Edge Case, Community Builder, Tinkerer, and Teacher
Hope it won’t last too much longer.
I’m still posting lots and lots of short stuff, as usual, so make sure you check me out on Twitter, FriendFeed, and my Linkblog (where I post interesting news and my take on it). Feel free to subscribe via the relevant means (feed, follow, etc.) if you want to automate the whole process.
See you soon! 
(Over on the Intel Software Network blog, software ninja Clay Breshears put up a post today about why he will “Never Own an Electronic Book”. Turns out his frustration stems from how hard it is to search for something, if you don’t know exactly what you’re searching for. This is a problem not just for ebooks and readers like the Kindle, but for the web and our text-oriented world in general.
I typed up a response to Clay in a comment, which I’m reproducing here, because I think it illustrates that things aren’t as bad as they seem, and not yet as good as they should be.)
Clay, you make a very good point, but it seems to be aimed at the effectiveness of search in general, rather than just on ebook readers (though they suffer in the same way). Just like prices can only come down, I hope that natural language search can only get better from here.
That said, as a rabid Kindle fan, the situation there might not be as bad as you fear. 
When you search on a Kindle, it searches across all the books you have on the device (it indexes them during idle time while you’re reading, and new books show up in the index quickly). And here’s what the search results page looks like:
It shows you how many results were found in each book, and by selecting that book, you can quickly skip back and forth between the hits.
Notice that there are also options to find results from the web, Wikipedia, the Kindle Store, and the built-in dictionary on the Kindle, if what you’re looking for isn’t in one of your books.
Search DOES need to get better, but I’m pretty happy with how well it works on the Kindle today. Come by next time you’re in the neighborhood, and I’ll give you a demo!
Update: I’m an idiot. This is a feature that’s part of Lifehacker’s Better GReader Firefox extension that I installed the other day. I just now noticed the behavior, and though it was part of Google Reader itself. Still, a cool feature - check out Better GReader for that and more! And sorry for the false alarm. Here I thought I was breaking news on a new feature!
Just noticed this - a new Google Reader feature!
When I clicked the post title, instead of opening in a new tab, as usual, it opened an inline preview of the entire target web page, right there inside Google Reader.
There’s a new “Preview” button at the bottom of the entry, too, where you can toggle the preview on and off.
Haven’t read anything from Google about this feature yet, but it’s neato!
Something about the term “user generated content” has bugged me ever since I first heard it. I’m enthusiastically behind *what it actually means*. But the term itself just sticks in my craw. It makes me think of a galley full of slaves users, chained down, “generating” “content”.
I just came across this post about the term from Ted Ernst at AboutUs (a Portland-based wiki company where Ward Cunningham, the guy who invented the wiki concept, works):
The individual contribution is not what’s important, it’s not what makes everything work — it’s the fact that we have a community of contributors who implicitly agree to work together, to collaborate, to try and constantly improve the content.
It’s a short post, and worth a read. It references (and quotes) a great post by Brianna, a Wikimedia admin, where the idea originated. Read that one, too:
Actually, there’s only one problem at root: the attitude which leads one to choose these words. That attitude is one from the corporate world. That the best term they could come up with was “user-generated content” shows what a limited understanding the business world has of what it is we’re doing. And why should we settle for the best term THEY can come up with?
I’m a big believer that names are important. They have power and significance beyond what you think.
Food for thought.
I use Flickr to store my photos online. You can “geotag” your photos on Flickr, to show where, exactly, they were taken (on a map). I’ve geotagged most of the 4000+ photos I have on Flickr. By hand, dragging them to the correct location on the map. What a pain.
The iPhone, with the new 2.0 software, can take pictures and tag them with your current location (if you have an iPhone 3G with real GPS, this location information is usually MUCH more precise). Suddenly, the dream of being able to get photos from the iPhone to Flickr, WITHOUT having to manually geotag or othewise manipulate them, seemed to be within reach.
So close, yet so far away.
Right now, there are a few ways to get photos from an iPhone to Flickr. The easiest, I think, is to setup the “upload by email” feature on Flickr. This gives you a secret email address that, when sent a photo as an attachment, uploads the photo to Flickr for you. This is how I get iPhone photos onto Flickr 99% of the time. The downside is, the photos get sent at a much smaller size (640×480) than they were taken at (1600×1200). On top of that, all of the “EXIF” metadata (what make and model camera took the picture, what exposure settings were used, etc.) gets stripped off of the photo when it’s emailed. This includes the geotag/location information. So it arrives at Flickr shrunken and lobotomized and unaware of where it was taken. So sad.
Once the App Store launched, Flickr uploader apps started appearing in droves. AirMe seems to be a popular one, but I tested it, and it didn’t preserve the geodata, (and I think it shrunk the photos, too). So I deleted it.
I’ve been watching the development of an app called Flickup with interest. The author, Martin Gordon (@kodachrome22 on Twitter), is someone I kind of know from Ars Technica. But most importantly, the feature list of Flickup looked promising - it can upload photos and preserve the geotag/location information. It’s not free ($1.99), so I waited a little longer to try it than I would have otherwise, but try it I have, and I’m pleased (if not 100% ecstatic) with the results.
First of all, Flickup DOES preserve the geotag information of the photos it uploads (with a caveat):
This is a photo I took from within the Flickup app, and uploaded straight to Flickr. The app asked me for permission to use my location (like all location-aware iPhone apps do), which I granted, et viola! The photo appears on the map where it was taken (to the best of my iPhone’s knowledge). Click on the photo then click “map” to see it - I can’t figure out a way to direct link to a single photo on the map on Flickr.
Even better, for photos taken from within the Flickup app (as opposed to uploading saved pictures from the Photo Album), the photos go up to Flickr in their full 2 megapixel 1600×1200 glory.
If you’re looking for an app ONLY to take pictures, and send them directly to Flickr, you can stop reading here. Flickup is perfect, and does everything you’d expect it to (you can edit the title, description, and tags of the photos, etc., too).
So what are the caveats? They have to do with uploading saved pictures from the iPhone’s Photo Album.
First, when you upload a saved photo from the album, it goes as a shrunken 640×480 version. Martin says this has to do with some limitations in the iPhone’s APIs (which I believe). He also says that the API is the cause of all the other EXIF metadata being stripped from the photos (which is probably what makes this such a problem in the first place - fix your stupid APIs, Apple!) Don’t count this against Martin or Flickup.
Second, when you upload a saved picture from the album, Flickup WILL geotag it, but it appears to grab your CURRENT location (it asks), rather than use the location data stored in the photo. In other words, it will geotag the photo with the location of where it was UPLOADED, instead of where it was TAKEN. Martin acknowledges this is sub-optimal.
(A photo uploaded from my Photo Album, but geotagged at the time of upload.)
If what Martin says about the Apple APIs stripping out EXIF metadata (and again, I have no reason not to believe this is true), then there’s probably no way for Flickup (or any other photo uploader app) to preserve a photo’s ORIGINAL location information. The best we can hope for is how Flickup works - tag it with the location at the time of upload. If you take photos and upload them immediately, then there’s really no difference. But it’s super annoying that Apple comes SO CLOSE to making this work the way it should, yet falls short in the home stretch.
So, is Flickup worth the $1.99 in the App Store? If you’re a Flickr user that cares about a) uploading pictures at full size instead of 640×480, and/or actually preserving all that fancy location data that your iPhone can tack onto your photos, then yes, absolutely. Flickup is the way to go for full size geotagged Flickr uploading goodness.
There’s still room in this field for perfection. But it seems that it will depend on Apple making changes to the photo and location APIs on the iPhone, or some really clever developers figuring out ways to get around those restrictions. Guess which one I’m betting on happening first?
I’ve become a bit obsessed with blog editors lately. I’m a long time fan of MarsEdit on the Mac, which, all other things being equal, is my favorite way to write a blog post (in fact, I’m using it right now). But I’ve been exploring options for other platforms, where I can’t use MarsEdit (the ScribeFire plugin for Firefox is my second favorite, because it runs everywhere Firefox does, including my little Eee PC 901 that runs Linux).
For the iPhone, there’s the WordPress iPhone app, available for free from the App Store. It’s actually a really great app, and I highly recommend you get it and use it if you have a WordPress-based blog. Even my self-described non-techy wife Rachel loves it, and uses it all the time to post pictures to our family blog. But of course, I can’t help but explore other options.
One of the cool new features in the recent WordPress 2.6 release is the new, revamped “Press This” bookmarklet. It’s a bit of javascript in a bookmark that lets you create a new post, and easily add photos or embed videos from whatever page you were on when you click “Press This”. Since it’s just javascript in a bookmark, it should work in pretty much any browser.
Which is, of course, what led me to try it on my iPhone. I’m happy to report that it works pretty darn well:
All of the functionality seems to be there - grabbing an image from a web page, or video embed code (which probably won’t work too well in practice, without the ability to copy and paste on the iPhone, although the bookmarklet is supposed to automatically grab the embed code from YouTube pages, and possibly other video sites, too). It seems to be able to do everything the full blown iPhone WordPress app can do, and even a little more (for instance, including a link to a page in your post, which is a pain in the butt without copy/paste, or including images from Flickr or any other web page without saving them to your iPhone’s Photo Album first). At the very least, it’s another option to add to your growing blog editor arsenal (what? you don’t have one of those? I do!).
I might go so far as to say that this is now the most flexible, powerful way to post to a WordPress blog from the iPhone. Yes, even better than the WordPress iPhone app itself.
There’s one small speed bump. I don’t know of a way to add the “Press This” bookmarklet to your iPhone without adding it as a bookmark on your computer first (find it on the “Write a Post” page of your WordPress 2.6.x blog), and they syncing it over to the iPhone via iTunes. Also note that each “Press This” bookmarklet is specific to a single blog - if you have many blogs, you’ll want to create a bookmarklet for each of them, and name them appropriately to avoid confusion.
What other iPhone blog editing hacks do you know of? Share them in the comments, along with any questions, enhancements, or anything else you feel like.
Speaking of Ignite Portland, Chris and Ponzi Pirillo, and the other organizers of the best geek conference I’ve ever been to, Gnomedex, pinged me last week to see if any Ignite Portland alumni would be interested in giving their talks at Gnomedex 8.0 this year.
As a result, at Gnomedex on Saturday morning, there’s going to be a “mini-Ignite Portland” with selections of popular talks from past Ignite Portland events. (This isn’t an official Legion of Tech event.) There’s also going to be a similar “mini Ignite Seattle” on Friday afternoon, with Brady Forest and his cadre of Igniters.
I somehow got roped into being the “emcee’, introducing the talks, etc (I’m not crazy about getting up on stage), but I hope to get through the intro quickly and sit down fast.
Rick Turoczy over at Silicon Florist has a writeup, with a list of the talks that will be featured, and you can see the “speaker bio” page for the talks on the Gnomedex site.
Here are the talks that are migrating north to Seattle:
The coolest thing about all of this? The idea for Ignite Portland was hatched at last year’s Gnomedex. They highlighted some of the previous evening’s Ignite Seattle talks, and I loved them. The energy and excitement were off the charts, and I immediately started thinking (and Twitter-ing) about how awesome it would be to do an Ignite event in Portland. Connections and plans were made, venues were filled to capacity, Legion of Tech was born, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Besides the obvious coolness of these talks, there’s something poetic about Ignite Portland making an appearance at Gnomedex. It goes to show that a lot of really cool things can happen in the space of one year!
Just put up a note at IgnitePortland.com about the volunteer kickoff meeting tonight at Cubespace. If you’re interested in helping plan, organize, and pull off Ignite Portland 4 on November 13, check it out.
In the past, we’ve had almost more volunteer help than we can handle. Which is an awesome problem to have. This time, we’re going to focus on being organized, and trying to streamline the whole process (since there’s nothing really new about it, now that we’ve done three of these).
Oh, and don’t forget to fill out the volunteer survey, to let us know where you’re interested in helping out.
It’s going to be fun and interesting, no matter what!
Won’t be using this as my avatar, probably, but all the cool kids have been making these, so I had to jump on the bandwagon. Darn that condition I have - FOMO - Fear of Missing Out!
Now that I think of it, it doesn’t look particularly manga-ish, but oh well.
At the Intel SIGGRAPH booth, I ran into something unexpected at the Intel Software Network kiosk - a brand new (just announced this week) Lenovo ThinkPad W700.
Besides being quite big (you can see it’s about to swallow my bestickered MacBook Pro whole), this Centrino 2-based monster’s claim to fame is the integrated Wacom drawing tablet in the wristrest.
The specs are extremely impressive, too: 17″ WUXGA (1920×1280) display, Intel Core 2 Extreme quad core 3.0GHz CPU, up to 8GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GPU with 1GB of RAM, and two hard drive bays for RAID 0 or RAID 1. This is pretty much the fastest portable on the planet.
Perfect for artists, webcomic creators, Photoshop junkies, and anyone else who doesn’t want to lug their external drawing tablet around. Instead, you can just lug the W700 around, because it’s a stretch to even call this bad boy a “laptop”.
I think this system has officially claimed the title of “Lapzilla” from the 17″ MacBook Pro. Saw some more of it at the Lenovo booth, and there’s no other way to describe it other than “monster”.
Oh, and for reference, prices start at around $2900.
That price, however, doesn’t include much. Only a Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, lower resolution screen, no Wacom tablet, 512MB VRAM, etc.
Maxed out with all the goodies (Quad core processor - $875, WUXGA screen - $225, 4GB RAM - $170, Wacom tablet and Pantone color corrector - $150, 1GB VRAM - $400, 2 fast hard drives in RAID 0 - $435, and a Blu-Ray drive - $450 inflates the price up to a whopping $5500. And that doesn’t even include the even more spendy option for a pair of fast SATA 64GB SSD drives (which you can’t apparently RAID together), which would add another $2000+ to the price. Yikes. I guess the size isn’t the only “monster” thing about the W700.
Update: Here are a couple more photos, of the monster W700 trying to eat my little 8.9″ Eee PC 901.
# # # in reply to harrisja #
Still quite useful. # in reply to jmoriarty # # # # # #
# in reply to sleepingforest # # in reply to dickieadams # # in reply to BrianEnigma # in reply to georgegsmithjr # in reply to georgegsmithjr # in reply to rachelbancroft # in reply to betsywhim # in reply to betsywhim # # # in reply to TiEsQue # # # in reply to ahockley # # # # in reply to LeStew # # # He’s entertaining the staff. And there’s wifi. # in reply to Jmartens # in reply to chrisorourke # in reply to chrisorourke # in reply to ejacqui # #pdxtst # # in reply to hangry # in reply to JenFloyd08 # Seriously, though, love your stuff, loved JPG before, you know… in reply to fraying #
TinyScreenfuls Feed (this blog)