The history of video online is pretty incredible. In the early days, it was technologically impossible. Our modems were slow, connections shaky, and HTTP couldn't be trusted for large file downloads let along movies (remember when you had to choose between FTP and HTTP links? If not, you're not a geek, and that's okay, we love you anyway). Then it became technologically possible, but it was a pain. First you had to choose between Quicktime, Real Player and Windows Media, and then you had to choose your speed, and unless you had a blazing-fast ISDN line (remember those?), you got your video in an itty bitty little square. And the images were so blocky and choppy I had better luck stop-motion-animating my legos.
Then came YouTube. YouTube took the existence of certain technologies - Broadband Internet with Adobe Flash, Flash Video and Media Server - and innovated everything we know about online video. Now, basically everyone can partake of video online because nearly everyone has Flash player (and you can use it, mostly, on slow connections). And so blogs, Facebook & MySpace pages, and even news sites [iReport] are littered with funny little videos in 300 pixel boxes. But I'm still bored with it all.
You see, unless I'm just killing time with StumbleUpon, I generally go to a website for a particular purpose. I want to learn about the company, product, initiative. I want to buy something, review something, or interact. And in the web biz, when we want people to do these things we call 'em calls-to-action, and when they do them, that's called a conversion. And figuring out what does and doesn't generate the highest conversion rate is a whole psudeo-science unto itself. My boredom problem? I haven't seen a good example of connecting online video to the call-to-action.
Many producers are still separating out the technologies in their minds. Calls-to-action are often web forms or shopping carts. Videos are edutainment. Rich Internet Applications - configurators or product-explorers - are Flash / Flex widgets. But these are all separated - with separate development cycles, separate project managers, separate deployment schedules. And that makes for a really boring Internet.
I'd like to see more done with online video - a lot more. The video shouldn't be next to a call-to-action - they should be integrated together. When I have a little person talking to me in the little box, that person should be able to point to the actual button, form, or widget I'm supposed to use. If an online store has a video selling a product, why can't I add that product to my shopping cart in the video (and of course, see my total or other items in the video too)? And if you really want to get fancy, why can't the video respond to my actions? It's just a matter of videotaping a few extra scenes.
This stuff isn't hard - technologically it's all pretty easy, actually. But I think we're missing the technological producers who can see the big picture clearly enough, and understand the different technologies well enough, to link it all together. And until that happens, YouTube is just going to be a point-and-click player. :: snore ::
A friend sent me this which I post due to the absence of meaningful content.
A new priest at his first mass was so nervous he could hardly speak. After mass he asked the monsignor how he had done.
The monsignor replied, "When I am worried about getting nervous On the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I take a sip."
So next Sunday he took the monsignor's advice. At the beginning of the sermon, he got nervous and took a drink. He proceeded to talk up a storm.
Upon his return to his office after the mass, he found the following note on the door:
1) Sip the vodka, don't gulp.
2) There are 10 commandments, not 12.
3) There are 12 disciples, not 10.
4) Jesus was consecrated, not constipated.
5) Jacob wagered his donkey, he did not bet his ass.
6) We do not refer to Jesus Christ as the late J.C.
7) The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not referred to as Daddy, Junior and the spooky.
8) David slew Goliath, he did not kick the sh*t out of him.
9) When David was hit by a rock and was knocked off his donkey, don't say he was stoned off his ass.
10) We do not refer to the cross as the "Big T."
11) When Jesus broke the bread at the last supper he said, "take this and eat it for it is my body." He did not say "Eat me. "
12) The recommended grace before a meal is not: Rub-A-Dub-Dub thanks for the grub, Yeah God.
And by the way, next Sunday there will be a taffy pulling contest at St. Peter's ... not a peter pulling contest at St. Taffy's.
My office Mac - a beautiful 8-core Mac pro with 23-inch flat panel monitor - has a weird illness in its font book ... or something. I actually have no idea what's going on but occasionally Helvetica goes haywire. Check out the screenshots below. If anyone in the blogosphere stumbles upon this post and knows what is going on and how to fix it, let me know!
... because you really only ever need to talk to me, right?
Google has just (finally?) released one of its most obvious product extensions but its one with enormous potential. Now sitting in the right column of my blog, the Google Talk Chatback Badge, also here:
Click on it, and if I'm online with Google chat, you'll be instantly connected with me. No need to have a Google Talk account of your own.
Now these things are nothing new. Google's late to the party as they tend to be, but that trend also calls for enormous simplicity and far-reaching potential implementations. AOL has had some sort of open API for a while, and there are plenty of simple, silly little badges out in the world for leaving "live" or nearly-live comments, chats, etc on blogs and websites. But none of them have been able to make it this easy to interface with a major personal IM provider like Gtalk.
Aside from random IMs I may get at inopportune times (don't take it personally if I don't respond right away, or, at all in any given day), the potential applications for freelancers, cheap businesses, one-man Interactive shops (ahem), are pretty cool. Today there are decent services like LivePerson that facilitate online chat-based customer service widgets where a badge not unlike this one facilitates talking to a company's service group. Unlike Google's, a user could leave an offline message, record a chat history, and the company can have a number of other services. But that costs money (around $99/seat/month for LivePerson) that I and a lot of my clients don't want to spend. Having something as simple as a dedicated IM name and this chat badge could make life simpler for small businesses and freelancers everywhere.
Which could be Google's long term goal, for that matter. They continue to build their business offerings for small and medium sized businesses with Google Apps for your Domain including Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and Gmail plus services like Google Checkout. As it stands now, Google Checkout is geared mainly for product-oriented companies and not service providers like yours truly (it's kind of a pain, actually). But if they were to improve Checkout and add web-based Widget-driven Customer Service tool combined with bug tracking and collaboration software seen in Google Code - they could have a really easy, web-based suite of tools almost too good to pass up.
It's not perfect now and will need some work to get there. Right now, the chats from the website don't appear in my regular IM client (Adium), instead forcing a popup window to chat it. That's annoying, because the last thing I need is a 18th window to sort through. But like most things from Google, it's getting there - and the potential is promising.
My newest article for php|architect has been published today and can be grabbed from their website for a low low Canadian price. This month it's "Playing Nice With Google" in which I explore the basics of the GData API for communicating with some of Google's basic data services. They actually have quite a few of their services set up on GData, which opens up a world of programming possibilities.
In exploring the format and its features for the article, I was actually quite impressed by it overall. It makes sense, its a relatively simple standard that can extended to meet the unique needs of whichever application is implementing it as its API format - which brings to mind an interesting point. By all accounts, the API standard is not proprietary to Google and is open to implementation by any application out there. Yet I haven't seen much of any GData-compatible APIs out there since it would seem many sites and developers prefer to do something home-grown if they open their application at all. I, for one, intend to create a GData-based API for applications I'm building at work. We're still in the early days of the open and API'd web - but I appreciate services like GData to get us there.
A whole book could be written around playing nice with Google for web managers and developers - they have dozens of APIs across a range of technologies and I want to play with them all. In this case, we focused on what PHP developers can quickly dive into - GData:
Playing Nice With ... Google
Google CEO Eric Schmidt commented in a New York Times article, back in December 2007, that 90% of people’s computing needs can and will someday be handled in the Web-based cloud.
Much of that functionality is quickly getting there, as Google and others develop services that undermine Microsoft’s core products and reach out to consumers, individual professionals, small business owners, consultants, cross-border and cross-company teams, and even some larger companies and universities. The movement from the desktop to the virtual space has been on the horizon for some time and, thanks to advanced Rich Internet Application technologies like the Flex and Ajax libraries, is fast becoming a reality.
However, Web 2.0 is not merely about supplanting our desktop icons with bookmarks. New technologies should improve the way we do things, not merely swap out one information silo for another. In order to truly create a new working paradigm where information can be shared, distributed, manipulated, referenced and expanded upon, we need to be able to get at the information in the first place. Enter Web Services—a topic that has frequently graced these pages over the last few years. Freely opening up our architectures in a controlled and secure manner brings fresh ideas far beyond anything we could have come up with by ourselves.
Read more of the article in the magazine - available in print and digital formats.
Update: Well the original image quickly went wonky. So here's another funny one that's now unrelated to the title, and for more - click the link below.
The only thing worse than recruiters, I used to say while working on the corporate side of a staffing business, is cabbies. I tend to avoid taking a taxi places except when I'm really tired or just really need to get to where I'm going. Not because of the expense, though the average $22 ride home from just about anywhere in Manhattan is too much to do regularly, but because of the drivers. And if you've never felt like you were about to die in a cab, either because of their pisspoor driving skills or because they're infuriating the gun-toting monster in the giant SUV ahead of you, then you just can't understand it.
There are a lot of bad cabbies out there, but its much too difficult to do anything about them. To report a violation of your official passenger rights, you have to appear in person in Taxi Court (there is actually such a thing and only open from something like 10-3 two days a week) to confront the cabbie in person (something about Constitutional right to face your accusor ... fine, guess it makes sense, whatever). That's so horribly inconvenient that nobody does it, and drivers get away with their assholery.
Well, no more! Possibly in an effort to remind them who's boss after two recent entirely ineffectual day-long "strikes," the Taxi and Limousine Commission has begun Operation: Secret Rider. This badly branded campaign is a fantastic effort for the Taxi Police (again, yes, there is such a thing) to secretly ride in cabs to catch bad cabbies violating passenger rights. Things like talking on a cell phone while driving, refusing trips to the Outer Boroughs (which they should really test for Roosevelt Island - where no cabbie agrees to go!), and refusing to accept credit card payment will all get the cabbie a $150 - $350 ticket, which for some could be almost an entire day's wages.
It's not entirely bad, though. Police will identifying cabbies who behave themselves and provide good service and publicly honoring them at a ceremony later this year.
Oh holy hell. If you were feeling particularly sane this morning, then you simply must go and play on the Boohbah website for about 5 minutes. What's Boohbah? No effing clue. It's some sort of LSD-influenced children's program on PBS that puts the annoyingness of Barney, Teletubbies and Mr Rogers combined to shame.
I was at this site for a legitimate work reason, honest to God, but I left about 5 minutes into it, crying from laughing too hard.
That was my feeling this morning when not only did the Fed cut interest rates, but cut them by what I feel is a whopping 3/4 point. That's pretty substantial considering not all that long ago Bernake had his head in the sand about our pending financial mushiness. Now the base rate is just 3.5%. Allow me just a moment to pat myself on the back for a small, simple maneuver that, really, is stupid to be proud of but I'm happy about nonetheless.
The lower rate, of course, means that its cheaper to borrow money from banks. Which theoretically inspires people to do stuff like buy houses at lower mortgage rates, etc and so forth. Of course we're also stuck in a nasty little housing slump that has not yet hit the bottom, so whether people will be rushing out for mortgages remains to be seen. Hopefully those who got in over their ARMs heads will be able to refinance at lower, fixed rate mortgages and save their homes, solidify the mushy housing market, etc and so forth.
What it also means, though, is that very soon your interest rate for your savings account is going to suck even worse than it probably already does. This is something of particular interest to me, because over the last year we've been working hard to build up a little cache of savings for whatever - job insurance, buying a house (or an island), whatever comes up. I'm rather proud of it, really, because the end of 2006 was a concerted effort to pay off the debt that had been plaguing my credit cards for more than a year, ranging from a few thousand dollars to as much as 9,000 at any given point over the previous 18 months.
Granted, all the accounts were dry on January 1st of last year, but the credit cards were all paid off, too, and that felt good. In short order the savings accounts began to fill again, ultimately finishing out our somewhat ambitious savings goal. This year, the goal is to turn that savings pot into income-producing assets through investing.
Of course, the market is crap right now. We're primed to jump into it in the near future, but I sure am glad I chose to wait for this year. Call it luck, call it intuition, I'm not sure, but last Fall I opened a new account with Zecco.com but opted to hold off any investing activity until I was secure in my new job and the savings accounts were stable. Then January came, the housing and credit crisis really took form and it was clear that not only would the stock markets continue to fall, but so too would the interest rates.
Since all my investable assets are in cash right now, that meant that while I was holding off on growing the money through investing, it would grow at an even slower rate as my bank dropped its interest rates on my accounts. I needed a way to lock in some semblance of a decent rate so my money wouldn't be so very stagnant.
Enter the Certificate of Deposit, which just happened to be mentioned at CNN today as a good short term place to stash cash while the market figures itself out. (Go me!) CDs trap your money for their duration, 3 months to 5 years, but I cautiously waded into the water with a CD Ladder at my bank, ING Direct. At the time, ING was giving decent rates of 4.9% on CDs up to a year (and lower rates for longer terms, which showed that the banks were clearly expecting rates and returns to drop in the longer term). I opened 3 CDs at 3, 6, and 12 months.
Soon after, ING dropped their rates across both my Savings and new CD accounts. Instead, I looked about and found ETrade's Banking division not only had a better interest rate on their Savings Account (a whopping 5.05% at the time) but they also had a 5% CD - which was better than even my "good" rates at ING. So I stashed a lot of cash into that CD to lock it in, and also moved the bulk of our savings to an Etrade liquid savings account. In all, leaving just a little bit of money at ING (where we still have a checking account). The result would be my money would still grow where it otherwise wouldn't since it's not ready to be invested.
Then today the interest rate dropped as expected, ETrade's CD dropped as well, and I was left feeling pretty good about my timely maneuver. In 6 months the markets may all still be bad, but I'll have at least done okay with my cash in the mean time while gearing up to jump into the markets.
Wow, this was one of those days where every reload of CNN.com brought a new major headline. Some things happened so close together, they didn't even get a top spot.
Really it started late yesterday and early this morning all world-wide stock markets falling in response to the shaky U.S. economy; the day was primed from the get-go to be a nasty one on Wall Street.
The Dow, finicky as it is, fell about 450 points in the first couple minutes of trading. Allusions were made to Black Monday that kicked off the 1987 (dep)(re)cession.
The Oscar noms came out somewhere in there. I continue to hope the WGA brings us a cancelled red carpet, but that's just me.
Some fascinating statistics from Netcraft out today - check out this chart that shows what web server software is powering the web:
Apache is is king still, rightfully so (though in "active websites" Apache's been losing ground over the years), but take a look at that pink line. All of the other webservers are developed by a company or consortium for use by many different companies. Apache, Microsoft, NCSA (really?!), are all used by many different websites, from e-commerce to corporate to personal websites.
But there is no publicly available Google Web Server. As an administrator, it is not possible for me to set a policy of "We Use Google Web Server." Only Google can use GWS. Which means for that pink line to show that hundreds of thousands of domains/sites are being powered by Google Web Server shows Google's sheer mass. It probably includes things like Blogger, Google Pages, Google Base, etc. Still, that is a lot of computing power wrapped up in one company.
January's honors of Business Failures for Customer Service goes to Adobe and Wall Street Journal. Though to be honest, neither company has really offended me with any great gusto, but they sure as hell are annoying me!
Let us start with Adobe. Now, generally, Adobe is a company I respect and very much appreciate. I think they have great products and a great attitude towards modern web development. They really took strong steps towards Nirvana with Flex 2 and AIR, and its Adobe we have to thank for the online video revolution. But what if the awesomeness you need to create has nothing to do with Adobe's current product push? Or what if you need some detailed answers to your custom product idea? The answer - don't start with customer service. If you do, they get really annoying.
When they eventually get back to you, they don't send you an email. They email you a PDF. The answer you want ... is in a PDF. There's something to be said about a company that really believes in and uses its own products, but someone's drinking too much Kool-Aid if they think emailing a PDF is a good communication mechanism. What's the point of that? Really? Oy. Oh and I got it twice.
In any case, here was their response. Aside from sounding like a high school freshman wrote it ("this is to inform you that, this support portal ..."), I really think they have a bunch of form letter paragraphs and click checkboxes to automatically include them. The result is a disjointed, idiotic sounding response ... that comes in a PDF. Annoying and/or stupidness shown in red:
Thank you for contacting Adobe Customer Service.
Due to the Support Portal being closed on weekends, we were unable to respond to your e-mail. We sincerely regret any inconvenience this may have caused and appreciate your patience.
[We ... I ... pick a plurality!]
I understand that you want an Adobe product that will allow you to convert documents to [Product] and those documents can be downloaded in their original formats.
[ Wow ... they copied and pasted my original text ... and ended up with a sentence fragment. I assure you my original email would make my English profs proud. These guys, however ... ]
Jeof, this is to inform you that, this support portal does not have the necessary resources to suggest which product to purchase, specific upgrade paths, upgrade eligibility, product and pricing information. You need to call our Adobe Sales Department.
Our Adobe Sales Department contact number is (800) 833-6687 option 2; we are available 7 days a week, 6:00 A.M to 8:00 P.M, Pacific Time. Our representative will also assist you to take the correct buying decision based on your specific needs.
Jeof, for more information about the product in question, please visit the product's information page here: http://www.adobe.com/pro ducts/alphabetical.html
[ NOT the product information page! ]
For information on how to buy or order Adobe Products, please visit the following page: http://www.adobe.com/buy/
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
For your records, your customer ID number is [ ... ] . The customer ID number is the easiest way for us to access your account in our database. In the future, please provide this number when you contact Adobe. Your case number is [ ... ] .
Jeof, the Web Support Portal Representatives are available from Monday to Friday. For your convenience, on weekends we have a dedicated phone support for Customer Service related queries. Please feel free to contact our phone support at 1 (800) 833-6687 from 6:00am-8:00pm PST, 7 days a week.
We thank you for your time.
I hope you find these resources helpful. Best Regards, Mac S. Adobe Customer Service
So not only does product support apparently not know anything about how their products work or can be used, they have no ability to forward my request to their sales department, whom I'm apparently supposed to talk to. They copy and past my original email into a form that then auto-generates a response with bad grammar that overuses my first name way too often. Why don't companies allow their customer service people to think? Or more importantly, why don't they hire people who can?
Moving on to the Wall Street Journal. I subscribed to the venerable paper while in University, and decided it was high time to re-up. So at the beginning of the year I paid my dues and they happily took my money - on New Years Day, no less. And I was happy to get my first paper ... oh ... I haven't gotten my first paper yet. Now going on two whole weeks with nary a newsprint in sight.
I've been trying to sort it out with their customer service department, but now I'm just going around in circles. They're nice enough, in general, and seem generally competent, but they get the Customer Service Failure award because noting is resolved. In this modern day and age, is it really this hard to deliver a freaking newspaper? Is it really hard to track down why the newsie can't seem to drop it off with one of the other two dozen Journals that come to my building every morning?
Why is it so hard to just get answers? Answer that, and you may have the winning business plan for the rest of eternity.
The year started with a bang ... and no cash. Manged to end 2006 with zero debt, finally, but only after emptying nearly every account. But the debt was gone and so was I ... to Germany for a week, followed very quickly by a turnaround trip to London. Half of January was spent abroad ... the perfect month, far as I'm concerned.
February we tried out First Fridays at the Guggenheim ... and it was terrible. Packed in, bad booze, and pretentious hipsters galore.
March came and with it the worst sinus infection ever ... landing me in the hospital for four days with my head feeling like it was about to explode. The morning after I was released, I stood in line early early to get Zach's Wii for his birthday.
April brought two of many visitors for the whole year, some good, some not so good. Color Purple ... not such a great show.
May, to Los Angeles for Jacquie's graduation. Talk Radio, The Jocker, and File on Ryan Carter - all pretty good shows ... and all basically for free!
Summertime and it was another major development push, learning Salesforce.com in time for the SIFMA conference. Harry Potter on IMAX! Zach got his dream job at DC Comics ... I started to hate mine.
Throughout the year a number of articles finally published - as if I were smart or something. August and it was off to Maine! September, to San Francisco via LA. Last minute tickets to Jersey Boys. And it was time to enrich my life with the almighty iPhone ... followed soon after by drama, drama, drama.
Finished out the year by paying off all the credit cards again, but this time with a nice little nest egg to lean on. From no cash to fine savings, all in one year.
Yeah, no easing into the new year for ol' Jeof. Until a couple days ago, I was working every calendar day since Christmas (which includes weekends and New Year's Day, for those unclear on what a calendar day is). Why, you ask? Deadlines, says I! There was a big deadline to hit at the end of last week and circumstances kept delaying the work. So that called for a giant push at the end of the project, of course. No worries, the deadline was hit and was rather anticlimactic. le sigh
But I have scraps of paper strewn about my desk, stuffed in pockets and at the bottom of briefcases chock full of ideas and topics I fully intend to blog about ... so stay tuned ... as soon as I catch up on my sleep.
Netscape is dead. It wasn't the first, but for a while it was the best.
The domain, Netscape.com, will live on as a portal that no one really knows what to do with; I imagine with people dwindling away from using the browser fewer will use the site when no one has it as their home page anymore. AOL itself has had little idea what to do with it, changing the Netscape.com business model several times in the last couple years. As usage dies down, so will ad revenue, and eventually, the last shreds of "Netscape" will fizzle into the ether of Lore.
Many in both Internet and e-Business circles will ponder on the age that Netscape brought us. Some may say that Netscape and all it represented - its development, it's closed nature and penchant for developing its own brand of markup (IE did as well) during the browser wars, it's spawning of the so-called information superhighway - has no place in our current, transitional, Web 2.0 age.
Personally, I think this is just the beginning. Netscape is not the first browser to die, nor will it be the last. The dawning age of the Ubiquitous Internet will bring with it new access paradigms that don't involve "Back," "Stop," and "Reload" buttons.
A couple years ago I had a problem with my alma mater's new fangled way of doing their mass Easter communion. Single Serving PrePackaged Wafer & Juice Communion Cups. Just peel off the top film, scarf the Catholic approved styrofoam wafer, peel off the second film, chug the juice and feel the blood and processed body of Christ surge through you. Convenient? Cheaper? Cleaner? Yup, yup, yup! But it also robbed the communal spirit communion should bring - no breaking of the bread, no sharing of the cup. It felt more like tossing back that final koolaid at Heaven's Gate.
Well, now the wolves have done it again with the NanoBible ... here's the rather creepy-esque "ad:"
Sure, I can see why microfiche-ing the Bible to a size easy transported by ingested latex condom could be useful if, say, you had to smuggle it into Stalin's Russia, but to actually turn it into jewelry?
I imagine someone sees this and thinks "well now I can always have a Bible with me for that special moment where I could lead someone to Christ," if you happen to have a microfiche reader from your local Library Surplus store handy.
At some point in my Christian education I was taught to never have a Bible you would think twice about giving away. Yet as Bibles pass $30, $40, $50 and more, they're becoming investments that are increasingly more difficult to part with. Now you have Cross Of Gold 2.0 - and it serves no other purpose than to laud a superficial faith over those you deem less worthy.
It just gets more insidious at the company website:
In this fast-paced world we live in, it is becoming increasingly difficult to hang on to basic values. Speed and efficiency have become the new gods in our society: computers are continuously being improved to become faster, more efficient; cell phones now include miniature computers with internet and e-mailing capacity, as well as a video plus camera all rolled into one; larger planes are being built so that more people can get to where they’re going, faster; satellite technology has become so efficient that it can now read what you’re reading!
What any of that has to do with the Bible, I have no idea, but then Christians haven't been very good at marketing in the last hundred years. I continue here with a few bits from their "What We Believe" page, which reads worse than most Jr High youth group sermons I've heard in my life (No offense, Tommy or Mark. Pete, on the other hand ...)
Let’s face it: technological progress has taken over the lives of many of us in Westernized societies, leaving very little room for contemplation, or for fully experiencing all the interestingdetails ...... zzzzzzz ......
Since we couldn’t beat advancing technology, we decided to join it by bringing to the world something that wouldremind us ......
If God is in all things, and if Christians hold the Holy Bible to be the Word of God, then what better way to remember Him and honor His Word, than to be able to “wear” it at all times and in all places?
Uh ... "reading" it?
Yes, folks! [ They actually say "Yes, folks!" on their website...] We believe that even in this crazy world, there IS a place for God and His Word in our hectic, impossible daily lives… So don’t wait, and make room in your life for the Nano Bible™ starting today!
I'm going back to my happy imaginary land where everything makes sense, Christians are good people and Bibles are not choking hazards.
If someone can tell me this is all a big joke, I will give the site free hosting for a year.
So on Gmail's login screen they have an invitation to tell "your Gmail story" via YouTube video.
My "Gmail" story? It would seem so many people just love Gmail so very very much that they send their pithy love notes to Google, and now in a masturbatory act of self aggrandizement, Google wants to promote them as videos. Which is fine, more power to them, but let's not forget that as great as it is, like all email applications, it's still got its problems. The difference - and the only thing that makes it truly vunderbar - is the uber-effective spam filter. What's my Gmail story?
My Gmail story is about how Google in its infinite wisdom databases decided it would be a good idea to greylist all the mail servers at my hosting provider, thus seriously restricting the amount of mail that could come into my box. You see, I have a dozen or so email addresses and they all forward to Gmail because Gmail's spam filtering and conversation threading is pretty good. But when my mail can't get to Gmail because Gmail's throwing a hissy fit, well, screw you, Gmail!
My Gmail story is also about how because it's use of JavaScript and browser tricks is so cutting edge, the application throws enough JavaScript errors and bugs that memory leaks and other issues that when I and any other developer who uses it has Firebug turned on, it causes Firefox to leak memory - quickly. And this morning the proof was plain and simple with this big red notice:
Sure there are problems with Firebug, but a lot of those problems come from the way webpages are coded that cause it go haywire.
What's my Gmail story? It's that Gmail is slow to implement useful features and the competitive features it does have don't work well for me. The idea of being able to search my mail is great, but the search sucks. I'm not sure it's even as good as Google proper. If I need to find a message from Zach, I type in "Zach" or "From:zach" but it's rare that the message I want is ever found. Why? Because despite emails having Zach's name in the From Name field, they come from zacherymilan@ ... and therefore I have to search for "From:zacherymilan...". Of course, if he sent it from work, then I have to search for his work email address too. By the time I get a really useful search query to find the message(s) I want, I may as well have written a RegEx to do it ... and I only know what a RegEx is because I'm a nerd. Do regular users actually find the search useful? It's a pain for me.
And why can't I mark messages as important?
And why are signatures so wonky? Why can't I have multiple, or why can't it put them in the right places or lose that annoying automatic double-hyphen that shows up before it.
Why does it have to say "on behalf of jeof@jeof.net" whenever I send from a non-gmail address?
Gmail's drinking its own Koolaid but it's jumping the gun a bit. Rumour has it that a massive new version is on its way (beyond the back end fixes they recently did, which are cute). But for now, my Gmail story is that I barely use Gmail anymore. For me, its not much more than a massive mail catcher that I download my mail from (via IMAP - finally) into Apple Mail and my iPhone.
( There's been a perfect storm of contemplations in my head and blog posts out in the world, so I'm committing to digital ink some of observations and passive aggressive instructions. Let's begin. )
An old college friend of a friend of mine has been visiting New York since the day after Thanksgiving. I didn't even know she was coming and I don't think she knew I lived in New York, nevertheless it's always good to know more people around where you are and who doesn't love an excuse for a dinner date. As she and I were chatting on her first day in the city, attempting to sort schedules and find a good evening for dinner, she let me into her small personal hell of trying to find a couch to sleep on. It would seem that out of four cousins and two friends (other than me), she was hard pressed to find anyone willing to let her stay at their place. At the time, she was covered for all but a couple nights, maybe, if she was lucky.
Such is New York, I find. I don't know what it is about this city's culture but from what I've seen, people do not tend to open their homes to travelers all that often. I don't know if its because we all have such limited space as it is, and home is our only psychological refuge from the bustle of the borough, but my friend's story is not the first I've heard like it. I let her in on a well-known secret, however, that our place is always open to guests and old friends.
We have a lot of old friends back in California - some who until recently never left California - who love to come visit a real big city, and we've never had a problem putting them up. We've long since stopped playing tour guide, opting to hand over a couple of tourist guides and a trusty map instead, but they're welcome to a key to the door, an inflatable mattress and warm blanket or four, and dinner if they're home in time. Our most recent guest - a college acquaintance we barely knew - called (well, Facebook-messaged) as a last resort within days of coming, and we were happy to inflate the bed for him (less so later, which I'll get to). As far as we're concerned, our home is open to old friends and friends of friends.
Which all came flooding back to my mind when I reread a passage from Jimmy Carter, reposted on Nathan's blog:
“When Mama was home we never turned away anyone who came to our back door asking for food or a drink of water….One day the lady from the next farm came to visit, and Mama commented on how many tramps she had helped that week. Mrs. Bacon said, “Well, I’m thankful that they never come in my yard.” The next time we had some of the vagrant visitors, Mama asked why they had stopped at our house and not the others. After some hesitation, one of them said, “Ma’am, we have a set of symbols that we use, to show the attitude of each family along the road. the post on your mailbox is marked to say that you don’t turn people away or mistreat us.” After they were gone, we went out and found some unobtrusive scratches; Mama told us not to change them.” — Jimmy Carter, An Hour Before Daylight
Of course, there is another side of the story. For just as we are happy to put up guests, like most reasonable, domesticated people we do expect some measure of decorum of the part of our guests. Now, the vast majority of our guests over time have been perfect gentlepeople. Their habits may be weird (like staying up until 4am and falling asleep to the TV, only to not get up until very late in the afternoon and wonder why the city is boring), but generally most are welcome to come again. But still, I was happy to find via Lifehacker a list of the top-ten ways to be a perfect houseguest. A recent guest of ours would have done well to consider these ...
Show up on time. If you tell your host that you’re going to come in on Wednesday morning, show up at that time. If you’re running late make sure to give a call and update your host when you’ll be arriving.
Good advice. The corollary is "Don't be early." If you say you're coming on Sunday afternoon, don't send a text on Saturday morning saying you'll be here in a couple hours. Moreover, if you're taking the Chinatown bus, assume you will be late and try to give updates; believe me, they ain't Amtrak
Bring a gift. To show your appreciation for the free room and board, bring a gift. It doesn’t have to be big or expensive. Baked goods are always appreciated.
A theoretical idea Martha would be proud of, but totally unnecessary. By the way, I prefer reds to whites ;-)
Offer to pay for groceries. If your host will be paying for your food while you stay, offer to chip in for groceries.
If you're staying for a while, at least offer. I'll turn you down, most likely, because just getting around the city will be expensive enough and you probably don't know that yet.
Keep your area neat. Before you leave each day, make sure to make the bed and straighten up your room.
You're "room" is my living room floor. We've had college aged guests not quite understand the value of a clean living room.
Help with chores around the house. Always be willing to help around the house. Help prepare the big holiday meals, wash the dishes, and take out the trash. Don’t wait for you host to say no, just start helping.
My sister is actually very good about this, it brings a tear to my eye. We've come home to clean dishes and a noodle based meal that was quite tasty.
Disclose your schedule. Let your host know your schedule everyday and do all you can to stick to it. This will help you host plan when to serve meals and how late they need to stay up.
Again, the other side of this coin is "Have a schedule ... or at least an idea." We don't play tour guide. We're happy to go out with you, show you a few things, give you some ideas, but we're so over going to Empire, Liberty, and I only go to Times Square when I'm very, very drunk. Ask for input, not an itinerary.
Always ask. Remember, you’re a guest. Even if someone tells you to make yourself at home, still ask before you start using things. It’s just good etiquette.
ESPECIALLY OUR COMPUTERS. That may seem odd, but its happened. Our aforementioned last minute, Chinatown bus taking freebird scheduled somewhat untidy house guest decided it would be a good idea to open Zach's computer while we were at work to "find a song he heard us play." Well when he did that, Zach's IM came on, and I was like "huh?" to get the response "Its just me doing this, I'm leaving now." Yeah. Stay off our computers unless you ask. And if we freely allow you to, which we have happily, don't erase our browser histories just because you looked at porn. We use our histories for legitimate purposes.
Don’t overstay your visit. Try to keep your stay shorter than three days. Your host has things to do and they can’t put their life on hold forever.
Strip the bed before your leave. Your host will likely wash the bed linens after you leave. Help make their job easier by stripping your bed before you leave.
Would be nice. I spent summers traveling with a concert group so doing this or making the bed in the morning is second nature to me. I think most of our guests have been pretty good about this - and the one redeeming quality of our less than favorable guest was that he also deflated the bed and folded it up.
Leave a thank you note. A short handwritten thank you note can go a long way to show your appreciation.
But the most egregious offense is when you don't get any thank you. Isn't this standard? Isn't this like the most common, basic, all around introductory First grade lesson that you thank your hosts in any way? A note is fine. Saying "hey, thanks" is nice. Even a Facebook message would suffice. But to ask randomly when we don't really know you, show up early ... and then late ... use our stuff without asking and generally not really being a good guest and still not even say thanks ... not so cool. On the other hand we have had really nice guests do really nice things, like send us small gifts after the fact - one who didn't even stay with us, all we did was have dinner with her!
Out of the twenty or thirty times we've had guests stay at our place, only once did we ever think it wasn't such a great idea. And really, it doesn't matter if you make your bed, clean up a bit, help with dinner or anything. We're always happy to have people visit the greatest city in the world and more than happy to make that easy by making up a bed. This trend in New York of not doing that baffles me, and hotel prices are out of control, so feel free to come on by.
As he announced his plan to ease the mortgage crisis for consumers, President Bush accidentally gave out the wrong phone number for the new “Hope Now Hotline” set up by his administration.
Anyone who dialed 1-800-995-HOPE did not reach the mortgage hotline but instead contacted the Freedom Christian Academy — a Texas-based group that provides Christian education home schooling material.
The White House press office quickly put out a correction moments after the President’s remarks. After dialing the correct number, 1-888-995-HOPE, CNN was connected to a “counselor” within three minutes.
Well it looks like Gary finally got the nerve to ask for our little Carnie's hand in marriage. She said yes (I voted for the slap, scream, and run away just for the fun of screwing with him). Apparently the rock is huge. Here's a pic, isn't she gorgeous?
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Update:
4:26 Caren Johnson: the rock isn't HUGE
4:26 Jeof Oyster: well you said it was a big ass rock on your finger
The good folks at php|architect saw fit to give me a few pages again, this time for an article about PHP and salesforce.com's awesome Force.com Platform-as-a-Service product. The article was a labor of love, though by the end it was more labor than love, as I found I wasn't entirely sure how to capture all the possibilities in just 4,000 words. But in any case, the article has been published and is available on newstands - you can get in here. Here's how it starts:
Once upon a time in a job far, far away, there was a firm that desperately needed a new way of doing things. For thirty years across seven different acquisitions, a dozen separate offices were using whatever means they could to manage their relationships with clients, vendors, and each other. In some offices, the staff still relied on paper order forms passed from the sales floor to fulfillment. Others managed nearly all their processes with email and an Excel® spreadsheet stored on a shared drive. Most offices were linked by some middle-office software for billing and account maintenance, but only a precious few in the company actually knew how to use it. The company was growing, but the staff was ill equipped to handle the load.
Obviously, we needed some serious help in the software department, and fast! But finding software that matched our business and processes exactly would be nearly impossible; we were a people-centric business and so the software we needed would have to address all the concerns, procedures, and idiosyncrasies of those people. Worse still, the software would have to do this for the people in six different business functions: sales, fulfillment, billing, marketing, information technology and management reporting.
The theoretical answer to this conundrum is CRM software. Over the last couple of decades, CRM applications have evolved from glorified address books to massive data systems in as many flavors as there are people who use it. But if you’ve never worked with the development and deployment of CRM, it can be a real beast. So many stake-holders (with matching opinions) and so few developers quickly leads to paralysis. In the end, like many organizations we opted to purchase some expensive software that we modified extensively to meet our needs.
While purchasing the software gave us control of our own destiny, it also closed us off from the world. Sure this web-based application was scalable and extensible, but in order to do any work on it meant required proprietary knowledge of the software and our processes. And with so many cooks in the kitchen, the software at its best could only serve the lowest common denominator. Extensions had to serve everyone and all business units and departments had access to and had to know how to use everything in the software just to use the part they needed.
In retrospect, it could have been easier and cheaper if we’d not purchased the software. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers had been around for a while who’d be more than happy to take on the cost of hosting, managing and upgrading our software for us. The trade off then, however, was that our unique processes would have to fit within the mold of the software - a common but highly undesirable problem. At the time, the answer was to buy it. Today, the answer may very well be in a company called salesforce.com.
(Incidentally, the article is entitled "Use the Force.com, Luke." I apologize for this title. It was the result of shared exasperation and a looming deadline for both me and my editor, and by the end of it I don't think either of us really cared what to call the thing. Also, there is a misprint on the issue's cover, where the slug refers to it as CMS. This should read "CRM." The article's references are correct.)
Have you ever noticed humanity's need for an "Other?" I fault Christians worst for the phenomenon, but only because it is a stark violation of our/their very purported belief system. But it is wrong to assume it is exclusively a Christian phenomenon. Indeed the very reason it exists in Christendom is because, hey, Christians are human. It is merely from their inability to recognize their humanness that they're inhumanity flows. But that is another topic.
The concept of the other exists throughout history. Nationalism is founded on the concept of an "Other." Whatever is not us, is not right - is not good, not correct, not perfect, not to be trusted, not to be loved or respected or validated. Whole wars are fought on the concept of fighting the "Other." Wars are lost when the "Other" is seen as "Similar." Having Others makes us feel better about Us. We can compare ourselves against Them. Those Damn Muslims, those Backward Mormons, the Degenerate Gays or Socially Worthless Fatties. As long as we're not Them, we're golden.
Of course I'm as guilty as the next guy at this. Hell, I feel guilty for having taught some of these concepts in the old days being Mr Perfect Christian Bible Youth Group Man. Today I'm reminded all the more of this phenomenon by my friend Tommy. He examines his own perspective in a recent blog posting, where among musings he examines his own mockery of Others.
This concept hits home significantly because of my life as Other. I grew up on the outside. With only tangental acquaintances and the 30,000 foot view of my local social groups, I was the Other for many of the Similars. I was the one the kids made fun of, the one who gave them a sense of belonging, the one who was good for a laugh. Much of my personality emerged from this status, some of it good, some bad, but much of it just me, or at least the me I've become.
Reading a post like Tommy's is hard because that's the kind of attitude I left behind him years ago when I abandoned my old life in Jersey, never to see those people again. But also reading my friend's post reminds me clearly that I am just as susceptible, as he is, to creating Others out others, even in my own Otherness. A precious few in our world have no need for an Other. The rest of us are insecure, selfish little bastards who can't get over ourselves, and in such a life we cheapen our own existence, blinding ourselves to the pain we cause or encourage, refusing to challenge ourselves to live like we say, and wish, we would.
Blogging time has been hard to come by, but only because I'm happy doing many different things these days. As you may have guessed from various entries here and at JEOFnet, it's been a busy couple of months for us!
Let's start with the biggest change - my new job. The job, in short, is great - though I've not really been able to say why its great. I think the biggest thing is that I've felt my stress slowly seep out of my pores and joints. A lot of people who saw me before I quit and then again after a couple weeks in my new role said I look heads and tales better than before - more relaxed, more at peace. And they're right.
Life at my new job is quite different than my old. For one, I have to actually record what I do during each hour of the day - which is tough when I tend to work on a lot of different things all at once. The culture is very different from my old job as well; it feels more alive, more interested, like a place where interesting thing happens and everyone is an expert, professional, or otherwise contributing to the general mindshare of the company. And it's nice to not live in fear of tyrannical management ready to pounce at the slightest misgiving. There's plenty to do, mind you. The company has had little to no leadership in terms of Interactive technology, theory, process and approach. But this is my favorite place to be in.
Other than the job, which admittedly was slow in the first few weeks, we've had a busy couple of months! It started with the all new bedroom, which has finally been completed with the mounting of our sexy new West Elm shelves (which are a bitch to hang, by the way). I'll take pictures soon enough - but its very nice indeed.
We've also seen Wicked - which I can't stop raving about - and Sufjan Stevens in concert - which was just ... amazing. This past week we went with a couple friends to an advanced screening of Battlestar Gallactica: Razor at some out of the way theatre in New Jersey. I drove - and relearned why I hate driving in Jersey. Eventually we found our way back to civilization. There was also the trip to Raleigh which was a horror story in and of itself (read about it at JEOFnet). This weekend Zach is in Denver for his sister's wedding (I was disinvited ... long story). And this coming week is Thanksgiving!
You may not have ever heard of Sufjan Stevens, which if that is the case then you must come over right now for a musical edumacation. In the words of his own mother,* his music can seem a bit "weird, right?" but the big orchestra pieces he composes are just invigorating, breathtaking, even, if I may gush a bit. Well, his music on an iPod is nothing like his music in a live opera house with a full orchestra behind him.
For starters, these tickets were not easy to get. I just wanted to toot my own horn on that one. Of course I do not reveal my tricks whenever I find something difficult to get, but I just want you to know I'm that good. ;-) This particular event was the premier of a new piece commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music that was meant to celebrate the monstrous Brooklyn Queens Expressway. The piece itself is a blend of mediums primarily movies and live music, with some live action hula hooping thrown in for good measure.
I'm not really qualified to judge the artistry of the piece, which lasted for about 30 minutes, but it was good fun to watch. His theme was connecting the mass production of hula hoops - which can go on forever - with the industrial and utilitarian expressway. The connection point was hubcaps and hula hoops. The music was pretty good, the hula hooping was impressive. He's gotten mixed reviews but I found his ability to make music a visual and auditory experience was spot on.
After the debut of The BQE he played a number of his songs form various albums, and the experience just kept on going. There's no music like live orchestra music, and no one does orchestra music today like Sujan. He reinterpreted his own work into new arrangements that were stunning in their own right, all in front of a 100 square foot screen that steadily streamed a video version of a Rorschach test.
All in all a pretty amazing concert. It's too bad it only played for 3 days. But rest assured if he's playing live in New York again, I'm gonna be working my magic for tickets.
*a friend of Zach's is friends with Sufjan's family, and ran into his mother at the supermarket soon after the Christmas album was released last year.
So I mentioned last time I blogged that we finally got to see Wicked. Wicked! I've been listening to the soundtrack almost exclusively for three weeks since. And I'm probably going to be buying tickets for it again soon - with a few extras to drag people along. It was exactly what a good musical should be - huge, loud musical numbers that you can't help but empathize with the character because you feel like you're right there in the moment. Plus the story is this perfect blend of myth and ever-so-slightly possible reality that one really believes it could happen.
Of course, it helps that we saw it starring my new favoritest Broadway actress EVER - Stephanie Block. She's playing Elpheba (the "Wicked" witch) and does an absolutely amazing job. Her voice is like an alto-soprano, so she has this great range which she uses fully throughout the show. Plus, I learned later that she basically the "test voice" for the composer when he was writing the musical - so it was her voice he used to hear how all the songs and parts and whatnot came together. She probably should have had the part in the beginning but then Idina Menzel came along and they gave her the part. No matter, she does fine, but now Block's starring as Elpheba and I'm going to get back in that theatre as soon as I can.
So my sister is going to be seeing it in Chicago soon, and I hope she likes it. If anyone's interested in going with us the next time we go, let me know! I'll grab you a ticket. :)
Though if you've tried to email me, find me on Facebook, or wait for me to play my move in Scrabble, you probably wouldn't believe it. I've been busy! Somehow, anyway. I don't feel like a whole lot has been accomplished but at least I looked productive, I suppose.
Last week I started my spiffy new job as Interactive Director. I must say, it's kind of a culture shock. It's an entirely different world outside the financial services, away from the barrage of Blackberry obsessed boss, and not waking up with a sense of dread for the coming day. I actually slept through the night this past Sunday! It's a good company, I work with a good team and I'm looking forward to making some magic happen. There's a lot to do, a lot to build, and big ideas for the future. I'm looking forward to it.
As with any job there's the awkward period of adjustment, getting used to the people, letting them get used to me (they have the harder job, I think), figuring out where the lights are, that sort of thing. But I'm finding my footing and I think soon enough I'll really enjoy my work again.
But there's life outside of work, and this whole month has been chock full of it! We've been doing some redecorating this month with an all new bedroom. That, of course, meant we had to paint (can't just throw furniture in a blank room, now, can we?). And buy new curtains. And add lights. And buy shelves. New bedding. 42 trips to Home Depot, IKEA and schlepping the old stuff back to the Estate. It's been busy! But by this weekend the room should be done and I'll post pictures.
We also finally got to see Wicked last week ... and its fabulous! It's like my perfect Broadway play ... massive beautiful set, huge voices attached to fantastic actresses, fanciful storyline, breathtaking work all around from lighting, sound to the tech, staging and directing. I loved every minute of it. Of course, two days later a friend calls us with an extra ticket so Zach got to see it two days later. I'm still extremely jealous. But he doesn't know I bought a second ticket for myself and will be seeing it next week!*
In two weeks we're seeing Sufjan Stevens' The BQE at BAM ... which will be fun if for no other reason than those tickets were bloody hard to get. And, sure, he's a genius. But still. Hard tickets!
This weekend its off to Raliegh to visit Jenn. Then ... maybe eventually I'll get to sleep. Right now I'm trying to figure out how best to build a web based release management system that will interface with Subversion properly. Sounds intriguing, right? Well, it is to me.
*kidding! ... or am i? "yeah ... I'm 'working late' tonight..."
Out of today's edition of Powerful Christians Got Batty (which I think is a Focus on Dobson publication) we have two keen stories of abuse of power. The first, a throwback to the embezzlement days of yore. The other, a totalitarian spin on personal freedom only a fundamentalist could love.
Perhaps you have heard the story of professors suing Oral Roberts University's President and his wife? They are alleging a litany of abuses of power, from breaking the law by requiring students of the non-profit Christian school to work on a specific political campaign to pure and simple embezzlement. "They also contended that the Roberts house on the campus had been remodeled 11 times in 14 years, that the university jet took family members on trips and that the family’s university-paid cellphones sent text messages to 'under-age males — often between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.'" The Roberts appeared on Larry King to defend themselves, which, of course, will only serve to bring out everyone else who knows things but until now has kept them quiet. Like this article at beliefnet:
I am a relatively recent graduate of ORU and feel compelled to address the litany of rumors and allegations that are currently circulating about the University. What I write is based on my experience in attending ORU and is in no way related to the lawsuit at hand. ... I am deeply disappointed with the half truths and outright lies being disseminated by the Roberts.
n order to understand the angry reaction to the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by the Roberts, it is important to understand that ORU is millions of dollars in debt (perhaps as high as $85 million), due to a slowdown in giving to Oral Roberts Ministries and financial mismanagement. This crushing load has necessitated severe staff cutbacks, reduction of salaries and delays on campus improvements. While campus salaries are reduced or jobs eliminated altogether, Richard and Lindsay drive around campus in luxury cars that cost more than a Professor makes in a year.
Richard and Lindsay billed the University for home improvements they say were necessary due to black mold in their house, yet what they didn’t say is that mold was a problem in dormitories around campus, resulting in the illness of several students. ...
Allegations aside, I am most troubled by the tone the Roberts have taken throughout this time. Instead of a spirit of humility and seeking what was best for the reputation of the University, the Roberts have accused the professors of extortion.
A whole lot more is gonna fall out of this case.
Meanwhile at another conservative Christian university where free speech is strongly discouraged, you should be very careful who you befriend on Facebook. "Regent University officials have threatened to discipline a law student [Adam Key] for posting on his Facebook page an unflattering photo of Regent President Pat Robertson."
The picture, posted on Key’s Facebook social-networking Web page, shows Robertson making what appears to be an obscene hand gesture. Key copied it from a YouTube video in which Robertson scratches his face with the middle finger of his right hand. The video is edited to freeze the frame in that position for several seconds.
Regent officials gave Key two choices: publicly apologize for posting the picture and refrain from commenting about the matter in a "public medium," or write a brief defending the posting. He faces punishment that could include expulsion.
Key wrote his legal brief, which they surprisingly didn't like, and now faces disciplinary action. Their reasoning is that private universities are not required to take pesky little things like First Amendment rights and personal liberty into account when drafting Codes of Conduct. And apparently, at Regent U, insulting Pat Robertson and/or his Miracle ShakeTM constitutes a gross violation of how a good Christian lawyer should behave.
Study: Youth see Christians as judgmental, anti-gay
Majorities of young people in America describe modern-day Christianity as judgmental, hypocritical and anti-gay. What's more, many Christians don't even want to call themselves "Christian" because of the baggage that accompanies the label.
Across any topic of interest from the mundane to the professional opionion, jeof.name is my new general interest blog. To find out more about a particular topic, check out the list below. To find out more about me, click one of bubbles in the upper right corner and jump to one of my other sites. Or just send me a mail with questions, comments, or long lost loves.
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. Yup - it's already on my Amazon Shopping List.
