Chris Charabaruk

Radio Alarm Clock 0.10.2

Chris Charabaruk — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:29:12 -0800

Changes in 0.10.2:

FIX: Snooze button wasn't turning off sleep radio.

Don't always go for the big stuff; there are smaller challenges which are just as important

Chris Charabaruk — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:36:07 -0800

I just read an interesting blog post by a Googler named David Wurtz. Summed up, he says that smart people should do stupid stuff. The point is that you don't have to tackle the biggest challenges to be successful; you can find something more down-to-earth and find lots of success working with that instead. A quote:

Although I endorse those who attempt to spend their time defying gravity (the world needs these people), I simply think students simply forget that the real world is not graded by professors with untamed beards. Students are largely unaware that they could realize just as much success, or perhaps even more success, if they point their incisive intellect at simpler, "stupider" problems. So why don't they?

The thing is, while there's always a place for another scientist hunting for the Higgs boson, or diplomats striving for world peace, we can't neglect those things that are closer to home for all of us. And ultimately, it's those simpler, more local, "stupider" problems that affect us most directly.

You don't need the fame and fortune of solving a big hairy problem to be a success; you just need to solve any problem we all face in the real world.

I've probably not done the post any justice with this write-up; go read for yourself.

DemoCamp Toronto 24 recap

Chris Charabaruk — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:11:55 -0800

Cover via Amazon

Last night, I attended DemoCamp Toronto 24, my first ever DemoCamp event. Shocking, I know, that it took so long for me to attend one. The night started off with an interview of Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv about his experiences, as part of the tour for his new book, Crush It! (which, by the way, was being given for free to attendees.) After Gary's interview, we had a break for pizza and networking, after which there were six demos, spanning from GridCentric through to Cadmus.

I'll put down my notes from Gary's interview later on, but let's start off with the demos.

Like I mentioned, GridCentric opened up the demo part of the night. They demonstrated their product, a hypervisor for clusters, which could be summed up as "fork in a cloud". And when I say fork, I mean in the UNIX way; you can quite literally fork new virtual servers/clusters like you can in UNIX with processes. Very interesting.

This was followed up by dataTO, a community site where people can suggest new data sources for the City of Toronto to provide as part of its open data initiative. It's kind of a cross between Stack Overflow and Reddit self-posts. The people behind the site aren't just getting things running and building connections with the city, though: they are looking at ways of making the code behind the site usable by groups in other cities as well.

The third demo of the night was 5 Blocks Out. This is a service with a lot of potential, for people who aren't just looking at virtual communities but their own local, physical ones too. You can meet new people, and find out where to go for anything in the city (and your own neighbourhood). Right now, it's mostly restricted to about 200 neighbourhoods in central and west Toronto, but the duo behind it are looking at expanding the service as quality permits.

The next demo was for Datamartist, a great tool for quickly and easily transforming and managing data from various sources. It's a GUI based tool that serves as a "data scratchpad", making life easier for the IT people who have to get the proper data to the proper people, and take other data and stick it in the appropriate slots. It's pretty pricy for individuals, but at $750 per license, it's still a lot less expensive than its 6-figure competitors from Microsoft, SAP, et al.

Following that up was Eqentia. This is a news aggregation service that deals with semantic matches and topic based aggregation, rather than the simple matches and feed/service based aggregation we've been dealing with in the past.

Last but not least was Cadmus. Their service provides a way to find what's trending amongst your friends. They primarily handle Twitter sources, but FriendFeed and RSS are also supported.

My favourite demos were 5 Blocks Out and Cadmus. The 5 Blocks Out service shows an incredible amount of potential, and looks to be a great way of becoming engaged with your neighbourhood. I can't wait for them to expand out into Durham Region so I can make good use of it. As for Cadmus, well, I follow over 600 people on Twitter now, and it can be pretty hectic trying to figure out what the top stories are amongst those people.

Now, for the notes I wrote during Gary's interview:

We are ahead of the game and don't know it
What is my motivation?
Don't read about it -- do it!
Analytics, SEO, etc. = bullshit. Good feelings = THE GOAL
We underestimate the ability to appreciate effort
Always try
Need to be/own yourself -- don't have to be someone else.
"The big game is patience."
Passion is required to have patience
Problem is people chasing cash, rather than their passions
Motivation: Desperation trumps innovation
Always a lot to learn
Don't be scared of having multiple passions
"Create tunnels" to connect with others -- share more interests than just the primary
Cost of entry nowadays is sweat equity, not money
"The long tail is longer than you think" -- wider space means more winners
Don't sweat what you can't change, but monitor it anyway
"Five year plans are impossible" -- things change, you have to be able to adapt immediately
Key to stickiness: Quality content and great customer/consumer service
Caring is MORE IMPORTANT than cost
"We're going back to small-town rules"
Word-of-mouth drives caring & consumer expectation
Expectations change, we adapt fast
Massive culture shift re brands & caring

All in all, it was a great and informative evening. Many thanks to Gary for speaking to us, to David Crow and Saul Colt for organizing the night, and to Rogers Ventures and StartupNorth for sponsoring the event.

The next DemoCamp Toronto happens on January 26, 2010, and you can bet that I'll be there.

Oshawa Coffee and Code redux

Chris Charabaruk — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:59:54 -0800

Image via Wikipedia

Something I wanted to do last year was get a Coffee and Code group up and running in Oshawa. Nothing much came of it, unfortunately, thanks to a lack of viable venues. However, a lot can change in eight months, and I'm again evaluating places which could host such an event.

I'm giving myself all of next month and half of January to figure out a good location. I've a couple candidates in mind, but nothing is absolute. No set date, no finalized details, nothing until I've figured out a good place for hosting a Coffee and Code out here in Durham Region. I've learnt my lesson.

Business cards are a great way to invite users to your service, aren't they?

Chris Charabaruk — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:06:38 -0800

A few months ago, I got the idea to use my Taskerrific business cards as a way to invite people to use the service while still in private beta. It was pretty simple... Set up an invite code for an event, prepare a bunch of label stickers with the invite code on them, and then put those labels on the back of the cards I'd hand out at the event. Pretty simple.

Unfortunately, I've not seen any real uptake of this. I'd point out the invite code after telling people about Taskerrific, let them know to use it when signing up. But very few people actually bothered signing up, and then most of them didn't bother using the invite code I gave them on the card. Instead, they went through the dialog for getting an invite code in the first place. Kind of disappointing.

I wonder if the problem is poor execution, or if the idea itself just doesn't cut it. The labels include the line "Invite code:" but besides that and the code itself, there's nothing else. If it weren't for the fact I write out the labels by hand, I'd include a short link to Taskerrific's sign up page. (Perhaps that's the problem).

I think that this is a great idea for services still in private beta, but looking for testers. If you're in this position, give it a try and let me know if it works for you.

Finally, Taskerrific is live

Chris Charabaruk — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:03:31 -0700

Image by coldacid via Flickr

It took long enough, but in my defence, I'm only one guy. But yeah, Taskerrific is up and in private beta, although it feels more like an alpha release to me.

Like I said on the Taskerrific blog, I'm going to be pushing weekly updates to the site for a while, then eventually going down to every other week as things settle in and functionality increases. Right now, the goal is to have a first draft of search pushed to the site before I go to the cottage for the long weekend, and teams functionality by the end of September.

At some point I also need to change from using CSS and tags for the main body layout to tables, to avoid the need for Javascript just to make the design work. (That is a horrible, horrible hack, and I'm still ashamed of it.) I know tables for layout are taboo, but I don't care. Call me when my layout works on CSS alone.

I need to work on monetization, too. Considering the self-employment program I'm currently in has income targets (I need to make minimum $750 by mid-December) it's important that I start getting ads sold, and quick. I'm working out rates, but they feel a bit steep for a brand-new service. So I might put up a donations box as well. I juts hope that I can hit the target to keep Taskerrific alive.

Anyway, go check it out. Let me know what you think. Even if you have to wait to get your invite code, it won't be too long (at this point, certainly under 24 hours, although if there's a lot of demand I'll need to start rationing). Have fun.

Facebook buys FriendFeed – is this the end of a good thing?

Chris Charabaruk — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:02:54 -0700

Image via FriendFeed

Bret Taylor of FriendFeed broke the news today that the social aggregator service has been purchased by none other than Facebook. In the short term, things will remain the same as they've always been. But Bret's post on the company blog suggests that plans are already afoot to integrate FriendFeed into the current black hole of social networking.

For me, and apparently a good deal of other FriendFeed users, this isn't good. One the one hand, I won't deny that being bought by Facebook means more resources for FriendFeed, as well as the opportunity to further grow the service's user base. On the other hand, it shows that Facebook intends to put the service to use as part of itself, or put the service to sleep.

One of the main reasons I use FriendFeed is because it lets me connect with others without all the cruft and crap that comes with Facebook. If the services are merged, then what? FriendFeed is to Facebook as Blellow is to Twitter; both serve a professionally-oriented niche compared to the bigger services, but it's an important niche. Clearing out FriendFeed for the general service doesn't serve anyone but Facebook and its investors.

While I hope the best for FriendFeed and its team, I'll be expecting the worst from this point on. And I'll be keeping my eyes open for any new, professional social aggregators that come along.

If you're not showing up in Twitter Search, that means Twitter thinks you suck

Chris Charabaruk — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:01:44 -0700

Image via CrunchBase

Or at least that's how it appears to me, now two weeks without being indexed, with this recent update to a Twitter Support report regarding people missing from People Search and regular Twitter Search:

Find People search index should be up to date. It is now updating regularly, on a daily basis. If you're still not listed in search, your tweets may be filtered for search quality; find out more about this here. Search filtering is done automatically, and cannot be un-done by Twitter Support.

I've updated my own ticket regarding my situation with a demand for an explanation to this. But knowing how Twitter generally handles problems and how they deal with their users, chances are there won't be any.

My advice? Perhaps it's time to abandon Twitter and use something better instead, like Blellow or FriendFeed. Twitter doesn't care about you or me or anyone. It's apparent in their nightmarish customer service.

I'm not being indexed and I must scream

Chris Charabaruk — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:34:17 -0700

Image via CrunchBase

I'm currently dealing with a Big F**king Crisis on Twitter. Given the importance of real-time search, and the way Twitter Search has become its poster child, the fact that my tweets newer than June 30 haven't been showing up in searches has really been driving me crazy.

It doesn't help that Twitter's support site has the form for reporting problems buried under "Contesting account suspension". Or that they systematically ignore their space on Get Satisfaction. Or any of the other ways they seem to pretend that users don't have any problems. Fortunately I've been able to report the problem, and with luck, Twitter might soon again include my tweets in their search results.

UPDATE 10:14 EDT: It seems that Twitter's support site is set up so that problem tickets are private, so that link to mine won't work unless you're me or you work for Twitter. In the meantime, this link will let you file your own trouble tickets, in case you're having problems with Twitter, yourself.

UPDATE 17:25 EDT: Sometime in the past few hours, Twitter closed my ticket, passing it off as potentially being the same as the problem which causes new Twitter accounts to be missing from People Search. As that's not my problem at all (I show up perfectly fine in People Search) I've reopened the ticket to further clarify the issue.

What's missing from the social web?

Chris Charabaruk — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:03:30 -0700

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

What's missing from the social web? The ability to just hang out and throw back a few. Really. The missing element from the new, social media driven internet is quite ironically the ability to socialize with people directly, rather than mediated through various services online. And why is this important? Because no matter how much we can expand our social lives online, what matters most is our social lives offline.

You see, we all have a need to have friends, people we can hang out with for no reason at all. The story of social networking services has been "we can let you find new friends and have lots of fun with them". But how often is it that said fun gets translated from the internet into real life? After all, a few games on Facebook does not match throwing a few darts at the pub. Or battling it out in paintball. Meeting someone on FriendFeed is not the same as an encounter with an attractive stranger at the local nightclub. What we get online are digital analogues (no joke intended) to the activities we look forward to online, but they aren't really replacements for those activities, no matter how much they seem to be.

I'd love to get to simply hang out with friends and meet strangers in the real world. But I don't get that online. Sure, I get to hang out with people. I get to meet real people. But I never get the same satisfaction, the same thrill, as doing so off of the net.

If you find that for all the interaction and social behaviour you enjoy online, there's still something missing, perhaps you should get off the computer for a while, head out to the bar, and enjoy some real, face-to-face socialization.

Chris Charabaruk

Radio Alarm Clock 0.10.2

Don't always go for the big stuff; there are smaller challenges which are just as important

DemoCamp Toronto 24 recap

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Oshawa Coffee and Code redux

Business cards are a great way to invite users to your service, aren't they?

Finally, Taskerrific is live

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Facebook buys FriendFeed – is this the end of a good thing?

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If you're not showing up in Twitter Search, that means Twitter thinks you suck

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I'm not being indexed and I must scream

What's missing from the social web?