Archive for the 'Computers' Category

Is Google’s Innovation Stagnant?

Published
by
C.G.
on March 16, 2008
in Computers
. 2 Comments

I voted in the 2008 Webware 100 Awards

I voted in this years Webware 100 awards - just like last year - and looking at all those websites and their offerings got me thinking a bit about Google and their ability to innovate. As you can see from the list, there are 300 finalists (Webware’s words) out of hundreds of thousands more. They are categorized in ten different but sometimes overlapping ways. Last year, I used the contest to research new Web 2.0 sites and its what got me interested in a lot of the social qualities of what makes a site, a Web 2.0 site. You can thank the 2007 Webware awards for getting me into Twitter and other micro blogging engines like Tumblr and, later, Pownce.

The Webware awards also let me touch the pulse of that is hot and new in core web technology and innovation; it also gave an insight as to how companies hope to - and in some cases had hoped - to make money in an area that, like the dot com bubble before, was littered with bad business models and unusually lofty dreams of success. In fact, the difficulty faced by even those mentioned in the list became very apparent to those involved with AllPeers, a file sharing service who’s investors didn’t see a money making opportunity any longer.

But the organizations that remain are, regardless of their profitability, truly amazing. They offer a wide range of products and services that, if they haven’t already, could alter the face of social, mobile, and collaborative communication in business, research, and art of all kinds. Many are house hold names: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Gmail. Some are “relics” of earlier innovation that still remain popular: Firefox, iChat (and other chat clients like Pidgin), and eBay. But most of the contestants are very new to the Web 2.0 landscape; websites like Pownce, Hi5, iLike, Mint, and Picnik didn’t exist a year ago (to my knowledge, anyway). Each of them brings a new idea to their respective categories and are the reason they are a part of the top .03% of all the nominated sites. And while Google is mentioned ten times in all of those 300 finalists, they are for products I’ve seen before and have been using for years; it made me wonder, is Google’s innovation stagnant?

Now before all you Google lovers attack me, know that I am a huge fan of Google’s products. I used them for search almost as soon as the site was up. I’ve been using Gmail since I got an invite way back when you only got five invites to give away. I’ve used their Calendar app since in came out and even have all their Blackberry applications installed on my beloved smartphone. And I have great respect for the products I don’t use regularly - like AdWords and Groups. But when I look at the newer sites out there, I can’t believe that Google has let their most popular sites stagnate like they have done.

First, let’s talk about YouTube. YouTube, as a concept was revolutionary! It was one of (if not THE) first flash video sharing sites. While as popular as ever, YouTube looks horrible! The interface is ugly and is difficult to navigate; it could use a visual refresh. I know that Google like to keep their pages running quickly and deliberately keep complex graphics and flashy code out of their products but there could be a cleaner interface without bloat. I uploaded a video today and I was completely in the dark as to the progress of the upload and when to expect it to show up on the site. In contrast, I uploaded a video to Vimeo, a website up for the Webware 100 award in the same video category, showed me the progress for the upload and had a percentage and time estimate when the video was going to be processed. Because Vimeo can handle HD, the video I uploaded - a 640×480 clip - wasn’t degraded in anyway; the quality was the same as if I was watching it on my desktop. Vimeo isn’t the only one that’s better than YouTube; Viddler is another sharing site that, in my opinion, is nicer than YouTube. Now I know that there are more videos on YouTube and that helps it stay popular but I don’t want to use the site myself because it just feels old - as old as the original site before Google bought them for 1.6B.

Blogger is another site that has suffered from Google. Yes, they integrated their log-on system and have made some minor updates to the site but its still the same basic blogging engine. The site, while relatively simple, is the same site it was when I first joined up in August of 2004!! Since then, WordPress has become my de facto blogging engine. And they certainly the only one in town; there is MT, Vox, TextPattern, Drupal, and SO many more. AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, MySpace and other well known sites have their own systems to let users write and interact socially. Now they might not be as great as WordPress or MT4, they are evolving! MT4 recently came out; WordPress release 2.4 and now 2.5 is around the corner! When is Blogger going to get a major revision?

Gmail; my favorite and only email client has never gotten me down. Its relatively fast and its conversation view is second to none. The spam fighting technology they came up with is enough for me to use it as long as it works. Its not the only email address I use, however, I have specific emails for each website under the soitscometothis.com domain but they all forward to Gmail so I can get the spam filtering and the easy IMAP/POP access for my Mail app for the Mac and my Blackberry (respectively). Again, the interface isn’t new or fresh or even feature rich as some of their counterparts. Yahoo’s mail system looks great! Microsoft’s is ok… I just don’t like the live.com colors they use for the branding. But it’s not Hotmail any more. AOL’s web email also looks great and they all do the same thing. Granted, Gmail is adding features that keep it new - so, again, I don’t want to discount what they have done. But POP access? IMAP? Is that really innovation? They came up with a great message view and spam catcher and that’s about it. What’s next?

Twitter. Where’s their Twitter clone? Jaiku? It’s been closed since Google bought it so I can’t say that if it needs new features but they were acquired in October - and they just got started bringing it up to speed to Tumblr and Twitter. And where is their huge social networking site like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, and others. Orkut is the only one that I know of and it isn’t very popular - only in Brazil where it has suffered a great deal of bad press and negative user feedback from some scandals down there. They’ve owned since before they went public and nothing has come from that space.

All this isn’t to say that Google isn’t innovating; they have Google Docs, Google Apps for your domain, Google Maps, and many other search related products. But when Zoho is offering a much more mature product, are all those “beta” tags Google sticks to the end of their sites really mean that the best is yet to come?

There are so many other sites out there who have a new take on what Google can do and offer. Before it was Microsoft and, to a degree, Yahoo. Now, Google is the target and they aren’t losing to those other two large companies, they are losing to all the smaller sites who think outside Google’s box. Perhaps in indicative when Facebook is stealing all their talent - just like Google did before to MS and Yahoo. Its probably a sign of things to come (or not come as the case may be) when your the top talent leaves a company known for the cutting edge to go to a company that is on the cutting edge. While it could be the economy, could their lack of innovation and difficulties in keeping top talent be a contributing factor to their stock’s decline?

I think so.

Shaking It Up A Bit

Published
by
C.G.
on January 15, 2008
in Apple, Computers and Hacks
. 0 Comments

As part of my new year’s resolution to be healthier, I went to the gym this evening after work. I’m working hard - feeling the burn - and I’m on my last exercise feeling good. All of a sudden, I drop my iPod. I wasn’t too worried about it. I had dropped my iPod before on harder surfaces (the gym floor is that rubbery stuff). When I picked it up, I still heard music playing and only noticed something was a little off when I tried to rewind the song I was listening to at the time I dropped it. A quick sliding of the ‘lock’ feature once or twice and it was fine. I finished my workout and went to the locker room where I grabbed my jacket, took the elevator down to the ground floor, and started walking home. All of a sudden, as the iPod started playing a new song in the playlist, it stops.

Just like I had attempted to do before, I slid the ‘lock’ button around to try and free it up but it didn’t work this time. Again, thinking nothing of it, I tried to reboot the iPod by pressing the ‘Menu’ and the ‘Select’ button in the center of the click wheel. It was then, I saw something I had never seen before - the sick iPod.

The sick iPod is a picture of the Gen 1 iPod that only worked with a Mac (unless you hacked it or used XPlay like I did). Below this frowning iPod is the link to Apple’s support page for the iPod.

Now I didn’t have a lot of faith in Apple’s support page. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been able to solve a lot of problems by visiting their site and feel that, while it doesn’t account for every situation, I’m satisfied with what solutions they do offer. But predictably, they didn’t have any simple instructions on how to de-brick your iPod… except buy a new one.

So I started looking at the new iPod Nanos. The small form factor, I thought, would be great for keeping it in my pocket. No more using a belt clip (that didn’t keep my current iPod in place). I also thought of getting the iTouch. With its large widescreen display - and all those new features announced today at Macworld 2008 by Steve Jobby-Jobs - I thought it might satisfy my craving to watch TV and movies on the subway. But I didn’t like the small-ish storage they offered.

I have almost 50GB of music and 15 GB of video already. An 8GB Nano or a 16GB Touch wasn’t going to cut it. The “Classsic” iPods, while thinner than the one I have - and capable of storing all my media needs for a while, didn’t seem like a good purchase either because it only offered me a slightly different version of the iPod that I have. Plus, will all the cool things announced along with the iPod upgrades (MacBook Air, Time Capsule, and the new AppleTV), I’m already looking at contributing a significant amount of paper route money to Steve’s backdated options income.

So after chatting with a friend of mine, I decided to seek out a fix for my bricked iPod on the Interweb - I hear they have the Internet on computers now…. (sorry for the Simpson’s joke). I did a quick search and found the wonderful site, iLounge. Their forums have been a great source of information on all things iPod - today was no different. I couple of clicks here. A few more there. And presto! I found a post that offered hope. The the solution was unconventional to say the least.

Most of the posters with bricked iPods were told to shake it. SHAKE IT!!!

Out of all the things you don’t want to do with your hard drive based devices is shake it!

But, the theory was sound to me… The idea is that the hard drive was stuck from the fall and the iPod was playing cached music. Once a song to be played wasn’t in the cache, the iPod threw up. With nothing but a $200 to $399 bill for a new iPod in the cards, I shook it.

Nothing happened.

I shook it again.

Nothing happened.

I started thinking of that saying: Shake it once is ok, shake it twice is ok. But shake it a third time and you’re just playing with yourself.

I stared to wonder if I was either kidding myself into thinking this could work and, again, thought of what iPod I’d be owning (and what I should have engraved on it ;) )

But with nothing to lose, I shook it a third time despite feeling shameful and this time I put my full wrist into it.

Low and behold, it worked!!!!

The moment I tried to reset the iPod, the screen became backlit and started loading my media info. All my playlists are there and I was able to sync the iPod with my computer. Just shaking the iPod saved me from getting a new, shinny, engraved, widescreen or really tiny (and perhaps colored), iPod.

Oh well.

My Wish: A List That Works

Published
by
C.G.
on November 20, 2007
in Computers
. 2 Comments

Ever since I started dating my wife, I’ve been creating a Christmas list for the holiday season for her and her immediate family. The idea, simply enough, is to take the guess work out of finding a “perfect” gift for someone and get something you are sure they want (it wouldn’t be on the list otherwise). And while I don’t always agree with the idea of having a good clue as to what one might get for their birthday, anniversary, or Chrismukkah, it does make things easier for the gift giver and somewhat easier for the gift receiver. Now, being the Web 2.0 nerd fanboy junkie techie that I am, loves to mess with the simple art of pen and paper and replace it with a ajaxy website.

Enter Wishlistr.

Like so make butchered words that fill the Web 2.0 landscape, lets you share your list with others. Create your list by manually entering items or use the ‘bookmarklet’ that you can slap on your favorite browser’s toolbar to add items automatically. When you add things to your list, you get to ever the title of the items (and it does pre-populate this field for you) and a little bit of text for the list reader; it also adds the URL of the item to the list so the buyer could click on it and buy, research, shop for the thing you want. Its actually really neat. Its so simple and, yet, effective.

Except when it does work.

See, I was going to update my wish list tonight when I ran into a little problem: Wishlistr wouldn’t load; they had ran out of their bandwidth. Don’t ask me how that happens in this day of cheap hosting or private servers but it did. See for yourself:

picture-1.png

So for this holiday season, I wish for my Wishlistr to work.

Flocking Again

Published
by
C.G.
on November 3, 2007
in Computers
. 0 Comments

So Flock 1.0 came out recently and, now that I’ve joined the rest of the social web 2.0, I thought it would be nice to give it an honest try again.  Despite how tightly this application is coupled with famous sites like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, Twitter, and others, I still yawn at the thought of using this as my default browser.

First, the browser is still based off of Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine.  A nice engine - especially compared to Internet Explorer’s bastardized one - but not as nice as Safari’s.  Gecko its not as fast nor as compliant as Safari’s; it still fails the Acid2Test and doesn’t display the reference image properly.  Again, its still better than IE but not perfect like the KHTML/WebKit engine found in Safari and my current favorite, Shiira.

And like Firefox, Flock supports extensions.  But not all extensions work.  So far, the only one I know not to work is the AdBlock Filter Updator - which isn’t that big a deal.  To be fair, I’m not a heavy add-on user because Flock (and Firefox) will often suffer because of poorly coded extensions or just have to many to load at one time; it hogs memory and slows down nearly every function of the app.  I will say this about both Flock and Firefox, the extensions are what make the browsers what they are.  Without them, they’re just a slightly better IE.  Nevertheless, you still aren’t guaranteed that your extensions will work.

Now the main draw to Flock over Firefox is supposed to be the integration I mentioned earlier.  That, too, seems to fail me.  Take Facebook, for example.  Your friends show up on the left sidebar.  Above them, is you and your status.  You can click on your status and change it; you can also clock on some of your applications.  Notice I said some.  Only the standard apps show up.  That might be because Flock can’t anticipate the functionality of every application but, at the very least, it could pull the link from the app and point to it directly in the browser when clicked on.  Also, the “news feed” of your friends doesn’t show up.  Sure, in the friends list, which (by the way) can get really hard to scroll through if you have a long list because each friend takes up almost 10% of the sidebar space, you can see their status.  But to get to their other stuff, you have to click on an “actions” button that lets you poke, send a message, write on their wall, and a few other things.  If you use apps like SuperPoke, you don’t have the ability to use them in Flock.

For the Flickr, integration, you have a similar setup where your contacts on on the side.  You see when they last updated their photo stream but you have to click on their “media” to view their uploads.  In the end, it takes you to the same Flickr page you would normally have gone to had you their Flickr page directly.  And your only options are to send them a message or view their profile.  Sure, you can upload your images to Flickr but that’s just about all you can do on yourself from the website.

With Flock you can also post to your blog.  I’m using it right now and find it comparable to most of the other thick client blogging apps out there like BlogGTK, Ecto, and others.  I guess because I’m not an active blogger - and Wordpress has all that I need (including spellcheck) I don’t always see the need for these applications.  But when I was using Blogger, I’ll admit that I would have liked a Flock to handle all the editing and publishing.  I happen to think this is one of Flocks stronger features even if it doesn’t get all the glory of the Web 2.0 world.

I don’t want to make it sound as if Flock is bad.  Far from it, I think Flock is a great piece of software - especially if you use social media sites like YouTube.  It especially works well with del.icio.us - my only bookmarks site.  And it has a slick RSS reader if you don’t like web based apps like Google Reader.  One bonus feature that you won’t find on Firebox (not even as an extension) is extra stability.  According to Techcrunch, Flock’s developers paid special attention to Flock’s stability and is more stable than Firefox; Duncan Riley did a review of 1.0 not too long ago and liked it.  If your a PC user and are frequently seeing your Firefox crash, Flock may be your savior.

But when it comes right down to it, Flock is another Firefox with a few specific extensions that perform tasks that can (and often are) accomplished buy other plugins.  All the updates that are shown in the sidebar are nearly always available as an RSS feed and, if you’re like me and use Google Reader, have access to those updates 24×7 - even if you aren’t at home or on your laptop.  So the value, for me at least, is limited.  Still, I think one should give it a try and see if my observations warrant it.  I’ll be using Flock for the next week with all my sites and I’ll see if I come around.  If not, I’ll be going back to Shiira which, as I mentioned before, rocks!

So Bored With Computing… I Built My Own Web Server

Published
by
C.G.
on October 5, 2007
in Computers, Hacks and Linux
. 0 Comments

Wow! My first post using Wordpress 2.3!

Anyway…

Besides doing the automated install of Wordpress 2.3, my computing life has been pretty boring. I have no new gadgets to keep me busy and no cool programs to toy with. All I’ve been doing with my computer is the normal web surfing, iTunes listening, and working at odd hours (thanks to Parallels running Windows XP on my Mac).

But I have this old computer and my very powerful PC that I built by myself. Well, with the help of my friend. It just sits there, though. Unpowered and unused. Until last weekend…

Or maybe it was two weekends ago…. well, anyway…

I took my desktop Ubuntu build and wiped it clean. I was still on 6.10 since I got my Mac mini in December-ish of last year. Plus, I have 7.04 on my IBM laptop so I hadn’t been using it in a long time. I installed Ubuntu 7.04 Server on it and started to set up a website. But not just a website, Wordpress!

Man, the folks who are behind Ubuntu are great. Canonical has done such a great job with Ubuntu; Linux wouldn’t be what it is today without it. All I had to do to get my webserver up and running was type the following line of code:

sudo apt-get install wordpress

That’s it!

Well, to be honest, there was more to it. I did have to figure out how to configure a few things here and there to get the install working the way I wanted but it wasn’t more than a few lines of code in a text editor. I didn’t even need to actually use the computer in the typical sense. I installed OpenSSH before I started the whole process so I used the terminal app built into OS X to do everything.

So now, if you go to my internal address of 192.168.1.106, you get to see my Wordpress 2.3 blog. Next week, I’m going to try and build a firewall/router out of the other computer using Linux, natch. I’ll create some route statements to direct web traffic to the web server and open it up to the internet.

So, like I said, I’m bored with my computers. Bored enough to build my own web LAMP server and future firewall.

Yawn…