Ramble On

Moving

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:31:00 +0000

I think I will be moving my blog over to Wordpress. Working on Propeller I have been turned off of Blogger because of all the spammers using it and giving it a bad name. I also don't feel that Google is doing enough for it, and don't see too many new features. So this will be my new home.

Pagey's Blog

I will give it a try and see how I like it.

Rock and Roll

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:34:00 +0000

Over the years I have seen many concerts, The Rolling Stones(2x), Pink Floyd(2x), Robert Plant, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Rush, The Black Crowes, Bad Company, ZZ Top, just to name a few. With family and work, I just didn’t have the time or money to do this anymore, and I didn’t have much interest either. So after a break of about 5-6 yrs I am heading up to Ottawa to see John Mellencamp ,Tom Cochrane and Red Rider. Hopefully it’s a good show, I have been a fan of John Mellencamp since he was John Cougar, it’s also my wife's first concert which should be interesting.

Since buying these tickets, all of a sudden other concerts have popped up that seem to work with my schedule and I have bought tickets for. My hometown of Kingston has recently built a new arena and very famous band in Canada, called The Tragically Hip, famous to Canadians (probably not so much Americans) is from Kingston and will open the arena so we picked up some tickets to go see them. As the dust was settling on this, Def Leopard, Styx and REO Speedwagon announce they are touring Canada, and while I probably wouldn’t have hunted down tickets myself, a co-worker of my wife decided to buy some tickets for the show at the Air Canada Center in Toronto, and wanted to know if we would like some. With it falling on a weekend I said sure, and the more I think about this show the more excited I’m getting about going to see it. Crappy 80’s music, You got to love it!

My thoughts on that later.

Mont Tremblant pt.2

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:20:00 +0000

Just got back, and wish I was still up on the hill, yesterday afternoon was crazy, sunny at the bottom and complete white out at the top, couldn't see 10 feet in front of you, still didn't stop me.

View at the top of the mountain. The board with the lights tells you which lifts are open.

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:20:00 +0000

A shot from the gondola looking back at the village.

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:19:00 +0000

Making snow!

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:19:00 +0000

Bottom of the mountain.

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:18:00 +0000

Winter wonderland

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:18:00 +0000

Amazing views from the summit!

Off to Mont Tremblant, Quebec

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:29:00 +0000

For a few days of Skiing

Propeller update

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:28:00 +0000

Got another look at the new site last night, and it has even improved more from the last time I saw it. I can't wait for this to launch, it's so exciting. There is no other site on the web like it, and I'm not talking just looks but the way it's gonna work is very unique.

Geo caching

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:07:00 +0000

Got this GPS for my wife(she asked for it, I'm the one playing with it) Were going to start Geo caching with the kids. Nice handheld!

Merry Christmas to me

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:03:00 +0000

My new Sony Bravia 46"
Just ordered my HD package from my satellite provider, should be running on Saturday.

We Will Rock You

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:20:00 +0000

Just went and seen We Will Rock You in Toronto, if you get a chance to see this go. It is awesome, I only think it's playing in Toronto and London and I'm not really sure why it's not in New York.

The new Propeller

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:46:00 +0000

I just got a sneak peak at the new site design for Propeller.com and all I can say is WOW!!! We are going to kick ass!

Fellow Scout Wil agrees
wil wheaton sees aols propeller

Propeller Taking Off

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:12:00 +0000

A nice post about Propeller at Centernetworks

" Does this mean that Propeller will grow to the Digg traffic level in a year? Nope, I certainly doubt it. But could Propeller become a strong #2, absolutely. And looks like Duncan Riley might just be eating these words, "It might be too early to Deadpool the Netscape Social news experiment yet, but without the type-in traffic and brand recognition of the Netscape name, the whole idea will struggle to survive. I give it 12 months max."

Here is the story

Cars of the future?

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 01:27:00 +0000

One of the channels that I'm assigned to on Propeller is the Auto Channel. I see many stories about hybrid and electric cars, and one of the things that stood out is how ugly they have been over the years. It's almost like if you decide to build an electric car, then you had to make sure it's not pretty. That all seems to be changing, lately it has been going in the opposite direction and these cars are looking better then the gas guzzling Corvettes and other sports cars. A lot of these are just concept, but it is looking much better. Here are a few I have taken notice to.

AC Propulsion's tzero

From their site "The tzero is not for sale. It is a concept & development vehicle to demonstrate that cars could be both fast and efficient."

http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero/

The Chevy Volt(One of my favorites)

Not in production, but GM says it will be soon

http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/

Honda CR-Z, another favorite of mine

Another Concept car at this point

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/honda/honda-cr+z-hybrid-concept-car-too-awesome-to-be-a-honda-308956.php

PHEV Ford Edge with HySeries Drive

HySeries Drive is a plug-in series hybrid system, that uses a 336V lithium ion battery pack to drive the electric motor. This makes it the world's first drivable hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with plug-in capability.

Again, not in production(can you see a theme here)

Tesla Roadster

This is probably the most promising for spotting driving down the road. They are now taking orders for these.

Some impressive stats;

100% electric
0 to 60 in under 4 sec
135 mpg equivalent
245 miles per charge
Less then two cents per mile

So while all of these are yet to be down at your local car dealer at least it's a step by designing a sexy car to generate some interest, and hopefully they will be on the road soon.

New Firefox Extensions for Propeller

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:34:00 +0000

New Extensions have been released to replace the old Netscape Sitemail Notifier and the Friends Activity Sidebar, Check them out, they also work with Netscape 9.
Sitemail Notifier
Friends Activity Sidebar

Time to Fly

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:13:00 +0000

Propeller is now online, the switch over went quite smoothly, it could be a couple of days to get the bugs out.

This from Tom Drapeau;

We have just completed our planned changes to Netscape.com. As we originally reported, a new portal has been launched on Netscape.com, and the social news site previously located there has been moved to propeller.com.

Over the last week, we have received some very positive feedback, both from early social news adopters and from those who were gradually won over by the communal experience at Netscape.com. I want to thank you all for your great feedback, and want to reiterate that the Propeller social news experience is not going away. On the contrary! In the coming weeks, you will be able to see Propeller content on both the new Netscape.com portal, as well as AOL News.

We have not been neglecting our member feedback either. We do realize that there have been undue performance problems and a few technical glitches over the past few weeks. Let me apologize for this poor user experience, and assure you that we are hard at work in fixing these. We have also had more spam escape our filters lately, and I want to apologize for that as well, and give thanks to all of our great members who reported these stories as such.

Also, we are not happy to simply stand pat with our existing features. In the near future, we will be able to share information about our new social news platform, which we are extremely excited about. It will bring together the best of all worlds: a world class design team, an advanced website platform, and a host of new and interesting ways to enjoy social news.

Best of all, we won't rush the new social news site to the public. We will want to hear your opinion on the new site, as it is because of you, the newly named Propeller member base, that we continue to develop social news services. We really hope that the Netscape.com social news community will come visit Propeller.com. We are confident that you will feel right at home!

http://blog.netscape.com/2007/09/19/propeller-lives/

Propeller.Com

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 01:10:00 +0000

Just last week Tom Drapeau announced that Netscape would be re-branding the site. That Netscape.com would be turned into a news portal like it used to be and the social news site would be moved to another location. As usual everyone jumped all over this as some kind of funeral as you can see here.

techcrunch: netscape-digg-clone-is-kaput
wired: Netscape ends Digg-clone
Wikinomics: netscape-social-experiment-digg-clone-is-dead
PCWorld: Netscape scraps redesign
And so on, and so on

Fast forward to today, Tom has announced the name and location of the new site. Propeller.com.
A great name and a very slick looking logo, things are looking great for the new site and now we can emerge from under the shadow of the Netscape name. We are about to take this site to the next level and a lot of great things are in the works, stay tuned!

Interview with Netscape Director, Tom Drapeau

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:34:00 +0000

Tom chat's about Netscape and where it is headed.
here...

How you can make Netscape better

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 12:30:00 +0000

I realize not a lot of the Netscape community visits my site, but the few who do can pass on this to their friends.There are a few things that can be done to make Netscape an even better social news site.

Site Mail
This is a big problem right now. Too many users are abusing this great feature. It was designed as a way for the community to communicate with one another not as a voting tool. Why do certain people feel they need to site mail EVERY story they post. If you come across a breaking story, then yes please site mail it. If you come across a very very interesting story sure share it with everyone. I would like to see more people share out there friends stories and not their own, I think this would help a lot. Right now the spammers are using this feature to drive traffic to their site, and it affects the overall quality of the homepage and site. This is supposed to be a Social News Site and stories about someones lawn ornaments is just not news, and does not belong on the homepage in my opinion. When voting don't just vote on a story because it was site mailed to you, take your time and see what the quality of the story is before voting.

Story Submissions
Some of the members of the community feel they need to submit only stories from their own site. A lot of this is spammers trying to drive traffic to their ad filled site, some have legitimate stories that they want to share, I don't have a big problem with that but I think the best submitters are the people who are diverse and submit stories from many different sites. In my opinion I think the ratio should be out of every 10 stories submitted from other sites include one from your own.

Don't make it Personal
Just that; don't' make it personal, this is what sets Netscape apart from Digg is that we have a diverse friendly community. This is one of the reasons I left Digg, and I'm sure a few others have done the same. When deep in a debate with someone over a story, please refrain from personal attacks, and don't be sucked into a personal argument by someone. If it is getting to heated move off to another thread for a while and cool down, if someone is attacking you, use the report function to report them as abusive. It is great to see some stories comments hit 1000+, you would never see this on Digg, and lets keep it that way by showing courtesy to other members of the community.

Please pass this on to other members, as a reminder why we have the best social news site on the web.

Follow Me

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 11:34:00 +0000

A Cool Firefox/Netscape plug in for Mahalo
Also if enough people install it, I might win a 20-inch 2.0GHz iMac(only in my dreams)
Follow Me

Stephen Colbert a Netscape user?

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:53:00 +0000

How cool, Stephen Colbert refers to a Netscape Article to introduce a story about the Illuminati.