News Goat

We Do What We Can

2009-10-09T06:42:00Z

A couple of months ago, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy, followed quickly by mastectomy, and is now undergoing chemotherapy. When she first told us, i started preparing myself for the worst. Mom was already in poor health, and I figured if the cancer didn’t kill her, the treatment would.

Since then, I’ve become a little more hopeful. The doctor gives her good odds for surviving five years. The chemo’s been hard on her, landing her in the hospital with pneumonia recently. But, she’s responding well to the treatment.

I have to be optimistic, because anything else will drive me insane.

Because of this, my wife and I are running in the Komen Race for the Cure this Saturday. We started a team, so a few of our friends are joining us for the run. I hate running, but I hate being unable to help someone I love more, so there ya go.

This is the part where I hit you up for money.

I suck at this sort of thing, so I’m just going to say it: If you can afford to donate a buck or two, I’d love for you to sponsor our team. Or it’d be good if you could tweet, reblog, etc. the hell out of this to get the word out.

And if you have any extra bandwidth for your good thoughts, please send some to my mom. But don’t send them too hard — if she figures out where they’re coming from, I’ll have to explain Twitter/Tumblr to her. And nobody wants that.

This Lousy Twitshirt

2009-04-17T15:17:00Z

Update: Looks like Twitshirt is changing their policy. Great to see a company respond so quickly to the community.

So, yeah, Twitshirt. I want to be clear that my objection is not for me personally. Do whatever you want with my words — once I’ve said them, I’m done with them. In fact, once they switch from the password anti-pattern to oAuth I’ll likely sign up and dutifully wait the 20 years it will take for me to earn enough to get a check. But that’s me, and you should never assume you can use someone else’s work without permission.

Because that’s really the problem here: permission. While royalties and opt-out forms are improvements over past attempts to sell tweets on shirts, it’s still not right. That’s not how copyright works. I can’t stand on a street corner and sell copies of Wall-E with a simple disclaimer that I’ll stop if I’m asked to. And Disney’s certainly not going to be interested in my offer of a 2.5% royalty.

It’s made worse by the fact that Airbag Industries, the company behind Twitshirt, is one I really admire. I expect better than this from them. My guess is they didn’t think it through. If they had, they would’ve seen that opt-out is wrong. They also might have realized all the other problems they were setting themselves up for.

So you wanna sell Tweet Shirts

This is the first problem that occurred to me. It’s also the first opportunity that occurred to me: What’s stopping me from retweeting everything that @hotdogsladies (who is opting-out) posts and making a killing on royalties? As far as I can tell, only morals.

Now, how ‘bout we print this shirt:

Think anybody will have a problem with that? Or maybe something like this:

Our little tweetshop has been in business five minutes and we’ve already committed copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and libel. Feels like a Monday, doesn’t it?

It’s a good idea. A really good idea. But from a practical standpoint, it just doesn’t work. I can only think of two ways to do it right: Create a CafePress style site, where individual Twitterers set up their own shops and you take a cut. Or, find individual tweets you like, negotiate a price with the writers, and sell limited runs of the shirts. Offering any tweet is so tempting, but it’s a world of hurt.

I hope Airbag realizes they’ve made a mistake and, at the very least, switch from opt-out to opt-in. It matters because words matter, regardless of whether you can sell them on a t-shirt.

Finding Your Way in the World Today Takes Every Gadget You've Got

2008-10-29T03:53:00Z

This past weekend, we went geocaching for the first time in a few years. We assumed, with each of us having an iPhone 3G, that we had everything we needed to find some caches.

Yeah… No.

We tried two different methods. First, we browsed to a cache page in Safari and clicked the Google Maps link to see the location in the Maps app. This all worked as it should — eventually. We were on a very slow Edge connection, so it took minutes to load the page, and more minutes whenever the map needed more tiles. The iPhone would find the location just fine. The problem was, the map app doesn’t have a high enough resolution to lead you to a specific set of coordinates.

We next tried MotionX GPS Lite. Downloading a 7MB app over Edge is a special experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. MotionX works pretty well — put in your coordinates and the on-screen compass leads you to the location. This would work for geocaching, but the app depends on the iPhone being in motion for it to calculate a heading. In motion at a speed of at least 3 MPH, in fact. So to use this app I had to run back and forth in the woods, trying not to step on a cactus or slam into a tree. Ultimately, I gave up, as each heading update just made me more lost.

This was all very dissappointing. One of the reasons I bought an iPhone 3G was for geocaching and other GPS-related activities. But since it failed to achieve in the modest task that was its charge, I’m left wondering if I need to buy a separate GPS device.

Some people claim the iPhone GPS chip isn’t accurate enough for geocaching or turn-by-turn directions. I don’t buy that. The first commercial GPS devices were accurate to within 3-5 meters, same as most new devices. No reason the iPhone would be any different. A GPS receiver picks up signals from a minimum number of satellites then tringulates its location. The device itself has very little influence over the accuracy that comes from that process. It may be that the iPhone uses a small receiver that has more trouble detecting satellites. But the GPS-A chip is supposed to help compensate for that.

My gut tells me the real problem here is Core Location, the API apps use to access the GPS data. I know it provides speed, heading, and coordinates, but what an application really needs for geocaching is a continuous stream of updated coordinates. I’d be willing to bet Core Location can not provide those updates fast enough. If someone more familiar with the API could shed some light on that, I’d love to hear about it.

So am I giving up on my iPhone as a GPS device? Not necessarily. It’s possible that a future update to the OS will improve the situation. In fact, that may be what GPS software companies like TomTom are waiting for before they release their apps — a better API. Or perhaps there’s a better GPS app in the iTunes store that I haven’t tried yet. If anybody’s had success with a particular app, let me know in the comments.

In the mean time, though, I probably won’t be doing much geocaching.

SPOILER ALERT

2008-09-17T22:32:00Z

…It’s a boy.

(What, you didn’t know we were expecting? You really should try Twitter)

Two points about ultrasounds: First, the work involved in performing an ultrasound makes Photoshop look like MS Paint. Second, many people have asked if we’re going to have a 4D ultrasound. Unless we change our minds, the answer is no. Maybe it’s just me—and it could be, since most people that have seen them, love them—but the photos and videos look to me like they’re from deep in the heart of the Uncanny Valley. Again, just a personal thing.

It’s become clear to me why women get pregnant and not men. Angela is handling the discomfort and inconvenience far better than I would. She’s amazing, she is. Of course, I’ve always said if I could be pregnant with our child, I totally would. Just the same as I will promise, here & now, to fight any dragon that attacks the U.S. That’s just the kind of man I am.

So, anyway, parenthood. I don’t have anything profound to say about it yet. So far, it’s a constant theme park Viking boat ride between overwhelming fear and immeasurable joy. I go into it totally unprepared and completely committed. I can’t even imagine what it will be like. I try, but what I imagine ends up being things I’ve seen in sitcoms. I only know one thing for sure: I’m grateful to have such a wonderful partner.

And, despite all the uncertainty, I’m sure looking forward to meeting that little guy.

A List Apart - The Survey 2008

2008-07-29T13:20:49Z

If They Had A Dime For Every Time Somebody Suggested...

2008-05-17T22:00:00Z

Man, Dan Farber is an entrepreneurial genius. While the folks over at Twitter have been racking their brains trying to come up with a way to make money, ol’ Dan has it figured out: charge for the service. Why not advertising? Well, because:

[Twitter users] won’t appreciate ads slipped into their Twitter stream.

This despite the fact that one of the most popular Twitter clients, Twitterrific, has an ad-supported version, and most users choose it. Or the fact that their already running ads on Twitter Japan, and I haven’t heard about a mass exodus by the Japanese people. But Twitter wouldn’t have to go down that path if we users weren’t so cheap:

Here’s a solution. How about paying for what you like to use. Much of what gets sent via Twitter is a form of self-advertising. If you like Twitter so much, how about paying $5 a month for the privilege.

At this point, I probably would be willing to pay for Twitter. It’s the one Web 2.0 service I find both entertaining and useful. The problem is, what happens when I pay for the service, but none of my friends do? Then it’s far less useful to me. In fact, this is the problem for all social sites: If they limit it to only paying customers, it becomes far less social, and far less interesting.

But, as Dan has pointed out, the problem is really us cheap users. In fact, we’re a plague on other medias as well:

…why aren’t people willing to pay for what they use? Public radio has the same problem, hence the tedious pledge drives.

There are so many problems with that last sentence, I don’t know where to begin. Pledge drives are how people pay for public radio. The fact that public radio exists and continues to do pledge drives means it is a working business model. How else does Dan think people should pay for a service that is broadcast free over the air? Perhaps he thinks NPR should have been set up as a subscriber-only satellite radio service from the beginning… in 1970… before there was satellite radio…

And of course we know users wouldn’t put up with ads on a radio station. That’s just crazy talk.

You have to admit, Twitter is in a pretty nice position — people so love their service, they keep suggesting ways the company can make money and stay in business. But the Twitter folks have said in the past (And if anybody remembers where, please post it in the comments. I can’t seem to find it now.) that they have plans for generating revenue, but they want to stabilize their platform before they ask users or advertisers for money. In fact, that’s exactly what they’ve done with Twitter Japan: It’s a smaller user base than the rest of Twitter, so they obviously consider it stable enough to run some advertising.

But thanks for the suggestion, Dan. Now I have an idea for CBS: Ask for your money back.

Messages About My Mediums

2008-05-16T03:26:00Z

For anyone looking to learn about Movable Type, I’ve started writing a series of articles about MT for Devlounge. My most recent was published a couple of days ago and covers how to use the Action Streams plugin, which I’ve talked a bit about before.

And while I’m mentioning that, I thought I’d also talk about the various ways I’m publishing these days. Like a lot of people, I don’t post to my blog as often as I used to. Over time, this has turned into a place for longer articles, and short “link posts” just aren’t what I want to do here. But I see things all the time that I want to share, so here’s how I’m divvying them up:

Really short, of-the-moment type stuff goes on Twitter.
Links that I’m saving for my own reference get saved at del.icio.us.
Links that I don’t necessarily need to save, but that I want to others to read — and thoughts that are longer than 140 characters — are shared via Google Reader.
And, as I said, longer blog posts go here, and MT tutorials go on Devlounge.

Of those, Google Reader’s shared items is the one I’ve really gotten into lately. Since they added notes and sharing anything, it makes a decent tumblelog. I’m hoping they continue to move it in that direction.

So that’s where I am with blogging. What about you — how do you publish these days, and how has it changed since you first started blogging?

The Problem With GroupTweet

2008-04-18T13:00:00Z

My first reaction to GroupTweet was: What’s the point? It seemed like an indirect way to send and recieve tweets with people I already communicate with on Twitter.

My second reaction to GroupTweet was: Ok, this could be useful for communicating with a subgroup of your friends. As people use Twitter, they tend to accumulate followers that are spread out geographically. If you’re wanting to make plans to go out on Saturday night, those tweets don’t necessarily need to go to people that live hundreds or thousands of miles away from you.

My third reaction to GroupTweet is to unfollow those I’ve followed, and not join any others. The problem with GroupTweet is it undermines one of the biggest strengths of Twitter: the ability to control the experience. When you follow someone else’s group, you allow that person to decide, at least partly, what you receive. The group owner chooses who to allow in the group, and when they let someone in, you start receiving their tweets to the group, whether you want them or not.

Just to be clear, I haven’t had an actual problem with GroupTweet yet, like getting spammed or anything. It was just seeing a tweet from someone I hadn’t followed that made me realized the idea has a fundamental flaw.

So I could see starting my own group, but I can’t see joining someone else’s without a clear set of rules on who will or won’t be allowed to join — much like the example GroupTweet gives on their home page. I don’t know that there’s a real solution to the problem without making the GroupTweet service significantly more complex. It may be that this is an idea with limited application until Twitter offers more fine-grained control of what you receive.

Microsoft's Change of Heart

2008-03-04T03:52:00Z

Microsoft announced today that IE8 will, in fact, act like IE8, a complete switch from their previous plan. Why the change of heart? Perhaps to get various governments off its back. From the IEBlog:

While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue.

So in the end it was government regulations, not community backlash, that got this idea nixed. Whatever the reason, I think Microsoft is making the right decision — one that will continue IE’s evolution into a standards-compliant browser.