Earthling - EarthLink blog

Thank You

2007-09-28T18:15:55Z

In this final entry on Earthling, I mainly write to say thank you all for reading, commenting, e-mailing, talking, listening, and contributing. The blog helped us make the porous membrane between internal and external conversations a bit more...porous, helped resolve lots of individual one-off needs from customers, departments, and partners, and gave us a way to participate in conversations going on around us. I have enjoyed sharing my view of the internet with you, and hearing about yours.

I'd like to extend a huge thanks as well to all of the people inside and outside of EarthLink who supported the blog in numerous ways, made me feel welcome at their meetings and planning sessions, invited me in to their corner of the world and helped me get issues addressed, strategies refined, and problems solved.

If you'd like to keep up with me, you can do so over on Extraface, my own blog. Grab the Extraface RSS feed here. And if you happen to be at BlogOrlando where I am today, come find me and say hello.

If you'd like to keep up with EarthLink news and announcements, we've developed the new RSS feed below just for that purpose:
feeds.feedburner.com/elnk

As a final programming note, on Monday I'll be permanently closing comments and trackbacks and I’ll be preparing the site for its role as an archive throughout next week. Expect to see some visual changes then.

Thanks again,
Dave Coustan

Everything Must Go: Half Off On Used Comments

2007-09-20T23:04:17Z

With me moving on as part of the restructuring, and the company in the midst of transition, we decided it's best to end Earthling's run. I say "we" in all honesty; assessing the situation and available resources, this is the path I recommended, and my leadership agreed.

Since I last wrote I've been working on how best to handle the "sunsetting," and what to do with all of the stuff Earthling has produced. In addition to the 459 blog entries I've published and the 1739 comments you've contributed, there are lots of other things that have come out of Earthling. When thinking about wrapping it up, it's important to think about what's behind all of those things and the larger world they connect to. And that can be complicated.

To help inform these decisions, I've been reading the advice of a few people, including Josh Hallett, Jake McKee, and Jeremiah Owyang. Jake McKee has written about the question for companies as the bus test -- i.e. could your corporate communications vehicle still persevere if the main participant were hit by a bus. Jeremiah has kept a single blog throughout his career transitions, and that's been tremendously valuable for him. In my case, I came on board to create and run a blog for EarthLink, so I knew going in that Earthling would be something of a joint interest between me and the company and would be deeply tied to both parties. Josh has recently been observing the EarthLink situation and asking some strategic and practical questions about how an individual corporate blogger and the company he/she represents should best deal with transitions. I'm working through that in realtime, and through these last couple of blog entries hopefully I can offer some insight into how I'm doing it.

Over the past two years, I poured a great deal of myself into this blog and tried to avoid too many arbitrary distinctions between Dave, the person and Dave, the guy who represents EarthLink on Earthling. I still think this approach is the right one, although it does make it difficult to make a clean break. I'm grateful the company has for the most part trusted me with hashing that out. In part to help me sort all of that out, here are the parts and how I'm accounting for them. This is an active process and I may be adding thoughts here:

The blog entries, comments, trackbacks - I'm leaving Earthling up as an archive in case it can be useful to future readers. I'm also respectful of preserving the information here so that inbound links don't turn in to dead ends. I'll change all of the templates to make it clear that what remains is a static archive, and comments and trackbacks will no longer be accepted.
The Flickr stream - For the past couple of years I've been keeping both my personal photos and EarthLink-related photos on the anearthling account, at www.flickr.com/photos/anearthing. I think that's given you a better sense of who I am and hopefully made me more accessible and easier to connect with. I've gone back and forth on how to handle this, and I think it's best for me to start a new Flickr account for myself and keep Anearthling around at least until the Flickr Pro status runs out. I'll probably mirror some of the same photos from there on my account, to make sure they don't go away. On Flickr, my new home will be www.flickr.com/photos/extraface. Add me as a contact there if you'd like to continue to see my often goofy photo stream.
The RSS feed - I'm working on helping EarthLink create a new feed just for announcements, and one tough decision was whether to have that take the place of the old Earthling feed, or be a new feed that people opt-in to. I decided on the latter, and I see it this way -- it's a completely different vehicle, with different purposes, schedule, and utility. So it should have its own, new feed. As soon as that's done, I'll be passing that address along.
The product blogs and employee blog directory - The product blogs will continue in the hands of their respective owners, and I'll make their placement prominent on the front of Earthling. I'll be taking down the employee directory, but welcome readers to connect with me online and vice-versa.
The relationships - I've had the privilege of interacting with thousands of people through Earthling, via various forms of online communication and in person. I've helped answer questions, resolved issues, gotten and given advice, connected product teams and leadership with their users, connected people to each other, and just gotten to know a whole lot of people. Fortunately I don't see those relationships as changing much, and I get to take all of that with me, and hope that many of you will continue to keep in touch.

I'll be publishing a final blog entry next week, and will include my future contact information and more on where to find me online then.

Lay Of The Land

2007-09-14T14:40:51Z

How the heck do you follow up a restructuring announcement on a corporate blog? A Friday heh list didn’t quite seem right on the heels of such a weighty announcement, and I’ve been struggling with that question and what to talk about next. Nothing seemed quite right, so I stepped away from Earthling for a while. As I return today, I thought it might be useful to give you a brief rundown of answers to questions that you may have about the current state of things:

Were you personally impacted by the restructuring?

Yes, I was. I will be moving on from EarthLink in a few months, but will continue to help out the product teams in the meantime.

What are the plans for this blog?

I’ll be making a last couple of entries in the next few weeks and wrapping things up. As far as what the company’s plans are for how to handle that transition, as those decisions are made I will include them in those final entries.

What is EarthLink's focus now?

In plain but broad English, we're focusing our attention on how we can best serve our current user base. Teams are starting to meet within the new structure, and the executive team is working on next steps as far as the bigger picture.

How will the products and services you offer change?

Nothing to say about this yet, as the product teams and leadership are currently getting together to work through any necessary changes. Our core offerings should remain unchanged, but there may be some adjustments as we evaluate our portfolio of products with slightly newer eyes.

What is happening with Wi-Fi?

As I wrote last week, despite misinterpretations in the press, our current networks continue to operate and we continue to explore new models for Municipal Wi-Fi deployments. Glenn Fleishman of Wi-Fi Networking News explored the topic in greater depth in an interview with EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff recently.

How has it been since the restructuring as an employee?

Everyone will react to this question differently, and large scale change within any company will bring with it some growing pains. For me, it's been a little chaotic, and I'm looking forward to things settling in to a new routine. In addition to offering severance and transition assistance, the company has done some nice things to help impacted employees get their next position, like rounding up a list of all of the firms, agencies, and companies that have contacted EarthLink about possible hires and sending it our way.

If you have any additional questions, drop me a line and I'll do my best to get them answered. But bear in mind that as we work through the company transition, we're not ready to entertain conversations about future directions or next steps yet.

Clarifying EarthLink Municipal Wi-Fi Plans

2007-08-30T12:57:50Z

I've seen a few articles online this morning suggesting that EarthLink is getting out of the municipal Wi-Fi business. This is not the case. After checking with our leadership this morning, I want to confirm two points:

We will continue to operate our existing municipal wireless networks in cities like Philadelphia.
In the other markets such as San Francisco, we're approaching city officials to discuss needed changes in our business model, which includes them stepping up to some sort of anchor tenancy agreement. Our CEO has stated publicly that he is not willing to invest any more money in new network buildouts under the old business model: coming in up front with the cash to build out the network and trying to buy customers one at a time.

If you'd like to hear more on this question, EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff discussed it on yesterday's EarthLink Restructuring Call for Investors(free registration required).

EarthLink Announces Restructuring

2007-08-28T16:13:35Z

Today EarthLink announced a corporate restructuring that included downsizing and organizational changes that refocus us on our core business. Here's a link to the full press release with all of the details. EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff sent along some brief thoughts he wanted to share with you directly via Earthling:

Today, we announced changes to EarthLink's corporate structure that better position us to operate profitably and focus on the heart of our business: delivering award-winning Internet tools and services to our customers. These changes will affect all of us -- both our friends and colleagues who will leave EarthLink, and those who will remain. I am grateful for the hard work and care that all of our employees have contributed in their tenure here, and we are seeking to make the transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved.
If you are a customer, these changes will not impact the level of reliability and service and support you have come to expect from EarthLink. If you are a partner, nothing in terms of our relationship has changed; what’s changed is that we’ve right-sized our business to better compete in today’s marketplace.

Sincerely,
Rolla Huff

Comments are closed on this entry.

Two Bests For Belkin

2007-08-27T18:05:58Z

Electronics accessories manufacturer Belkin impressed me in two ways recently. First, check out the tabbed clamshell design of their Apple iPhone accessories packaging:

See the little pull-tab on the top right? No scissors, box-cutters, blowtorches or headaches required, you just pull it and the perforated plastic comes apart.

Second, a couple of weeks ago Belkin contributed a whole bunch of networking and power equipment to Alex Hillman's IndependentsHall coworking project in Philadelphia, which is now fully ensconced it its own space.

The Stash (uploaded by alexknowshtml, all rights reserved)

Here's more on the cooperative arrangement between Belkin and IndyHall. I've written previously about some of Belkin's innovative product designs -- I love the various form factors they offer for powerstrips. I think it's smart of them to support local, independent developers in Philadelphia as part of their outreach, product development, and marketing strategy. Congrats to the IndyHall folks as well for all of the great press!

Friday Heh List

2007-08-24T19:05:26Z

Send along any of your finds and I'll add them to the pile:

Upside-down 8's - The Uni Watch blog uncovers what sound like some mis-played 8's on Boston Red Sox uniforms and banners.
Even A Cy Young Pitcher Apologizes For Not Updating His Blog - I just thought it was hehful that Curt Schilling started a blog entry with "I continue to fall behind but am trying to at least keep up with the season when it comes to blogging. " Welcome to the fraternity of apologists, Curt.
Rick Rolling - Because I just heard about this myself, I'm not going to try to pull it on unsuspecting Earthling readers. It's a running gag where you try to fool people into clicking a link that ends up at Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" video.
Childhood Dreams Become Reality - Anil heralds the introduction of a version of the Soundwave Transformer toy that really does play music! More on the twisted history of the Transformer toy line in this purged Stuffo.com article preserved by the Wayback Machine, penned by yours truly. [via IBRW]
Bad Spock Blog - A blog that collects poorly done drawings of Mr. Spock, contributed by readers. [via Tom]
Video Hehs:
- The Hipster Olympics [via Cheengoo]
- Breaking The Surfer Stereotype [via Don]

Separately/Together And EarthLink Montage

2007-08-23T16:03:22Z

Late last week EarthLink made available a beta version of Montage, a new, free email/RSS/address book suite for Windows XP and Vista. It's a desktop application that lets you handle multiple email accounts along with RSS feeds and podcasts, all with a unified interface and organization system. Mike Strutton, Director of Client Software, calls the treatment of multiple inboxes "Separately/Together," and he explains how it works as follows:

"Using Montage you can manage multiple email accounts EarthLink/AOL/Yahoo/Gmail/Etc. in a way that other Windows clients don't do. You can view the inbox as an aggregate across all accounts, or just one account -- it's simple. No need for filters/folders or jumping back and forth between different webmail applications. This was one of two features that got the most reaction in our demonstrations and user testing."

Montage Mail View (click to see at screen resolution)

Smart Sorts are another Montage feature that help you bring order to your inbox. They allow you to automatically place email or feeds that match certain conditions into a folder or "sort". This is a way to nondestructively make piles of or views into your information without manually thinking about, keeping track of, and moving everything yourself. The productivity nerd sites abound with examples of how to use smart sorting to get a better handle on your overflowing inbox. If you're a Mac user familiar with the Apple approach to email and desktop management, you're probably already enjoying non-destructive sorting and easy mailbox aggregation.

On the RSS aggregation side of the application, Montage takes the RSS-as-email metaphor and treats individual articles within feeds as if they were email messages with the titles as subject lines and a read/unread state. There's a preview pane that shows either the article summary(referred to as the "abstract") or the fully-rendered web page the article comes from. You can also apply Smart Sorts and folders to feeds, and use tags to organize articles you'd like to hold on to in ways that are meaningful to you. There are also some good features behind the scenes, like it appears there is built-in support for authenticated feeds. The only one I know of off the top of my head today is Daring Fireball, but I expect to see lots more of these in the future.

If you're a regular Earthling reader, you know I've written a fair bit about how I strongly prefer and recommend the River of News approach to the Inbox approach. Email itself has become virtually unmanageable for most people I know, and I've grown very accustomed to the idea that articles just flow through my news reader, and if I don't get to all of them, nothing bad happens. I don't miss marking things as read/unread and clicking to view everything. Missing important articles has not been a problem.

Montage's RSS reader capability is a good platform, and I appreciate the folder features, but in the future I'd like to see at least an option or skin to treat RSS feeds in the scrolling River of News style that myEarthLink Reader and Google Reader offer. When I open up the RSS tab, I'd like a long scrolling list of all of the things I've subscribed to and their full text content where available. Having the option to view full feeds where available right in the application itself would be helpful -- instead of the fully rendered web page, which takes time to load up and isn't as handy as just the text if you just want to read the content quickly. I know there's something different about reading content within the context of the web page it comes from, but I gladly give that up for the convenience and rapid browsability of syndicated feed reading. I always have the option of viewing the full page in my browser if that's what I want to do. The ability to group feeds into folders is a nice touch, but to me the current Montage RSS interface emphasizes maintaining the states of all of your feeds, which adds to the time it takes to get through your daily reads, rather than letting the information flow through and taking sips of it when you need it.

Montage Feeds View (click to see at screen resolution)

Give Montage a try and let us know what you think. There are lots of helpful materials on the main product page, including a getting started guide, an FAQ, and our current list of known issues in the beta release. The Montage team invites your feedback (please use this form or just drop me a comment), and asks specifically what you think about the Separately/Together treatment of multiple email providers. Is this something you find useful, neat but not something you use much, or not really of interest at all for the way you use email?

On The Product Blogs

2007-08-21T20:18:01Z

The beta release of EarthLink's new integrated email client, address book, RSS, and podcast aggregation software Montage is now available as a free download for Windows XP and Vista. Here's the FAQ, and I'll have a more detailed write-up on Montage shortly. (Alright, not technically on a product blog yet, but it is now ;))
Protection Control Center version 3.0 launched last week, with support for Microsoft Windows Vista. Ben has all of the details on the PCC blog.
Travis answered a common new user question about deleting posts from myEarthLink Reader.
And John wrote about increasing the folder limits in Web Mail in response to several user suggestions, so that you can now make up to 200 folders in your account.
(update: a straggler) On the myEarthLink start page blog, Tom explains how to change your preference for what happens when you sign out of Web Mail.

Another Friday, More Heh

2007-08-17T20:13:20Z

Another Home Run For *PLAYER*! - A Wikipedia page devoted to John Dowd. He's the fake Barry Bonds character that EA Sports uses to represent Bonds in their video games, since he's not part of the MLB player's union. "In a similar fashion, Barry Bonds is known as "Joe Young" in 2K Sports' MLB 2K7 game, and "Reggie Stocker" in MLB 07: The Show. " [via Creevus]
It Looks Good On You, Though - With both NCAA and NFL football nearly upon us, Cap'n Ken brings us a look at this year's crop of LSU hats.
Blank Is The New Blank - This infographic traces and relates all of the things that are the new something else, as in "Dippin Dots is the new McDLT." [via Josh]
Google Thinks I Am A Robot - Somehow the Googlebots got confused and accused Mojo of lacking humanity.
iPhone Sexy Touch Time - Buy a little quality time with an iPhone. Someone in India is selling "...15 minutes to "see/touch/feel" the JesusPhone under supervision." via Travis]
And a few video hehs:
- Uhh... - This *appears* to be a verbal dispute ending with one of the parties chucking himself against a wall. [via Leah Jones]
- Manager Ejected From Baseball Game - It has all the hallmark features of a classic manager/ump discussion -- the cap throw, chest-bumping, kicking dirt on home plate, and wild gesticulation. Then the manager really melts down and sets a whole new standard for baseball bufoonery. Watch for the grenade maneuver.
- Nosy Bears - A nostalgic heh in the form of an afternoon/saturday morning toy commercial from 1992. [via Creevus]
- The Entertainer By Hand - Somewhere between heh and groany, a clip of a guy who can perform "The Entertainer," instrument-free with only his hands. [via Tom]
Yog's Notebook Coloring Contest - On the cute side of heh, this is a coloring contest put on by Sci-Fi/Horror zine and blog Yog's Notebook:

Add Yog channel to your page

They're using Splashcast to display entries, and I discovered it when SplashCast's Marshall K tweeted about it.

How To Send Photos From A Helio To Flickr, With Geotags

2007-08-16T20:03:44Z

Back in April, I reported on how to smoothly send photos to your Flickr account via a Helio Drift. Thanks to a recent Helio UP software upgrade, you can now set your Helio device (Heat, Ocean, or Fin) to automatically upload your photos to Flickr complete with location tags, anytime you send them to Helio UP. What that means is that now your photos will appear on Flickr's world map interface, as expandable dots in the place where you took them. I've always wanted to do this with my Ocean, and it just makes sense as a smart feature given that Helio's devices have GPS functionality built-in.

The how-to of this entry really has two parts.

First, you have to set up Helio UP on your Helio device to reflect an upload email address for Flickr and to auto-upload. All of the information for that is in this knowledge base article. I don't know if this is still true, but I found back in April that when you set up your upload email address on Flickr, it's a good idea to keep asking it for a new one until it gives you something shortish, like 12 characters or fewer before the "@" sign.

Next, make sure that on the Flickr side, your preferences are set up to allow EXIF GPS data.

If you have those two things set up, you should be able to:

Snap a photo on your Helio
Choose "Helio UP"
Set the photo to "public"
Title and tag the photo
Name (or select, if you've done this before from there) your physical location
Hit "Post"

And that's it. Assuming you've set Helio Album to auto-up to Flickr, your photo should automatically be sent to Flickr with all of your geotagging, tags, and title preserved.

Here's proof that it worked with my Fin today.

How Thin The Helio Fin Is

2007-08-16T18:25:48Z

Just got a Fin in the mail today (thanks, Helio!). It is one thin, sleek machine. I'm already having a bit of an identity crisis -- not sure if I'm a QWERTY powerhouse Ocean type or a wafer-thin magnesium-encased Fin type. Fortunately with Helio's account system, if you are lucky enough to have two devices, you can switch back and forth as you please with an online switching interface.

For scale, at 11.43 mm the Fin is thin enough to act as an underline on the spine of a book like this:

Here's another size comparison, some Fin unboxings a previously recorded Ocean/Fin Live Grope, and a Quick Look video.

As an aside, I also just got photo geotagging to work (to Flickr, via Helio UP on Fin/Ocean), which means my photos will now automatically be added to Flickr's world map interface. I'll write a separate entry on that.

Scrabulous Talks Human

2007-08-15T20:13:29Z

I've been playing Scrabble with friends via the Facebook-embedded application Scrabulous, and when I went to play my turn today, I got the message below:

I have to award Scrabulous a best for this straightforward, honest, clear communication to their users. It lets us know that actual human beings build the application (which further endears us to it), that their code upgrade took some unexpected turns as new releases sometimes do, that they're open to help from the outside world to get things going quicker, and that they're taking some more time to get things right. Here's to hoping they get it all figured out quickly and with a minimum of pain.

New Helio Fin Plus Pun Watch

2007-08-15T18:58:42Z

This morning Helio released its newest device, the superthin, magnesium-cased Fin. At 0.45 inches (or 11.43 millimeters if you prefer), it's the thinnest clamshell-style device in the U.S. market.

(it's this thin)

It does everything its QWERTY sibling the Ocean does including the integrated messaging system, a great AIM client, and GPS integration, and also has a beefed-up 3 megapixel still and video camera.

Helio also released several software updates today, including a rentable ($2.99/day) Garmin turn-by-turn voice GPS app to go along with the included Google Maps for Mobile with GPS software, and an update to device desktop RSS software H.O.T. for the Heat, Fin, and Drift. The new version of H.O.T. supports adding your own feeds as channels, so you can receive updates on your device desktop and see them at a glance.

I've used Google Maps for Mobile with GPS on my Ocean countless times to search for restaurants, call them up for reservations with click-to-call, and then dial up directions on the fly from wherever I am. I can see using the Garmin Mobile app for those times when I don't have a copilot, have no idea where I am, and need the heads-up turn-by-turn directions spoken out loud to me.

The Fin costs $175 and is available at Helio.com, in Helio stores, or by calling 1-888-88-HELIO.

As far as the pun watch, I had to really stretch this time around. The major gadget blogs stuck with prosaic titles like "The Helio Fin," and I had to do some searching to find the more traditional punny blog entry titles. Here are the best of those:

Helio dips a thin Fin into the flip phone pool
Helio Fin - Thin is most definitely IN!
Ain't No Fin Thinner Than This
And the award for weirdest Fin headline goes to...
Helio Fin, the Fine that it Satisfies - Either a weird machine translation, an SEO-spammy mashup, or a human who needs a little more practice.

Afternoon Site Enhancements

2007-08-14T20:21:14Z

I'm working on a couple of small enhancements to Earthling this afternoon:

Enlarging the width of the main content area to allow for standard 500 pixel photos straight from Flickr
Added the AideRSS widget to the right side, which provides some suggestions for the top posts on Earthling from the past month

You should notice both right away on the main page, and I'll be working on implementing the same throughout the site next. If you see anything acting strange that might be why. Other improvements coming, including some much-needed attention to the search results template, but this is all for today. As always, if you have other suggestions for improvements you'd like to see, please leave them in the comments or drop me a note.

Special thanks to Chris at Citizen Studio for his assistance with some graphics crunching.