Ken Sheppardson

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T11:48:05Z

It's a new year, and things are changing. I've moved from Change.org over to CrowdFlower where I'll be heading up the web operations team. This past year was a bit of a roller coaster ride going from TWiT to Change.org to CrowdFlower, but I don't regret any of it, feel like each move was a step forward, met some great people along the way, and I'm excited for the year ahead with CrowdFlower.

Speaking of web operations, I feel a little guilty that my personal sites are still hosted on a Fedora 9 Linode instance (even after 795 days of uptime) and as I move over to a new Ubuntu 10.04 instance provisioned with Chef, I'm also dumping WordPress for Jekyll (again) with a little simpler site design.

I hope the new infastructure will encourage me to write a bit more, particularly some thoughts on the philosphy of and tools related to "DevOps".

What's Up?

2011-11-02T10:21:31Z

So I'll never be a particularly prolific blogger. That's pretty obvious at this point. I do have a few lessons learned and tools to share that'll eventually either appear here or on the Change.org Tech Blog, but meanwhile I'm most active over on Google+ these days. I think it might also be time to abandon Wordpress and give Posterous or Tumblr another shot. Something with a bit less friction might make publishing a bit less... intimidating.

I'm Joining TWiT

2010-05-04T17:46:59Z

For the past few months I’ve been consulting with This Week in Tech (TWiT) helping build a new TWiT.tv website. Last week Colleen Kelly—who’s done an amazing job building out TWiT’s studio, live & mobile streaming infrastructure, and IT systems—decided she’s moving on from TWiT and accepting a position with Google. One thing led to another, and I’m joining TWiT as their VP of Engineering. Stay tuned for more on what we have on the drawing board.

UPDATE (1/15/2011) - After nine months I'm moving on from TWiT. The network is gearing up for a growth phase where what they'll need is a technical staff with specific experience in video production and studio management that really just isn't a fit with my background or interests. Over the years I've strayed far from my core interests (data analysis, systems modeling, and software development) and it's time to get back on track.

Why Cisco Will Buy Palm

2010-04-12T13:01:48Z

Bloomberg reported today that Palm is up for sale, resulting in a flurry of articles citing HTC and Lenova as two of the most likely bidders. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me to see HTC pick them up just to bolster their intellectual property portfolio and help solidify HTC’s bid to be the leading anti-Apple. However, in the spirit of US Robotics acquisition of Palm back in 1995 and attempts by 3Com to integrate Palm after they merged with USR in 1997, I think there’s another bidder out there who can and should grab Palm while they can: Cisco.

[UPDATE: Later in the day yesterday outlets began reporting that Cisco is on the list of companies that have, in fact, made a bid for Palm. Others include HTC, Lenova, and Dell. Since then, there’s word that Lenova has walked away.]

Here in no particular order are the reasons I think Cisco will make a bid for Palm, and why I think they just might be the highest bidder:

Cisco’s Consumer Aspirations – With their acquisitions of Scientific Atlanta (set top boxes), Linksys (consumer grade networking hardware and VoIP solutions), and Flip (flash memory video recorders) Cisco has made it clear they’re moving into the consumer content production and delivery device business. Acquiring Palm would give them yet another delivery device line, the underlying operating system, and hand-held hardware expertise.

Carrier Relationships – Just as the Scientific Atlanta acquisition gave Cisco a seat at the table with cable companies and Linksys solidified their position with traditional ISPs when it comes to the residential “last mile”, acquiring Palm gives them similar connections with Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, etc. This will be important not only with respect to handsets, but as Cisco tries to compete with network access devices like the Novatel MiFi, Sierra Wireless Overdrive, and similar devices from Motorola.

WebOS – Beyond the basic intellectual property portfolio that would give Cisco a stack of chips in the mobile device patent game, Palm webOS could serve as the basis for a wide variety of touch screen devices from Cisco in a number of form factors: VoIP phones, coffee table media devices, or future Flip devices, for example.

Talent – It’s five miles from Palm’s campus in Sunnyvale over to Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose. Picking up Palm is a great way to get a local pool of handheld system design and engineering talent—including a large pool of ex-Apple talent—for use on any number of Cisco projects, but particularly portable consumer devices.

Deeper Pockets - HTC’s market cap is $8 billion. Lenova’s is $55 billion. Cisco’s is $152 billion. If it comes down to a bidding war, Cisco takes it.

Vindication – Ken Wirt, Cisco VP of Consumer Marketing was SVP or Worldwide Marketing for Palm from 2001 to 2006. As one of the many Palm executives left by the wayside as Palm has struggled to find a winning game plan, you’d have to think Wirt would appreciate the opportunity to show what Palm could be with the resources of a parent company like Cisco behind it.

Signs of Palm Mojo

2009-01-11T01:28:00Z

Update – It turns out Blast Radius--an interactive agency that worked on the Palm web site--also has an in-house toolkit called Mojo. The toolkit described below is the Blast Radius tookit and doesn’t seem to be related to webOS.

The new Palm Pre will be the first phone to use Palm’s new webOS operating system and the Palm Mojo framework. Apparently the SDK is in private beta at the moment, and there’s not a whole lot of information on Palm’s developer site. However, it looks like Palm has rolled out parts of Mojo on their site. If you visit the Palm Pre CES launch video page at Palm.com, and check out the source, you’ll notice they’re already including mojo.js:

    <!-- GLOBAL JAVASCRIPT -->
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/js/extlib/dojo/dojo.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/js/dist/extlib.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/js/dist/mojo.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/js/palm-config.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/js/palm/global.js"></script>

I wonder if it’s a coincidence Palm also uses Dojo? Scanning the mojo.js file, here’s a list of mojo mentions:

      mojo
      mojo.command.Behavior
      mojo.command.Behavior.execute
      mojo.command.Behavior._execute
      mojo.command.Behavior.getRequest
      mojo.command.Command
      mojo.command.Command.execute
      mojo.command.Command._execute
      mojo.command.Command.getRequest
      mojo.command.Command.onError
      mojo.command.Command.onResponse
      mojo.command.Rule
      mojo.command.Rule.condition
      mojo.command.Rule._execute
      mojo.command.Rule.getRequest
      mojo.controller.Controller
      mojo.controller.Controller.addCommand
      mojo.controller.Controller.addCommands
      mojo.controller.Controller.addIntercept
      mojo.controller.Controller.addIntercepts
      mojo.controller.Controller.addObserver
      mojo.controller.Controller.addObservers
      mojo.controller.Controller.getCommand
      mojo.controller.Controller.getCommandChain
      mojo.controller.Controller.updateObservers
      mojo.controller.Map
      mojoControllerMap
      mojo.controller.Map.getInstance
      mojo.controller.Map.mapController
      mojo.controller.Map.mapControllers
      mojo.controller.Map.setSiteMap
      mojo.controller.Param
      mojo.controller.Param.setValue
      mojo.controller.Request
      mojo.controller.Request.constructor
      mojoControllers
      mojo.distinct
      mojo.fireEvent
      mojo.helper.Events
      mojo.helper.ObjectQuery
      mojo.helper.ObjectQuery._createSchema
      mojo.helper.ObjectQuery.select
      mojo.helper.String
      mojo.helper.Validation
      mojoHelperValidation
      mojo.helper.Validation.execute
      mojo.helper.Validation.getInstance
      mojo.helper.Validation.isEmailAddress
      mojo.helper.Validation.isLength
      mojo.helper.Validation.isPostalCode
      mojo.helper.view.Error
      mojo.helper.view.Error.showElementErrors
      mojoHistory
      mojo.History
      mojo.History.getInstance
      mojo.History.setDefault
      mojo.History.setHash
      mojo.log
      mojo.Messaging
      mojo.Messaging.getTopic
      mojo.Messaging.publish
      mojo.Messaging.subscribe
      mojo.MessagingTopic
      mojoMessagingTopics
      mojo.Messaging.unsubscribe
      mojoModel
      mojo.Model
      mojo.Model.add
      mojo.Model.addObserver
      mojo.Model.contains
      mojo.Model.get
      mojo.Model.getReference
      mojo.Model.notify
      mojo.ModelReference
      mojoModelReferences
      mojo.Model.remove
      mojo.Model.removeObserver
      mojo.Model.set
      mojoObserve
      mojoObservers
      mojo.query
      mojo.queryFirst
      mojo.queryMatch
      mojo.service.Delegate
      mojo.service.Locator
      mojo.service.Locator.addService
      mojo.service.Locator.getService
      mojoServiceRegistry
      mojoServiceRegistry.length
      mojo.service.Service
      mojo.service.Service.constructor
      mojo.service.Service.invoke
      mojo.service.Service.setName
      mojo.service.Service.setParams
      mojo.service.Service.setUri
      mojoTemplateControllers
      mojo.toSentenceCase
      mojoValidationError
      mojoValidationGroup
      mojo.widget.Logger
      mojo.widget.Logger._enabled
      mojo.widget.Logger.log

Cleaning House

2009-01-04T01:26:40Z

The year end break finally gave me the time and motivation to take care of something that’s been nagging me for some time. For the past five or ten years, I’ve been hosting a dozen or so random little sites for friends and family. If you’re reading this, you might just be in the same situation: the friend whose theater production needed a site, your family member’s band, another friend’s pre-Flickr site for publishing kid pictures.

Each one of these sites was a quick little side project, and a great excuse to try out [insert neat new technology]. In my case I’ve accumlated a standalone Perl CGI site, a Gallery photo site, a Mason site for a band, not to mention my own WordPress blog. Of course web hosting has evolved quite a bit in the past decade, so each of these sites was originally built on a different host. MSEN back in Michigan, Aimnet here in the Bay Area, then stints on Lunarpages, Bluehost, and most recently MediaTemple’s GridService. Different sites on different servers, MX records pointing all over the place, a mix of registrars…it was ugly.

So to start off the new year, it’s time to start fresh. All the sites have been consolidated, refreshed, archived, backed-up, validated, and otherwise cleaned up. In the process, I replaced a number of services and tools that just weren’t working for me the way they used to. Here’s what’s in my toolbox at this point:

GoDaddy – I can’t stand GoDaddy. Their DNS management UI was probably down literally 50% of the time I tried to access it. They’re relegated to registrar duties only at this point, but only because they’re cheap enough it’s not worth the time to transfer to someone marginally cheaper.
linode – MediaTemple’s GridService was pretty slick, however for low traffic sites there always seems to be an initial lag that feels like they’re spinning the site up or something. I took a look at both linode and slicehost, both of which offer ~$20/mo packages with root access, your choice of Linux distributions, and nice management tools. Slicehost almost had my business, but their full-instance backup feature lost out in the end to linode’s DNS management and monitoring tool. Slicehosts’s DNS UI was particularly painful, requiring you to enter each record manually in an old-style web form vs. linode’s much more robust UI.
jekyll – As I’ve described, I’m using git (with repositories hosted at github) and jekyll for revision control and site generation respectively. None of these small projects really requires a database back end or dynamically generated content, so a simple site generation tool like jekyll and the use of markdown/textile makes things easy.
lighttpd – I’m a long time Apache user, lighttpd really does just feel lighter and cleaner, particularly for these small static sites.
postfix – I suffered with sendmail long enough, editing one config file then converting it over into a format the app actually read. Sendmail is out, postfix is in. One config file, logical config options, and logs that seem slightly easier to monitor/mine.
Ruby & Python – Perl and PHP are out. Ruby and Python are in. Life is better now.

OK, I’m old school. I was sold on straight LAMP, sendmail, RedHat derivatives (CentOS/Fedora), vi, etc. almost ten years ago, they’ve worked for me, and I had better things to do than reconsider those choices. But I was really just stuck in a rut. Times change, tools evolve, the web isn’t what it was 10 years ago, and now is as good a time as any to re-examine what’s in your tool box.

Trying out Jekyll

2008-12-24T01:25:19Z

As Tom Preston-Werner (author of Jekyll) describes it:

Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator. It takes a template directory (representing the raw form of a website), runs it through Textile or Markdown and Liquid converters, and spits out a complete, static website suitable for serving with Apache or your favorite web server. Visit http://tom.preston-werner.com to see an example of a Jekyll generated blog.

Jekyll is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which is where I first heard about it.

The thought of maintaining a site via a text editor (vi, in my case) and pushing changes out from the command line gave me some major ‘90s deja vu, but WordPress has always seemed a bit to “heavy” for me, so I thought I’d give Jekyll a shot. Plus Jack Moffit and Dustin Sallings were both talking about Jekyll, and in fact Jack had already moved his site over from Movable Type to Jekyll. Plus I just want to be one of the cool kids, so here we are.

With the git/jekyll combo, a little CGI script that does a git pull and calls Jekyll, and the web hook feature of github, I can edit pages locally, commit them to a git repo, and when I’m ready to make changes on the live site I can just do a “git push”. My changes are uploaded to github, they hit the CGI script on kensheppardson.com, and the site is rebuilt.

I have a feeling this system will encourage me to post a bit more often. We’ll see.

Update 3/1/2009 – I’m back on WordPress, primarily to test out some add-ins, but I also miss WYSIWYG a bit.

They're just making this up, aren't they?

2008-11-20T01:50:41Z

Over on FriendFeed Louis Gray mentioned that his Twitterank is #1, and his Tweetvalue is $1034. My Tweetvalue is $241, and I couldn't really care less what my Twitterank is, as it seems they're just making this stuff up. Here's how twitterank relates to tweetvalue for the top 50. I think I'm going to have to assign a value of $0 to Twitterank and a rank of last to Tweetvalue.

Daily Identi.ca Activity

2008-10-30T22:07:53Z

Posted from kshep

TWiT Army

2008-08-24T15:32:16Z

Leo Laporte has launched an instance of Laconi.ca, the open source microblogging platform that powers Identi.ca. Given that Leo has 53,810 followers on Twitter at the moment, the TWiT Army could have a pretty significant impact on the microblogging landscape.

Simple Microblogging Transport Protocol

2008-07-05T13:58:11Z

If you're reading this post, then you're probably familiar with Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Identi.ca, Pownce, Jaiku, Kwippy, and perhaps three or four other "microblogging platforms". I apply the term somewhat loosely here. One reason for that is I don't exactly know what it's supposed to mean. Another is that many would argue these services can't all be lumped into the same category because Twitter is in no way like FriendFeed, or that one of the others doesn't deserve to be on the list, or that Jaiku is dead, or that we're all on crack. I'm not here to argue those points.

Generally, I'd describe a "microblogging platform" as a system that allows someone to share short messages with one or more of their online contacts or broadcast to the public. These messages, when grouped by theme or topic, make up "threads" or conversations. They can also be searched, forwarded, replied to, etc. They're either little nuggets of our witty and insightful thinking that we want to share with others, or they're information like "I'm out of beans."

Twitter
I am mad at Twitter. (To the person I know who works for Twitter, I'm not mad at you. Honest.) I think I'll leave it at that.

The Answer to Your Prayers
In response to Twitter's recent issues, many have suggested we need some sort of open, decentralized Twitter-like microblogging network. Dave Winer, for one, has written extensively on the subject. Steve Gillmor, Marc Canter, et al have also discussed some sort of "Plan B". That conversation has fragmented out over the web and generated some very interesting technical discussions.

Unfortunately, I don't really enjoy trying to track down and wade through other people's posts, technical specs, and standards documents. For example, I'd hate to have to read both the OpenMicrobloggingProtocol specification and the Microblogging over XMPP specification and try to figure out how they each work, let alone which is better. So rather than try to address anyone else's specific points or aggregate all that wisdom and all those differing opinions into some consensus, I thought it would be best to propose a new standard that should pretty much cover everything.

Before I continue, I'll give you a chance to go check FriendFeed, Google Reader, Twitter, and your email since this isn't a quick little 30 second comment wrapped around someone else's article. You might have to set aside a solid five minutes for this. Alright, ready to settle in? Here we go...

Simple Microblogging Transport Protocol (SMTP)
[Note: I'd originally considered calling this the "Sheppardson Microblogging Transport Protocol" but that seemed a bit too... well... long. Plus I expect lots of folks would misspell my name.]

Unique User Address

We're going to be building a global distributed system here, so each user will need some sort of SMTP ID that's good across all the nodes that make up the SMTP network. This is really an address, of sorts, that points to our microblogging "home" node on the web. Our home node is where we usually post and read our microblogging content. If someone wants to direct a message to us, they can send it to the place specified by our SMTP ID. A reader can tell who posted a particular microblog message by examining the author's SMTP ID.

I propose we use the convention of username (e.g. kshep) followed by the address of the SMTP system on which that users lives (in my case, kshep.net). Let's string those together, perhaps separated by a special character of some sort, to form a unique address for each user. I'd suggest either a # or a %, e.g. "kshep#kshep.net" or perhaps "kshep%kshep.net".

Message Content Type & Size

Users will probably want to publish and consume microblog content on a wide variety of devices, so let's limit content to text. If a user wants to reference a picture or a mixed media document of some sort, I'm sure someone else can come up with some sort of standard for a short (tiny, even) text string that we could insert into a message that will tell us where that document is located on the network. Many users seem to enjoy microblogging to and from their cell phones so let's say the messages can be no more than 140 characters long, which is apparently the longest message cell phones can display unless it's 160 characters.

User Interface

It's likely that users will want to both generate and consume SMTP messages on a variety of devices, so it's important that we support a variety of use cases and UI layouts. We're more concerned with the development of the SMTP protocol at this point, so it's probably not necessary to delve into the UI design too much. However it's worth noting that we'll want to support posting/reading in the web browser, cell phone, and perhaps even desktop clients of some sort.

Message Storage, Archiving & Search

Much of the criticism of existing microblogging architectures has been directed at their reliance on relational database systems, and some critics have proposed a file system based approach for the next generation of services. For example, a directory could be created for each user on an SMTP server and microblog messages could be stored as text in this directory. This would facilitate not just indexing and data mining techniques, but rendering this stream of microblog messages in the UI wouldn't require expensive DB access. Luckily we're dealing with very small messages here, relative to all the streaming media usually carried across the internet, so the bandwidth and storage requirements probably aren't that taxing.

Let the Games Begin
As you can see, I haven't thought this out completely yet. It's probably 60% baked at this point. I'd encourage you to leave comments, ask questions, and raise issues. For example, it's not quite clear to me how you'd send an SMTP message to everyone on a particular server, or what you'd do with a message intended for someone on a remote server if that server is down, or how you'd make sure the person sending you a message is who she says she is.

Also, in order to get Steve Gillmor on board (and I do honestly hope he comes on board. Seriously.) we need to figure out how to get track to work. This means each SMTP server will probably need to examine and filter messages based on their content and route those messages accordingly. Again, this is an important area for further discussion and investigation.

I do have one request: Please limit your conversation on the new SMTP specification to the comments here on this post, as I want everyone to realize this was my idea. Thanks in advance.

Twitter Clones -- Deja Vu All Over Again

2008-07-03T08:58:58Z

With all the talk of identi.ca, Plurk, Jaiku, FriendFeed, Twitter down time and the chatter from folks looking for a stable, full-featured social messaging service, I thought I might recycle an article from the archives. Please forgive me for the re-post, and the slight license taken in the translation.

From: k...@aimnet.com (Ken Sheppardson)

Subject: Diary of a New Aimnet Insti.ca Subscriber and an
Idea

Date: 1995/11/30 2008/07/03

Message-ID: [<49jabf$hj1@news2.aimnet.com>#1/1](http://groups.google.com/group
/ba.internet/msg/d50b4c55c2330ffc?dmode=source)

X-Deja-AN: 120577770

organization: Aimnet Insti.ca Information Services

reply-to: k...@aimnet.com

newsgroups: aimnet.general,ba.internet

Well I'm in my second week day as an Aimnet
Insti.ca subscriber. I'm not impressed yet.

Tonight once again I'm unable to call into their Belmon POP
get my XMPP account connected. (Only the second time, which puts this problem
relatively low on my list.) It keeps rejecting my login, so I'm in through
SF Jaiku again. No answer on the first call, but I'm in on
the second. What's wrong with Belmont Insti.ca I wonder. No
explanation in aimnet.announce on Lucindi.ca or any other
aimnet group FriendFeed room. It seems the support staff
doesn't read (or at least doesn't post to) their own groups
corporate site.

It's been five or ten times now that I've seen the "Server does not have a DNS
entry" message from Netscape Firefox when I try to access
http://www.aimnet.com [www.identi.ca](http://www.identi.ca).
Strange that their own name server doesn't have an entry for their web server.
Ah...there it goes. In general I seem to be batting 30% or so in hitting
outside sites on the first try. What's wrong with the DNS server, I wonder.

It only takes 45-60 seconds for my home page to come up when I try
http://www.aimnet.com/~kens,
[http://identi.ca/kshep](http://identi.ca/kshep) although it comes up
pretty much instantaneously when I try users.aimnet.com. Why so long

to redirect?

Many problems. I'd suggest people stay away at this point. Of course I don't
know if this is typical in the bay area or not. I've
certainly had more problems than I did with my previous provider:
Msen, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Jaiku, now part of Google
msen.com  of course they had their share of problems
too...this certainly isn't an ad for them)

If there's anybody out there looking to provide a great service to the
Internet community, I've got an idea for you: Get an account with every
ISP Twitter clone you can find. At regular intervals try to
log into each, check mail, read news, check web pages, check the number of
entries in passwd files, check disk usage %s on /usr volumes, then compile
stats on problems, busy signals, etc. Put it all together in a monthly
newsletter (real paper even) and sell it in area
bookstores, computer stores, coffee shops, and anywhere else you can think
of. give it away on your blog. I, for one, would pay somebody
$10 or so right this second for a

current copy. leave you a comment.

Whadya think?

Summize is your Imaginary Friend

2008-06-28T09:21:35Z

If anybody's keeping score, I'm one of those folks who thinks that IM, SMS, email, Twitter, FriendFeed, and perhaps another two or three other services we haven't seen yet each have their place and that no one service is likely to crush another, let alone all the others. I do find myself spending more and more time on FriendFeed, however, and for information flow that's not time sensitive, FriendFeed and Feedly make up my dashboard.

One very handy but somewhat hidden feature of FriendFeed is the "Imaginary Friend".

This feature allows you to add a contact with one or more associated feeds for individuals who don't yet have a FriendFeed account. It's also handy for bringing feeds from other services into your FF flow. For example, you can create an Imaginary Friend corresponding to a service like Summize, then add feeds for the different searches you'd like to monitor. In other words, you can reconstruct the Twitter "track" feature and have the results appear directly in FriendFeed.

To show you an example, let's just suppose the Twitter "Replies" tab is disabled and you've sworn off Twitter until track and IM come back online, but you don't want to miss messages addressed to you in Twitter. Your Imaginary Friend Summize rides to the rescue:

Step 1 — Generate a feed URL on Summize

First head off to Summize and perform whatever search you'd like to save. The advanced search features are VERY handy, and let you do things like search for all mentions of your Twitter ID that aren't in messages from you. For me, that search string is "kshep -from:kshep"." Once you've performed that search you'll find a link in the upper right corner of the results page with the URL for your query. Right-click on the link and copy the link for future use.

Step 2 — Create your Imaginary Friend

Next, over on FriendFeed go to the "friend settings" tab, choose "imaginary" from the top nav bar, and enter the name of your new friend. Once you've created this friend, you can add services associated with the friend just as you would add feeds to your own account. In this case we'll pretend the Summize search feed is just a blog. Go ahead and click on the "Blog" link and enter the URL you generated in Step 1. If you'd like, you can add multiple feeds to the Summize friend, one for every "track"-style search you'd like to perform. Of course there's some latency in this approach that you don't have to deal with when you're using the Twitter track feature, but with the track feature offline for the foreseeable future and more and more users splitting their time between the two services, sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

FriendFeed Target Window Script

2008-06-27T14:49:28Z

Here's a quick little Greasemonkey script that addresses one of the little quirks in my FriendFeed workflow. I've set FriendFeed as my home page and always have it open in a Firefox window. It updates automatically, with new items appearing at the top of the page. About 95% of the time I right-click on the links in items and open them in a new window so I still have the FriendFeed home page open.

After installing several of the FriendFeed Greasemonkey scripts over at Internet Duct Tape, I finally broke down and wrote my own. This script updates all the links in the body of the page so that they open in a "content" window, rather than window where the FriendFeed page appears.

Rather than duplicate a full tutorial on Greasemonkey and FriendFeed, I'd suggest you check out the tutorial on Internet Duct Tape. Once you've done that, you should be able to follow the link below to install the "Target Window" script.

[ FriendFeed Target Window Script ]

OpenSocial First Impressions

2007-11-04T18:32:03Z

This weekend I spent some time experimenting with OpenSocial a bit and watching the flow of comments in Google's opensocial developer forum. First of all, it's not really of much use to me at the moment as they haven't yet launched the "Data" part of their API, which will eventually allow RESTful access to profile data on OpenSocial containers. That means I'm left to watch from the sidelines as folks muddle through writing widgets. Bottom line: it seems like an early Beta at best, and there are lots of unanswered questions ranging from security concerns to how "open" the API revision process will be to how exactly new members can join the OpenSocial "club". Unless you want to deal with early- adopter/beta tester issues, give it a month or so before you jump onboard.

Enough Gear Already

2007-08-20T23:07:35Z

It seems that in addition to collecting guitars, computer hardware, digital cameras, unused calendars, planning systems and black Cordura bags I've also gotten stuck collecting blogging and social networking accounts. Plaxo, Linkedin, Flickr, Flixster, Facebook, Jaiku, Twitter, etc, etc. plus all the little plug-ins for cross-posting and integration.

It appears it's about time for a "code freeze" of sorts: That's it. No more new systems. No more changes. It's time to actually make music, take pictures, and write.

Making a Hipster PDA Case

2007-02-21T23:36:59Z

Like many folks I fell onto the GTD bandwagon about a year ago after stumbling upon 43folders.com. One thing led to another, and pretty quickly I found myself carrying a Hipster PDA, better know to anybody over thirty as "a stack of index cards." A traditional hPDA is held together with a binder clip, but that just didn't work for me. The clip would catch on things, the card edges would fray, and it just didn't seem like an elegant solution to me. I'd look for something better whenever I was in an office supply store, but never did find anything that seemed quite right. Finally, I decided I'd just try to make something, and after 5 minutes in Office Depot and 10 minutes with a paper cutter I had what I wanted: a clear plastic holder that didn't add any substantial thickness or bulk but protected the cards and provided easy access. After a few months, the holder was looking a bit ragged, so I thought it was time to make a new one. Here's the process (A full set of pictures is available on Flickr):

Avery Clear Binder Pockets (75423) come five to a pack. A pack is just over $3 including tax at any of the big three office supply houses (Office Depot, Office Max, or Staples)

First, cut the lower right corner from the binder pocket. The sealed length on the side opposite the holes will become the bottom of the card holder. You can cut a rough blank that's 7 inches or so by 5.5 or 6 and trim it down to size.

The left side of the rough blank is the original fold in the pocket. The top is open, and the bottom is the sealed section.

Cut back along the sealed seam on the bottom leaving just over 3 inches intact, then cut the flap off (Just the upper layer, that is).

Stick as many cards as you're likely to carry in the pocket as a guide, then fold the cover flap over. You'll need to crease the cover fold firmly, but as hard as you might crease it, it will likely take several days before the cover sits flat.

The holder on the left has bounced around from shirt pocket to pants pocket to computer bag and back for the better part of six months. The holder on the right is new.

Outlook "Sent Items" Hack

2006-06-05T23:09:01Z

For years, Outlook’s inability to have Sent Items go anywhere but the Sent Items folder has been a little pet peeve of mine. It might seem a little counterintuitive, but I really like everything I send to end up in my inbox where I sort it, file it, set up a "next action" ala GTD, etc. Up until now I'd just move the contents of my Sent Items folder to the Inbox folder every once in a while. Well, reading CNXN's article on using Outlooks without folders finally gave me a bit of a nudge, and a quick google turned up the following bit of code. Open Outlook’s Visual Basic editor, go to the ThisOutlookSession object, paste in the following code, save, restart Outlook, and anything that appears in Sent Items will immediately be moved ot the Inbox.

    Public WithEvents SentItems As Outlook.Items
    Private Sub Application_Startup()
        Set SentItems = _
    Outlook.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderSentMail).Items
    End Sub
    Private Sub Application_Quit()
        Set SentItems = Nothing
    End Sub
    Private Sub SentItems_ItemAdd(ByVal Item As Object)
        Item.Move _
    Outlook.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
    End Sub

Free SketchUp

2006-04-27T08:00:35Z

SketchUp is a neat, intuitive 3D drawing program from a company called @Last. Following Google's general modus operandi these days, and in complete opposition to Microsoft's general approach, Google bought the company a little while back and is "liberating" the software--or at least a version of it. Their objective is certainly to make it as easy as possible to populate Google Earth, but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that the software's just cool.

Google SketchUp--great name, huh?-- is a completely separate application from regular ol' SketchUp 5, which we've renamed--get ready for this--SketchUp Pro 5. The free version can be downloaded for $6000 (just wanted to see if you were paying attention) can be downloaded for FREE from Google. It's perfect for people who love SketchUp but who can't justify the price of SketchUp Pro. Do-it-yourself kitchen remodelers, backyard rocket builders, basement model train obsessives; Google SketchUp will let just about everyone build and show off their creations in 3D. I think it's a great day for 3D nerds everywhere, and I mean that in the best possible way.

[ more ]

Back to Plaxo

2006-04-26T09:27:09Z

I've installed Plaxo more than once over the years, but in the end I was always guilted into dropping it. Enough folks I know use it now, however, that I'm back. Perhaps I'll stay with it this time since they're now "less evil"...

Well, Plaxo has finally announced that they’ve harassed enough people into joining and won’t be making it quite so easy to for users to spam their entire address book. The words they chose certainly tell us that, at least internally, they fully knew how miserable they were making all of us

-- TechCrunch » Plaxo: Now With Less Evil

First Things First

2006-04-17T21:38:56Z

It's occured to me over the past month that blogging makes much more sense for folks who have some sort of blog entry-sized opinion to offer on a regular basis. It's not clear that I do. In other words, it's good to have content before you build a system for presenting that content. This site is probably much more sandbox than soapbox, and I suspect it'll morph quite a bit over the next few days/weeks.

Beyond Compare

2006-03-19T07:08:46Z

If you're a software developer, web designer, or simply use files on more than one computer, you need Beyond Compare:

Beyond Compare is a powerful time-saving utility for comparing files and folders on your Windows system.

Use it to manage source code, keep folders in sync, compare program output, and validate copies of your data. Beyond Compare can create a snapshot of a live directory structure, and compare it against the live copy at a later date.

Beyond Compare helps you analyze differences in detail and carefully reconcile them. It commands a wide range of file and text operations, as well as script commands for automating tasks.

-- http://www.scootersoftware.com/moreinfo.php

I've used BC for years, and I use it almost every day. Not only is it the best tool I've found for synchronizing files from my laptop or desktop PC to various servers, but it's even saved me when I had to replace a bad hard drive and selectively copy the contents of the old drive over to the new one. I can't recommend it highly enough.

For the Record

2006-03-05T18:40:01Z

I can clearly remember sitting at my desk in the Research Activities Building on the engineering campus of the University of Michigan back in 1988 posting to USENET from a trusty old Apollo Domain workstation. Apollo lost the workstation battle to Sun and was absorbed by Hewlett-Packard in 1989. The building where I shared an office was demolished in 1989 to make way for a shiny new one with a nice green lumpy lawn. I graduated and began the process of forgetting most of what I learned. Little did I know that it would be my USENET posts that would outlast pretty much everything else.

In 2001 Google acquired Deja.com (aka DejaNews). When they did so they brought online and indexed Deja's entire USENET archive, dating back to 1981. It turns out that archive contained pretty much everything I'd ever written online. It's more than a little strange and just a bit embarassing to have nearly twenty years of material suddenly surface when you'd assumed it had all floated off into electronic space long ago. I won't make that mistake again.

To anyone reading this blog in 2026, please ignore everything I wrote from 1986 to 2005 or so. I had no idea what I was talking about.

Finally

2006-02-21T21:52:52Z

I have a blog. I don't know how I got along so long without one. Now I just eeed to post random rantings for the next few months and the next thing you know Charlie Rose, Terry Gross, and Jon Stewart will all be thanking me for stopping by.

	Avery Clear Binder Pockets (75423) come five to a pack. A pack is just over $3 including tax at any of the big three office supply houses (Office Depot, Office Max, or Staples)
	First, cut the lower right corner from the binder pocket. The sealed length on the side opposite the holes will become the bottom of the card holder. You can cut a rough blank that's 7 inches or so by 5.5 or 6 and trim it down to size.
	The left side of the rough blank is the original fold in the pocket. The top is open, and the bottom is the sealed section.
	Cut back along the sealed seam on the bottom leaving just over 3 inches intact, then cut the flap off (Just the upper layer, that is).
	Stick as many cards as you're likely to carry in the pocket as a guide, then fold the cover flap over. You'll need to crease the cover fold firmly, but as hard as you might crease it, it will likely take several days before the cover sits flat.
	The holder on the left has bounced around from shirt pocket to pants pocket to computer bag and back for the better part of six months. The holder on the right is new.