February 15, 2003
Google buys Blogger maker Pyra
Via Dan Gillmor:
Google, which runs the Web's premier search site, has purchased Pyra Labs, a San Francisco company that created some of the earliest technology for writing weblogs, the increasingly popular personal and opinion journals.
And, later on:
Developers of blogging software have been finding user-friendly ways to help readers of weblogs and other information find and collect material from a variety of sites. It's in this arena that the Google-Pyra deal may have the most implications. More than most Web companies, Google has grasped the distributed nature of the online world, and has seen that the real power of cyberspace is in what we create collectively. We are beginning to see that power brought to bear.
Cool. Go Google!
OS X Screen Capture: SnapzProX
I went looking for a good Mac OS X screen/window capture utility and came across SnapzProX. Very cool stuff. Highly recommended if you don't mind spending the cash.
There are some cool tips on their web site that link to the on-line discussion forums. Excellent. If I was bored, I'd try capturing images from DVD.
Not Scripting News
When's the last time that the content on Scripting News had anything to do wtih scripting?
Yeah, once in a while you'll read about XML-RPC or something related, but that's maybe 10% of the time. Is it a case of misleading branding? If Dave renamed it "Dave's weblog" wouldn't anyone care?
I don't know why I just thought of it. I was scanning headines in NetNewsWire and thouht to myself "What does any of that have to do with scripting." And through the magic of MovableType, you now get to wonder about it too. :-)
Anyway, I'm not saying that Dave should change the name, I'm just remarking on how it's misleading if you bother to think about it.
Coffee!
Holy crap!
I had a cup of Coffee this morning because I got up rather early but was feeling especially sluggish. It's my first cup of the year. It really did the trick.
I really understand how some folks quickly grow dependant upon it for their "morning jolt." I'm just glad I won't be one of them. (I drink maybe 6 cups per year.)
February 13, 2003
Is the Sun setting?
Cheap Intel and AMD hardware running Linux is going to kill Sun unless the company does something so stop it, which they aren't.
Funny. I've been saying that for a few years now. I don't know how blind Sun can be, but they're really bad about seeing the writing on the wall. It's in neon 10-foot tall letters for god's sake!
I'm beginning to think that the LX50 I reviewed last year was less a sign of Sun finally getting it and more a last ditch attempt by the remaining Cobalt folks to keep Sun relevant.
Not Cyber
Why is the media still using "cyber" in front of things? I heard a snipit on TV about a story on the news about police using "cyber technology" to track down crime.
What the heck is "cyber technology"? They showed a picture of an IBM Thinkpad with some web site on it? That is cyber technology?
Okay.
What is not cyber technology?
There. Enough of my bitching for a little while.
February 12, 2003
My input to output ratio
So here's something I've been wondering about.
I go through cycles of productivity like most hackers do. Some days I get a lot done while others are mostly wasted. Some of my productive days involve a lot of output like e-mail, code, discussion, debugging, and so on. Other times it's a lof of input: reading, listening, etc. Once in while I manage to have a day in which the two seem to balance out and I go home feeling like I've accomplished three weeks wort of work.
Is it just me? Or does this happen to other people too? Is that balance a necessary part of being productive?
February 11, 2003
Geek Valentine Candy
Heh. I love it.
Thanks to the ACME Heartmaker you can put any (short) message you want on a candy heart. And if you're really bored, you can string a whole bunch of them together to make a long message like this.
Thanks to Geodog for the pointer.
I'm sure that some of you will come up with much more amusing stuff than I.
A boyfriend recommendation site?
Geodog points to an on-line service where women can rate and recommend guys they know. It's called greatboyfriends.com.
Heh. There's even an "I'm a Guy" button for people like me to click. It leads to a form that asks for the e-mail addresses of my female friends so I can e-mail them to solicit a recommendation.
I think I'll pass. But I'm still rather amused.
DBD::google
This is too cool. A DBD::google module on CPAN:
DBD::google allows you to use Google as a datasource; google can be queried using SQL SELECT statements, and iterated over using standard DBI conventions.
I've been wanting an SQL interface to Google for so long. :-)
Innovation Contest
One of my co-workers, JR, remarks on an innovation contest at work. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who wasn't sure what to make of the announcement.
The initial announcement sounded a bit fishy for several reasons. I wish I could post it here to see how others interpret it. Anyway, it contained just about all the information you'd expect: the goal, rules, timeline, and so on. But it left out one key piece of information. If I come up with Yahoo's next great idea, I'll win the prize (a strero). But will I get what really matters: the time and authority to work on taking that idea and turning it into reality?
The contest announcement never said. It didn't mention the fate of the winning idea.
So I e-mailed the vice president who announced the contest and asked: "Does the winner get any assurance that they'll be given the necessary time and resources to help build and deliver on their innovative idea?"
I got a response. He started off, predictibly, with "that's a great question" and then went on to not answer it. Yes, he said stuff, but he didn't say "yes" or "no." It was a yes or no question.
Sigh.
What's worse is that this contest does little to address the real problems that I wrote about earlier.
I worry that the self-appointed judges of this contest wouldn't know innovation if it bit them on the ass. They're doing nothing to address the real barriers to innovation in our workplace.
February 09, 2003
Browser or Aggregator? Some numbers.
I got to wondering about browsers vs. aggregators coming to my blog. I'm going to assume that anyone who hits http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/ is a browser and anyone who hits http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/index.rdf is an aggregator. It's simple and I have the data for a more detailed analysis, but that's not the point.
So, in the last 24 hours, /blog/ has had 1,012 hits while /blog/index.rdf has had 3,170. I know from past checks that I have roughly 240 unique visitors to /blog/index.rdf each day, so that number makes sense. But the surprisingly high number of visitors to my blog home page (as opposed to individual posts, which is what most aggregator users seem to hit) makes me wonder.
I just always figured that most folks used aggregators. But apparently most folks who read my blog use their browser. I suspect that the folks who read lots of blgos (20 or more?) are all using aggregators whilte the others just have a link to me on their personal "start page" so they hit it a few times each day.
Someday I'll break the numbers down with some heuristics to try and get a clearer picture.
What I'm really wondering is this: Is my blog unusual in this repsect? Or to most folks see this? I've not seen it discussed much, so it's hard to really know.
Flying pictures posted
So I finally got around to actually using my camera at the airport and in the air. The pictures are on-line here. And you can read the brief entry about today's flight in my flying blog.
Fight the Power
On the topic of Clay's Power Laws essay, Burningbird responds:
I started out linking primarily to the more well known webloggers. However, over time, I found other weblogs and webloggers who I tended to read more and more, and appreciate more than the so-called elite webloggers. Most of these people I met in my comments, and in comments on other weblogs. As I added more of these people to my blogroll, and linked to them in my postings, I tended to link to the elite bloggers less and less because I found that I just didn't read them as much. In other words, as my experience level increased in weblogging, my reliance on linking to a set group of elite bloggers decreased.
All I can say is, "Me Too!"