Squeezing My Mind Grapes

He Says While Posting On His Blog

2012-01-28T16:46:00.001-06:00

Here's something a gadget geek like me doesn't want to encounter on his travels on the Innertubes:

Study Finds Growing Up WIth Gadgets Has a Downside: Social Skill Impairment

The first thing that popped into my head reading this was, "But I didn't grow up with a lot of gadgets and I have terrible social skills." But I'm a gadget geek now. So I can't help but wonder if the reverse is more likely to be true. That is, perhaps poor social skills are part of what drives children to enjoy gadgets in the first place.

The Daily Show on SOPA

2012-01-19T11:51:00.000-06:00

You could face as a website, up to five years for streaming ten pieces of music.

When did Congress turn into Ogre?

What kind of douchebag steals other people's copyrighted work anyway?

Damn you Bob Newhart!

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KO Computer

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Colber SuperPAC Transfer Activated!

2012-01-13T10:24:00.000-06:00

I believe I have a pure cash erection.

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Indecision 2012 - Colbert Super PAC - Coordination Resolution with Jon Stewart

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Stephen Colbert on the New Hampshire Primary

2012-01-10T09:57:00.000-06:00

Ah, perspective.

Remember, The Magna Carta was written by angry, rich men who believed their leader was an illegitimate usurper.

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How the Sausage Doesn't Get Made

2012-01-06T10:50:00.000-06:00

The thing that I love about The Daily Show is the way it just has a knack for encapsulating everything that frustrates me about the absurdity of politics. Last night for example....

Look at it Stewart! Look at it! This is how the sausage doesn't get made!

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So Where Do I Go From Here?

2011-12-03T22:47:00.001-06:00

I haven't written much lately. Well, at least not on this blog. My Tumblr blog on the other hand has been fairly active by comparison. And of course I'm extremely active on on Twitter, somewhat less active on Google Plus, and I keep in touch with my family through Facebook. So where does Blogger fit in? In the past it was a no-brainer to put whatever I wanted on my blog but now there are so many more choices, many of them more convenient and faster than blogging. Twitter is amazing in this respect and Tumblr fills the gap nicely when Twitter falls short. Tumblr even holds its own nicely against Blogger in terms of longer form writing, something I never really did much anyway....

So here I am with my old blog writing a post wondering if it will be my final one.

Although the new revamped interface for Blogger does look cool once you get used to it. Maybe I'll play around with it a bit....

A President's Job is Hard...

2011-07-28T01:13:00.003-05:00

You're the most powerful man in the world but everyone wants a piece of you. You start out able to do no wrong but public opinion turns and you can't seem to do anything right.

Before—2008:

From Squeezing My Mind Grapes

And after—2010:

From Spock Is Not Impressed

Remember When We Thought Computers Were Used to Educate People?

2011-07-26T16:04:00.003-05:00

From the bowels of a box of stuff:

The disks were gone but the box graphics sure are pretty.

Endorsed by Alex Trebek!

Increase your SAT scores by 200 points!

Success Pack!

Step by Step. So many CDs.

A curriculum that covers third grade through college.

Knowing big words makes you rich!

Testimonials. (Which makes me wonder if anyone who actually used this program are actually reading this; if so, how was it?)

It even comes with its own diplomas!

Get a load of those system requirements. Note how much more memory the Mac version requires and the long list of add-ons required for the PC version. But also notice how much more powerful a modern smartphone is than a PC or Mac of that era.

Palm Pre Makes Yahoo's List of Phones Doomed to be Collectibles

2011-07-22T01:43:00.003-05:00

The most interesting thing about this piece is that it lays the blame for the Pre's demise squarely at HP's feet. And I think they're right. Palm was putting out a new update every month, slowly but surely improving the Pre by improving webOS. And then Palm sold itself to HP and nothing. There was a lot of talk and a lot of promises but ultimately those promises were broken as HP made webOS the centerpiece of their mobile strategy but showed little interest in actually making new phones. And the frequent updates which Palm had been so proud of dried up.

The Pre's immediate successor, the Pre 2 is only available on Verizon and sales people tend to steer people away from it. The Veer, a tiny little phone which combines the best features of the Pre and Pixi phones with some nice, fast hardware is only available on AT&T and is similarly neglected. The Pre 3 which was announced in January has yet to debut anywhere.

5 Best Cell Phones Doomed to be Collectible - Yahoo! Shopping

The Horrors of Presidential Primary Season

2011-06-15T16:39:00.002-05:00

The election season viewed through the lens of the 24 hour network news cycle becomes a horror movie. That sounds about right....

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Firefox Aurora and its New Multi-channel Approach

2011-05-21T23:22:00.004-05:00

With its 5.0 Beta, Firefox has debuted a new feature designed to speed up its own development to counter Google Chrome's rapid release schedule. With it's new Aurora release Firefox allows users to easily switch between three different channels: Development which is the normal version of the software, Beta which includes new features which are still being tested; and Aurora which is the latest nightly build of Firefox which can be expected to be unstable but also full of interesting new features.

It's all credibly slick and cool. Just select About Firefox in the Help Menu which tells you your channel and click Change to select a new channel. You select your new channel and click on Apply and Update and Firefox installs a new version of itself and restarts.

But I have to wonder if this is the right approach for Firefox. As slick as Firefox's channel switcher is, I prefer Chrome's approach of having separate installs of the browser for different channels. With Chrome's Canary Build, you can have your cake and eat it too. One safe, always up to date browser and another separate browser with cutting edge, experimental technology which will occasionally crash. And one can have dozens of pages open in tabs and another can open to just one or to your start page.

Aurora on the by contrast feels like an all or nothing proposition. You can switch between channels easily within one install of the browser but what happens if the latest nightly Aurora build is unstable? Will there be a way to switch to a more stable channel without bringing up the About Firefox box? I hope so.

And I think that Firefox with its more powerful extensions can benefit even more by having two separate browser installations. It is fairly common for early Betas of Firefox to be incompatible with many extensions. Having a "stable" installation of Firefox with all your favorite extensions and a second "experimental" installation which runs alongside it would probably be something that most Firefox users would enjoy.

While I realize that I could probably set this up myself using Firefox's Profile Manager, that tool is on its way out. And in any case it's probably overkill for most users. It would be much easier to have a check box that says "Maintain Separate Aurora Installation" or something like that in the About Firefox box.

Good News for PalmOS Fans

2010-11-23T15:14:00.003-06:00

For a while it looked like Palm had turned its back on PalmOS, the operating system which had powered its PDAs and smartphones for year. And to a certain extent they have but the situation may not be as dire as die-hard PalmOS fans had thought.

With the latest version of webOS, version 2.0, Palm has removed the PalmOS ROM from the phone which is the actual code which the Classic PalmOS emulator uses to run PalmOS apps on webOS phones like the Palm Pre and Pixi. It was a serious enough problem that MotionApps, the company which makes Classic essentially threw in the towel and stopped selling Classic. But it turns out that with a little digging and command line hacking, that the PalmOS ROM can be installed on a phone with webOS 2.0.

Two interesting points come out of this development. One, longtime PalmOS users who have already purchased Classic will be able to continue using once they upgrade to webOS 2.0 devices like the Pre 2 or after their older devices are automatically upgraded to webOS 2. The other interesting point is that since the PalmOS ROM is clearly separate from the Classic emulator, then creating a PalmOS emulator for webOS might be a lot easier than people realize. Even if MotionApps stopped selling Classic, it should be possible for someone else (perhaps even Palm themselves) to create an emulator for PalmOS apps.

While I wouldn't expect to see a lot of PalmOS emulators coming out any time soon, it's an interesting thing to note that since Palm is putting out the PalmOS ROM themselves through their webOS Doctor software, it should help keep PalmOS die hards going while they search for webOS equivalents to their beloved PalmOS apps.

Caught in the Act

2010-11-15T11:11:00.003-06:00

On last Thursday's Community, a furry little paw grabs Annie's purple pen:

A second later, it's gone:

Let's go to the video:

Also available in animated .gif format.

Screenshots From The Aerodynamics of Gender

2010-11-12T21:42:00.003-06:00

I loved Abed's Terminator vision in last week's episode. Here are some screen shots:

Palm Drops Classic, Why It Matters.

2010-11-07T13:45:00.009-06:00

Two weeks ago MotionApps, the developers of the Classic PalmOS emulator for webOS, announced that they were discontinuing Classic due to a dispute with Palm:

We are sad to announce that Palm has removed Classic’s ROM from the new webOS 2.0 device ROM which will result in Classic not working if utilized with Palm’s new webOS 2.0.

This is contrary to our agreement with Palm and was done without our approval or consent. Based on this action, MotionApps will immediately stop selling Classic. However, as a courtesy to our clients, we will continue to support existing Classic customers on webOS 1.x for the immediate future.

It's certainly a disappointing development for users of old school PalmOS apps like myself. But does it really matter? The truth is that I already have webOS replacements for most of my PalmOS apps. But a lot of these webOS apps are inferior to their PalmOS counterparts. Additionally, there are many PalmOS apps which still do not have webOS equivalents. And a lot of the PalmOS apps which have transitioned to webOS are still not ready for prime time. Finally, a lot of developers who made popular PalmOS apps are simply not interested in developing for webOS because its development tools are not mature enough yet.

While Palm has worked hard to foster developer interest, they are facing an uphill battle. Currently the webOS App Catalog has roughly 4300 apps. Add in the apps in Palm Web and Beta feeds and that number jumps to well over 5000. But Apple's iOS has 250,000 apps and Google's Android has 140,000 apps. And this isn't just a matter of quantity over quality, there are many unique and powerful apps which are not available to webOS users. A lot of this stems from limitations in the APIs of webOS and in the hardware of webOS phones. And that's all the more reason why Palm needs the Classic as a bridge between the limitations of webOS and the power of PalmOS. More than 30,000 PalmOS apps can be run in Classic.

Ultimately, it does Palm no good to further alienate a group of developers which were already upset with the move from PalmOS to webOS and who are attracted by the much greener pastures of Android and iOS. MotionApps has handed over the Classic source code and intellectual property rights to Palm, so Palm has all it needs to restore and support Classic themselves. There would seem to be no reason why they couldn't put it back in a future version of webOS.

So it makes a lot of sense for Palm to support Classic. They already go out of their way to support webOS and Homebrew developers. And they are working on tools to allow developers to build "hybrid" apps which will use both traditional C/C++ code and the HTML/Javascript code that powers webOS apps. A PalmOS emulator like Classic, could be another tool for Palm to get apps on to their platform.

Classic wasn't perfect. It was slow and it was the only app on webOS that could actually crash my phone. And using felt like living in a mobile computing ghetto—PalmOS apps ran inside Classic and couldn't be used as cards and you couldn't copy and paste between PalmOS and webOS apps. But it did allow access to a great number of apps which otherwise wouldn't exist for my phone or which are better than the apps which are available to me.

Now that Palm has full control of Classic and a perpetual license to PalmOS, they can fix all that if they want. They can make PalmOS apps run seamlessly as cards alongside their webOS counterparts. They can make it possible to copy and paste between PalmOS and webOS apps. They can even "skin" PalmOS apps to make them look more like webOS apps. For that matter why not add a PalmOS section to the webOS App Catalog where users can install legacy PalmOS apps? But all this will all take time and money—two things that I don't think Palm wants to spend on PalmOS. Having said that, Palm is still developing webOS anyway and it makes more sense for Palm to expand its capabilities instead of contract them.

I've seen a lot of comments about DOS and Windows XP bandied about in discussions about Classic. And Microsoft's history of support for Windows XP is actually a pretty good example of how to handle aging software—an example which Palm would be wise to follow. Up until last month you could still buy a PC with Windows XP preinstalled nine years after it debuted. (And you can still "downgrade" a PC with Windows 7 to XP.) Microsoft supported Windows XP with Service Pack 2 until July 31, 2010 and still supports Windows XP with Service Pack 3 to this day. For almost a decade, Microsoft has supported Windows XP with the result that it remained their most successful software program even long after it became obsolete.

Now compare this to what has happened with Classic. On October 19, Palm introduced webOS 2.0. By October 25, MotionApps withdrew Classic from the webOS App Catalog accusing Palm of breaking its agreement with them. That's not the kind of orderly transition from one platform to another that engenders user or developer confidence.

While Classic represents a tiny subset of the webOS user experience, there seems to be little point to removing a useful capability from it at a time when webOS is struggling to gain acceptance. The openness and freedom of the webOS experience is one of the things that distinguishes it from its competitors. At a time when Apple was trying to outlaw Jailbreaking and Google was challenging the legality of rooting Android, Palm actually made it easier to hack your phone. And Classic represented an example of that freedom—the ability to install and run "obsolete" software which you still found useful. For me the bottom line is that if I wanted a handset maker telling me what software I can and cannot use on my phone, I'd have gotten an iPhone.

With webOS 2.0, MotionApps drops Classic PalmOS Emulator in Palm's lap | PreCentral.net

Bible Readers for webOS

2010-11-01T23:37:00.005-05:00

I had a very religious upbringing and I still go to church regularly. And I've carried some form of bible reading software with me since I installed a the original OliveTree BibleReader on my Palm III back in 1999. So when I got my Palm Pre, I was very interested in looking for Bible readers on webOS. With the the Pre entering its seventeenth month of existence, the development of software in this area gives a good overview of the growth and lack of growth in webOS.

I have tried to take a look at the various Bible apps which I've encountered on webOS and will review them in turn. While this software round up will not be exhaustive I will try to be reasonably thorough.

webOZ Mobile Apps has created a number of readers for various translations of the Bible, each of which is sold separately (for $1.49-2.99). In addition, webOZ sells other Bible study tools like dictionaries which can be accessed from their Bible readers. Each of these apps are simple, fast, and intuitive. The Scrolling is fast and smooth. Tapping on an arrow on the lower left corner of the screen activates an auto-scroll function. To the right is an arrow which scrolls a page at a time. And in the middle is an options button which drops down a convenient menu for highlighting text, bookmarks, copying text, email, and search.

Each reader presents the user with a clean, friendly screen which makes it easy to drill down to the book you are looking for. Chapters are a little different as they appear on a drop down grid at the top of the screen once you've chosen your book. Verses however are awkward, you can't drill down to the verse you are looking for, you have to scroll through your chapter to find it. Searching is fast and intuitive (the app begins to search as soon as you begin to type) but it requires an active connection to the Internet to work.

The fact that every translation is sold separately is both good and bad. On the bright side, you can take advantage of webOS's native multitasking to run multiple translations side by side. On the other hand, you do get the uneasy feeling that you are being nickeled and dimed by having to buy each translation. (But they are cheap, so it's not too bad.) More worrying is the fact that webOZ simply does not have that many translations available for purchase. I'm Latino and I grew up using the Spanish language 1960 Reina Valera translation a lot and as far as I know webOZ only offers the 1909 version which uses older sounding language. When I'm reading in English, webOZ presents me with the opposite problem, they have the older King James version but not the 1963 Modern King James version.

Overall, webOZ presents a nice stable of clean, easy to use Bible translations for the casual churchgoer. But more serious Bible students should probably look into something a little more powerful.

YouVersion (simply called "Bible" in the webOS App Catalog) started out as little more than app wrapper for mobile version of the website of the same name but recently their Bible reader has improved greatly both in terms of looks and usability. It's tight integration with the YouVersion website is potentially very useful for serious Bible students.

YouVersion presents a nice, clean home screen which allows access to wide variety of Biblical translations. Once inside, it is easy to switch between translations. There is also an attractive dark theme for low light situations. It is easy to drill down by book and by chapter but as with webOZ it is impossible to drill down to specific verse, except by searching for it. Search is fairly quick but noticeably slower than with the webOZ Bible readers which search as you type.

Tapping on a verse allows you do a wide variety of things with the text, including copy it to the clipboard. But most other functions—even creating a bookmark—require you to have an account with YouVersion. But you can email the text and look at Contributions (essentially crowd sourced notes about the verse you've selected) made by YouVersion users. If you do have a YouVersion account, you can add Contributions of your own and share them with other users.

YouVersion is a fairly powerful Bible app but a lot of that power is due to its tight integration with the YouVersion website. So while hardcore Bible students will likely find it to be a valuable tool, more casual users might not be willing to commit to joining yet another website.

Bible Reader Plus ($1.49, free version available) is an app wrapper for the mobile version of excellent BibleGateway website which boasts "over 100 versions and 50 languages." But it does have a few interesting tricks. Once you've selected your verse, what you can do with it depends on the format of the Bible. The bibles come in three formats: web, database, and audio. Web bibles can only be copied and pasted like ordinary text you come across on the web. But text database and audio bibles can also be highlighted and shared online through, Facebook, Email, and SMS. And audio bibles can also, as the name implies, read the text back to you.

Bible Reader Plus also has tools for creating a Bible study plan with reminders, journals, and reports. Its web bibles also allow you to type out the book, chapter, and verse you are looking for and drill down to it which is a feature that other readers lack. Another nice feature is that it can open multiple cards so you can run several different translations side by side.

The biggest advantage of Bible Reader Plus is the sheer number of translations that it offers. But its many translations have an inconsistent look and feel and not all of its features can be accessed in every translation. As a result, Bible Reader Plus works best as a supplemental tool for serious Bible students or as a tool for casual users who occasionally look up a single verse.

BibleZ (Free) allows you download XML databases for a variety of translations of the Bible. The databases are quite large and don't always download nicely over 3G connections. They do however download well over WiFi . As with the webOZ offerings, you may not be able to find your favorite translation for BibleZ.

If you can, BibleZ offers the most attractive interface of the Bible readers I am reviewing here and allows you to switch between translations and drill down by book and by chapter easily via cleanly laid out menus and selection screens. As with most of the apps in this roundup, there is no way to drill down to a specific verse unless you do a search. And BibleZ is a little slower than the other apps to jump from its search results to a specific verse.

When BibleZ goes into landscape mode its interface elements disappear which is a nice feature when you just want to read. BibleZ also includes quick access to your reading history, notes, and bookmarks. It also allows you to tap on a verse to add a bookmark, note, highlight, and to either copy or share a verse through email or SMS.

All these features make BibleZ a very attractive and powerful app. The only thing holding it back is is the number of tranlations—BibleZ has a lot of them but it simply can't match the number of translations that online bible based apps like YouVersion and Bible Reader Plus boast.

Simple Bible (Free) Like BibleZ, Simple Bible depends on databases to load its biblical translations. Simple Bible has fewer databases and a clunkier interface. When you first start Simple Bible, it shows a splash screen with "What's New" and "Donate" buttons. This screen can be disabled, as can the the pop up encouraging you to download the Ten Commandments companion app. Once these screens are disabled, Simple Bible presents you with a list of your Bibles and a link to download more within the app. As with BibleZ, the databases are large and best downloaded over a WiFi connection.

Once you have opened your bible, a button toggles between the Old and New Testaments and menus allow you to select books and chapters quickly but you have to scroll to your verse or search for it. Bookmarking is rudimentary and clumsy. But Simple Bible does have one nice feature. You can tap on the screen and all the interface elements disappear, allowing for distraction free reading in either portrait or landscape mode.

Overall Simple Bible is something of a misnomer, while it is a nice free app it is also clunky and tends to get in your way more than it helps.

OliveTree BibleReader is an old school PalmOS program which runs well inside the Classic PalmOS emulator. I saved this program for last not because it's the best (even though it is) but because Palm's recent decision to stop supporting Classic means that the days when webOS users can run PalmOS apps on their phones may be numbered. Nevertheless, Classic still runs on the Palm Pre, Pixi, Pre Plus, and Pixi Plus for the moment at least so I'm including OliveTree in this roundup.

BibleReader uses databases for its biblical translations which much be purchased and installed separately from the reader in Classic. Some of these translations are free but others can be quite expensive. But OliveTree leverages the maturity of PalmOS to create an app with the kind of power and versatility which blows away the webOS apps in this roundup. In addition to bibles, BibleReader can also open commentaries, dictionaries, ebooks, maps, and more.

Every aspect of BibleReader can be customized with preferences for desktops, fonts, toolbars, and scrolling all of which can be tweaked by the user. You'll notice most of the apps in this roundup have one format the verses while YouVersion uses a different format which groups verses into paragraphs. As far as I can tell, the verse format cannot be changed in any of the webOS apps. But in OliveTree BibleReader this format can be changed.

Even though it looks pretty ugly next to the beautiful webOS apps in this roundup BibleReader is simply much more robust than its webOS competitors. It can remap the virtual buttons in Classic to control any of BibleReader's features. And BibleReader has a lot of features. Its bookmarks menu is better and easier to use than the bookmarking feature of any of the other apps in this roundup and it can be edited, saved, and exported as a file. It has menus for switching between translations and for quickly accessing your reading history.

BibleReader has a versatile and customizable verse chooser which allows you to drill down to a specific verse quickly and easily. And if you use one of the BibleReader desktops which support a "live toolbar" you can actually tap on any chapter or verse and select a new one from the verse chooser.

BibleReader's biggest weakness is that it was originally designed for a stylus-driven screen. Some of the screen elements are quite small and can require some pinching and zooming for large handed users. Similarly, the fact that it must run inside the Classic emulator is another weakness for BibleReader. Classic is slow to load and is about to be abandoned by Palm. So while in many respects BibleReader blows away the competition an one very critical respect, it isn't even in the race.

Conclusion: It's disappointing to see Palm abandon its Classic emulator so soon. While there are some good apps in this roundup, none of them have the power and flexibility of BibleReader and a similar story can be told about apps in other categories. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake for some who doesn't already have a large investment in PalmOS apps to try them right now.

As for the webOS apps, if it has your favorite biblical translation, BibleZ is your best bet. It has a great combination of flexibility and power. If you don't have a favorite biblical translation go with one of the webOZ translations. It's simple, fast, and perfect for casual users.

What We Need is an Ellis Island for the American Southwest

2010-11-01T19:14:00.000-05:00

One of the big issues in this year's mid-term election is immigration. As usual there is a lot of bluster on both sides of the issue. But one thing that I haven't seen is a lot of ideas for actually controlling immigration in an orderly manner. Conservatives, when not jumping up and down screaming "What part of illegal don't you understand!" tend to focus on enforcement, calling for border fences and putative action against employers who hire illegal aliens. Liberals tend to focus on legalizing illegal aliens, talking about "a path to citizenship" and using the word "comprehensive" a lot. And Libertarians call for open borders.

The problem with enforcement is that it doesn't work. While it is not a particularly well known fact, president Obama has actually increased the rate of deportation of illegal aliens and auditing of businesses which hire illegals. And yet the screams of the opponents of illegal immigration have never been louder. The truth is that we'll never be able to deport 12 million illegal immigrants and until we as a nation admit that, we'll never solve our problems with immigration.

That's where the liberal "path to citizenship" comes in; whether you call it an amnesty, a pardon or whatever; an illegal would come forward, pay a large fine, and "go to the back of the line" where after a period of time they would be eligible for citizenship. While it seems like a fairly good idea to liberal ears, the major problem with it is that the average Democratic politician doesn't have the guts to actually go through with it. For example the DREAM Act which was a relatively modest version of this idea (applying only to young people with no criminal records who agreed to join the military or attend college) was proposed but will not be voted on until the Senate's lame duck session largely because Democrats were afraid of blow back in the election. With large Republican gains and possibly an outright Republican takeover of one or both houses of Congress expected in tomorrow's election, it seems unlikely that the lemmings in Congress are likely to approve any kind of comprehensive immigration reform.

In the very unlikely case that our government does grow a spine however what's wrong with the open borders policy advocated by Libertarians? Nothing really except that it removes a lot of control from the government. And Americans would fear increased competition for low-paying jobs from cheap, illegal immigrant labor. And of course it makes it easier for terrorists, drug dealers, and other assorted nogoodnicks to get into the country. The truth is that no country has truly open borders and the United States will not be the first.

So here's my idea. Politicians love to idealize the past and pander to voters who long for the "good old days." So why not reach into the past and create another Ellis Island, this time for the American Southwest.

Basically, the United States would create one or more processing centers on its border with Mexico. They would be places where potential immigrants could go, get some papers and maybe a lead on a job. They could also be searched, vaccinated, and be subject to background checks. The upside would be that the United States would know who is entering the country and would be able to track them more easily if it needed to do so. It would also eliminate the dangerous crossings of the border which have led to the death of many illegal aliens. With thousands of illegal immigrants removed from the other parts of the border, drug runners and terrorists trying to cross the border would be more likely to stand out and border enforcement would be more likely to work.

This would be a small part or of a truly comprehensive reform of our immigration system. A single processing center on our southern border would not resolve the problem of immigrants overstaying their visas. And it certainly wouldn't do a thing about the 12 million illegals who are already here. But it could resolve the emotionally charged issue of people crossing our border illegally.

Of course this is all just spitting in the wind if our politicians continue to be either gutless talkers or mendacious panderers on this issue. And the current election cycle doesn't give me much hope. But if America's politicians do ever grow up and actually fix this problem, it would help if they'd look the story of Ellis Island for inspiration.

Community's Episode Within an Episode

2010-10-08T02:12:00.004-05:00

One of my favorite things about NBC's Community is the little jokes that it puts into the background. Last night they seem to have managed to squeeze an entire second episode into the background. Ostensibly about how the death of Pierce's mother brings all of Jeff's anxieties about his own mortality to the surface with a subplot about Britta and Annie's mutual competition and jealousy (as well as Shirley feeling left out by the two younger girls), it also includes at least six little ten to thirty second vignettes about a subplot with Abed helping a pregnant girl who goes into labor and catching a lot of grief from her hotheaded boyfriend.

Abed is seen in the background talking to a very agitated pregnant girl outside the study room. He touches her belly and places his head on it to listen to the baby.

Pregnant Girl follows Abed and grabs his arm as she looks around nervously while Britta in the foreground explains that the current Gulf oil spill is worse than 15 Exxon Valdez spills. When they are joined by a redheaded dude, the pregnant girl places herself in between Abed and the dude as some students laugh at Britta when one of them points out that "Nobody is on the other side of this issue."

Redheaded Dude takes issue with something that Abed says. He shoves Pregnant Girl out of the way, knocks a Slurpee out of Abed's hands and pushes him. Pregnant Girl grabs her belly and doesn't look well. Redheaded Dude tries to start a fight but Abed runs off. Pregnant Girl throws up a hand in disgust. All of this is going on behind Annie while she's talking about Pelicans.

Abed is sitting in the cafeteria talking to Pregnant Girl and Redheaded Dude as Ian joins Jeff for lunch in for foreground. Redheaded Dude shows some pretty angry body language. He gets up and tries to storm off but Pregnant Girl begins to have contractions. Abed and Redheaded Dude (the baby's father?) both help her limp away. She's clearly in labor at this point.

Pregnant Girl is seen behind an angry Shirley giving birth in a van. Abed has his back turned but it's clearly him assisting in the birth. Redheaded Dude is holding Pregnant Girl's hand.

Girl and Redheaded Dude are seen behind Shirley holding a new-born baby as Shirley asks Abed about his day.

The End of XMarks

2010-09-27T21:49:00.003-05:00

Today Marks announced that they will be closing their doors soon. They had a great bookmark syncing service for Firefox which made it possible to share bookmarks across multiple computers and access them on the web. It was great for people who had more than one computer (at and at work for example) or who simply wanted an easy way to import their browsers when they upgraded their computers. You could even access your bookmarks on your cellphone through XMarks' web interface.

It was a great, innovative service—real cloud computing at a time when most people had not even heard of the term. But their support page for the shutdown shows quite dramatically, why XMarks will cease operations soon. Simply put, the functionality of XMarks has been taken over by web browsers. Beginning with Chrome, all of the major web browsers today have added a syncing solution for bookmarks in recent months. While XMarks could also sync bookmarks between different web browsers, most people tend to pick a browser they like and stick with it.

That's certainly what I do. While I occasionally run different browsers just to compare and keep on top of what's out there, I've mostly stuck with Chrome over the last couple of years after having been a loyal Firefox user for many more years. And before that, I had stuck with Netscape for the better part of a decade. In fact, even though I have fond memories of XMarks, the truth is that I haven't used it in years. And even if I was a big browser slut, I could always use a social bookmarking service like Delicious without installing XMarks. So while the closing of XMarks seems surprising to me at first, perhaps it shouldn't have been much of a surprise.

But the end of XMarks causes more than just nostalgia; it also raises concerns. While it came into existence before "cloud computing" caught on, XMarks is essentially a cloud service. It stores your bookmarks on a remote server and allows you to download them on whatever computer you are using. XMarks is not the first cloud computing service to be shutdown after going out of business or being bought out but it will not be the last. And that is the issue that we all must grapple with as more and more of our data migrates from our computers and our control and onto remote servers which companies which may or may not be financially stable control.

This is going to keep happening. Cloud computing services will come and go and users will be forced to scramble to save their data when those services go. Ultimately, the only solution is that age old solution that we always seem to be too lazy to do; set up a backup plan and stick with it....

Will the New iPod Nano Be the New Wristwatch?

2010-09-17T01:01:00.012-05:00

The new iPod Nano hasn't been received as well as its predecessors by some people. But for others, it has been something of a revelation. The idea that you can actually replace your wristwatch with an MP3 is very appealing to a lot of nerds, myself included. In a way it represents the arrival of the legendary Dick Tracey watch. While a few companies have actually tried to create a high tech watch, most of them have been wildly impractical. They always too big, ugly, expensive, and lacked the battery life that people expect from a watch.

But perhaps the time has come for the iPod watch. I haven't worn a watch on a regular basis in over five years, because I always carry a phone or a PDA or an iPod around with me anyway and they all display the time. Moreover I have been "trained" to recharge modern gadgets on a regular basis, so battery life is less important to me. And the iPod Nano is small, looks great, and fulfills multiple needs: it can be a watch, an MP3 player, and it even has a pedometer and FM radio. More importantly it is something that I would use every day, I'm always listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks and this device is as good as any other for that purpose.

In fact the new iPod Nano has everything it needs to be an "invisible" piece of technology. Everything except Bluetooth. Why does it need Bluetooth? Because with Bluetooth, you can use wireless headphones with the iPod Nano. Without Bluetooth, you need to attach a set of head phones attach to long wires. And these wires would attach to your wrist which seems very awkward if you are going to be walking around with one of these things. You could also use a Bluetooth dongle, like the Nike+ sensor but that would make the pretty little Nano bulky and probably ugly, defeating the purpose of a Nano watch.

So close. Maybe a Nano pocket watch? Of course you could always switch it from a watch band to a key chain or even use it as a tie clip whenever the mood struck and that's pretty cool too.

Portable Apps—Now With Updates!

2010-09-17T01:01:00.007-05:00

Once upon a time, it was possible to just drop a program on to your hard drive and just run it. At worst you might have to unzip a group of files into a folder and just run your program. But these days software is so complicated that it insinuates on putting pieces of itself on every corner of your computer. This often makes our computers slow, buggy, and hard to upgrade.

A few years ago, some people began taking advantage of the growing sizes of USB flash drives to create a new generation of software which has been helping fight this trend. Portable Apps can be installed on a flash drive and allow you to work with your own files and your own applications on any computer without making any changes to the computer which you are using. It's perfect for people who need to borrow someone else's computer or for people who often find themselves having to schlep files from one computer to another. For that matter, it suddenly occurs to me that users of files synchronization services like Dropbox would do well to keep a few frequently used portable apps in their Dropbox and cut the flash drive out of the equation.

I always keep a flash drive with a Portable Apps installation on my key chain just in case I ever find myself needing to do something on a computer but don't have one with me. But my biggest problem with this—indeed with the very concept of Portable Apps—is that software gets updated from time to time and it's very hard to keep up with software updates, especially when you have dozens of portable apps which are constantly being updated.

Enter PortableApps.com Platform 2.0. The latest version of the Portable Apps software brings several interesting changes, like themes for customizing the look of the Portable Apps menu. But more importantly, you can now check for updates to your apps and Portable Apps will download and install them automatically. PortableApps.com Platform 2.0 is currently in Beta so caution is advised. In my own personal testing, PortableApps.com Platform 2.0 was able to update all but one (PNotes) of the thirty-nine applications on my my SD Card and another app (Notepad++) needed to update some of its plug-ins the first time it ran. Everything else ran perfectly. While it wasn't perfect (hence the "Beta" tag) this was certainly preferable to downloading and installing thirty-nine programs.

Overall, PortableApps.com Platform 2.0 is a welcome update to a very useful application platform which itself was already a welcome addition to any large flash drive.

PortableApps.com Platform 2.0 (Leo) Beta 5 Testing

The Fountain at Daley Plaza

2010-09-09T19:05:00.002-05:00

Facing City Hall

Facing the Picasso Sculpture

Rainy Day Flowers

2010-09-09T18:55:00.003-05:00

It's amazing what can get your attention sometimes. Last week it was this the water in these flowers following some morning rain.

Zooming out....

As Homebrew Reaches New Heights, webOS Needs to Grow to Accommodate It

2010-08-29T17:54:00.007-05:00

My Palm Pre is fourteen months old and I still can't find a phone that can replace it. While I have had plenty of opportunities to play with Sprint's Evo 4G and am eligible to upgrade to it; every time I handle it my reaction is the same. I love the hardware but can't help wishing that its Android operating system were half as elegant and as usable as the webOS.

One of the things that has kept me so enamored with webOS is the Homebrew developer community that sprang up around it shortly after the Pre was released. Is your phone too slow? You can overclock it. Need an easy way to block unwanted phone calls? There's a patch for that. Not happy with your Calendar? There's a patch for that too. Ever wish you could use your phone's flash LED as a flashlight? There are actually several patches for that. Not happy with the Pre's messaging app? There are fifty patches for that.

One recent example of the power of webOS Homebrew patches is Advanced Configuration for App Launcher. This patch is a mouthful and so is the list of improvements that it adds to webOS's spartan App Launcher. It also exposes how bad most modern phones are at the seemingly trivial task of launching apps.

Back in the days of PalmOS PDAs and phones like the Treo, the app launcher was a relatively simple application but in comparison to the webOS launcher it is far more powerful and sophisticated. It allowed users to easily organize their apps with categories that could be added, deleted, and renamed. And there were numerous third-party launchers available for PalmOS which provided users with a wealth of customization options.

The webOS launcher by contrast comes with a measly three unnamed screens with no visible way to create more. (I'm oversimplifying things for the sake of the argument since webOS's Universal Search feature does make it easy to drill down to your apps by typing out the first letter or two of their names but do keep in mind that in the case of the Palm Pre, the keyboard is often hidden beneath its slider which adds one more step to your searches.)

And the situation on other platforms, the situation is not much better. Android borrows a page from desktop computers by shoving all of its apps into its launcher but allowing you to clutter your phone's home screens with shortcut icons. And it further complicates things for users by allowing each handset maker and cell phone carrier to customize the Android user interface, tweaking things just enough so users can't always just jump to a new Android phone without relearning how to navigate through its UI. Apple's IOS4 is the most mature of the modern smartphone platforms and has the most advanced launcher. With multiple home screens, folders, and multi-tasking; IOS4 approaches the power and ease of use that PalmOS had almost a decade ago.

The situation with application launchers is indicative of the atmosphere in which the webOS Homebrew community is operating. Modern smartphone OSes are powerful but they have also thrown away a lot of little things that made older smartphones like the Treo so easy to use and powerful in their own right. In the year since the Pre came out, numerous webOS patches have been created just to improve the launcher: patches for creating, naming, and organizing launcher screens; for hiding and unhiding apps; and for making it easier to navigate through app screens. Advanced Configuration for App Launcher brings all of these tweaks under one roof. It allows you add and delete named pages to the launcher, creates tabs for easier navigation between screens, the list of features goes on and on—but more importantly; this patch makes it easy to turn features on and off; so your launcher can be as simple, or as complex as you wish.

While Advanced Configuration for App Launcher is a potent example of how a handful of hackers working in their spare time can build powerful software for webOS, it also points to the limitations of what Homebrew can accomplish. This patch has been a huge pain in the ass to install in recent days. And since it is being updated frequently, it has to be reinstalled a lot. And the author of the patch even warns you that it conflicts with a lot of other patches. In order to get Advanced Configuration for App Launcher to install, I had to use the Emergency Patch Recovery utility to uninstall all of my patches and reinstall them one by one, beginning with the problem patch.

While in the past I haven't minded wiping out all my patches—I even appreciated the opportunity to rethink how I use my phone and which patches I want to install. But I don't want to have to do this every time one of my patches is updated.

And this problem is becoming more common. As the number of webOS patches grows, the number of potential conflicts between individual patches grows. While webOS Internals and other Homebrew developers have worked hard to create tools to make the patching process as painless as possible, there is only so much that they can do. Sooner or later, it will become necessary for Palm or perhaps HP to get involved with the Homebrew community beyond just offering gentle encouragement.

Many webOS patches are simple hacks which should have been in webOS from day one. Palm should be looking at the Homebrew patches that are out there and adding some of them to webOS. They should also create some sort of framework which will make it easier to add little tweaks (maybe HP-Palm can call them "extensions") to webOS without restarting the UI. As HP prepares to build a wide variety of devices based on webOS, such a system might even make it easier to customize webOS for use on a variety of form factors.

As a Robot Begins to Slowly Die, Its Human Masters Mourn

2010-07-30T21:48:00.003-05:00

NASA's Spirit rover appears to be near the end of its career and I can't help but feel a twinge of sadness at the news. And it's not the first time. A few years ago, I felt the same twinge of sadness when NASA's Phoenix lander "died." It's a curious thing, our capacity to empathize, and it's an ability that we don't think about very often. NBC's sitcom, "Community" probably captures this sentiment best:

“You know what makes humans different from other animals? We’re the only species on Earth that observes Shark Week. Sharks don’t even observe Shark Week, but we do. For the same reason that I can pick up this pencil, tell you its name is Steve, and go like this [snaps pencil in half] and part of you dies just a little bit on the inside. We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for screenwriting. People can find the good in just about anything but themselves.…

The same sentiment that is applied to Sharks, Pencils, and Ben Affleck also applies to space probes. The same NASA story which explains Spirit's predicament also links to a tribute video which describes the plucky little rover's exploits. It's a very human thing and it's worth noting.

Spirit May Never Phone Home Again - NASA Science

KeyBoss - PreCentral Forums

2010-07-11T01:12:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite apps on my old Treo phones was KeyCaps a utility which allowed me to capitalize letters and enter function symbols without using the phone's shift or alt keys. KeyCaps greatly speeded up my input and was one of the apps which I really missed when I moved to my Palm Pre. Now KeyBoss is recreating that functionality on webOS. While KeyBoss is currently in Beta and should only be installed by advanced users, I have tried it and it works well. This should be a must have utility for webOS homebrew users once it becomes available the main Preware feeds. KeyBoss - PreCentral Forums

The Good Guys—A Pleasant Summer Surprise

2010-06-14T22:37:00.004-05:00

"I've got enough to worry about! I've got strip clubs. I've got champagne rooms and free buffets and an economy where clients are cutting back and they're sleeping with their wives again. Their wives!"
The ring leader from the latest episode of The Good Guys.

The Good Guys isn't the best show ever but it is a fun diversion at a time when network television is clogged with reruns, reality shows, and unwatchable garbage shows. An enjoyable mix of low-brow humor and 70s style buddy cop action, The Good Guys is as flat out fun.

The main appeal of the show is its villains which exude quirky desperation rather than the usual vaguely bland menace we've come to expect from more serious shows. With procedural cop shows, the bad guys tend to melt into the background in order help the show milk the mystery and keep the audience guessing until the very end. The Good Guys reverts to a much older formula where the identity of the bad guys is almost never in doubt. As a result, the show is free to imbue its villains with a quirky sensibility which makes them as enjoyable as the cops who chase them. This makes for a fun alternative for the grim, forensic porn which so many procedural cop shows seem to aspire to today.

Mozilla Plugin Check Runs on Any Browser

2010-06-10T15:14:00.007-05:00

I no longer use Firefox very much. But it doesn't seem that Mozilla holds a grudge. Mozilla's new Plugin Check will check your browser for outdated plugins allowing you to head off potential security threats even if you are running on a different browser. Mozilla, a class act in a world of squabbling children.

Thanks to security guru and all around paranoid freak Steve Gibson for the tip.

Internalz, a File Manager for webOS

2010-06-09T09:52:00.004-05:00

When I reviewed zcorder I complained that this voice recording app has no way of managing recordings while noting that you can always use Internalz to browse through your recordings. After having played around with it a bit, I have to say that I'm pretty pleased with Internalz. I can move, copy, delete, and rename my recordings fairly easily and organize them by creating new folders for them.

File management is something we all have to do with our computers and as more and more of our data starts migrating to our mobile phones, a good file manager will become increasingly necessary for them as well. Internalz works well as a file manager. I would probably like more sharing options, like the ability to email files. But overall, this is a good, solid choice for managing your files.

"I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missourah."

2010-06-09T09:38:00.003-05:00

Slate put together a pretty nifty widget for figuring out how the American flag would look if we added more states. A nice, little time killer.

Like Chrome But Hate Google? Iron Can Help.

2010-06-07T22:34:00.003-05:00

I've always been a big fan of Google's Chrome web browser but these days a lot of people are worried about Google's growing power and its implications for their privacy. But Chrome is so fast! And it's so much better than other browsers! It's something of a conundrum.

Enter Iron. Iron is a new web browser based on the same Chromium code which Chrome uses. As a result, Iron lacks some features like Google Update and address bar suggestions which most people love but which others deem to be a privacy risk. Iron's creators have gone even further and have removed Chrome functions like the Client-ID and error reporting and more. The point is to eliminate all behind the scenes contact between Google and your web browser. While this might seem a little paranoid to some, to others it might be just what the privacy doctor ordered.

UberCalendar, Smart Up Your webOS Calendar

2010-06-05T18:06:00.003-05:00

One of the shortcomings of the Palm Pre and Pixi the calendar application. While it is clean, simple, and arguably more powerful than its counterparts on the iPhone and Android; long time users of PalmOS can be forgiven for thinking that the webOS calendar feels dumbed down. Enter UberCalendar. A Homebrew patch for the webOS Calendar app, UberCalendar adds a number of enhancements to the calendar such as including the subject of an event in week view, more reminder times, the ability to remember and open the last calendar view when the Calendar app is reopened, buttons and shortcuts for entering new events, and a shortcut for launching the excellent Agenda Homebrew app which provides an at a glance view of all your upcoming Calendar entries. These enhancements along with others make the webOS Calendar more powerful and more pleasant to use.

The UberCalendar just debuted and is a little rough around the edges. One example of this is that UberCalendar supports the use of icons for events but these icons must be downloaded and saved separately on your phone's media partition. While this gives you more options for customizing your Calendar, it can be confusing for less advanced users. But then again, Homebrew software is by definition software for advanced users. More importantly, even with its current shortcomings, UberCalendar is the best add-on for the webOS Calendar available and is a must have for anyone who wants to get more out of their phone's calendar.

Once again UberCalendar is a Homebrew app and is not available through the official Palm App Catalog. It can be installed through Preware or with WebOS Quick Install.

Good News, Bad News

2010-06-03T06:42:00.001-05:00

So the good news is that HP will probably continue to make webOS smartphones. The bad news is that to HP, smartphones are just a small cog in their machine: CEOs say the darndest things: 'Smartphones are just another connected device to us' | PreCentral.net

Phone Angst, Part II: Will HP Kill Palm Smartphones?

2010-06-02T22:12:00.006-05:00

I was feeling pretty happy with my Palm Pre until I started seeing this headline making the rounds of the Internet: HP CEO: 'We didn't buy Palm to be in the smartphone business' | PreCentral.net. Here we go again. I have been hearing about the imminent demise of Palm for almost as long as I have used Palm's products. In the past it has been little more than the rantings of disgruntled users but this time it's the CEO of Palm's soon to be parent company which while not actually suggesting that it is not interested in Palm's core business. While that may not have been his intent, it is a troubling thing to hear nonetheless.

When I first bought my Palm Pre almost a year ago, it was because I was looking for a platform which I could use over the long haul. After a decade of using PalmOS PDAs and smartphones, my attempt to move to Android in the form of the T-Mobile G1 did not work out. It was a technically amazing mobile platform which fell wildly short of the ease of use that I had enjoyed with PalmOS.

The Pre and webOS felt like a second chance to me. It was an open, modern mobile operating system which was backwards compatible with PalmOS through the Classic emulator. It seemed like the perfect platform for my needs. And it has only gotten better in the past year with regular updates.

But none of that matters if I can't buy another webOS smartphone once my Pre no longer works. While my Pre is still going strong, it is also showing its age. It has a small crack on the upper left hand corner of the screen—it's barely noticeable now but it's sure to grow over time. It is beginning to suffer from the infamous "oreo effect" where its slider flexes in a left to right fashion. And I have to overclock its processor for it to be as fast as newer phones. While a webOS tablet would be cool it will not be able to take the place of my Pre when it finally gives up the ghost.

While it's entirely possible—even probably—that Palm or HP might clarify the situation to give Palm's smartphones a vote of confidence, I feel more cynical about the platform today than I even have before.

Update: After reading some of the discussion at Precentral and the ZDNet article which helped provoke a lot of the discussion, I am probably a little more reassured that webOS is part of a larger strategy which calls for a large number of devices which presumably includes smartphones. But I still have to wonder if HP won't simply let Palm die away slowly the way they did with its Jornada PDAs and Compaq's iPAQ line of PDAs and smartphones. Only time will tell I guess.

Oil Spill Fighting Technique or Sex Slang?

2010-05-29T20:08:00.002-05:00

Hint: You've probably seen the latter referenced on a sitcom.

Top Kill
Mexican Halloween
Hot Richard
Junk Shot
Rusty Trombone
Top Hat
Operation Sombrero
Dirty Sanchez
Bottom Kill

Answers:

1. Oil Spill Fighting Technique: used by BP to fight recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

2. Sex Slang: featured in the Halloween episode of Community, "Introduction to Statistics."

3. Sex Slang: featured in 30 Rock episode, "The Funcooker."

4. Oil Spill Fighting Technique: also used by BP to fight recent Gulf spill.

5. Sex Slang: featured on multiple comedies.

6. Oil Spill Fighting Technique: also used by BP to fight recent Gulf spill.

7. Oil Spill Fighting Technique: name given to a technique similar to the "Top Hat" employed in fighting a 1979 oil spill highlighted on Rachel Maddow segment showing that spill fighting technology has not improved much since the 1970s.

8. Sex Slang: featured on multiple comedies most notably The Daily Show.

9. Oil Spill Fighting Technique: another name for the "Dynamic Kill" method which uses relief wells to take the pressure off of the main well.

Tracy Jordan's Non-sequitors in Emanuelle Goes to Dinosaur Land

2010-05-15T21:03:00.007-05:00

[In the copy shop stairwell remembering his childhood.]

TRACY: It's all coming back to me! Oh my God!
I slept on an old dog bed stuffed with wigs!
I watched a prostitute stab a clown!
Our basketball hoop was a rib cage. A rib cage!

Why did you bring me here? I blocked all of this stuff out for a reason.

Oh lord! Some guy with dreads electrocuted my fish!

DOTCOM: Tray, use this pain to get your Oscar.

TRACY: I hate pain! I'm doing Garfield III and as soon as I make some copies of my passport I'm never coming back here! Move!

[On the movie set.]

Well, I'm sorry Sean and child actor whose name I can't remember. You haven't walked in my shoes. All my life I've tried to forget the things I've seen.

A crackhead breastfeeding a rat.
A homeless man cooking a Hot Pocket on the third rail of the "G Train." The G Train Nermel!
There's something inside of me that needs to come out! And if Garfield III: Feline Groovy can't tell my story, then I'll win my Oscar elsewhere. Or I'll die trying!

[Back in the stairwell.]

I've seen a blind guy bite a police horse!
A puppy committed suicide after he saw our bathroom!
I once bit into a burrito and there was a child's shoe in it!
I seen a hooker eat a tire!
A pack of wild dogs took over and successfully ran a Wendy's!
The sewer people stole my skateboard!
The project I lived in was named after Zachery Taylor, generally considered to be one of the worst presidents of all time!

I once saw a baby give another baby a tattoo! They were very drunk!

zcorder Brings Voice Recording to webOS

2010-05-08T02:59:00.004-05:00

One of the major omissions from webOS phones like the Palm Pre and Pixi is a lack of a voice recorder. While MotionApps has made its Voice Memo app a free add-on for users of its Classic PalmOS emulator, it has the disadvantage of needing to be run from inside another relatively slow-loading application. Worse yet, I personally have never been able to get Voice Memo to work properly on my Palm Pre.

I've never been a huge user of this feature but I do miss it. And some people swear by it; so the arrival of zcorder onto the webOS Homebrew scene should be welcome.

Zcorder records both voice and sound from other running webOS applications. It is a very simple application. Your recordings are saved as MP3 files to a folder on your phone's internal memory and while you can browse them when you connect your phone to a computer in USB mode or use the Homebrew app Internalz to browse through them but you cannot manage your recordings in zcorder as you can with a true "voice memo" application.

But it works and for now it is the best bet for voice recording on webOS.

Zcorder is a Homebrew app and is not available through the official Palm App Catalog. It can be installed through Preware or with WebOS Quick Install.

Yahoo Thinks it's Still 1998

2010-05-07T00:11:00.004-05:00

Gizmodo posted recent Yahoo ad where they take aim at Google: Yahoo Bitch Slaps Google In $85 Million Ad Campaign - Yahoo vs google - Gizmodo. I found the ad to be very striking but perhaps not in a way that bodes well for Yahoo. The thing that struck me was how retro it felt. Yahoo is basically promoting itself as a "web portal" even if the words never appear in their commercial. And for good reason, web portals were wiped out in the early 2000s by the bursting of the Dotcom bubble and by a new search engine called "Google."

Portals were all the rage in the mid to late 90s. They were huge, bloated pages that expected you to slog through tons of ads and links just to type in a few search terms. The result was huge, slow loading home pages at a time when most people still connected to the Internet through relatively slow dial-up modems. But they had "everything you need in one place"—never mind that if all you want is one thing, you'll have to wait for everything else to load and put up with numerous distractions.

And now Yahoo is for all intents and purposes trying to bring the concept back. The truth is that they never really abandoned the concept. When Yahoo started out it was more of a directory of websites than a real search engine. And they've stayed true to that concept even as the rest of the Internet abandoned it.

The bottom line is which page looks cleaner and easier to use?

This one?

Or this one?

Good luck Yahoo. I hope this turns out better for you than it did for these guys.

Brightness Unlinked

2010-05-06T01:47:00.005-05:00

Brightness Unlinked is a Hombrew app which solves two common problems for users of the Palm Pre.

There is no way to adjust the brightness of the Palm Pre's keyboard independently of the screen's brightness. Normally this is not a problem but sometimes—particularly in low light conditions—you want to turn down the brightness of the Pre's screen as much as possible. But when you do this, the backlight on the Pre's keyboard can become so dim that it becomes hard to type. Enter Brightness Unlinked. With Brightness Unlinked running, you can crank up the lighting on your keyboard while cranking down the lighting of the screen.

But for me the best feature of Brightness Unlinked is the fact that it can turn off the Pre's screen when it is sitting on the Touchstone charger. In theory, the Pre can double as a bedside clock while sitting on its charger but in practice its screen—even at its lowest level—is far too bright for anyone who wants to get a good night's sleep. So while you may never find yourself typing away on your phone in gloomy twilight, Brightness Unlinked is a must have app for anyone who keeps their Palm Pre by their bedside.

There is also a patch which will allow Brightness Unlinked to run every time you restart your phone but I found that it seemed to make the phone sluggish when you are low on memory. I never quite figured out if it was because of the patch or simply because my Pre was low on memory. But in any case, I found the patch to be rather redundant since Brightness Unlinked can reside the webOS Dashboard and can continues to run even if you throw away its card.

Brightness Unlinked is a Homebrew app and is not available in the regular Palm App Catalog. It can be installed through Preware or with WebOS Quick Install.

Something Else to Take a Look At...

2010-05-05T02:27:00.004-05:00

While browsing through books at Borders, I came on a surprising juxtaposition. Near the top left of this picture is Sarah Silverman's book The Bedwetter. Near the bottom right is a biography of Mao Zedong. For some reason I find the similarity between the covers of these two very different books to be absolutely hilarious.

Bean Bombed by Birds

2010-05-04T23:51:00.004-05:00

Look closely at the picture below. At first glance it's just another picture of "The Bean" at Millennium Park. But a closer look shows that it has taken bird droppings in at least five places. It's just something I noticed today....

Community, the Best Comedy on Television

2010-04-26T16:50:00.005-05:00

I can't stop watching Thursday's episode of Community. This show is really firing on all cylinders right now combining brilliant pop-culture parody with lovably weird characters. Set among a Spanish study group at Greendale Community College; a small, not very well regarded school; Community has created a surprisingly rich tapestry to tell its stories with even minor background characters like "Leonard" and "Starburns" getting their moments to shine. As for the main cast of characters, they all seem to be searching for either redemption or acceptance. Jeff, the disbarred lawyer; Pierce, the ex-CEO who has never really had or wanted friends until now; Britta, the embittered slacker; Shirley, the recent divorcée; Annie, the overachiever and former pill-popper; Troy, the immature dumb jock; Abed, the pop-culture loving kid who can't seem to connect with "normal" people—at times the show feels like Lost with robot jokes.

While Thursday's episode continues Abed's obsession with movies and TV, it also shows a strong emotional edge as Abed finally finds a way to connect with people by getting them to all speak the same language—"chicken." Abed's inability to express himself and connect to people has been a running theme all throughout the series. In the pilot Jeff speculates that he has Asperger Syndrome. Abed's father is constantly frustrated by his son's oddness and only comes to accept his behavior when he explains it through a movie that he makes. So while Abed does insist that he has "self-esteem coming out of my butt," he definitely has a serious problem dealing with other people. Thus when he gets his opportunity to relate to people through his control of Greendale's popular chicken finger snacks, Abed takes it and runs with it. But this connection is tenuous and it is easy for him to see that it will disappear when people get tired of the chicken fingers. That's an awful lot of character development to put into a half-hour show and still manage to squeeze in a brilliant mob-movie parody and a lesson for Jeff on the consequences of exploiting your friends for your own gain.

IAU Decides Earth is No Longer a Planet

2010-04-01T00:00:00.001-05:00

HONOLULU (AP) -- The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the international body of scientists responsible for naming stars, planets, and other astronomical bodies, announced today that following a vote taken at its annual Spring meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii that it was reclassifying the Earth. The IAU voted to strip Earth of its "planet" designation and reclassifying it as a "giant dwarf planet." An IAU spokesman said that the change is meant to eliminate confusion following its 2006 decision to demote Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet" status.

"We chose to reclassify Pluto in part because it is part of a larger body of objects which we call the 'Kuiper Belt,'" said IAU spokesman James Brown. "Since Pluto is too puny to clear this area of debris, we felt that a new designation was necessary to distinguish Pluto from proper planets like Venus and Neptune." Brown went on to explain the motivation which drove the IAU's decision regarding Earth. "As with Pluto, the way we see Earth's place in the solar system must change as new discoveries are made. Earth was once regarded as the center of the universe but as science progressed, our view of Earth's place in the universe had to change. As more and more Near Earth Objects (NEOs) have been discovered it appears that Earth, despite its much larger mass and gravity, like Pluto is not able to completely clear the neighborhood around its orbit. While many NEOs like Apophis will probably either collide with Earth or be ejected from their orbits by Earth's gravity, there are also enough objects like Cruithne with weird but stable orbits that we feel that a new classification was necessary to describe Earth's place in the solar system."

A second vote to decide whether or not Jupiter should be promoted from a "planet" to a "dwarf brown dwarf" has been scheduled for the IAU's winter meeting in December.

Teaching My Tether to Get Along With Classic

2010-03-22T02:43:00.004-05:00

I posted this guide to Hotsyncing my Pre with my netbook using My Tether as a wifi hotspot in Precentral in this thread. I am archiving it here on my blog because I don't want to have to spend a lot of time searching for it on Precentral's vast forums.

Running My Tether and Can't Hotsync? Use My Tether to Hotsync!

I'm not sure if this post will fall into the "Duh, we all knew that already" category or the "That's just crazy enough to work!" category but it's new to me and I haven't seen it on these forums.

I was thinking about doing a hard reset on my Classic PalmOS installation in hopes of getting it to perform better but wanted to do one final Hotsync in order to back it up. But I had been having a lot of trouble performing a Hotsync. Wifi? Failed. Bluetooth? Failed. Then I remembered reading in these forums that a lot of users of My Tether were having trouble hotsyncing.

So I had what seemed at the time to be a crazy idea. Since My Tether is doing a fairly good job of turning my Pre into a wifi Hotspot, why not tether my Pre to my netbook via wifi and do a wifi Hotsync that way? Since I was having no success in Hotsynching while connected to my home wifi network, this felt like a rather unlikely solution but I tried it anyway. And it worked.

So to summarize:

The Problem: Cannot Hotsync Classic via wifi or Bluetooth.

The Cause: Users of My Tether often suffer this problem and it is widely believed that My Tether is the culprit.

The Solution:

Launch both My Tether and Classic.
Turn on wifi tethering in My Tether.
Connect to your Pre as you would connect to any other wifi hotspot.
Take note of the IP address which your Pre assigns to your computer.
- In Windows 7,
  1. Click on the wifi icon in your system tray to bring up your wifi network.
  2. Right click on your wifi network (by default My Tether calls itself, AoNet).
  3. Click on Status and then click on the Details button.
  4. Your IP adress will be listed in the Network Details box that comes up.
- In Windows XP,
  1. Your connection will sometimes put a network icon in your system tray.
  2. Click on it and select the Support tab of the status dialog that pops up.
  3. Your IP Address will be listed here.
    or
    1. If this icon is not in your system tray, open My Network Places instead.
    2. Click on View network connections in the sidebar and click on Wireless Network Connection.
    3. It will pop up the same status dialog as in the above example.
Launch the Hotsync app in Classic.
Tap on Select PC.
The Hotsync app will be unable to find a PC and will ask you to enter your PC's name or IP address by hand.
Enter the IP address that your Pre assigned to your PC.
Tap Done.
Tap Hotsync.

That should be it. You should now be able to do a successful hotsync. Or at least that's what I did to get Hotsync running in Classic.

Snake Oil or Useful Health Supplement?

2010-03-21T09:18:00.003-05:00

Links to this nifty infographic have been making the rounds for some time. But there is an interesting discussion about it and the at Scienceblogs that might be worth a look.

An Unofficial RSS for a Web Comic You've Probably Never Heard of...

2010-03-21T02:28:00.004-05:00

...or maybe you have but you don't follow it because you couldn't find an RSS feed for it. It turns out that all you(I) had to do was Google it. And there it was and is. And that makes these fragmented sentences worth it.

Maybe the Nexus One Wasn't Supposed to be a Hit

2010-03-16T23:19:00.003-05:00

Image by spieri_sf via Flickr

There has been quite bit of buzz about the Nexus One and its failure in the marketplace. Google's first branded smartphone has sold only 135,000 units, making it a bona fide flop. But I have to wonder if Google needed or even wanted it to succeed. While the Nexus One was Google's first smartphone, it was hardly a unique product. It was only one of a rather long and always growing line of Android handsets being built by a wide variety of cell phone vendors. In fact, I distinctly recall a lot of grumbling that with the Nexus One, Google was going to be competing directly with its own customers, the companies which had licensed the Android operating system.

And this makes the "failure" of the Nexus One fairly convenient for Google and for its licensees. Now Google can reassure its licensees, "See guys, we're not taking away sales from you!" But despite the lackluster sales, the Nexus One did raise the bar putting powerful hardware into an attractive package which handset makers still have to match. And this was likely the point of the Nexus One all along to let competitors like The Droid get the sales while the Nexus One keeps them honest and nudges them in the direction that Google wants them to go. No more underpowered Android handsets.

This wouldn't be the first time that Google has done something like this, putting out a product that was designed more to nudge rivals than to actually succeed on its own. While Google Chrome is growing in popularity and is now the basis for an ambitious new operating system, Chrome's original purpose seemed to be to assure that Google apps like GMail would run really, really fast. As a result, Chrome was a very fast browser with no extensions, no themes, and other glaring flaws. If the history of Chrome is any indication, I doubt if anyone at Google is losing any sleep over the Nexus One's sales.

'Til Death—Directionless and Less Than the Sum of its Parts

2010-03-15T00:23:00.003-05:00

'Til Death originally started out as a fairly generic Everybody Loves Raymond type of sitcom that got by on Brad Garrett's energy and some occasional wackiness by the supporting cast. Fast forward to the present and Garrett's energy is gone, the wackiness level is through the roof, and the show has gone from an overachiever to and underachiever.

'Til Death is probably the most self-aware sitcom on television right now with Eddie's son in law Doug having developed a "mental condition" where he believes that he is on a TV sitcom. As a result, the show trots out every sitcom cliche in hopes that it will somehow be fresh because they are winking at it. The trouble is that TV shows have been breaking the fourth wall for decades; so when 'Til Death does it, the winking self-awareness doesn't feel fresh.

That's not to say that the show doesn't work hard to be inventive. I'm currently watching an episode where the cast is dreaming of Doug and Ally's wedding filmed entirely as a series of cartoons. But ultimately, it all feels like the writers are throwing darts at the wall hoping that something will stick. And right now, not enough is sticking.

While the over the top performances by almost the entire supporting cast do guarantee the occasional laugh, this show used to get more laughs without trying half as hard as they do now. This raises the question of what happened and I think that the answer is that they've essentially taken their star, Brad Garrett, and turned him into a straight man. It reminds me of the "What Up With That?" skit on Saturday Night Live which is an interview show where there are so many ridulous distractions with singing and dancing that the host never gets around to interviewing his guests. At this point in its existence, 'Til Death is a lot like that skit. There is so much over the top silliness that there is little room for anyone to be consistently funny.

Google Reinvents Graffiti

2010-03-05T17:00:00.010-06:00

Google has added a new feature to Android which looks a lot like an old feature from another mobile OS. Palm's old PalmOS PDAs had stylus-based input system called "Graffiti" where you would enter characters based on set of predefined pen strokes. It worked very well for years until the emergence of smartphones required Palm and Handspring to adopt keyboards for their devices. Add a long lawsuit by Xerox and Graffiti disappeared into the mists of gadget history.

Sort of. The idea of Graffiti remains popular enough that there is even a version available for iPhones. So it was probably only a matter of time before someone tried to bring it to Google's Android OS. That someone turned out to be Google itself which recently released a Gesture Search application which allows you to run searches by simply drawing letters. This is essentially what you did with the old PalmOS Graffiti.

But Gesture Search is a single standalone application while Graffiti was an essential part of the PalmOS and could be used with every PalmOS application. In fact even after Palm abandoned having a dedicated Graffiti input area for its Treo phones, it was still possible to install an app which would allow you to enter Graffiti strokes directly on the phone's screen.

That has gotten me to think about webOS on my Palm Pre. While there is a virtual keyboard available for webOS, there is nothing like Graffiti or even Gesture Search available for webOS. And that's disappointing because after all, Palm was the company which made this sort of input work in the first place.

And I think that Palm is uniquely suited to make it work again. Palm already has the code to Graffiti and Graffiti II—the successor to Graffiti which Palm introduced in part because of the Xerox lawsuit. And Palm has a its dashboard notification system which would be a convenient place to keep the controls for a Graffiti-style input system. So there really is no reason why Palm couldn't create another version of Graffiti and have it work on the entire operating system.

I used Graffiti for years on Palm PDAs. And I've used smartphone keyboards for years. But I was never really able to get used to using virtual keyboards which is one reason why I never got an iPhone. Now if I could have Palm's old Graffiti writing system back and have it live in my Palm Pre's dashboard, that would be a great alternative to sliding open my Pre when I only have to enter one or two characters.

Official Google Mobile Blog: Search your Android phone with written gestures

Rogue Antispyware

2010-02-20T23:23:00.000-06:00

The Internet is full of websites where they tell you what software you should be running but how many places are there that tell you what you what not to run. Well here's one that I encountered on Usenet: Rogue Antispyware, your guide to rogue security software that you should not not have on your computer.

Phone Angst

2010-02-16T20:29:00.009-06:00

People have been obsessing over their phones for a while now but I think that Palm may be taking it to a new level with webOS on its Pre and Pixi phones. Since Palm has committed to a regular upgrade schedule for webOS with big updates coming once a month along with minor updates in between the big ones. All told Palm has put out nine updates for webOS since June 2009 and buzz for the tenth update, webOS 1.4, is growing among its users.

Part of it is just the newness of the platform. Google's Android has been around for well over a year. Apple's iPhone has been around for three years. Palm's webOS has been around for just eight months and is still very much a work in progress. webOS 1.4 is expected to bring among other things support for video recording, a feature which the iPhone and Android phones have had for some time.

But I think that an essential part of all the phone angst that webOS is generating among its users is that Palm has always generated a strange dichotomy of feelings among its user community. The loyalty of the Apple user community is legendary and with the iPhone it has only grown and reached ever more cult-like proportions. Microsoft has its fanboys too but mostly its users tend to show more of a grudging acceptance than actual love. With Palm, the feel of the user community is a lot more complicated. Loyalty tends to mix with anger over perceived wrongs and missed opportunities which make members the Palm user community like one half of a separated couple—still in love but distrustful and bracing for the worst.

My own phone angst is as much a result of the platform's newness as it is to the its rapid pace of development. I jumped on the Pre early on and I love to tweak the hell out of it using Homebrew patches which I load through Preware. And the Preware people have worked hard to keep up with the pace of webOS development. As result, I sometimes have to deal with days when I have to uninstall and reinstall almost all my patches. Today was one such day as the Preware folks in anticipation of webOS 1.4 updated their patches for compatibility with it. As result I found myself staring at a phone which needed to update over forty patches. Luckily the Preware developers have worked hard to make this process as painless as possible and I clicked the "Update All" button and Preware went to work:

Arrrrgh!

I decide to try the "Emergency Patch Recovery" (EPR) utility. This program has been useful to me in the past by allowing me to wipe out all of my phone's patches in one feel swoop rather than having to uninstall them one by one. But first I have to uninstall my phone's theme and do a Luna Restart (a quick restart that Preware can do when you don't need to do complete reboot). So I fire up Preware again and suddenly it only has to update seventeen patches instead of forty. Hmmm, that's new. So I hold off on running EPR and hit the "Update All" button again. So I close Preware and start it again. Now only nine patches need updating. So I hit the "Update All" button yet again. And this time Preware goes through the process without a hitch.

So all's well that ends well. I find a theme that I like, install it, and do a full reboot of my phone so all the updated patches can take effect. The surprising thing was that I did all this over the course of a couple of hours as I was going about my day. Except for the Java restart and the reboot at the end, my Pre remained in use doing other things while I had Preware churning away in the background (Preware takes a long time to load its list of applications and to do updates). It wasn't perfect but it was a much smoother process than what I've experienced in the past with having to update patches one by one. So my phone angst is a little lower at the end of this day...

...and that's a good thing because I'm going to have to do this all over again later this week or the next week when webOS 1.4 comes out.

Avatar—Dances With Wolves Meets 2001: A Space Oddessey

2009-12-25T19:07:00.006-06:00

Warning: This review will contain significant spoilers for the movie Avatar. Do not read it if you don't want to be spoiled.

On a purely mercenary level, James Cameron's new movie, Avatar is the perfect movie for every demographic. A visually stunning film created with 3D digital technology which didn't even exist a few years ago, Avatar is equal parts Sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure, and cowboys versus indians space western. There's even a romantic subplot thrown in to appeal to the "chick flick" crowd. While the story is simple on the surface, there also appears to be plenty of room for a very complicated back story.

The comparisons with Dances With Wolves and this film are inevitable. A military man makes contact with the natives and works to earn their respect. He goes native at about the same time that his own people arrive—basically our own western civilization—to play the bad guys. While a lot of people might complain that this is a simplistic movie–and it is—the people who like it, including myself, simply don't care that it's core message can be boiled down to "white people bad, blue people good." There are plenty of crappy movies out there with complicated plots and I'm glad to report that from my perspective, Avatar is neither the former nor the latter.

The movie revolves around a crippled marine named "Jake Sully" who must take the place of his dead twin brother in an ambitious program in which scientists explore an alien moon called "Pandora" by interfacing directly with genetically engineered alien bodies called "avatars." They do this in order to communicate with the planets natives, a race of ten-foot tall blue humanoids called "the Navi." The scientists are working against time as the Navi's "Hometree" is right on top of a mineral called "unobtanium" which a greedy company wants to mine. And that company has plenty of stereotypical marines in its employ who are ready to kill the Navi. Sully initially cooperates with his fellow marines, giving them a run down of the strengths and weaknesses of the Navi stronghold even as he works to gain their trust. Ultimately Sully falls in love with the Navi culture—and with a Navi warrior woman.

Naturally, Colonel Quaritch who is in command of the mission decides that the time has come to show the Navi who's boss—in one particularly effective scene the colonel uses Sully's own videolog to justify cracking down on the Navi. Sully tries to warn the Navi but finds himself rejected by his new people instead. Colonel Quaritch orders an attack on the Navi Hometree which is essentially a reverse 9/11. The heart of the alien culture is destroyed in a single unprovoked attack that echoes the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center by terrorists on September 11, 2001—only this time we're the terrorists and the aliens are the victims.

This isn't the first time we've seen 9/11 echoed in sci-fi. Battlestar Galactica used the Cylon destruction of the human colonies as a metaphor for the 9/11 attacks as well but Avatar is the first time that I've seen this metaphor employed in reverse, as an indictment of our own culture and echoing the destruction of American Indian culture by our own western culture. It's a fairly potent symbol and it really is the only way we can really justify what happens next. Sully turns against his fellow marines and teams up with a hand full of scientists and a renegade marine pilot (played by Michelle Rodriguez who supplies the fairly compelling scene of a beautiful woman in war paint flying a hovercraft into battle against her fellow marines) to lead the Navi as they fight back against the marines.

The Navi retreat to the "Tree of Souls" which is essentially the nerve center of Pandora, a tree which connects all life on this moon into one giant neural network, Quaritch is convinced that the Navi will be broken if the Tree of Souls is destroyed and makes it the next target in his "Shock and Awe"—yes, they actually say that in the movie, Cameron's bluntness as a story teller is his greatest weakness but his movies are so well crafted and so action filled that it is rarely an issue. It's not an issue for me here as the movie is so spectacular and so immersive that it is almost impossible to get pulled out of it.

Sully convinces the Navi to gather all of their tribes to make a stand at the Tree of Souls which ends in a fairly predictable but nevertheless stunning fashion. The evil humans are defeated and banished from Pandora and the Navi gather at the Tree of Souls to download Sully's consciousness into his avatar body. His human body dies and Sully is fully alien now. It's a piece of wish fulfillment which reminds me of the end of Inglourious Basterds where World War II is won in Europe not by a hard long slog through German held lands which kills millions but by blowing up Hitler and the entire German high command real good. Given that this is a sci-fi fantasy movie, it's hard to argue with the film makers' decision.

But I think that there is something else going on besides a extremely well made science fiction, fantasy, and special effects. I can't for the life of me imagine how an ecosystem like the one we see on Pandora can just naturally evolve. While it is fairly common for sci-fi film makers to ignore the laws of science when they interfere with their paper-thin plots, I don't think that this is what is going on here.

Pandora is basically a giant neural network where every living thing is so tightly integrated with rest of the planet that even the fiercest of the woodland animals know to attack the marines when the Navi are almost overwhelmed by the onslaught of the marines attacking with their superior technology. This neural network is so sophisticated that it is actually possible for the Navi to download Sully's mind directly into his avatar body at the end of the movie. This download is actually attempted twice in the movie—a human scientist, Dr. Grace Augustine who is played by Sigourney Weaver, is shot and the Navi attempt to download her mind into her avatar body. This attempt fails because she's too badly injured but before the final confrontation with the marines, Sully prays to "Eywa," the Navi deity to look into Dr. Augustine thoughts and to help them defeat the humans.

The Navi even bond to their animals by connecting a long braid of hair which unravels to reveal tiny tentacles which connect to tentacles on a similar braid which is attached to these animals. It reminds me of an organic version of the human/machine interfaces you see in movies like The Matrix. There is a scientific idea called "The Gaia Hypothesis" which suggests that all life is connected and cooperates to keep Earth livable which on the surface does resemble what we see in Avatar with all of Pandora's life being linked together. But in this movie Ewya is described in a manner which reminds me more of the way that the Force described the early Star Wars movies (before George Lucas ruined the concept in the prequels with technobabble about "midichlorians").

On the surface, Avatar is expressing a very anti-technology viewpoint—love Mother Earth (or in this case "Mother Pandora"), don't destroy her with your technology. This is a fairly common theme in James Cameron's movies; but there is a deeper, more subtle theme here which is never expressed—probably because it would be boring and James Cameron doesn't do boring. Just like John Connor cannot survive to lead the human resistance against Skynet without a Terminator acting as his bodyguard, so the Navi cannot defeat the humans without the interference of Eywa. Could it be that Eywa is just a non-evil organic version of Skynet? Is Eywa an incredibly powerful supercomputer which can be accessed by the Navi?

I think that this is as good as any theory on the "science" of Avatar. It would certainly explain gravitational "flux" which wreaks havoc with the human electronic equipment and which allows the gravity defying Hallelujah Mountains which float in the air with seemingly nothing save for this mysterious flux to hold them up. If some intelligent species evolved on a world where the gravitational and magnetic fields were so screwy that an entire mountain could just hang in mid-air, it might make it hard for them to develop human-style electronics. Any technology that such a species might develop would likely be organic. It's not a huge leap to imagine that some cataclysm—like say, a self-aware organic computer wiping out the existing civilization—resetting all life on Pandora and allowing it to be remade in the image of an all-powerful artificial intelligence which directs its evolution until all that life is part of the giant self-aware computer which first paved the way for its creation. They might even give it a name and make it their deity. Intelligent design sci-fi style or more aptly in the words of Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Oddyssey, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Hurry Up and Wait—Palm's Update Cycle Slows Down

2009-12-23T01:35:00.003-06:00

Ever since Palm came out with its Pre phone, they have been updating its webOS operating system approximately once a month. Sometimes the updates have been small and sometimes they can introduce bugs. But even so, it was OK for me since there would usually be another update just around the corner. Now with their latest update which brought webOS to version 1.3.1, the update cycle has apparently slowed down. webOS 1.3.1 came out in mid-November and now we are nearing the new year with precious little word of another update. While normally a delay in updating webOS might not be a problem for me but webOS 1.3.1 has unfortunately introduced a rather serious bug which causes Motionapps' Classic emulator to be very unstable. Worse yet, just running Classic now can leave my Pre so sluggish that I have to reboot it both before and after using this program. And just to add insult to injury, apparently Motionapps has already fixed this bug but can't release the fix until Palm does its next update.

A perfect storm of incompetence. Suddenly the new Palm is starting to look a lot like the old Palm.

For Your Sitting Pleasure

2009-12-20T23:38:00.003-06:00

There is a building in downtown Chicago which has been under construction for quite some time. While it still is under construction, several stores have opened making for an interesting contrast between shiny, new stores and unfinished ones. It also has the coolest looking bench:

Christkindlmarket (sp?) in Daley Plaza

2009-12-20T22:52:00.006-06:00

A lot of German-American food, tiny shops selling holiday and Germanic themed trinkets, and a lot of people milling about. And also a puppet show!

Took a Walk in the Park...

2009-12-17T23:20:00.003-06:00

It was about 34 degrees Fahrenheit today when I took a walk through the park, just barely above freezing. Usually the water fountains of Piotrowski Park are broken even in the summer. But on the way home, I chanced upon this one:

There's just something so interesting to me about the water in the fountain wears away the ice from previous, colder days.

Textured Clouds

2009-12-14T23:16:00.003-06:00

I like the mix of bright, thick, and fluffy clouds layered on top of dark, thin, and wispy clouds. The scene in both pictures was originally much brighter than what my phone's camera could capture but I think I like the pictures just the same even if I'm pretty sure that it's the edge of my finger at the bottom of that second picture....

Art Near the El

2009-12-13T20:56:00.003-06:00

I usually start my day by taking the train and there is some pretty interesting—is mural the right word?—near the station I usually use.

There is some pretty artsy Batman graffiti adorning a local parking lot:

And a more aspirational installation on the side of a church:

Are Pink Clouds Effeminate?

2009-12-12T23:28:00.002-06:00

I took this picture last month during the afternoon before Thanksgiving. My phone doesn't do it justice but I really liked the subtle interplay of the wispy pink cloud against the blue sky and bright, nearly full moon.

A Cell Carrier Goes Underground

2009-11-11T23:30:00.004-06:00

One of the most frustrating things about a long commute can be going into a subway and losing your phone signal. So an ad like this one can be rather hearkening:

I have T-Mobile and my G1 has been getting better coverage on the Blue Line subway in recent weeks. Unfortunately, this improved coverage doesn't help as much for data usage. T-Mobile's 3G coverage is already relatively slow to begin with and my G1 tends to drop to EDGE speeds in a subway so checking email and web browsing can be slow. On the other hand my Palm Pre tends to lose both voice and data in the subway so T-Mobile is ahead of the game here.

Wherein My Obsession With a Lone Flowerpot Continues...

2009-11-10T23:59:00.002-06:00

I guess it's another sign that winter is coming when the Chicago Cultural Center switches from weird flowers to nothing to pine:

Halloween in Daley Plaza

2009-11-01T00:51:00.006-05:00

This Halloween I went to Daley Plaza for "Chicagoween." The place looked great.

And there was a showing of Young Frankenstein.

Funny movie but I was a little disappointed. Last year they had live entertainment.

Then Pyrotechniq came on to the stage....

Those Clouds Are So Red...

2009-10-31T01:20:00.001-05:00

So I was out for a walk at sunset and the sky was an incredible color....

Yep, Summer's Defintely Long Gone

2009-10-21T23:44:00.001-05:00

It was actually a pretty nice day in Chicago today. But heading home I encountered a pretty stark reminder that we're well into fall and winter is coming. Granted the cold weather of a couple of weeks ago was a clue but seeing the planters at the Chicago Cultural Center—which I had previously made fun of—empty was a little sad.

XKCD Does it Again

2009-10-21T23:34:00.001-05:00

I hate to say it, or rather write it, but yeah this is more accurate....

Firefox Gets Proactive

2009-10-16T22:58:00.002-05:00

I don't use Firefox as much as I used to. Chrome is just so much faster that I almost invariably turn to it first. But Firefox's rich collection of add-ons is so useful that when I have time and feel like some random web surfing, I'll usually fire up both Firefox and Chrome and use them side by side.

Tonight when I fired up Firefox, I was confronted by this dialog box. A bit aggressive no? Actually no. It turns out that Microsoft's Firefox add-ons expose Firefox users to malware attacks. I'd noticed this little piece of news this morning and by nightfall when I fired up Firefox, it was already uninstalling the Microsoft add-ons. That's a pretty fast turn around time for cleaning up a problem which was only recently discovered.

Now if only Firefox could identify the add-ons that are slowing it down....

In Praise of Hard Buttons

2009-10-16T21:42:00.005-05:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Winter hasn't exactly come early to Chicago but it is unseasonably cold right now—cold enough that I've had to break out a jacket and gloves. This kind of leaves me in a bind gadgetwise. I still love my Palm Pre and am satisfied with its little sliding keyboard but the cold weather makes it less useful when I'm out in the cold. While the Pre is a slider phone a perfectly usable little keyboard, when the slider is closed the Pre is basically all screen with a single button that does only one thing. Other than turning it on and off and changing the volume, all other interaction with the Pre is through its screen. Normally this is no problem—in fact it's normally quite enjoyable. But when you are wearing gloves suddenly it becomes impossible to interact with the Pre.

Now contrast that to my older T-Mobile G1. The most recent firmware update gave this phone a new lease on life by making it fast enough to be usable again. And now the cold weather is is making it a lot more relevant for me because it has something that the Pre lacks—real hardware buttons. The G1's trackball is very responsive and allows me to interact with the phone quickly and efficiently. The home button allows me to get to the G1's "desktop" and access my shortcuts. And finally, the back button helps me get around the phone even faster.

I've always felt that the G1 was something of a evolutionary odd duck. Not as pretty as the iPhone or as elegant as the Pre but an interesting phone because it shows the potential of Android as a phone OS. With the release of the Pre and its webOS operating system, suddenly the potential of Android doesn't fascinate me aas much as it used to. But the ability to scroll through a bus tracker web site on a cold day without having to take off my gloves doesn't need to be fascinating, it just needs to be quick and efficient.

Today's Windows Error at a Public Place...

2009-10-16T21:32:00.005-05:00

...comes to you courtesy of the Chicago Transit Authority's Blue Line train station at Clark & Lake. At least it wasn't a Blue Screen of Death and it's not like Chicago is hosting the Olympics.

My New Old Phone

2009-10-06T23:09:00.002-05:00

Ever since upgrading to my Palm Pre, I haven't had much use for my T-Mobile G1. Sure, I kept it because sometimes it's useful to have a second phone but for the most part my G1 has been semi-retired. But a funny thing happened last week. Google pushed out an update to the G1's Android operating system.

I was pleasantly surprised as a rumor had been going around the interwebs that the G1's hardware was too puny for the latest Android update. More importantly, the update seems to have fixed the G1's number one problem. It has suddenly become a much faster device. It's not as fast as my Pre is on its best days but it's definitely competitive.

This is a pretty exciting development. The G1's problems had soured me on Android but now with its latest update, I'm starting to de-sour.

Classic Takes One Step Forward, Ten Steps Back

2009-10-06T22:19:00.000-05:00

There is something of a compromise these days between gadget and software makers and their users. They put out incomplete gadgets and software and we put up with it because we think it's part of the price for getting to play with the latest and greatest. Witness the Beta label which clung to GMail for years. And it's not just with software. It took years for the iPhone to get a basic feature like cut and paste.

Similarly, Palm was able to release the Pre without certain features, like video recording, and with few native apps, asking its users to trust in its ability to update their phone. And certainly Palm has been good about updating the Pre with updates coming on a monthly, sometimes even weekly, basis. And they smartly made sure that one of the first third-party apps available for the Pre was Motionpps' Classic, an emulator which allows its users to run PalmOS apps.

For me, Classic essentially sealed the deal and made me get my Pre simply because I have used PalmOS apps like SplashMoney and HandyShopper for years and could now use them on my Pre. And while Classic isn't perfect, sometimes it crashes and freezes up and it has even crashed the entire phone on occasion. But generally it has been improving through updates.

Until now. With the recent 1.2 webOS update, Classic gained the ability to Hotsync to a desktop computer over wifi. A second update added the ability to sync over Bluetooth. And yet, I still haven't figured out how to make this sync work even though I frequently used both Bluetooth and wifi to sync my older Palm devices. This isn't too bad, I'm willing to be patient with MotionApps as they have promised to put up a FAQ to help users sync to their computers. But the thing that really bothers me is the fact that ever time I start up an app in Classic it pops up the following message:

Great, a nag screen for all my older apps. Perhaps MotionApps think they are helping users. Perhaps it's trying to cover itself legally. Or perhaps they just want them to badger software makers into joining Classic's certification program.

Either way it is annoying. It gets in the way of my work. And worse yet, it reminds me of Microsoft's obnoxious User Account Control in Vista. Sure it only runs the first time I run an app inside Classic but unless I keep Classic running all day long—something which given Classic's stability problems is not realistic—I will wind up seeing this message hundreds of times a day as I start and stop Classic and apps within Classic.

Another new addition within Classic isn't quite so bad as the nag screen but it is puzzling. I give you full screen mode:

Not much to look at right? All it does is hide the Pre's top bar, giving you exactly zero extra pixels because it merely replaces it with its own considerably less useful and less informative top bar. Now if full screen mode would collapse the virtual d-pad and buttons and give you full use of the Pre's 480x320 screen, it would be something which I've wanted since the Pre debuted. As it is implemented now, Classic's full screen mode is both pointless and useless.

For the first time since I got my Pre I'm an unhappy user. Ever since updating to version 1.2.1, my Pre has been slow and buggy and I can't pin-point the reason why. Classic is getting in the way more than it is helping. And at a time when Palm is ramping up its efforts to get more apps onto the Pre, webOS doesn't want to load more than fifty apps at a time.

Are these just growing pains for a young platform with a bright future or is it a sign that Palm has reached the limits of its ability to create something good and useful for its users. I deeply hope that its the former and not the latter.

Jedi Dog

2009-09-15T21:03:00.002-05:00

It's probably a bit late to be jumping on the Animals With Lightsabers bandwagon but this video is too cool.

Microsoft Brings the Cute But Will Windows 7 Really Bring the Happy?

2009-09-10T21:48:00.003-05:00

I'm very pleased with Windows 7 and I have it on most of my home computers. But as the release of Microsoft's latest OS draws near I can't help but feel this impending sense that Microsoft will somehow screw things up ruin Windows 7. Well, Microsoft must have sensed my concern because they've deployed one of the cute kids from an earlier ad campaign to calm my fears.

You have to hand it to Microsoft, no one uses cute kids to peddle their wares better. The kid is adorable and I get a huge shock when she starts playing a video she's created mashing up the positive reviews which Windows 7 has received with pictures of bunnies and unicorns and Europe's Final Countdown. I've always loved that song—so much so that I use it as my ringtone—and I'm fascinated by the way it's used by the media. Arrested Development used it to great effect during GOB's magic act. And now Microsoft is using to juxtapose extreme cuteness with the idea of happy future using Microsoft software. Watching this ad is downright addictive.

I'm impressed. And a little terrified.

Best Barney Episode Ever!

2009-09-09T23:25:00.002-05:00

I noticed this on Cracked. There is something so satisfying about seeing something like this after a long hard day. I just had to laugh.

Urban Moon

2009-09-04T21:06:00.003-05:00

Yeah, they're crappy phone-cam shots and they don't do their subject justice but nobody said that the expectations are high when you blog. My point with these pictures is something that can't easily be expressed without them. Typically, in a large city like Chicago, the glare from street lights obscures the night sky. But here the low-hanging, full moon in these shots holds its own quite nicely with the glare of the lights of downtown Chicago. A mere phone-cam can't do justice to the beauty of a full moon but it is a lovely sight that has to be seen for itself to be appreciated. And it can be seen every month. Just look up.

Why People Pirate

2009-09-04T20:40:00.003-05:00

It seems that Hulu will no longer be offering Season three of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. I suppose that's not a big deal for most people. Buffy is a ten-plus year-old show and most of its hardcore fans probably already have DVDs of it. But it does remind me of the big problem with web video.

It's unreliable. You depend on a website to stream video to you—video which can be pulled at any time for any number of reasons. For example if the studio which owns it wants more money.

Now compare that to a video sitting on your hard drive. Maybe you ripped it from your legally bought DVDs. Maybe you downloaded it illegally. Maybe you bought it legally through something like iTunes or Amazon Unbox. But the point is that the video is "yours" in the sense that it is on your computer and you can control it. (Now that's not necessarily true in the case of DRM encumbered video that you can buy legally but I think you get my point.) Video on the web can go "poof" at any time.

The movie and TV industries bitterly complain about piracy but it's largely a phenomenon of their own doing. Hulu largely exists because the TV industry wanted to have a place where they could stream their shows and maintain control of them, providing users with an alternative to piracy. And yet it is still hard to find complete series of many of Hulu's shows. And pulling shows doesn't help. (It's called "Video on Demand" not "Video When the Studios Feel Like Giving it to You.") The bottom line is that until people can rely on web video to always be there, they will be tempted to pirate movies and TV.

The Palm Pre Gets An Onscreen Keyboard. Yay?

2009-09-02T00:31:00.002-05:00

One of the reasons why I never got an iPhone was because I could never get used to its virtual keyboard. Still, once an onscreen keyboard became available for the Pre which was relatively easy to install, it made sense to at least give it a try. And the results were about what I had expected. While the ingenuity of the Virtual Keyboard is admirable (when tap the "Sym" button, you can scroll down and enter any symbol that the keyboard is capable of entering), it is ultimately too small to use comfortably especially in comparison with the Pre's slide out hardware keyboard.

There are also other problems. While the Pre's built-in error correction is fairly meager compared to that of the iPhone, it does come in handy for little things like putting apostrophes in contractions and automatically capitalizing letters at the beginning of sentences. This does not work with the Virtual Keyboard even though realistically, you will tend to make more typos with it than you would with the hardware keyboard—disappointing to say the least.

But the Virtual Keyboard does have its uses. It's great for pulling up recently visited pages and bookmarks in the web browser which usually come up after typing a couple of letters. It's a small thing but it is potentially very convenient since you no longer have to slide open the keyboard in order to type two or three characters.

More than anything else, the Virtual Keyboard makes me miss Palm's old Graffiti writing system. A fairly simple, easy to learn set of onscreen strokes which allowed users to enter information without any kind of keyboard, Graffiti was one of the things that got me hooked on the old PalmOS. And it would be a nice thing for some enterprising developer to try to bring to the Palm Pre.

Wherein My Unhealthy Obsession With Clouds Continues...

2009-09-02T00:26:00.002-05:00

As Palm Pre's App Catalog Grows, Homebrew Scene Exposes a Potential Achilles Heel

2009-09-01T23:08:00.006-05:00

In the less than three months since its release the Palm Pre's App Catalog has grown from a little over a dozen apps to forty five. So while it's not growing as fast as its fans would like Palm seems to be moving in the right direction in terms of courting developers. Rome—and all major software platforms—were not built in a day. And for those of us who are impatient and technically inclined, there is always the Homebrew scene.

But it is the very popularity of the Palm Pre's Homebrew apps which expose a worrying concern. It seems that the Palm Pre limits the amount of space which it dedicates to storing applications. As a result, there is a limit to the number of applications which can be installed on the Pre. I have installed a lot of apps from the App Catalog and a lot of Homebrew apps on my Pre. All told, including the Pre's built-in apps, I have fifty-two apps on my Pre. And as a result, I often bump up against this storage limit and have to delete existing apps in order to install new ones.

When you consider the size of huge number of apps in the iPhone's App Store or even the Android Market, the problem with this approach is clear. There is no reason why I should be getting anything resembling an "out of memory" error on my phone when it still have three gigs of free storage space left. The original PalmOS in its heyday, had over 30,000 apps available for it and most of those apps are available for the Palm Pre thanks to the Classic emulator. So for Palm to have a limit on the number of apps that can be installed on its webOS devices like the Pre feels like a mistake which should be corrected sooner, rather than later.

Hits Close to Home

2009-08-23T23:18:00.001-05:00

Felicia Day Wants You to Date Her Avatar

2009-08-17T20:56:00.002-05:00

I only seem to be posting pictures and viral videos these days. I suppose I should feel embarrassed for not posting more original content....But not this time...

Google Addresses Privacy Concerns

2009-08-11T22:56:00.001-05:00

I feel better already...

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

I Know the Feeling....

2009-08-09T23:53:00.001-05:00

I Have Nothing Interesting To Say

2009-08-02T21:40:00.004-05:00

So here are some pictures of an eagle statue in the Logan Square neighborhood.

More Clouds...

2009-08-02T20:57:00.001-05:00

The Palm Homebrew Community Kicks Into High Gear

2009-07-26T01:07:00.003-05:00

Life is good for a Palm Pre user who's not afraid to take risks with his phone. Precentral has turned into an unofficial clearinghouse for the hackers who are delving into the innards of the Pre's operating system and building new apps at a time when Palm's App Catalog has been stuck at thirty apps for a month.

While there are already several Twitter apps in the App Catalog, my current favorite is probably Twee which has a multitude of features a slick interface. Other new homebrew apps include PreChess, Comics, and Mine Search which is a version of the classic Minesweeper game. But the most exciting app by far is probably FileCoaster which downloads and installs homebrew apps to the Pre. It's an exciting time to be a geek.

Not Quite Sundown....

2009-07-26T00:57:00.003-05:00

Clouds can be very stunning when lit from underneath by the setting Sun. As usual, a phone cam can't do the richness of the colors justice. But I think that pictures still has their charms. In the first picture for example, the big white cloud looks almost like a living creature looming above the unsuspecting houses.

Chicago At Night

2009-07-26T00:52:00.002-05:00

Morning Moon

2009-07-20T23:45:00.003-05:00

I suppose it was unrealistic to expect a phone camera to capture the colorful beauty of an early morning sky but I think that this picture is pretty good nonetheless. You can just make out a thin sliver of crescent moon peeking around the rooftops.

Homebrew Apps Provide a Fun Outlet for Impatient Pre Users

2009-07-19T22:42:00.005-05:00

Palm recently released its Mojo Software Development Kit to developers. This is a good thing because I was getting sick of seeing only 30 apps in the Pre's app catalog. There will still be a wait as developers create and and submit applications to Palm for approval. In the meantime, the Classic emulator allows you to use most of the thousands of PalmOS apps that have been created over the years and there are always web apps which can be both fun and useful. And now, Homebrew apps created by hackers for the Pre are becoming both useful and easy to install.

The first app pictured here is Pretris, probably the best of the homebrew games available for the Palm Pre. A fairly simple but attractive Tetris clone for the Pre, Pretris is a good example of how the Pre's webOS allows for the rapid creation of fairly polished apps. In addition to Pretris there is also a pretty good homebrew Solitaire game available for the Pre.

Besides games there are also useful utilities available for the Pre. Translator and Currency Converter are probably my favorites among the homebrew utilities. Even though the installation tools are partially command-line based, they were fairly easy to install. (By contrast, I have yet to successfully install Palm's Mojo SDK, the damn thing keeps stopping and rolling itself back during the installation process.) And it makes installing your homebrew apps as easy as dragging and dropping them onto a desktop icon.

While it would be unrealistic to pretend that there is absolutely no risk to using this homebrew software, so far I have encountered no problems with the half-dozen or so apps I've installed. In theory the developer mode which the Pre has to be put into in order to enable app installation is a potential security risk but it is also fairly easy to enable and disable.

The speed with which these homebrew apps have sprung up is remarkable and bodes well for the future of application development for the Pre's webOS.

The Harold Washington Library—What Could Have Been

2009-07-18T02:23:00.003-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

On the top floor of the Harold Washington Library (pictured at the left) there is a little nook off to the side where you can see some of the other models that were entered in the original design/build competition which lost out to the design which the city sponsored when it was looking to build a new library. These were the "also rans" which lost out to the design which was finally chosen for the library.

Inside the Thompson Center

2009-07-17T00:04:00.004-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

The James R. Thompson Center is something of an odd duck architecturally speaking. It was built in the early 90s to house state offices in downtown Chicago like a giant governmental shopping mall. It's a big, bulky glass and steel building that mixes trappings of a serious modern office building with whimsical candy colored columns. Depending on the angle you look at it from the Thompson Center can be either hideously ugly or breathtakingly beautiful. It's full of abstract art. A lot of the art pieces are kind of ugly but I've always liked the one below.

The Coming Age of Paid News

2009-07-16T03:57:00.002-05:00

I haven't bought a real, physical newspaper in years. And yet I read online versions of newspapers aggregated through Google every day. And this Doonesbury cartoon does a pretty good job of encapsulating the results of an entire society doing the same thing. And certainly there is a lot of breast beating by journalists about the way that Google and Yahoo supposedly steal food from their mouths by posting links to their content. But the plight of newspapers is bigger than Google News, Google Reader, and bloggers posting links to their content. Linking to online newspaper articles drives readers to newspaper websites and generates at least some ad revenue. There is also an elephant in the room that the newspapers don't like to talk about when they talk about search engines and blogs linking to their content. Newspapers also make a lot of money off of classified ads. Or at least they used to. With Craigslist stealing the classified ad business which newspapers used to own, things start getting grim.

And forcing Google, Yahoo, or even bloggers to pay for linking to news websites sounds like a pretty good way for newspapers to cut off their nose to spite their face. (On a personal note, I actually had to look up that saying before I wrote it down, my original mangled version of that idiom was much more disturbing.) It doesn't bring back the classified ads revenue and it sets up a dynamic not unlike the one that currently exists with the music industry which is currently alienating an entire generation of its fans by suing people willy-nilly.

So what is the answer? At the moment there is none but there is certainly a lot of experimentation going around. Plenty of journalists have been pushed out of old media like newspapers, radio, and television and found a home on the web as bloggers. And some of the bigger blogging sites like Huffington Post and The Daily Beast are growing larger and have the resources to act more like traditional newspapers. (He writes having rarely if ever visited either website.) It's possible that big professional blogs will eventually replace traditional newspapers altogether. It's also entirely possible that in the future newspapers will go completely online and will rely on either contributions or on some sort of micro-payment system which is reasonable and convenient enough that people are actually willing to pay it. This is pretty much what is happening now with iTunes and the Amazon MP3 store. While most teens still won't pay for music, older people are perfectly willing to trade a few dollars for the convenience of being able to download music from one reliable place at a low price. Or maybe the future of news looks more like TV and radio, multiple shows and channels all supported by advertising. I just hope that they don't overdo it.

Moreover devices like Amazon's Kindle promise to open up a whole new market for bloggers as they allow people to carry thousands of books and subscribe to hundreds of newspapers (which are updated every day), all in a relatively compact device. Of course these days tiny laptops are almost as compact and software similar to that of the Kindle's can be programmed for them. But laptops are real computers and their software can be hacked to remove the DRM software which controls what can and cannot be loaded onto the Kindle. The Kindle by contrast is completely "safe" from such shenanigans. This is why I think that in the end the newspapers' problems are more about control than they are about money. A big newspaper like the New York Times could potentially save a lot of money right now if they just gave all of their subscribers a Kindle but they will likely resist the move lest a user hack their device to read for free. So instead everybody reads for free.

As a post-script to these meandering thoughts I'd like to point out that many of the bigger newspaper bankruptcies have happened in part because they were mismanaged into the ground. And we certainly don't reward financial mismanagement in this country. OK, so we do; but the newspapers aren't too big to fail. Maybe the newspapers (and the mainstream media in general) need to ask themselves if they deserve to survive at all. While they are good at reporting body counts for the was Iraq, they did piss poor job of considering arguments that might have kept out of that war. Similarly, they've proven very good at detailing gory details of our economic crisis but did little to warn us that it was coming. And those who tried to warn us were generally laughed at. (I realize that the last link was a to a clip from CNBC, a cable TV network but radio and newspapers were every bit the enthusiastic cheerleaders to our exuberant economy which crashed so embarrassingly with every talking head on TV telling us that we had no way of knowing what was coming.)

Clouds...

2009-07-16T00:08:00.003-05:00

...fluffy.

It's Like He's Reading My Mind

2009-07-15T00:43:00.001-05:00

I feel the same way all the time.

The Bowman....

2009-07-14T23:13:00.003-05:00

...Or is it the Spearman?

Exanotes—The Future of Cloud Computing?

2009-07-14T01:46:00.005-05:00

I'm pretty happy with my Palm Pre but one of its shortcomings is in the Memos app. While it's a nice looking app, it is too simple, lacking such old-school PalmOS amenities as Categories or a List View. Worse yet, unlike the Pre's Contacts and Calendar, the Pre's Memos don't sync to anything. They are trapped on the Pre and cannot be edited on a desktop computer.

While I was able to import all of my old PalmOS memos into the Classic PalmOS emulator, again I have a situation where my memos are trapped because Classic cannot yet sync to anything. And since Classic cannot exchange cut and paste data with normal webOS apps, my memos are in a sense doubly trapped—on inside Classic semi-isolated from the rest of the Pre's data and unable to sync with the outside world.

Today I stumbled on to an interesting web-app. Exanotes is a web-based note-taking service. While it does offer a clean, simple interface what stood out for me is the fact that the service it uses 256-bit AES encryption. Good encryption is one of the things which have been sorely lacking in "Cloud Computing" applications and may help assuage the fears of people who are worried about putting their data into the hands of a third-party website.

The author of the web service has stated that he wants to create webOS app which syncs with the web service in the background. This would eliminate the need for a desktop client as any computer with a browser can be the desktop client for a user of this service and it will still be protected by the user's password (just don't click on the "Remember Me" check box if you are somebody else's computer).

My only real concern regarding Exanotes is its scalability. Will it be able to support thousands or even millions of users trying to sync to it at the same time? Only time will be able to answer that question but for now I'm hopeful. Exanotes looks like what I want to hear when people talk about Cloud Computing and I hope it succeeds.

Exanote might be worth checking out for people thinking of moving from a PDA to a smartphone.

Still More Millenium Park Pics

2009-07-13T00:53:00.002-05:00

More Millennium Park Pics

2009-07-11T21:44:00.004-05:00

I take a lot of pictures of Millennium Park. In my defense, it's a very nice park....

I don't know if it's very noticeable in these pictures but The Bean is almost as popular with birds these days as it is with humans.

Reporter Groped by Senator...Kind of Likes it

2009-07-10T21:17:00.000-05:00

This I came across this video on Daily Kos. Weird, wild stuff.

Malware Goes Mobile

2009-07-10T17:32:00.008-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Two new stories by ZDNet caught my eye today. The first is a story about a piece of malware which attacks Symbian-based phones (most Nokia phones use some version of this operating system) by pretending to be a legitimate piece of third-party software and spreads through SMS messages. This was news to me as I didn't realize that mobile malware was so common (this was the latest of many Symbian viruses and differs from them only by being more transmissable). This is an unfortunate but development arising from the fact that phones have gotten so much more powerful these days.

The second story interested me mainly because I recently wrote something about this recently. Basically, you had a group of websites which got flagged by Google as malicious because the advertising network which they use was flagged as potentially carrying malicious code. And ironically enough, the advertising network claims that their ads were clean and that only website was attacked. Either way, it all adds up to a headache for everyone involved; users, website operators, and ad providers alike.

These stories caught my attention in part because they have become so commonplace. Our happy high-bandwidth Internet with its mobile access and fancy web apps is fun and exciting but it also creates new avenues for the bad guys to attack us.