Did you shutdown today?

Post ImageI sure as heck didn’t. Like Engadget asked back in February, “how about we all decide to hold our breath for 24 hours, too?” In case you hadn’t heard, today was International Shutdown Day. Yup, they wanted us to not use computers for a day. Fat chance! Engadget explains:

It seems that a pair of men named Dennis Bystrov and Michael Taylor — bitter victims of the bubble, we suspect — want to perform a social experiment wherein people all over the world boycott computers for an entire day; willing participants are encouraged to click a pledge of sorts on the International Shutdown Day website promising to forgo any and all PC usage on March 24th.

Heh, like that was gonna happen. This is the funny part though:

Still, we’ve no qualms with operating in a much greener fashion, but considering that the protesters’ website is actually up and running on a power-sucking machine as we speak, it makes you wonder who the real hypocrites are, no?

So much for dedication to their cause!

Read: Engadget

I like focused gadgets

Post ImageIt’s very easy to get excited about cool new gadgets and devices, isn’t it? I am guilty of it. Thing is, these gadgets are often far too complex. Their creators often try to cram in too many wonderful features. It happens in software too, but I think the effect is far more noticeable with physical devices. I doubt I will stop getting so excited about new gadgets anytime soon, but I have been thinking about it, and the devices I appreciate most are focused on doing one thing well.

It’s kind of like the 37signals philosophy:

We’re focused on executing on the basics beautifully.

I wish more gadget makers made that their goal. A camera is a camera. A media player is a media player. A phone is a phone. Why do they have to be combined into one? Usually what ends up happening is that the device suffers. Take my phone for example. It’s great at making and receiving calls, and sending text messages back and forth. As a still or video camera, it totally sucks. And as an audio player? It’s not even worth the trouble.

My camera on the other hand, is wonderful. It’s a Canon Digital Rebel, and it does one thing and one thing only: it takes photos very well. Unlike my phone, which had to be designed to support the extra features (so maybe a little thicker for the camera, an extra button to start the video, etc), my camera is a focused device. Every feature is there specifically to help me take photos. And I appreciate it.

I know the idea is that you could carry less stuff if you had one gadget that did everything, but I’d rather have separate gadgets that do their jobs very well than one gadget that does a bunch of jobs poorly. Maybe one day we’ll have a gadget that can morph into a contextually appropriate focused gadget…but that’s a long way off.

What we have is a failure to communicate!

Post ImageTom Webster of Edison Media Research was on hand at the recent Corporate Podcasting Summit in London, where he talked about a new research report that shows podcasting isn’t growing much. There’s been a lot of discussion about the findings, but I don’t think they are cause for concern. I think Tim Bourquin has nailed it:

I think the survey is flawed from the get-go Frank because if they used the word “podcast” I guarantee most of the general public assumed they were asking “if they had ever listened to one of those homemade talk shows on an iPod.”

So I think it truly is a failure to communicate what we’re talking about. We all still have a lot of work to do.

Ever since day one, we’ve had an “Other Names and Similar Activities” blurb on Podcast Spot. I had an entire slide devoted to the name issues in my Podcasting & Marketing presentation back in January. I blogged about the issue again in February.

Podcasting is just a name. A word we use to refer to an idea or technology or process. That doesn’t mean it’s the only word to refer to those things, or even the best word. And it’s certainly not the first word that will come to mind for the vast majority of the population.

Have you ever listened to or watched a podcast? Wrong question to ask most people. You need to ask them in such a way that you don’t have to use the word podcast. I don’t think the word “podcast” will ever become as widely adopted as the word “blog” has.

If you take a look at the presentation slides (PDF link), stop and think about slide #5. I think I understand what they are going for with the second point, “Podcasting does NOT refer to the downloading of individual MP3s or songs,” but it doesn’t work. It just makes the whole thing confusing. Are they saying a podcast can’t be an MP3? I don’t get it…that’s what the individual being surveyed will probably be thinking.

Podcasting is all about communication. It doesn’t matter what we call it though.

Read: Frank Barnako

The 10 Most Connected Cities

Believe it or not, most people think that North America is the best place in the world in terms of Internet access. They are shocked when I tell them that in comparison to the rest of the world, we suck! Internet access here is expensive, and not nearly as quick as in other places. Finally, there’s a list to back up what I’ve been saying (via WiFi Edmonton):

Through a blend of private and public investment, a number of cities have had remarkable success in providing almost complete connectivity throughout their city limits. For residents in these cities, high-speed access is available almost anywhere and at any time, and often for below-market rates.

Number one is Seoul, and the example I always use, Hong Kong, is number four. The top 5 spots are Asian cities, Stockholm is number six, and at number seven is the first North American entry and it’s not even a city; it simply says, “Various Municipal Projects, United States.” The only other North American entry is Silicon Valley at number ten (even though Mountain View is included in the number seven entry too!)

Clearly, we have a long way to go in making North America the most (and best) connected place in the world.

Read: DailyWireless

Clean & Hackable URLs

Post ImageA week ago, Roland Tanglao reiterated his love for clean URLs. Or perhaps more accurately, his hatred of dirty (?) URLs. Here’s what he wrote:

URLs with question marks, ampersands, etc should be banished to the Web 1.0 h*ll where they belong. I’ve been preaching the clean URL gospel for years but if I see one more WordPress blog with “?p” or one more Drupal site with “?q”, I’ll scream 🙂 Seriously if your webhost or your tech gal/guy can’t figure out how to use clean URLs, find somebody else. It’s 2007!

I couldn’t agree more. Here’s an example of what he means:

Dirty: http://example.com/articles.html?articleid=123&tag=rss
Clean: http://example.com/articles/123/rss

Clearly I prefer the second one, and I’m guessing you do too. I’m going to go one step further though, and say that not only should URLs be clean, they should be hackable! What does that mean? Let me give you an example:

http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com/episodes/FF7962/license
http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com/episodes/FF7962
http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com/episodes
http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com

The first link is for the licensing information of an episode. All you’ve got to do is “hack” off the end and you get the episode itself. One more hack and you get all the episodes. And finally, you’re left with the entire podcast. It’s pretty logical right? And it would be trivial to replace the episode ID with another one, or /episodes with /tags, etc. That’s what I mean by hackable – they are easily modified to get you where you want to go.

Here’s another example:

http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com/episodes/archive/2007/02/24

That will show you all episodes for February 24th, 2007. The URL is readable, and immediately you understand what it is doing. What if you want a different day? Replace 24 with something else. Just the month? Hack off the 24. You get the idea.

Clearly I am drinking the clean & hackable URLs koolaid, and as a result Podcast Spot has nothing but clean, hackable URLs. If you’re working on a web project, consider doing the same – your users will thank you for it.

10 Reasons To Love Opera (the browser)

Post ImageI love Opera, I really do. It’s an awesome web browser, and it’s a shame that it doesn’t have more market share (most stats put it around 1% or less). I could go on for days about the many different reasons that Opera rocks, but here are my favorite ten (in no particular order, based on the latest version, 9.1):

Paste and go (Screenshot)
This one really shows the attention to detail that the Opera team has. How many times have you copied a URL to the clipboard, only to go paste it in the address bar of your browser? Then you have to click go or press enter. With this handy feature, Opera saves you that second step. As the name suggests, you can paste and go all in one step!

Instant back and forward
I don’t think this is listed as an official feature, but it should be! In IE or Firefox, clicking back will usually take a few seconds for the previous page to reload – not so in Opera. As soon as you press back (or forward) the previous (or next) page is instantly there. Firefox is pretty good at this too, but Opera is quite simply superior.

Highlighted Text Context Menu (Screenshot)
As soon as you highlight some text in Opera, a context menu appears with a bunch of useful commands at the ready. Again, it saves that extra step of right clicking after you have highlighted text. It might sound inconsequential, but it makes a huge difference.

Top 10 Sites (Screenshot)
Everyone has a set of websites they regularly visit. Opera is smart enough to keep track of these sites, and gives the ten most visited sites a special and easy-to-access menu. It’s kind of like automatic favorites. Very handy.

Notes
After experiencing this feature, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it. Ever keep notepad open while browsing so you can copy things you might need later? No need to do so with Opera! Highlight any text and you can then turn it into a note, or you can manually create a note with whatever text you want. Notes are associated with a website too, so you can quickly see your notes for a given page. Incredibly useful feature.

Better Tabbed Browsing
All modern browsers have tabbed browsing, but none of them do it as well as Opera does. For one thing, tabs are ordered (say you have three tabs, A, B, C. Click on A, then click on C, then close C. Opera goes back to A, the other browsers go to B). Again with the attention to detail, right click on any link and you have two options: open in a new tab (which brings it to the front) or open in a new background tab (which does not). Awesome.

Search Keywords & Create Search (Screenshot)
IE and Firefox handle search engines pretty well (with the search box I mean), but it’s pretty much up to the site developer to help the browsers recognize the search engine. Not so in Opera. Right click in any search box and choose “Create search…” and automagically you have a new entry in your search engines. You can also associate keywords with engines. So for dictionary.com, you might associate “d”. Then you can type “d word” in the address bar, and Opera will take you there.

Mouse Gestures
Of all my favorite features, this one takes the most getting used to. Essentially mouse gestures allow you to navigate or modify the window using only the mouse. Just another small feature that can save you a bunch of time.

Trash Can
Have you ever closed a tab, only to realize a few moments later that you still need it? In other browsers you have to try to get back to the page again. In Opera, just click on the Trash Can, and choose the tab you closed. So damn handy.

Site Preferences
This feature gives you the ability to modify preferences only for a given site. Want to turn off javascript just for one site? Opera lets you do it. Not a feature you’ll use daily, but it can definitely come in handy.

Like I said, I could go on! If you like what you see, you should definitely try Opera. It’s completely free, and there are no advertisements inside (much older versions had a banner). And if you’re afraid your favorite sites won’t load correctly, don’t worry. It’s increasingly rare to find a site that doesn’t work correctly in Opera. And actually, Opera is the only Acid2-compliant browser for Windows!

In fact, I have just one problem with Opera – my del.icio.us page loads incredibly slowly. I have no idea why, but I’d like to get it fixed. If you have any ideas, let me know!

UPDATE: It appears Opera simply doesn’t like my huge list of tags. I changed my del.icio.us preferences to display as a cloud, and only tags with at least 5 items, and now it loads very quickly!

Read: Opera

Notes for 3/18/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

Oilers lose ten straight

Post ImageJust got back from the Oilers game. The Blues were in town tonight, complete with a bunch of ex-Oilers like Dvorak and Brewer (both of whom got points tonight). The Oil came into the game having lost their last nine games, and I was hoping my presence would stop the streak from going to ten. It didn’t.

You can read a game recap here. Dickson scored the tickets from a friend, and they were excellent – section 136, row 3. I don’t think I have ever sat that close before. We were right near the attacking zone blue line. It’s quite different seeing someone get crunched on the boards when you’re that close, let me tell you!

We also had club access, which is basically a mini-concourse downstairs. The club access is really nice because the bathrooms and bars are far less busy than those on the main concourse. We didn’t see any food vendors though, so maybe you still have to go back upstairs for that.

Anyway, we lost in overtime (I was hoping to see a shootout). That makes ten straight, just one away from matching the franchise record. The only positives now are seeing the young guys get some experience (and goals).

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Wi-Fi Heartbeat

Post ImageOh man I totally need to get me one of these! BoingBoing posted yesterday about a DIY project that can give you a “sixth sense for wireless networks.” Here’s the project description:

This project is for a small electronic unit that allows the user to sense the presence and relative signal strength of wireless hotspots. It can be worn as a pendant or carried in a pocket. It is “always on” and communicates the presence and signal strength of an in-range hotspot by way of sequences of pulses – like a heartbeat you can feel. The stronger and faster the “heartbeat”, the stronger the wireless signal detected.

Just imagine walking around a city’s downtown with this thing on…it would never stop pulsing! Very cool idea though.

Read: BoingBoing

Video Stuff: Vlog Blind Date, Mesh 07 Contest, Soar & Wow

Post ImageHere are a few interesting video-related posts I have come across in the last day or so:

Vlog Blind Date
This is a really funny and well done video featuring Justine Ezarik. She goes on a blind date with…it’s a surprise! You have to watch to find out. The video was made to promote JumpCut from the looks of things (and with their help, evidently).

The mesh Video Contest
Want to go to mesh for free? Have a talent for creating great video? Then this contest is for you! All you’ve got to do is submit a video that captures the essence of Web 2.0 – “whatever that means to you.” If you win, you get flown to Toronto for free, with the hotel and conference tickets all taken care of. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

Comparing “Soar” and “Wow”
In this post, Long Zheng takes a look at two commercials: one for Windows XP, and one for Windows Vista. It’s quite amazing how different they are. While both are good, I think the Windows XP one is better.