Month: July 2008

Wireless Internet at the Edmonton Public Library

edmonton public libraryI’m not entirely sure what a “library of the future” might look like, but I’m certain it would have readily available wireless Internet access. Actually that idea isn’t very futuristic at all – many libraries now offer free Wi-Fi service to patrons, such as the Edmonton Public Library (EPL).

Launched in early February, the EPL’s wireless Internet service is available at almost every library branch in the city (Lessard and the temporary Idylwylde location being the only two exceptions). In its first five months of operation, the service has seen nearly 7500 sessions with an average of 450 sessions per week in June. Via email I was able to find out some additional details about the service from Lachlan Bickley, Acting Director of EPL’s eServices.

Like the Next Gen wireless service, the EPL’s wireless runs atop existing infrastructure. Wireless network traffic runs over an IPSec/GRE tunnel and eventually makes its way onto the Alberta SuperNet. The service is currently limited to 250 users per branch, and each user is restricted to 500 KB/s of throughput. Web content itself is not filtered, but only the HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols are allowed. The EPL chose Aruba Networks to provide the equipment for the service. They are capable of supporting 256 access points in total, or 128 redundant access points. The EPL is currently using 52 and expect to add an additional 30 over the next few weeks. They constantly monitor the network and will make adjustments wherever necessary to ensure reliable access.

Initial costs included the purchase of hardware and software, as well as installation. Ongoing costs are minimal aside from annual support agreements with Aruba because the network needs to be up and running to support internal administration anyway. Again, this is very similar to the cost structure of Next Gen’s Wireless Edmonton.

Lachlan told me that the EPL wanted to enable customers to access library services using their own wireless devices for convenience, and to reduce demand for wired public workstations. I suspect another reason for launching the wireless service was to keep up-to-date with other libraries around the world.

If you have a library card, you can sign on for an unlimited connection time. Otherwise you need to request “guest access” by speaking with staff at a service desk, who will set you up with 3 hours of connection time. I’ve tried the service a few times at the Stanley A. Milner library downtown using a library card, and I found it fast and reliable. The connection worked quite well in the Second Cup on the corner too.

Kudos to the Edmonton Public Library for offering this service. I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

Twitter officially acquires and rebrands Summize

twitter When I wrote about Summize last week, I mentioned the rumor that the search engine was being acquired by Twitter. Today the deal was formally announced, though no financial details were shared:

We’re excited to announce that Twitter has acquired Summize—an extraordinary search tool and an amazing group of engineers. All five Summize engineers will move to San Francisco, CA and take jobs at Twitter, Inc. This is an important step forward in the evolution of Twitter as a service and as a company.

The old Summize site started redirecting to http://search.twitter.com earlier this morning, and the colorful Summize logo has been replaced with the blue Twitter one. Sadly, they’ve also shut down the Summize Labs section of the site, with a loose promise to bring the prototypes back in some form down the road.

According to TechCrunch, the deal was mostly stock. They have a video up with Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and will be posting a transcript of the interview later today.

For a much more interesting take on the deal, check out the Summize blog post:

It’s with great pride that I officially confirm Twitter’s acquisition of Summize. The rationale for this transaction from Twitter can be found here. I’ll outline my motivation to sell our beloved Summize, talk about our experience soup to nuts, and recognize the players who made this deal possible.

They provide an excellent overview of how they got to today, and they specifically cite Fred Wilson‘s help in getting the deal done.

Congrats to everyone involved!

UPDATE: Here’s the interview (with transcript and analysis) that Michael Arrington did with Evan Williams. They talk about Summize, the API, and Twitter’s revenue model.

Canadians celebrate new Xbox 360 dashboard, long for Netflix-like partnership

xbox 360Xbox 360 owners should be excited about the announcements Microsoft made today at E3! A number of new games were shown, including Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, and Resident Evil 5 (interesting that the most anticipated games are all sequels). They announced a bunch of new downloadable games, and will finally make community-designed games available in the next update. They’re enabling “play from hard drive” functionality, and have added a few new display support options.

Other new features include the ability to browse Xbox Live Marketplace content on the web, and the Xbox Live Party System which enables up to eight friends to connect to watch a movie, play a game, or share photos. Related to that feature are the new avatars, an extension to gamertags akin to Nintendo’s Mii.

And then there’s the two biggest announcements of all: the dashboard is getting a makeover, and Live Gold members will soon have access to Netflix streaming. When I heard about the dashboard update I thought, “finally”:

“When people turn on their Xbox 360s this fall, they’ll get an entirely new interface and Dashboard, an entirely new Xbox through the magic of software,” said John Schappert, head of Live services.

Microsoft is a software company after all, it’s about time they take advantage of that to do some cool new things with the console.

When I heard about the Netflix streaming feature, I thought “cool”. I agreed right away with MG Siegler:

With one fell swoop, Microsoft may have dealt its strongest blow in the consumer market to Apple in years.

Then I realized I live in Canada.

Netflix only serves U.S. customers at the moment, and as far as I know plans to expand to Canada and the UK were shelved a long time ago. The amount of content on Xbox Live for Canadians is already far behind our American counterparts, and this announcement just means we’re even further behind. As Mathew Ingram says:

If what you like is anything made by the CBC and the occasional CTV show like Little Mosque on the Prairie, then you are probably going to be in heaven. Otherwise, you are out of luck.

Sad, but true. I’m excited for the new dashboard and other features, but once again disappointed that as a Canadian my access to media via the Internet is severely limited.

Notes for 7/13/2008

Here are my weekly notes:

For some reason they had the waterfall on the High Level Bridge running today. We stopped to snap a few photos and a short video.

Waterfall on the High Level BridgeFuck You're Hot. Eat Shit.Waiting for mini donuts!Taste of SummerTaste of SummerGrain Elevator

Five iPhone / iPod touch applications I want

appstoreI finally got my iPod touch updated to the new 2.0 software today. I had tried repeatedly yesterday, but eventually gave up due to all the errors. The download was about 230 MB, and it took about an hour to get installed with all my data restored. The update costs $9.95 for iPod touch owners and is free for iPhone owners.

The first thing I did was poke around the App Store in iTunes. Pretty quickly though I realized that the best way to browse it is actually on the device itself. So far I’ve installed Twitterific, Evernote, the New York Times app, and the Facebook app. The second thing I did was get Exchange working. The applications are cool, but right now the Exchange support is what makes the update worth it for me.

I know that more applications will appear over time, but right now it seems like there aren’t very many useful ones. Here are five applications I’d love to see:

  1. Remember the Milk – They’ve already got a web app for the iPhone, but I’d love to see a full app complete with offline access to my task list. I’d be surprised if they didn’t create one, actually. This is the app I want most.
  2. Buxfer – I use this app all the time to manage my personal finances, and I’d love to have on-the-go, offline access.
  3. Brightkite – Apparently they have one in the works, and it should be ready by the end of the month. I hope it has some sort of auto-check-in feature (based on the network I’m connected to or something).
  4. Ping.fm – The current web app works great, but it would be better to not have to open up the web page and possibly log in.
  5. WordPress or Windows Live Writer – I’m not sure how often I’d post to my blog from my iPod touch, but it would be cool just to know that I can.

A couple of honorable mentions: a better weather app than WeatherBug (from Environment Canada would be wicked) and some sort of FriendFeed app.

What applications do you want?

SubSonic 2.1

subsonic I’ve been using SubSonic for about a year now, and I’m a big fan. As the website says, SubSonic is a open source toolset for .NET developers that helps a website build itself. Essentially what SubSonic does is automatically generate your data access layer for you. It saves you from having to write the same boilerplate code over and over. Developers like to talk a lot about improving productivity, and SubSonic actually helps in that regard. The latest version, 2.1, was released on Tuesday.

SubSonic is known as an Object-Relational Mapping (OR/M) tool. What that means is that it generates objects that reflect your database structure. So if you have a table called “User” it will create an object called “User”. Unlike most OR/M tools however, SubSonic prefers convention over configuration. This is my favorite part about SubSonic – there are no mapping files! You don’t need to say that “User” is a table you’d like to use, and that the “Username” column is a string. SubSonic figures that out on its own. Everything just happens automagically.

I like to run SubSonic manually on the command line, so that I can stick the code it generates into a class library. You do this by running SubCommander. The objects SubSonic generates by default are Active Record objects. You use them like this:

User user = new User();
user.Username = "mastermaq";
user.Save();

The newest version of SubSonic also supports what’s known as the Repository Pattern, for developers who don’t like the Active Record way of working with objects. You can learn more about that here.

Also new in SubSonic 2.1 are query factories, which let you write fluent code like this:

return new Select()
    .From<User>()
    .Where(User.Columns.Username)
    .IsEqualTo(username)
    .ExecuteSingle<User>();

Doesn’t that look wonderful? It almost makes working with the database enjoyable!

If you are still writing your data access code by hand, I’d definitely suggest taking a look at SubSonic. If you’re using a different OR/M tool, you might want to see how SubSonic compares. It currently works with SQL Server 2000/2005/2008, MySQL, and Oracle.

You can download SubSonic 2.1 from CodePlex. Check out the SubSonic website for more information, and also Rob and Eric‘s blogs.

Ten days until Edmonton's first BarCamp

barcampedmonton In just ten days, Edmonton’s tech community will converge at the World Trade Centre downtown for BarCampEdmonton1. Our recent DemoCamps have been extremely successful, and this is another great way to help the community grow:

Barcamp is an ad-hoc gathering of people in and interested in the Edmonton tech community. BarCamp is a series of loosely scheduled 20 minute presentations/discussions about whatever the community is interested in.

We are planning on having three different presentation rooms, as well as a couple of discussion rooms/areas, a “business” room, a “tech” room, and a “misc” room. Ultimately the topics will be whatever the community want them to be.

That’s the spirit of BarCamp – community driven!

I’ll be helping Eric setup free wireless at the venue. It’s a topic I’d love to talk more about – the state of wireless in Edmonton. I’d also love to talk more about Twitter, especially considering my talk at last month’s BarCampCalgary was very well received.

I’m hoping for a good turnout full of both new and familiar faces. Here are all the details:

WHO: You!
WHAT: Edmonton’s first BarCamp!
WHERE: Edmonton World Trade Centre, Floor 6 (600-9990 Jasper Avenue)
WHEN: Saturday, July 19th, 2008 from 10am until 4pm
WHY: Meet new people, learn new things, have a great time!

Unlike with DemoCamp, we need you to sign up for BarCamp. Do it soon before space runs out! Bring your ideas, your gadgets, and your enthusiasm. See you on the 19th!

Summize Conversational Search

Summize If you haven’t checked out Summize yet, you should. Summize is a conversational search engine. Their mission is to “search & discover the topics and attitudes expressed within online conversations.” I think Summize is a decent preview of what search engines of the future will look like, even though it only works with content from Twitter at the moment.

I got started with Summize for a very specific, practical reason. When Twitter took the instant messaging interface down (and track along with it) I lost my primary method of watching for replies. I turned to Summize for help, searching for my username so that I’d see when someone replied to me (turns out you can craft more specific searches using the Advanced Search). I continue to use this method today.

Eventually though, I started to use Summize for other things. Occasionally I’d see a tweet about something, such as the Los Angeles airport being shut down, but there was nothing in the news yet. A quick search on Summize for LAX gave me the answers from people on the ground. I remember “watching” Tiger Woods win the US Open on Summize (everything is in real-time…I just followed the commentary). And lately I use it to see what people are saying about Edmonton with the #yeg hashtag.

summize search

Another thing I’ve used Summize for is movie reviews from real people. Let’s say I want to go see Hancock. Of course I’d check a site like Rotten Tomatoes, but what I really want to know is what people thought as soon as they left the theatre – did it suck or not? They can share that via Twitter, simply by sending a text message, and thousands do. Summize allows me to focus on those tweets by searching for Hancock. For common searches like new movies, Summize highlights them as a “trending topic”, visible in the sidebar of the site.

It’s this last kind of search that gets me particularly excited about Summize (and intrigued by the possible Twitter acquisition of Summize). Summize Labs have taken things a step further with Realtime Twitter Sentiment. Now I don’t even have to look through results, I just enter “Hancock” and Summize tells me that the “overall sentiment on this topic is so-so.” Wonder how well it works? A search for Rogers Canada currently says the sentiment is bad (people are upset about the iPhone rate plans). Summize is like a dream come true for marketers – they can find out what people are saying about their product or service in realtime. Very cool stuff.

I think Summize rocks. It has a great interface, powerful features, and it’s fast. Summize makes it possible to find value in the noise created on Twitter.

Another troubled Newcap station rebrands: K-Rock is K-97 once again

K-97 Back in March, Edmonton radio station Big Earl 96.3 switched formats to become Capital FM. The station (CKRA-FM) had been in decline for quite a while, prompting owner Newcap to try something new. Now they’re at it again, this time with K-Rock (officially CIRK-FM). Tune your radio dial to 97.3 FM and you’ll now hear K-97, classic rock.

Here’s what the Edmonton Radio Ratings site had to say in the Spring 2008 book:

While the return of popular morning man Terry Evans was hailed as the second coming (or the fourth or fifth instalment of his career), the station seems to be suffering from the effects of past damage done.

Once a top-three station, the blame of K-Rock’s 11th place showing can’t be solely put on on Evans’ inability to spark interest in the station (he only works mornings, after all). Look instead to a demographic that’s aging, shrinking and growing tired of the same old.

According to Wikipedia, this rebranding is actually a return to the station’s roots:

CIRK signed on the air in 1979 as K-97 and became an Edmonton favourite during the 1980’s. In 1997 the station was rebranded as K-Rock.

More detailed rating information can be found here (PDF link). The next ratings should be released next week, on July 14th. Time will tell if the new (old) name has any effect on Edmonton radio listeners.

Ping.fm helps you post to many sites at once

ping.fm I’ve been using a new web application called Ping.fm for the last couple weeks. It’s a really simple service that helps you post to multiple social networking sites at the same time. Instead of updating Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, Tumblr, etc. separately, you can do it all at once with Ping.fm.

The best part about Ping.fm is that they expose a number of different interfaces for updating. That means you don’t need to have a browser window open in order to post! In addition to the website, there’s a mobile web app, an iPhone web app, a Facebook application, an iGoogle gadget, an API for developers, and IM support for AOL, Yahoo, and Google Talk. I find that I use the Google Talk and iPhone interfaces most often.

When you setup your services, you can assign them to three categories: Statuses, Micro-Blogs, and Blogs (for example, I have Twitter in Statuses and Micro-Blogs). Then when you post a message to Ping.fm, you choose which of these categories to update. Additionally, you can setup “custom triggers”. For example, I have #t setup. If I post something that starts with #t it will update Twitter, Tumblr, and Identi.ca. Finally, you can update specific services with “service triggers”, like @fb for Facebook.

The current list of supported services is: Bebo, Blogger, Brightkite, Custom URL, Facebook, FriendFeed, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, and Xanga. Three of these (Custom URL, FriendFeed, and Identi.ca) have been added in just the last ten days or so. The Ping.fm team is obviously very actively adding functionality based on user feedback.

Another thing I like about Ping.fm is the API. I recently requested an application key, and while I haven’t really played with it yet, I intend to replace some existing update code I have with calls to Ping.fm. I suspect there will be quite a few third party tools and services that make use of Ping.fm’s API. Having an API is key for a service like this.

I’m really happy with Ping.fm, but it’s not perfect. Here are a few wishes and things I’d like to see improved:

  • None of the checkboxes work in Opera. I’ve never seen this before on any other website, and it’s really annoying.
  • I’d like to be able to set a “prefix” for Facebook. By default, my updates are just mashed together, as in “Mack Tempted to take a nap :)” but I’d like to specify a prefix of ” – ” to get “Mack – Tempted to take a nap :)”. Same goes for LinkedIn.
  • I really wish Ping.fm had an SMS gateway. Then I could update via text message. I wrote my own code with Twitter’s API to accomplish this for now.
  • Would be cool to have a setting to turn off URL shortening by default.
  • I’d love to see OpenID support too.
  • Support for IM statuses as services would be wicked – Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, and Skype would be at the top of my list.

I’ve seen a few people write about Ping.fm, wishing that it had a way to aggregate your friends messages at all of the supported services. I hope they don’t go down that route – that’s what I use FriendFeed for. I’d rather Ping.fm stay focused on posting, not reading.

If you’d like to give Ping.fm a shot, use the beta code “pingyoulater”. I think these codes change from time to time, so if that doesn’t work, search Summize for a new one.