Category Archives: Web Site Stuff

Problems with Radio

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I am now committed to locate a new blogging tool … although I know
that the search is going to be tough. For years I have used Radio
from userland Software, however it keeps giving me fits and I have now
been unable to get a blog post to “post” for weeks.

Radio has some incredible features that I exploit, and I have grown so
used to how to get things done I really like it. If only it would
work consistently.

I’m doing this as a test to see if threatening to leave this piece of software might cause it to work again …

Who knows …

Playing with Croquet

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Ok … I have a new thing to explore and experiment with.  After
this weekend, I downloaded Croquet and it is pretty amazing.  A
very cool starting point for 3D synthetic worlds.  I also started a new blog to post about my Croquet Experiences … I’ll be posting more as I learn more.

I’m going to go home and get this working on my projector … I think
it would be fun to explore with my kids … see what we can do!

Cory Ondrejka @ AC2005

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Wow … Cory is one of the most important figures behind Second Life is here with his presentation Why Games Will Save the World. 
It is always interesting to see the slides that attempt to communicate
important ideas by bashing certain people and conversations … I was a
little disappointed by that.  But he did get into the core of
using gaming for education.  It was a good talk with a lot of interesting sounds bites and examples of the values of game playing.

Joichi Ito @ AC2005

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Joi was supposed to be presenting on the Future of Blogging, but immediately said that he wasn’t going to only talk about blogging.  🙂

He had some good stuff to say about a wide range of subjects …
Wikipedia, Firefox, File Sharing … and more on Wikipedia.  He
brought up fansubs
– which I hadn’t heard of, but makes perfect sense.  People take
various video content, and then add their own subtitles in their own
language.  Joi also showed a very cool remix of The Matrix
Reloaded done by someone who put together a bunch of anime clips to the
same sound track.

I had not heard of ccMixter … it’s a Creative Commons music site.  Of course he promoted the concepts of tags and technorati … Plazes … last.fm
and how quickly tagging has taken off … a new free-form way for
organizing/categorizing information, and more importantly information
flows.

Too much good stuff to blog … what a great spew of information!

Esther Dyson @ AC2005

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To start things off, when I walked into the session Esther was pointing people to Vizu
… very cool polling site. I’m now signed up and playing around
with it. I pretty much missed a lot of the rest … it was
basically an open Q&A session … there were a lot of good questions about ICANN, privacy, and the accountable Internet.

John Udell @ AC2005

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I have always liked reading John Udell … I think this might be the first time to see him present. His talk is on Annotating the Planet
and started with a very cool mash-up demo using Google Maps. He
reviewed the various Google maps mash-ups, and then went into some
details on his various bike rides that he is mapping with the Gmaps Pedometer.

He touched on the areas of privacy and geotagging of all sorts of information. Referring to David Brins book The Transparent Society
he had some commentary on how to potentially protect ourselves from the
abuse of this information, and how to control who can get at this
information.

He pointed to David Rumsey’s web site,
and quoted from his talk at a recent conference. David has an
amazing collection of maps … and is doing some very cool synthesizing
of old and new maps.

The death of Meetup?

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When I first saw Meetup come on-line, I
thought it was really going to be an interesting medium for social get
togethers.  I started to use the free service, and felt that they
could really start some good momentum going, and leverage the various
locations for their revenue.  Well … they quickly were
overwhelmed by their own success.

What I found was that it was difficult to add new venues – locations –
to their system.  I started to make suggestions, however they were
not able to incorporate them.  Then they chose to start charging
for stuff … and then they wanted committments from “organizers” …

Bummer … IMHO, the whole thing kinda fell apart.

I got two e-mails today with the subjects “Last chance to save Salt
Lake Wi-Fi and Wireless Meetup Group”, and “Last chance to save Salt
Lake Slashdot Meetup Group” … broadcasting the lack of
interest.  It seems to me that someone is not modifying their
business plan to accomodate and cater to the potential clients.

Google Maps, cellular phones, and the adventure continues

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After reading Nat Friedmans post below, I had to start experimenting
with Google Maps.  This is too fun.  I’ve had several calls
with friends now, when their were driving someplace.  I quickly
ask them where they are, and start to zoom on Google maps … tracking
their travels as they are driving.  Too much.

As Nat describes his conversation, I have now had numerous like
it.  I called my friend Joe while on his vacation driving up the
coast of Oregon.  Once he told me he was at a drive through coffee
shop in Florence, OR I narrowed him down to this area.  As they drove north they told me they were crossing 35th street right here!

I talked with him about the golf course coming up on the left … it
was funny to hear his comments about the scenery and the various
buildings etc. that I could ask him about.  Funny … I can almost
see this as the next step for Google.  I joked with Phil Windley
and our CTO Roundtable group last week … it’s almost like my friend
Joe was getting live access to personal Google Maps … and I was
getting a virtual tour at the same time.

I’m thinking about my first Google Maps hack … I’ve got some ideas and can’t wait to play with it.

Living in the future. #

….

Later in the drive, we called Joe on the speakerphone and he gave us an aerial tour of the region using Google’s satellite maps. It went like this:

Joe: There’s a golf course on your right.
Us: Cool.
Joe: Huh, what’s that strange building coming up on your left?
Us: It’s a Marriott.
Joe: Oh. Cool.

…

[nat friedman]

Apache -> Tomcat -> Java still too complex

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On another note, I once again installed a copy of XPlanner on one of
my Linux boxes.  XPlanner is a very cool XP/Agile project manager
that allows a team to create user stories and plan development
iterations.  I really like the tool, and am looking forward to the
next version.

To install XPlanner, I had to install Java, along with Ant, then build
XPlanner.  The version of Ant on my FC2 box was too old, and so
then I had to upgrade Ant.  Then build XPlanner.  Then
install Tomcat, and deploy XPlanner within Tomcat.  Then go and
get mod_jk to connect Apache to Tomcat.  Then configure
mod_jk.  Then configure Apache.

All in all … this whole process is still far too complex, and is
overly complicated.  I fully understand the “power” and
“flexibility” that many people will claim … but it is just too hard
for the simple tasks of getting things working.

This is one place that I believe that Open Source falls down. 
This entire suite is a very incomplete solution due to the manual labor
required to install and configure.  It’s just not a “complete” nor
“polished” solution … IMHO.