My iGeneration

Photrade Shuts Down

2009-07-14T08:49:00.000-05:00

It was announced today that Cincinnati-based photo sharing website Photrade has been acquired by MyPhotoAlbum.com/dotPhoto.com after losing its seed funding in 2008. Anyone who followed the company blog knew that very few employees stuck around after the funding dried up. Photrade tried doing something different by paying photographers for the use of their flickr-like uploads when used on blogs and other sites. The PHP-powered site employed protection in the form of custom watermarking, size limits, link find and block, and a patent-pending "ad block" (where ads were used to protect your photos off the site and at the same time makes you money) to prevent illegal use. MyPhotoAlbum.com is planning on integrating some of these features into their system.

Facebook Mobile Carrier Not Supported

2009-06-18T11:48:00.000-05:00

So if I can text 32665 from my mobile phone AND receive a message back from Facebook saying that my carrier is not supported, why is my carrier not supported? Obviously they can send SMS to my carrier just fine...

Google Entering the People Search Arena

2009-06-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

Google is now directly competing with people search niche sites like Spock, Wink, and PeekYou by offering you control of your online "profile." Instead of linking it to their social network Orkut, they're taking the same approach as the existing people search sites by linking results to existing (third-party) social networking sites. It will be interesting to see how the existing people search sites will react to Google's actions...will they continue to survive?

Double Whammy! Both Technorati and SourceForge Down at Same Time

2009-06-06T15:46:00.000-05:00

Technorati has also went down today. Their maintenance page says that they are "currently experiencing backend issues."

SourceForge is Down Today

2009-06-06T15:15:00.002-05:00

Has anyone else noticed that Source Forge is down at the moment?

B.Net Fail

2009-05-15T23:16:00.000-05:00

The URL shows success, but the page shows "Oops!"

Geni Hack: Prevent the people you invite to your tree from receiving too much Geni-related email

2009-05-09T18:36:00.000-05:00

From Geni regular Shmuel Kam: If you DO want to invite people to join the tree, then I have learned (the hard way) that most people are driven away by the many daily emails [Geni] sends. The following is an important technical tip on how to reduce this "spam" in advance. AFTER you have filled in their email address, and pressed the Invite button, go to the URL bar of your browser, and substitute everything to the left of the long number (their profile ID) with the following text, and press Return: http://www.geni.com/account_settings/notifications/ This will take you to THEIR account settings, regarding email notifications. I recommend disabling all of the **daily** emails ONLY (the middle block), and leaving everything else as is. If you disable the lower block, then you pretty much prevent people from being able to use this site to communicate with each other (because they won't be notified about diddly). Do NOT forget to press the Save Button. Once they accepted your invitation and joined, only they will be able to change these settings (via Settings on the top-right of any page). But this might be a bit much for the technically challenged or the elderly.

Indiana Has More Software Engineering Jobs Than All Other Engineering Disciplines Combined, Says Company Data

2009-04-29T18:43:00.000-05:00

According to a market survey by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute, IN), software engineering related positions account for 40,000 jobs in the state of Indiana. All other engineering disciplines combined only account for 10,000 jobs in the state. The survey's sources included census data and company estimates. When (non-CSSE) Rose professors were presented with this data, jaws dropped. Now, where should the funding go? How about to expanding CSSE offerings...

Gmail Outage

2009-04-16T16:21:00.000-05:00

Temporary Error (500) - We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes.

Looks like Gmail is out today. Anyone else experiencing this issue?

Sims on Stage, Formerly SingShot, Set to Close the Curtain

2009-03-26T13:18:00.001-05:00

Less than two years after purchasing SingShot, Electronic Arts has made the decision to close The Sims On Stage service in order to "focus resources on future games." The site will go offline on March 31, 2009. This has to be good news for karaoke competitors like SingSnap and SingStar Online (online service currently only available via console), but what about users? What do you envision the future of online karaoke to be? SingStar is betting on the living room console, but I think the winner will be the first service to combine console and PC recording.

CPL, CAL gone...who will fill the void? WCG?

2009-03-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I checked in on CAL or CPL, and the new WCG Ultimate Gamer series on Sci-Fi prompted me to look them up. They're gone. As of August 2008, investors in the United Arab Emirates bought out CPL, and in November the same group purchased CAL. Then, I can only assume, the economy tanked in the UAE and the investors never got around to re-instating the competitive leagues. This leaves quite a void in competitive gaming in the US, one that less well known groups like WCG appear to be trying to fill. Will they be successful? HotSpot Technologies is looking into a different style of competitive gaming - one that has possible pay outs for even the first time player, and not just a few individuals at the top.

Where the money's at, 2009-2012 predictions

2009-02-24T21:03:00.000-05:00

While a few companies are still receiving VC funding, you can expect a whole lot more companies seeing bailout money. What tech business should you be in to receive the funding? Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.

Modernized power grids, heavy transmission lines. We have to have a way to move around all that new green electricity.
Home power generation: solar panels, roof turbines, and even the return of excess power back to the grid.
Municipal wireless, rural wireless (near VHF/UHF ranges after the HDTV conversion this July), fiber-to-home. It's ridiculous that people anywhere are forced to still use dial-up.
Print-to-digital conversion consulting. Newspapers especially, but expect Kindle 2 authors to need some advice as well.
Health care IT. Don't bother with electronic health records - Google's on it. But the rest, including displaying and modifying those records, is up for grabs.

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The Consumer View: Why do I pay for the same song over and over again?

2009-01-26T13:12:00.000-05:00

With the rise of Internet gaming consoles like the PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360, we're seeing a new form of revenue generation for artists and labels: the add-on pack to Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Singstar, etc. At generally $1.50/song and $19.99/album, the consumer pays full retail price to be able to sing or play songs they likely already own in physical or digital form. How long will this last before consumers demand that they be allowed to pay once for a song and have all rights to it? Imagine iTunes adding icons for "Rock Band Compatible" or "Guitar Hero Rockable." It would require a little coordination among game publishers and storefronts, but I could see consumers being more willing to pay a little more up front for guaranteed playability down the line than they are to continue re-purchasing a song for each and every platform. What do you think?

Editing the MediaWiki ISBN Links Page (For Amazon Associates, etc)

2008-12-22T19:52:00.000-05:00

By default, MediaWiki links anything "ISBN xxxxxxxxxx" to Special:Booksources/xxxxxxxxxx, which has links to various stores where the visitor could buy that book. You probably want to monetize this by changing the Amazon link to include your Associates referral code. Here's how you do it:

Figure our what your "namespace" is. At the bottom of every MediaWiki page, it says "About xxx". xxx is your namespace.
Go to (your MediaWiki url and title scheme)/(your namespace):Book sources. Change the links to your liking, using MAGICNUMBER (all caps!) where ever you need the ISBN inserted. Save and test.

If you don't like using the Book sources page, you can change it by editing the contents of MediaWiki:Booksources.

Playstation Online: Credit Card Information Not Valid

2008-12-19T01:28:00.000-05:00

When entering credit card info info via your PS3 to the Playstation Network, you may receive the error "Credit Card Information Not Valid." Try removing the second line of your address information to resolve this error.

The Future of Software Engineering

2008-12-18T20:01:00.004-05:00

Despite IEEE efforts, there is industry confusion over what a software engineer (SE) is and what a programmer or computer scientist (CS) is. As it is taught at Rose-Hulman, the nation’s top undergraduate engineering college, software engineering is “the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software.” It’s a broad field, and as such individual software engineers often specialize in some subset of the process. For example, I specialize in web engineering or “web science .”

Computer science on the other hand often puts its graduates into the role of the programmer – a code monkey who relishes in the design of elegant algorithms. According to Wikipedia , computer science is “the study and the science of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems.” In practice, an SE could be doing CS work and vice versa, but as taught at Rose-Hulman the SE has additional knowledge in project management and the entire software life cycle. An SE major usually chooses the SE path because he or she isn’t all that interested in the cut-and-dry coding part of the life cycle.

The two fields are rapidly moving apart, in part driven by the outsourcing of code monkey work. Outside of boutique software shops, software engineers are expected to focus on the initial and latter steps of the life cycle while managing others doing everything in between. Will the future bring more abstraction from coding for software engineers?

I think so. I’m not talking about abstraction from code – as technical managers, software engineers will always be knee deep in code – but from the actual coding itself. Case in point: open sourceology. Once just a morally good idea, I’ve seen many technologists self-describing themselves as open sourceologists these days. The benefits of open source are plentiful and self-obvious, and now we have people marketing themselves as being capable of choosing, integrating, and deploying customized open source solutions (myself included). Less than 5% of systems built today are completely new - see the A7 NRL Project. Some industry experts I’ve spoken to envision the future for software engineers being practically nothing but picking and choosing already written components to build a completely new system, ready-customized for the domain at hand. Others still like Shawn Bohner, Rose-Hulman’s new Director of Software Engineering, picture a world where software will write itself.

Another future, one which Google, Microsoft, Adobe and others are banking on, is web applications and cloud computing. AWAI-free world in which the accessing/input device used by the customer doesn’t matter, data can be securely accessed from anywhere, and desktop applications seamlessly integrate with web counterparts. Note that this future does not necessarily include data portability , but let’s hope it does. The software engineer in this world is best served by creativity and strong UI and communication skills, as customers can come and go as they please without needing to consult their IT department.

Any shop that doesn’t value web skills over traditional application skills – and yes, there is a difference - is doomed to fail in the second case, and any shop that continues to write everything from scratch will fall behind and/or fail in the first case. My advice to companies that want to survive into the next decade is to hire based on overall competencies in areas that are set to matter the most – creativity, UI, cross-compatibility, language independence, platform scaling, customer interaction and testing – and consider traditional skills “a plus.” Coding as an art can be beautiful, but it’s not what the customer sees and won’t pay the bills. Companies are catching on that there are already existing solutions available that mostly cover their needs and simply need a little tweaking for their individual requirements – I wouldn’t expect them to pay you to continually reinvent the wheel for too much longer.

Signature Position in Thunderbird

2008-12-04T11:24:00.000-05:00

If you attach a signature in Thunderbird, it will by default put your reply below your signature and even ignore your choices if you try changing the position through the settings menu. To fix this, you're going to have to edit your preferences file manually.

Close Thunderbird.
Backup C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\randomHash.default\prefs.js to somewhere, like your desktop.
Open C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\randomHash.default\prefs.js
Change
user_pref("mail.identity.id1.sig_bottom", true)
into
user_pref("mail.identity.id1.sig_bottom", false)
There might be more user_pref("mail.identity.id1.sig_bottom", true) parameters depending on how many identities you have.
Save and reopen Thunderbird and see if this fixed your problem. If not, maybe double check that you changed each and every identity.
Do not try changing the position via the settings menu or it will revert to the default position.

Source: MozillaZine

Companies and Products That Suck, 2008 Edition

2008-12-02T13:01:00.001-05:00

The New Year is a time to reflect, and this year's C&P That Suck edition primarily revolves around my recent move, which has been nothing short of ridiculous.

DirecTV

Skip Button Time Update: Around October, DirecTV snuck in an update which affected the duration of a "skip." I think it had something to do with Dish somehow copyrighting the "30-second skip." After the update, I was never able to correctly skip any number of commercials again.

False Sign-up Promotions: When I signed up, I was promised a $100 visa gift card within eight weeks. I filled everything out properly, even got confirmation that it was received by the third-party rebate processor, but I never received the card.

Broken Contracts: I signed up for a one year contract. This was confirmed by both the lady I signed up with, and the lady I disconnected with after 13 months of service. A few weeks later I receive a bill for a $150 early termination fee. I don't think so!

Dish Installation
When signing up via their standard customer service number, they told me it was alright that I didn't have a phone number at the time. The Indianapolis-based installer contacted me once via email, but ignored my response. The install window came and went without so much as a knock. I sent a second email asking who is responsible for notifying me when they reschedule - Dish or the installer - and was told that it's standard policy to not go on an install unless telephone contact has first been made. Yay for miscommunication.

Vectren Energy
A week before the move, the gas company was contacted and it was arranged that when the current resident's service was terminated it would immediately turn over to our name. This is what the customer service rep told us. Yet we went two days without heat because they turned it off and then send the same guy to turn it back on two days later. Even he said "I don't know why they would do this!"

But the one that takes the cake...
Verizon Internet
Three weeks before the move, Verizon was contacted and it was arranged that on the day of the move, service at our previous address would turn off and service at our new address would turn on. The customer service rep made it clear that this was possible. That night our Internet went out. We contacted customer service again, and a new rep who said no such thing was possible, and she cooked up a scheme to get service back on at our previous address - just cancel the move order. By the end of that week I still had no service, and my Verizon Online account was disabled. When I called customer service back, they no longer had any record of my ever having service! Apparently they immediately delete all records as soon as you "cancel service" - which is not what was ever supposed to happen in the first place. The only option they could present me with at this point was to put in a "new order" for either address, and it would be several weeks until it could be turned on, even at the previous address, because of the needless corporate bureaucracy needed for new orders, and no matter what I could not have my previous Verizon e-mail address back. Good thing I don't actually use my Verizon e-mail address! So I put in the "new order" for the new address, and was given a promise date of five days after our move-in. "Fine," I said, but that's hardly the end of it. The day comes and goes, and around 7pm that night I get a robo-call from Verizon saying that it's been rescheduled another 7 days - bringing my total Internet downtime to a full month. Now that day comes and goes, and they claim everything is peachy and begin billing me. Only problem is, I still don't have an Internet connection. On that day, one Verizon employee came out and did a line test. He didn't tell me, or Verizon for that matter, the result of the line test. The following week when the second employee comes out, he finds that the line connected to this house isn't even rated for DSL, and he had to spend two hours running a new line from down the block! Over a month from when the ordeal began, I finally have a connection. Only problem is, it might be called DSL and be using DSL protocols, but it's not giving me anymore than 2 x ISDN speed!

That green number up top is my DOWN speed! The sad thing is, I could have had Time Warner Cable Internet installed by now and probably not had any of the speed issues. I decided not to go that route, because they require a month lead time before they'll send an installer, and Verizon kept stringing me along week by week. Let's hope someone there is working next week...

Hamachi on Vista: Mediation server has rejected your login request

2008-12-01T21:10:00.000-05:00

After upgrading to the latest version of Hamachi, I kept receiving this error: "Mediation server has rejected your login request." I ran through the solutions on the Hamachi site and none of them worked. Here's what did:

Close Hamachi.
Disable Windows Firewall (Through Your Control Panel).
Rename Hamachi Folder in %APPDATA%
Open Hamachi.
Create new account, DO NOT use the same username as last time.

Missing Exchange Folders via IMAP

2008-11-28T01:56:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when you use IMAP to access e-mail from multiple e-mail clients, like Outlook and Thunderbird, some mail folders show up while others do not. This is due to IMAP "subscriptions" - the client tries to automatically pick the right folders but usually fails. Here are fixes:

Outlook:

Right click on your Exchange Inbox and select "IMAP Folders."
Uncheck the "Show only subscribed folders" box found at the bottom of the window.
Click OK and all of your folders should show.

Thunderbird:

Go to File > Subscribe.
Place a check next to the folders you'd like, and click "Subscribe."
Click OK.

The OpenSource Mail Alternative: Thunderbird, Lightning, Plaxo and Google Calendar

2008-11-26T19:50:00.001-05:00

Tired of Microsoft Outlook hogging all your system resources? Don't want to pay for 2007 in order to remove mailbox size limits? I've set several of my clients up with Mozilla Thunderbird in recent years, and it gets the job done when it comes to e-mail.

But what about your calendar? Contacts? Plaxo integration is important to me since it keeps an off-site backup of my contacts, as is Google Calendar since I don't run on an Apple so I don't have access to the ever-popular iCal.

As it turns out, Thunderbird supports both Plaxo and Google Calendar with a few add-ins:

If you haven't already, download and install Thunderbird.
Download and install Lightning , Mozilla's calendar add-in for Thunderbird. Instructions on-site.
Use CalDAV to sync Lightning with Google Calendar. The instructions are for Mozilla Sunbird, but it works all the same - you can find the "New Calendar" option in Thunderbird by clicking Calendar (bottom of left pane) and choose Calendar-New Calendar from the top file menu.
Finally, download and install the Plaxo Thunderbird Toolbar to sync your contacts. Instructions on-site.

Reading List by Amazon vs. Google Book Search "My Library"

2008-11-25T20:38:00.000-05:00

Within the last month or so books have gotten a real boost. Maybe not in sales, but in survival. Google made a groundbreaking agreement with authors and publishers wherein the two would share in the profit of Google making books available online. For CreateSpace authors, Google makes it easy - just merge your cover and block PDF files into one, upload directly to Google, and watch the revenue roll in. For the casual reader, Google even added a My Library feature for book reviews.

Not to be outdone, Amazon released their Reading List application through OpenSocial onto LinkedIn. This is the only place I've heard of it - I can't even find it on the main Amazon site - but it looks promising because you can see what your LinkedIn Network is reading/recommending as well as your whole industry.

The Breakdown
RSS: Google offers an RSS feed of your book list, Amazon does not.
Stats: Amazon offers stats on how many people are watching your list, Google does not (where's the Google Feedburner integration!?).
Books: Google links your books to their online counterparts on Google Books, Amazon links your books to other people's recommendations and the Amazon store (where's my affiliate income!?).
Location: Amazon lets you note if you're reading the actual book, or of course, the Kindle e-book version.
Reliability: At least once during my test, the Amazon app spit out a generic error that I figure was related to timing out since a refresh of the page fixed the problem.

The Verdict: I'd hold off dumping your personal library into either service just yet. Google needs to offer more portability (is it an OpenSocial app?), and Amazon needs to work on reliability.

Will these two new bookshelf sharing applications be able to compete with the already popular hoard of similar applications like iRead, GoodReads, and Shelfari (with a combined market share of 737k monthly active Facebook users)? Without practical data sharing between the services, I anticipate that the big names will simply encourage more new people to share their reading tastes online. Google's RSS feeds are a good step in that direction, but the service is lacking an import feature. I don't imagine too many people being interested in re-inputing their libraries.

Obama Administration Job Site Crashes on Day 1

2008-11-13T23:40:00.000-05:00

The many people who signed up on change.gov to receive an email when a full job application (to be a part of Obama's "non-career" administration) was available have apparently crashed the application system, which was launched late last night. Everyone who signed up received their email, but was greeted by a "No suitable nodes are available to serve your request" error message when attempting to access the website today. Perhaps some of those new jobs should be in the website QA department?

Northern Kentucky's Technology Corridor, A Well Kept Secret

2008-11-11T20:28:00.000-05:00

Many have heard of Silicon Valley, but few have heard of the Northern Kentucky E-Zone. Based out of Covington, Kentucky, and with access to a faster and wider trunk line than Silicon Valley, the E-Zone accelerates, mentors, and helps increase exposure of start-up, emerging, and existing technology entrepreneurs in the form of early stage capital (grants, loans, forgivable loans and equity investments), office space, and entrepreneurial networking activities.

While you certainly don’t see it when looking for jobs in the area, Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati actually has an active tech scene. Amongst the hoards of large multinational conglomerates like P&G, hiding in the wings you can find start-ups like ShareThis and Photrade. The Circuit hosts events for IT professionals, and their C-CAP arm connects entrepreneurs with local angel investors like the Queen City Angels.

What makes the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati area so attractive? The ready availability of public transportation (as opposed to the nearest midwest tech capital, Carmel/Indianapolis) is reminiscent of the coasts, the miles and miles of urban and suburban environments coupled with a relatively low cost of living, free dog parks, low taxes and healthy stay-out-of-the-way local/state governments to name a few things. On Startup Weekend, Cincinnati’s entrepreneur community is third in the country.

Over the next several months, I hope to document some of the achievements of this growing tech community. If you would like to have your Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati Metro Area technology business profiled, leave a comment.