Category: Uncategorized

So, nine and one-half months later, my radioShark arrives from Griffin Technology. That time period… ring any bells?

Anyway, my original order was just before Christmas last year. It was a pre-order, with a “shipping soon” promise. In January, at Macworld, the promise was “end of February” delivery. I let it go for a while, but at the beginning of September, I sent an exasperated email to Griffin, asking if they were ever going to ship this product. I had ordered a PowerMate at the same time, but it was held to save shipping costs, so I was waiting on both. On September 2, I was told that at the Paris Expo Griffin had announced a shipping date for the first time, and the product would be available in two weeks. Felt like being told the check was in the mail, but I wanted to believe them, since I think they have a host of innovative niche products. Both the radioShark and the PowerMate are fun accessories, nothing more (so far).

Last week, I phoned Griffin and left a voicemail, and got a voicemail back letting me know that I was near the top of the list. Today, the package arrived, and the wait comes to an end.

So, what do I think?

Install was smooth and easy: install software, plug in antenna to USB port. Easy, easy, easy. I’m listening, on a slight delay, to the Giants-Padres game down in San Diego, and it’s all easy. In constrast with TiVo, there is no obvious “skip ahead” button. Instead, there is a fast-forward… which makes sense. However, audio isn’t as easy to decipher at the default skip of 10 seconds, but switching to 5 seconds in the Preferences menu is pretty good. I’m not a big commercial radio listener, so I don’t know if ads are a consistent enough length to skip that way. But I’m not really focused on the ad skipping, and more the scheduling aspect. Therefore, what’s missing is a guide to San Francisco radio, integrated into the application. No “Season Pass” for This American Life, for instance, or Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me. Hmmmm. I expect there are alternatives, and those two shows, for instance, are easy to find.

The CPU on this 400Mhz G4 PowerMac is pegged right now, though, between the radioShark and Radio Userland (no relation, but still miserable performance). Slow enough that I can type faster than the words appear here. Ouch. Peek-a-Boo shows that it’s radioSharkServer eating the extra cycles because I’m recording right now.

Before the end of October (to pick an arbitrary deadline), I really want to switch the blog over to WordPress. That will help. Of course, by then, the new iMac G5 wil be here, so CPU will no longer be an issue!

It’s up to Business 2.0 to decide if they want to put stories behind registration or subscription. However, the Time Inc. webmaster who has the sense of humor (?) to call their subscription server curtain.timeinc.net should be admonished. Perhaps he or she thought it would soften the “blow” to call a wall a curtain, but let’s be honest here. And labelling the link to the second part of the story as “subscription required” would be a lot more honest. I’ve been to Business 2.0 a few times and run into this before, so I wasn’t surprised, but without the honest warning, you still hope until you mouse over the URL.

For what it’s worth, I was following Dave Winer’s link to Om Malik’s story on building companies to flip, since it leads with OddPost as an example, and I met those guys in February, before the Yahoo acquisition. But I’m not interested enough to subscribe, as I used to receive a free copy of Business 2.0 (in print) and it wasn’t compelling enough to pay for, despite (like this) the odd article of interest. If I’m missing something, let me know. Looks like at some point in the future I might be able to get a PDF version from Om’s site.

Yes, like everyone else who has seen (or will see) Winged Migration, I found myself wondering time and again how they shot this film of real birds. Fortunately, with the DVD’s special features, some of the details are available. Just incredible visual scenery, without effects. With all the possibilities for simulation and creation, recording the real world from innovative viewpoints is little short of amazing. Ninety minutes felt like a bit much, but I’m not sure what I could cut… and the filmmakers mentioned flying more than 15,000 hours in the 3-4 years of filming, so it’s not like they didn’t edit already. The website isn’t much, but it does have a map of the actual migration patterns followed.

Kevin Kline is a school teacher in the Midwest, outed by a former student (Matt Dillon) at the Oscars only days before his wedding (to Joan Cusack’s character). Denial, and then acceptance, all very light-hearted. The movie is In & Out. Short, funny… would be good on an airplane, and was good at the end of a long day last week at home with the DVD. One amusing web-note: movie was made in 1997, and originally had the URL inandout.com for the official site, which is what I usually link to. That URL now links to the burger chain, but when the movie studio originally let the domain registration lapse, it was grabbed for less-savory scenes, as detailed in this 1999 CNET News.com story. Oops.

David Weinberger published Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A unified theory of the web in 2002. I just got to the book a few weeks ago, after finding a hardcover copy lying about the office during a move. Like The Tipping Point, Small Pieces is one of those books I’ve heard about and lived (in some small ways), so I wasn’t surprised by the tone or the broad message. But I am still startled by some of the phrases and phrasings which encapsulated some of my own thoughts about the way the web really is life-changing.

Weinberger, like others who write well, records his thoughts in ways that resemble thinking. That talent requires a disciplined ignorance of everything that might interfere with or interrupt the translation from ideas to words. Personally, I usually find that concentration only when reading, or lying in bed unable to sleep. Getting up to write it down is futile, so far.

I actually picked up a pen and marked a few pages to record here, which shows you (a) how much I enjoyed this book and (b) how much the idea of blogging what I read is changing how I read. Here are the passages I’d like to “underline” for others.

Words may be the stuff of the Web, but time determines its structures. And it’s as if we’re trying to fill every available temporal niche on the Web with new types of talking. [p. 62, from Chapter 3, Time… of course I jump at that one]

When it comes to failure, corporations use these formulaic, ritualistic words precisely so that our eyes have no purchase on what’s written. [p. 73, reminds me how people are always surprised to get a response to an email they write to a site… and why I get such pleasure out of showing readers “behind the curtain” at work]

Unlike databases, jokes, the other form of knowledge on the Web, reveal what you weren’t expecting. If they’re predictable, they’re about as funny as a database. … Laughter is the sound of sudden knowledge.
The Web is useful because of the database applications that let us look up information, find flights, make reservations, buy books. The Web is exciting not because it gives us the efficiency of databases but because it gives us the punch of a good joke. [p. 144… read on through the end of 145, which is also the end of Chapter 6, Knowledge]

Yet, considered simply as written, these two pages have something important, and quite simple, in common: both sites were created because the authors wanted to share something with others. Despite their difference in content and style, both pages are social acts, written with others in mind. We take that for granted when we visit a site. We understand without having to think about it that the site expresses a point of view. [p. 165]

Three side notes:

1. I still have not read The Cluetrain Manifesto. Weinberger is one of the four co-authors. I think admitting this fact on my blog revokes my credentials? But the first step in any program is admitting you need help! 😉
2. Weinberger, of course, has been blogging about as long as anyone. I’ve been there a few times, but not often.
3. The copy I have is a signed copy, with a short note to a former News.com colleague, Jennifer Balderama, whose blog I haven’t read in a long time. I think she’s at the Washington Post still.

Happy to return the book anytime… but glad it survived in the newsroom this long, so I could get around to catching up, two years later.

Thanks to Jeff Veen for catching the most outrageous line of tonight’s Online News Association meeting. I could barely believe my ears. Just how much wine was consumed prior to this one?

Separately, Jeff voiced a telling comparison: Orkut and LinkedIn are like high-school yearbooks. You get everyone to sign it, and then you put it on the shelf. They don’t do anything. Amen. I also learned about Upcoming.org, which I had somehow never seen/heard of. I guess not getting out much means I don’t have a lot of use for a collaborative event calendar, but it’s still nifty bottoms-up stuff.

I use a boring cellphone. That’s OK, but I am interested in a few features of more modern phones, specifically a camera and a web browser. My biggest fear, though, is the service plan which will be required to keep the data charges economical: it’s almost certain to be out of whack with what I pay now, and what I need (I don’t use my cellphone all that often). Still, the time will come for the (small) leap forward, and one reason is the ability to scan feeds and/or sites in downtime. In other words, content.

I used to use AvantGo on a Palm V, but when I got a Blackberry a few years ago, I stopped carrying the Palm because e-mail on the ‘Berry trumped cached browsing of the News.com channel, among others. Pockets are only so big. But I miss having things to read for those odd minutes that are forced upon you.

So I think things like the coming CNET Mobile Feed Reader, a BREW app, powered by FeedBurner will find an audience. I also know News.com Mobile, the XHTML version of the site formatted for small screens, will be more useful to me then. Maybe I’ll try WinkSite, which has this entry on reading RSS feeds from your phone. Never heard of WinkSite until Scoble mentioned it. I expect once I make the jump to a modern phone with a service plan that doesn’t hammer me for actually using the services, I’ll pay more attention to these kinds of offerings.

Or not. But this free favicon generator seems like the real deal. I’ve played around with a pixel-level graphics program in attempt to create a clock favicon, but then I needed a converter. Hmmm… Anyway, found this tool via MpP Favicon Gallery, which was linked to by Dan as a QuickBit. Thanks!

I have a list of several things to update/fix/enhance about this blog, but those always come behind actually blogging. I figure most people who read me are using the RSS feed, so the simplicity (read: straight from the template) design isn’t even visible to most.

Always nice to see that continued effort is being noticed. CNET News.com Extra was mentioned by Dan Gillmor on Saturday on his blog. Quiet words, but that’s high praise from someone who gets it. Always more to do, of course, and a few interesting comments that I had to respond to, as well. What’s your take?

Via The Map Room, a link for old maps from the University of New Hampshire library. My favorite? Northeast corner of the St. Regis quadrangle (warning: 1.8MB image)