« May 2005 | Main | July 2005 »

June 30, 2005

links for 2005-06-30

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 29, 2005

links for 2005-06-29

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 28, 2005

My Web 2.0

I have to say that I'm really happy to see My Web 2.0 launch (I got to see a beta demo a couple weeks ago). It's not immediately apparent, but it's personalized social search, using shared bookmarks between friends. I wrote about this back in December 2003 when I tried to come up with ways then-new social software sites could be useful. My second idea was to combine Friendster with Epinions so that you could search for reviews among your circle of friends, but I had it all backwards. Instead of turning Friendster into a search engine, Yahoo flipped that, by incorporating Yahoo 360 contacts into search.

My first thought when seeing this after thinking "cool, they built what I always wanted!" was that the bookmarklet posting interface does look a lot like the delicious posting interface, but I think these services serve different needs. I use delicious to bookmark all the neat things I find online, but Yahoo's search is more for reference things and epinions style bookmarks I want to save for later and share with friends. I guess though I've used delicious for a couple years now I still think of most material there as ephemeral, while I'm thinking My Web at Yahoo is better suited to permanent storage.

I'm changing my default browser search to Yahoo for a few days to see how it grows and becomes useful. It'll be interesting to see how the search gets better the more friends and saved pages get added. I'm already getting random other users mentioned above normal search results so that's a good sign. I can't wait to see what it's like in a few weeks when I do a random general search and find friend-approved links to exactly what I wanted instead of spammy search results or general information sites.

The other great thing I like about Yahoo's new search is that it attempts to circumvent one of my pet peeves: search engine spammers. Search engine gaming to get your URL high up in searches is a selfish act that degrades everyone else's experience and it's grown into a huge industry. Google has been gamed endlessly for years now to the point at which many general results have begun to suffer. I'm hopeful that if I limit my yahoo contacts to people I know and trust, no amount of search engine spamming in all the world by the SEO community will be able to muck up my results. In effect, this new search could kill an industry I thought would outlast the cockroaches, and that's a great thing.

Ross has a good summary of what this new push means for the worlds of social software and search. I'm curious to see what Google's next move will be. Hopefully they'll buy delicious and incorporate that.

Posted by 08:03 PM | Comments (3)

heh

25266845_F_tn.jpg

Dear preshrunk

Posted by 07:43 PM

Marketing shills

This Boston Globe article about blogs that shill products without disclosing their connections is an eye opener. I suspect that as underhanded SEO techniques become more obvious to Google, companies will move into this sort of hidden message marketing by paying bloggers to load up entries with fake testimonials for products they've never used.

Take a look at Jeff Cutler's old blog entries by scrolling down here. You see obvious keyword linking that jumps out like "Credit Cards" and "Funeral Flowers". Of course, Jeff doesn't think he's done anything wrong and the article closes with "In our opinion, paying bloggers is no different than Tiger Woods getting money to wear the Nike logo."

Of course there is an obvious difference: Tiger Woods actually uses Nike products. Also worth noting is that it may very well violate FTC guidelines. [via]

Posted by 08:35 AM | Comments (2)

Acts of Volition Radio comes to iTunes


(Acts of Volition on iTunes, originally uploaded by mathowie)

Thanks to the new podcasting features of iTunes, I get to enjoy my favorite audio program automatically, in iTunes. I found it under "Audio Blogs" in the podcasting directory.

Posted by 02:08 AM

links for 2005-06-28

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 27, 2005

links for 2005-06-27

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 26, 2005

Bursting any day now

The writing has been on the wall for ages but the real estate bubble's getting really bad lately. Now I know my friends in SF have been hearing about it for a decade, but let me tell you: it exists and it's real because it's hit my out of the way corner of Oregon.

I remember before the internet bubble burst and friends in far off places like Austin, Texas were talking about all the new construction, the big salaries, and lack of employable talent. I remember thinking if the madness that happened South of Market could migrate halfway across the country to a place like Austin, it was bound to burst. NY and SF are where the internet hype started, and I'd call LA and Seattle 2nd wave cities. Austin I'd consider a third wave beneficiary of the bubble time and if it ever burst, those in the 2nd and 3rd wave would be hit hardest. Just a few months later everyone I knew in a Texas dotcom was out of work.

So we've owned our first home for about 18 months now and I watched real estate up here for a while before we moved, and prices barely budged. But in just the past six months, everything is skyrocketing. We are considering moving up to a house with an extra bedroom (having a baby that gobbles up your extra room tends to make you want to upgrade) and we found out our home has gained quite a bit in value in this short time. We were thinking a price that was about 10% over what we paid in late 2003 was pushing it. Turns out the local market is bearing a 30% gain on the house in this short amount of time.

Of course, any gains we make from the bubble will be gobbled up by a follow-up purchase. When we arrived in Oregon, I distinctly remember how refreshing it was to see affordable housing that was completely unlike the Bay Area's ridiculous prices. What is shocking to me today is that this small out-of-the-way town in pretty much the middle of nowhere has a couple new neighborhoods with large custom homes pushing the half-million dollar mark. It's like the Bay Area all over again, but worse since it feels like we're sort of in one of those third wave kinds of places far from the source.

When things are getting bad this far off the beaten path, I have a strong feeling the end is near. The economy is doing better than it was, but it's not great. The interest rates are really what is making this happen and they have nowhere to go but up, causing the entire house of cards to collapse. I'm counting the days until that happens and wondering if I should take the plunge in this market. We hope the next house will be something we can grow with and hold onto for a good 10-15 years, so maybe any temporary market correction is moot.

Posted by 10:15 PM | Comments (3)

links for 2005-06-26

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 25, 2005

links for 2005-06-25

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 24, 2005

links for 2005-06-24

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 23, 2005

links for 2005-06-23

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 22, 2005

Ah fair use, where would we be without you?

Jason Kottke was just on G4's Attack of the Show, and thanks to my hacked TiVo, it's available as a 85Mb MPEG2 torrent.

Jason did great for live TV, which is just about the most stressful thing in the world. He seemed relaxed, though the host seemed a little manic. I assume a producer was screaming in the host's ear to keep Jason moving, which caused the host to cut Jason off whenever he started sounding reflective. My favorite parts were the host violating the Adsense terms of service by goading people into clicking his ad links and the graphic "Blogging for Bling" in the background (because clearly, Jason's only in it for the benjamins).

Posted by 03:57 PM | Comments (2)

New interview

Rebecca Blood started a new feature on her site, setting out to interview bloggers about how they got started, why they do what they do, and what others can learn from that. I was lucky enough to be the first one, and she's posted part one of our interview (part two will be posted Friday).

If you also blog, you'll probably find something useful in it. It was good to talk to Rebecca and get into some hearty questions (mostly in part 2). I'm used to doing interviews with reporters writing for a general audience so it was refreshing to get really specific weblog-oriented questions directed at me.

Posted by 09:56 AM | Comments (1)

links for 2005-06-22

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 21, 2005

I don't know what to think of things like this

Interesting, I was awarded a spot on the Always On/Technorati Open Media 100 as a "trendsetter." I don't know how they determined who is on the list or why, or even what "open media" means, but I'll take it and add it to my list of dubious accomplishments like "Shift Magazine's Top 25 Web Personalities."

Posted by 02:06 PM

links for 2005-06-21

Posted by 12:16 AM

June 20, 2005

Done with snopes

Every so often I end up at snopes.com to hear about some crazy email forward or urban legend. It's ok content you can often find elsewhere but they're the central place for much of it so it's easy to find them. In the past few months however, I noticed they added an obnoxious popup ad (fired in Flash I would presume, which I don't block) on top of all their articles. Today I noticed after following a link there that my back button no longer worked, redirecting me to the snopes page I was already on.

That's pretty awful thing to do to users -- forcing them to look at annoying flashing ads that jump out when their browser is set to avoid them and then not to let them leave.

Posted by 11:15 AM | Comments (5)

links for 2005-06-20

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 19, 2005

links for 2005-06-19

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 17, 2005

iTunes Feature wish: podcast this artist

With the news that podcasting is coming to the next version of iTunes, I had an idea for how podcasting could be used to benefit both users looking for music and the iTunes store for selling music.

I got this idea when I realized how much I enjoyed a Grant Lee Phillips album in my music mix and what an outlier he is in my collection. I love folk music and this guy straddles the line between folk and country (and I'm not much of a fan of country). Anyway, I realized when I was hearing a track that I really need to track down his other stuff. That got me to thinking how I only hear about iTunes albums I should buy from friends that recommend them. I wondered why can't I tell iTunes to email me when he releases a new album?

Taking that further, I wondered if there was a way I could tell iTunes to buy a specific artist's new albums the moment they come out, automatically. Of course, then I realized it could be problematic if artists were releasing re-issues or greatest hits packages I might not be as interested in. Then it hit me: podcasting.

Podcasting is a great thing for amateur DJs and amateur broadcasting, but there are certainly useful aspects that companies could use to improve their business.

My hope is that iTunes 4.9 lets me subscribe to artists, and creates a podcast whenever they offer a free track off their new albums. This feature would be something like "auto-download any new Ben Folds track that is given away free" in a checkbox. Or heck, Apple could even just auto-subscribe me to download freebies for all the artists I've ever purchased off the iTunes Music Store.

As it stands now, I have to load up the main iTunes Music Store page to find the freebies and I only remember to go back once in a blue moon for new ones. Once in a while I find a new band there. It'd be great if I could get a podcast of the main iTunes freebies as well. If there's a free track in iTunes every time I start it up and I start hearing stuff I love I will most certainly buy more albums. Extra points if I can subscribe to all freebies by genre if I want to avoid uninteresting (to me) music. Granted, iTunes would have to loosen their one-freebie-a-week limit to every major artist with a new release.

The coolest aspect of podcasting to me is the nature of its automatic push-pull technology that fetches stuff for me. Just like my TiVo records shows it thinks I might like, I'd love it if my iTunes library had surprises in it every few days. Of course, the ultimate would be if iTunes could offer me free tracks from artists I have never heard of but would enjoy. iTMS knows what I own and iTunes knows what else I listen to ripped from CDs (they could be audioscrobbler if they wanted to). If there's a new album from some artist very closely aligned or contained in my library, grab their free track this week and have it waiting for me.

I guarantee I'll buy more music if my iTunes library suddenly becomes a tool to help me with new music discovery.

Posted by 10:38 PM | Comments (2)

links for 2005-06-17

Posted by 12:14 AM

June 16, 2005

links for 2005-06-16

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 15, 2005

links for 2005-06-15

Posted by 12:13 AM

June 14, 2005

Oh mY! god

My favorite weblog update service in the world, blo.gs, was down for a few hours today and I was lost. I could read some of the blogs I track via bloglines, but without all the personality of their site designs (not to mention all their sites' features).

It came back after being down for a few hours, and I instantly noticed something new: the favicon was Yahoo's Y!. That's odd I thought, until I saw the copyright notice along the side: "Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All Rights Reserved."

Jim was vague about who was going to buy it, but congrats! I'm happy to see it falling in good hands.

Posted by 01:36 PM | Comments (2)

Feds monitor Flickr

Frightening news from Salon:

Meanwhile, Jeremy Lassen, the publisher of a small book imprint in Portland, Oregon, responded to the news of the Chicago incident by creating a series of photo collages entitled "Bush and Guns," and posted them to the photo-sharing site, Flikr.

Last week, he says, he himself was paid a visit by the Secret Service. "On June 7th, two Secret Service agents showed up at my place of employment and asked to speak with me," Lassen wrote on his blog on Sunday. "One agent said they wanted to talk about something I posted online. I asked what, [and] one responded 'You post a lot of stuff online, don't you?' and then showed me some color printouts of my 'Bush and Guns' pictures. I was as helpful as possible, and explained to them the about the incident in Chicago, and the context of those pictures."

Blog entry about the visit from the Feds (The Flickr set mentioned in the post seems to be gone)

Posted by 11:06 AM | Comments (2)

June 13, 2005

Tiger and TiVo are friends again

I posted this on PVRblog but it's worth repeating here for my TiVo/mac owning friends that might have seen it: if you upgrade to Tiger and you lost your TiVo music and photo sharing, someone has come to the rescue and released a TiVo desktop app that works.

Posted by 12:47 PM

June 11, 2005

links for 2005-06-11

Posted by 12:14 AM

June 10, 2005

How to mania

Last week when I was guest-posting a bit on Lifehacker, I found the motivation to write a bunch of how-tos I've been meaning to do for my own site. Basically it boiled down to spending a couple hours each night writing, editing, and putting photos and links together for each one. It was a bit of a grind, but helped me pass the time between late night feedings when I was on baby duty. So here they are:

Reducing intake of sugary drinks - I really love Honest Tea, and it's helped me get down to drinking cola once a week or so.

Sharing dual-platform desktops with a single keyboard/mouse - I've written about Synergy, VNC, and my dual platform setup before, but with the recent release of a Synergy GUI app, it's now easier than ever to share multiple systems as one giant desktop.

Learning to love Audiobooks - I find that I love audiobooks more than printed books for a lot of titles, and I seem to have more time for audiobooks than reading. I ran down all the things that make a good audiobook experience and a few of my favorites. There are many more I forgot to mention (like Bill Bryson's great stuff), including bad audiobooks (Jared Diamond - great speaker, great writer, but the publisher pays a drone to read his text).

Using firewire networking - Upgrading to tiger seems to have improved firewire networking in my setup. I now get very fast transfer rates between my mac and PC.

How iPod mounts work - I've come to the conclusion that my $65 iPod holder is an expensive, but necessary accessory, for the sake of safety.

How to setup a drip system in your garden - I can't tell you how much I love not having to water the plants by hand and how easy this stuff is to set up. This little system eliminates the one thing about gardening I disliked most -- being a slave to the watering can.

Uptime server monitor review - I've been happily using uptime for years. It just plain works.

Posted by 09:59 AM | Comments (3)

links for 2005-06-10

Posted by 12:14 AM

June 09, 2005

links for 2005-06-09

Posted by 12:14 AM

June 08, 2005

star wars figure, forgotten


(star wars figure, forgotten, originally uploaded by Box and Arrow)

You never know what washes up on shore

Posted by 02:52 PM

links for 2005-06-08

Posted by 12:15 AM

June 07, 2005

One thing the internet got right

In reading about the copyright insanity of Wal-Mart and Ofoto, I'm reminded of how much better the copyright prevention approach works online. In the (much criticized and abused, but in this case, forward thinking) DMCA, there's a safeharbor provision for ISPs so that they aren't responsible for what happens on their network, their members actually doing things illegally are responsible. This makes perfect sense and does have methods and rules about what an ISP needs to do to help remove offending material, but never puts the ISP on trial for the work of their customer. Without this, ISPs wouldn't be able to fund the manhours to babysit and question every single byte on their disk drives.

Wal-mart and Ofoto are making really bad business decisions as the result of pressure from professional photographers, presumably to prevent lawsuits directed at the photo developers themselves. But like Ernest said, this is a silly approach. Every service can have unintended uses and consequences like getting wedding photo duplicates made without the photographer's permission, but the person that took possession of the negatives is in the wrong, not the photo developer. The same goes for Kinkos watching your every move when you use their copiers.

Maybe we could see an end to these silly stories if safeharbor provisions were more widespread. It seems like the one thing in internet law we really got right.

Posted by 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

links for 2005-06-07

Posted by 12:15 AM

June 06, 2005

Say it ain't so doc!


(Say it ain't so doc!, originally uploaded by mathowie)

Filed under: reasons why doctor-patient communication should never be handled by RSS in the future.

Posted by 11:56 AM

Dear Apple...

Now that you'll be running Apple hardware on x86 chips, please use this change to bring down the costs of your hardware significantly. The mac mini was a huge hit for one reason: price. Now that you'll be saving hundreds of dollars on chips getting them from Intel instead of Motorola (and getting them at much faster speeds), please pass the savings onto us and you'll watch your market share continue to rebound.

In other words, don't let us get into the situation where $799 Apple 20" cinema displays have the exact same hardware as Dell 20" monitors that recently sold for $398.

Also, I figure it's just a matter of hours after the first intel-mac rolls off the line before we realize exactly what keeps us from running OS X on any cheap PC. I suspect whatever hardware or software dongle limits this will be thwarted the same day.

Anyway, I think it's great news, I just hope it means cheaper, faster macs.

Posted by 11:39 AM

June 04, 2005

links for 2005-06-04

Posted by 12:15 AM

June 03, 2005

eBay my ride

It's not entirely surprising to see cars from the show Pimp My Ride being sold on eBay for cash. I think this newest one makes it five or six of the featured cars that have been sold.

The show's premise is kind of flimsy: kids in SoCal in rough situations get a crazy $30k car makeover that is supposed to change their life for the better. Speaking as someone that once owned a highly customized car in Southern California, they're more trouble than they're worth, making you constantly worried about them getting stolen or broken into.

When you hear about the kids on the show, it's most often money problems, and having a playstation in your dash doesn't quite solve that, though they frequently point to improving these kids' self-esteem as some sort of benefit making the show worth it. So many end up on eBay, which will probably help these people out, so I guess the ends justify the means and we get some entertaining television out of it.

Posted by 01:07 PM

links for 2005-06-03

Posted by 12:17 AM

June 02, 2005

links for 2005-06-02

Posted by 12:17 AM

June 01, 2005

Spellbound

Woot! The national spelling bee finals started today and they end tomorrow with a four hours of it broadcast on ESPN.

TiVo link for the early round coverage at 10am and the live finals at 1pm.

Posted by 06:24 PM

links for 2005-06-01

Posted by 12:17 AM