August 2005 Archives

Speculation is running rampant about the details of Apple's special announcememt next week. The leading thought is that Apple will formally announce a partnership with Motorola and Cingular to create a cell phone that is capable of playing music purchased from the iTunes store.

This could be very cool. At the moment, my iPod stays locked in my car where it powers the integrated iPod connector in my MINI. I just have too much stuff to carry around and a cell phone, while not as fun as an iPod, is just the more practical choice. Combining an iPod with a phone removes the need to chose.

I'm normally a little wary of "convergent" devices that do a bit of everything but nothing particularly well. Still, Apple has a good track record of developing stylish and functional products, so my hopes are high.

This could be enough to push me to switch mobile providers to Cingular. Of course, with my luck, the new phone will be backlogged for months before it becomes available.

However, speculating on future Apple products is a difficult game. Some times the rumors are dead on. Other times they completely miss the mark. Another theory is that Apple will announce the next generation of iPods that come with ability to play video clips. This is a natural evolution from the current line of photo iPods.

My hope, however, is that Apple will announce that the iTunes music store will begin selling music videos. This is a market that is tragically underserved and one that I am eager to start spending my money on.

The iTunes store has had music videos available for viewing for some time now. Selection, however, remains limited. I would love to buy a smattering of new videos each month to create a record of the sights and sounds of the new and popular music for the month. Oh, and if this is truly the year of HDTV, as Steve Jobs has declared at both Macworld and the WWDC, it wouldn't hurt if the videos came in high definition format.

Yesterday I was flipping through the computer books section at my local Barnes and Noble. I found a book on J2ME that looked interesting,⁽¹⁾ picked up a technical magazine and headed to the counter. The sales clerk rang up my order and I walked away.

Something was troubling me, however. The final price just seemed a little too high. Maybe the magazine was one of those absurdly expensive magazines, but I didn't think so. So I compared the price on the book to the price I was charged and so that there was a $5 discrepancy.⁽²⁾ It took a few minutes but they finally cleared things up and issued me a refund.

This wasn't the first time I have been overcharged recently. On my way home from work on Friday, I picked up some poster frames⁽³⁾ and a CD from Sam Goody. The cash register overcharged each item by $2. At least in this case there were big red stickers with the correct price on them, so the cashier immediately noticed the problem and corrected it on the spot.

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⁽¹⁾Enterprise J2ME: Developing Mobile Java Applications. I'm hoping this book will give me some insights on using J2ME in some more social network type situations. I have another two J2ME game programming books, which aren't of much help for learning how to deal with XML parsing of RSS feeds, for example. My first impressions remain good. It presents a number of design patterns based solutions but also cautions users to consider simpler alternatives that are less taxing on limited CPU devices.

⁽²⁾Actually, now that I check Amazon, they list the higher list price as well. Maybe I picked up an older edition of the book, before the price was raised. Or maybe the data feed from the vendor was in error. In any event, I'm keeping my $5.

⁽³⁾Watch for more details on the poster frames in an upcoming post. To find out what I was framing, you can check the comments buried deep in an entry on the forthcoming sister site to 43 Things and 43 Places. Sorry, it's not open to the public yet. I hope you will forget to look for it when the site is finally opened up to a wider audience.

Yay, I was just able to successfully log into my Yahoo account. I don't think I've logged into the account in the past six or seven years. I tried a couple of months ago to log in when I got an invitation to the preview of Yahoo 360, but I couldn't remember my password and the remind me of my user name and password features didn't seem to work.

I thought I would give it another try, now that Flickr is slowly getting absorbed into Yahoo. I think I read somewhere that within the next year you will be required to use a Yahoo account to log into Flickr.

So after punching in half a dozen or more variations of my commonly used passwords, I suddenly struck gold. Chalk one up for easily guessed passwords.

Once logged in, I updated the account's email address which was still set to an account that I cancelled some seven years ago. Hopefully this will make it easier to retrieve my account information the next time I forget.

This weekend I have been enjoying the Pandora music player that Scoble has been gushing about all week.

This has been a surprising amount of fun. Type in a random artist or song and get a stream of similar songs. Right now I'm listening to the "Lindsay Lohan" station.⁽¹⁾

I haven't done too much customization to the playlists. You can add additional songs or artists to the station, or ask for more or less songs like the currently playing song. I wonder what kind of an impact this would have on the playlist, and whether or not it will be used as input to some sort of collaborative filtering system to supplement the data from the Music Genome Project.

I also don't really get the "community" features they are trying to expose, such as sharing stations. Since you can't select future songs, what does it really mean to share a station when your friends just create their own station with the same inputs?

Still, it is really nice to be able to tune into a stream of music, without commercial interruptions or annoying DJ's, selected to complement whatever mood I happen to be in. Although there are some obvious choices, I've been enjoying a lot of music from groups I had never heard of and, without the service, most likely never would have heard. I haven't been compelled to click on the "buy from iTunes" or "buy from Amazon" links, but you never know....

On a final note: mild rhythmic syncopation rulez!⁽²⁾

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⁽¹⁾That was probably too much personal information. Sorry about that.

⁽²⁾I don't think I have yet heard Pandora play me a song that hasn't had mild rhythmic syncopation as on of its characteristics. I guess my musical tastes must be fairly limited.

I've had my current cell phone, a Nokia 6600, for about 10 months or so now and thought it was time to look around at the current state of the art and see if it was time to upgrade.

I've had my eye on the Motoral RAZR V3. It might not be the newest thing out there, but this tiny little thing just oozes style. So I go to the Motoral site to check out its specs. The consumer websites never have the important information, so I head over to the Motocoders developer site.

The specifications for the phone are publicly available and I spend some time reading through them. More detailed information on the APIs, however, are locked behind a registration form.

The Motocoders information page links to the program FAQ for more information about the developer's site. And, oh yeah, you can't read the FAQ about joining the program without being a member. Real smart.

Scoble links (indirectly) to a study that shows that 92% of "influencers" have heard of RSS and that 87% use RSS readers.

*Yawn* I bet a high percentage also watch televesion, read books, eat at McDonald's, drive a car or any number of other things. This doesn't really seem to prove anything.

Although I find it interesting that 8% of influential people in the field haven't heard of the technology driving it. That's the more surprising number.

I was on my way to the movie theater to check out the latest movie⁽¹⁾ that Robot Daniel promises wasn't that bad even though it looks like it would be. Leaning against a telephone pole as I waited for the light to change, I see an attractive woman walking toward the corner with a group of friends.

I recognize her face, although I'm not really sure from where. She recognizes me as well, and begins somewhat awkwardly, "I'm sorry but I forgot your name."

"Hi, I'm Bob," I reply.

"I'm M.⁽²⁾", she answers. "How have you been?"

"Oh, pretty good," I say. "Things are pretty much the same. And you?"

"Yeah, the same," she replies. "So do you still work there?"

My mind races. I really need to remember who this person is and when we last spoke. "Uh, which place was that?" I clumsily respond. I've had five jobs and earned two degrees since I moved to Seattle.

"You know, 'there'," was her strained follow up.

I could tell that this conversation was going nowhere fast. I quick diversion was necessary. "No, I was working at A.⁽³⁾ for a few years but I recently left to join a start up⁽⁴⁾ with some friends I met there."

"Oh, that's really great," she exclaims, noticeably relieved to find an opening as the light stubbornly continued to refuse to change. "It must be great being able to work on things with a small group of friends."

"It really is," I answer. "It's great to be able to decide what you want to work on and then to actually be able to work on it."

With that the light finally changed and we began crossing the street. I suddenly decided that the movie theater was not, in fact, just down the street as one might think if strictly looking at a map, but would in fact require turning down a different street now.

"Well, it was great seeing you again."

"Yeah, see you later."

I still can't remember who she was. I suspect she was probably someone from business school or law school, although I never purchased any of the yearbooks so I don't have any way of verifying this. It just seems that the intense experience of working with someone through graduate school could burn the image of a face into the memory long after any remnants of recognition have been ripped away by the passing years.

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⁽¹⁾It is with some discomfort that I realize that the events described in this post would have fit in nicely as a scene in the movie.

⁽²⁾Not her real name, interestingly enough. But it might be her real first initial. I could kick myself now, but this would have been a great time to use one of Daniel's name-remembering tricks. How hard would it have been to add a "Hi, M., it's good to see you again. I'm sorry, but I can't seem to remember, what was your last name again?

⁽³⁾Not the company's real name. However, you could probably Google my previous blog to find a mention if you don't already know.

⁽⁴⁾The controversy surrounding the history of my current company can currently be found documented on Wikipedia.

There's a game I like to play when I walk around downtown. It's called "Crazy guy of cell phone user" and it goes something like this. Let's say you're waiting at the bus stop and you hear someone talking out loud with no one in sight, making wild hand gestures. Is this a crazy person or is it just someone making a telephone call?

It isn't as easy as you might think. Bluetooth earpieces can slip unnoticed around an ear and disappear completely if the person has anything but a very short hair style. And you can't always judge by clothing because even successful professionals can dress down quite a bit.

Here's a hint for the rest of you. If you see me walking down the street, I can almost guarantee that you should put me in the "crazy person" category. I know that this is the Mobile Duo site, but really I only carry my phone part of the time and even then there's a good chance the batteries are dead.

I will, howver, often walk down the streets singing out random pieces of the current song stuck in my head. Usually I'll look around a bit to see if there is anyone within half a block or so around me. But even if there are people nearby I might just keep singing anyway, only at a lower volume and without moving my mouth as much.

One of the fun things about Bloglines is exploring the links between subscribers, seeing what other feeds people are reading and how they organize their feeds. I think I am going to have to raid Jana's subscritpion list for the feeds of a number of former co-workers that I have lost touch with.

I have just been spending some time reading Nick's blog with stories and pictures of Edinburgh and his travel through Scotland and Ireland. I have been making mental maps in my head of some of the places that I still recognize from the pictures.

Edinburgh is an amazing city and I wonder if I made a mistake not pushing harder for a job there when the potential of an opportunity presented itself.

Matt, if you are reading this, I think I made a terrible mistake. If there are any openings now or in the future, please, please, please, won't you hire me and take me away from all of this.

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NOTE TO CURRENT EMPLOYER: publicly begging for a new job should in no way be taken as an indication that I am unhappy with my current position or that I am looking to change positions.

NOTE TO FUTURE EMPLOYER: previous disclaimer to current employer should in no way be taken as an indication that I am not eager to move on to better and more interesting things.

I notice that Jana was nice enough to subscribe to my blog, although for the life of me I can't see why. I hope that she isn't to horrified at my long, inchoherent rants about silly technical things.

I'll try to come up with a few posts every now and then that are more friendly to a graphic designer audience. Maybe I could talk about CSS or something?

It's 5am and I was having trouble staying asleep. So what would any normal person do? Why run to the computer and see if anyone in the blogosphere is talking about me. Like some pushy salesman, I finally configured Movable Type to notify the world--specifically Technorati, Weblogs.com, and Movable Type--every time a post an entry.

I've been focusing on Technorati these past few days, but decided to see what was happening on other services. Jeremy Zawodny now has links to both Technorati and Bloglines searches. This time, I clicked on the Bloglines link.

The Bloglines search is still a bit slow, but when the results show up, my post is listed in the second spot. I click through on the preview link. It's strange to see my words all formatted and blog like on another server, but I like the clean look.

My eyes are drawn to the top of the page, which announces that four people have subscribed to my blog. Clicking through I notice that only three people are willing to admit publicly to this. I did confirm with Ben over instant messaging last night that he has also been reading my blog, although I don't know whether he is the mysterious fourth subscriber or if I have a fifth reader.

This is really starting to freak me out a bit. I was feeling a bit discouraged yesterday wondering if all of my writing was being wasted with no one reading it. Still, I'm not sure I feel better knowing that there are people who do.

Now I'm scanning through my previous posts, trying to gauge whether there is at all anything in them that would be interesting to someone other than myself. I'm really not sure.

Robot Josh is always looking for the secret sauce, that special combination of ideas or implementation that makes one site successful where others might fail.

One secret sauce is chocolate and peanut butter, the two great tastes that go great together. That is, two ideas that on their own may be fairly common but that when blended together form something unique. I think 43 Things demonstrates this process remarkably well, combining blogging functionality with social and community features. The result is a site that lets regular people, in effect, create a blog without even realize they are blogging.

We are currently looking for that secret sauce for our latest project. In one of our discussions, Robot Daniel wondered which of the ideas we were taking about was the chocolate and which was peanut. After all, he reasoned, the chocolate always has to be on the outside, or your fingers will get quite sticky.

This afternoon I was in the local Bartell's to get my afternoon bottle of water (why don't I just buy in bulk and keep some water in the refrigerator?), when I noticed a bag of limited edition Reese's Peanut Butter Cups--inside out. Yes, they had the peanut butter on the outside.

I would have preferred to just get an individual packet to prove the point, but all they had were the larger bags. And so I return to the office with a bag of inside out peanut butter cups. Fortunately, the other robots were around to help make short work of the candy, and thereby sparing me a rather nasty sugar rush.

My experiment to see if Technorati can be a viable alternative to trackback, now that Jeremy Zawodny has declared that trackbacks are dead, seems to have been a failure.

Not having written any blog posts for nine months means I haven't had the opportunity to observe how Technorati handles my blog. It was fun, then, sending out ping to the service. I was pleasantly surprised to see my post show up in the list of entries referencing Jeremy's post. However, I wonder why the entry featured only the two words within the anchor tag and didn't provide any additional context. Really, "had enough" is hardly interesting enough for anyone to clickthrough. The entry didn't even have a real title for my post.

The Technorati link search also seems to behave strangely. For one thing, it is very slow. I think the nonresponsiveness of the site is fairly well acknowledged, but I'm willing to forgive a little performance problem--running a successful site is hard. But inconsistent results are more troubling.

I just ran a search for pages linking to Jeremy's post. The results seem to be switching back and forth between "26 sites, 3 links in the last 2 days" and "31 sites, 18 links in the last 1 day". This is hardly inspiring my confidence in services like Technorati providing an accurate and timely view of events unfolding in the blogosphere.

I wonder whether a centralized service like Technorati is even the appropriate solution for this particular problem. While there may debates over the number of "real" blogs, the number is clearly increasing rapidly. Assuming that a central store can efficiently handle all of this growing data seems silly.

Isn't the right solution to a distributed problem like this to find a way for the individual sites to keep track of which other sites are linking to them, using some type of notification system. Maybe something like, oh, well, a trackback?

The current trackback system may well be flawed, but that doesn't mean the idea is wrong. It may be unrealistic to expect Technorati to collect and index hundreds of thousands or even millions of posts each day. It is perfectly realistic, however, to imagine Jeremy maintaining a list of a few dozen sites linking to the one or two or three entries that he writes each day.

Yahoo blogger Jeremy Zawodny has had enough with trackbacks and is getting ready to disable them on his blog. They aren't disabled yet, so I thought I might have to take advantage of the time to send my own trackback before I lose the ability forever. But that seemed a little childish, even for my own developmentally challenged social skills.

Instead, how about this as a little experiment:

Hi, Jeremy. I'm a long time reader, first time linker. I just wanted to know how likely it would be for you, or any of your readers, to discover what I thought about your post if I don't use trackbacks. Will PubSub or Technorati really be able to find this message and add it to the distributed conversation?

About a month ago, I went down to the local Macy's to upscale my wardrobe a bit. I needed a few pieces of "resort casual" clothing to enter the restaurants for dinner on the Alaska cruise I was about to take.

A salesperson asked, as they always do, whether I had a Macy's card that I would like to use. I mentioned that I did have an account but that I didn't have my card with me. No problem, he responds, then can just look up the account. Ten minutes later I get handed the telephone and asked to answer a few multiple choice questions about my life. At the conclusion of this whole mess, the salesperson remarks that, oh, well it looks like you had an account after all. Well, duh.

I return home from the cruise, expecting the bill to be waiting for me. It isn't. I wait some more. Still nothing. I call up the customer service number on the back of my credit card. The automated system tells me that my account does in fact have a zero balance. This is weird.

I decide to head back to the store in person to straighten things out. The sign over the customer service desk says that payments can be made here. Perfect.

I ask the cashier for the balance so that I can pay off the bill. She scans the barcode on my receipt and the terminal brings up a mimum payment of $6. That's great, but how much do I owe to pay off the account? Well, that requires a call to customer service.

She calls customer service, gives the rep my account number and then hands the phone to me. I try to explain my situation, but the voice on the other side of the phone tells me that I need to be transfered to customer service.

So finally I get transfered to the person who ought to be able to help me. What's my account number, he asks. I scratch my head for a bit, as the only thing on this slip of paper I have is a barcode. So I get the cashier to scan the code again so I can give yet another person my account information.

After all of this, I finally get the amount I must pay off. I ask why I wasn't able to get this information from the automated system I called in the morning. Well, it turns out that this is a dual purpose card. The VISA part did have a zero balance while the Macy's part did have a balnance.

Whatever. So why hadn't I received a bill? He tells me that's strange because it was mailed two weeks ago. I asked the rep to confirm my address. As a started rolling off the street address, he stops me. That's not the address they have on file. Turns out the helpful salesperson must have "updated" my address to my previous address.

A few minutes later things finally look like they are starting to come together. I've got the payoff amount and my address is now updated. Then, there's an expression of concern on the other side. Looks like my payment is due in three days, which is not really enough time to mail a check.

No problem, I reply. I'm at a store now and I can make may payment directly. I'm just glad I caught it in time to avoid a late fee. I finish up the call going over everything we had done. So, I will recieve a statement at my correct address next month? Well, actually no, not if you pay off the balance. We don't send a statement if there's no balance. Not even to confirm receipt of payment, I asked surprised. No, he assures me, if you don't get a statement then that means you are paid in full. Well, I counter, I didn't get a statement this month and that's because you had the wrong address.

It's fifteen minutes later and I am finally ready to pay. Unfortunately, they only take cash or checks. Checks? Who takes checks? I can't even use checks at my friend's store, and I've known him for over ten years.

Luckily, I'm just across the street from an ATM. It takes me a few more minutes to run over and pull out some cash. And with that, the long saga is finally over.

Slashdot had a link to this article on a new service in the UK called BlueCasting. This is a brilliant idea. Embed a directional transmitter into a billboard that offers to send additional information or promotions to cell phones that are in viewing distance of the advertisement.

The range of 100 meters seems a bit excessive to me. It may be fine for the initial rollout, but the airwaves could get quite crowded with promotions if the idea took off.

What if, instead, the range were limited to something like five to ten meters. Just enough so that you receive a small discount on the newest Britney Spears CD as you passed by your local music store--but only if you acted in the next hour.

Of course, the system would also need a way to limit the number of times it interrupted you to keep it as a useful service instead of turning into a new form of spam. Well chosen, personalized ads delivered in real time could be extremely effective.

Last week the blogosphere was alive with taking about who was going to Foocamp and who had been invited and who had not and who was entitled to go because they are oh so special and how could Tim O'Reilly just not see that.

The post that struck me most was Robert Scoble's post describing that while he was envious of those who got to go, he was glad that he had gotten to attend in previous years and wished the best for this year's attendees. This was a thoughtful, mature, and honest response. Subscribed!⁽¹⁾

Fear, not, Scoble. You are not alone. I, too, was not invited to Foocamp this year.

Now who am I and why should I be invited to Foocamp, my readership of none thinks. Ahem, that is, well, that's the problem. It's not like I don't do interesting things. I work for one of those hip⁽²⁾ Web 2.0 startups that build shiny little things on everyone's favorite Ruby on Rails framework, with oodles of tags, full of ajaxian love and goodness, brimming with more Web services and RSS feeds than you can shake a stick at.

What I haven't been as good at is becoming known outside of my little circle of coworkers, being involved with the community, giving back ideas and sharing experiences, helping others better themselves.

And so, although I haven't been Foocamp before and there's a good chance that I might never be invited (there are just so many talented people out there), I would like to try to spend the next year, as Scoble might say, "living the Foocamp life". That is, I would like to try to become the kind of person who would fit in well at a gathering like that.

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⁽¹⁾ "Subscribed!" is apparently what you are supposed to write when you want a blogger to know that you were so impressed by an entry that you added the blog to the ever growing list of blogs that you follow. Not yet being a big believer in RSS, however, I didn't have a good feed reader handy at the time. Yes, Firefox and Safari both have built in RSS support but the interface seems clumsy to me. Anyway, the point is I had to download a feed reader first and then subscribe. It's about time I got into RSS a little more seriously. After all, all the cool kids are doing it these days, so why shouldn't I?

⁽²⁾ Daniel would tell me that the correct term is "hep". Now, Daniel is a bona fide rock star and a much cooler cat than I could ever hope to be, so I guess I believe him. Still, it sounds more like some sort of social disease to me. Oh, and I don't usually refer to people as "cats", but this weekend VH1 Classic had Woodstock movies on constant rotation which left me in a bit of a mood.

It looks like 618 people on 43 Things want to "Be a better blogger". I was one of the early people to adopt this goal and, well, I have been less than successful at following though.

From reading through the entries posted there, the best piece of advice seems to be to try to write something every day. Seems like easy enough advice. I suddenly feel ready to recommit and rededicate myself to blogging.

Unfortunately, this is my second post on this new blog and already I have fallen off track. I hope this is just a temprorary setback and not the beginning of another six months before I write my next post.