Feed Me

IOS App Store Search sucks

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:23:44 -0700

I’d love to install the new Google Hangouts app. Apparently it’s available, but searching for it in the IOS App store is a total fail. Seriously Apple, can’t you just update the index when a new app is approved?

Voters trust Clinton over GOP on Benghazi - Public Policy Polling

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:26:49 -0700

Voters trust Clinton over GOP on Benghazi - Public Policy Polling:

According to this poll, 41% of Republicans think that Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history. 74% think it’s worse than Watergate, and 70% think it’s worse than Iran Contra. That’s staggering. Of-course, of the 41% who think it’s the worse scandal in American history, 39% don’t even know where Benghazi is.

As I said in another forum, I’m at a loss why anyone who is intelligent and paying attention would self-identify as “Republican” these days. If you want to call yourself “conservative” that’s cool, I may even agree with you on some issues, but “republican”? It’s like saying “I’m a flipping idiotic, conspiracy theorizing, wingnut, watch me do something stupid”.

Absolutely Classic

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:54:25 -0700

Absolutely Classic:

A revised version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station. With thanks to Emm Gryner, Jo…

Nice backstory too…

http://emmgryner.com/emmbassy/?q=node/861

Reset Fitbit One

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:53:51 -0700

The kind folks at Fitbit got back to me about my syncing issues and they were able to solve the problem. I expected I’d be receiving a new Fitbit One, but instead they had me reset the tracker. I haven’t seen this procedure in the documentation, so if you have a similar problem try this…

To restart your One tracker, please do the following:

1. Plug your tracker into the charging cable, which needs to be connected to your computer. Please make sure that the gold dots on your tracker align with the gold contacts in the inside of the charger. When you hear a click, you will know your One is in the charging cable properly.

2. Hold down the button on your tracker for 12 seconds.

3. Remove your tracker from the charging cable.

4. Press the button on your tracker until the screen illuminates again. Your One should function properly now.

Fitbit One distress

Mon, 06 May 2013 09:57:45 -0700

I love my Fitbit One, it’s definitely helped me increase my daily activity. Recently though it stopped syncing to my iPhone, no amount of rebooting, reinstalling apps, and charging helps. I’ve reported the issue to Fitbit and fully expect they’ll get back to me with a replacement.

In the meantime, it’s amazing how much I miss some technology I didn’t even own a few short months ago. I can still carry the fitbit and check it by hand before going to bed, and that’s helpful. But without the syncing and competition it just isn’t the same. I share stats with my wife and a couple of friends, of-course they all think I’m being lazy and not carrying it, but the truth is I miss the sharing aspect.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think folks who post daily activity updates to facebook are nuts, but sharing privately with a couple of close friends is actually fun, somewhat motivational, and I actually miss it. Who'da thunk it.

The Chevy Volt: An Electric Car With Its Own IP Address

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:45:00 -0700

The Chevy Volt: An Electric Car With Its Own IP Address:

According to IBM, the Volt is equipped with 100 electronic controllers, its very own IP address and roughly 10 million lines of software code. … that’s also more than today’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner which features a paltry 8 million lines of code.

And this is a good thing? How could all that code possibly be needed? The more code the more chance of bugs, not something you want in a car. Typically I’m more impressed with the least amount of code necessary for the functionality; it’s rare touting how many lines of code you wrote is impressive to engineers.

I also wonder if it’s IP address is Internet routable, I sure hope not. Maybe it’s behind a NAT firewall, but does that mean Volt’s can ping each other?

Where's Ping's Facebook connection?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:23:00 -0700

So, this is confusing. Like many Apple Fan-Bois (yep, I admit it) I’ve downloaded iTunes 10 and activated my Ping account. It should be fun, many of my friends have interesting musical tastes. Now, I’m no Lady Gaga, but I’d prefer not to have to enter the name of every single person I know into iTunes to see if they’re on Ping. Even the few people I’m particularly interested in following may not activate Ping for a few weeks or months, I really don’t want to have to keep checking.

No worries though, Apple has my back. Or do they? Here’s an excerpt from an email I received from Apple after activating the service…

Finding People to Follow

Ping makes it easy to find and follow your favorite artists and friends. In iTunes on your Mac or PC, select Ping and click Featured Artists or Featured People to find new or noteworthy Ping members. If you know someone already on Ping, you can search for them by name from the Ping home page. You can even check to see which of your Facebook friends also use Ping by connecting Ping to Facebook when editing your profile.

Cool! Ping will search my Facebook friends and let me know who’s using Ping. The problem is, you go to your profile, edit it, and there’s no mention of Facebook. Maybe I’m a being a dunce (it’s happened before), but if it’s there it’s really well hidden.

To add more grist to mill, AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher snagged a conversation with Steve Jobs himself after yesterday’s event, and he says no Facebook.

Jobs did not elaborate on those troublesome terms and also would not say if Ping would incorporate Facebook Connect–which would make it much easier to find friends to share music with.

“We could, I guess,” he shrugged.

And when I asked how to find friends, Jobs offered, noting iTunes had 160 million users across the globe: “You can type their names into search or send them emails inviting them to join.”

Kara did add an update to her article saying that Facebook is available to some users, but not her, and not me. It seems that I’m not the only one who’s confused. Cultofmac and Dan Frommer are having issues too.

Come on Apple, let’s get this right. Facebook integration would be really useful, don’t tease us if you’re not going to turn it on.

UPDATE: @michaelwilde adds “you know whats wierd… i had a facebook link in iTunes Ping last night.. but its gone now.”

Interesting Personal Search Startup

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:15:00 -0700

Greplin in an interesting Y Combinator funded startup that would have saved me a couple of weeks ago. I was looking for a phone number but couldn’t remember where I’d stored it, Greplin searches everything – problem solved!

The question is, who are these guys and why should I trust ‘em? If they have access to my Facebook, Linkedin, Salesforce, Twitter, Dropbox, and Evernote accounts, they pretty much have access to every piece of data in my personal and business life. That makes me awfully uncomfortable; even if the principals in the company are standup folks, how do I know their software is secure? If they become popular they’ll be prime targets for bad guys.

UPDATE: I wanted to give Greplin a whirl, so I tried registering with a few of my less concerning accounts (twitter and facebook). After two days I received an email that they’ve finished indexing but due to heavy load they’re not ready to let me use the site yet. So, they have my data but they won’t let me see what I have. I’d rather they didn’t allow signups until they’re ready. I’ve removed access to the application on both facebook and twitter. I wonder what tidbits Greplin still has? I guess I may never find out.

Entrepreneurship

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:35:13 -0700

Entrepreneurship:

Fascinating interview with Peter Sisson, founder of Toktumi. It looks like Toktumi is a great company, and Line2 is fantastic. I’ve ported my office phone, it’ll be even better when they add SMS support next month.

Hoax

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:13:00 -0700

Hoax:

I still loved it. I particularly like this quote from the article…

“If you guys don’t cast her I’m going to move to Canada because everything I know is wrong.”

I love this

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:34:47 -0700

I love this

Google Kills "Wave"

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:55:28 -0700

Google Kills "Wave":

Besides being impossible to explain, Google Wave was slow as hell. I wonder if it would have lasted longer as an app that ran out of the browser?

AOL execs, some analysts see changes taking hold - Technology - MiamiHerald.com

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:57:00 -0700

AOL execs, some analysts see changes taking hold - Technology - MiamiHerald.com:

Any company that makes almost half of its revenue from dial up is screwed.

A brief, yet helpful, lesson on elementary resource-locking strategy « The Reinvigorated Programmer

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:59:26 -0700

A brief, yet helpful, lesson on elementary resource-locking strategy « The Reinvigorated Programmer:

This is my life

Wow! This is amazing, it’s even tempting a graphic novice...

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:53:00 -0700

Wow! This is amazing, it’s even tempting a graphic novice like me – maybe I can retouch images after all. I do wonder what hardware they were running on though. There must be a tremendous amount of processing going on while that progress bar inched up; my guess is they’re using a 16 core box with a ton of memory. It would probably be a lot slower on typical systems. That doesn’t make it any less amazing though. Wow!

Leo Laporte crowd surfs during Diggnation

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:26:48 -0700

kevinrose:

This is beyond EPIC, Leo is the man!

Tip for online advertisers

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:10:00 -0700

If you must use interstitial advertising at least make sure your ad loads significantly faster than the Skip Ad button.

iPad ordering tidbits

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:47:00 -0800

I noticed a couple of things while ordering the iPad this morning. First is there’s no mention of the camera kit; this was announced back in January and includes two cables. One was an SD to 30-pin, the other was a USB to 30-pin. The VGA accessory was available but my brief search through the Apple web site finds no mention of the camera kit. I wonder if there’s production problems?

I also see that the USB wall wart charger is quite a bit larger than the one that comes with an iPhone and is pointedly described as being 10 watts. The extra size could be due to the addition of an extension cable; I’ve always doubted the 10 hour battery life claim and think it would make sense to be able to use the iPad and charge it at the same time. The longer power cable would allow that. What about the 10 watts though? This is probably more than the iPhone adapter and, I’m guessing here, could be due to the larger battery in the iPad. I’m sure you’ll still be able to charge with the smaller power adapter, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it took much longer to get a full charge.

iPad preorders start today

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:23:36 -0800

iPad preorders start today:

Yep, mine’s on the way. Well, it will be in late April. 64GB 3G version (only the best). Reading on the Kindle and web surfing on the iPhone will feel so 2009 for the next month and a half.

It's wrong to read other people's email

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:50:00 -0800

It's wrong to read other people's email:

Recently Business Insider reported on how Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (duh!), may have used Facebook login information in order to access competitor’s email. I have no idea if Zuckerberg actually did the dirty deed, but if he did it’s indicative of extremely poor ethically standards.

I’ve been involved with managing IT and Operations departments for over 25 years now (I started very very young) and in all that time I’ve never intentionally read someone else’s email. Sure, there used to be times when I had no choice but to peek inside a message in order to solve a real email issue, but those times were few and far between and unavoidable. For several years in the late 80s and early 90s I used the excellent Software Tools mailer, written by Dave Kashtan and Ken Adelman, and hacked on quite a bit by me. Because it was common to have to peek at the headers of email to resolve issues the ST mailer automatically ROT13’d the body of the message just so admins wouldn’t accidentally see the contents of an errant email.

This is basic ethics, something you just don’t do. Hundreds of people have worked for me over the years and I’ve never had to tell one of them that this was wrong; it’s just obvious. The few times someone who worked for me got caught snooping through someone else’s email or files things did not go well for them, and I didn’t feel they needed a warning. If someone sneaks into your house while you’re at work they don’t need to be warned that this is a no-no, you unleash the hounds and be done with them.

Being an IT admin means you have lots of power. Frequently more access than the CEO, CFO, or even the IT Director (in recent years I haven’t always had all of the root and admin passwords). With great power comes great responsibility.

My point is, if these charges are true, I would be concerned about doing business with Mark Zuckerberg – he’s already failed one of the basic ethical tests. Sure, he was young, but I started when I was 15 years old and no-one had to tell me this was wrong. There’s no doubt that these actions are considered unethical and if he did it he knew he was wrong.

That being said, one can assume that the access was gained because Zuckerberg took his rival’s password from their Facebook account and used it to access their email. This doesn’t bode well for Zuckerberg’s engineering skills either. Who, in their right mind, stores plain text passwords? It is a good reminder to always use different passwords, don’t count on a website to keep your password safe!

Now I’m curious about Facebook Connect. It’s so convenient it’s hard to avoid, but do we really want to give these guys access all of our other accounts? So far it’s mostly social network sites, but what happens when my bank starts supporting Facebook Connect or similar Same-Sign-On solutions. Who do we trust and when is convenience worth giving up security? That’s a topic for another post.