Author: John Roberts

I’m ages behind in noting my reading and movies (pending: 11 books, 2 films), but before we head out to catch a Memorial Day parade in the Presidio, worth capturing some links in un-related paragraphs.

Obama’s Wesleyan commencement speech, via Jim Fallows.

Richard Feyman and the Connection Machine is an essay I plan to read, since I’ve read some Feynman and more about Hillis’ efforts at large-scale computing.

Future purchase: a Reelight, which I learned about from Cool Tools.

Video and accompanying New Yorker story of being trapped in an elevator. Saddest part is how this incident derailed the guy’s whole life, even though his health wasn’t threatened. Some nice history of elevators included.

Sea Forts are one more legacy of World War II. Very Neal Stephenson-ish.

While I look forward to the new Indiana Jones film (reviews be damned!), I can read “The original Indiana Jones: Otto Rahn and the temple of doom.

Why startups fail is hardly a new topic, but I’m interested all the same. Calacanis, whom I rarely read, emphasizes “the start.” As in, the finish is most important, but if you don’t start, you’ll never finish.

Far From Always Being Right, the Customer Is on Hold gently probes the surface of how bad customer service drives us crazy. Instead of talking about the weather, we find common cause with strangers in stories of bad service.

I’m a sucker for development stories, even for products like Tape Deck, which I’ll never download/buy/use.

Someone needs to tell the author of Times (via), the new Mac OS X newsreader application, about how to tell the story of his application where the user benefit comes first. Some examples where the user isn’t being considered.

“Times uses many advanced OS X technologies, like Core Animation…” (Why do I care what technologies you use? What experience do you deliver?)
“While Times is brand new, it is not shy on features. Nearly everything you’d expect in a newsreader is here, from notification of new articles to many other customizable options.” (Ummm… why not just list the features? Not because I want a feature checkbox front and center, but the category of newsreader isn’t widely understood, and not all would agree on expectations.)
On a related note, if you have “nearly everything,” I’m wondering what is missing.
I have to wonder what the New York Times thinks about the name of the application, given its news focus? From when I first looked a few weeks ago, I think the font choice has switched to something neutral — probably related.
I have not tried this application. I care about the category, so was interested in the news of its release, but wasn’t even interested in trying it from this intro experience. Here’s a review I have yet to read (but will).

Visible Borders in Designs seems niche, but maybe I’ll read the whole thing later.

Got into a discussion about how genders see colors differently. Not sure if these are definitive, but interesting: Do women perceive color differently from men? and The Meaning of Color for Gender.

People wonder whether social network advertising will prove as lucrative as the search ads which have driven Google to its current throne. I don’t have the answer.

But this morning I saw an ad on Facebook that was relevant and interesting to me, and I clicked on it. It was a text ad, “Core Perform C2 Seat: The first stability-adjustable seat for the Concept2 erg. Strengthened core muscles, improved rowing efficiency, and faster boats!” View the screenshot:

I don’t actually own a Concept2 erg, but I’ve spent plenty of time on earlier models. I won’t be purchasing the Core Perform, but glad to know it exists. I assume my mention of rowing in my Facebook profile was enough to connect the dots. Not remarkable targeting, but interesting all the same.

Only caveat to the “success” of this ad? I was only visiting Facebook to accept a friend request. The site isn’t part of my daily fabric.

Technical note: Facebook uses Javascript to obscure the (incredibly long) tracking URL and display the actual destination URL (http://www.coreperform.com/product.php). That’s a nice touch. It gives me confidence to know the actual destination URL. Of course, I checked the source, and saw the actual click URL, but few would bother. I assume Google has tested this display URL replacement technique, and decided it’s not worth the extra page load time…yet.

Two weeks ago in Phoenix, we went to see The Counterfeiters. Winning the Oscar for best foreign language film does help bring a movie some attention, and some needed distribution.

My German is non-existent, so when the film started with the subtitles half off the screen, annoyance started to rise. But the projection corrected, and the film took shape. You never forget the Holocaust setting, but you are compelled to follow the people. The story of Nazi counterfeiting (Operation Bernhard) is new to me, and the film makes me wonder just how was true, since it was “based on a true story.” Either way, the moral ambivalence of the lead concentration camp counterfeiter — himself originally a criminal — helps focus the story. In a world soaked in atrocity, Adolf Burger’s survival instinct isn’t pretty, but his choices are understandable.

79 from Metacritic.

A month ago, Vin sent me a box full of books, including several Robert Sawyer novels. I’ve enjoyed earlier reads, and Flashforward was a quick romp.

Courtesy of a supercollider experiment, the world gets a glimpse of its future 21 years out. Sawyer takes a swing at the mundane (patent office is overwhelmed with applications based on these glimpses) and the existential (can you change the future you foresaw, including your own murder?). Not all equally compelling threads, but the core premise is entertaining.

Pirillo Starts Large Scale Community CMS Project is TechCrunch coverage of Chris Pirillo’s announcement of Gnomepal. I’m trying to think of a company where its content management system is a sustainable competitive advantage. I’ve been involved in the building (and rebuilding) of several, and it’s hard to imagine a scenario where you wouldn’t start with one of the open-source projects first.

A look at the first Web server at CERN is a Scoble video I want to watch because I enjoyed this book about the CERN origins of the web.

Dan Bricklin video about WikiCalc is on my list simply because I enjoy his continued evolution as a curious mind in this industry.

Mary Meader led an interesting life. (via) The opening graph of her obituary in the NYTimes:

Mary Meader, who as a spunky new bride in the 1930s took off on a 35,000-mile journey to advance geographic knowledge by making unprecedented aerial photographs of South America and Africa, died Sunday in Kalamazoo, Mich. She was 91.

History in a food fight. Worth a look.

I watched the CampfireOne videos introducing Google App Engine, and read a few reviews/reactions. Many folks I respect pointed to this writeup as the most useful. It’s alright if you’re only going to read one.

My friends Vin and Chris found time for favorite10 this year. f10 is for music lovers who are constantly on the lookout for new music. Honestly, I am not the target audience. Hard to remember the last time I looked for new music, whether online or off. But Vin was kind enough to invite me to the private beta, and now it’s available for everyone. If you believe in vinyl and the coherence of the album in a singles world, then you care enough about music to use f10. Give it a look.

Khoi Vinh watches another generation fall under Tintin’s spell. Been there, and also waiting for the movie. Some of the language in these comic albums isn’t PC anymore (e.g., “dirty gypsies”), but Tintin is never one to stand for injustice.

Google News finally answers some of publishers’ questions, and promises more information in the future. Wow…I spent a fair bit of time trying to deconstruct this for News.com 3-4 years ago.

Academic PDF, which I have not yet read, but plan to: “The User Experience of Software-as-a-Service Applications” (link is to HTML abstract)

Jon Udell goes LazyWeb with “Parsing human-written date and time information, and the commenters come through, especially with DateJS.com. Not the only solution, though. I’d never heard of GATE, but looks useful. I’ve used solid implementations of this type of parsing at I Want Sandy, 30boxes.com and a few other places. Wonder how many rolled their own, or started with DateJS, GATE or similar utilities, and built from there?

Ken Norton makes his Scoble video debut in Google Announces Offline Docs. Ken, good job, but the laptop in hand was a bit tough. And now we know where this tweet came from.

During the last year or so I was at CNET, I pinged the legal team a few times about a corporate policy on blogging by employees. Didn’t happen while I was there. I realize it’s not so simple when you’re a media company — but it didn’t have to be that hard, either. So I noted the BBC’s Guidance –
Personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites, including the section on blogging. Good for them: more media organizations should follow this lead.

Speaking of British media companies, the Guardian impressed me in two ways last week. First, by creating the position of head of the Guardian’s development network with the goal of “offer[ing] data and tools for external developers.” Second, by hiring
Matt McAlister to inaugurate the role. Good luck and have fun.

Brief notes on Charlene Li’s 2008 SXSW presentation, “Social Strategies For Revolutionaries.”

Stefanie Olsen talks with John Battelle a couple of weeks ago. For when you can’t keep up with his blog, a distillation of some of the topics he covers and thinks about for FM.

I know storage isn’t free, and photos add up, but still surprised to get an email from BrightRoom telling me it’s the last chance to order some race pictures. I’ve bought a few before… wouldn’t you at least keep shots of customers, even if you dump all the other finish line photos? Of course, the email is remarkably promotional, and short on details: “Your Run Wild 5k/10k photos are going into retirement: SALE details below!” Will the photos disappear, or will you simply charge me more in the future to “retrieve” them? If you’re keeping them at all, then retrieval is almost without cost, so this feels like forced urgency. And I’m not interested or impressed.

I’ve set up my FriendFeed, but not using it yet. Definitely finding Twitter more and more interesting, and I’m now including my tweets on clock, on the home page.

Watched only one of Barry Pilling’s videos so far, but worth a link and a look.

2005 article someone (Ken?) recently reminded me about: “Wheels and Deals in Silicon Valley” I did my first racing in January, at the Early Bird, and I’m putting in some miles now in preparation for a mid-May century. Been mostly solo, though…guess I’m missing out on the deals! 🙂 Any San Francisco-based riders reading?

My sister Mary sits in with The Loose Marbles, a New Orleans street band. That’s her on the accordion, on the right. Original location, if the embed causes any problems.

More about the Loose Marbles in The New Yorker from May 2007.

I found the final book of the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Amber Spyglass, a bit loose. No untidy loose ends, but Philip Pullman uses more words to describe less action as the climax approaches. I do appreciate the bittersweet ending, though. You don’t get to save the world and live happily ever after. Think of Frodo at the end of The Lord of the Rings. Even in victory, something may be lost.

I’m an optimist, generally, but a bit of pathos never hurts.