Month: June 2007

SSDD – Podcasting is just a word!

Post ImageI don’t know how many times this is going to come up, but I’ll keep posting about it until I don’t have to anymore. Podcasting is just a word. It means different things to different people. All that matters is the idea or technology or process that we use the word podcasting to refer to.

PodZinger recently renamed themselves to EveryZing, prompting Ivan at Vecosys to proclaim that podcasting is dead (via Podonomics):

You know that Podcasting is over as a bankable concept when companies start rebranding themselves to escape the word.

Absolutely incorrect. The concept is alive and well. The word podcasting – well maybe it is starting to fall out of favor. The two should not be confused, however! We can use any word we like to refer to the concept, and it remains as valid today as it was three years ago.

(By the way, if you’re unsure of what SSDD means, here’s the definition.)

Read: Vecosys

Evil stuff from Apple with the iPhone

Post ImageI say ‘evil’ and you say ‘Microsoft’, right? Wrong. When you think evil, you should think Apple. At least that’s what I thought after reading this:

One of the first things you’ll need to do with your new iPhone is register with the iTunes Store in order to activate the handset.

Presumably, most of the iPhone early adopters will be Apple devotees with current iTunes Store accounts, but for those who don’t have an account already, have your credit card ready during the iPhone setup process.

Imagine the iPhone was a new product from Microsoft and it required you to have a Windows Media Player account (via Live.com or something). Would there not be an uproar? You can bet your ass there would be. People would be bashing Microsoft like there’s no tomorrow.

Why aren’t more people complaining about Apple? Double standards suck.

Read: crave

Graduation Day at the U of A

After six long years, I finally walked across the stage today at the Jubilee Auditorium to complete my undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta. I am now the proud holder of a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematical Sciences (Minor in Economics).

For me, graduating from university is a stepping stone to bigger and better things. I’ve done my fair share of complaining over the last few years, at times wondering if completing my degree was even worth it. I stuck with it though, and I guess time will tell if it pays off. I am guessing it’ll be many years from now when I finally recognize some of the things I learned during my time at the U of A. I think the best things in life are usually like that.

The ceremony itself was rather long. The first hour contained speech after speech, while the second hour involved over 700 graduates walking across the stage. The honorary degree was presented to Dr. Maria Klawe, who gave a very interesting (if slightly long) convocation address. In her remarks, Dr. Klawe mentioned three pieces of advice:

  1. Fail openly, and fail often.
  2. Avoid jerky behaviour.
  3. Endeavor to become good at something you find difficult.

The highlight for me was when Dr. Klawe explained how she came up with #2. Back in 1990 she had the pleasure (or displeasure it sounds like) of meeting Steve Jobs. She was quick to point out that she admires his many impressive accomplishments, but at the end of the day, she remembers that he acted like a jerk. As a result she vowed to always treat others with respect, no matter how wealthy or famous she became.

There are a lot of people who supported me throughout university, but I have to say thanks to Mom and Dad, first and foremost. My parents have always been there to support me in everything I’ve done, and I really appreciate it. Unfortunately my Mom couldn’t come today, but I know she would have if she could have! Extra thanks to my Dad for pulling double duty as my photographer this afternoon (I’ll post more photos tomorrow).

Thanks also to everyone else who helped me get to this point – you know who you are. I appreciate both the encouragement and constructive criticism.

Finally I am done with school! Huzzah! Now I can focus on my career and, um, repaying my student loans.

Kristen Bell should play Supergirl on Smallville

Post ImageBreaking news Smallville fans! Well, as breaking as news can be in the off-season. The CW announced today that Supergirl will be joining the cast for season 7 (via KryptonSite):

This fall, Supergirl will be joining the lineup of burgeoning superheroes and villains in SMALLVILLE. Supergirl is the latest DC Comics character to join the series that has previously welcomed Martian Manhunter, The Green Arrow, The Flash, Aquaman, Cyborg and Brainiac. Casting for the Supergirl role is currently underway.

A character named Kara-El has already made an appearance on Smallville, played by Adrianne Palicki. Fans will know that Kara-El turned out not to be Kryptonian at all. Thus it makes sense that they would look for a different actress to play the real Supergirl aka Kara-El.

My vote is for Kristen Bell! Now that we know Veronica Mars is not returning to The CW next season, Kristen is mostly available, as her only duties will be voicing the unseen narrator of the new show Gossip Girl.

Kristen is young, hot, and has a lot of fans (myself included). I think playing Supergirl would be great for both Kristen and Smallville!

Read: CBS PressExpress

Safari comes to Windows

Post ImageIt’s no secret that an incredibly large number of web developers build sites only for Internet Explorer, ignoring standards and other browsers. It drives me nuts. Unless instructed by the client to focus on a particular browser, I build sites that work on as many different browsers and platforms as possible. Take Podcast Spot, for instance. We want it to work anywhere, no matter what technology the user happens to have installed. So far, I think we’ve done a good job. There’s always room for improvement however.

Since we’re a “Microsoft shop” we don’t have any Macs in the office. For testing, we’ve relied on friends and the incredible BrowserCam service. It would be nice to just have a Mac though. Or, you know, Safari on Windows:

Apple® today introduced Safari™ 3, the world’s fastest and easiest-to-use web browser for Windows PCs and Macs. Safari is the fastest browser running on Windows, based on the industry standard iBench tests, rendering web pages up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2.

Let me first say that I think this is absolutely fantastic news! The more standards-adhering browsers available the better. That said – what about Opera?! Dammit why does everyone ignore the best cross-platform browser. Argh!

You can download Safari here. It’s just over 8 MB. I just installed it and already found a bug. I have three monitors, and dragging Safari to a different screen than the one it launched in and maximizing causes the application to disappear. Oh well, it’s beta. Looks exactly like Safari on the Mac to me though (and that kind of sucks, I hate how Apple completely ignores the Windows look and feel).

There’s lots more discussion from around the blogosphere here.

Read: Apple

Welcoming ColdFusion to the world of .NET

Post ImageTwo weeks ago Adobe unleashed a public beta of ColdFusion 8, the first major release of the technology since Adobe acquired Macromedia. One of the new features in version 8 is native support for .NET objects, which makes it simple to build business logic in .NET and still utilize ColdFusion for the user experience layer. Thus, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to ColdFusion developers – you can now easily use the very powerful .NET framework as part of your applications!

If you’d like to get your hands dirty, you can download the beta here. Then check out this code example from Ben Forta, Adobe’s Senior Technical Evangelist. He shows you how to use .NET to retrieve information about the hard drives on your server.

I asked Jason Delmore, Product Manager for ColdFusion, for his thoughts on adding .NET support. Here’s what he said:

I think the point that our .NET capabilities emphasize is that there are strengths to each development technology…and an environment that allows for heterogeneous development can leverage the strengths of each of those environments at the same time.

It’s a good point: ColdFusion provides another option for integration. Of course you’d like to use .NET all the time, but if you have to use some Java perhaps to integrate with an existing system, ColdFusion lets you combine both pretty easily. It also allows you to take advantage of PDF, Flex, and other technologies if you’re so inclined.

Unfortunately Jason declined to share what the next version of ColdFusion will bring, but it sounds like Adobe will make calling ColdFusion code from .NET much easier, with a “.NET Gateway.”

The new release of ColdFusion is obviously good news for CF developers, but I think .NET developers should be happy about it too. Any technology that makes it easier to use my code in another way is a good technology in my book!

Read: Adobe Labs

Notes for 6/10/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

  • The rookie Lewis Hamilton won his first F1 race at the Canadian Grand Prix today. I called it! He’s had an amazing start to his career – 6 races, 6 podiums.
  • So far the applications on Facebook have worked fairly well, but I knew it couldn’t last forever. I was surfing some profiles tonight and saw one of the applications had puked out a bunch of error text. It didn’t affect the page at all, it just looked ugly.
  • Have you seen the logo for the London 2012 games? I think it sucks.
  • Eric Rice has an interesting discussion on his blog about Google Maps StreetView and terrorism. My take: it doesn’t make terrorism any easier or more likely.
  • This Matrix-inspired comic about Vista SP1 is really funny, but really geeky. That said, I absolutely love The Matrix, so I am not complaining!
  • I absolutely love Rihanna’s new album, Good Girl Gone Bad. My favorite song at the moment is “Don’t Stop the Music” but the entire thing is just really enjoyable. Maybe I’ll write a review this week.
  • Tuesday afternoon is my convocation – finally! I am not looking forward to the ceremony so much as I am looking forward to not having to deal with school anymore.

Podcasting Lectures at the U of A

Post ImageDuane Szafron is a Computing Sciences professor at the University of Alberta. He’s also a podcaster. Sadly, being both a podcaster and a professor is currently a fairly rare combination, but I hope the work of Szafron and others will change that:

“I think it makes it harder for people who give fairly boring lectures. I think more students won’t show up for those,” he said. “And I guess my attitude [as a professor] is, if you can’t deliver anything extra than what you would provide online or whatever, then what’s the difference if people don’t show up for class? Is that really bad if people don’t show up?”

Spot on! I’ve written before about podcasting and boring lectures, and I completely agree with Professor Szafron. Recorded audio and video lectures are not a replacement for class time, they are a complement.

It sounds like Szafron’s podcasts have been a hit, at least based on an informal survey of his students. Currently he makes lectures available in MP3 format, though he apparently experimented with video as far back as 1999. Both have their place, but I think audio is a much more appropriate format for lectures – they are easy to listen to on the bus, train, or while doing something else.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we might be able to help educational institutions take advantage of podcasting. Maybe I’ll have to pay Professor Szafron (who I never had as a prof) and his colleagues a visit!

Read: The Gateway

Fifth generation Archos to support H.264

Post ImageI’ve learned a lot about portable media players in the last year or so, mostly as a result of Podcast Spot. We convert audio and video files to a variety of different formats, so it’s useful to know which devices support which formats. I admit I was shocked to learn that current Archos devices only support H.264 video and AAC audio with an optional $20 USD plug-in. The website is kind of misleading about it too.

Looks like that might get fixed. Engadget has been exploring rumors about the next generation devices from Archos:

Nevertheless, GenerationMP3 was able to snag a screenshot of more details surrounding the PMPs, so here’s what we know now. The 405 will supposedly accept both miniSD and micro SD cards, support MPEG2/3/4, WMV, H.264, and AAC formats, play nice with JPEG, BPM, and PNG photos, and weigh 146 grams.

I hope that “support” as used above really means “support without additional software required.” The devices that Archos makes are fairly impressive, but the whole plug-in thing just grinds my gears.

Read: Engadget

Back to high school to congratulate Mr. Rice

Yesterday I took a trip down memory lane and revisited my old high school, McNally. I’ve been back a few times since graduating in 2001, but yesterday’s trip had a very specific purpose – I went to congratulate my old principal, George Rice, on his retirement. I found out this was his last year a few months ago via Megan who has been teaching at McNally this year. Helps to have people on the inside 😉

I passed the news along to a few friends including Sharon who suggested we get former students to sign a card for George. As those of you with Facebook know, that project started a month ago or so. Megan arranged to have a small item added to yesterday’s staff meeting, and Sharon and I took the card to present to George along with Megan and Anna (another graduate from my year who is teaching at McNally). We managed to get at least one graduate from each year since 1997 sign the card, which I thought was pretty amazing. This was his 14th year as principal at McNally, and I know there are students from each year that are grateful he was their principal.

Walking into the staff meeting was kind of neat – there are a lot of teachers there that I remember, and they clearly remembered us. Nice to see people smile when you enter the room! Megan and I said a few words, and a few of the ladies shed some tears. George smiled and thanked us, shaking my hand and giving Sharon a hug. A few stories were shared, and then we let them finish the staff meeting. We walked around the school a bit too – it looks mostly the same except for the courtyard which is beautiful! You can see pictures here.

You might think it’s odd that I would be so interested in going back to see my high school principal, but I don’t. I spent a lot of time in the office during my three years at McNally, for both good and bad reasons! I was heavily involved in Students Union (finishing as Co-President with Sharon), I was the student rep on School Council, and I was McNally’s student rep for the Superintendent’s Advisory Committee. Bad reasons include conflicts with teachers, and things I’d rather not mention 😉 Needless to say, I saw a lot of Mr. Rice and developed a good relationship with him.

Generally speaking, I don’t think we realize or appreciate the effect someone has had upon us until it’s too late to thank them for it. I know George had a positive impact on me, always providing encouragement and leadership. I am glad I had the opportunity to thank him for it.

In case you’re wondering, George isn’t taking much time off! He’s planning to take a short vacation and then he’ll be making a bid to become a school board trustee. I wish him all the best!