out on Friday.

“Ah, that’s great! No wait, scroll down more.”

“Look at that! That’s so cute!”

“Ahhhhhh…”

“What is that! HaHa!”

“That’s so cool! Can you send me that link?”

Categories
Technology Weblogging

WordPress Two Lookies

I listened to an interview with WordPress developers Matt Mullenweg and Donncha O’Caoimh. It reminded me that I hadn’t checked out WordPress 2.0 yet.

I downloaded the code using the Subversion command:

svn export http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/

This gave me a copy of the code without the Subversion source code control files. I then uploaded it to my server to WordPress Two and had a look around. Asymptomatic has a good review of what’s changed, including a true data abstraction layer, which should make for a more robust product.

From a user’s point of view, the administrative interface is vastly improved, with a much better organized, as well as more attractive design. This is the Post Edit page and as you can see most of the post options have now been placed behind DHTML-based buttons, which can be clicked to expose or hide the specific option. As the page also shows, photo uploads can be handled directly for the post and, though it doesn’t show in the snapshot, in-page preview actually uses an iframe and loads the user’s stylesheet, so you get a chance to see the post ‘live’. You can also use an Ajaxian option to add new categories, on the fly, as you add a post. The Edit page also has a WYSIWYG editor, which you can turn on or off in options.

The theme selection page also has some new features, such as seeing an image of each theme available for use in the page. However, a new option allows the theme designer to attach a functions.php file to their theme, providing options to allow the users to customize the existing theme. In the Default theme, this allows the user to change the header and font colors.

The use of DHTML and Ajax is noticeable in the product, and most of it welcome. As such, the Javascript libraries are setup in such a way that you can access these for your own weblog customizations. However, after the first ‘ooo wizzy’ moment watching the update message fade from bright yellow to pale blue I ignored the effect; so I’m not sure the JS for this particular modification is worth the load.

All in all, WordPress 2.0 is a major improvement over 1.5. Enough that if you’re thinking of moving to a self-hosted weblog rather than a centralized hosted solution, now is the time to give this possibility serious thought.

After this first, quick look, I have only two suggestions for the WordPress development team. The first is remove the section listing those posts currently in draft above the page where the post is developed. It takes page real estate, and you’re repeating what’s already available in the Manage page. The second change I would recommend would be to make the WYSIWYG editing interface plugin-abled so that any number of good WYSIWYG editors can be wrapped and released as editing plugins. I did this with Wordform, and it gives the users an option in the one area they can be most picky: the editor.

(I believe the Desktop can be replaced with a plugin, but if not, this would be another suggestion.)

One thing I do differently, and something for the developers to consider, is a separate preview of the page. I did this with Wordform, using the same files that are used for the main page, but with a preview option. Right now, with the page previewing in the edit page, if the entry has several photos, this could slow the page down when loading and saving after edits. Also, even when you load the stylesheet, viewing the preview in an iframe is not the same as actually viewing it exactly as it would look when published. Still, this is a preference–there are folks who would probably prefer the in-page preview.

I’ll be getting a fresh export and updating the code once a week or so until the beta is released. I’ll cover different aspects of the tool with each release, as well as discuss what I would do to alter the base tool with plugins and administrative extensions.

If you’re interested in playing with the new interface, send me an email and I’ll set you up a test account — if you’re not too scary, or have a name like “Joe Spam” or something.