Leftover pizza for lunch
May 16, 2008
FriendFeed Facetime
One-On-One With The Founders Of FriendFeed
The four co-founders of FriendFeed have the best resumes on the Internet. They were the original engineers who developed Gmail and Google Maps, the applications that launched the whole Web 2.0 craze (yes, it's all their fault). Now they're starting over with Web application called FriendFeed, designed to let users aggregate all their social networking activity -- their blogs, Flickr accounts, del.icio.us bookmarks, Twitter chitchat, the whole enchilada -- onto a single, at-a-glance page.
Tell FriendFeed your ID on any 35 different social networking services, and it grabs up the info from those services and displays it in your FriendFeed. You can also post links and commentary about interesting pages you find in your regular Web travels. In addition to posting content to their own feeds, FriendFeed users can subscribe to each others' feeds, and in that way, keep up with and comment on each other's activity.
"FriendFeed lets you share the things you find on the Web with people you know," said co-founder Bret Taylor, who was previously a group product manager at Google, where he launched Google Maps, the Google Maps API, and founded Google's Developer product group. After leaving Google he went to Benchmark Capital as developer in residence, according to a FriendFeed corporate backgrounder on the company's site. He and his three co-founders started FriendFeed in October.
I wrote my first impressions of FriendFeed after I'd been using it for several hours. I still agree with those impressions today.
The display is nice and simple: Just a Web page with a list of entries. To read other people's feeds, you friend them, just like on any other social networking service, and then when you visit the FriendFeed home page, you'll see a single stream of all your friends' activity, displayed in chronological order, newest first. You can consume FriendFeed feeds as RSS, view them in desktop applications, including AlertThingy and Twhirl, and more.
This is my FriendFeed. Friend me and I'll friend you back. And you can also subscribe to InformationWeek articles on FriendFeed.
May 15, 2008
Instant community
JS-Kit provides a set of software tools and services to allow Web site publishers to add comments, ratings, and other community technology to sites, just by copying a couple of lines of JavaScript into the site's HTML templates. JS-Kit is potentially a good solution for companies of any size that need a cheap and easy way to add community features, without getting involved in a hairy IT project. JS-Kit can be deployed by anybody who knows HTML and can modify a site's pages. It doesn't require IT departments to get involved -- which is, of course, a great strength and also potentially a big problem for potential JS-Kit customers.
JS-Kit is designed to make any site, no matter how small, as interactive as Amazon.com or Yahoo, without the seven-figure IT budgets those sites have to generate and maintain new features. "If you're not one of those guys, you don't have the money to build this and make it bleeding edge," said Khris Loux. I interviewed ; at the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco the week of April 22.
JS-Kit provides a portfolio of community features for sites, including:
Users can add comments to individual pages, including video comments.
Site publishers can allow users to rate content on the site
Site publishers can provide navigational services that display the top-rated articles on a site, with optional categories.
Site publishers can can display a box listing editors' picks for best pages and articles on a site.
The data and logic runs on JS-Kit's servers, and are embedded in the site publishers' pages using two lines of JavaScript. The content appears, to the site visitor, to be running directly on the page.
May 14, 2008
Quinoa: It's like kibble, but for people
A few years ago, I started to think about kibble. Pets and livestock get a single mixture of food that serves all their nutritional needs. They don't have to decide what they want to eat, they don't have to cook, they just eat the kibble. Same food today as yesterday and the day before.
Well, like most people, I like variety in my diet -- but not all the time. We have a half-dozen things we eat for dinner, and I usually have a frozen Lean Cuisine for lunch, and I have three or four things I have for breakfast (complicated by the fact that I dislike most breakfast food -- don't really care for eggs, waffles, or pancakes). But I've been looking for something even simpler -- human kibble -- something that I can eat many times a week that's healthy and will fill all my nutritional needs.
Then we discovered quinoa. It's a South American grain, but unlike most grains it's got a lot of protein in it, and a lot of amino acids, and it's a good source of fiber, phosphorus, magnesium and iron.
I've actually read about it before, but was intimidated by it. You need to soak it first, and then it supposedly has a very peculiar taste. However, we went to a vegetarian restaurant over the weekend and there was quinoa in one of the entrees, and it was really quite good. Reminded me of couscous.
So we bought some a day or two later. Julie soaked it, and I cooked it for breakfast this morning. It's really easy to cook -- it cooks up just like rice -- two parts water to one part volume of quinoa, microwave four minutes, stir, microwave too minutes more, strain and serve. I threw in a handful of raisins and ate it like oatmeal.
I don't know why people said the flavor is peculiar. It's got a very subtle, nutty flavor, almost no flavor at all. Like tofu, it takes on the flavor of whatever you add to it. Indeed, you can put sweet stuff in and have it for breakfast, or cook it up in broth and add vegetables and meat and have it for dinner.
I've been having Lean Pockets for breakfast most days (turkey and cheese or chicken parmigiana or Mexican style -- I told you, I don't really like breakfast foods), but I worry that they're overprocessed and not quite healthy. Quinoa seems like a good alternative.
If only I could remember the name and how it's pronounced. It just won't stay in my head. Quinoa. Quinoa. Quinoa.
It's pronouced "keen-wah," by the way.
Like quinoa, soy is a common vegetable source of protein, although I've been a little concerned about rumors that it's actually bad for you. A few minutes of Googling turns up nothing definitive, just more rumors. Certainly, I don't attach much weight to this article with the delightfully sensationalistic headline: "Soy is making kids 'gay.'
Did I say the headline is delightful? Perhaps I should have said instead that it's FABULOUS.
May 12, 2008
Holy crap, I have a lot to do at work today
I've got two newsletters, the InformationWeek Daily every day this week, and the InformationWeek Blog Newsletter, which I need to wrap up today and send to the copy-editors, then put the finishing touches on it tomorrow so it can be sent out.
You can subscribe to the newsletters yourself, by the way. Or you can watch a video of a monkey washing a cat. Either one is good with me.
I have two long e-mail threads from Friday that I need to respond to.
I have two meaty posts on the InformationWeek Blog I need to write. I've been sitting on the notes for a couple of weeks now and I need to get the info out there before it becomes obsolete.
This weekend, I had a couple of free hours, and rather than doing what a normal person would do, I played around with screencasting software. Like a lot of multimedia-creation tools nowadays, it's easy to use but hard to use well. I want to do a screencast introducing Twitter.
And there's the usual - updating http://www.twitter.com/iwpicks, keeping up on the spam folder, reading messages on the InformationWeek article and blog comments, etc. etc. etc.
So what am I hanging around here for? Get to work!
May 11, 2008
Photos: A visit to North Park with three wimmin
We made an excursion to North Park in San Diego tonight. Me, Julie, our friend Claire, and Claire's sister. Me and three wimmin. It was like "Sex and the City." That would make me the little prissy round gay guy who was Sarah Jessica Parker's friend. I don't like where this is going.
May 09, 2008
"The Office" 5/8/08
Last night's episode illustrated something I really like about the show. Even the douchiest characters are sometimes right, and even Pam and Jim sometimes act like douches.
Ryan is a douche, and the writers accentuated his douchiness last week, so it took us until this week to see that he was right about Jim. Jim is a slacker. Sure, he sells a lot anyway, but he's probably only selling 10% of what he could. So in some respects Ryan was right to put the fear of God in Jim.
I've read that there's going to be a spinoff series of "The Office," but I don't know which characters it will star. The current Pam and Jim storylines could be headed in that direction -- "Pam & Jim Take New York" (or Philadelphia).
In other news: I think I'm tired of the word "douche" as a synonym for jerk.
May 07, 2008
Twitter / Merlin Mann: Just invented a sandwich th...
Seen on Twitter. Original message is here, in case you're interested.
May 05, 2008
My First Trolls
Regular reader of this blog (both of you) may have noticed the occasional comments over the past two weeks from someone signing himself "Taco Rubio," and someone else signing himself "Mitch Rules!" They were apparently offended by my post on San Francisco burritos a couple of weeks ago and left sarcastic comments like, "Wow, Mitch. Thank you so much! I never would have found a good burrito if not for this post. How do you do it?" and "Hey thanks for letting us know Lost is doing viral stuff too, Magellan!"
This afternoon, Taco Rubio stepped the level of hostility up a bit: "Please stop equivalating your personal 'discoveries' (SL, burritos, that you have 10 toes) with 'newsworthy", it insults us who were building things while you were discovering Diablo everquest two years ago."
"Taco Rubio" and "Mitch Rules!" seem to be offended by the fact that I often write about things that other people have written about before. But everybody does. The key to blogging -- and journalism too -- is write something. If it's original and smart, so much the better, but even if it's not, write something.
I cannot understand the mentality of people who go around posting anonymous nastygrams on other people's blogs. It just seems like such an empty way to spend time, liking making love while wearing a hazmat suit. There's just no flavor to it. As a form of bullying, it seems remarkably unsatisfying.
Taco Rubio posts from the IP address 67.182.64.105. According to ip-adress.com, he's posting from Stockton, Calif.
Google tells me that Taco Rubio was the name of someone in Second Life who liked to take upskirt pictures of female avatars and put them in a museum. I am not making this up. He was suspended from Second Life. And we wonder why mundanes think Second Life is weird.
Mitch Rules posts from 76.102.193.168, which is in Oakland, Calif.
May 04, 2008
Ideas for making "Iron Man" even AWESOMER
We saw Iron Man last night. It was TOTALLY AWESOME. But it would have been even AWESOMER if Jeff Bridges had played the villain as the Big Lebowski.
Robert Downey Jr. could have played Tony Stark/Iron Man like his character in Wonder Boys -- a bisexual sex-addicted drug-using aging party-boy.
John Favreu was director and had a small role in the movie; he could have brought in his co-star from Swingers, Vince Vaughn. When Tony Stark needed a pep-talk, Vince Vaughn would've said Tony was like a big bear with claws and with fangs -- big fuckin' teeth -- etc. And he would have said the Iron Man suit was "money," and in the big fight scene he would've said, "Vegas, baby!"
Peter Billingsley, who played the kid in A Christmas Story, had a small part in Iron Man. I didn't recognize him on-screen but I saw his name go by in the credits (I am not making this up). The story possibilities for Billingsley's character are ENDLESS. He could have equipped Iron Man with a Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle BB gun with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time.
Note to self: If your business partner is named Obadiah Stane and he's bald, he probably doesn't have your best interest in heart. Best to make sure that your 401(k) is in order.
May 03, 2008
Waddling Penguin Pooper
Julie's sister Ann gave this to us a few years ago. It's a little wind-up toy. Fill the penguin's body with candy and he waddles along pooping little chocolate BBs. I don't know why Ann saw this in a store (or whatever) and thought that we would be the perfect recipients for this gift. I don't think I want to know.
May 01, 2008
"We Are Happy To Serve You"
Julie got this for me today. It's a ceramic reproduction of a kind of cardboard coffee cup that used to be ubiquitous in take-out places in New York in the 70s and 80s. I think they're still around today - I don't know. TV detectives on "Law & Order," "Law & Order: SUV," "Law & Order: Crossing Guard Stories," etc., drink from cups like this all the time, makes the shows look authentic
Social networks and public emergencies
In Emergencies, People Turn To Web 2.0, Not Traditional News
When danger is at their door, people turn to social media sites, blogs, and instant messages, rather than the mainstream news media, for necessary information. Twitter and Google mashups in particular proved far more useful than traditional government channels, according to a report prepared at the University of Colorado. I learned that the hard way last year.
The Telegraph reports on how people used social media during two emergencies: The Virginia Tech mass-murder, and last year's Southern California wildfires:
During the California fires, web users on sites including instant messaging forum Twitter kept friends and neighbours informed of their condition, minute by minute. They also used Google Maps to track the progress of the fire and mark areas where schools and businesses were closed. However, the authorities struggled to display the sufficient up-to-date information. The mass media were unreliable, the study found, as they struggled to access remote areas from which website users with an internet connection could easily report. Media sites also focused on the 'sensational’, such as fires close to celebrities’ homes, which distorted the overall picture, the scientists said.
Via Read/Write Web
My wife and I live in San Diego, we've been here 11 years, and we've lived through two really bad wildfire seasons, both of which threatened to force us to evacuate. In the latest round, this past October, I found TV news had limited usefulness, but Twitter and Google Maps were great for getting the most important information into my hands rapidly. That information being: How close are the wildfires to our house?
April 30, 2008
Hey! You Got Video In Our FriendFeed!
Hey, FriendFeed users: Interested in getting InformationWeek headlines and TechWeb TV videos delivered to your feed? Get them now by friending InformationWeek on FriendFeed.
We've had a FriendFeed account delivering our article and blog headlines for about a week now; this morning, we added the TechWeb TV video channel to the mix. It took all of about 10 seconds. We're already uploading all our videos to the TechWeb TV YouTube channel. YouTube provides public feeds of users' content. I simply told FriendFeed that I wanted to add a YouTube account to our InformationWeek feed, told FriendFeed what the TechWeb TV account name is (it's "techwebtv," duh), and FriendFeed did the rest.
I really like FriendFeed. It provides a single control panel from which you can view all your friends' activity on about 35 different social networking services: Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, del.icio.us, blogs, Google Reader shared items, StumbleUpon, etc. etc. etc. You can follow your friends' feeds, and they can follow yours. I wrote up my first impressions of FriendFeed last week.
My personal account is Mitch Wagner, follow me and I'll follow you back.
April 29, 2008
Ginger vs. Mary Ann
Web 2.0: Clay Shirky On Wikipedia, Sitcoms, And Gin
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at NYU who studies social media, gave a stirring talk at Web 2.0 Expo last week on the Web 2.0 revolution -- how it's harnessing all the brainpower made available by the societal changes of the past 60 years. That time was, until recently, wasted watching mindless television, but now it's being put to work on Web 2.0 projects, some profound and some silly, but all significant.
Shirky posts a "lightly edited" transcript, "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus," in which he attempts to answer the question that all Web 2.0 evangelists get from time to time: "Where do people find the time?"
Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.
TV fans provide business lessons
'Lost' Fans Serve Up Surprising Lessons About Web 2.0 For Business
When I set out to do an article about fans of the TV show Lost and how they're using the Internet, I didn't think I'd learn anything about using Web 2.0 for business. I thought it was an article our readers might find entertaining, and that I'd enjoy doing, and nothing more than that. And yet I was pleasantly surprised to find that a couple of business lessons popped out, about self-organizing groups and how they can get results without traditional, top-down management.
Lost Fans Find Internet Thrills Via Wikis, Games, Second Life takes a look at how Lost fans are having fun online via Lostpedia,a wiki encyclopedia of information about the show; a Second Life group; and official show sites run by ABC, the network that airs Lost.
April 28, 2008
Not getting hepatitis is one of the main things I look for in a restaurant
We've been eating from Chipotle every Monday for the past few years. I feel a little embarrassed, living thirty miles from Mexico and preferring burritos from an American chain, headquartered in Colorado, which was, for several years, majority-owned by McDonald's. But it was the closest thing we could find in the area to San Francisco-style burritos, and so we liked it.
Then, last week, we learned about an outbreak of hepatitis-A that was tied to the Chipotle we eat at. So far, 18 people have been infected.
We actually gave thought to continuing our Chipotle tradition. After all, we figured, we didn't get sick. And Chipotle will now be on its best behavior. And surely the Health Department wouldn't allow the restaurant to stay open if there was a risk? Surely the situation was under control.
But this is the George W. Bush American century, motto: "Competence? We've Heard Of It!" Also, we live in San Diego, motto: "Just As Corrupt As New Jersey, But The Weather's Nicer!" I no longer have faith that the Health Department would shut the place down if there was a question of health problems.
So I cruised around on Yelp and discovered El Azteca. Seventeen reviews, only one bad, none of them mentioning diseases that come from pooping on your hands before preparing food. So I figured we're already one step ahead of Chipotle.
The place is a hole-in-the-wall in a strip mall across from a gas station, near the highway, and across from a 7-Eleven. To me, this is a plus; I love a dive restaurant with the promise of great food.
Here it is in Google Street View:
There's a head shop next to El Azteca. While I was waiting for the food to be prepared, I got the occasional whiff of patchouli incense. In front of the head shop, several well-groomed gentlemen were discussing philosophical issues.
The reviewers on Yelp stress how enormous the burritos are. Compared with San Francisco burritos, not so much. My burrito was not "the size of your thigh" (as one reviewer writes), unless you're about six months old.
I had a chicken asada burrito, Julie had the chicken enchilada platter. We found the food pretty good, but we weren't knocked out by it. The refried beans were slightly nasty. I don't know about Julie, but I'll give the place another try, order something different next time.
Get 'Lost' on the Internet
Lost Fans Find Internet Thrills Via Wikis, Games, Second Life
Fans and producers of the hit TV show Lost are taking to the Internet, building a wiki, alternate reality games, communities, and a virtual island in Second Life to explore the world of the ABC show.
Fans of the TV show Lost don't need to limit their thrills to TV. They can turn to the Internet to hang out with fellow fans, solve puzzles, and speculate about the mysteries of the show.
 |
|
 Campetin Hoorenbeek is one of the leaders of SL-Lost, a reproduction of the Lost Island in Second Life. |
|
| (click for image gallery) |
Lostpedia is a fan-built encyclopedia where fans create detailed episode guides, biographies of the major and minor characters, articles speculating about where the series is going, and more.
Fans in Second Life can join SL-Lost to hang out with other fans, chew over previous episodes, play games based on the show, and explore a recreation of the Lost island in the virtual world.
And ABC, the network that airs the show, is getting into the act, too, posting tongue-in-cheek Web sites for the fictional airline Oceanic Air, the enigmatic Hanso Foundation behind many of the shows mysteries, and more.
Treadmill desk
Treadmill Desk: It's Crazy - But Is It Crazy Enough To Be A Good Idea?
A treadmill desk is a desk that doesn't have a chair, but instead has a treadmill in front of it. The theory is that you stand up and walk while you work or play on your computer, getting exercise while going digital. When I first heard this idea, I thought the idea was completely insane. But the more I hear about it, the more it make sense to me, and I think I'll give it a try.
The theory is that you walk along at 1 mph while working -- fast enough to get your blood moving.
Because 1 mph doesn't speed up the metabolism a whole lot, the treadmill desk wouldn't be a substitute for a good workout -- doctors currently recommend at least a half-hour of moderate cardio exercise, such as walking, swimming or biking, on most days of the week.
But doctors also say that the more exercise you get, the healthier you'll be. And that's where the treadmill desk might come in -- adding a few miles a day to your walking sounds all good.
April 27, 2008
April 25, 2008
About Confabb
Web 2.0: Confabb Provides Directory And Ratings For Conferences
Most Web sites for conferences are pretty poorly designed. Simple tasks, like scrutinizing the schedule or finding the show hotel, take too long and are too painful to accomplish. That's one of the problems that Confabb, a directory, rating service, and social network for conferences, is looking to solve. I met with Confabb at Web 2.0 Expo, and got the lowdown from the company chairman.
To see what Confabb is about, take a look at a listing -- for example, this one for Web 2.0 Expo. You can browse the location, map the location, find out where to register, view a listing of sessions (blank for the Web 2.0 Expo page, unfortunately), write a review of the conference, discuss, upload media, and more.
The service has 10,000 users, 30,000 speakers, and 70,00 conferences listed. Anyone can enter information about any conference. Conferences and users come from all industries; company chairman Salim Ismail showed me pages for technology conferences, of course, and also for conferences for the construction industry and political science. The service is targeted at medium-sized conferences: Not a monster show like the Consumer Electronics Show, and not your local Meetup for pug-owners either.
The service has proven more popular outside Silicon Valley than it is inside it, Ismail. When Confabb launched, the founders assumed that Silicon Valley would love it. But they thought the mainstream world would hate it, because of the user control and ratings (mainstream businesses have historically been resistant to losing control of their brand on the Internet, and letting just anybody say anything about their products and services).
Instead, said Ismail, the opposite happened: Silicon Valley yawned at the service -- "it was just another company on TechCrunch," Ismail said -- but mainstream conferences loved it. And the thing they loved about it was the user involvement and the rating: Conference organizers spend a lot of time nagging attendees to fill out evaluation cards, and they liked the idea of making the process more convenient, on the Web.
Me and my huge Fred Flintstone-like feet are homeward bound today
Hallelujah! It's been a great conference, but a very tiring one. Conferences always take the energy out of me - I'm an introvert by nature - and while I enjoy being around people, constant socialization wears me out.
Plus my shoes are -- and I rarely use foul language anymore so bear with me on this -- fucking horrible. I bought them new as dress shoes, or what amounts to dress shoes in these business-casual times, and they don't fit. They're too small. They're Hush Puppies, and I think Hush Puppies run small. Either that, or my feet (which are already Fred Flintstone-like in their hugeness) have grown yet again. Which is something that happens to you when you get old and fat.
So I'll be buying new shoes soon. For now, I'm just wearing my sneakers, which I brought with me for walking on the treadmill (which I did for two of the four days of the conference, totally rocks, by the way. Go me!). Sneakers with khakis, a blazer, and a business-causal shirt look funny, but I'd rather not be in pain.
Not that looking funny matters at this conference, judging by the appearance of the attendees. People under the age of 27 or so are just funny-looking these days.
More specifically, the men, rather than the women, are funny-looking these days, and I think that's payback for the 80s.
If you look at TV and movies from the 80s, the men look all right, but the women have porn-star makeup and big hair and padded shoulders. They look like mutants. And the young women in those TV shows and movies all go for the Madonna look.
In twenty years, when we look back on video of the 2000s, the women will be the one who look all right, but the men - specifically the young men -- will look ridiculous, with their so-called beards that are basically just random patches of facial hair and their hair standing up on end in eight different directions. Their hair looks like they just got out of bed in the morning -- but they do it on purpose! They arrange it that way.
I won't look funny in twenty years though. I'll look like a slob. That's a timeless, classic look, like a single-breasted two-button pinstripe suit. Soup stains on your shirt are always in fashion.
And now I need to have a little snack because my blood sugar is starting to drop, post a blog to InformationWeek, pack, check out, get over to the convention center for a meeting, all in an hour and five minutes. That's plenty of time. NO NEED TO PANIC!
FriendFeed first impression
FriendFeed is absent in body from Web 2.0 Expo this week, but present in spirit. It's coming up quite a bit in conversation, even though the company isn't exhibiting or speaking here. FriendFeed is a social network for power users, it aggregates feeds from your Twitter account, blog, Flickr, LinkedIn, and 31 other types of social services and presents them in a single feed for your friends to read. I decided to give FriendFeed a try and share my first impressions with you.
I signed up for FriendFeed when I first started hearing about it on Twitter a few weeks ago, but bounced off it, I think because I went into it with incorrect expectations. When I heard about it, I thought of it as something that every social networking power-user wants: The single service or page that reflects all your activities all over the Internet. You can just give that URL to your friends, family and business associates, and never have to worry about them following you on all those services you're spending time on.
But that's not how FriendFeed works. Because, not only does it aggregate all your socnet feeds, but it also allows you to friend other people on FriendFeed, and let them friend you, and they can leave comments on your posts and you can leave comments on theirs and pretty soon you've got yet another social networking service to check in on, and who has time for that?
Or so I thought a few weeks ago. But this week I looked into it some more and said to myself: Is another social network really a bad thing? Because the entire point of social networking is to reach out and connect to other people, cementing existing relationships and creating new ones. And another socnet means a whole other community to meet people on. And that's good.
So I took a break from Web 2.0 Expo to get some alone time with my laptop and FriendFeed. Yes, I am aware of the irony: I have traveled all this way to a conference saturated with social networks, and I left the conference to connect with a social network.
This is my FriendFeed account. Friend me and I'll friend you back. I also set up a FriendFeed for InformationWeek; friend that account and you'll get all InformationWeek headlines delivered to your FriendFeed.
April 24, 2008
Attention, FriendFeed
I'd like to meet with you at Web 2.0 Expo. E-mail me, campers. mwagner@cmp.com Or DM me on Twitter; I'm MitchWagner there.
Recent Comments