Category: Uncategorized

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So…found the the Kauffman Foundation Multimedia site via I, Cringely; there looks to be quiite a bit of fairly nifty video there. So much, in fact, that I’ll never see it.

It’s all video, even though much of it appears to be talking head-style interviews, and it’s all only hosted here, via magic clicks off of a single landing page (though at least they do have link and embed codes available for single videos). Seriously, folks…I see no RSS feeds, no audio podcasts, no YouTube or blip.tv channel. Audio is tough enough to manage on the Internet; not that I don’t go to sites and watch video if I’m really motivated, but it’s competing with a LOT of other stuff.

Why not an audio only option, with a podcast feed? At first glance, these programs appear to be very usable only as audio, and with a podcast feed, I could just throw in the my podcatcher and it would show up (like similar audio from fora.tv, the LSE, and C-SPAN already does). And not that the video isn’t nice, but I’d suggest either picking one of the big boys for distribution, like YouTube or fora.tv; or use a service like blip.tv, which would let you brand/skin your player and URLs, but still give automagic RSS feeds, commenting capabilities, etc. Or do both! Have your own site, but copy it around as well.

Too many places do this. In their zeal to control their message, they limit it to practically no one. Video in particular is vulnerable to this, as it not nearly as amenable to background multi-tasking. I have to search out video, and mostly pay attention directly to it. There are only a limited number of places that is going to happen. www.kauffman.org/KauffmanMultimedia.aspx is not one of them.

Sorry, Kauffman Foundation…I probably won’t see much of this material. Bummer.

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Earlier this morning, I listened to Robert Scoble’s kyte video “Arrington and I disagree on future“. I enjoyed the video; some of the points were relatively trivial, some I disagree with…but all are decent. I’m pretty much always willing to give Robert a listen; he’s earnest, if nothing else. +1, scobelizer! (there are certainly other A-List types that I can’t say the same about).

The point on metadata is my favorite, and I think dead on. It’s why I continue to be confused by the popular fascination with trying to push the Internet through a 140 character twitterfeed. The service is not rich enough even for the message (you really only have room for 2 or 3 meaty sentences); and since any attempt at categorization, grouping, references, or other metadata actually counts against your character total, you’re screwed. Twitter’s saving grace is it’s first-mover popularity advantage, which gives it lots of network affect mojo, and the simple-to-use API which lets you at least mash other stuff up against it.

Nevertheless, metadata is key. Unfortunately, rich metadata is both fairly hard to do and time-intensive. As Robert noted, only a few percent of Twitter users bother with hashtags, which are it’s primary mechanism for expressing metainfo explicitly. That’s why I also agree with the curation model espoused by Jon Udell and others; we should be able to let self-selected experts in a particular space do their work, and toss that into the mix.

By happenstance, I just bumped into a proto-example; Dave Winer’s new Top Links page. It does try to jam things through Twitter, but it leverages external resources in a mashup fashion to make up for Twitter’s shortcomings. Definitely worth watching.

I certainly also agree with Robert that FriendFeed has a FAR superior infrastructure to support and expose metadata. The new filtering and searching tools, for example, provide powerful functionality to ask questions like ‘show me posts from my friends about [a topic; based on text search] that have at least 3 likes’. Nice stuff.

Friendfeed is basically Twitter 2.0, in my opinion, and we’re really just getting started. Twitter will evolve and improve (one would hope), FriendFeed is certainly hard at work adding functionality, and there are always new services coming. We live in interesting times!

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I love Bruce Sterling. At first glance, he just throws things at the wall to see what sticks; but there’s really a LOT more going on than that. Sterling groks this stuff…his comments are usually deeply relevant about 4 steps ahead of the pack. For example (excerpt from Wired Gadget article, then commented on (((like this))) by Bruce:

The Electronic-Book “Readers” Who Refuse To Sit Still As an “Audience”

For the last few days, O’Brien has spent a few minutes every day in the Kindle book store tagging the more expensive digital books with the ‘9 99 boycott’ tag and removing it once the price drops below the threshold. (((Why not .99 cents, or, even, get paid to read the book. I fail to see why a 9.99 price point is remotely stable — especially if, thanks to electronic global financing, the *currency itself* is radically destabilized.)))

Hell. Yes. This is the meat of the matter, and few people seem to get it. These prices for digital versions of physical products are presently COMPLETELY divorced from Real Reality, because they’re joined at the hip to the faux world where they’re just like the real product, but DIGITAL, like that’s some magic phrase. These are products with no distribution cost, folks. (spare me the hand-waving requirement of fractional cents, especially when we’re talking non-video, today. And that’ll get taken care of soon enough.) It’s not what it costs, it’s what it’s worth, and what it’s worth is related to the size of your audience, which is related to your availability, which is related to what it costs…headspin time. I’m not (necessarily) saying it should be free…but picking $9.99 out of the ether like it has a basis is not sustainable, in my opinion.

Thanks, Bruce. Keep ’em coming.

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Wow…I was completely blown away today (in a good way) when an online buddy, Paul Reynolds, nominated me out of the blue for Nicest Guy on FriendFeed! Thanks, Paul!

Who’da thunk?? I don’t have world’s greatest reputation for Mr. Nice Guy at work, for example. I’m a production support database administrator, and I can be…um…kind of difficult. At times. Occasionally. (Especially if I haven’t had enough caffeine…don’t bug me first thing.)

I think it’s quite instructive to explore the different facets of one’s personality as seen by different groups. You have work, home, friends, how you act with strangers, by yourself vs. in a group, etc. My purely online face isn’t something that I’ve really thought about before…it’s interesting (and flattering) to hear that at least one person thinks that I’m consistently positive and constructive!

I’d definitely like to drag that packet of behaviors into work a bit more. Of course, one carries all the baggage of past experiences, bad karma, blown tempers, etc. in a persistent environment like that (I’ve worked at the same place for a decade now), but I’ve tried over the past few years to be more encouraging and positive about things in general. It appears that it’s working! Paul, I plan to remember your extremely generous comment whenever I’m beating myself up or being too hard on myself. Again, thanks very much.

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With some level of hype, FriendFeed unveiled their new design today; you can check it out at http://beta.friendfeed.com. Ugh.

I was already taking a step back from constantly keeping up to date with statuses there; last week, Dave Slusher made a great observation that I wholeheartedly agree with…we all should spend less time adding value to other services (like Twitter, FF, FB, etc.) and more time on our own sites, podcasts, etc. as well as directly at sites that we enjoy. So I’ve spent a happy week catching up on posts at postings at places I really dig (like Dave’s site, Charlie’s Diary, Jon Udell’s blog, etc.) and not worried so much about the meta-meta talk at FriendFeed.

This latest update, assuming it reaches the standard site in anything like it’s present form, would go a long way toward killing the site’s remaining usefulness for me. I’m not there to watch excitedly as twee…er, posts from 1,000 random C-level celebs float by; FF did at least allow me to keep track of relatively complex conversations about a post. Now, the comments on a post increase without even pushing that stream to the top, which basically kills any usefulness to me that the site would have.

I’m not planning on removing my account or anything, and I might muck about it enough to at least tell when someone is trying to talk to me. But I’m SERIOUSLY not impressed, and I think that this design is deeply flawed. That being said, it very well might succeed, as it’s enough like twitter that they may catch some of the twitter hype (which IMO is pretty obviously what this is intended to do), but it’s 100% FAIL from my standpoint.

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I have a habit of getting a scene or conversation from a story stuck in my head, grabbing the book to re-read, and then getting lost in it again. I love re-reading good books, and this is one of my favorites…Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. Stephenson has really mastered the art of storytelling; his books are tales about people that I care about, but still are great science fiction, because they require the scifi hook to work (be it nanotech in this instance, or virtual reality, quantum worlds, or whatever).

But as I’ve schlepped my careworn paperback copy around the house for the past day or so, it suddenly clicked. The novel’s subtitle, after all, is …or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. How can I NOT re-read a book about a digital book on a digital book??? Kindle copy ordered, and arrived 60 seconds later.

We’re livin’ in the future, folks!

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My buddy Mischa recently posted a list of apps he’s using on his T-Mobile G1. I enjoyed reading the list, and decided to write up my own, especially since we don’t seem to have a great deal of overlap.

BuzzOff: I don’t use a lot of settings-tweak sort of apps, but I do like this one. Lets me put the phone in vibrate-only mode (no ring) for a specified amount of time, and then have it pop back to ringing automatically. I used Locales to do a similar thing when I first got my phone, but the GPS-heavy nature of Locales is pretty battery draining. This solves the same problem without that downside.

Cinema / VideoPlayer: Two different video players. VideoPlayer itself was one of the first players available on the G1, and it’s quite solid. Cinema has a touch-based UI, which is fun to play with. I don’t normally install multiple apps that do the same thing, but video players are mostly wraps around installed functionality, so they’re not using a lot of space.

ConnectBot: One of the few apps in common with Misha. As he said, it’s a very capable ssh client. SSH on the G1 is enhanced by the fact that it has a physical keyboard; makes using it quite easy. If you need this, you NEED it. *grin*

FBReader: A etext reader…this is a port of the main FBReader project to Java and the Android platform. As of this writing, this app still isn’t in the Android Market; you have to d/l and install separately (from http://fbreader.org/fbreaderj – you also have to flip the bit to to allow non-Market sw installs. Just a settings checkbox, though.) I love ebook readers, so I was glad to see this project team start their port; I used this reader on my Nokia 770 and loved it. They’re still adding formats (right now oeb, epub, fb2), but even so, it’s already head and shoulders above any other etext reader I’ve found on the G1. (If you know of other good ones, though, I’d love to check them out.)

Forecast: I have a bit of a “small app” / “conserve memory” thing, especially for program types that aren’t in my top interests. So for weather forecasts, I looked for the smallest app I could find that would give me the basic info. This one seems to do the trick; certainly not a lot of (ok, no) bells and whistles, but it works as intended.

imeem Mobile: I do like the streaming audio apps! There are a lot of sites and services that bring the “digital jukebox in the sky” to your G1 (or iPhone, etc….any smartphone is pretty well supported), and pretty much (IMO) make the satellite radio guys weep. (They spent too much money and time on big-names and merging). I probably use Last.fm (see below) more, but imeem’s app was on the G1 from the beginning, so I spent some time with it. It’s nicely done, continues to be updated (always a plus), handles even fairly low connection speeds well, and looks good.

Last.fm: One of the big apps I was hoping for on the G1, and it showed up in January. This is great for me; not only do I love the service, but I “scrobble” (send my listening data) to their site from as many music tools as I can. Doing this both improves the recommendations that the site can give me, and allows me to share info (like songs I “love”, etc.) to friends on other networks like Friendfeed and Facebook. The Android app is full-featured; it lets you play streams based on a song, an artist, or a tag (I often listen to music tagged “80s”, for example), and gives you artist info, etc. (as does imeem). The client updates my listening list as well, which only leaves music played on the standard “Music” app out of the loop. That’s solved now as well (see ScrobbleDroid below).

My Maps Editor: A recently released app from Google; this lets you read and edit maps that you’ve created in the custom “My Maps” part of Google Maps. Useful for pre-created maps for a day trip or something like that.

Quote Pro: I’m not a big stock watcher, but it’s a nice-to-have. Small and well-behaved.

Rings Extended: Very nice tool. Lets you use any sound on your phone (built-ins, MP3s, even allows you to record sounds on the fly) for pretty much any audible notification. So if you want SMS notifications to play 10 seconds of “Message In A Bottle”, or something, this is for you.

Scrobble Droid: The last piece of my scrobbling puzzle. This cool little utility runs in the background, and pushes songs you play through the built-in Music app out as “scrobbles” to Last.fm. Nice!

StreamFurious: Another audio streaming app. I primarily use this one for news; I listen to a lot of BBC World Service, but there are plenty of varying “channels”, from FOX News to Democracy Now, and everything in between. StreamFurious supports pretty much any mp3 stream of the PLS or M3U-style…anything in Shoutcast, Icecast, etc. Comes with a bunch of pre-installed streams, but you can add them straight from the browser by going to a page offering a stream and just clicking on the link. Very handy!

I don’t have any games installed right now…I’ve had a few, but nothing’s really struck my fancy yet.  I need to look for a good chess program (and it doesn’t have to be very good *grin*); I enjoy having a chess game with me. I do need to install DroidDice, though…thanks for that mention, Mischa.

I think it’s great that the Android Market already has a pretty healthy assortment of apps (judging anecdotally just from the fact that Misha and I have fairly similar interests, but very few apps in common, and neither of us really get into the gaming section). Sure, the Apple App Store has it beat to death…whatever. I’m not as interested in G1 vs. iPhone vs. Pre as I am watching the uptake of all of the various smartphone types. It’s a huge potential audience…I think there’s plenty of room for various platforms to co-exist.

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I was checking out Bandcamp a couple of days back, after learning of it from a recent boingboing post. Looks like a pretty nice website for bands to use to promote their music…nice layout, easy sharing, CC-friendly, flexible payment options, ample metrics, etc. So I checked for one of my favorite new-media friendly artists, Paul Fidalgo…he didn’t have a site yet! Ack…had to fix that. I shot Paul an email (we’ve become online buds over the past year or so), and he checked it out.  He seems to have liked it enough to have put one of his songs up there…it’s a free download, and easy to stream to see if you think it’s worthwhile. I’d say check it out!

There’s plenty more good music where that came from (Paul’s got that Jonathan Coulton geek vibe going on with at least some tunes), and you can pick up a lot more of his stuff at his Amie Street site, as well as iTunes, etc. (Paul definitely groks the new music ‘paradigm’).

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I just spent my afternoon in some weird state. I heard about a takedown notice by Amazon on kindle DRM tools , tracked down a link to an excellent overview article, and then momentarily lost my mind. I didn’t download MobiDeDRM.zip. I backed away from the site, and started thinking about how to anonymize my access to it (I know plenty of ways, never fear). All over tools that I simply want in order to backup my Kindle purchases against the possibility of something happening to Amazon! I don’t want to rip the DRM and upload books to Usenet…I don’t want to even give them away to friends. I WANT the authors to get paid; I love authors. I even like publishers, some. *grin*

But on the off chance something happens to Amazon or the DRM service for AZW, I want accessible backups. I really like this Kindle2, and I’m investing in books on it. We’re finally at the edge of something big wrt electronic books, and I’m on the bleeding edge…I don’t want my bookshelves to end up on the bloody side. So after I realized how goofy I was being, I downloaded the damn zipfile (just like I did with the Hymn project’s iTunes cracker years ago). I’m going to crack all my books, stick those files in a couple of my backup repositories, and sleep well at night. Both because my books are safe, and because I’m not doing anything wrong. There’s nothing for me to be afraid of, and I’m ashamed of myself for worrying about it for a couple of hours this afternoon.  My penance will be to re-read the Microsoft Research DRM talk from my (non-DRM’d) copy of Cory Doctorow’s ‘Content‘!