found_drama

Although I will argue that my judgment was impaired, A. talked me into creating a Facebook profile two nights ago.  I don’t really remember the circumstances or her rationale.  But she made an impassioned plea that on some level resonated with me, for better or worse.  So there I am.  Time will tell if this was foolish or not.  Leaning toward “not”.  That said, some first impressions: Read the rest of this entry »

Downloaded and installed Firefox 3 this morning¹; here are some first impressions from throughout my first day of use:

1. Content rendering seems improved.  Not sure if it actually is improved or not.  Just feels that way².  Noted that it seems to use the default OS X buttons for otherwise unstyled form buttons now.  I should look into this content rendering thing, see if there really were changes.
2. Tab bar is more “Safari-like”; tab now merges with the browser chrome instead of with the window of content.  But the closing ⊗s are still on “the wrong side”.
3. Tab drag/drop indicator is easier to see.
4. Firebug was incompatible with the upgrade.  (No surprise.)  But the Add-on/Extension Manager couldn’t find the compatible, updated version?  I had to go looking for it.  (Maybe this is more of an issue with Firebug?)
5. TOOLBAR:
   1. I actually like the big back button³.
   2. Why not merge the Stop/Reload buttons like the Apple team did in Safari?  They’re mutually exclusive actions anyway…
   3. I like what they’ve done with the address bar.  Especially with the favicon.
   4. Also, I like how they have the little star for the bookmark.  Kind of reminds me of how “favourite” pages are marked in Confluence.
   5. Default theme makes it hard to see the separators on the Bookmarks Toolbar.
6. Some fields don’t seem to want to let me type in them.  This one is hard to replicate but I think it has something to do with when I try to give focus to the field before the page finishes loading.
7. When did the RSS “radio” badge get turned from orange to blue!?!?
8. There seem to be a lot of pages that wind up with horizontal scrollers that didn’t have them before.
9. When it comes to showing the address bar all the time, Firefox 3 means business.
10. Speaking of the address bar: I like how it drops down like that with the memory of the favicon and title and URL.  Gimme some context!
11. I like that the bookmarks are now displayed/managed in a sidebar.  Where they belong.  Responses to clicks seem a little strange sometimes.  (Try right-clicking on a bookmarklet?)
12. And at the end of the day: it was nice that it didn’t crash when I quit the browser.  For a change.

Up next: Ubiquity?

1. At long last?[↩]
2. Then again…  Some elements appear to render totally differently.  Maybe block-level elements?  Something is off in a few places…[↩]
3. Is this blasphemy?  Everyone else seems to hate it.[↩]

Read Wired’s piece on the 37signals guys last night and then saw it again this morning via DF.  Haven’t looked around too much to see what others are saying but the DF emphasis seems to be on “ginned-up conflict” vs. doubled revenue in ‘07.  Coming away from the article last night, I find myself with my own mixed feelings about their approach.

On the one hand, if you’ve created something as massively popular as Rails, the conventional wisdom is that you are in some way beholden to that project both technically and culturally.  And regardless of the technical successes and/or limitations of your platform, there is a definite case to be made for a cultural failure if that cultural figurehead is out there making hostile statements and calling everyone else a crybaby.  Doubled revenues are nice but carving out a niche island and then burning all the bridges that lead there?

On the other, I would be a liar if I didn’t see some merit to the “fuck off” approach.  The conventional wisdom also tells you that “everyone else” is going to lean on you for answers first instead of either (a) trying to figure it out themselves or (b) making a substantive contribution.  I.e., Newton may have stood humbly on the shoulders of giants but he’s still Newton.  Not that the lads at 37signals are necessarily making Newton-level contributions to the webdev or business fields but I don’t believe that the metaphor is any less apt.

For me, the crux of the article lies in one particular quote:

“Someone on the outside would look at what we do and say, Let’s ratchet it up to some enterprise level,’” he argues. “I don’t want to make our software more complicated. I really don’t understand why everyone’s interested in Fortune 500 customers. I just don’t get that.”

Suggesting that it’s about your goals and your audience.  There is a lot of pressure when you shift your focus to those enterprise deals; the stakes are higher, the scopes change — everything is different.  And if that’s not where you want to be, if you are unwilling or unprepared to go there, then by all means don’t.  Maybe it’s because you believe the Fortune 500 companies are aging dinosaurs whose times are limited.  Maybe you just don’t like wearing collared shirts to your demos and presentations.  If nothing else: if your brand and your credibility are built on values like keeping it small and always keeping the middle-finger preemptively and defensively up, well then have at it.

High nerdery; join us.

F_D in transit to WordPress 2.3…

Plugging in the new native tagging API was a snap (10 minutes max). There’s a built-in migrator for existing Ultimate Tag Warrior tags (bonus) so getting this rolled out to the live environment should will go nice and smooth.

The bummer part is with the “conflict” reported on the Extended Live Archives plug-in that we’re using for the archives here. What’s weird (at least to me) is that the reported issue talks about “problems when editing or creating new posts due to the database changes” whereas I couldn’t even get the plug-in to work at all in my sandbox environment (wouldn’t load Taxonomy or Folksonomy clusters). So now we must decide whether to strip it out, wait for the fix (or try to fix it my own self), or re-invent my archives all together. I’m leaning toward the latter because of some other UI tweaks that I’m considering (may as well do it all at once, eh?)

As you may recall, I started this article thread back in September, asking the question:

“How do I teach web publication to a scientist and/or university professor? Someone who is obviously smart but also technologically UN-savvy?”

After setting some ground rules, we quickly eliminated Microsoft Word and all-but-eliminated iWeb.  Then I went on a roughly nine month hiatus on this particular topic.

Why?  For one, the original subject found a solution on her own.  Much the fire’s fuel taken away, there was not much motivation left over.  As I do not want to leave this unresolved however, I did make a vow to return to this and wrap it up.

The thrilling conclusion?

I really didn’t come up with (a good) one.  Not that I could find.  iWeb came close except for the publication matter.  Word was way off.  I did not consider Dreamweaver¹.  What’s left?  Mostly web-based programs like Blogger or Vox.  Given the original question and the original goal, I believe something like Vox would be the way to go.

Anyway: glad this is off my plate.

1. In part because of cost and in part because (in my experience) it assumes you know how to do what it’s doing for you but without it.[↩]

Google launched “My Maps” this week and it seems to be all over the place. It’s a fun, addictive little toy; a nice addition to their already pretty awesome map system. Brady Forrest called it “a direct shot across the bow of sites like Platial and Frappr” — and while I don’t necessarily agree with the aggressive connotations of the “direct shot” part, he does hit it with the bit about geo-indexing individual web sites. That’s pretty rad. (Don’t bother with the comments. Nothing of value there.) It’ll definitely be interesting to see how this grows and layers it adds to Google’s model (esp. w/r/t/ local search…)

Anyway, enough tech punditry: this shit is fun.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I spent the better part of my morning building out this “Vermont Panoramics” map. Sure, all these photos were already geotagged in Flickr but the Yahoo! maps just don’t have the same granularity, the same level of detail as Google’s. ¹ So it’s been pretty neat, playing around with it. Getting the feel of the tools, dropping content into it and onto it, all of that good stuff.

And if they’re reading (indexing? crawling?), here’s my My Maps wishlist:

• If I draw a line, I should get the distance. This is going to be critical to making this a success.
• Similarly: if I draw a shape, I should get the area.
• Let me make my own “push pin” icons.
• Latitude/longitude entry. I know that some folks like being arbitrary and guess. I tend to favor precision whenever and wherever possible.
• Public vs. private maps is nice but what if I’d like to open up the map a little? Not just make the map public but really and truly share it with folks? Let them add push pins as well?

UPDATE:  I left out the part about plugging the KML into Google Earth for the fly-arounds and another take on the location surfing.  It’s pretty damned cool.

currently playing: Shunt Limit “As Time Goes By (Luke Jay mix)”

1. I mean seriously: in the Yahoo! map, my house is a pixelated blur and in Google’s I can see the foundation and know that the image was taken while it was under construction.[↩]

Yes, this appeared in my Flickr stream a few days ago and I’m just now getting around to cross-posting it here.

Short version:

Clearly the green of this fake license plate is supposed to be reminiscent of Vermont. But the "COMPUTE FREE OR DIE" is clearly a bastardization of New Hampshire’s motto. So… Yeah. You tell me.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven’t been following this "GPL3" thing very closely. My attention to detail here is strictly w/r/t/ their confusion vis-à-vis the license plate.

Brilliantly funny “certification program” detailed at jcooney.net. I must admit that I prefer the re-styled badge featured on Coding Horror…