Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Earworms
There's a term for "songs that get stuck in your head". They're called earworms, This happens to me all of the time. When you're around small kids the earworms can be children's music (e.g. Barney, Sesame Street, Bob the Builder, etc). But I find that old pop tunes "get stuck" even more often. And they're usually songs that I didn't like in the first place.
Scary idea: someone will figure out how to trigger this effect and will write the "killer song" to drive us all mad -- like the Monty Python sketch on the Killer Joke. "Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!"
Scary idea: someone will figure out how to trigger this effect and will write the "killer song" to drive us all mad -- like the Monty Python sketch on the Killer Joke. "Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!"
What can't this thing do?
I just set up Verichat on my Treo. It's like Trillian for Palm OS. It supports Yahoo Messenger, MSN and AIM. It's a little weird "chatting" on this miniscule keyboard but it does the job. Plus, you can take pictures and send them to the people you're chatting with. Kinda cool. The only catch with Verichat is that the chat traffic flows through a proxy server which requires an annual subscription to use. Not expensive but I'm not sure yet that I'd use this enough to warrant the expense.
I've been listening to MP3s on my Treo using Pocket Tunes. Sounds great. I've got a couple of 256 MB SD cards so I can have several albums of music available. I can use regular headphones plugged into the headset jack via an adapter. The battery drain during MP3 playback seems minimal, lower than the drainage while making calls. Pocket Tunes lets you use other applications while the MP3 keeps playing. And you can answer calls which will pause the player. The next release of Pocket Tunes supports ShoutCast streaming audio so listening to radio stations and any other channels in Shoutcast will be possible as well.
The Treo 600 is an interesting union of devices: cell phone, PDA, MP3 player, digital camera, wireless Internet appliance, etc. It's not the best choice for any one of these categories but if you're looking for a single device that does all or most of these jobs, it's probably the best choice for now. There are smaller phones, faster PDAs, better screens, etc. but the Treo strikes the best balance between phone and everything else it does.
For me, the most interesting part is having wireless Internet access in a small general purpose device. Shoutcast support is possible because of Sprint's 3G network, not because this is an MP3 player. Sharing pictures is possible for the same reason. It'll be interesting to see if we get to a point where voice is a secondary aspect of cellular networks. It's just another type of data. VOIP takes that point of view. Why can't I have a high resolution digital camera that can "push" pictures over the Internet? Or a digital music player that can download audio tracks from the Internet (for a fee, of course ;-) without requiring a Macintosh or PC? When does the phone part of the device become optional? And if it does, what's the pricing model for such wireless devices? How many devices do you want to own that can do this? Also, there are many ways to be wireless, Bluetooth and WiFi are also options when you're near other suitable devices or within range of your own wireless network. We'll want devices that will seamlessly choose the best option for moving data around.
I've been listening to MP3s on my Treo using Pocket Tunes. Sounds great. I've got a couple of 256 MB SD cards so I can have several albums of music available. I can use regular headphones plugged into the headset jack via an adapter. The battery drain during MP3 playback seems minimal, lower than the drainage while making calls. Pocket Tunes lets you use other applications while the MP3 keeps playing. And you can answer calls which will pause the player. The next release of Pocket Tunes supports ShoutCast streaming audio so listening to radio stations and any other channels in Shoutcast will be possible as well.
The Treo 600 is an interesting union of devices: cell phone, PDA, MP3 player, digital camera, wireless Internet appliance, etc. It's not the best choice for any one of these categories but if you're looking for a single device that does all or most of these jobs, it's probably the best choice for now. There are smaller phones, faster PDAs, better screens, etc. but the Treo strikes the best balance between phone and everything else it does.
For me, the most interesting part is having wireless Internet access in a small general purpose device. Shoutcast support is possible because of Sprint's 3G network, not because this is an MP3 player. Sharing pictures is possible for the same reason. It'll be interesting to see if we get to a point where voice is a secondary aspect of cellular networks. It's just another type of data. VOIP takes that point of view. Why can't I have a high resolution digital camera that can "push" pictures over the Internet? Or a digital music player that can download audio tracks from the Internet (for a fee, of course ;-) without requiring a Macintosh or PC? When does the phone part of the device become optional? And if it does, what's the pricing model for such wireless devices? How many devices do you want to own that can do this? Also, there are many ways to be wireless, Bluetooth and WiFi are also options when you're near other suitable devices or within range of your own wireless network. We'll want devices that will seamlessly choose the best option for moving data around.
Pumpkin carving 101
Ned posted his family's Halloween pumpkin photos on his blog so I thought I'd do the same
My older son is home sick from school. He's had his second bout with strep throat in two weeks. The antibiotics didn't work the first time around so they gave his something stronger.
This is our handiwork from earlier today. We've done fancier carving work in the past. but decided to stick with a very basic pumpkin face this year. Not scary at all.
There's something very visceral about plunging a sharp knife into a pumpkin, twisting it around and scooping out the guts. Very cathartic. We should do this more often.
One suffix to rule them all
As of this yesterday, Handspring is no more. The company has merged with Palm. The new entity is known as palmOne. The Palm OS portion of Palm has been spun off as PalmSource.
What's with the "One" suffix for names? We've had Netscape One, JavaOne, SunOne and now palmOne. In some cases, there's a claim "One" is an acronym but I think it's just supposed to sound cool. Likewise, there's the continued use of camel case in names. Reliance on camel case is going to cause pronunciation problems among the non-technorati. Hey buddy, where can I buy a Pal Mo Nee?
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Despair, Inc.
I'm not sure how I got on their mailing list but I received a Despair, Inc. catalog in the mail today. Despair, Inc's Demotivators have been around for several years. Funny stuff, for example these entries from the 2004 calendar: Achievement , Ambition, Success and Teamwork.
Floating titles
I've added support for floating titles when you hover over links. I borrowed the JavaScript code and CSS from kryogenix.org. I'll try to use them as appropriate since they can get annoying. The code can be found here
Update: disabled floating titles for now. There's a weird interaction with the scrollbar with IE6 that I need to look at.
Update: disabled floating titles for now. There's a weird interaction with the scrollbar with IE6 that I need to look at.
Monday, October 27, 2003
Longhorn and old code
Microsoft PDC 2003 is underway in Los Angeles this week. Main focus this year is Longhorn, the next version of Windows. Lots of press buzz for something that's not likely to ship until 2006. During Gates keynote they demonstrated how Longhorn was capable of doing all sorts of flashy things. I think it's pretty funny that they made a point in showing that VisiCalc, a 20 year-old DOS program, still runs on Longhorn. As Dan Bricklin points out, one reason that VisiCalc is even able to be shown now is that someone kept a bootleg non copy-protected version around. The original program would only run from 5-1/4" copy-protected floppies. Does anyone use 5-1/4" floppy drives any more? On a machine that's capable of running Longhorn? That would be compatible with 20-year-old copy protection code? Not too likely.
The interesting related problem here is that we can jump through hoops to make new environments capable of running old code; in some cases writing OS or processor emulators to fool the old code into working. But if we can't actually get access to the bits of the old programs and data, the effort is moot. I've got old Iomega® Jaz cartridges, NeXT optical disks, digital backup tapes, cartridge tapes and even some old 9-track magnetic tapes lying around. Except for the Jaz media, I don't have appropriate hardware to get the data off any of these media. And even if I have the hardware, I don't necessarily have appropriate drivers or applications to read the data. And digital media degrades over time so some of the old media may be worthless by now. In recent years I've been burning CD-ROMs for backups, I wonder how long it will be before these fall into the same technology dustbin as the other media?
The interesting related problem here is that we can jump through hoops to make new environments capable of running old code; in some cases writing OS or processor emulators to fool the old code into working. But if we can't actually get access to the bits of the old programs and data, the effort is moot. I've got old Iomega® Jaz cartridges, NeXT optical disks, digital backup tapes, cartridge tapes and even some old 9-track magnetic tapes lying around. Except for the Jaz media, I don't have appropriate hardware to get the data off any of these media. And even if I have the hardware, I don't necessarily have appropriate drivers or applications to read the data. And digital media degrades over time so some of the old media may be worthless by now. In recent years I've been burning CD-ROMs for backups, I wonder how long it will be before these fall into the same technology dustbin as the other media?
EclipseCon
Eclipse is having its own conference in Anaheim, CA next February. Lots of interesting talks in the program
Tired of sitting at red lights?
Buy this $300 gadget to turn red lights to green. According to the article, police are worried about chaos at intersections. You think? In Boston, we have enough trouble getting drivers to pay attention to the traffic lights in the first place.
The traffic light changer device, called a MIRT (mobile infrared transmitter), emits a beam with a 1,500-foot range to a receiver installed at the intersection. It changes the light immediately, allowing an intersection to clear before a fire or rescue truck approaches. It's hard to believe that the receivers installed in intersections don't require a keycode or other type of authentication. Anyone with a MIRT can change the lights. Seems like a huge potential liability since MIRTs aren't illegal.
The traffic light changer device, called a MIRT (mobile infrared transmitter), emits a beam with a 1,500-foot range to a receiver installed at the intersection. It changes the light immediately, allowing an intersection to clear before a fire or rescue truck approaches. It's hard to believe that the receivers installed in intersections don't require a keycode or other type of authentication. Anyone with a MIRT can change the lights. Seems like a huge potential liability since MIRTs aren't illegal.
Fox News vs. The Simpsons
I don't know how accurate this article is since I haven't listened to the interview. Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons" was interviewed on NPR's "Fresh Air" program last week. He revealed that Fox News threatened to sue if an episode spoofing the news channel was aired. Groening called their bluff and went ahead with the show because he assumed that Rupert Murdoch wouldn't be stupid enough to sue himself. On the episode, Krusty the Clown is running for Congress (as a Republican) and debates his opponent on Fox News. Here's the debate:
That's pretty darn funny. The people at Fox News must have no sense of humor.[Split screen: showing Krusty with the American flag behind him; for his Democratic opponent, the background was a Soviet flag. Devil horns were superimposed on his head.]
Fox News Announcer: Welcome to Fox News, your voice for evil. Tonight, we'll be interviewing the top two candidates for Springfield's 24th Congressional district. For the Republicans, beloved children's entertainer, Krusty the Clown. And for the Democrats, this guy.
Democrat: Hey, I have a name.
Fox News Anchor: Yes, I'm sure you do, comrade. I do appreciate your being here. You're usually so mired in sleaze, it must be an effort to come down to the studio.
Krusty: May I say something?
Fox News Anchor: Certainly, Congressman.
Democrat: He hasn't won yet!
Fox News Anchor: You make a very adulterous point. We'll now conclude this debate with a Krusty campaign commercial.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
w.bloggar blog editing application
w.bloggar is a desktop application for editing blog posts (and templates) that goes beyond what browser-based blog editors can offer. For example, it allows off-line editing. w.bloggar is compatible with many popular weblog systems (Blogger, Moverable Type, b2, Roller, LiveJouranl, etc). w.bloggar is compatible with a number of popular blog APIs: Blogger API, metaWeblog API, MovableType API and b2. All of these are based on the XML-RPC specification. I've tried w.bloggar out my Blogger-based blog and it works great.
Picasa and Hello
We use Picasa at home to organize digital photographs. Picasa has a slick UI and does the basics very well. Picasa recently introduced a companion application called Hello for sharing pictures with friends over a peer-to-peer connection. An interesting alternative to posting pictures on a public web site or using an online photo sharing service such as Yahoo Photos, Shutterfly or Ofoto. Good stuff.
Pigs love pie
We stopped at a farm stand this afternoon to buy some pumpkins to carve for Halloween. Nearby the pumpkins was a fenced-in area with several goats, hens and a single pig in separate pens. The pig was busy gobbling down an entire cherry pie. The owner said that all his pigs have loved pie. Not surprising. Who doesn't love pie? 
. The pig gets to eat all of the pies that haven't sold. He'll eat any type of pie except peach -- apparently peach is too sweet.
In contrast to this pig's discriminating taste in pies, his predecessor would eat anything. Tin cans, old shoes, cardboard, whatever he could get his teeth on. Apparently indiscriminate pigs are nothing new, years ago it was common for New England farmers to dump their household trash into the pig trough and let them chow down. Pigs must have pretty tough digestive systems to process all of this "roughage". This reminds me of a movie reference from Snatch where Brick Top is telling an associate how he uses pigs to dispose of bodies (Brick Top: You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes). Yikes.
b2
b2 is PHP blogware. It supports multiple users, categories, comments, bookmarklets, RSS syndication, file/image upload, the Blogger API, weblogs.com ping, etc. It requires PHP4 and MySQL. My ISP supports these so I may finally wean myself off Blogger and give b2 a try. Note: I don't have anything against Blogger, I just want a few features that Blogger doesn't support and would like to dig a bit more into PHP.
Antville
Antville is an open source project aimed to make an "easy to maintain and use" weblog hosting system. It's entirely written in JavaScript and based on Helma, a powerful and fast scriptable open source web application server (which itself is written in Java). Antville works with a relational database such as MySQL
Sounds interesting, I hadn't heard ot Antville or Helga before. My ISP doesn't support Java hosting but I may try this out locally.
Sounds interesting, I hadn't heard ot Antville or Helga before. My ISP doesn't support Java hosting but I may try this out locally.
McPhling
It's amazing how many people are writing software for Palm OS. There are quite a few applications and extensions that are real time savers. One Palm OS extension that I recently discovered is called McPhling. It makes it easy to jump back to the last application that you were using or pick among the last N apps that you used. Very useful.
Lost again
We saw Lost in Translation last night. My second time. The first half of the film was funnier than I remembered. It's a terrific movie, worth a second viewing. Go see it.
Friday, October 24, 2003
Infrequently Asked Questions in comp.lang.c
Geek fun in a phony FAQ. (Via MetaFilter)
C# Language Specification 2.0
The C# language will get a pile of new features in its second release. There's a C# Version 2.0 Specification document on Microsoft's web site that goes into detail on new features. Major highlights include:
It will be interesting to see if C# and Java continue to "one up" one another over the next few years or plateau at a certain level of complexity. Unconstrained language evolution is hard since design choices made earlier constraint what you can add. (Via Lambda the Ultimate)• Generics permit classes, structs, interfaces, delegates, and methods to be parameterized by the types of data they store and manipulate. Generics are useful because they provide stronger compile-time type checking, require fewer explicit conversions between data types, and reduce the need for boxing operations and run-time type checks.
• Anonymous methods allow code blocks to be written "in-line" where delegate values are expected. Anonymous methods are similar to lambda functions in the Lisp programming language. C# 2.0 supports the creation of "closures" where anonymous methods access surrounding local variables and parameters.
• Iterators are methods that incrementally compute and yield a sequence of values. Iterators make it easy for a type to specify how the foreach statement will iterate over its elements.
• Partial types allow classes, structs, and interfaces to be broken into multiple pieces stored in different source files for easier development and maintenance. Additionally, partial types allow separation of machine-generated and user-written parts of types so that it is easier to augment code generated by a tool.
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
QuikClot
I heard a report on QuikClot on the radio this morning. QuikClot is an inert substance that can be poured over an open wound to stop bleeding. It's been in use by the military in Afghanistan and Iraq and has been saving lives, especially when it can take hours to get a wounded soldier to a hospital. When poured directly into an open wound, QuikClot acts like a molecular sieve, sifting molecules by size. The larger platelet and clotting factor molecules do not fit through the QuikClot material and remain in the wound in a highly concentrated form. This promotes rapid natural clotting and prevents severe blood loss. Behind the technology is an interesting tale of an accidental inventor (Frank Hursey) who discovered a terrific application idea which took 15 years to bring it to use.
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
The Dylan Programming Language
Here's a little programming language history that I dug up. Years ago, I had been tracking the progress of the Dylan programming language. Back then Apple was promoting it as "the next big thing". It is a cool language but it never really found enough of a following.
Dylan began with Apple's acquisition of Coral Software in Cambridge, MA. Coral developed Macintosh Common Lisp. Apple asked them to continue to support MCL and simultaneously develop a new dynamic language with the power and convenience of Lisp and Smalltalk but with the performance required for production applications. Dylan started out with Lisp prefix syntax but eventually supported a more conventional infix syntax. The tools and environment were hosted in MCL but standalone Macintosh executables could be generated.
The Apple Newton was originally going to be programmed in Dylan but a series of delays and memory constraints eventually led to it being abandoned. The Newton software team looked at Self which led to the development of the prototype-based language NewtonScript.
The original code name for Dylan was Ralph (after Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man). When the Newton team decided to develop NewtonScript, Ralph was refocused for use on the Macintosh. Apple decided to name the product Dylan, which stood for Dynamic language. Apple distributed a Beta release at WWDC in May 1994. A few months later, Bob Dylan sued Apple for trademark infringement. According to the lawsuit, "Apple is intentionally using, and intentionally has used, the names of famous individuals, including (Isaac) Newton, Carl Sagan and now Dylan, in conjunction with Apple's products in a deliberate attempt to capitalize on the goodwill associated with these famous individuals". Apple settled out-of-court and obtained the rights to trademark Dylan. Apple Dylan shipped in Fall 1995 but the project was abandoned shortly afterwards.
Mike Lockwood relates the last days of the Apple Dylan project. Sad but pretty funny. Oliver Steele was the project lead for the Dylan development environment and has some screen shots of what the IDE looked like.
Despite Apple's abandonment of Dylan, there's still a user community out there and a few implementations of the language. The Apple Dylan release is still available but doesn't run on OS X. There's also Gwydion Dylan, the Marlais interpreter and Functional Developer, The first two are open source projects, the last is a commercial product.
Dylan began with Apple's acquisition of Coral Software in Cambridge, MA. Coral developed Macintosh Common Lisp. Apple asked them to continue to support MCL and simultaneously develop a new dynamic language with the power and convenience of Lisp and Smalltalk but with the performance required for production applications. Dylan started out with Lisp prefix syntax but eventually supported a more conventional infix syntax. The tools and environment were hosted in MCL but standalone Macintosh executables could be generated.
The Apple Newton was originally going to be programmed in Dylan but a series of delays and memory constraints eventually led to it being abandoned. The Newton software team looked at Self which led to the development of the prototype-based language NewtonScript.
The original code name for Dylan was Ralph (after Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man). When the Newton team decided to develop NewtonScript, Ralph was refocused for use on the Macintosh. Apple decided to name the product Dylan, which stood for Dynamic language. Apple distributed a Beta release at WWDC in May 1994. A few months later, Bob Dylan sued Apple for trademark infringement. According to the lawsuit, "Apple is intentionally using, and intentionally has used, the names of famous individuals, including (Isaac) Newton, Carl Sagan and now Dylan, in conjunction with Apple's products in a deliberate attempt to capitalize on the goodwill associated with these famous individuals". Apple settled out-of-court and obtained the rights to trademark Dylan. Apple Dylan shipped in Fall 1995 but the project was abandoned shortly afterwards.
Mike Lockwood relates the last days of the Apple Dylan project. Sad but pretty funny. Oliver Steele was the project lead for the Dylan development environment and has some screen shots of what the IDE looked like.
Despite Apple's abandonment of Dylan, there's still a user community out there and a few implementations of the language. The Apple Dylan release is still available but doesn't run on OS X. There's also Gwydion Dylan, the Marlais interpreter and Functional Developer, The first two are open source projects, the last is a commercial product.
Treo 600 review -- after one week
I'm sure that many (all?) of you are sick of reading about my Treo 600. If so, skip to the next entry. I just wanted to jot down my impressions after one week of usage. Overall I really like this phone. Nearly everything is better than the Treo 300.
Pros: Answering the phone with one hand is easy. The 300 had a flip cover which made this a tricky maneuver. The 600 has a very solid look and feel. The screen is bright. I can now read it easily in daylight. Blazer 3.0 has JavaScript and CSS support. Pages render faster and look nicer. With the 300, my office building had a couple of "dead spots" where I couldn't get reception. No "dead spots" with the 600. The 600 has an SD card slot so I can backup to a card, store pictures, MP3 files, etc. HotSync with the 600 is a lot faster. The processor in the 600 is a lot faster than the 300. The 600 has great sound quality for ringers, games, etc. and also includes MP3 support. The 600 has a camera which is a fun addition. Not for serious stuff but comes in handy.
Cons: The keyboard is a little cramped compared to the 300. I'm willing to trade off the narrower phone for this. It would nice if more applications supported the 5-way control pad. I've heard that this is also an issue with the Palm Tungstens. It would have been nice if the 600 included Bluetooth support. Sounds like there will be a Bluetooth SDIO card but that won't be as convenient. RecoEcho doesn't work on the 600. All of the alternatives (Jot, Newpen, Graffiti Anywhere) force me to learn a few new pen strokes -- I've been using Graffiti for seven years so I just need to adjust my brain a bit I've found some software incompatibilities which seem to be related to Palm OS5. ListMaker doesn't work at all. Eudora works okay but has a display glitch after you fetch new mail. Hand/RSS has some display problems.
By the way, Gizmodo, the gadgets weblog, has collected a set of reviews of the Treo 600 including a video review that shows how the display looks in daylight.
Pros: Answering the phone with one hand is easy. The 300 had a flip cover which made this a tricky maneuver. The 600 has a very solid look and feel. The screen is bright. I can now read it easily in daylight. Blazer 3.0 has JavaScript and CSS support. Pages render faster and look nicer. With the 300, my office building had a couple of "dead spots" where I couldn't get reception. No "dead spots" with the 600. The 600 has an SD card slot so I can backup to a card, store pictures, MP3 files, etc. HotSync with the 600 is a lot faster. The processor in the 600 is a lot faster than the 300. The 600 has great sound quality for ringers, games, etc. and also includes MP3 support. The 600 has a camera which is a fun addition. Not for serious stuff but comes in handy.
Cons: The keyboard is a little cramped compared to the 300. I'm willing to trade off the narrower phone for this. It would nice if more applications supported the 5-way control pad. I've heard that this is also an issue with the Palm Tungstens. It would have been nice if the 600 included Bluetooth support. Sounds like there will be a Bluetooth SDIO card but that won't be as convenient. RecoEcho doesn't work on the 600. All of the alternatives (Jot, Newpen, Graffiti Anywhere) force me to learn a few new pen strokes -- I've been using Graffiti for seven years so I just need to adjust my brain a bit
I've found some software incompatibilities which seem to be related to Palm OS5. ListMaker doesn't work at all. Eudora works okay but has a display glitch after you fetch new mail. Hand/RSS has some display problems.
By the way, Gizmodo, the gadgets weblog, has collected a set of reviews of the Treo 600 including a video review that shows how the display looks in daylight.
Score Higher in Google Search Engine
Except for personal vanity, I don't really care how the pages from my blog are ranked on Google. But it's still interesting to understand how Google computes page scores. Eric Wolfram has written an interesting article on how to score higher in Google Search Engine. Eric's advice in a nutshell:
I like that. Even if it's not true it's nice to imagine that it is.(Via rhs)Be helpful to someone. It is that simple. It is the single most important thing you can do to improve your score on Google.
Sunday, October 19, 2003
Kids Play
Another article to make you feel old. Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine got a bunch of 11 year-old kids to play classic video games like Donkey Kong, Tetris and Pong, and transcribed their reactions. Here's a snippet of their reactions to Pong:
They were also deeply disappointed that you couldn't make the blocks explode in Tetris.Tim: I would never pay to play something like this.
John: I'd sooner jump up and down on one foot. By the way, is this supposed to be tennis or Ping-Pong?
Becky: Ping-Pong.
Gordon: It doesn't even go over the net. It goes through it. I don't even think that thing in the middle is a net.
Tim: My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line. Fear my pink line. You have no chance. I am the undisputed lord of virtual tennis. [Misses ball] Whoops.
John: Tim, how could you miss that? It was going like 1 m.p.h.
BobFest
As names go, Bob is common as dirt. I once worked for a company where so many people were named Bob, that I rarely needed to respond when someone called out for Bob. Being a Bob isn't all sweetness and light. It's so common that it doesn't stand out and people often forget it. Also, there's that whole SubGenius cult thing. But, I've just discovered, that there's something called "BobFest". Avon, Colorado runs an annual BobFest that has had 10,000 Bobs in attendance.
What's in Ned's Head?
"What's in Ned's Head?" would be a good name for a certain blog. It's also the name of a kids game where contestants pull icky objects out of Ned's ears and nose. It was a FamilyFun Toy of the Year award winner for 2003.
Treo 600 pictures
Here's a link to some nice pictures taken with a Treo 600. A lot better than anything I've taken so far. I'm still adjusting to the camera's limitations. It's a lot easier to take a good photo with my wife's Olympus C40Z. These pictures give me some hope that with enough patience, and the right lighting, the Treo can do reasonable well. (Via Miguel)
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Moblogs
Mobile blogging (Moblogging) is the ability to update blogs while on the move. It's gotten a lot of attention with the availability of camera equipped cellphones. In the first half of this year, camera-equipped cellphones outsold standalone digital cameras. Research group Strategy Analytics estimates that 65 million camera phones will be sold worldwide in 2003, or 13 percent of handset sales.
My Treo 600 has a camera. The image quality is typical for camera phones (640 x 480). There's no flash or zoom functions. It's useful for "fun" pictures, not serious photography. The image quality will surely improve with the next generation of camera phones. With what's available now the interesting aspect is "instant" sharing. The ability to share an image from anywhere right after it's taken is powerful.
Moblogging with pictures (sometimes called Photoblogging) may quickly overtake blogging with text. There are already a number of large moblog sites including Text America, Buzznet, Airblogging, Fotolog.net and CamBlog. Moblogging.org has some good rmoblog resources and links.
So what am I going to do with this stuff? I set up a moblog with Text America (bcongdon.textamerica.com) and sent a picture to it -- the picture was taken with a different camera, I was just trying out the upload feature. I'm not sure that I'm ready to share my life in pictures yet. I'm still getting used to the idea of sharing my thoughts via text.
Update: I just sent a couple of pictures to my moblog taken by the Treo 600. Nothing special. Just random photos. The whole process was pretty easy. Now if I just can find an easier way to post entries to my blog from the Treo 600. Sprint's wireless data network is fast and the Blazer browser on the Treo 600 supports full HTML, JavaScript and CSS. But Blogger's UI doesn't work so well on a small screen. One of these days I'm going to post a rant about websites that look like crap on the Treo. In many cases, it would take very little effort for the web designers to do a better job.
My Treo 600 has a camera. The image quality is typical for camera phones (640 x 480). There's no flash or zoom functions. It's useful for "fun" pictures, not serious photography. The image quality will surely improve with the next generation of camera phones. With what's available now the interesting aspect is "instant" sharing. The ability to share an image from anywhere right after it's taken is powerful.
Moblogging with pictures (sometimes called Photoblogging) may quickly overtake blogging with text. There are already a number of large moblog sites including Text America, Buzznet, Airblogging, Fotolog.net and CamBlog. Moblogging.org has some good rmoblog resources and links.
So what am I going to do with this stuff? I set up a moblog with Text America (bcongdon.textamerica.com) and sent a picture to it -- the picture was taken with a different camera, I was just trying out the upload feature. I'm not sure that I'm ready to share my life in pictures yet. I'm still getting used to the idea of sharing my thoughts via text.
Update: I just sent a couple of pictures to my moblog taken by the Treo 600. Nothing special. Just random photos. The whole process was pretty easy. Now if I just can find an easier way to post entries to my blog from the Treo 600. Sprint's wireless data network is fast and the Blazer browser on the Treo 600 supports full HTML, JavaScript and CSS. But Blogger's UI doesn't work so well on a small screen. One of these days I'm going to post a rant about websites that look like crap on the Treo. In many cases, it would take very little effort for the web designers to do a better job.
Bloglines
A couple of things I found in web statistics for this blog:
• In the referrer log I found references to Bloglines, a free service that lets you subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs. A web-based RSS aggregator. Here's a screenshot
• Some of my pages have been referenced from Google queries. I have a list of the search phrases that were used. Best one so far is "boston accents ben affleck". Most common search phrase seems to be people looking for the "ibm logo".
• In the referrer log I found references to Bloglines, a free service that lets you subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs. A web-based RSS aggregator. Here's a screenshot
• Some of my pages have been referenced from Google queries. I have a list of the search phrases that were used. Best one so far is "boston accents ben affleck". Most common search phrase seems to be people looking for the "ibm logo".
Happy Brithday Lava Lamp
The lava lamp is celebrating its 40th birthday. Over at oozing goo you can learn how to make your own. Lava lamps are becoming popular again as a cool retro thing.
What fad will have the next retro revival? Mood rings, black lights, pet rocks, macrame? How about the CB Radio? Well, at least in spirit. Some folks have compared blogging to CB Radio. 10-4
What fad will have the next retro revival? Mood rings, black lights, pet rocks, macrame? How about the CB Radio? Well, at least in spirit. Some folks have compared blogging to CB Radio. 10-4
Spam Filters That Fight Back
Paiul Graham proposes a way to punish spammers:
I like the idea but 'm not sure that it would work. First, as Graham notes, the filter would have to ensure that this is only done to suspected spammers. It would be bad if an innocent web site was punished by mistake. Also, it appears that a lot of spam includes links that literally, or through encoding, includes the recipient's email address. This is sometimes done in image references so even just displaying the email may "leak" your email address to the spammer. Unless the spammer's web site gets so overwhelmed by HTTP traffic, the end result of this "punishing" may just be that the spammer gets a list of email addresses that are clearly active.So I'd like to suggest an additional feature to those working on spam filters: a "punish" mode which, if turned on, would spider every url in a suspected spam n times, where n could be set by the user.
The huge volume of the spam, which has so far worked in the spammer's favor, would now work against him, like a branch snapping back in his face. Auto-retrieving spam filters would drive the spammer's costs up, and his sales down: his bandwidth usage would go through the roof, and his servers would grind to a halt under the load, which would make them unavailable to the people who would have responded to the spam.
Pump out a million emails an hour, get a million hits an hour on your servers.
Bayesian filter for comment spam filterng
A more sophisticated comment spam filtering technqiue based on the Bayesian algorithm that's used to filter out email spam. (See A Plan For Spam by Paul Graham for details on the Bayesian algorithm).
Friday, October 17, 2003
A curse of their own?
According to The Smoking Gun, the New York Post accidently printed an editorial bemoaning Thursday night's Yankees loss to the Red Sox, noting that the "Curse of the Bambino boomeranged this year".
iTunes for Windows
I downloaded a copy of iTunes for Windows. It's pretty nice. Does Apple now "get" how to write Windows software? In the past it always felt like there must be some sort of stigma inside Apple for developers who write Windows versions of Apple software: Quicktime, Newton desktop software, etc. No such stigma exists at Microsoft for Macintosh developers. Microsoft makes boatloads of money selling software for the Macintosh. iTunes will make money not as software but as a service. It's been a success on the Macintosh. It will be interesting to see whether it takes off on Windows or not.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
BlogSnob
"It's the the better, faster way to publicize your personal site". It's BlogSnob. Despite the fact that several thousand blogs have listed themselves with BlogSnob, I don't think I'll add mine. Call me a snob but I don't see the point to advertising random blogs that I don't actually read.
Kill Bill
I saw Kill Bill: Vol. 1 this evening. If you've read reviews of this film, you'll know that there are buckets of blood and gore. This is not for the squeamish. It's all intended as film geek fun and mostly it works. I'm not enough of a film geek to catch all of the movie references in Kill Bill. I found this interview with Quentin Tarantino where he goes into great detail on his influences and film references found here.
Update: So, did I like Kill Bill or not? I'd give it a thumbs up but I really want to see Vol 2 to decide whether it really hangs together.
Update: So, did I like Kill Bill or not? I'd give it a thumbs up but I really want to see Vol 2 to decide whether it really hangs together.
New Thinkpads Sense Motion
The latest IBM Thinkpads include motion sensor technology that can protect data if their owner drops them or runs down the hall with them. Basically, when it detects accelerated motion it parks the read/write heads on the hard drive to protect the data.
We can take this to the next level, like this fanciful Dynabook cartoon from Walter Smith's web site. When the laptop (or a PDA or cellphone) detects potential disaster it transfers all crucial data over wireless before hitting the floor. Of course, you would need a high bandwidth wireless connection to do this.
By the way, Walter Smith worked at Apple on the Newton. He designed and built NewtonScript and the Newton object store. He currently works for Microsoft.
We can take this to the next level, like this fanciful Dynabook cartoon from Walter Smith's web site. When the laptop (or a PDA or cellphone) detects potential disaster it transfers all crucial data over wireless before hitting the floor. Of course, you would need a high bandwidth wireless connection to do this.
By the way, Walter Smith worked at Apple on the Newton. He designed and built NewtonScript and the Newton object store. He currently works for Microsoft.
Permalinks
A couple of people have asked why I don't have Permalinks on my blog entries.. Actually, I do, they just were not marked very well. I've added permalinks on entry titles. Enjoy. Let me know if you encounter any problems.
BlogKomm: single window blog and comments
Pete Lyons has started using a comment system written in PHP called BlogKomm that looks pretty good. It doesn't use popup windows which is a feature I'd like to have. I'm going to stick with SquawkBox for now but I may switch to BlogKomm when I get some free cycles.
My new toy: Treo 600
As I mentioned in an early posting, Handspring is offering an upgrade program for owners of Treo 180, 270 and 300. 
I took advantage of the offer and ordered one. It arrived yesterday. The service swap from my Treo 300 to the 600 was done in 10 minutes. The Sprint customer server rep on the phone knew all the right information. Kudos to Sprint.
I've moved my data over and most of my applications. Only a couple of minor glitches that seem to be related to the newer version of the PalmOS (OS5) rather than the Treo 600 itself. I'm still in the "gee whiz" stage with the phone but so far it meets or exceeds my expectations.
I took advantage of the offer and ordered one. It arrived yesterday. The service swap from my Treo 300 to the 600 was done in 10 minutes. The Sprint customer server rep on the phone knew all the right information. Kudos to Sprint.
I've moved my data over and most of my applications. Only a couple of minor glitches that seem to be related to the newer version of the PalmOS (OS5) rather than the Treo 600 itself. I'm still in the "gee whiz" stage with the phone but so far it meets or exceeds my expectations.