Monday, December 7, 2009
Google Goggles for Android
It’s only a matter of time before Android is an OS for the brain and Google Goggles allows you to know everything about everything. Parties are going to be so boring in the Android future.
reblogged from faketv
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Jack Dorsey’s new venture Square looks brilliant and promising. Notice that little box on the bottom saying Get real rewards and do you also remember that Jack’s also an angel in Foursquare? Smells like a FourSquare integration to me. This would make perfect sense.
Think PayPal and Yelp on-the-go.
Watch Jack demo Square in this video.
I wish I ran a retail storefront right now just so i could swipe a credit card with my phone.
reblogged from david-noel
Monday, November 30, 2009
New microsyntax for Twitter
[T]here is value in coordinating our language, and providing some basic guidelines that emerge based on behavior — so that we can encode more meaning into these little blips of communication.
Explained:
- /via
- /cc
- /by
Twitter with a Brain: Proxies and APIs
Suppose that the user wants to un-follow “pottymouth” for 24 hours.
I long for a way to temporarily follow and un-follow people and trending topics. The magic suggested in this article would enable much more than that, but this would be a useful start. [via DF]
Thursday, October 29, 2009
How Critics Reviewed the Original Macintosh in 1984
via DF:
The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a “mouse”. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I don’t want one of these new fangled devices.
John C. Dvorak
Actually, I love it when others make design decisions for me—as long as those designers’ tastes align with my own. Microsoft’s products have no coherent design, so the company instead pushes “choice”, as if that’s a substitute for a lack of commitment to any single vision.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Wordpress Plugins on RRR
In case you find it useful, here’s a list of the plugins I use on RRR’s Wordpress installation and an example of how a couple work together. I’m inspired to post this after following the tips provided by Dreamhost on fine-tuning a Wordpress installation to speed it up dramatically.
ADMIN (make it easier to manage)
- Ajax Plugin Helper - activate, deactivate, and upgrade plugins without leaving the plugin screen.
- Simply Show IDs - displays the IDs for posts, pages, and categories plainly on the “edit post/page/category” pages.
- Maintenance Mode - allows me to work on the site while showing a temporary “Site down” message to all visitors.
PERFORMANCE (reduce page load time)
- WP Super Cache - reduces hits on the MySQL database.
- JavaScript to Footer - for plugins and template pieces I can’t or don’t want to move manually, moves javascript calls to the footer section of the page, which speeds up page display.
SEO (make sure people find us)
- Redirection - redirects old/broken links and whips up magic using regular expressions (see example below).
- All in One SEO Pack - used mostly for page/post titles and descriptions.
- Google XML Sitemaps - in case it helps.
DISPLAY (make things functional/easy/pretty)
- Audio player - for playing single files that aren’t uploaded to SoundCloud.
- FAQs - handy FAQ manager for our growing FAQs.
- Flexi Quote Rotator (temporary) - used for showing a rotating crop of quotes. Not ideal but it works when I need it.
- List category posts - on static pages, displays a list of all posts by title within a stated category or categories, with links to the original posts (see example below).
- Shadowbox JS - lightbox funcationality for pictures, videos, audio, html, etc.
- Exec-PHP - enables execution of PHP on a Wordpress page.
Each has its own usefulness, but combining them in interesting ways also made my life easier when it was time to set up the album/collection pages.
Each song exists in multiple categories of song collections; e.g., “Layers of the Earth” is in the science album, the Earth Day collection, and the box set. It would be a pain to configure automatically-generated category pages to show custom descriptions, embedded audio players, purchase buttons, and more for each unique cluster.
Instead, I set up static pages that hold everything but the list of posts in each category. Then I set up each song to display its categories. Using Redirection, I pointed each category listing on a song page to the matching Wordpress Page with matching slugs. (For instance, the category “earth-day” redirects to a music page with the same slug). Each music page then automatically lists any tracks assigned to a category via the “List category posts plugin”. You can see it in action on the Layers of the Earth page and any of the collections it links to near the top.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Google Social: search results from people you know
Whoa: search results from people in your various networks based on what they’ve broadcast publicly. Searching for something mundane like “Brooklyn food” (no quotes), I get all these mentions of “Brooklyn” and “food” from people I’m connected to on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Suddenly, that random restaurant someone raved about on Twitter four months ago is relevant again, because the recommendation is right here in my search results.
Once you’re enabled it, search for something. If you don’t see social results after searching, click “Show options…” near the top of the screen and select “Social” under “All results”.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Virtual Street Corners: Connecting Brookline and Roxbury
Beginning in June 2010, the storefronts in Coolidge Corner, and in Dudley Square, Roxbury will be transformed into large video screens, providing pedestrians of each neighborhood with a portal into one another’s worlds. Running 24/7, life-size screen images and AV technology will enable real-time chat between residents of the two neighborhoods.
(via @jonardrey)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Apple Netbook Claim Chowder
Gruber posts claim chowder regularly, but this one strikes me as reblog-worthy.
Two days ago, Apple announced its financial results for the quarter ended September 26. The company sold 3 million Macs, of which 2.3 million were laptops, and booked $1.67 billion in profit. Not one of those 2.3 million laptops was a “netbook”…
He then cites examples of numerous analysts predicting doom for Apple unless they produce [low-margin] netbooks.
Non-Mac users simply refuse to understand why anyone would buy a $1k Macbook or spend more for Macbook Pro worth cheering about, and simultaneously rationalize saving a few hundred bucks on a laptop that is “OK” and “decent” and “gets the job done”. In authors this reveals itself in punditry that is downright resentful and, often, wrong.
Mac users experience what it’s like to have a computer you love and cheer about and never look back. They’re not perfect, but their problems exist in a different class of not-such-a-big-deal rather than I-hate-this-machine. It’s not a conspiracy—they really are that good.
Friday, October 16, 2009
What problems does Google Wave solve?
A good, if limited, introduction to Google Wave. [via waxylinks]
