adamyntium

Category: technology

  • Fair use, mashups, and profits – why hasn’t anyone figured this out yet?

    Lots of us love music and we love to share it; I think that’s even more powerful than simply “grab lots of music for free”—it’s the sharing that excites us, motivates us.  Music is a shared experience!

    Why, then, hasn’t anyone made it easy to share music snippets legally from a simple iframe, a simple widget that someone can cut and paste or even drag and drop into their blog?

    Let me give an example of how painful it is to share (within, IMHO, fair use) a music snippet:
    1) Identify song you want to share with others.  Determine that it’s DRM’d.  Ack!
    2) Remove DRM (yes, I know this may technically be illegal, but frankly I don’t give a damn.  Call it civil disobedience)
    3) Use software to grab a relevant thirty second snippet and save it as an mp3.  Make sure tags are still embedded.
    4) Upload to server.
    5) Before all of this, download and install a good flash player so others can listen to your snippet whether on a Mac or PC.
    6) Embed the appropriate code into your blog entry.

    Check out this entry on the emotional wallop of strings for an example of the result. 

    I think it took me at least 20 minutes just to prepare, upload, and post this one clip.  Does that sound very conducive to sharing to you?!

    So you know what massively puzzles me?  Why on earth hasn’t any major player (Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, Apple, etc.) made this process easier… not only facilitating the discovery and sharing of music by the increasingly powerful blogosphere, but increasing subscriptions and download sales?!  Let me explain how I envision this working…

    What the blogger / music lover does:
    1) Blogger goes to associates.amazon.com or embed.rhapsody.com or whatever and looks up an album or specific track.
    2) They then selects an embed method (php include, javascript, iframe, etc.) and optionally set other customizable widget options.
    3) If not already logged in, they enter in their subscription ID or affiliate ID so they can get credit from referred subscriptions and purchases.
    4) They copy the specified HTML and paste it into their blog, along with (hopefully) personal comments.

    What the person visiting the blog sees:
    A simple mini-player widget that contains a play button and a short description of the clip (title, artist, album), along with links to:
    – “Learn more about this artist, album, or song”
    – “Purchase this song” (on iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.)
    – “Subscribe to service for unlimited listening to 3 million songs” (again, on Rhapsody, Napster, etc.)

    * * *

    Of course, even cooler would be all the online music folks coming together to make a common standard of some sort, so this widget could actually have a small pulldown menu enabling listeners to buy the tune on or subscribe to their preferred online music service.

    So why hasn’t any of this happened? Some guesses:
    – Music services are shortsighted and want to more tightly (and obnoxiously) control the listening experiences.
    – Music services are scared crapless of lawsuits; despite the fact that any sane person would envision 30 seconds being pretty much fair use, the RIAA would probably sue anyway.
    – Fears over brand tarnishing (putting the names of artists and music services on splog sites featuring child porn, for instance)

    I’m skeptical about the third issue, though. After all, Amazon seemingly lets pretty much anyone embed jpegs of book covers or album covers on raunchy or spammy sites.

    * * *

    So, what to do in the meantime?
    If I wanted to be lazy AND give the finger to non-Windows-users, I could just link to Amazon.com clips, for instance, like this clip of “Where Does the Wayward Footwear Go?” from The Bobs. But that’s pretty inelegant, and it also depends upon Amazon:
    – having the song I want to show off
    – including a decent snippet
    – not changing the URL or blocking folks from accessing it off the Amazon.com domain

    And, to be fair, it’s not a very attractive option for Amazon.com. I mean, what do they get out of it? No potential sales, no branding (except from my arbitrary mention), etc. And unless I manually create a link to the album (“Songs For Tomorrow Morning” ), it’s not even easy for the listener to learn more about the album or group, much less purchase the CD. In other words, it’s a lousy experience for everyone.

    Surely there’s got to be a better way?!

    — –

    Update at 12:58am the next day:
    Hmm… well, there’s Napsterlinks.

    But…
    – They require people to register with Napster before hearing any music (even a 30 second snippet)
    – Each registered user can hear a track only three times total (which is reasonable, IMHO)
    – The embedded widget doesn’t allow one to fast-forward in a song, nor can it contain multiple tracks (much less an album). Just one track per widget :(.
    – There seems to be a bug whereby any page with the widget on it never finishes loading. Weird.

    So, unsurprisingly, napsterlinks are seemingly quite unpopular (I had never actually seen them in the wild, and doing a blogsearch yielded just a tiny handful in existence). Such a lost opportunity!

    And Rhapsody? Sure, you can listen to free tracks with them, but…
    – You’re limited to 25 total plays per month (kinda stingy).
    – You have to download and install their plugin (not too time consuming, though)
    – The player window can’t be embedded :-(.
    – Any click to play a song opens BOTH the player window and a full-sized Rhapsody page. Boo!

    Obviously NOT a decent experience for bloggers :(.

    So, hey, music services… we’re still waiting. Yahoo? Apple?…

  • I’m staking a claim to Web 4.0!

    Okay, I admit it.  I missed the boat and jealously hollered that naming anything Web 2.0 is a bunch of crap.  So more recently I thought, hey, that’s no problem, I’ll just glom onto Web 3.0, the semantic Web.  I mean, look, I have lots of nice Jewish programmer friends, so who am I to be anti-semantic?!

    But dammit, then I discovered that Nicholas Carr has already laid claim to Web 3.0!  The bastard!

    Never fear, dear BLADAM readers… I have the solution!  I am hereby claiming as my own Web 4.0… with t-shirts and stickers, special edges, an expensive conference, and a network of blogs.

    Yes, yes, I hear your skepticism already:  So, Adam-you-total-killjoy-smartass, pray tell us… what exactly is Web 4.0?  Well, I thought you’d never ask!  Allow me to explain this scintillating new Web with crystal clarity.

    Web 4.0 involves two-way individually-aggregated communal infocommerce predicated upon the six human senses!  Sure, smell-o-vision may have crashed and burned, fine, maybe that tactile mouse thing never took off… but all of it combined?  And tied to the Web?  Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be big.

    SMELL the Web.  FEEL the Web.  TASTE the Web (actually, this part includes just LICK until 4.1, but that’s a mere troublesome tribble).  Imagine a wackypedia entry with which you can SMELL Detroit!  Imagine your favorite mapping service applied tactilely to 

    Pamela Anderson’s cleavage

     academically enlightening geodesic dome models… collaboratively, in real time!

    But I’m not stopping there.  I’m also trademarking the following:
    – Television 4.0 (2.0 clicked with the remote)
    – Medicine 4.0 (Viagra lifted it up to 2.0)
    – Philosophy 4.0 (Exiting the cave was 2.0)
    – Air travel 4.0 (Southwest is 2.0!)
    – The Law 4.0 (The McDonald’s Coffee heated things up to 2.0)

    and

    …wait a minute? What’s that you say?  We never really did refer to any of these things as 2.0?  No one has ever blathered on about whether Jet Blue qualifies as part of Air travel 2.0?  Or whether a doctor is adhering to Medicine 2.0 principles? (maybe if he has—snort—well-rounded edges and listens to his patients?).  Hmm… how about “My new Sony is so Television 2.0!”  No?  It just sounds silly and goofily arbitrary?

    No matter!  If my 4.0 schwag is really hip and if I can get enough bloggers to BlogOn!(tm), we can make this a true movement with all 0.0000037% of the world’s citizens who are also nomenclature-obsessed-geeks.  Our numbers may be small, but we’re powerful… just look at our Alexa graph, babeeee!  You dare compete with that? 😉

  • Gmail user? The new "murder," er, "mute" function will have you crying tears of joy

    Lots of folks have noticed that five very cool new features debuted today in Gmail:
    1) Enhanced UI, with Reply and other handy features placed at the top of conversations.
    2) Notification when new messages have been made in the conversation since you started drafting your reply.
    3) Forward an entire conversation (all messages).
    4) Send chat messages to your friends using Gmail chat or GTalk even when they’re offline (the messages’ll be held for them).
    5) Get Gmail on your mobile phone with a rich app (not just slow Web pages).

    [Read more about these new gmail features]

    But what I have to share with you is even more deliciously glorious… especially for those of you who are on lots of mailing lists or who have boring (albeit perhaps well-meaning) friends who just won’t shut up.

    Friends, Romans, fellow GMail users… I introduce to you…

    MURDER!

    Oh wait, that’s not exactly right.  Officially, the new feature is called Mute Thread, or “Mute” for short.  Here’s how it works:

    THE OLD WAY:
    1) You’re reading some posts about the elections.
    2) You were once excited about reading this stuff.
    3) But at least one conversation is now on its 471th message.  You keep hitting Archive but the damn conversation keeps popping up every time someone makes a new post!
    4) You’re ready to tear out your hair.  The posters’ hair.  Your keyboard’s hair.  Er, keys.
    5) MAKE IT STOP!  MAKE IT STOP, PLEEEEEASE!

    THE NEW WAY:
    1) You get yet another annoying message in the same damn conversation that’s already been conversed to death.
    2) You press the ‘m’ key.  Unless a message is written *directly* to you (e.g., your name is in the TO spot), you’ll never see that message in your inbox again!

    In short, the Mute feature enables you to tell Gmail: “Archive this conversation AND all future posts in it… just have ‘em skip the inbox!”

    [See official Gmail info on Mute]

    I can think of only one downside to this feature at the moment:
    If you filter your discussion list mail into separate labels (say, “Prolific Politics List”) and already have those posts skip the inbox… then the M key will sadly have no effect.  It doesn’t remove labels, it just creates a “get out of inbox free”

    But that aside, I think this is a super-awesome feature, and one that—to my knowledge—is unique amongst major Webmail providers.

    So, go ahead, indulge in those high-traffic lists again.  And don’t hesitate to threaten any annoying poster, “Dude, if you write one more word about Rummie, you’re getting SO m’d!”

    DISCLAIMERS:  I work for Google.  I am not on the Gmail team.

  • International calling / SMS rates — Why so high?

    Okay, BLADAM friends, apologies for two rants in a row (in a sadly otherwise dry AdamBloggingSeason), but… why does T-mobile—an international company—charge so much for international calling, roaming, and texting?

    And Cingular—the only other American mobile phone company I know of that supports international roaming—has rates that are even worse, from what I gather.

    Anyway, on T-Mobile, the rates for me to call from the U.S. overseas are more than triple what I’d pay via a discount calling card or even AT&T Callvantage.  Calling from overseas to *anywhere* ranges from about $1 to $4 a minute for incoming OR outgoing calls.

    But what *really* gets my hide is T-Mobile’s charge for text messages sent to and from my friends in Europe.  15 cents each for me to send a handful of text characters, and 35 cents each to receive the same.  What the heck?!  I know, I know, this voluminous amount of data has to potentially pass through companies that aren’t T-Mobile, but still!  And no, T-Mobile’s varied texting-bundle plans do *not* include international SMSes.

    I’ve played with various SMS options online, but haven’t found any to be reliable for either sending or receiving text messages internationally.  Oh lazyweb, anyone know of good options? (other than calling up T-Mobile and telling them they’re provincial jerks for their usurious rates, which, I admit, doesn’t exactly qualify as a good option)

  • Second Life — Amazing, beautiful, compelling… and not for me

    What if you could build a better world, from the ground up?  What if you could even start “yourself” over… You.v2 or even New You; a different hairstyle, thinner, maybe even a different race or gender?  What if you could escape the hellish aspects of our world whenever and for however long you liked?  Glamorous, confident, rich, powerful, whimsical, witty YOU.  What if you could, indeed, have yourself a Second Life?

    You can.  Via the amazingly powerful and immersive Second Life world online, you can build or even just experience your own 3D world… with thousands of other people from around the world in real time.  Music, art, religion, geekery (of course!), and (duh!) sex.  It’s all there, and discovering—even participating in it—is practically as easy as pointing and clicking.  When I first tried out Second Life (“SL”) years ago after meeting one of the founders of Linden Labs (Second Life’s creator), I was floored by the fluidity of the experience, just how easy it was to join, get around, meet people, and actually have interesting and entertaining conversations.

    But after exploring SL for about ten hours over a long weekend, I grew wary… and have infrequently returned.  I’ve thought quite a bit about SL since then, and have been reluctant to voice my thoughts; as a geek who has indeed made some true friends (and, yes, even met stunningly brilliant and beautiful members of the opposite sex) via online interactions even back in the 80s, I worried that I’d seem hypocritical discussing my dismissal of SL.  However, an essay today by Ted—“Second Life? How ‘bout getting a First Life”—has prompted me to blather on a bit about my thoughts on virtual reality.

    Ted does a fine job describing what SL is, beginning with this:

    Second Life isn’t a game, a chat room, an eBay knock-off, a social networking site, a Starbucks, or a media service—it’s ALL OF THEM COMBINED. Second Life is, in a nutshell, a reality simulation (oxymoron?) that attempts to synthesize, using a 3D audiovisual user environment:[…]

    In the end, Ted admits this:

    Is it fun? You bet your butt it is. Did it foster human interaction when I tried it? Sure. Did it foster artistic appreciation? Sure. Did I want to go back to 2L as soon as I logged off? Yup. In fact, I was so compelled about it, I was thinking about it when I woke up this morning. And I don’t know if that’s healthy.  I think that’s the reason why I won’t be logging back on to 2L for a while. I can see it ruining peoples First Lives. One of the players I talked to on Second Life said he had been on twelve hours a day since September 6. OUCH.  I went ahead and deleted it from my Macbook.


    But I might be reinstalling it.

    In between his expressions of admiration and his cautionary note, he touches upon the concern highlighted in his post’s title; basically, with such a rich Second Life, what can happen to one’s First Life?

    Now, mind you, I’m the first to roll my eyes at all the scary-stories-of-the-day from clueless journalists and nincompoop congresscritters and all who talk about banning various games because “of the harm to the children!” What a load of crap. And indeed, I concede that Ted’s final paragraph is edging a bit uncomfortably close to the alarmist for my taste.

    Personally, I worry less about virtual reality games being a danger to society… and more about the tradeoffs they pose to me. It’s all about personal responsibility, and I know that, hell, I barely have enough time to deepen, much less expand the number of my own friendships… barely enough time to keep my friggin’ apartment clean… barely enough time to call my Grandpa, compose new music, meditate in the beautiful parks nearby, finally take up yoga, lose those 17 pounds that are weighting me down, and become conversant in Spanish and/or French. In my FIRST LIFE!

    In a nutshell, then, time that I spend in Second Life is time taken away from my first life. And — again, speaking for myself at least — I need fewer distractions, not more.

    Sure, you could argue “Look, ya dumb luddite, what about those hours you spend watching TV? Playing video games? Reading blogs? Writing your own useless blatherings? How is that crap any different than blowing off some steam or having some harmless fun in an imaginary world?” For starters, I don’t watch TV (except for the occasional Simpsons episode or the satellite TV on JetBlue), nor do I play video games. So that saves a huge chunk of time ;-). But even those passtimes are fundamentally different than virtual reality participation.

    You see, when you’re in SL, for instance, unless you’re a total hermit crocheting in the corner, you’re interacting with other people. Other HUMANS. And, I’d guess, you’re likely to form attachments or at least become part of the social fabric for others. As a once a month visitor, it’s a non-issue, but if you drop by weekly or even daily, I envision it becomes like a bar: people know your name, they’re happy you came, yadda yadda. The more time you spend, the more you become a part of this world and the people in it, and the more they become a part of your personal life.

    Think this is nuts? Have you not read the studies which show how we humans not only identify with fictional characters on TV, but actually become emotionally attached to them? Feel that they are an integral part of our lives… feel sorrow at their losses, joys at their accomplishments? Have you been living in a cave whilst millions of people became enthralled with OJ and JonBenet and countless other folks who are no more real (as in, someone you have met, have talked with, have interacted with in ANY way) than avatars representing real people online?

    * * *

    So, by participating in SL, it’s not only easy, but perhaps unavoidable to find acceptance, friendship, and attachment within the new world… such that it becomes perhaps almost required to sustain or even deepen those relationships. You miss playing your video games for a week, no sweat. You miss a TV show here and there, and you can always bittorrent it or have a friend fill you in on what happened. But virtual reality is different, no?

    * * *

    I firmly believe that all of us have limits of emotional inclusion. While some can cultivate and sustain more relationships, I don’t think anyone’s ability in this context is infinite. At some point, people you relate to, care about, and regularly interact with by necessity substitute either for others you have or have had a relationship with, or — perhaps more critically — others you COULD relate with or get to know better.

    And here’s where I am most likely to potentially create a firestorm of controversy: I believe, with all my heart, that online relationships in the aggregate are worth less than in-person relationships. Mind you, I happily and meaningful maintain a number of friendships with folks online and I value them (both the friendships and the people behind them). But — again, on the whole — there’s undeniably too much missing. While I’m often wary of statistics in this context, I do believe what I learned in Communications Studies in college: more than 90% of communications are non-verbal. The way one positions his arms… how someone looks or doesn’t look you in the eye… a person’s posture… how they touch you, how they shake your hand. Logically, so little of this makes sense, but emotionally and spiritually, it is near-everything.

    It is for this reason that — as I have grown up — I have made the personal decision to leverage online communications as a means to an end: specifically, in the personal (non-work) context, interactions are typically intended to sustain, enhance, clarify, or even create relationships in the flesh. Life — okay, my First Life — is too fleeting to think and plan otherwise.

    * * *

    And so we return — quite circuitously, I admit — to my personal objections to Second Life. It’s not that it’s not real enough… it’s that it’s just real enough to serve as a quasi-substitute for life-in-person. And furthermore, it’s designed not to reflect, much less improve or enhance, one’s existing relationships (a la the ideal of Facebook, IMHO), but rather to create an alternate albeit real reality that necessitates tending to.

    * * *

    There’s a place for SL. First and foremost, I don’t wish to be judgmental towards those who find value (or friendship or love or financial profits or whatnot) in SL. The service itself has clearly been designed with passion, with care… and it’s something I greatly admire and respect. And I can absolutely see the worth of SL for many folks and in many contexts: artists wishing to create, to share. People who, for reasons of geography or physical handicaps or family obligations or anything else, find the social aspects of SL more compelling and available than what they have in their FL. Or folks who are entirely comfortable developing, to quote Fight Club, single serving friends. Or researchers, hackers, shy people… the list goes on.

    Second Life is a fascinating world, a truly amazing accomplishment in virtual reality, an engaging experiment in every respect. It’s just not for me.

  • What makes a blog a community? And are such communities indeed highly fickle?

    I’ve spent much of this weekend dealing with my blogfeeds.  I have well over 200 (haven’t bothered to count ‘em exactly), and I’m tens of thousands of posts behind.  Some feeds I’ve just had to (often regretfully) unsubscribe from, others I’ve “reset to zero” (admittedly just masking a larger problem), but—most interestingly to me—I’ve become more acutely aware that some blogs have a thriving community and others do not.

    Some examples of blogs I perceive to have strong communities:

    What indicates a strong community on a blog? (I’m not counting “meta” sites like Digg, Slashdot, MeFi, etc., by the way)

    • Entries tend to have many comments.
    • Commenters tend to stick around over time (there aren’t just a lot of one-off commenters on individual entries).
    • Commenters aren’t just “talking” to the blogger, but also to each other.

    So what helps establish and maintain a strong blog community?  Some guesses:

    • Reasonably frequent posts (2+ a week)
    • EASY commenting (e.g., no insane captchas, required registrations, etc.)
    • A fixed topic that fascinates a lot of people (politics, gossip, sex, techie stuff, etc.)
    • Many readers (though, perhaps unsurprisingly, this is clearly neither necessary nor sufficient)
    • Popularity of the blogger in real life (due to career, good looks, large friend base, perceived influence, etc.)
    • Popularity of the blogger online.

    The last item is complex enough to merit its own subitems ;-).  Popular folks online recursively attract more popularity because:

    • Their blogs are linked from many other sites (more traffic, greater perception of “importance”)
    • Commenters (rightly) perceive that posting on their blogs will attract attention to *them* (the commenters).
    • Additionally, commenters (again, often correctly) assume that A-listers may notice them and think more highly of them, link to them, etc.

    Note, by the way, that “compelling, original content” and “engaging writing” don’t seem to correlate with the strength of blog communities.  I have plenty of blogs in my feed list that have amazing content and feature outstanding writing… but are devoid of any measurable sense of community.  Conversely, I’ve seen quite a few blogs (no, not the ones I listed at top!) that tend to offer somewhat stale writing and uncompelling content, yet still feature a thriving community.  I suppose it’s much like the Entertainment world at large, eh?  Popular megab(r)ands rake in the fans and the bucks while many independent artists starve for funds and attention.  But I digress.

    *  *  *

    I do have a somewhat obnoxious theory, though.  I think about 2% of blog readers account for 98% of blog comments.  The LC:  Loquacious Commenterati.  Often un- or independently-employed, quite often geeky (sitting at a computer all day and often into the night). 

    Why does this matter?

    1. Blog communities are likely to be less diverse than one might wish.  My very-smart-and-interesting parents, for instance, do e-mail, send IMs, read newspapers and look at photos online, but I am fairly certain they’ve never commented on a blog.
    2. Blog communities (like any communities, I suppose) can be fickle, both due to selfish reasons (A-lister no longer works for Impressive Company, cute blogger is no longer single) or more extrinsic reasons (commenters get demanding full-time jobs, start getting laid, start having families—though not necessarily all at once!)
    3. Blog communities can pressure bloggers to alter the frequency, topical focus, transparency, monetizeability, and other aspects of their blog, even when such modifications are not necessarily in the bloggers’ interests.

    With all of that said, I must nonetheless insist that I am not attempting to denigrate all LCs (of which, admittedly, I am often one myself).  Many are my kind friends, colleagues I greatly respect, and so on.  But in the aggregate, I still find the seeming-capriciousness of blog communities and LCs to be both fascinating and occasionally disconcerting.

    *  *  *

    So now, in a rather ironic but not-unexpected twist, I welcome your comments below.

    • Why do some blogs boast a thriving community, whereas others are commently-baren?
    • If you’re an LC, what motivates you?  Do you feel that motivates most LCs?
    • Are blog communities and LCs really as fickle as I suggest?  And if so, is that even a bad thing?

  • Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 plus more details of my past and upcoming weeks

    It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and—as always—I have so much to say.  I’ll use my recent and upcoming schedule as a crutch for providing some musings and commentary 😀

    Last week:

    – Monday:  Special Google Event and Hakone Gardens private party.
    Early in the day I got to test my Event Planning mettle.  It all came out okay!  No one was electrocuted.  No one went hungry.  No one fell or was thrown off of large balconies.  Reviews were good, and I wasn’t fired.  In the evening, I joined a friendly group of geeks at a private party at the beautiful Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California.  Free sushi!  Company presentations in the blissfully short form of one haiku each!  Plus prizes, a Futurist presentation, and much more.

    – Tuesday:  The Fifth Annual Google Dance and included “Meet the Engineers” event
    I was responsible for planning this year’s Meet the Engineers event upstairs during the Google Dance, enabling lots of Webmaster’y-type folks and Googlers to chat informally about largely search-focused ideas, questions, and more.  Overall, it seemed to go pretty well, though I certainly got some good feedback to improve the event for next year 🙂 (feel free to add more feedback in the comments below if you’d like!)  And in the general party there were battling robots, lots of cheese, wacky green-screen dancing karaoke, demo’ing and dunking Googlers, and lots and lots (thousands!) of geeks in various stages of buzzed revelry 😀

    – Wednesday:  Search Engine Strategies Conference (continued from Tuesday) and yet more geek parties
    The Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, California is one of the largest events of its kind… four solid days of learning ‘n’ camraderie in the Web Marketing / Search Engine Optimization space, with four evenings of networking, drinking, and playful debauchery.  My colleagues sumo wrestling!  Geeks Gone Wild on the dance floor!  And, on a serious but equally important note, it was a great chance for me to meet some fascinating heavyweights in the industry and for me to do my best representing Google… answering questions, gathering thoughtful bits of feedback, and happily putting names with faces (“Ah, you’re THAT blogger…”).

    – Thursday:  My first speaking engagement on behalf of Google!
    My boss, Matt Cutts, is one of the most articulate and likeable fellows in the search engine realm.  When he speaks, people listen!  When I speak… well, I really hadn’t ever publicly spoken on behalf of Google before, so as you can imagine, I was a bit apprehensive and also quite excited.  Making matters even more interesting was the fact that all of my fellow panelists (from Yahoo, MSN, and Ask) came prepared with Powerpoint presentations and I came prepared with… nothing.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  I had spent quite a bit of time thinking about the subject at hand (how Google looks at links on the Web) and was pretty confident about my ability to answer questions… but I certainly hadn’t thought of making an opening statement.  It was a “Q&A” session, after all!

    Well, luckily, during the few minutes of the others’ presentations, I managed to quickly shuffle a reasonably organized selection of thoughts into my head and then out of my mouth in a basically impromptu four minute speech.  I even squeezed in a bit of geek humor, specifically a reference to Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” book… which was, to my pleasure and relief, pretty well-received (yay, fellow geeks with good taste in literature!).  I was asked some great questions and had answers for all but one of them, for which I admitted “I don’t know.”

    Overall, it was an enjoyable and worthwhile experience, and I look forward to speaking at another industry event.

    *  *  *

    I spent more of Friday and Saturday doing just laid back things… catching up with some friends, and catching up on sleep.  And for this week…

    – Sunday:  10 year anniversary of Lindy in the Park!
    If you live in the Bay Area and you haven’t yet been to this event, you’re missing out.  And—since it happens every week (well, in general; not the 10 year anniversary, obviously)— it’s not too late for you to get your hiney over there and have some good, energetic, sunshiney, family-friendly, no-date-needed fun!  From around 11am to 2pm each week, the DJs spin a variety of swing and definitely-not-swing-but-still-danceable music for folks to swing dance to, and there’s a free 30 minute lesson at noon!  Today there were over 250 people dancing away, smiling, meeting up with old friends and making new ones.  I guiltily don’t make it to LitP as often as I’d like, but I always have fun when I do, so I highly recommend y’all stopping by if you’re able to—whether you’re a dancer (yet) or not! 😀

    – Monday:  Brave Combo and The Mad Maggies, performing at The Elbo Room in San Francisco
    I’m not yet familiar with The Mad Maggies, but I *LOVE* Brave Combo!  They’ve been around forever and recorded quite a diverse bunch of music, but what it all has in common is this:  a sense of playfulness, strong musicianship, and a giddy enthusiasm and often silliness that is immensely likeable.  Polkas and more polkas, funky twists on classical pieces, bright horns and earthy voices.  I can’t wait to see these guys live! (and I’m curious to check out The Elbo Room. too, which is just a couple of miles from my apartment).

    – Tuesday:  A chamber music performance at Google
    We have a very nice grand piano at the Googleplex, and so I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that there are relatively informal concerts (featuring my fellow Googlers!) on a semi-regular basis here.  I’m looking forward to unwinding to some good live classical music at the end of the work day… without having to worry about parking, ticket fees, or dressing up :-D.

    – Wednesday:  A dance performance—Riptide—featuring my friend Tiffany B (warning: crappy Website.  You may want to navigate from here.)
    I’ve known and done swing dancing with Tiffany for years, but I’ve embarrassingly not made it to one of her many fine professional performances yet.  This coming Wednesday marks the first time I’ll see her on stage… finally!  And—fellow Bay Area people—there are still tickets left!  Go, go, go!

    – Thursday:  Either collapsing early to bed or attending the amazing 9:20 Special weekly swing dance
    In particular, though, I can’t wait to go to this the *next* Thursday, when there’ll be music performed by the lively and talented Lavay Smith and her full band!

    – Friday:  The 5th anniversary of Friday Night Waltz
    Though I’ll always be a swing dancer deep down, there’s something quite magical and exhilirating about spinning around the floor with various waltzes and partners.  The Friday Night Waltz event (held primarily in Palo Alto and Alameda… most recently, with trial (formal!) evenings in San Francisco) is a wonderful mix of accessible lessons with great teachers, a very friendly crowd, and free refreshing refreshments (fresh fruit, candies, etc.)  Interestingly enough, only about 60-70% of the songs are waltzes; the rest are an ecclectic mix of swing tunes, polkas, Latin numbers, and other danceable songs.  Like with the other dance events I’ve mentioned above, there’s no partner required (everyone dances with everyone else, and folks rotate regularly in class).

    *  *  *

    Whew!  Now you can understand why I haven’t had much time to be blogging.  It’s all I can do to be getting enough sleep and occasionally calling my family and friends to let ‘em know I’m alive 😀

    Still, yes, I know I have a few thousand long-overdue Australia and Singapore photos to post, more (and more interesting :-P) stories to tell, and so on.  I’ll see what I can do to squeeze that stuff in soon!

  • Trying out online database services (see my movie list!)

    Microsoft Access is for masochists.  It’s expensive, a pain to learn, and—frankly—quite overkill for nearly any home application.

    So, for too long, folks like myself have kept lists in Excel.  This works… sort of.  But it’s a pain to share, and it lacks a lot of the usefully-database’y features that make working with data multidimensionally both useful and fun.

    For instance, I’m trying to keep track of where I’ve traveled around the world, what sets of pictures I’ve taken, where those pictures reside (online, in photo albums, etc.), who I have yet to share them with, and so on.  I *could* do lots of messy filtering and sorting on Excel as I try to handle related action items, but a database (featuring multiple persistent views) would be so much easier!

    Well… dabbledb and Zoho Creator to the rescue!  Below I’ll talk about my initial experiences using both services, some advantages I perceive in each, and I’ll also demo my first “app”—a filterable/sortable list of movies I’ve seen and want to see (all 217 of them so far!)

    Clearly, there are lots of professional uses for databases.  But here are a few hobbyist uses I’ve thought of off the top of my head:
    – Managing and showing off stamp / comic book / music / other collections
    – Dealing with rosters (Little League, Church members, volunteer list, etc.)
    – Working with a personal or team todo list.

    *  *  *

    Zoho Creator (“ZC”) is, at least for now, free.  Dabbledb (“ddb”) offers a 30 day free trial, and various plans after that starting at $10/month.

    Getting started on either service is a snap.  You can easily import your existing data just by copying the cells from Excel and pasting one big block into a text box in either service.  Both of them handled this data quite smartly!

    Some other things both services have in common:
    – Very passionate developers who regularly participate in discussions online about their services.
    – The ability for users to put views and even forms on other Web sites.
    – Active user forums.
    – Helpful getting-started / overview videos

    Some advantages specific to ZC:
    – A unique and seemingly powerful scripting language
    – Custom error messages and validation
    – Multi-select-list fields.
    – The ability to put an “active” view into another Web page

    Some advantages specific to ddb:
    – It’s fast!
    – Handy grouping function
    – Superior ease of data entry
    – More choices of field types
    – Multidimensionality (a bit hard to explain… but you can define relationships between tables)

    I’ve included my movie database (in ZC) as a sample below.  Have fun searching, filtering, sorting… and don’t worry, it’s read-only, so you can’t hurt anything! 😀

  • Being under the microscope

    I’ve been at Google about four months, and it’s been a hell of a great ride so far.  I really need to write more about this later, but in a nutshell… my colleagues rock, the flexible and trusting environment is awesome, and I’m very excited about what I’m working on.

    However, I do have to admit to sometimes being a bit freaked out :o.

    I spend a good chunk of my morning reading relevant industry news and also thoughtful blogs from Webmasters and others all around the world.  I glean a lot of great ideas (and yes, sometimes also bugs) that I share with colleagues here at Google. 

    A few days ago, I came across a pretty untraditional note, and I thought, hey… wouldn’t it be kinda funny if I actually went ahead and mailed Al a Tylenol packet?  So I did.  I figured he’d get a chuckle, maybe share it with some friends or even post a quick update on his blog.

    I had no idea that something this silly would capture this much attention!

    Anyway, yeah, this little mailing was indeed sent on a whim from a random Googler (me!), and though I’m a bit shocked by the response, I’m glad that my letter ended up entertaining not only Al, but also lots of other people.

    Along with many others here at Google, I’m working on some very cool projects dealing with Webmaster communications.  But aside from all of that official stuff, I’m reminded that it’s clearly the little things now and then that give a human face to this company.  Not to mention that when one of us Googlers decides to be a bit wacky, it’s far from a private moment 😛

  • Super-speedy-search tip for Firefoxers! (search keywords)

    I love RottenTomatoes.com.  It’s one of the most useful and addictive movie sites I’ve found, right along with IMDB.com.  Now I can look up movies on either database in a snap by using a surprisingly little-known Firefox feature that lets you assign a keyword of your choice to any search on any site.

    I’ve set up my browser so that I can type “rt [moviename]” or “imdb [moviename]” in my Firefox addressbar and be whisked right to that movie’s page in RottenTomatoes or IMDB respectively.

    It’s easy to do!  Just go to your favorite site (movie or otherwise) in Firefox and right-click on a search bar on the page (e.g., where you’d normally enter in a movie to look up) and then select “Add a Keyword for this Search.”  You’ll then see something like this:

    Enter in any title you want in the first box (that’s what’ll show up in your bookmarks), choose a short but easy to remember keyword, and the URL should be filled in automatically for you.

    From then on, you can enter in stuff like “rt an inconvenient truth” (great movie, btw!) directly into your Firefox addressbar and save yourself the hassle of navigating to the RT homepage, then finding the search box, etc.

    * * *

    But what if you’d like to make use of such a handy feature at home and work (or on your personal desktop and laptop) and don’t want to set up such shortcuts multiple times?

    Google Browser Sync to the rescue! (insert standard disclaimer here… I work for Google, I don’t work on this particular product, I’m not paid to write this, yadda yadda yadda). It’s a super-nifty way of having your bookmarks, cookies, and other stuff (you choose!) automatically synchronized across all your computers. And yes, privacy-keen geeks, you can opt to have all of this stuff encrypted, too :-D. The downside: This extension causes my Firefox to load more slowly (sometimes taking 10-15 seconds), but I’m guessing that’s because I have a crapload of settings, extensions, bookmarks, etc. It’s still well worth the initial load-wait for me.

    * * *

    Anyway, I hope you find these tips helpful, and feel free to share any of your own Firefox tips below! 😀