Make a Tiny Link
Following on from the previous post on Make A Shorter Link and its future, there is news to report.
Shortly after we announced that MASL was closed for new links, Kevin Gilbertson of TinyURL got in touch with a proposal: he’d be happy to take on the MASL database, do all the work of intertwingling it with his code, and maintain the existing MASL links for as long as they need to be maintained.
This was just the sort of offer we needed, really. We always said from the beginning that we’d try to pass on the DB to an appropriate person if and when this time came. Kevin was as about as appropriate a person as we could have asked for, and he has been generous with his time and his encouraging comments. He said that if he’d known about MASL at the time, he’d have never started building TinyURL, which makes the transfer of our service to him even more apt.
So that’s that, then. Gilby (as he’s known) has taken control of MASL’s insides, and we’re in the process of handing over the domains to him. Make A Shorter Link is now part of TinyURL; if you want to make some nice shorter links, perhaps even some tiny URLs, you know where to make them.
It feels a little bit like Barney’s first day at school. Off you go little MASL; have a great time! Be good!
Labels: tech
I want backspace in my pen
Today I had to do some editing of several lengthy documents. The only sane way to do work like this is to print it out, sit in a comfortable chair with good natural light and a hot cup of tea, and crack on.
But the downside was the need for me to make notes in the document margins. I found myself struggling to write anything that other people would be able to make sense of, because my handwriting has grown steadily more terrible as my use of computers has increased.
When writing with a pen nowadays, I’ve become very lazy about spelling and grammar, far more so than I would be if I was typing the same text. It’s because I’m so used to having the chance to backspace and correct my errors as I go along - consequently, I don’t worry too much about the errors in the first place. I expect them to happen, my brain allows me to make them, smugly assuming that it can save itself from public embarrassment during the final edit.
My handwriting isn’t just a mess; it’s a chore. I am appalled at the thought of it. The simple solution would be to practice regularly by writing proper old-fashioned letters to friends, instead of flinging half-hearted texts and emails their way every once in a while. But the first solution that popped into my head was: “I want a backspace in my pen.”
Weblogging in local government
As part of some work I was doing recently, I had a chance to talk to a local councillor who has a weblog. The purpose of the conversation was to evaluate what she thought of the blogging software she was using, but uncovered several other fascinating snippets relating to the culture of weblogging within local government.
First was that the councillor’s decision to use a weblog was not at all supported by her fellow party members. They were wary, if not distrustful, of what she might expose on the blog without a certain amount of censorship by party officials.
“Having a blog makes me look like a maverick, rather than a part of the group,” she said.
“My own side see it as a problem. They have to trust me a great deal, not to say something I shouldn’t.”
She didn’t say so in as many words, but it was clear that she felt that not all of her political group did trust her. They even insisted on monitoring the blog during election time.
She’s started the blog to communicate with the local residents she represents, but over time found that the people who read it most were:
- the local press (who treated it as a source of stories)
- the opposition parties (who looked for gossip, and were sometimes the object of it)
- trainee or would-be councillors
The work is ongoing; we’re trying to understand how e-democracy can work better. One important starting point is that “e-democracy” doesn’t actually mean anything; right now, it’s used as a label for everything on the web that’s vaguely connected to politics.
The blogging councillor I spoke to continues to post. She’s prolific by any blogging standards, and much more so than almost all other councillors.
MASL: Make A Spammer's Life (easier)
Make A Shorter Link, the link-shortening service dreamt up by me, and created and maintained by my friends Matthew Hunt, Phil McCarthy and Edd Dumbill, is now closed to new links.
Why? Because it’s being abused by spammers, and we can’t devote the time required to secure it from their unwanted attentions. And because since we founded it, our lives have changed. We all changed jobs, changed careers, moved house (or even moved to the other side of the world). All of us have new priorities, or more important things to occupy our time. MASL needs attention that we can’t provide for it.
The spam reached boiling point during the Christmas holidays, so Edd switched off the new links feature. Shorter links you’ve created in the past will continue to work. We’re exploring options for long-term hosting and management of our database of shorter links, just like we said we would if and when this time ever came.
If you’re annoyed by MASL’s sudden closure, blame the spammers. And if you still need to create shorter links, there are plenty of other options for you.
Labels: tech
I am a Twit
I signed up for a Twitter account ages ago, fiddled with it a couple of times, and forgot about it. It seemed neat enough, but I couldn’t see the benefit.
Now I can. In the last few days, there’s been a sudden burst of activity there - most importantly, by people I know. Having added them as friends, now I can see the benefit.
As I strolled home from dropping B off at school this morning, I checked my phone - it was crammed with fresh messages from Twitter friends in various time zones. As I read through them all, the phone buzzed with the arrival of more messages. “This is great!” I thought. It’s quicker and more succinct than reading people’s blogs; it’s immediate, intimate, and informal. It’s fun. Your pals in your pocket.
Twenty minutes of phone buzzing later, I had to change my Twitter settings so that only direct messages were forwarded to my phone. Pals in pocket is nice, but you can only take so much constant updating from the rest of the world.
But how fab to have all this in my pocket whenever I like. How great to have the ability to SMS people via the web (using the direct message feature) for free; to be able to post thoughts to the web on the move, even using my ancient handset.
There are a few things that are a little confusing. It’s not easy to see the difference between “Friends” and people you are “Following” (they seem to be one and the same by default, but the number of friends is not always the same as the number of followers). I think a skim through the Twitter commands help page might help me get a better grip on it all.
Twitterlicious.
Labels: tech
Switching to the Blogger beta
Cor, this new version of Blogger is nice. Google has added some new features but not messed too much with the interface, which surprised me a bit - I thought they’d make it look much more like Gmail or Google Reader. Maybe that will come later.
But the new labels feature is well done, feeds are available for every label you create on your weblog, and the labels links are usefully, not obtrusively, added to existing posts. It’s also easy to browse through hundreds of old posts and add labels to them by checking a few boxes and selecting “Apply label”.
There’s a new WYSIWYG post editor, which I don’t use. Nice to see it included though. Best of all, you can switch it off completely - a nice touch which shows the Blogger team were expecting some users (the old timers) who would prefer to do things the old-fashioned, I’ll-code-it-myself-thanks, way.
So far, so good. Someone asked me about Blogger the other day, a web professional who was interested in setting up something bloggish on his site. I recommended it, on the basis that it’s so easy to set up and use. There really is no hassle. I think it offers the best combination of features and simplicity. Yes, it lacks a lot of features that other weblog apps offer; but those features are extras. They’re not necessary for running a weblog. Some people might like them, but most people don’t need them.
Oh, and something else I’ve just noticed this evening: you can now post to Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress.com and others from inside your Google Docs account.
Labels: tech
Quick 'n' easy nuking of hard disks
If you ever have a clunky old PC with hardly any RAM and a malware-clogged version of Windows and no suitable Linux distros or Windows install CDs to hand, and very little patience and an urgent need to just get the machine wiped properly so you can get rid of it on Freecycle as soon as possible, I can heartily recommend Darik's Boot and Nuke as a swift and easy way of doing exactly that.
Labels: tech
I stole this look from Evan Williams
I think Matt Webb's Interconnected was the first site or weblog I noticed that pushed all the stuff traditionally kept in sidebars down to the bottom. You know, stuff like archives, links, "about this site" info. Shove it down to the end of the page, let people find it if they need it. I like that. Despite toying with them in the past, I've never been a fan of sidebars and prefer to keep everything I post in nice simple horizontal chunks.
So I've ripped Evan Williams' CSS to form the basis of this new look, because he uses the same approach and I like the way he's done it. Basis? Who am I kidding? I've almost copied it exactly, even the yellow highlights on the links. Hope that's OK, Ev.
Next week: Giles plagiarises Robert Scoble and Jason Kottke in a desperate attempt to get noticed.
Only joking. Last week I was mostly writing about rats. Next week it's hydrocarbons.
Labels: tech
A Freecycle webapp
Freecycle is a great idea; giving away stuff you don't want to people happy to come and take it from you.
The problem is that Freecycle operates via mailing list, and isn't very well suited to it, especially when subscriber numbers increase beyond a hundred or so. Suddenly you're being swamped with messages and it's very hard to keep track of the status of any particular offer. People end up sending many unnecessary messages finding out if something's gone, is still available, and so on.
What Freecycle could benefit from is a neat little webapp to make the process simpler.
Let's say we start with a home page at freecycle.org - something nice and easy to remember, much better than the Yahoo! Groups URLs that members currently have to deal with.
Local Freecycle groups could all have a subdirectory of that, perhaps also subbed within a country dir, such as freecycle.org/uk/bradfordonavon.
On this page, logged-in members would see a list of current offers, colour-coded with the status. Pale green background means on offer to all; yellow background means reserved and awaiting collection. Red background means taken; these items will drop off the bottom of the list fairly soon after being snapped up.
Each item is controlled by its owner. When you log in, you have access to another page called "My items" which shows everything you are offering or have claimed.
Making a claim would work a bit like comments on a web page, but only the item owner would see all the claims. Other members would see only their own claim, along with the total number of claims made by others. Such as: "You have made a claim for this item. There are 5 other claims."
A successful claimant will be chosen by the item owner simply by ticking a checkbox next to their name; a message will appear in their "My items" page informing them that they've been successful, and perhaps they could optionally have an email sent to an address of their choosing with the same information.
Freecycle's ingenious concept is constrained inside mailing lists. I think that a well-designed webapp along these lines - almost an eBay without the payment involved - would go a long way to freeing it up and getting more people taking part.
Stupid Animated Characters; or, Your web page might not be the only one I have open right now
Web pages with stupid animated characters in them are annoying enough in their own right, but they get me all the more annoyed when the stupid animated characters start talking the moment the page is loaded.
Nokia's Park WiFi page, for example. (WARNING: Stupid Animated Characters.)
What bugs me so much is the assumption on the part of the site developers that just because the page has been loaded in my browser, I am looking at it immediately.
Tabs are not new in web browsers, no matter how new they might appear to IE users. A lot of us have been using tabs, and what's more, opening pages in background tabs for years now. That's how I do the vast majority of my browsing.
It follows that I'm rarely looking at a page while it loads; I'll open it in the background and devote my attention to it when it suits me, ta. To open a bunch of links in background tabs and then have to guess which bastard one is talking at me is hugely irritating.
Please, developers who insist on using Stupid Animated Characters: can you not at least give us web users the opportunity to load the Stupidness and play it when we like, perhaps with a large "Play" or "Talk" button? Please?
Grumph.
The MySpace mystery
An extract from this week's PA column..
To those of us who qualify as grizzled veterans of the web, MySpace is something of a mystery.
We find it astonishing that a site so packed with garish, browser-slowing pages crammed with mostly non-sensical ramblings by teenagers should be so incredibly popular. Of course, the rambling teenagers think differently.
For them, MySpace is the online equivalent of hanging out. It's not supposed to be about interesting content, the whole point of it is simply to be there. That's why most of the pages aren't, in themselves, very interesting. All they show is that their creator has a presence on MySpace, and therefore is doing the fashionable thing.
Millions of people have signed up for MySpace accounts, so quickly that traditional media couldn't just watch them do it. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp was quick to step in with a purchase offer, hoping that owning MySpace would grant it citizenship among this new generation of media purchasers - young people who rarely glance at newspapers, care little about magazines, but spend a lot of time in front of their computers.
The advertising industry has made the same observation and is throwing money at popular web sites and services in an effort to make some impact on these precious young eyeballs. The eyeballs, though, are moving.
Some observers argue that simply by having been purchased by a global media company, MySpace has already lost its "cool" factor. While it doesn't seem to have stopped people signing up every day in their thousands, the word is starting to spread about other, similar virtual hangouts.
And the one attracting most attention right now is called Bebo.
The basic idea is exactly the same. You sign up to Bebo mainly so that you can be on Bebo; your friends will all be there too, and together you can leave rude messages on eachother's web pages, draw silly pictures on each other's online whiteboards, and browse your friends' friends.
As with MySpace, anyone can add anyone else as a "friend". If your favourite band or a famous author has a Bebo page, they can become your friend in a click. Making friends is good; having lots of them shows you are an active Bebo user. Popular people will get connected to more new people, and therefore become more popular. It's addictive.
To the grizzled internet veterans, Bebo is lesser of the two evils, not because it isn't owned by a global media company (no doubt it soon will be), but because the web pages it produces are not nearly so offensive to the senses.
MySpace pages are, frankly, a mess. It's like the 1990s all over again, when people stuffed their primitive home pages with flashing text and pointless animated graphics. Only now, it's embedded pop videos and Flash music players that start playing whether you want them to or not. Page designs are frequently painful to the eyes, a mess of colour and content all jumbled together. Bebo pages can include the same things, but on the whole tend to be a little quieter.
Blame broadband. Back in the 90s, all this flashy stuff was frowned on because bandwidth was limited, and going online expensive. Every second cost pennies.
Now, with "free broadband for life" offers and ADSL modems being given away with every new mobile phone, there's no respect for bandwidth any more. The kids take it for granted, assume that it's endless, and fill it with their ramblings.
We grizzlies moan, but other than the affront to our eye for page design ("It were all blue links on a grey background back then,"), we've no real need to.
Labels: tech
My Wikipedia contrail
Well, you did ask:
Category: Doctor Who companions
I was of the generation that sort of gave up watching half way through Colin Baker, and I realised I had no idea who any of the companions were from then until Rose Tyler. It was a quiet work day.
Blu-ray Disc
While writing an article, I wasn't sure if it was "BluRay" or "Blu-Ray" or "Bluray" or "Blu-ray"; turns out it's the latter.
Momus
Sorting out my record collection, deciding what to buy on CD when I finally get rid of all the vinyl (yes, it's going to happen, despite my recent thoughts to the contrary). Suddenly thought: Does Momus wear that eyepatch for a reason, or just because he's a pop star? There's a reason.
Strontium Dog
My mate Jaspre has written a book about Strontium Dog, but I had no idea who or what SD was.
The Housemartins
Couldn't remember Stan Cullimore's name.
Honey, We're Killing the Kids
I have no idea what this is doing in my Wikipedia contrail.
Exploring Warwick blogs
I've been having an enjoyable poke around among the hundreds of weblogs hosted for students, staff and alumni of The University of Warwick. There's some hilarious stuff there...
There is a woman sitting beside me
And now, in the computer centre, she has sat beside me – she was one seat away but moved nearer – its all very odd. She keeps trying to read over my shoulder too!! Haha, lady! I am typing all about you!!
Alphabetty spaghetti
This blog is actually to do with bands and not spaghetti, just though it was a more catchy title. Sorry to disappoint the contingent of spaghetti lovers.
The chavs on the bus go round and round
Floosh... what was that? look backwards, and a head sagging around knees covered in a cap was throwing up all over the floor, and he did it 6 times…... good chav effort.
The Lakeside Gestapo, part 1
But even after the fairly lights incident (in which they warned me about my christmas lights and i fucked the head cleaner up properly with a fabricated story about british electrical safety standards and the 2002 european union directive on flame retardant materials and she backed down very quickly) and the forced entry to clean on a fortnightly basis I could put up with things, but there are going to be killings if they make me get up every bloody Tuesday at 9 for no reason at all.
Trust me, you don't want pasta
That’s FUC* CRAZY!!! That means for every little skittle that you are eating, you are taking in 90% carbs!?!!? Screw pasta, the best source of carbohydrates is skittles, and I feel the need to tell everyone about it. This means you only have to buy 2 packets of skittles (55g a packet) and you'll get your fare share of carbs for the day, plus no washing up or waiting for food to cook…AWESOME!!!
Writing for the sake of it
Sheep. Sheep are really, really cool– I mean awesome. My friend told me last night that Weber’s theory of law is based upon sheep. I disagree however and think it is more likely based on turtles, as turtles are going to take over the world in a few years time (one told me the other week).
Chill at times of stress
For me, the dusk sky blend perfectly with the silhouette of the Sea Harrier. I find it calming and inspiring at the same time, a symbol of the depth of human achievement and also the strength of the forces that protect us. Inspirational and calming.
I'm genuinely full of admiration for the scale and ambition of this project. I hope it continues to thrive.
Labels: tech
Inline Flickr in Delicious
Del.icio.us released two new features today; the "network" view, which moves people subscriptions out of the inbox and into a separate page; and inline thumbnails of Flickr images:
This is neat, and not just because it's terribly useful when browsing through your links. It's also neat because it shows how Yahoo! is letting the various services it has purchased talk to one another, and (forgive me) mash up their features into new, interesting things.
Labels: tech
Web site broken, please help
I've spent the best part of an evening trying to tidy up this site, make it a bit more presentable, but I can't find the solution to a layout/CSS problem and it's driving me nuts.
I've swiped the simple two-column layout from Floatutorial, which I rather like the look of. With normal text, the CSS works fine. But when I add the gubbins from Blogger, something breaks; any content I put into the left column pushes content in the right column further down the page, with a huge long gap between the top-most post title and the content to which it relates. I've spent hours trying to fix it but I'm flummoxed.
If any of you clever types have five minutes spare to examine the template file I'm using, laugh at my stupidity, and point out my error, I'll be gratefully in your debt.
Update: Web site mended now. I started again, from scratch, with a completely different template (Roger Johansson's simple two-column layout for the Blogger template and Anton Andreasson's big buttons for the more page. I find it frustrating that the promise of CSS is something so simple and so powerful, but the reality for amateurs like me can be hours of cursing and exasperated hand-waving in front of the computer. I knew the effect I wanted was possible, I just didn't understand (a) why it wasn't working and (b) what I had to change to make it work.
And Seb - thanks for your help. I owe you a pint.
Labels: tech
The GTD Prayer
Our lifehacks, which art in contexts,
Inbox zero be thy aim.
Thy Kinkless done.
Thy Mind Sweep fun, in @work as it is in @honeydo.
Give us this day our next action.
And forgive us our open loops, as we forgive those who delete our email.
And lead us not into web surfing.
Deliver us from IM.
For thine is the Moleskine, the Project and the Due Date
For someday/maybe,
Allen.
With apologies to David Allen, Merlin Mann, Deb Barham (RIP), and everyone who enjoys being really organised.
Labels: tech
Me spouting off about email software; again
Tim Gaden interviewed me as part of a series of conversations he's been having with people who use, or have used, Apple's Mail application. There was a time when I liked Mail; and shortly after that, a time when I used it grudgingly. Then I switched to Thunderbird. Now I'm using Eudora. None of them are great, but I've spent so much time trying out so many email clients (and posting about this process at Mac DevCenter) that I'm bored of it, as is anyone who's read any of my rantings on the subject before. So there you have it. I have opinions about email software, and today my opinion is that I should be using Eudora for a little while. I don't expect you to care much, though. The plaster has dried on the walls in my newly-constructed office, and I've started decorating. I should be able to move in soon. I shall miss working at the kitchen table though.Labels: tech
My friend, a Windows user, calls in desperation
(Phone rings)
"Giles, our computer's gone mad. Every time we turn it on we get these pop-ups telling us we're infected with something; then we have all this horrible porn appearing on the internet."
Sounds familiar. I'm sorry - I don't think I'm capable of fixing it. Sure, I could spend a few hours trying to clean it up but previous experience tells me I won't make much of a difference.
"My husband tried turning it back - what do you call it?"
Reverting to a saved state?
"Yes, and we thought that helped, but it all started again soon enough."
I wonder, is this the old Windows Me machine I helped with last time?
"No, we bought a new one. It's Windows XP I think. Could you come and have a look at it? We'd happily pay you for your time."
I wish I could help out, but I don't think it's worth it, for you or for me. I'd spend hours fiddling with Ad-aware and all that other stuff and I still wouldn't get it all cleaned up. You need to take it to a professional. Or buy a Mac.
"It's so frustrating that it's come to this again. We installed all the antivirus stuff, we did everything we could, but the computer is still like this. Is there nothing we can do to prevent it?"
Well, you could use Firefox and Thunderbird, instead of Explorer and Outlook Express -
"Firefox! I remember, you set that up for us on the old one. But we didn't get it set up on the new computer when we switched."
Ah. Oh.
"So what shall we do?"
Well, back up all your important stuff as best you can, and take the machine to a professional. They will almost certainly offer to wipe it clean for you.
"Great. It's going to cost a fortune isn't it?"
Quite possibly. Good luck.
Labels: tech
Command+Option+8
From this...
...to this...
...with a few keypresses. In Mac OS X, I can hit Command+Option+8 to turn on screen magnification, which zooms me nicely in to just one text file. Then hit Control+Commmand+Option+8 to turn on inverse video, so all the colours are flipped around. Sometimes the inverse video trick is a good way to give my eyes a bit of a break when they're tired.
Labels: tech
Barney singing "Land of the silver birch"
Land of the silver birch (Odeo browser stream thing, or MP3 download)
His nursery class did a project about North America, and they were taught this song.
Bartering airtime in Africa
Africans are experiencing astonishing, rapid growth in mobile telephony. Mobile handsets are selling even to the poorest of people because there is an enormous need for communication. For decades, people have wanted to communicate but have been prevented from doing so because fixed line connections were expensive and unreliable.
But most amazing of all is the move by Kenya's SafariCom service provider. It is offering users the chance to trade airtime with one another.
So I can buy airtime (with a scratchcard from any local shop), then send it to another account - either for free (as a gift), or in exchange for money, goods, or services.
The upshot is that the phone service has created, from nowhere, an alternative currency. A barter system that will allow people to exchange money (or value) across vast distances, with no need for banks or travel.
This is astonishing. The typical Western consumer thinks that our society is at the cutting edge of technology and its interface with society. But in Africa, people are using the same technology in radically different ways. Imagine the barter system being introduced here in the UK. Would you work, in whole or in part, for airtime? Especially if you had the opportunity to sell that airtime on to others, or exchange it for goods?
What will 'money' look like in fifty years from now? Twenty years?
These notes made during a recent broadcast of Global Business on the BBC World Service.
DAB hand for freebies
There are perks to this job.
This morning, a courier turned up at the door while we sat eating our cereal. He handed over five large cardboard boxes, each containing one or more Digital Radio sets. I've got the chance to review and play with them for a few weeks.
As I said to the PR company that got in touch to offer the goodies: "I'm a complete radio nut. The thought of having a houseful of DABs turns me into a gibbering, salivating wreak. When will they arrive?"
A frequently asked question: "Do you get to keep them all, Giles?"
Answer: No. In my experience of reviewing gadgets, games, computers and software, it's rare for a journalist to be given something like this to keep. Generally, if the item is cheap (less than 100 quid or so), you might be in with a chance, and the likelihood increases if it's software.
One memorable exception: when Psion launched the Psion 5MX pocket computer back in 1999, I attended the press conference. Celebrity geek Stephen Fry gave a very entertaining speech, various Psion dudes gave little presentations, then at the end as we filed through the door, every single person present was handed a brand-new Psion in a box. I was astonished.
Of course by then I was already a loyal Palm user and owner, so couldn't really justify keeping a second PDA in my rucksack; so on my return to the office, I handed the Psion over to my surprised colleague Lawrence. I think it died on him, losing a pile of data, a year or so later.
Labels: tech
Google Base notes
Been messing with Google Base.
If I want to add an entry to the Base about myself, how should I go about it? My first thought was to include it in the People Profiles item type, but it turns out to be not for general People Profiles at all - it's all about finding a date. The default attributes for this item type include Sexuality, Marital Status, and Interests. And each entry in this item type has a maximum lifespan of 31 days.
So it's no kind of People Profiles item type at all, it's a find-a-date service. I wish Google wouldn't beat around the bush with all this "We just want to help the world find all its information" rubbish and just come out and say it: "Yuh. We cloned Craigslist. Go crazy, kids!"
Base lacks the "Doh!" obviousness that the original Google home page had. The UI is downright confusing, but then again neither Craigslist, nor eBay (another cloneparent for Base) have particularly simple interfaces. Once you're inside Base, either in search results or your own "Dashboard" for creating new items, finding your way elsewhere is very hard.
There's tags buried in Base - called Labels - but no way to browse tags, or hop from one to another mid-search. It's frustrating.
What Base needs is some really clear contextual help to explain exactly what each element is for. And some much clearer, more honest, labeling of things like "People Profiles" - change the name to "Personals" and be done with it.
Labels: tech
Trying out Odeo
Barney and I spent an enjoyable half hour exploring the Odeo interface and creating some silly audio of our own.
I'm very impressed that Odeo not only Just Works, but does so in a relatively unknown browser like Camino. It's very well made and Barney, aged only three, got the hang of it pretty quickly.
I shall be adding some more fooncasts in the near future, no doubt. Be warned: there may be singing involved.
Labels: tech
Microsoft and Web 2.0
Here's today's internet column for PA. This column is written for use in regional newspapers around the UK, so the text is aimed at ordinary people, not web geeks.
Things are changing at Microsoft. The software company that has dominated the world's computer software (and consequently, hardware) markets for two decades is feeling the faint breeze of competition from young upstart companies, and has decided to act.
Those upstarts are mostly new names that most people have not heard of. Tiny little web companies whose offerings are so appealing that people are flocking to use them, simply because they fill a gap and fit a need. The giants of this world, Microsoft chief among them, are playing catchup.
People are flocking to things like Gmail (now called Googlemail in the UK), Flickr (www.flickr.com) and Writeboard (www.writeboard.com), all of them free services that replicate on the web services we used to think were confined to the computer we were working at.
That model has been blown out of the water in the last year.
Thanks to the increased availability of wireless broadband connections (soon they will be ubiquitous), computers everywhere can be expected to be online most of the time.
And with this in mind, the people who produce software are starting to wonder whether they need to produce anything physical at all. Why make CDs, wrap them in cardboard boxes, and ship them all over the world, when you can make software that works just as well through a web browser?
The web is moving towards becoming a platform for services, not just a glorified electronic newspaper or shopping mall.
This platform idea is known as "Web 2.0" and it is the primary motivating factor behind huge companies like Microsoft having to rethink their whole attitude to software and the way it is designed and distributed.
Think how Microsoft makes its money. The vast majority of its income over the past 20 years has been from sales of boxed copies of Windows and Office. These products, sold by the million to corporations the world over, have been incredibly popular and incredibly profitable.
But in a broadband society infused with computers (our mobile phones are computers, our stereos are becoming computers, soon our TV sets will be computers), all of them able to connect to the network all the time, people are moving away from having "a computer" at which they do their work.
Now, people want to be able to use any device to access their stuff. They want to keep files online and put them to use from any computer they happen to be sitting in front of, be it a traditional PC or a huge high-definition TV set.
So the move has begun. Microsoft's senior executives, Bill Gates included, have issued a series of memos spelling out the threats as they see them, and the new direction they think Microsoft should take.
The new direction is internet services. The path will be a rocky one, because everyone and his dog (remember, on the internet no-one knows you're a dog) will be busy putting together their own internet services.
In taking this step, Microsoft is effectively putting itself back on the bottom rung of the ladder, alongside all the upstarts. It has the benefit of huge resources and a bottomless pit of money, of course; but some argue that the key to success in the world of Web 2.0 is good ideas that just work.
And you don't need resources or money to have one of those.
Labels: tech
"Next ->"
Everywhere I go on the web these days, I find little tiny "Next ->" links. At the bottom of every page of Google or Yahoo search results; or in every Flickr user, tag, or group view. You see a few, and you always have to click Next to see some more.
So why are the Next links so tiny, so hard to click on?
I'd like to see them get a bit bigger, a bit easier to click on. It's not that I can't see them, it's just that they're so fiddly to use. They require more effort than actually starting a search, or clicking a search result.
In fact, I'd like to see the page developers use some real smarts and make large sections of the page clickable. How about if the margin of each page, about 30 or 40 pixels at each edge, became a Previous/Next link? These margins could be subtly shaded to indicate that they were different from the page background itself. I see no reason why this couldn't be a user pref, stored in a cookie or somesuch, so that people who didn't like or didn't understand the concept could simply switch it off.
But those of us who liked it and understood it could fly through search results and Flickr pages much faster than before, with far less mousing required.
Labels: tech
Feeding on feeds
I'm interested to see services like Superblog and Suprglu, which offer instant aggregation of feeds you might generate whilst using Flickr and Del.icio.us and the like.
Interested because I've had an idea bubbling in my mind in recent weeks - to create some weblog-style projects that are built in exactly that manner. If Rising Slowly ever rises from the ashes (and its demise is another story, which I'll hopefully be in a position to tell you shortly), I'd quite like it to rise in this way - as something simpler to scan, from the reader's point of view, and quicker to write, from mine.
I imagine the result to be a mishmash of short links, photos culled from various sources, and occasional longer posts as and when I see fit.
I'm interested in creating a bunch of such sites, on various themes that interest me. I'd like to create one about interesting maps and techniques of mapping, and another about 'Englishness' (what is England, what makes its people English, how does the rest of the world perceive England?).
None of these subjects are going to get the high traffic that would interest any of the 'traditional' 'weblog publishing networks', but I'm still quite tempted to try and create them myself anyway.
What I need to find is a simple way of building such sites. My technical prowess is almost as non-existant as my eye for visual design, but I know how to use the del.icio.us Javascript feeds to generate a custom feed of links (I really like the way you can limit the feed to just one tag of your choice), and the Flickr badge system to do something fairly similar with pictures. The end result is something like this. There'd be some temptation to add some auto-generated ads (Google Adsense? Some Yahoo alternative? Is there a Yahoo alternative?) at the bottom.
All this is just thinkings-aloud at the moment. I'll get back to you when I've thought something more useful.
Labels: tech
Sub-editors for weblogs
There's one thing that webloggers lack, one thing they could really benefit from, and that's sub-editing.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a sub-editor is there to read through a journalist's work, correct and re-write it where necessary, and prepare it for publication.
Here in the UK (I speak from my own direct experience), subs are usually in charge of writing headlines, standfirsts and boxouts. They will often re-write intro pars to make them more interesting. They are also usually in charge of the layout for printed publications, ensuring the copy physically fits on the page in the gaps between the adverts.
The best thing about subs from a writer's point of view is that when you've got three or four of them reading your work before it gets printed, mistakes get spotted. You get a chance to correct them before they are made public, thereby saving yourself from shame and your employer from the possibility of legal action.
One very irritating thing about a lot of the very best weblogs is that they have no subs. The writing may be wonderful, witty, informative and entertaining, but is ruined by simple errors that would get fixed by a good sub.
Here's an idea: a subbing service for webloggers.
People sign up for a service called blogsub. When you sign up as a blogsubber, you have to declare yourself willing to read through a certain number of posts from other people every week. Maybe just one, maybe several a day. When another blogsub user wants to post something to their weblog, it is randomly assigned to a blogsubber who checks it through, offers a re-write if they think necessary, and corrects basic errors. The original owner gets a chance to review the subbing (something that doesn't happen in professional newsrooms, but I think there'd be uproar without such a facility) and confirm the post as ready-to-go. Only now does it go live on the owner's weblog.
There might even be demand, in future, for a professional level of service. Some team weblogs, especially those partially or completely dependent on advertising income, might want to pay for subbing services to give their online publications an extra coating of sheer professionalism. Indeed, you could argue that some of the biggest-earning and best-known weblogs ought to start employing sub-editors of their own.
Hugging the Hedgehog
Partly to broaden my computing horizons, partly as an exercise in exploring new things to write about professionally, and partly to fill the hours of an otherwise dull Friday evening, I thought it might be fun to install Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog on my aging iBook.
This machine runs OS X Tiger acceptably, but there's a lot of slowness and disk-grinding to put up with. It's an early model white dual-USB iBook with 600MHz G3 processor, 20GB hard disk, and 640MB RAM. I installed Ubuntu from one of their nicely packaged disks ordered from the web site. I had previously tried downloading a .iso and burning my own disk, but for some reason it didn't work.
I took some notes as I went along. These are, of course, just the notes from one evening's noodling. There's likely to be more notes as more evenings present themselves, and more noodles are partaken.
Things I didn't expect to work, but they do
- installing and running in the first place. This is hardly an up-to-date machine, but Hoary Hedgehog seems to be running very happily. It seems fast enough for daily use (but let me try using it for a few days before I conclude further on that)
- customisable toolbars
- auto software updates
- USB mouse and scrollwheel (this is a really old mouse that's been lurking in the cupboard for years, too)
Things I am very impressed by
- 'apt-get install epiphany-browser' ... zap! A new browser installed, and an alias to it inserted in the Applications menu without me looking. Smart.
- themes and design. It all looks nice; not pretty-pretty like OS X, but still nice. I like the tendency towards minimalism.
Things that I did expect to work, but they don't
- control-clicking instead of right-clicking (eventually I added a mouse and found things much easier)
- Online documentation in the Ubuntu wiki - almost everything I search for doesn't exist
Mysteries
- where's the hash key? In fact, where's a bunch of special characters? (Some time later: hmmm, found hash at least. And some others. Some serious keymapping required for long-term use, though.)
- how do I put the machine to sleep? (Some more time later: looks like the post from areitze on this page offers a solution to this problem.) (Even later still: Yes! It works.)
- key command variability. To quit some apps, it's Control+Q. Others, it's Alt+F4, or Control+W. Annoying.
Things I really miss from OS X
- Quicksilver
- Command keys
- Expose
- Markdown
- TextEdit, rather to my surprise
- BBC Radio Player working
- A simple online software repository, along the lines of Hyperjeff
I have no doubt there exist Gnome alternatives to all of these. I just haven't had the chance to find them yet.
Labels: tech
I'll send you a deck
I read with interest an article (PowerPoint: Killer App?) discussing the problems of a presentation-fixated corporate culture.
Some years ago, I took on a copywriting project for a large multinational manufacturing and chemicals company. My task was to interview one of their senior staff, and distill into about 1500 words his views on a particular issue. It sounded straightforward enough.
But the chap I needed to speak to was a very busy man. He could barely spare the time to answer my emails, let alone talk to me on the phone.
"I'll send over a deck," he said, "and we can go through it on the phone while I'm on the way to the airport."
A deck? I wondered.
He sent me a deck - a PowerPoint file, each slide within it groaning with information, fonts squeezed tiny so it would all fit. How anyone could ever take anything from this while watching this guy make a presentation was beyond me.
We whizzed through the slides as his car whisked him to Heathrow. He treated the call much like a presentation; I could hear his voice adopting the same tones, the same pauses, the same "A-ha! And this is the clever bit!" revelations that you'd expect to hear as an audience.
Ultimately, my job became converting this chaotic, over-stuffed .ppt into something more like reasoned prose. It was very difficult, not least because when I asked for some additional help from one of the big guy's minions, I was told: "Sure, we can send you some useful information," and what they sent was more PowerPoint files.
I'm not totally against PowerPoint, or presentation software in general. I can see when it can be put to good use. But as the Washington Post article makes clear, there are many people who just don't understand what 'good use' means in this instance, and apparently treat PowerPoint as an all-purpose tool for sharing information - any kind of information, be it well-suited to slides or not - with other people.
On another occasion at about the same time in my career, I went with a colleague to give a presentation to a roomful of strangers. We had worked for days on our slides, but of course the laptop died at the crucial moment. We had nothing to present.
So I winged it. I remembered what I needed to say, and made much of it up as I went along. I used gestures and facial expressions to make my points; I used physical objects in the room to represent abstractions and analogues. And it worked. Afterwards, someone said to me it was the most interesting and enjoyable presentation they had ever been subjected to. I was quite proud of that.
Bandwidth anxiety
My wireless router died. I tried resetting it. I checked to see if there'd been a power cut (apparently not). I tried everything I could think of, but the router was dead.
Networkless, I felt detached. Anxious as to how I'd get my work done (I'm one of those people who checks facts as he goes along; I need to be online most of the time to look things up, ask questions by email, IRC and IM, send questions to people).
But also just generally anxious. If I stopped to think about it, being offline for a while wasn't going to be too serious. With my sensible hat on I was able to see that nothing terribly urgent had to be done, I'd be able to get by until the router was replaced.
My sensible hat returned to the shelf where it belongs, I worried. What if someone's mailed me about something important? What if there's a big story breaking that I should know about? How are my chums getting on with Extendaword? When will I be able to play again?
Being without internets for a few days demonstrated to me how dependent I am on them. I habitually check my mail every time I pass the computer on a non-work day (it sits on the side in the kitchen). I frequently refresh my browser or RSS reader to see what the latest Mac/weather/chump/foo headlines are.
Without these dependable distractions in my day, I felt slightly listless. Even Kate noticed it. She likes to check the weather forecast every night, and was frustrated not to have that facility available.
It's not like I was distraught or incapacitated without my connection; I just got on with offline life, did some jobs and played some games in the garden, read a bit more book than I might usually.
But the feeling of unease and frustration was impossible to ignore. After three days I was impatient, urging the phone to ring while I sat and waited for a return call from Belkin. It never came.
Eventually I gave up and spent 45 minutes playing telephone runaround with their customer service line; I ended up chatting to a bloke who meant well, but really couldn't help. Feeling tense and aggravated and worried that I might be facing a week or more without bandwidth, I drove to Bath and bought a new router.
Now I can relax.
Labels: tech
Responding to Chris Hollander
Chris Hollander took me to task about my live in one huge text file approach to my work. I've got some rejoinder comments to make, but I haven't got a .Net Passport so I can't post them on his site; nor can I find Chris' email address, otherwise I'd contact him directly. So, I'll post them here.
Chris says:
Sorry folks, but I can't imagine how this could be productive. In doing this, your essentially eschewing every productivity gain thats been made in the last ten to twenty years. your also confining all of the work you do to a single modality; a single way of thinking, a single means of organizing, a single perspective on your information.
Thing is, this is the modality that suits me best. Because of the job I do, and the particular list of clients I have, and the manner in which I work, my needs are very simple: for me, the most important aspect of getting my work done boils down to maintaining a list of things to write, and writing them. It really isn't more complicated than that.
I like having this single perspective on my information. It's the simplest way of storing it all, and viewing it all, and searching it all. It's quick.
Chris goes on:
The author explains that he also tried the notion of many text files instead of one big file; however, he found himself back at the big-ass-file approach once he had multiple machines, and was unable to synch his collection of files.
Well, what I actually said was: "I played about with a variety of sync methods and couldn't find anything that I felt really comfortable with." I was able to synch, just not in a manner that suited me or the way I work.
note to author: this is exactly why the "one big text file" approach fails! invariably, you are going to have multiple machines; even if somehow you find a way to survive with (gasp!) only one computer, you are going to have multiple applications on that one computer. even if you somehow get by with only one application (a text editor, in your case), there are many people/entities/companies/proccesses contributing to "your" information!
Well, that might be the case for many people but not for me. There's usually only one contributor of information, and that's me.
synchronizing your information with information provided by family/co-workers/customers/vendors
I simply don't need to do that. I'm lucky to have such a simplified existance, it seems.
synchronizing information across all of your devices: phone, home computer, portable computer, media devices, living room, car, network services.
More simplicity: I don't have any such devices. Just two computers. That's it.
Saying that your information is "organized" because its all in one big text file is like saying that my junk is organized because its all in the garage.
Ah, but I always know where to look when I need to get hold of some junk.
"Is that an Apple?"
This has never happened to me before. There I was, sat in my local library doing some work away from the distractions of home, when a smartly-dressed woman approached me and said in an apologetic tone: "Excuse me, I don't wish to intrude, but is that an Apple?"
"Certainly is," I said, surprised but rather pleased that someone was sufficiently interested in my laptop to come and talk to me about it.
"Do you mind if I ask you something? Does it work on Word?"
I smiled.
"Sure, you can use Word on it. It looks a little different to the versions you'll have seen on Windows computers but it does the same job.
"Here," I added, "I can show you."
The woman moved round so she could see the screen. She pointed at my todo.txt, which I happened to be editing at the time.
"Is that it?"
"No, that's, um, something different. I don't use Word much, but I'm relatively geeky so don't worry about the stuff I'm using. Here, this is what Word looks like."
I used Quicksilver to launch Word and showed her a blank document. "It's all pretty straightforward."
My companion seemed to have made up her mind already; she just needed encouragement.
"Yes it looks great. I saw one in Selfridges in Birmingham and it was only £600, I didn't think they were that cheap. The chap said there was a new model coming out."
"There is, a new iBook, they've just announced them. But if writing Word documents is your main requirement, one of the old ones will be more than enough."
"I've always liked the look of them," she went on. "They appeal to me, I can't say why. When I decided that I needed a computer it just seemed like the right think to buy."
"Well this is three years old," I said, pointing to the iBook. "It still works fine. You might need to pay more for things like Applecare, which is an insurance scheme, and for Word itself; but the cost of the machine itself is probably going to be very good value in the long term. These machines last well and they are much easier to use."
I had to stop myself going off on an Mac evangelist rant; besides, the woman seemed to want to get away from this raving geek. And anyway, she knew what she wanted.
"Save up your pennies and get yourself one," I concluded.
She smiled.
"Thank you; you've convinced me. I shall."
What is Preview?
Yes, what is it exactly?
Many people only know Preview as Apple's humble PDF viewer. Rather than mess about waiting for Adobe Reader to launch itself, plugins and all, Preview opens faster and does the job just as well. But there's so much more to this application. It turns out that Preview, especially the most recent version shipping with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, has plenty of extra features that can elevate it to one of your favorite utilities.
There's also an odd missing piece of Preview which looks like it was a mistake by someone at Apple. Perhaps the help files should have been edited to remove this particular reference?
Labels: tech
Mini observations
Another light-hearted Mac-related post, celebrating the arrival of my new Mac mini computer: Mini observations.
Setting this machine up is more interesting, even more challenging, than I had expected. I deliberately did not use the Migration Assistant to import everything over from my old iBook, because I want to use this machine differently and organize the files on it in different ways.
Labels: tech
Tweaking Mail in Tiger
A new article published at Mac Devcenter: Tweaking Tiger Mail:
The release of Mail 2.0 was largely overlooked amid all the fuss about Tiger's system-level features, but a number of people made public complaints about changes made to the user interface. Mail's performance has improved, but the apparent willingness of Apple's designers to create an entirely new kind of toolbar icon just for use in Mail got up some people's noses.
Labels: tech
On Park Street
The number 9 bus from Temple Meads winds around the shopping district, then heads past the tourist gateway to the harbour area, and starts up Park Street. When the bus stops by some fountains on the left, you can open up your iBook and connect to Streetnet, the local free wifi network.
While the bus chudders uphill, away from the fountains, you'll lose connectivity for a few seconds on the bend, then find it reappearing as you pass Waterstones on the right. Now's a good time to hit 'Submit' on the login page, and start playing.
But first you'll want to enjoy a noodle around. You can look in Borders and mooch at the media bookshelves, but you won't find what you want and it's available for free from the public library anyway, so why waste cash on it? You can open up the iBook again in Borders, just to see, but there'll only be a crappy T-Mobile hotspot that is almost as overpriced as the coffee in Starbucks.
Back on the street you can explore a little more, noticing that all the takeaways offer a 20% student discount, and that a huge number of people passing by have iPod earphones stuck in their heads, and that an alarming number of emergency vehicles are passing at high speed, sirens wooing and waaing, and that the men erecting scaffolding outside stop to look at every attractive girl that walks by.
Battery level at 80%. Good.
