tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog

Let Obama be Obama

2010-01-29T11:53:00.000-08:00

Reading Marc Ambinder's recap of President Obama's "question time" at a GOP event today, it reminded me of one of my favorite West Wing scenes:

I've refrained from discussing politics on this blog for a long time, which surprises many who followed me through the 2004 and 2006 election, and to a lesser extent the 2008 election. I haven't felt I had much to add to the debate, candidly.

I want an honest debate. I realize that's somewhat naive, given the money at stake. But I want an engaged President, one who's intellectually honest but also not afraid of his own convictions. It sounds like that's what we got today, and I believe that the country needs more of it.

I have not seen the video of his 90 minutes sitting down with the GOP, but a commenter on Marc's post points out that C-Span has it here. I'll post a YouTube embed once it's up.

Update:The White House has the video of the event up:

Google Sites - your online resume

2010-01-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, I put my CV online as a wiki. It started as a way to just catalog the speeches I'd given, articles I'd written, etc., if for no other reason to have it all in one place. As I noted at the time, one of the most popular pages on my blog was the "About Me" page (still is) - not surprisingly, people wonder who the hell you are when they land on your blog from a Google search, and they like being able to get a better sense of your background before deciding if they want to read your posts.

But putting that info online has had another benefit: upcoming conferences want my bio, or a headshot, or a sense of where else you've spoken to convince the conference committee that you really are the guy they want to invite. Now I just have to give them a URL. In at least one case, I got cold-called by someone who was looking for a presenter on a topic I'd spoken about before, which ended up being a very fun presentation (well outside my usual focus) and one that they appreciated. Turns out that putting relevant content on the web can be useful for people looking for that kind of thing. Who knew?!

But last year I'd grown tired of the wiki app I was using (PmWiki) and wanted the CV in something more robust. I decided to give Google Sites a whirl - other than a few internal pages at Google, I hadn't used it much and it seemed a good opportunity to try it out. The CV was previously at http://www.rklau.com/cv/; the version managed by Sites is now at http://cv.rklau.com/ (and the old URL just redirects to the new one).

Advantages of having this managed by Google Sites:

No software updating. I'm sure by last year was several versions behind. That's usually a bad idea - security vulnerabilities can lead to easy defacing of content, and your resume is the last place you want defaced content - but I just never made it a high enough priority to stay current. I was lucky - as near as I can tell, I never got hacked - but it was luck.
Better editing interface. The WYSIWYG interface on Sites makes it much easier to add content without having to remember whether this wiki uses three apostrophes for a larger font size or the plus sign, and whether URLs are [URL|title] or [[title|URL]] or some other variation.
CNAME support. Like Blogger, Sites supports hosting your content at a URL of your choosing. So I was able to set up http://cv.rklau.com/ and have the site immediately served from my domain.
One less password. I had a separate username and password (managed by PmWiki, not the most secure approach in the world) to prevent anyone other than me from modifying the content. That's fine, until I lose the password, and then get locked out of my own CV! Having Sites manage the content means it's managed by an account I use much more frequently (my Google account), and can rely on Sites' much more robust notion of permissions.

The only downside to this system is that it's too much information. Nobody really cares about that speech I gave in 1996, or the magazine article I wrote in 1999. On my todo list is an abbreviated version of this page that's just the highlights... I'll get around to that. With Sites, moving the data around is a snap.

Turning off Blogger FTP

2010-01-22T16:41:00.000-08:00

Just finished posting on Blogger Buzz about a fairly significant product decision: we're shutting down FTP publishing at Blogger.

For the vast majority of Blogger users (99.5% of them, to be exact), this is a non-issue. But for the .5% who continue to use FTP, this is going to be a non-trivial issue. Once it became obvious that we were doing this, we wanted to announce as soon as we knew what our path forward would be. As someone who started blogging on Blogger in 2001 using FTP, I personally recognize the significance of turning off one of Blogger's first features.

We will have a migration tool that will convert existing FTP users who want to migrate to Blogger's Custom Domain option (I host my blog on Blogger's servers, at my own domain: http://tins.rklau.com/), and expect that this will address the vast majority of cases users see. The tool's not ready yet, but we wanted to announce as soon as possible to give users the ability to start planning their migration or at least evaluate their options.

I know people will have questions, and we're hoping to address them as openly as possible - what this means for them, what their options are, etc. Hit me here, or leave a comment over on the dedicated blog we set up today.

Blogger Pages - finally!

2010-01-21T23:31:00.000-08:00

We've been hinting at these for a while, and we were this close to getting Pages out before the holidays... but at long last they're here. To say that most Blogger users wanted stand-alone pages on their blogs would be an understatement.

I created a couple pages tonight - in addition to the obvious About Me (a good idea for anyone stumbling on your blog from a search, helps them know a bit about you) and Contact Me (more on that in a minute), I created an "Ask me anything" page.

Inspired by my friend Annie, who just created a page at Tumblr which lets visitors submit a question that Annie or her husband Josh can answer. I went ahead and hacked together a variation of that idea, using Blogger's Pages and Google Docs forms. Docs Forms are one of my favorite Google features that nobody uses - here's what I did:

Step 1: Go to Google Docs, click "Create | Form":

Step 2: Create a simple form:

Step 3: Grab the form's embed code:

Step 4: Paste that into your blog post (make sure to click "Edit HTML" first):

End result? A simple version of Annie's "ask me anything" which is now part of my blog's navigation (thanks to the Pages gadget):

Special bonus tip: turn on Docs notification rules so you're notified whenever people fill out the form:

About that Contact Me page: in addition to listing my e-mail address, I threw a Google Voice call widget on the page, something I've been meaning to add to the blog forever. I love that I can not only record a custom greeting for calls from the widget ("Thanks for calling from my blog...") but that I can direct the calls to voicemail. While I genuinely look forward to hearing from my readers, I don't want to wear out my Nexus One too quickly. :)

Speaking of Voice, I've got a few invites left. Leave me a comment if you'd like one.

Thoughts on my Nexus One

2010-01-13T11:53:00.000-08:00

A number of people have asked about my Nexus One - did I like it, should they get one, any tips... figured it was a good time to jot down some thoughts. Big, honkin' disclosure: I received this phone for free, and I work for Google.

Bit of background: as is now well known, Google gave all employees a Nexus One ahead of the holidays. The phone's existence was confidential at the time, so we were asked to not blog or tweet about it. Officially, the phone was announced on January 5, and has been available for sale through the Google website from that day forward.

The phone runs Android 2.1, the latest version of the Android OS (there may be a few of you who don't know - Android is Google's mobile operating system). This is an update to the Android OS which other phones will get soon, but is currently running only on the Nexus One. The phone I'd been using for the past six months was an iPhone 3GS, and my first reaction to the Nexus One was: holy crap this thing is fast. I took my SIM out of my iPhone the day I got the Nexus One, and haven't taken it out since. (That means I only get to use AT&T's EDGE network, not the speedier 3G network... to get 3G data speeds, I will need to switch to T-Mobile, which I will be doing soon.)

I use two Gmail accounts: one for corporate mail, one for personal mail. The Gmail app on the Nexus One supports multiple Gmail accounts out of the box, so I get a superior mail experience right away: on the iPhone, I used the browser interface for both accounts: the iPhone mail app doesn't support Gmail's "conversation card" view (grouping threads together), Gmail's archive feature, or Gmail's search across the entire account - all things I rely on in Gmail. From an e-mail perspective, the Nexus One fits my use far better.

Next up: Google Voice. Conveniently enough, around the same time Google acquired FeedBurner, we also acquired Google Voice. As a result, the only phone number I've given out - in e-mail signatures, on business cards - is my Google Voice number. There is no Google Voice app for the iPhone, so my GV experience on the iPhone was never very good: calls to my Google Voice number worked just fine, but calls from the iPhone always showed my AT&T phone number. On the Nexus One, all it took was logging into Google Voice - a couple steps later, my phone new to route all incoming and outgoing calls through Google Voice, so that the only number anyone ever sees from my phone is my GV number.

The phone's four dedicated buttons took a bit of getting used to, but after a month of use I'm squarely in the camp who find them to be an excellent step up for phone navigation. Hold down the Home button and you get a menu of the most recently used apps - making navigation between apps a breeze. Think of it like alt+tab for your mobile phone, something that exists on the Blackberry but not on the iPhone (which doesn't allow multiple apps to run at once. Even better, with Android supporting apps running in the background, you're taken to where you left off in the app when you select it. The universal "back" button - which goes back to whatever you were doing previously, whether that was a prior webpage, or a different app - is awesome (once you get used to it).

Contact sync is phenomenal: you can sync as many contact sources as you want (I'm syncing three contact sources: corporate Gmail, personal Gmail, and Facebook); the phone then does an on-device "merge" to display a de-duped view of the contact. (It's not a true merge - Facebook data is read-only, so Android can't modify that info.) And anywhere on the phone you see a contact's name, you get the ability to pull up a short-cut menu that lets you dial, IM, SMS, or e-mail them - pretty slick. Changes you make to your Gmail contacts are immediately synced back to the cloud, no need to plug the phone into your computer.

Much has been made of the menu button (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Android's use of the long press). I love the menu button - I've seen others refer to it as the "right click" of the mobile OS, and that strikes me as a pretty apt analogy. I like getting under the hood - and Android makes both the OS as well as its apps incredibly useful to people who like to tinker. The downside for some - not me but I understand the complaint - is that it hides sometimes critical app settings/options, making it harder to discover and potentially a barrier to use. The long press is trickier: there's really no way to know what's going to react to a long press, but it's often an invaluable extension of the app. Once you know that a long press is possible, it often simplifies actions (adding bookmarks, quick-dialing numbers, editing info, etc.) that might otherwise take a few clicks.

Google Maps, especially the turn-by-turn navigation that first launched on the Droid is a dramatic upgrade. More layers (terrain, streetview, Latitude are just a few I use daily) make the maps much more interactive on the Nexus One, and the navigation - the phone speaks each turn to you, and as you near arrival, you see the streetview image of your destination - is just perfectly executed.

One last comment before talking about the third party apps: speech recognition. I had the phone for weeks before I realized how compelling this feature was: anywhere you can enter text, you can speak to the phone. The voice recognition takes your words, uploads them to the cloud where Google servers translate that to text, then send it back down to the device. It's not perfect, but the other day in the car I was able to dictate messages in an IM conversation and the person on the other end had no idea I wasn't actually typing. It's incredible the first time you use it - and it's available in any app (I've also spoken to the Seesmic app, which then posted the tweet as text to Twitter, and to the Gmail app in responding to e-mails). And the voice quality? Thanks to the phone's processor and a second, noise cancelling mic on the back of the phone, the voice quality on phone calls is superb.

Now to the apps: while there's a big gap in numbers between the iPhone App Store (well over 100,000 apps) and the Android Market (somewhere around 20,000 apps), there's a substantially smaller gap in terms of popular apps. Almost all of the apps I most loved on my iPhone - Fandango, OpenTable, TripIt, FourSquare, Facebook - have counterparts on Android. Only two that I used daily on the iPhone - the Kindle and Sonos apps - remain unavailable on Android. (I never played many games on my iPhone, but it should be noted that one category where the iPhone retains a significant lead is in games.)

Here's a list of apps currently on my Nexus One with a quick explanation of what each does:

Aldiko: outstanding e-book reader (better than Kindle on the iPhone in terms of feature set; obviously the book store is not quite as good, but the integration with free eBook download sites is a plus). Currently reading Makers by Cory Doctorow.
Amazon: search the full Amazon catalog (can use barcodes or photos in addition to typing or speaking your query), track orders in my account.
APNDroid: useful if you want to disable your phone's cellular data connection (useful if you're often on WiFi and want to turn off your EDGE or 3G data connection)
AppReferer: builds a QR code (a 2D barcode) that makes recommending an app to another Android user in person a one-click affair.
Battery Graph: shows a nice chart (exportable, even) of battery usage, which is helpful if you're trying to isolate when the battery started to drain.
Coin Flip: silly app that lets me flip a coin. Use it mostly to settle disputes between the kids. :)
Congress: built by Sunlight Labs, a phenomenal "pocket Congressional directory" that includes contact info, committee memberships, news, and YouTube vids of every Senator and Representative.
DroidLive Lite: Streaming radio (via Shoutcast) from 1300 radio stations around the world.
Facebook: news feed, photos and profile info for friends
Fandango: Order movie tickets from movie theaters so I can bypass lines at the ticket counter.
Finance: Google Finance app
Flashlight: turns screen bright white to use in dark rooms
Foursquare: app for playing Foursquare, also has a nice widget for my home screen
Gmote: turns my Nexus One into a touchpad remote (when paired with a computer running the Gmote server software). Handy for giving presentations, or just doing something nerdy and cool.
Google Goggles: search Google by taking pictures.
Google Sky Map: the one app that consistently blows people away. Load it up, turn your camera toward the night sky and you'll get a real-time view of which stars, constellations and planets are above you. An awesome accompaniment to a telescope.
Jewels: Bejeweled-like game.
Layar: Augmented reality app that displays info on screen in realtime through your phone's camera.
Locale: very sophisticated app for scripting events to happen based on certain triggers. (When I'm at home, disable the data connection and connect to my home wifi access point. At 11pm, turn off the sound and put the phone to sleep; at 6am turn the sound back up; when I'm at work, put the phone in vibrate mode; etc.)
Metal detector: actually works.
Movies (aka Flixster): Lots of info/trailers/reviews about new and upcoming movies, also integrates with Netflix for DVDs
My Tracks: built by some Googlers, great app for keeping track of runs/bikes/ski runs you've done; captures altitude, distance, etc., then uploads to Google Maps My Maps.
OpenTable: make restaurant reservations from the phone.
Owner: adds my contact info to the unlock screen ("If found, please contact Rick Klau...")
Pandora: streaming music channels.
PapiJump: great little game using the phone's accelerometer.
Pintail: monitors your phone's SMS messages for a message that says "locate" (plus a PIN); once received, activates the GPS and replies with the phone's location. Helpful if you've got a lost phone.
Robo Defense: addicitve game.
Scoreboard: Tracks scores of your favorite teams, with realtime updates and notifications as score changes.
Seesmic: Great Twitter app.
Shop Savvy: grab a barcode, find out who sells it and for how much.
TiVo Remote: works with any TiVo HD unit over WiFi.
TripIt: phenomenal itinerary manager for all travel info.
Voice Recorder: does exactly what it says it does.
Yelp: Local reviews.

Cons:

The battery life lasts the day, but barely. I had a few problems with the battery not lasting the full day, and through a combination of Battery Graph (mentioned above), Android's built-in Battery Use (under Settings | About this phone | Battery use - it shows which services used the battery, along with more data about the specific power consumption) and input from fellow Googlers, I was able to pretty dramatically improve things. Keys were ensuring that sync was working properly (a Facebook sync error was causing perpetual sync attempts, which was wasting battery life) and keeping the WiFi radio on (which prevents the phone from constantly defaulting to the more resource-intensive cellular radio for data).
The UI: while I generally love the UI, there are cases where apps are designed inconsistently. What one developer puts under menu | settings, another puts on a button on the app's home screen. (And another makes available only via a long press on a different screen.)
Screen: the screen is gorgeous (really: it's kind of amazing), so long as you're not in direct sunlight. I'm not outdoors all day long, so this doesn't significantly impact me... but it's an issue for some, I'm sure.

Bottom line: love this phone. What am I leaving out? What else do you want to know about it?

Home networking - advice sought

2010-01-05T14:56:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me over the winter break that I have cobbled together a rather ridiculous mess. I have a total of 14 devices connected (mostly via ethernet, some via wifi) to our home network, and I'm betting that the use of hand-me-down equipment is creating packet bottlenecks that I could easily eliminate. I just don't know how to diagnose the bottlenecks (if they exist) and how to benchmark whether the current setup is sub-par.

Here's the current state of affairs:

Room 1: I have a Netgear 4 port switch (I believe it's model FS105), into which my Sonos 90, PS3 and TiVo Series 3 are all plugged in. The Netgear is plugged into the CAT5 jack in the wall, using the existing home wiring to connect to my D-Link (DIR-625) router in the upstairs bedroom closet.
Room 2: A Sonos 120 is wirelessly connected to the D-Link upstairs.
Room 3: an Epson printer and two Windows desktop PCs are plugged into an older Linksys wireless router (where I've disabled the wireless antenna and am using it solely for the ethernet hub capability). A TiVo (series 2) is connected via 802.11g to the D-Link in the bedroom. The Wii is also connected via wifi to the D-Link in the bedroom.
Room 4: TiVo HD is connected via ethernet into the wall jack, which is connected to the D-Link router in the bedroom closet. In the closet, the other Sonos 120 is connected via Ethernet to the D-Link router. The D-Link is connected to the Comcast cable modem.
Both my wife's laptop and mine connect primarily via wifi to the network (she's on WinXP, I'm on a MacBook Pro).

I'm using WPA to secure the wireless. One of the wired connections actually terminates in the Sonos in the bedroom closet, don't recall which. (The Sonos has an additional ethernet ports to serve as a hub, specs on their site say "2-port switch (10/100Mbps, auto MDI/MDIX) allows Ethernet devices to connect through SonosNet".)

So... how badly am I slowing things down? What's the best resource for doing this right?

FreedomTM - last chance to pre-order!

2010-01-05T10:16:00.000-08:00

I'm long overdue in getting a review of FreedomTM online. Dan sent me a review copy last month, and I read it cover-to-cover. To answer the most critical question: yes, it was worth the wait. If you liked Daemon (and who didn't?!) then you'll absolutely enjoy FreedomTM.

I'll spare you the spoilers - there are some good twists, including a big one I didn't see coming - and will leave a discussion of the primary plot developments for another post. I'm more interested in talking about some of the themes Dan Suarez presents in FreedomTM that have stuck with me since reading it.

Dan looks at the growing homogeneity of the world we live in - our government, our network, our culture - and sees opportunities for a single point of failure that renders those very systems vulnerable to attack and exploitation.

In FreedomTM, a "darknet" develops - which facilitates locally-organized, resilient groups that are able to leverage the Daemon's layers of information in addition to their sustainably built communities (farms, businesses, even small militias to defend themselves). These groups lessen their dependence on the government for protection, for food, for commerce... to the extent that the "darknet" becomes more important for the day-to-day commercial interactions (through "network credits", reputation monitoring of individual participants) and even social interactions (whuffie-like reputations, landmarks which are only visible to darknet members, etc.).

John Robb has written extensively about resilient communities (most recently here, and also about darknets here), and anyone who's read any of John's writings will find his thoughts incorporated in a number of places in FreedomTM. On a semi-related front, just yesterday, I read Brad Feld's review of another book, The Lights in the Tunnel, and it's about the potentially radical impact that automation will have on society (50% unemployment?). While The Lights in the Tunnel is non-fiction, it sounds like it's interpreting many of the same themes that informed Suarez's thinking in FreedomTM and Robb's writings on resilient communities - and the conclusions one comes to are unsettling (to say the least). This is what sets FreedomTM apart from many other technothrillers: Dan's got a point to make, and he uses his fiction to show us a possible outcome of the path we're on. You'll find yourself thinking about these issues long after you finish FreedomTM, which I consider the height of praise for the work.

None of this is to suggest that FreedomTM is a dry or academic read. It's most certainly not. The action is fast and furious, the tech is pitch-perfect (as it was in Daemon), and not nearly as futuristic as you might hope. (See TheDaemon.com, esp. the "technology feed" on the right, for more evidence of fantastic-seeming tech from Daemon and FreedomTM that are actually being used today.) As Publishers Weekly noted, "The two books combined form the cyberthriller against which all others will be measured." I particularly liked where FreedomTM ended, with more optimism for our future than you might have suspected Dan had after reading Daemon. :)

If you haven't read Daemon, the paperback was just released last week, and FreedomTM is out in hardback on Thursday.

If I have any quibbles, it's that there's more to the story than what's in the book. I don't doubt that this is the book Dan wanted to write (he said so, and I believe him!) but there are details that I'd love to know more about. Ultimately, the main character of this story is the Daemon: it occupies almost every page. The people - Ross, Sebeck, Phillips, Loki - are supporting characters, and often drop from the narrative as we pick up where others left off. I wouldn't have minded more of their individual narratives, but that's a minor nit.

A few other reviews of FreedomTM that should help you make your mind up:

Full disclosure: I got to know Dan Suarez in 2007, and am fortunate to consider Dan a good friend. (More on our background here.) He's sent me several copies of both Daemon and FreedomTM, which I've shared with friends and colleagues.

Google Chrome Extensions: Blog This! (by Google)

2009-12-09T16:10:00.000-08:00

Posted via the Chrome extension Blog This:

Google Chrome Extensions: Blog This! (by Google): "Add a BlogThis! button to the browser toolbar, which lets you post to your Blogger blog from any webpage with just one click."

Sweet. Nice job, Jungshik!

Matt Stafford wired

2009-12-01T09:48:00.000-08:00

If you've got 6 minutes, watch this video. NFL films routinely wires up players for audio - typically to include snippets of hits or sideline banter in end-of-season highlight reels.

But what happened during the Lions/Browns game two weekends ago was remarkable - and listening to the audio from rookie QB Matt Stafford as he commands a comeback (starting down 21 points) is phenomenal.

Then he gets flattened, as time expires. And, well... just watch it. Really incredible.

Defending bloggers' free speech

2009-12-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, CNN.com published an opinion piece I wrote. It's a topic that's not new to my readers - I've been writing about the striking similarities between pamphlets and social media for years (2003, 2009) and more recently read up on George Orwell's focus on pamphlets as a necessary component of communication for individuals to have the ability to freely express themselves.

I mentioned the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in my op-ed, and I realized yesterday that next Thursday (December 10) will be the 61st anniversary of the United Nations adopting and proclaiming the declaration. December 10 is known as Human Rights Day - if you have any suggestions for the best way to observe Human Rights Day, leave them in the comments.

Parental controls on multiple computers

2009-11-27T23:30:00.000-08:00

Didn't see this one coming: earlier today, Robby (my 7 year-old son) mentioned in passing: "Ricky [my 9 year-old son] knows the password on the computer upstairs." I didn't immediately grasp what he meant - after all, I'd set each boy up with their own account with a password and customized their desktop so they could get access to their e-mail, Club Penguin, etc. The two computers - one XP, one Vista - each had parental controls enabled, with an explicit whitelist indicating which sites they could visit.

Then it hit me: he knew the parental controls password.

Whoa.

Sure enough, one thing (on a fairly short list) Vista's parental controls does well is it provides a report of sites that each account has accessed. Since the account can only get access to sites which have been explicitly whitelisted, this list shouldn't be that interesting. Unless there are new sites on the whitelist! Sure enough, Vista shows you which sites were unblocked in the last week. Gotta give the kid credit: he's discovered a couple adventure games online (no clue where/how - that's a discussion for another day) and logged in as me to whitelist the site so he could continue to play.

Once he had the power to whitelist sites, he had the power to remove the time restrictions on his account. Turns out almost the entire time we were cooking on Thanksgiving day, he was battling ogres and advancing to a level 17 knight with an upgraded sword and a shield with magic powers. (Do I sound proud? I shouldn't, right?)

As I started poking around looking for a better solution, I had a hard time finding something that would work. Here's my wish list:

individual accounts for each child
time-based restrictions, both for time of day and cumulative time logged in
content filtering (i.e., no adult sites) as well as a whitelist/blacklist to enable or disable specific sites
centralized account config, ideally web-based (this allows Robin or I to administer from our own computers, instead of needing to log into theirs - and avoids having to set up duplicate controls on each computer for each user)
traffic logs

Before this sounds like I'm trying to delegate responsibility for managing my kids' online experience: I'm not. I actually want them to explore, and learn to use the machines beyond pointing and clicking on things. (Looked at that way, the whole 'figure out Dad's password and then reverse-engineer the parental controls mechanism so I can get what I want' thing looks like a big success. +1 for me, I guess.)

But Robin and I aren't always looking over their shoulders - whether we're cooking Thanksgiving dinner, or putting their sister to bed, or, yes, hanging out by ourselves - there are times when they're on their computer by themselves and I want them to be safe. The setup we had - XP & Vista's default controls - just didn't cut it. Things weren't centrally managed, there was no ability to restrict the total time on the computer (i.e., 'no more than 2 hours on the computer per day'), and the ability to override settings using the admin account password (which I've since changed, thank you very much!) all made for a less-than-ideal setup.

I asked on Twitter, and got a couple replies but nothing that seemed tailored to what I wanted. I asked on Facebook: nothing. And a couple hours of looking online produced surprisingly little: most solutions were either single-computer solutions or, in a few cases, were hardware based. Then I stumbled on a post on flyertalk.com, of all places, looking to do exactly what I was looking to do. And the recommendation was to a service I hadn't yet found in my online research: Safe Eyes. The key for me? You can install it on up to 3 computers for no additional cost.

I've now installed it on both computers the boys use, and Robin's PC as an administrator. The accounts for the boys are managed by Safe Eyes - so when they log into their accounts on either the XP or Vista machines, the Safe Eyes app logs them in (their Safe Eyes account credentials can be saved, so that they're logged in automatically); if they're logged in during a time when they're not allowed to be online, they get a dialog box telling them that.

Controls are well done: it took about 20 minutes to configure what types of sites are OK (see below), which specific URLs are OK, whether they can IM, etc. The time limits are both time-of-day as well as elapsed-time, and various other controls let you ID specific programs you allow/disallow. A browser toolbar sits on Robin's computer (IE only, unfortunately - doesn't work for Chrome) that lets her add a site to the whitelist with one click - a nice feature if the kids hear about a new site they want to add to their list of visited sites.

(Admin screen showing summary of each account)

(Whitelist setup is centrally managed across accounts)

I had both boys read and sign the "Internet Game Plan" - a good, common-sense list of things that both boys should be aware of as they spend more time online. As tech-savvy as Robin and I both are, it was good to go back over the basics as much for our benefit to make sure that the boys felt comfortable with these guidelines.

Mostly, Safe Eyes is a nice technical solution to a problem that's only partly technical: as I explained to Ricky, by stealing our password he violated our trust. Had he asked us for permission to play that game, we could have looked at it together - but he didn't, and got caught. So we've dialed back his access - and he will earn it back. Safe Eyes will make it easier for us to manage that process, and give him more confidence that his effort will be rewarded.

Couple of things the geek in me would like to see: IM notifications that a kid's time has expired (perhaps asking for an OK to extend the time?), a simple way to see how much time remaining in a day each child has. It's also important to note that Safe Eyes is primarily focused on Internet usage, so if your interest is more towards limiting specific apps, this may not be the right fit for you. (Almost 100% of what we do on a computer is in the browser - e-mail, IM, games, etc. - so this works just fine for us.) Safe Eyes does support "program blocking" - but as near as I can tell, it's for programs that access the Internet, not any app on your computer.

In the end, Safe Eyes is pretty close to my ideal solution. I didn't need to buy new hardware, it's not hard to install, it allows me to manage everything on the web, and it will grow as we let the kids do more online without sacrificing their safety. If I wanted to install it on my Mac to simplify admin even further, though, I'd have to upgrade my license: by default, Safe Eyes allows you to install on up to 3 computers - don't get me wrong, I love their approach... but we have 4 computers. :) They also support up to 10 users across those 3 computers, which seems more than enough for any family.

(Disclaimer: I signed up for Safe Eyes' affiliate program after buying my own subscription. I'm really impressed with the service so far. If you decide to sign up after clicking on that link, Safe Eyes will pay me a few bucks as a referral fee. I've done this for similar services in the past - SitterCity, Click 'n Kids - not for the compensation, just because they're great services. What little money I tend to make simply goes to off-setting the cost of using the services themselves.)

U.S. Caselaw in Google Scholar

2009-11-17T11:03:00.000-08:00

Last night, an important new feature launched on Google Scholar: more than 80 years of US federal caselaw (including tax and bankruptcy courts) and over 50 years of state caselaw is now fully searchable online, for free at Google Scholar.

This project is the culmination of much work, led by a remarkable engineer at Google named Anurag Acharya. Shortly after I arrived at Google, I heard about a small group of people working to make legal information available through Google. Given my background, I was particularly interested to see if there was a role for me - and thanks to Google's culture of encouraging employees finding 20% projects to contribute to, I was able to not only find a role but to dive in.

It's been a thrill to be part of this project, but most importantly it's exhilarating to know that for the first time, US citizens have the ability to search for - and read - the opinions that govern our society. Matt DeVries, a law school roommate, has a great overview of what this means for him as a lawyer here. Tim Stanley, a pioneer in this space who I first met when he built a search engine to index the articles published in the law journal I founded, said simply, "Thanks, Google!" and then did a good job evaluating what Scholar does (and doesn't) do with the opinions. Rex Gradeless, a law student, pointed out that while this may be of interest for lawyers and law students, the real winner here is citizens who've historically not had comprehensive access to this information at all.

It probably goes without saying, but in case it's not abundantly clear: working at a company that embraces projects like this is incredible. This was a labor of love for a number of co-workers (past and present), all of whom instinctively grasped why this is important and how connected it is to Google's mission. I'm very proud to work at Google today.

Daemon Sequel Freedom(tm) available for pre-order

2009-11-10T16:39:00.000-08:00

Could not be more excited about this news: Freedom(tm), Daniel Suarez's sequel to Daemon is now available for pre-order at Amazon. Let the count-down begin: the book is available in just over 8 weeks!

In case anyone doesn't remember me raving about Daemon, here's my original review, and January's follow-up post discussing the soon-to-be re-released Daemon in hard-back.

Paramount has Daemon in pre-production, where the screen-writer who wrote WarGames is co-writing the screenplay.

University of Richmond Law School

2009-11-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Though I don't practice law, I'm a proud graduate of the University of Richmond Law School - it was an extraordinary three years of my life. It was there that I really learned how to think critically, learned how to argue (much to my wife's chagrin), and learned how to be an entrepreneur.

Yeah, you read that right.

Law school is hardly where one thinks about being (let alone becoming) an entrepreneur. Yet along with a group of fellow students, I founded a law journal that was the first in the world to publish online - with the Dean's active support and the encouragement of faculty. Publishing a scholarly law journal exclusively on the Internet was unheard of at the time, and represented a gamble for the law school. We (the students) received academic credit for our time - something up until that point only afforded to Law Review and Moot Court participants. The school's brand was closely tied to JOLT's, and it wasn't clear in the early days that this was a venture likely to succeed.

But succeed it has - JOLT now counts more than 400 students as alumni, has contributed to the scholarship in the technology law space, and is very much an accepted outlet for scholars to seek out when looking to publish their work. And some of my best memories of my time at Richmond were those focused on the actual creation of the Journal - working with the administration, recruiting students to join our crazy idea, convincing professors around the country that we really would pull it off and they should submit their articles to us, evangelizing to the press and academia once we'd launched to generate buzz about the Journal. All of those skills I use today - because this was in a very real sense my first entrepreneurial endeavor.

It had never occurred to me before writing this post - but the biggest gift Richmond gave me was the environment in which it was possible to be an entrepreneur. Too often you hear about entrepreneurs who fail, and fail again, and fail a third time before they find the recipe for success. But Richmond created an environment in which it was quite possible to succeed - and that became an invaluable launching point for my career.

I write all of this because the Law School has produced a 10 minute video detailing the school, the surrounding community, and what the students mean to the Law School. It's a great video, and if you're thinking about going to law school, I think it's a terrific introduction to a school that should be on your short list.

(Full disclosure: if you hang on long enough, you'll see my mug for about 2 seconds.)

Twitter list word cloud

2009-11-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

I've been enjoying Twitter Lists in the last week... for those that don't know, Lists gives others the ability to "curate" Twitter IDs into groups. You can see which lists I've been added to by clicking here. It struck me that this is the first time I've had such a view into how others categorize me.

I took the words others used to describe me, and then went to Wordle to generate a word cloud based on those words. (I'll bet someone builds a service to generate these word clouds automatically within a week.)

Gets it about right, actually.

What Would Augsburg Do?

2009-11-05T05:47:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago I attended the fall board meeting for Augsburg Fortress. Augsburg is a publisher affiliated with the ELCA, which is the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States. My connection to Augsburg is a result of a speech I gave to a group of leaders in the ELCA several years ago, and has been a remarkable experience for the last two years.

It’s remarkable for several reasons: it’s my first experience sitting on a board, so that alone makes it a worthwhile effort. But what makes it so rewarding – and so challenging – is the difficulty of being part of a traditional publisher in 2009.

Add to that that my day job – working at a company often blamed for many of the publishing industry’s difficulties – and it has made for quite the learning process.

Last spring, Augsburg’s CEO Beth Lewis asked if I’d consider leading a discussion at our board meeting focused on Jeff Jarvis’s book, What Would Google Do? We ended up delaying the talk, in part because we’d have a new class of board members joining us in the fall and it felt like a better way to kick things off with the “new” board.

On Friday, I tweeted that I’d be leading the discussion, and almost immediately Jeff tweeted right back that he’d love to eavesdrop. A few e-mails later, Jeff and I had it settled: I’d surprise the board by starting off our session by hearing from none other than the author himself – and thanks to Skype video chat, we had him projected full screen and plugged into the A/V so he could speak to us. (Miraculously, the mic on my MacBook Pro even picked up comments from people 30 feet away, making it a completely easy dialogue from 1,000 miles away.)

Jeff had some great ideas to frame the discussion: ask what business you’re really in was the key, of course. But as a brother to a Presbyterian minister, he also had a rather good insight into the challenges faced by leaders in the church: how to admit mistakes, how to foster communities in the midst of declining church membership – he spoke to these challenges as someone more than passingly familiar with the dual challenges Augsburg faces.

Beth asked what is probably the most critical question of Jeff: how do we avoid the “cash cow in the coal mine” – the part(s) of our business that generate revenues today but are neither core to the business nor likely to be a part of Augsburg’s future.

Jeff was blunt: “pretend you needed to get rid of your print business tomorrow. Just turn it off. And imagine that there’s a kid or group of kids in a dorm room today, thinking about how to re-engage people of faith. What are they working on? What are they going to do that will threaten you?”

I wanted to be respectful of Jeff’s time – he was terribly gracious to give up a part of his Saturday morning to chat with us – and we said thanks and then dove in. While I will not go into the confidential aspects of our board discussion, I did warn the board that I’d be blogging the meeting, with the goal of inviting a broader discussion – from Lutherans, from techies, from publishing vets – to figure out if there isn’t a way to be public about the challenges facing us, and hopefully identify some creative paths forward.

Our first step was to throw out the key words that the board felt mattered most from Jeff’s book. More than a dozen words went up... several of the core themes of the book, many of which were obviously applicable to our challenge: trust, transparency, platform, links, beta, imperfect, abundance.

But I pointed out that a biggie – perhaps the biggest – was missing: free. This isn’t easy for an established business to confront: how can we just give stuff away? We talked through the mechanics of free: it’s not what you give away, but how giving things away can expand the market for your other products (and/or create entirely new ones). I recommended Free to the group (one of the many reasons I love our CEO: she had a copy on her Kindle within a minute of my recommendation), and threw out a couple examples from Chris Anderson’s book to talk about how Free can be, as Jeff pointed out in WWGD, a business model.

We also talked about data: what data could we collect – not personally identifiable data, but data about congregations, about product adoption, about customer life cycles (do families whose children attend Sunday School have adults who go to adult bible study more often? Do families who attend adult bible study volunteer more at church, donate more money to the church, or recruit friends to join?) – and how could that data be valuable to others?

What’s exciting to me is that Augsburg is already a company asking “what if?” and acting on it. The best example of this is sparkhouse, a completely new effort funded by Augsburg as an entrepreneurial startup intended to completely reimagine faith-based publishing. And that’s not the only one: Augsburg has built up a number of social networks – see Creative Worship Tour as an example of how Augsburg is connecting like-minded individuals around the world to facilitate interactions and foster community around new ways of managing weekly worship.

While these are great steps, they are by no means guarantees of success. Jeff talks a lot about the news industry: declining circulation, uncertain revenue future, competition from new players who didn’t even exist three years ago. But he could just as easily be talking about the church: membership is down, the average age of congregations is going up, and people are less and less focused on denominations at all when it comes to their faith. Add to that the well-known challenges of being a book publisher today and it’s clear that Augsburg has its work cut out for it.

Which is why I wanted to have this discussion out in the open. In WWGD, Jeff talks repeatedly about “publicness” – and he spoke movingly of a comment left on his blog over that weekend about a widow who lost her husband to prostate cancer. (Jeff has been documenting his own battle with prostate cancer – and his successful surgery and ongoing recovery – for months.)

Someone (or someones) out there will have ideas that we need to be thinking about. If you’re that kid in her dorm room thinking about reinventing publishing and community for people of faith, I want to hear from you. What would an Augsburg platform look like? (I got to define API to the board during our meeting – I doubt there are too many other publishing boards talking about APIs!) Which questions aren’t we answering? Which aren’t we asking?

My fellow board members are going to be hanging out here; I’m hoping that we can foster an ongoing discussion about our future here. Thanks again to Jeff – for writing a thought-provoking book, for giving of his time this morning – and thanks to all of you, whose input and guidance I cannot wait to read.

BlogWorld Expo recap

2009-10-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

I was in Las Vegas last week to attend BlogWorld Expo, and had a terrific time. Events like these are as much about the conversations in the hallways (and, if you're a speaker, the speaker ready room), and this year's BWE was no exception.

My presentation on Friday was about where blogs fit in at a time that everyone's attention seems to be on Twitter; I shared some stats about Blogger that many in the audience hadn't heard before. Louis Gray did a terrific job summarizing my presentation (makes me feel bad, all I did during his was heckle him), and I was quite interested in the Q&A. (Wayne Sutton broadcast my presentation on UStream, and the archived video is on his site here if you're interested.)

I covered some of the same ground in an interview I did with Abby Prince from WebProNews:

More WebProNews Videos

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi, hopefully next time I won't have a wedding to go to and I can stay for the entire show!

My favorite Google Apps

2009-09-29T08:30:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Louis Gray's post about his favorite Google apps (who was inspired by none other than Google CEO Eric Schmidt), I thought I'd capture some of my favorite Google apps - especially those which are lesser-known. (To the many friends who I'll no doubt annoy by not including their products: note that I said some of my favorites. And I'm omitting a couple obvious ones: I live in Gmail, Reader, and Calendar... those deserve their own posts about how I rely on them seemingly every hour of the day. Not today.)

Last week, I was invited to give a presentation to a group of execs from the World Presidents Organization (it's real - I checked!), and the topic was pretty broad: "What are some of the things that wow you at Google?" As I read Louis's blog post, I realized that this presentation was more or less my follow-up to his post. With that, here's what I presented:

Blogger. Yes, I'm biased. But as I near a year of working with this team, it's hard not to love being part of a product that enables millions of people every month to tell their stories - and to have those stories reach nearly one in four people on the Internet every month! Specifically, I love that as soon as I click "publish post" the post is live on the web. No rebuilding, file transfers, or other delays: it's there. (And thanks to Pubsubhubbub, the post shows up instantly on Friendfeed, in my FeedBurner feed, and will soon show up instantly in other places. Hint, hint.) I love having complete control over the look and feel of the blog. And let's just say there are a few things coming in the next couple months that will make lots of Blogger users happy.
Picasa Facial Recognition. When this first launched in Picasa Web Albums, it was almost like a game: my wife and I sat on the couch, seeing pictures of our kids we hadn't seen in years. Now that it's available in the client app, it's been phenomenal to watch it collect and organize the thousands of pictures I've taken over the years. Nobody in the room at my presentation had seen it, and it was the first "magic" moment of the presentation.
Google Voice. There are several cool things here, but the transcription of voicemails is definitely the killer feature. I almost never listen to voicemails anymore (though when GV gets the transcription wrong, it gets it really wrong.)
Google Docs, especially surveys that populate Google Spreadsheets. Another product the audience hadn't even heard of, I showed them how I created a form to survey the parents for an end-of-year gift from the PTA last year. The form took just twenty minutes to build, we then e-mailed it out to all the parents, and within a day we had all the data we needed to make the decision. (For more on creating forms, check out this great post from yesterday at Digital Inspiration.)
Google Scholar. Everyone's done the normal Google ego search. But for anyone who's writen for a scholarly journal, few know that those journals are searchable at Google Scholar. (Here's mine.) One of the execs in the room had written several articles for labor law journals, he'd even forgotten about one we found when searching!
Google Mobile Voice Search. Several had iPhones in the room, and most of the rest had Blackberries. But none had the Google Mobile app, which lets you speak your query and get back location-aware results (say "pizza" and you'll get the nearest pizza joints).
My Tracks for Android. You want to know how overwhelming it is to work at Google? One of my fellow PMs also happens to have been teammates with Lance Armstrong. (Small world, actually - I have seen Lance Armstrong on TV!) So it is that PM Dylan Casey rounded up some engineers and built My Tracks, an insanely cool app for Android phones. (Side note: many in the room kept asking how to get this on their iPhone. Explaining that Android was our OS, and that it was different than the iPhone OS, made no sense whatsoever to them.)
Fast Flip. I really like this effort, currently in Labs. I keep coming back to it, intrigued by the UI - and folks in the room (most of whom were older) immediately caught on to the idea that this is very similar to how they read their print periodicals. I see this getting more traction as other products look at how to incorporate this idea into their own interface.

What about you? Which Google Apps can't you live without?

Free books on your iPhone

2009-09-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

In last week's post about the books I've been reading on my iPhone, I neglected to point out that there are a ton of free books you can "buy" from Amazon. The Kindle app is a free app in the App Store, so go ahead and put it on your phone if you haven't already.

Now go visit this page (better, if you use iGoogle, My Yahoo, Google Reader or another feed reader, subscribe to the feed). This is the current best sellers page for the Kindle, and not surprisingly, books that are free tend to sell pretty well. When you see one that intrigues you, click to buy and it'll be on your iPhone in minutes.

I've got a backlog of at least a dozen books I've picked up over the last 6 months that all look pretty good, and several have been downright outstanding. It's a great marketing tactic for authors - particularly those who have several books available but who want to reach a new audience. And if you're on a tight budget you can't beat the price!

Update: And if you don't have an iPhone/iPod Touch, or you'd really rather have the actual Kindle, the original Kindle (refurbished) is now $149 from Amazon.

Presenting to the WPO at Google

2009-09-24T11:16:00.001-07:00

I'm presenting at Google to a group of execs from the World Presidents Organization. Say hi!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Rodrigo y Gabriela at the Fox

2009-09-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

Robin surprised me with tickets to see Rodrigo y Gabriela last night. They were playing at the Fox in Oakland, which is a stunningly beautiful venue.

I found RyG based on a recommendation on Marc Andreessen's blog a couple years ago. (Marc - what's up with the lack of archives? Where'd all the good stuff go?) Thanks to Rhapsody, we were listening to their album that evening, and we were hooked. How could two people get so much music out of two guitars?!

Last night's show was remarkable on a couple fronts. The opening set was Rocco DeLuca playing a solo accoustic set (note to Rocco: next gig you play, introduce yourself!), and he quickly owned the crowd. Really enjoyed his singing - I just listened to some of the songs on his site (with his band The Burden) and his set was much more sedate (in a good way).

As for the main attraction, they were outstanding. My iPhone videos are admittedly blurry, and don't do justice to the insane finger work both do on their guitars - but I think you get a sense of just how phenomenal their music is. Here they are playing early in their set:

And here's their encore, where they sprinkled in just a bit of Stairway to Heaven (which they covered on their self-titled album) and finished with some help from the crowd:

We had a great time. If you get a chance to see them perform live, it's definitely worth it. Gabriela can make more music with her knuckles than most can make with a whole back-up band. (Here's a video from their appearance on Letterman that shows you up close what she does with her guitar.)

At the very least, they have to be among the top 10 Mexican ex-thrash-metal-classical-guitar-playing-Irishmen in the world, right? Who wouldn't want to see that?!

First post on SideWiki

2009-09-23T16:11:00.001-07:00

Just installed Sidewiki in Google Toolbar on my Mac. A feature I had missed when this was available internally (ironically) was the ability to copy your annotation to your blog; beneath the edit window for your Sidewiki comment, there's a "My blogs on Blogger" element; pick your blog, and then your Sidewiki comment is auto-posted to your blog.

Sweet!

in reference to: tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog (view on Google Sidewiki)

BlogPress Lite is live!

2009-09-22T20:05:00.001-07:00

Use an iPhone and have a blog on Blogger? Head on over to the app store and get InfoThinker's free "blogpress lite", built by them to celebrate Blogger's 10th birthday. Thanks, guys!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Really enjoying Socialvibe

2009-09-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks back, we announced a partnership with Socialvibe. As the blog owner, you get to pick which charity you support in the gadget configuration - then your blog's visitors are invited to do something (for example: rate a video, watch an ad, sign a petition). Each time they do that something, the advertiser who's sponsoring the gadget pledges a certain amount to the charity you've chosen.

I picked charity: water, and in two weeks my blog's readers have raised nearly 7,500 gallons of water for Charity Water. That's really remarkable, and I hope to see the number continue to go up.

What's been intriguing to me has been the effect it's had on me as the blog owner. I've watched the number climb and check the site a couple times a day to see where it's at. I'm thinking about picking a new charity each month to try and spread the love a bit, but also to re-engage prior visitors. It's a fun exercise, and it's quite fulfilling to know that something so simple can have such a meaningful impact on people who need the help.

If your blog is on Blogger, the link above contains the simple instructions to get started. If you're on WordPress, this article does a good job explaining it in more detail and has links to the WordPress setup (Socialvibe is also a WordPress partner). The Socialvibe site has simple directions for getting started on MySpace or Facebook. Give it a try, let me know what you think.

We're hiring

2009-09-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

You may have seen the news that we're getting more active about hiring at Google. We didn't really stop - but as you can see from the jobs listings (US, international) there are lots of opportunities to join and make a difference.

The hiring process remains rigorous, and if you're not confident you're among the best at what you do, this probably isn't the opportunity for you. From my own experience, I can say that you will find it among the most stimulating, challenging, exciting jobs you could have. Interested? Drop me a line, I can try to put you in touch with the right team. (Caveat: I will happily give referrals for people I've worked with or know professionally, but not if I haven't met you or worked with you before. If we don't know each other, please use the "job cart" to apply directly.)