Blog Battered Least of All

PDFcasting

2005-10-13T16:41:00.000-04:00

Adam mentioned something about this. PDFcasting has been done—-after all, iTunes manages PDFs, though they can’t open in iTunes itself—-but it’s a novelty. I’m certainly not going to say it will never happpen, but here’s the prediction I will make:

PDFcasting will not take off until someone comes out with a “PDF iPod”. And then it will rock.

Because the “PDF iPod” will not be like an iPod at all. It will have a large screen, and display essentially magazine content. And with luck, it will be made of electronic paper.

It’ll come. Just wait. It’ll come.

Line of the day: 9/16/05

2005-09-16T01:17:00.000-04:00

Today’s line is from an actual email, recieved as a campus-wide annoucement at my school. The email is from the Rabbi regarding weekly shabbat services. The line itself appears in bold:

Shabbat Services will take place this Friday (Sept. 16) at 6:30.
Following services we will have wonderful dinner.

Discussion topic: “Does God Bring Hurricanes? And if not What is God doing all the time?”

Everyone is welcome

Technorati tags: Line of the Day, shabbat, humor

Daring Fireball Wins

2005-09-12T16:59:00.000-04:00

Excuse my language, but this is fucking priceless. John Gruber reports on the fallout of the new iTunes 5.

Thank you, Mr. Gruber.

Technorati tags: iTunes, humor, GUI

Woody's cell ring

2005-08-26T22:25:00.000-04:00

I have to get this on the record before I forget. I’m watching Crossing Jordan. Great show, by the way. Woody’s cell phone rings.

His ring is a Newton alarm tone.

Aw, hey, Newton. I just pulled mine out again. It’s been almost a year. I’ve missed the little guy,

Technorati tags: Apple Newton, Crossing Jordan

Line of the day: 8/26/05

2005-08-26T13:15:00.000-04:00

I’m back! About time, too. Today’s line comes from the forums at LinuxQuestions.org, where jspenguin asks about DTMF detection and uses this sig:

The trouble with bite-sized cookies is that you can only track 256 people with them.

Now I sit back and pray someone else gets it.

Technorati tags: Line of the day, geek humor

From here on...

2005-08-23T12:06:00.000-04:00

Ok, look: the phrase is “from here on in”. Not “from here on end”. It can be said “from here on out”.

But not “from here on end”.

Am I clear? Am I wrong? Am I insane?

Technorati tags: grammar, usage, English, nit-picking

Comment spam

2005-08-21T12:11:00.000-04:00

From the looks of it, I just go hit with a butt-load of comment spam. I’ve deleted it all. If you posted a comment to the last post and I deleted it as spam (and shouldn’t have), drop me a note on this post and I’ll put it back. It can be hard to tell sometimes.

And here I thought I was getting all popular.

Technorati tags: spam, blogging, blog comments

Cindy Sheehan Vigil pictures

2005-08-19T13:33:00.000-04:00

Child at Sheehan Vigil
Originally uploaded by Peeja.

I attended the Cindy Sheehan vigil in Amherst, MA on Wednesday. I managed to get a few good pictures. So far I’ve only satisfied myself with two. This one is my favorite; the other one (and any future picutes) are available as a Flickr set.

Technorati tags: photo, Cindy Sheehan, vigil, child

Line of the day: 8/16/05

2005-08-16T12:04:00.000-04:00

I have to get my wisdom teeth extracted. Excellent. But there’s one nice thing to come of this: today’s line. It comes from the preoperative instuctions for general anesthesia I recieved. The last instruction is:

5. Please reread the above instructions.

That’ll keep a blonde busy…

Technorati tags: Line of the day, wisdom teeth, surgery, anesthesia

Line of the day: 8/15/05

2005-08-15T20:34:00.000-04:00

Ever wanted to run OS X on your Intel box? Now you can. This article explains how. And step #1 is our line of the day:

Authorized users should obtain the OSX files from Apple. It is illegal to obtain them from torrent sites by searching under the following keywords: “VMWare files for patched Mac OS X Tiger Intel”

Such responsibility.

Technorati tags: Line of the day, OS X, Apple, Intel, BitTorrent

It had to be.

2005-08-11T23:48:00.000-04:00

Oh, lord. There’s a SlashGoth.org. It had to be.

Technorati tags: goth, geek

I just don't understand the Postal Service.

2005-08-11T21:58:00.000-04:00

I got a letter in the mail the other day. Apparently I can get $30,000 worth of life insurance for only $1.00. Great. What interests me more is the address they sent it to:

To:
Head of Household Pre-Selected Residence Major US Market Area

WTF!? And this got to my mail box? What the hell kind of address is “Major US Market Area”?

Technorati tags: weird mail, junk mail, postal service

Line of the day: 8/11/05

2005-08-11T11:36:00.000-04:00

Been a while, hasn’t it? Oh, well. Today’s line comes from an older post over at Merlin Mann’s truly wonderful 43 Folders productivity/lifehacks blog. Here, Merlin explains why tabbed browsing is so damned worth it:

Whatever your browser is, if it doesn’t support tabbed browsing you’re missing the boat. If you have no idea what this means, please just get Firefox, and thank me later. Tabless browsing is like having to check out a library book one page at a time.

Yeah, that about covers it. Check out his site if you haven’t already. You may learn a thing or two, and your self will thank you.

Technorati tags: Line of the day, tabbed browsing, Firefox, lifehacks

Who the bleep is Liza Ramlow?

2005-08-09T16:54:00.000-04:00

I’m working on a paper about Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, which contains a character named Liza. I just installed Microsoft Word a couple weeks ago (I caved; Apple, get off your ass and write a decent word processor already…). Logically, I started one of my paragraphs off with “Liza”.

Word suggests I was writing “Liza Ramlow”.

Who the hell is Liza Ramlow? I have no idea. The name sounds a little familiar, but I have no idea who she is or why Word knows about her. A search of my hard drive reveals nothing. Google isn’t much help either.

If you’ve ever heard of Liza Ramlow, please, please leave a comment. Save my sanity.

Technorati tags: Liza Ramlow, Microsoft Word

One what under chicken fries?

2005-08-08T17:40:00.000-04:00

Anyone else noticed that Burger King just changed the lyrics to “Bob Your Head” from “One nation under chicken fries” to “One kingdom under chicken fries”? I wonder who pushed them to do that?

In their defense, though, “one kingdom” makes more sense for a place called “Burger King”.

Technorati tags: advertising, politics, Burger King

Thank you random hot-spot! (Please don't sue me!)

2005-08-03T21:45:00.000-04:00

I’m in New York. With my parents. Being away from my desk and TV and the Internet leaves me with no distractions from the simple fact: I’m lonely. Aside from a wonderful freak sushi incident with Ian the other day, I haven’t had real social interaction in a long time.

So when I opened up my PowerBook to the greeting of “Would you like to connect to ‘belkin54g’?” I was ecstatic. My face lit up. I may not have any friends around for a while, but at least I’ve got blogs and podcasts.

That’s sad, I know, but at least I’m happy.

I hate cell phones

2005-08-02T11:34:00.000-04:00

I have a new cell phone, the LG VX3300. It’s a piece of crap. But then I get the feeling that most are. What a god-awful mess of an OS. Why can’t it use something like Linux, something even remotely inteligible.

I wonder if that sounds like a joke. It’s not. Linux can only be understood by those who have taken the time to understand it, true. Traditional cell phone OSs can be understood by no one. They’re just there to make it theoretically possible to operate the phone. And the manual? Forget about it. It doesn’t explain what any of the features do or mean, it just tells you how to activate them—by which I mean it tells you the numbers to press to get through the menus to a feature. Great help that is.

By the way, on one of these phones, the default lock code starts out as ‘0000’, but after activation it becomes the last 4 digits of your phone number. The book doesn’t mention that last part. Thanks, LG.

Bonus Lines!

2005-08-01T22:03:00.000-04:00

I just couldn’t resist a couple more. The first is from the NBC show “Medium”, which I’m enjoying quite a lot. Here she momentarily relives a certain public figure’s execution and thinks:

Ungrateful bastards. Have you ever tried cake? It’s not like I said, “Let them eat Brussels sprouts.”

Line #2 (really #3, but who’s counting…) is the fine print from a new Post-It ad:

Not intended to be worn.

Ok, some context might help: a guy is in fact wearing Post-Its in the ad. Just the same…

Line of the day: 8/1/05

2005-08-01T11:29:00.000-04:00

Happy August, everyone. Happy Lughnasadh, as well.

Today’s line is the headline of a story from vnunet.com about “audio hallucinations,” hearing songs when there’s nothing playing. The article is entitled:

iPod hallucinations face acid test

Brilliant.

PSA: How to cancel your AOL account in 10 minutes

2005-08-01T10:48:00.000-04:00

I normally don’t like to just point to things without having much to add, but this needs to be spread around as much as possible. If you have signed up with AOL, get the hell out! If you haven’t picked up on it yet, you’ll soon see why it’s just no good (and never has been). I hate those adds where they talk abut their spam filtering—just talk to my girlfriend about AOL spam filtering. I don’t know how they get away with those ads.

So do yourself a favor: get out now (in just 10 minutes), before it’s too late.

Where everybody knows your name

2005-07-30T21:54:00.000-04:00

Looks like the most common search leading people to this site is “peter jaros”. So who’s looking me up by name? I don’t know. But you know who you are.

One from the Bronx. (Dave?)
One from Kentucky. (Kentucky!?)
One from who-knows-where.
And three (three!) from Illinois. (Anne, are you one of those?)

So, if you found my blog by my name, leave me a quick comment. I’d like to know who’s here. For that matter, I’d love it if anyone dropped me a line. It’s nice to get a little feedback now and then.

I wonder if there’s some famous Peter Jaros in Chicago…

Line of the day: 7/30/05

2005-07-30T21:33:00.000-04:00

I found this one earlier today. I don’t remember where I saw it, but it looks like it’s been on a few different bumper stickers. Your line du jour ce soir is a piece of sage wisdom from the ages:

Remember: pillage, then burn.

Dang, I always get that one wrong…

Line of the day: 7/29/05

2005-07-29T23:20:00.000-04:00

Today’s line comes from Brian Geiger’s article “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to ADHOC” over at O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.com:

I can’t tell you what most of it was. No, most of the memories are gone, like yesterday’s pizza. (For those of you who take more than a day to finish off any arbitrary amount of pizza, I welcome you to make your own analogy.)

If you have any interest in AppleScript, text adventure games, or writing Macintosh software, read the article. I myself have dreamed of going to ADHOC (neé MacHack), and this article made me a bit jealous. Actually, I’m tempted to try to rewrite his code to spec. I'd better restrain myself.

Hot stuff for the masses: p2p IPTV

2005-07-28T13:56:00.000-04:00

Presenting ACTLab TV and their technology Alluvium. It’s TV distributed over a p2p Internet model, which as we all know means less bandwidth needed and a much more accessible “transmitter”. It’s p2p IPTV.

There’s a land that I see where the media’s free / And I say it ain’t far to this land from where we are

(Was that too obtuse? 10 bonus points to the first one who gets it.)

Line of the day: 7/28/05

2005-07-28T13:28:00.000-04:00

This one comes to us from the comments on Engadget’s post “NEC to make eco-friendly corn phones”. It’s the begining of Ben’s explanation of why phones made of corn-based plastic are worth pursuing:

Millions of phones get trashed every year. Governments and unelected psuedo governments like the EU (bit of social comment there) have decided to make the producers take responsibility for the waste, kind of like enforced recycling. In Europe it’s called Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment or, and I’m not making this up, “WEEE”.

Yeah, you probably though I was going somewhere meaningful with that. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love that companies are doing something about the terrible e-waste problem, but I really can’t believe they gave it that name. Considering the money our congressmen must have spent to come up with a title that spelled out “USA PATRIOT Act” (“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”). I guess that’s the difference between the US and Europe…

Update: An alternate line of the day from the bottom of the post’s comments, by Rocket Punch:

MAN! I was excited for a few sec as I thought I read “porn phone”!!

Line of the Day: 7/27/05

2005-07-27T13:11:00.000-04:00

You can’t really expect one of these every day, can you? Here’s what inspired me this time, from Jason Santa Maria’s entry Maintaining Motivation, summing up the benefits of a little daily exercise:

Free your ass and your mind will follow.

I finish work tomorrow. Starting Friday, my plan is to walk down the road and back every morning. I’ll get in shape yet.

I hate the Mac G4's guts.

2005-07-20T10:33:00.000-04:00

That’s right. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Macs. I just have their guts. Consider:

I’m attempting to remove the Zip drive from a G4. To do this I have to remove the sled that holds the CD-ROM and Zip drive. To do that I have to disconnect them so the sled can come out. But to fit my hand in to disconnect them, I need to pull them out…

And considering the only tools we have here at work are a small case containing mostly tiny screwdrivers (the type with a spinning disk on the back and a ridged shaft rather than the nice kind with a handle you can actually hold on to) as well as a whole set of screw bits which don’t actually have a screwdrive to fit into (I have to make my own out of a series of extension and adapter bits that fit together—but again, no handle to grab), it’s no surprize that I’m having trouble.

ISO a new look

2005-07-16T11:20:00.000-04:00

Ok, Blog Battered Least of All's cookie-cutter look is getting old. I need to design a nice layout for the site. But what? I'd work from the theme of the site, but there isn't really one. I guess I'll have to play around with it a bit until it looks good. It's tough working with the Blogger-style templates, though, since they really confuse WYSIWYG editors (for the record, I hand-code in BBEdit, but previewing the page is just as difficult). Does anyone know a good way to code a nice Blogger template?

The New Goldfish

2005-07-15T23:16:00.000-04:00

Pepperidge Farms Goldfish have changed. They’re narrower, and more…solid. Hard to explain. I like them. Good work, Goldfish team!

ThinkGeek: Not evil.

2005-07-10T22:32:00.000-04:00

I just got the Cold Heat soldering iron from ThinkGeek. It’s very cool: when it touches metal it heats to 500 degrees within a second, then cools just as fast when you’re done. I bought it to hack my CueCat to work with Delicious Library, which is pretty awesome too. Unfortunately, the Cold Heat iron’s not much good on work that detailed. Also, the tips are delicate, and the included one broke in shipping. Bummer.

So, I wrote ThinkGeek an email asking “can I return the broken tip (which came bundled) for replacement without returning the whole iron? The additional tip [that I also bought and which is intact] is different; otherwise it wouldn’t be an issue.” I didn’t want to have to send the whole thing back.

Hours later, I got a reply from Mark Silverman:

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention! I’m sorry to hear that your Cold Heat Soldering Iron tip arrived damaged. I’ve sent out a replacement for you, and you can dispose of the broken tip as you see fit. We apologize for any inconvenience, and thanks for choosing ThinkGeek!

So the verdict is in: ThinkGeek is not evil. Thanks, Mark, and everyone at ThinkGeek!

My dream job

2005-07-10T22:10:00.000-04:00

I’ve been getting into Crossing Jordan lately. I’ve decided that Nigel has my dream job. Pulling out all the hacks to shape crime scene data and turn it into something amazingly useful. Truly creative computer work. That’s what I want to do.

But, hey, my summer internship’s pretty cushy, so I can’t really complain. Someday, though…say, what classes do you take to prepare you for a job like that? Hmm…

Who is a journalist?

2005-07-08T13:46:00.000-04:00

It’s a question that keeps popping up these days. If journalists have special privileges, can everyone be a journalist? I’m listening to Judith Miller’s speech at the Commonweath Club. She seems content with what she says has become the common law definition of a journalist: someone who is paid for and makes their living from their journalistic work. She seems to think that this gives appropriate consideration to journalist bloggers.

But should you really need to make money to be trusted with the rights of a journalist? I don’t think so. What is this black-and-white notion of a “journalist”? It no longer applies. There are, of course, traditional full-time journalists who work professionally. But legally, this is not a necessary requirement. It’s not a question of being a journalist, it’s a question of performing journalism. If you are performing journalism, whoever you are, you (should) have the right to keep confidential sources as it pertains to that action. We all have the ability to perform journalism when the opportunity arises. We all need the rights of the journalist.

The first Malcolm

2005-07-07T18:30:00.000-04:00

I’m watching the first Malcolm in the Middle. The theme’s a different recording, or at least the vocals are. More demo-y. It sounds like Linnell recorded it in his living room, which he may well have. I think I like it better.

Incidentally, Hal manages to be naked in the first minute. And Stevie’s there from the beginning. Somehow I got the impression he was a later addition.

Mmm. Must…not see…Charlie and the Chocolate Factory trailer…must not spoil the hotness…

Line of the day: 6/3/05

2005-07-03T10:49:00.000-04:00

This time it’s the name of a Facebook group:

Everyone I’ve Ever Known Is a Better Human Being Than Dick Cheney In Some Way

What can you say to that? The group is here. Honorable mentions: Coalition of Guacamole Lovers, Tori Amos Is The Only Person Who Really Understands Me, and I Just Tried To Ford the River, and My Fuckin’ Oxen Died (and if you get that, see this too).

Scariest...30 seconds...ever...

2005-06-30T18:14:00.000-04:00

*shudder*

The new Lysol ad

2005-06-30T16:01:00.000-04:00

Swear to God, I just saw a Lysol ad that began with a shot of fruit arranged on a closed toilet seat cover with a knife, accompanied by this voiceover:

Fact: Your cutting board has more bacteria than your toilet seat.

And underneath, the following disclaimer:

When used as directed. Water rinse required.

They don’t mean what I think they mean…do they?

iTunes 4.9: Oh, yeah, it rocks that hard.

2005-06-30T14:30:00.000-04:00

I’m speechless. This just rocks. Thank you Apple. Thank you so much.

I’m amazed at how much easier this makes life. Mind, I’ve been using an old free beta of PlayPod for a long time now, and it sucks. In fact, things have started breaking. I don’t know how that works.

Go check out iTunes 4.9 if you haven’t yet. It’s sweet. Though it’s sad to see a Z100 podcast…

Hey, everybody!

Another line of the day

2005-06-30T11:52:00.000-04:00

Didn’t realize this would be a feature when I posted one yesterday, but I can’t resist. This is the signature of thetraveller over at the Richard Vobes Radio Show forum:

Don’t you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence?
There’s one marked ‘Brightness’, but it doesn’t work.

Update: Credit where credit is due. Looks like this quote’s from Steven Wright. I should have known. :)

And the line of the night is...

2005-06-29T22:03:00.000-04:00

From tonight’s Law & Order, during examination of a famous porn star’s murder scene:

“The porn world is going to be in mourning tonight.”
“I wonder what they fly at half-mast…”

George W. Bush vs. The RIAA! Someday, Someday, Someday!!!

2005-06-26T19:26:00.000-04:00

Downhill Battle wants you! According to recent articles, Bush’s iPod contains what amount to pirated tracks copied from a staff member. What can we do? Encourage the RIAA to do what’s right. Downhill Battle have registered the domain, now it’s up to you.

Do you have what it takes to build SueThePresident.com?

Markdown vs. Blogger (Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!)

2005-06-16T15:49:00.000-04:00

I’ve started using Markdown to write my blog entries. If you haven’t tried it yet, and you write any sort of content in HTML, check it out. It’s an easy markup for basic content formatting that converts to XHTML. Very nice.

There’s only one problem with it: it handles paragraphs wonderfully. That means that the line-breaks Blogger substitutes automatically for every carriage-return are superfluous. No problem, I say, I can turn off that substitution. And I did.

So if you happened to stop by in the last ~12hrs, you may have noticed that none of my previous posts had line breaks anymore. Great. I had to go back and fix them up. Thankfully it didn’t take much more than running them through Markdown in most cases. I ignored anything that had run off the front page, though, so for now some of the archives are going to be harder to read. My apologies. :)

Unique?

2005-06-14T16:56:00.000-04:00

Just turned on the TV. There’s a man standing, facing the camera, in a dentist office. The dentist and his staff are at work behind him. The man speaks:

This is Dr. [so-and-so]. He’s a 1-800-DENTIST member. That makes him unique.

The ad goes on from there.

Er, being a member of your organization makes him unique? You mean he’s the only one? So if I call 1-800-DENTIST I’ll get his office? Hardly an association you’ve got going there with just the one unique member.

These advertising copywriters literally drive me up the wall!

Love spells with a money-back guarantee?

2005-06-12T17:18:00.000-04:00

That's right. California Astrology Association offers spell-casting—love and otherwise—with a money-back guarantee:

CAA's Unconditional Guarantee
For thirty-five years we've stood behind our unconditional one year guarantee: Every product and service we offer is guaranteed to work or your money back. Period. No questions asked.

So...who wants to try it out and report back. Personally, I'm not trusting anyone who differentiates between "love spells" and "wicca spells"…

Who was on Leno last night? He's not telling.

2005-06-11T16:23:00.000-04:00

That’s right. Unless I’ve missed something, The Tonight Show’s website doesn’t say who was on the show last night. It lists who’ll be on next, of course; in fact, it has info on the next five shows. Yes, there’s a “past shows” page, but those pages are compiled from each week’s shows, and they’ve only put together pages up to the week of May 16! That’s three weeks ago! So much for show notes!

This is what NBC and other networks seem not to get. The webpage should be for show notes—a recap of the show and extra information on things that came up. It is not the place to advertise for the show. Why? Because no one goes and looks up The Tonight Show’s website if they’re not already interested in the show!

It’s a classic case of trying to pull in an audience at the cost of ignoring the audience you have. It’s like schools that care more about admissions than enrolled students. It’s nice to know that NBC appreciates my viewership so much.

Oh, but don't you believe them: "The Best in Local News"

2005-03-27T23:58:00.000-05:00

I’m home on spring break for the week. Television is a little foreign to me by now, and it’s just weird to watch what I used to regard as normal. News 40 just played a set of promos about how they were the first on the scene and covered the whole story. The first big story? A fire. A big fire. News 40 got there fast and made sure you got to see every bit of this “breaking news”.

The building was burning down. To whom is this so important? To the people inside, surely; they obviouly figured it out without the media’s help. The fire department needed to know, but I certainly hope they got a ring before the local news. Who else? People who want to avoid traffic, maybe? I can’t think of anyone else. I’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow. Heck, I’ll hear about it at 11, when the news is scheduled to be on. Why do I care that it’s burning down right now if it has no immediate effect on me and I can’t do a thing about it?

First, because we’re sick voyeurs. We just like watching a house burn down. Ok, I don’t, myself, but I know that’s why most people care. It’s just like a car chase. That’s not news. That’s Fear Factor.

Second, News 40 gets a sweet 30 second promo. It’s great. They get to say, “We were there first, we covered the whole thing, and we are the best.” I’d bet most people don’t stop to think, “Would I really care? Do I need them to be there first and tell me every petty detail twenty times to stretch out the story until it stops ‘breaking’?”

Actually, it turns out that there’s a point at which even important breaking news goes on too long for America’s goldfish-like attention span. Already, Iraq is simply a fact of life to us.

That’s just the way it is…Some things will never change…

How to Slashdot yourself in the foot...

2005-03-23T17:10:00.000-05:00

How silly of me not to think of Coral. *sigh*

The PodLink page is back down. The download link has been Coralized, though, so whenever it comes back up, it should at least stick around for longer. From now on, use the Coralized URL to get to the page. It’ll be moved to SourceForge soon anyhow. I hope.

PodLink: The Freedom to Wash Your Hands Again

2005-03-22T01:28:00.000-05:00

PodLink is finally available. It’s taken me far to long to put this all up. The host may have to change, so this site should be the definitive place to go to find it. I’ll put the link in a more permanent place soon, like the sidebar.

For now, enjoy! Please send feedback to podnews@gmail.com, or leave a comment here.

Note: There are some bandwidth problems right now. If the site is down, it should come back soon. Unfortunately, “soon” means ~12 hours. I’m looking into better (free) hosting. If you can give me a hand, I’d really appreciate it (the file is only about 10MB). Leave a comment here or email me. Thanks!

Update (3/23, 1:47pm): PodLink is now a pending project on SourceForge. This may take a couple of days to complete. Until then, best of luck catching some bandwidth via the link above.

Hot Theological Action!!

2005-03-14T10:58:00.000-05:00

It’s become instinct now: whenever I see or hear or think of a word I’m not sure I know the full meaning of, I google it. It’s a reflex. Well, this time I happened to look up “apologist”. I found what I was looking for—and a little more:

Sponsored Links

Sexy Apologist Singles
View photos, personals and hot
profiles of local singles.
www.infobert.com

Hot!

Elroy Jetson

2005-03-09T13:50:00.000-05:00

Adam Curry just summed up a huge part of why podcasting (as a technology) is just so amazing:

So, in closing, I'd just like to say that [pause] isn't it amazing that I'm sitting here in an airport in a McDonalds talking into a piece of plastic [pause] which is being broadcast to all of you. Elroy Jetson, signing off.

*geeky giddy giggle*

RIAA: The Headlines

2005-03-03T08:40:00.000-05:00

The front page of the Recording Industry Association of America's website has a "latest news" section. Allow me to quote the headlines:

Copyright Infringement Lawsuits Brought Against 753 Additional Illegal File Sharers
RIAA Submits Report To Federal Government Outlining Piracy Problems In More Than 60 Countries
RIAA And Other Intellectual Property Groups Seek World Trade Organization Help In Cracking Down On Piracy In China
Double Diamonds Jump Start 2005
Motion Picture And Music Companies File Brief For U.S. Supreme Court Review Of Grokster, Morpheus Case
New Round of Lawsuits Against 717 Illegal File Sharers Includes Continued Focus On University Network Users Who Illegally Download Music
Justice Department’s Piracy Operation Against Criminal P2P Network Operators Yield Two Guilty Pleas

"Gee, Bob, just I don't know why more people don't love us here at the RIAA. Was it something we said?"

Jim Says His Piece

2005-02-25T18:59:00.000-05:00

I doubt I get sufficient traffic to send enough readers Jim's way to scare him off his manifesto, so I think this is safe to post. Jim Kloss from Whole Wheat Radio is working on writing out the result of an epiphany he had recently about podcasting. The second installment of this treatise/essay/diatribe (I hesitate to say "rant") explains the "beginning" of podcasting (at least under the name "podcasting") as only Jim can:

Any gardener knows that even if you have great soil, you're screwed if you plant stale seeds with a low germination rate. You need fresh, viable seeds with a happenin' foofy hairdo to make it all come together. Enter Adam Curry. With his background in media and his interest in computers, his "let's all have a party!" attitude, his MTV fame and (I assume from what I've read) his financial wherewithal, you've got one whoppingly viable seed. Plant that sucker in fertile ground and you'll have a real live Jack-In-The-Beanstalk story before you can close your eyes, click your heels three times and whisper "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home."

I encourage anyone interested in podcasting—particularly members of the media planning to write about it, if any happen to be reading—to read the whole thing (it's a set of blog entries, so they're in reverse order on the page). I'm not entirely certain where he's going with it, but I'm eager to find out.

My Mr. Picassohead(s)

2005-02-24T20:53:00.000-05:00

I'm kind of proud of this:Check it out in the gallery or see what others have made or make one yourself. It's actually a lot of fun. Unfortunately, you can't control where your name is signed, so I had to leave it technically anonymous. I managed to work in my signature anyhow.

Podcasting for the people

2005-02-24T20:07:00.000-05:00

I just had a great experience. I was in the computer lab. looking up a phone number online, when the custodian came in (it's evening). He said hi, I said hi. We struck up a conversation. We talked about the weather, then where I'm from (Massachusetts), which led to sports. Honestly, he did most of the talking, but he had more to say. I really didn't understand a lot of the sports talk, so a said a lot of "Uh-huh"s and "yeah"s. He might have been putting me on with some of it. I know he was trying to get my goat over the Yankees, but I didn't know enough to say much more than "Sure was a hell of a game." But he kept talking. And he clearly had plenty to say, even without much response from me. This poor guy comes in every night to clean up after us and usually has no one to share his thoughts with. If this guy's not a podcast waiting to happen, I don't know what is.

Skype is broken: Why Jon Gordon is silly and Adam Curry is justified

2005-02-16T14:55:00.000-05:00

I podcatch Future Tense from American Public Media. Usually, it's pretty good. This story, though, about VoIP, made me wonder about the host, Jon Gordon, and by extension most of the technology-exposed world (tech-literate or not) and how it views VoIP. The following is from the show, an interview with the VoIP Security Alliance's David Endler:

JG: What about the potential threat of voice spam and, for lack of a better term, "audio phishing" where a fraudster pretends to be from some legitimate company when they're not? DE: I don't think right now that's the most extreme threat. I think voice spam is really just an evolution in general marketing for any mass communication. If you look at bulk fax email, if you look at telemarketing, if you look at email spam, I think voice spam is just a natural evolution into that area. Quite frankly I think there are bigger threats to look at right now.

Voice spam? Voice spam? You're joking, right? Tell me this some sort of overly subtle irony. We've had "voice spam" for years, before email, before the Internet. We just usually call it "telemarketing". There's no difference between the two. True, VoIP calls could be made automatically with recorded messages...but wait, that's how most telemarketers do it these days! I'd say these two had never heard of telemarketing if David Endler hadn't actually used the word in his answer... But Gordon and Endler certainly aren't stupid. So why the discrepancy? I think it points to a fundamental flaw in the way we approach VoIP. Consider Skype. Adam Curry is always getting frustrated with Skype on the Source Code because once he's online, every one sees him, unless he sets up blocking and other strange things which he doesn't want either. What does he want? He wants a telephone. That's right, a plain old telephone, hooked up to his computer (or running as software on it). Skype, despite repeated references to "telephony", is not a telephone service. They like to pretend it is by licensing Skype USB phones (which, granted, are very cool), but it doesn't act like a telephone does. It's not a telephone service. It's a voice messaging service. It's AIM with voice, just like iChat AV. Yes, it works better, but it's a messaging service, and it needs to accept that. If Skype were a telephone service, no one would know if you're online. If someone called you when you weren't home, it would just ring. Maybe an answering machine or voicemail system would pick up. You could screen your calls. You could let your cousin leave you a message and never let him know you were home, but pick up the phone when your wife calls from the office. We like that. Sometimes more information is not a good thing. The theory was that knowing who's on and who's not would be more convenient. Unfortunately, the act of coming online (even being online) is enough of a reason these days to strike up a conversation. If you really want to talk to someone, you'll call them up and find out if they're there. That's my ideal vision of VoIP: a true telephone paradigm running over the Internet. Looking at it that way, "voice spam" sounds as silly as "cell spam". It's not a new kind of phone, just a new kind of phone line.

Poor confused spammer...

2005-02-14T17:27:00.000-05:00

Ok, here's another one. I just got a spam message from "Eligibility Verification" bearing the subject line "Enclosed Check May Be Yours." Here's the only problem: You can't enclose a check in an email. Surely anyone who can open the email, let alone follow the instructions therein, would realize the physical impossibility of enclosing a check in an electronic message. As for the body of the message, the spammer is kind enough to state bluntly:

This advertisement was sent to you by LuckySurf. For subscription changes, see the bottom of this message.

And sure enough, at the bottom is a standard "click here to unsubscribe and let us know that someone's reading so we can sell your address to others for lots of money" link (but not in so many words). But below this, it actually says:

To unsubscribe via U.S. postal mail, please send all inquires to the follow address: LuckySurf.com, Inc. 395 Oyster Point Blvd, Suite 110 South San Francisco Ca. 94080

Great. So if you prefer to pay 37 cents to get more spam, LuckySurf.com is kind enough to give you that opportunity. Chalk one up for my faith in humanity.

How Not to Be Seen: Lesson One

2005-02-14T13:30:00.000-05:00

A page on a site I can't quite grok (I think it's unfinished) has put up some pictures of the new Disneyia Nextelius, that is, the Nextel cell towers "cleverly" diguised at trees. I admit, most of them at least look nicer, but this one embodies absurdity of Pythonian proportion:Nice work, guys. No one will ever notice it now. *sigh* [via the Disney Blog, via Boing Boing, via MacHelp from Maui]

Spam: How do people make money from this?

2005-02-13T00:29:00.000-05:00

I don't get how spamming can be worthwhile. I just got this in my inbox. Tell me: who would click this link?

Subject: Coddled and dissolvable lozenges for serious fellows These tablets are just equal typical tablets but they are specially formulated to be soft and dissolvable below the tongue. The pills is sorbed at the rima oris and gets in the bloodstream in real time rather of acting through the tummytum. This effects in a speedy more potent issue which yet up to 41 hours! [Link]

Even if you were dumb enough not throw it out without another thought, how would you know you wanted what the email is selling? Even if you read through the googlespeak translation, all it's advertising is lozenges. What idiot is clicking on these links and ruining email for the rest of us?

Ok, so I'm an idiot.

2005-02-11T19:06:00.000-05:00

I've been using Blogger's "BlogThis!" feature lately, and wishing there were an easier way to make hyperlinks than typing out all the HTML (since the point of "BlogThis!" is to be fast and convenient). Writing the last post, I looked up and noticed...There will be a hand-shaped mark on my forehead for a long time...

Sharing Skype

2005-02-11T18:47:00.000-05:00

I just tried to share Skype with a friend. The form that came up said said:

Send a message to a friend and give them your Skype Name. You can also attach a gift like a viral or a souvenir to the email if you want to be extra nice.

Viral? Something tells me someone's been getting help from Google with their translations...

Hey, they do have this: FoIP

2005-02-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

All right, so some people are actually on the ball sometimes. I was just thinking about Voice and Fax over Internet Protocol (V/FoIP). All that puzzles me is that they seem to just be packaging traditional analog fax data into VoIP packets. True this allows for better compatability, but to me that seems like the same thing as plugging a fax machine into a VoIP phone. What's new? And check this out: we're converting analog print into digital image into analog sound into digital sound into IP packets into digital sound into analog sound into digital image and back to analog print. Does this seem silly to anyone else? I know! Let's run cheap dial-up ISPs overseas, then save costs for US clients by using MoIP: Modem over IP! That'll get people online for cheap, so they can use VoIP over that connection for all their calls and dump their regular telephone service! It's all cheaper and easier this way! I'm sure we'll see it soon. Let's see how that prediction turns out.

The things you hear in a dorm hallway

2005-02-05T02:04:00.000-05:00

Walking out of my friend's room just now, I happened to catch the following conversation:

A: It smells like pot out here. B: You mean like someone cooking something in a pot? A: Yeah, like that. B: Let's go make an artificial butter substitute.

Upon hearing this, the student was enlightened.

Google points surfers to Answers.com

2005-01-28T22:20:00.000-05:00

I really hate when Google changes. It just throws me. Google is such a basic part of the landscape. It's like waking up one day to find your keyboard's color and layout have been changed. It's just wierd. Nevertheless, this time I'm liking it. Sometime today Google redirected their definition links from Dictionary.com to Answers.com. I discovered this while exercising my Google/definition-link reflex on the word "Gestalt". After an initial stomach-turning, I noticed the bottom of the page that came up. It was from Wikipedia. This rocks. From the little I've seen, Answers.com is a clean, well-made site. A little too white for me, but I can deal with the color scheme. It's intelligently made. It doesn't look entirely computer-generated, and it's not chock full of ill-placed ads (unlike most sites that use Wikimedia content). I wonder how much Dictionary.com is hating what must be a huge drop in hits. They deserve it for all their petty attempts to squeeze subscription money out of casual Googlers. Know your market. Actually, according to Alexa, Dictionary.com is holding strong at #3 in Reference, just ahead of Wikipedia. Answers.com's not even on the top 50. Yet.

Steve Martin's Letter to Johnny Carson

2005-01-26T18:11:00.000-05:00

I hate to just pass along a link, but I wanted to post something in commemoration of Johnny Carson, and nothing I could think to say was worthy. Steve Martin, however, has done him justice. Thanks to Dave Winer for the link.

Hang on: why doesn't the iPod have this yet?

2005-01-14T16:20:00.000-05:00

If there's one blatently untapped market for the iTunes Music Store, it's people who just haven't bothered to try it, but would use it if they got started. So...why don't iPods come with 5 free songs from iTMS? There's already a bunch of little pieces of paper in the package, just add one with a coupon for 5 free songs. People try it out, see how easy it is, and then they're hooked. What's the matter, Apple? Can't spend five bucks per $399 unit?

Wikipedian Humor

2005-01-13T18:28:00.000-05:00

Stumbling upon the Wikipedia article on Freemasonry, I read this:

…(Freemasonry being non-dogmatic, there is no written-in-stone interpretation for any of these symbols).

It's the little things...

NEWS.com.au | Mind-bending game a bestseller (January 3, 2005)

2005-01-08T21:42:00.000-05:00

I just happened upon this article from News.com.au: NEWS.com.au | Mind-bending game a bestseller (January 3, 2005) I had to read the entire article before I figured out what the name of the thing is. Actually, I'm still not quite sure. So many proper nouns, such unclear writing. Can you figure it out? (Maybe it's supposed to be ironic, considering the subject...)

Mind-bending game a bestseller By Liliana Molina January 3, 2005 BOARD game aficionados have been exercising their grey matter on a Gold Coast-produced game over Christmas, and it has become one of Myer's most popular toys. While figures are yet to be finalised, a spokeswoman for the Kaleidoscope Classic said about 80 per cent of the 15,000-20,000 units sold this year had found their way under Christmas trees. A Myer spokeswoman confirmed the game was one of the best-selling games for Christmas at all stores. The puzzle game can be solved in 60 billion ways, and its Gold Coast makers describe its appeal as similar to that of the 1980s Rubik's Cube. "We knew we were on to a winner and we are over the moon with the fact that it has been so successful in the first major selling period here in Australia," Vishal Mehrota, the chief executive of developer Mind Challenge, said. But Mr Mehrota is not one to leave sales to chance, and in some Myer stores, people were on hand just to demonstrate the game to pre-Christmas shoppers. The game was developed by psychologist Mark Wood and mathematician/physicist Frank Dyksterhuis to appeal to the left brain, right brain, memory and creativity and is aimed at all age groups. It has 18 pieces, and the makers have estimated that one challenge has more than 20 billion ways in which it can be solved. Mr Mehrota recently returned from Britain, where he signed a $5.5 million three-year distribution deal for 480,000 units to add to the game's distribution in India. The company expects to launch two new games in April at the Australian Toy Hobby and Nursery Show, after successfully signing with Myer to stock the Kaleidoscope Classic at the 2004 show. It is also considering expanding distribution into new countries including Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. As well as a physical game, the Kaleidoscope Classic concept also has competitions and games on the Internet. The Courier-Mail

rentzsch.com: Love, Hate and Objective-C (Part 1 of 3)

2005-01-08T17:03:00.000-05:00

This is going to be a techy one. If you aren't familiar with/interested in Objective-C and you don't like confusion, you might want to skip this one. Otherwise, read on...

I came across this page today: rentzsch.com: Love, Hate and Objective-C If you read the blurb at the top of this post and are still reading, check this page out (the whole site looks pretty good too). What follows is my response. First off, my bias. I consider Objective-C to be my home language and Cocoa my home environment. I am also something of a traditionalist. That should cover it. On to the page. The page is divided into loves and hates. I won't respond to the loves, since I basically agree with them all. I do want to quote one thing though, from Love 5: Categories:

Trivia bit: iChat's InstantMessage.framework contains a category named NSViewShouldHaveAVisibleBitLikeEveryOtherFrameworkInExistance on NSView which adds visible and setVisible: methods. I fully agree guys, it's wacky we had to wait until 10.3 for this bit.

It's funny because it's true...

Hate 1: Method-call Syntax

No, it's the brace syntax where my hate lies. Do you really believe: [[[MyClass alloc] init:[foo bar]] autorelease] is easier to read or write than: MyClass.alloc().init(foo.bar()).autorelease()

Well...yes. I really took to the brace syntax. To me, MyClass.alloc().init(foo.bar()) says to call the init method of the alloc method of MyClass. In my head, the dot operator should only be used after a "noun", not a "verb". When I see brackets around an expression, I know I can treat it like a "noun" from the outside. Graphically, alloc() only marks this on one side. In fact, if I'm reading left to right as I usually do, I notice it after I've read the word, so I've already thought of it as a "noun". Obviously others find this notation easier to read. That's cool. But understand that it's not universal.

The brace syntax is all about assisting the compiler to delimit an ObjC message send from the otherwise "normal" C code. Thus, it's there to aid the machine, not the programmer.

Actually, I find I get the same benefit the machine gets, for the same reason.

I will say one good thing about the brace syntax: because it makes nesting method calls painful, it encourages conformance to the Law of Demeter.

I like that too.

Hate 2: Lightweight

ObjC is a mediocre language propped-up by a great framework.

Yeah, I'll buy that. I kind of like it that way, though. Maybe I just lack imagination.

Hate 3: Pointers

Raw pointers are evil and must be stopped.

I love raw pointers. Why? Because I actually understand what I'm doing and what the machine is doing. It's down-to-earth, not abstracted-all-to-hell. That's one thing I love about Objective-C. I think I've had more trouble with pointers working in languages that didn't let me actually touch them (like scheme) than in Objective-C. I know there are pointers in there somewhere. If I can't see them, it just confuses me.

More importantly, I had a hard time justifying learning a new language that lacks garbage collection.

On the contrary, I had a hard time justifying learning a new language that has garbage collection: Java. I don't want to hand memory management control over to some black-box garbage collector I can't trust. Who knows when my objects will be deallocated? I've seen the results, and it isn't pretty. No thank you. And what's so hard about the Cocoa system? If you want to be sure an object doesn't disappear, -retain it. If you don't need it anymore, -release it. It's elegant.

Hate 4: Alloc/Init Dance

...it is wrong that all code everywhere must separately call both +alloc and -init, in the right order.

I used to try to follow the great Usenet discussions (read: flame wars) over this issue. I was always in favor of calling +alloc and -init. When I read this, though, I remembered that the Cocoa frameworks are covered with methods like +[NSFoo foo], which really just calls [[[NSFoo alloc] init] autorelease]. So what's the issue? The number of calls to abbreviate? I'm all in favor of standardizing +new methods.

Hate 5: Designated Initializers

Yeah, I'd like to see some lingual support for this. In general, a class should be able to tell the compiler what methods a subclass ought to override. That way subclassers can be warned if they don't. That's the Objective-C style. Why isn't it in there?

Coming up...Part 2: Hates 6–10.

Here's what iTunes needs.

2004-12-25T22:58:00.000-05:00

I've been posting this sort of thing a lot, lately, haven't I? Oh, well. What does iTunes need (outside of a complex podcast management system)? Keywords. À la iPhoto or GarageBand Loops. In other words, the ability to tag tracks with words which show up in a panel of buttons somewhere (optional, of course). Now you can search in the search bar or by clicking on all the keywords you want to match. I don't know enough about the iTunes library internals and ID3 tags to know if this is difficult to pull off, but with at least two iLife apps already implementing it I think there's actually hope for this one. Podcatching's next.

Oh. That's why Skype is so great.

2004-12-24T19:11:00.000-05:00

A while back I noticed a big buzz over Skype, the increasingly ubiquitous VoIP client. Go-with-the-flow kind of guy that I am, I decided to mosey on over to Skype.com and see what the big deal was. Well, the client was free, not to mention cross-platform, and I had a few troubles with Apple's iChat AV, so what the hell. I downloaded it and installed it. I've never run the thing. Then, today, I heard Jimmy Jett mention Skype in his podcast, and on a whim I thought I'd poke around the net and see what I could get Skype to do that iChat couldn't. Being a poor firewalled college student, the first thing I needed to do was to get it to traverse a NAT. Otherwise, I'd be stuck talking to other people on campus—people I could see in person with less effort. This has been my biggest quarrel with iChat, and it's cost me hours of fruitless searching too get my computer IPv6 connectivity. That's not going to happen for a while. So why am I happy? Skype traverses NAT. And from what I hear, it does it pretty painlessly. I think I'm in love. Now if only I weren't home for Christmas break. I guess I can wait a month to try it out. Damn you, dial-up.

Why doesn't the iPod have this yet?

2004-12-20T18:39:00.000-05:00

I'm home from school, which means dial-up. Don't be surprised if posts are few and far between for a little while. I've got a whole plan for a podcast-aware system that I'll post eventually, but for now, here's something that I just thought of on the way to the car at school:

I'm heading home. The semester's over, thank god, and it's time to head home. I grabbed all my stuff from my girlfriend's room (which she had organized very kindly for me the day before—credit where credit is due) and headed out to the car listening to the Rant on my iPod. When I got there, my hands were full of stuff, and I had to get my keys out, open the car, put my keys in, take out my iPod, pause it (careful not to lose my place), put it back in my pocket, get in the car, and listen to some uninteresting mindless drivel that comes in on the radio. I'd much rather have been listening to the interesting mindless drivel I had on my iPod. Now, I could use a tape adapter. For this I'd have to take the earbuds out, plug in the adapter, put the tape part in the player, and put the iPod in a safe place. Not too troublesome. Except I only have a CD player. If I had a BMW, I could just plug my iPod directly into the car. For now, though, such things are relegated to the world of dreams, and dreaming of owning a BMW will get me no closer to hearing Jim and Esther in my car. I could use an iTrip. This would actually work for my setup. My friend has an iTrip, and handy as it is, I just don't like it. It's difficult to change the transmission frequency. The sound isn't very good. And it's expensive and easy to loose—a very bad combination in my life. I'll probably end up with one anyway, though I'll try to find a cheaper one that's not limited to iPod use (a very poor aspect of the iTrip's design). Ok, enough story. What's this wonderful idea I've had? What invention is the offspring of this necessity, to whose conception I bore witness? That metaphor took an odd turn... I apologize. Anyhow: Bluetooth. Blue-freaking-tooth. On an iPod. Have you seen the new Bluetooth Volvos? Bring your cellphone into the car, and the car speakers and a built-in microphone act as a giant, gasoline-powered, self-propelled Bluetooth headset. If we can get that tiny cellphone to send out wireless audio (not to mention receive it), why not an iPod? Let's replay the scenario, shall we?

When I got there, I smiled, remembering my Bluetooth-enabled car was totally worth it. I put down my stuff, opened the car, and turned on the car radio. With a push of a button, the car speakers were playing the Rant I was still hearing. I took out my earbuds and stuffed them in my pocket. Then I cranked the show so I could hear it while I loaded my belongings, and in a few moments I was headed back to my room, Jim still yelling away. When I got out, I just reversed the process. Seamless.

Remember the BMW coolness? The other cool part is having the iPod controls on the steering wheel. Works here too. As with the BMW setup, you can keep the iPod in the glove compartment for safekeeping and not have to take it out to use it in the car. Unlike the BMW, though, you can keep it wherever you want in the car, even in your pocket. Seamless integration. It's a good thing. </marthastewart>

Internet framed for the murder of the radio star?

2004-12-15T09:23:00.000-05:00

JimmyJett » IPods, Podcasting and Radio? Haven't heard all of this, just a clip though Whole Wheat Radio's Muffin News. He basically went on for a while about the rise and fall of the radio personallity. He's right. Absolutely right. I never liked the idea of satelite radio, and this is why. Because when you have 1000 channels, each with its own genre, all you have is a robot playing a playlist. I don't care about that. Honestly, it's mostly because I can do that myself on my computer. It's not the music that I tune in for. It's the DJ. Other people I listen with tend to stop listening when the DJ comes on, and I don't understand why. That's what I tuned in to hear. Sure, the latest music in a genre I like is nice, but I'd hear it eventually. I want to hear a familiar voice, someone with personality, a friend. At home, I listen to WRNX because its a small hometown radio station run by real people who I know and listen to everyday. I miss it while I'm here at college. But podcasting has changed that. See, that personality is always out there, but most stations won't pay for it. Trouble is, personality wants to be heard, and if that means doing it for free, so be it. It's sad that I can't hear John Allen and Don Moorehouse from back home while I'm here, but I can hear Adam Curry, Jimbob & Esther, Dawn & Drew, Phil Terrone, and a slew of other new friends. The global village is my hometown. Internet didn't kill the radio star. Radio did. Viva la revolución.

UMass: College Fails in Bid to Grow Marijuana

2004-12-13T23:39:00.000-05:00

College Fails in Bid to Grow Marijuana Home sweet home.

The Enderle Who Stole Macworld

2004-12-13T22:00:00.000-05:00

The Enderle Who Stole Macworld I know I shouldn't just blog every great page I see...but come on. I can't resist.

One more tally mark on the headboard of Apple's marketing department...

2004-12-13T21:33:00.000-05:00

iPod My Photo Oh. My. God. So cool. So sad. So almost but not really worth 20 bucks. Thanks to David Pogue.

iTablet -

2004-12-12T21:25:00.000-05:00

iTablet Oh, wow. Oh, wowy-wow-wow-wow. (</christopherwalken>) I want one.

Contestant, please define "technology for technology's sake."

2004-12-12T21:17:00.000-05:00

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000360023250/ Oh, dear. Idiots. Sigh. As always, thank you Engadget for rooting out mind-boggling stupidity. I don't know how they find these things, but I sure am glad they do.

The Theory of Everything

2004-12-10T21:02:00.000-05:00

I've been changing around my podcast lineup. I have to blog this. Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything. Get it. Listen to it. Particularly "Holy War" (actually from TOE's predecessor, Your Radio Nightlight). I'm not sure I understand the title, but it might be corrupted in the podcast process, since I don't think it's actually in the audio. If it sounds a little disturbing at first, don't worry, it doesn't go down that path much. I'm not sure if it's prophecy or warning or just good fiction, but listen to it. It will speak for itself. In other news, I'm thinking of starting my own podcast consumer. Adam Curry has inspired my with some of his dreams, and I think I may just be able to live up to them. We'll see. More to come.

New features in NewsFire

2004-12-09T20:53:00.000-05:00

Woke up this morning to the new version of NewsFire (0.32). Just a few new features, but a kick-ass few. Now, I sent the author, David Watanabe, an email on Nov. 26 with some ideas for new features. I'm not saying I'm responsible for any of the changes, but here's what I wrote:

Ok, first off, total props on an incredibly excellent piece of software. For me, UI is king, both in beauty and interaction, and your apps score big on both counts.

I can't resist giving credit where credit is due. If you use a Mac and you consume RSS feeds (or read sites with RSS feeds), try it out. You owe it to yourself. Continuing...

So, hoping I can help out, here are a few things I'd like to see in future versions of NewsFire: Mark as Unread: Sometimes I want to read my items when I'm offline so that when I'm online again I can look up the stories I found interesting without going through the whole list. Trouble is, there's no way to mark an item as unread again. I'd like to see that.

Well, the new version still doesn't let you do this. It does, however, let you flag items. This way you know it's read, but you also know you wanted to go check it out. Plus, the flag doesn't disappear every time you look at the item like the unread mark does. Nicely done.

Chronological-spacebar option: Right now, the spacebar goes through my new items in reverse-chronological order. I'd rather go the other way.

There's still no way to do this in NewsFire, and I think it's a shame. I much prefer chronological order, particularly in personal/journal type blogs. I don't subscribe to many of these right now, so I don't care too much, but I still think it's a worthwhile option.

Feed grouping: Here's a tricky one. I've found that news sites (NYT, Wired, Yahoo) tend to have have hierarchical categories of news feeds. For instance, Wired.com has a Daily Top Stories feed, and under that a Technology Stories feed. Below that are Gadgets & Gizmos, IS/IT Infrastructure, etc. Trouble is, I want the Daily Top Stories AND the top Technology Stories AND Gadgets & Gizmos (I like other tech, but only if it's big enough to go in Technology Stories). I'd rather not get really important Gadgets & Gizmos stories three times over, though. What I'd really like to be able to do is group them into a single "logical" feed which collapses multiple copies of an item. And as long as I'm dreaming...I'd like a pony...

He didn't really implement this one either. What he did implement is smart groups (sometimes referred to as smart feeds). Following a common Apple trend, smart groups sit in the sidebar like feeds, but contain items from your feeds matching certain criteria. In this case, I could make a smart group (and I have) which contains any feed in any of the Wired News feeds I get. This is almost like what I was asking for. It misses a few things though:

The original feeds are still there. Obviously, in most cases of using smart groups you want the original feeds to show up separately, since you might not show every item in them. In this case, I don't care about them. It's not so bad, though, since reading an item in the smart group marks it read in the original feed, so once I've read the smart group the feeds will sink to the bottom.
The items don't collapse. This is what I really wanted to begin with. For instance, the Wired News smart group currently has 4 copies of the item "A Gift Guide for Geeks" because they came from different feeds. I want NewesFire to detect that they are exactly the same and just display them as one. When I've read it anywhere, I should have read it everywhere. To NewsFire's credit, they may not be exactly the same; that is, Wired news might do something funny that makes they look slightly different. I'm typing this offline right now, but I'll check when I'm connected again. (Damn you random nice person who used to run but has now turned off a WiFi access point! No wait, it's there again. Agh! Damn you random error message! Oh, well. Later, then.)

Back to my email...

Full-story caching: Another big one. Again, I sometimes read my news when I'm offline. I'd really like a per-feed option to cache the page (plus images) at the item's link address. Then, if I try to go to the link while offline, NewsFire would point my browser to the cached copy instead.

Ok, so now I'm getting greedy. Maybe this isn't really a great idea, but I figured it was worth throwing out there. Needless to say, this feature did not make it into this release. I plan on writing David another message, though, and this time I'll ask for the ability to pre-cache inline images in the actual items. That way I can read Engadget offline without seeing that confounded broken image placeholder (and I can flag things I want to read more on). Plus, I'll have my comics offline. Excellent.

Anyhow, I figure suggestions can only help. Keep up the good work! Peter

That's my philosophy. So, stay tuned, because I'll be sending David my next set of feature requests soon.

Meet Peter: blogger

2004-12-08T19:34:00.000-05:00

Watching my life turn slowly from Adam Carolla to Adam Curry Well, consider me a blogger. I have now slipped entirely into the blogosphere with absolutely no regrets. What got me it this far? Glad you asked. 1. The aggregator. I always had a few blogs I liked to keep an eye on, but while I have always like the idea of RSS, a few bad experiences with poor aggregator interfaces had put me off the idea entirely. No more. enter NewsFire, by David Watanabe, the absolute king of Aqua. Anyone who's fileshared on a Mac ought to be familiar with his Acquisition Gnutella client, and David doesn't let us down with take on RSS. BTW, David's got another nice app that's in beta called Inquisitor (site down). This little baby's a nifty stand-alone web search interface. Remember Sherlock? Rather not? Me too. Have no fear, Inquisitor is nothing like it. As usual, David's approach is simple, elegant, and anything but clunky. Sadly, though, Inquisitor's beta test has expired and David hasn't put up a new version yet. Keep your fingers crossed. With a good aggregator in place, I can read all sorts of blogs and blogoids—that is, anything that can be logically syndicated via RSS, including comics, Dave Barry, news, and Wikipedia's Featured Articles. So what more could I want? 2. Podcasts. It's a new age, people, and I'm jumping in head first. A podcast, if you don't know, is an RSS feed with audio enclosures, typically taking the form of a radio show. Using an app like iPodder or iPodderX (which I use), users download the enclosures as they're posted to the feed. Podcasts clients usually have a mechanism for moving audio files into your media player library of choice—iPodderX is good at this simplistically (it only handles iTunes), while iPodder can run any script on a file after it downloads, if you know how to write the script. Once it's in your library, you just sync up your player, such as an iPod (hence "Podcasting") and you've got content. BTW, enclosures in RSS feeds are each associated with an item, just as plain text or HTML is in a normal feed. Usually, the items in a podcast feed have a summary of the podcast. You can read these summaries by consuming the feed with an ordinary aggregator (since it'll just ignore the enclosures). So what am I listening to? Here are my current podcast subscriptions:

The Engadget Podcast - This was the first podcast I got. I really only found it because Engadget's RSS feed came preset in NewsFire as an example. I never unsubscribed. If you like gadgets, if you like Macs, if you like PCs, if you like Linux, or if you like blogging and podcasting (ie, if you've read this far), you'll like Engadget. Be sure to check out the blog too.
Future Tense - This comes from MPR (Minnesota). It's a 5min technology piece, and I'm not sure yet how often it comes out. It's one of those short pieces that public radio stations syndicate to put between or in shows, like Word for the Wise and the Writer's Almanac. Haven't heard much, but it sounds like it's worth 5 minutes. And the Dec. 7 show is about Wikinews. This one's sticking around.
PRX: The Public Radio Exchange - More public radio. I miss WAMC, even though I'm closer to it at college than I was at home. I just don't have time to listen, usually. These pieces tend to be This American Life / Next Big Thing -style bits about just about anything. Try it out, see what you think. For me, it's a keeper.
The Super Smart Radio Whore Sex Show - Quite the name, huh? I missed Loveline, so I thought I'd give this a try. Not too impressed yet, but I'm still giving it a shot.
RPGMP3.com: World's Largest Dungeon Podcast - This is just funny. It seems to be just a recording of a D&D campaign. I've only managed to listen to about 5 seconds. Hey, if it's your thing, go for it. Frankly, as much as I love gaming, this bores me. I'll be unsubscribing as soon as I get around to it.
Adam Curry: Daily Source Code - The godfather of podcasting himself, Adam Curry, podcasts straight from the Curry Cottage in Guilford. He, collaborating with Dave Winer who is mostly credited for RSS's popularity, pretty much invented podcasting, and he has truly made it what it is. Definitely check out his show. He's just a really entertaining guy who knows how to run a good podcast. He likes to play promos for other podcasts, so it's also a great way to stay in the podcast loop.

Note from later on: I actually wrote this post offline before I created the blog. And never finished it. There were more feeds I didn't get to at the time. I'll post an update soon.