Video: Bubble 2.0 - Here Comes Another Bubble
This is a very funny video about the rise and fall of fortunes of the typical silicon valley .com set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” Well worth watching and totally work safe.
The Machine is Us
All I can say is “wow!” This short YouTube video is both an engaging and succinct history of the way the Internet is transforming human communication and a powerful argument that this transformation will ultimately radically alter humanity itself. Amazing.
SLeek is SLick! Turns Second Life to MUD!
As soon as I heard about SLeek I knew I’d find it useful. Notice I said useful, not appealing. Using the official Second Life client is a wonderful and unique experience and SLeek certainly can’t match it. What it can do though is bring a lot of the utility of Second Life to computers otherwise unable to run the official Second Life client. Even if you’ve got a fairly powerful system, running Second Life on a secondary display while trying to do anything else system intensive is likely to result in unacceptable performance all around. On these occasions SLeek appears to offer what we never knew we needed: a relatively light-weight SL chat client that provides additional functionality like the ability to move throughout the metaverse, IM friends or chat with those around you, and generally interact with the grid as if it were a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD). Definitely worth a look if you’re technologically adventurous and not terribly risk averse. My best advice? Use an alt if possible if you decide to give SLeek a try and avoid the inventory menu as if your inventory depended on it…it probably does!
Blogress!
I’ve made some good progress so far on the technology side of the blog.
- Fixed a problem with this theme that caused it to fail at very high resolutions.
- Implemented FeedWordPress syndication which allows me to syndicate content selectively based on author or post tag. This will be used in a super secret skunk works project known only by its proposed URL: genderista.org. :-P
- Implemented the Twitter Tools plug-in so that a daily digest of my tweets will get posted which makes tweeting cooler. It also will send out a tweet every time you post a blog entry. How cool!
- Implemented WordPress Mobile Edition which strips rich formatting from the blog so it displays nicely on mobile displays.
- Implemented Akismet filtering to eliminate comment spam
There’s still a bunch to do though:
- Post pictures from mobile phone to blog
- Integrate with del.icio.us
- Integrate with feedburner
- Investigate integrating with facebook
- Add XFN and additional links back to the footer
- Integrate with BlogHUD in Second Life
- SMS me whenever a comment is posted
- Setup special mobile phone email account
- Integrate AdSense just because
- Enable post via email
- Two-way comment notification
- Embed a chat client
- Link to my public google calendar, resume, picasaweb albums, etc…
- ACTUALLY POST NEW BLOG ENTRIES! :-)
Lots to do but lots of fun! :-) I am SUCH a GEEK!
Webcast Music Legally With Mercora Radio 2.0
There are actually two parts to this story. If you are simply interested in “music discovery” Mercora’s Radio 2.0 web-site is the place to go. Once there you can search for music by artist, genre, or DJ and legally listen to digital quality streams for free. There’s a surprising amount of good music there so it’s well worth a visit. What’s more, to listen to music in your browser there is no need to download any plugins, extensions, or other client software. Using the power of so-called web 2.0 technologies (thus the 2.0 moniker) Mercora’s broadcasts are streamed to your IE or Firefox browser (shame on you if you still use IE, by the way) without the need for additional software.
If, however, you are interested in exploring your “inner DJ” head on over to Mercora’s web-site and download their IMRadio client. Once installed you can legally share your music with listeners worldwide free of charge. That’s a pretty neat trick given the RIAA’s history of antipathy toward traditional p2p music sharing.
So how does Mercora perform the fancy footwork necessary to liberate users to share their music over the Internet free of charge? Well, because the music you listen to on Mercora is broadcast rather than downloaded as per the old Napster model and also because Mercora pays the fees associated with each broadcast. Very nice of them although I suspect they make a bit of money from banner ads and will likely ad the option to purchase music in the future. Just a hunch…
As cool as Mercora is it’s not without it’s problems. Mercora Radio 2.0 is officially “alpha” quality software so, as they say, buyer beware. Also, it’s frustrating that there is little in the way of documentation to explain to DJ wannabee how to set up her broadcast. Your best bet at this point is to choose the “My Groups” option within the IMRadio client and select the “MERCORA” group. This will reveal an online forum where you can ask questions and read previously posted answers. This is a useful tool but its marred by the lack of a search feature. As you can see, although the system technically works the Mercora developers have a bit more work to do before its ready for prime time.
That said, if you’ve struggled with setting up an icecast or shoutcast server, cringed at the thought of paying a third-party service for the right to share your music with others, or are tired of taking your chances with the RIAA’s lawyers Mercora is definitely worth the effort.
The Real Skinny on Google’s Book Search
(Just a quick FYI to international visitors: To the best of my knowledge, libraries in the U.S. do not send money to publishers based on the lending of books.)
Before getting your panties all in a bunch over Google’s alleged copyright infringement please go read Google’s FAQ on their print service before discussing this issue further. Here’s a place to start:
http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html
Here’s a quick summary:
There are three types of results you will get using Google’s book search:
NO VIEW
If you don’t want your book to appear in any Google search (including the limited snippet view) you can opt-out of their book search program.
SNIPPET VIEW
If no arrangement has been made by Google with the book’s publisher or copyright owner then all you will get is a snippet (approximately one sentence) showing the search term in context.
PAGE VIEW
If an arrangement has been made by Google with the book’s publisher or copyright owner then sample pages of the book, showing the search term in context, will be shown.
FULL BOOK VIEW
If a book’s copyright has expired or an arrangement has been made by Google with the book’s publisher then the entire book will be available on-line.
This service will be extremely valuable to both researchers and publishers and authors as it will link directly to on-line bookstores to drive sales and make onerous card catalogs a thing of the past. It will also allow people to quickly discover out-of-print works and perhaps indicate to publishers when a book has enough demand to make reprinting financially beneficial. Also, with Print-On-Demand now available it’s not hard to imagine out-of-print books being available to those who really want a copy with no need for the publisher to print and store inventory.
I have yet to see a real-life example of an exploit that will patch together a whole book from what little Google reveals based on a search. The result would be very low quality in terms of DPI in any case unless the end result were OCR processed back to text and reformatted as a PDF or text file. The same thing could be done of course with good old-fashioned print books using a book scanner and most (if not all) e-book formats with “digital rights management” (DRM) protection have already been hacked.
More generally, one should consider that progress brings about change and change can be disruptive even if it is ultimately a good thing. Although the Internet brings with it new problems like virii, hackers, spyware, and the like I doubt most people would want to do without it. There has always been a need to adapt and in a technological era of ever increasing change…well, you get the picture.
Many scientists already see nano-fabrication bringing to the world of “real goods” the same benefits and perils we see in the realm of information technology. This is still a few decades away so we’ve got some breathing room before that issue hits us. :-)
Formatting Tips for Project Gutenberg Submissions
So you say you want to help Project Gutenberg by working on a book who’s copyright has expired? Great! You probably already know the basic steps:
1. Perform a copyright search
2. OCR the book
3. Correct the OCR text
4. Upload the e-text and bask in the praise of your like-minded peers!
Well, actually there’s another step squeezed in between correcting the OCR text and uploading the e-text: Format the text according to Project Gutenberg’s rules.
Unfortunately, you have to read the FAQ to figure out exactly what rules Project Gutenberg expects you to follow. Ouch! Although I recommend you still read the FAQ here are a few of the more important rules you’ll need to follow:
Chapter Headings
For a standard novel, you can choose either four blank lines before the chapter heading and two lines after, or three lines before and one line after. Choose one and be consistent.
Line Lengths
You should use hard line breaks (cr/lf) to word wrap all text at 70 characters. A good text editor that can do this is Notetab Light. (Surprisingly, neither JEdit or EditPad Pro could perform this simple task.)
Em-Dash
Use two hyphens — for each em-dash.
En-dash
Use one hyphen - for each en-dash.
Indents
Do not use indents at the start of paragraphs. If you need to indent use spaces, not tab characters.
CR/LFs
Use them.
ASCII
Use it.
Words Edited Out
Use three em-dashs —— to indicate a word that was edited out.
End-Of-Line Hyphens
Remove them.
Italics
Bound words with underscore _ characters to indicate it should be italicized.
Ellipses
Leave one space before and after each dot. –> . . .
If I’ve left anything out drop me a line and I’ll add it to the list.
A simple hack to use Visual Studio from Linux
So you want to run Linux on your system and not have to boot into Windows to use Visual Studio? No problem! There’s a catch, of course, as usual: You’ll have to use a Linux Terminal Server Client.
This trick will only work if you are connecting via VPN to your work computer or if you have a Windows development system you can connect to on your home network. Since I have a separate development system running Windows I can just connect to it via RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) from my laptop which is currently running Ubuntu 5.10. After spending a lot of time trying to get MonoDevelop and Visual Studio to play nice together I think I’ve hit upon the best solution to my needs but your mileage may vary. Over my wireless network RDP performs very well and the Terminal Server Client software is built into the standard Ubuntu install. Good stuff.
Like I said, this is not a perfect solution; it’s just a simple hack that might work for you.
The Golden Age of Radio is Back
That’s right folks, the Golden Age of radio is back! Screw the man and listen to these great, free podcasts:
This Week in Tech
Hmm, that name sounds familiar. You’ll hear a lot of the old TechTV crew on this show along with PC Magazine’s John Dvorak. The tech news is very insightful, very current, and very entertaining. If you like computer industry “inside baseball” tune in and get your fill! There are even some good stock tips dropped here from time to time!
Are We Alone?
Seth Shostak hosts a great podcast sponsored by SETI. You’ll hear informative interviews with the leading scientists responsible for the kind of science news that often makes the front page of slashdot. If it’s made the geek news circuit check here and a few weeks later they’ll have the relevant researchers
As I discover new podcasts I’ll link them here but these are really good and you really should listen to their podcast archives. Great stuff. If you work from home these guys will help keep you company!