So I had seen the old videos on YouTube, but as you would expect the marketing machine that is Microsoft has me saying HOLY SHIT!!!
For those of you that are tech savvy this is old news, but for those of you that don't keep up on blogs, etc. and never click on the links I provide, I implore you to please check this out... IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND. Now if they can just deliver on the hype!
Microsoft Surface - a whole new kind of computer interaction.
I am a big fan of TinyUrl. It is a very simple concept but one that has so many applications. If you have ever seen a long URL wrap around and therefore break in an email client then you have one of the use cases for using TinyUrl.
Another case (which I imagine is converging as mail readers get more and more mature), is to make sure that the widest audience can see the link. Now that we live in a world of RSS and syndication every where, you have no idea when URLs that contain "border line" characters are going to get truncated or cause parsing errors in one of the many processors that it must go through in it's journey to the millions of consumers it is serving.
Now that I am using twitter often and blogging more often I find myself having to go through the following steps:
highlight the link I want to copy and hit ctrl-c
hit ctrl-t to open a new tab
type in "tinyurl" and hit ctrl-enter
hit ctrl-p to paste the link and hit enter
select the link and hit ctrl-c
paste it to where I want it to live
This was getting old to me... so I just googled "tinurl plugin" and found this wonderful little gadget, the TinyUrl Creator :: Firefox Add-on.
So now my 6 step process above is a right click, left click, ctrl-p. As Borat would say, "Very Niice!"
I have spent the better part of three days giving my blog and RSS feed an overhaul. I can see the writing on the wall and as a software engineer I know that in 2 years, those that do not have a solid online presence, will not even get an interview.
I mean think about it, if you have a list of 10 candidates, and 8 of them have a blog with relevant links to their other web based personas you can weed out those that are obvious freaks, and you can get a much better feel for a person then by just spending two hours with them in a very un-normal process such as an interview.
I would rather watch the beast in it's natural habitat, that is going to give me a better feel for what kind of person they really are.
Anyway, here is what I have been working on for my site:
I now have both www.beebe4.com and http://beebe4.blogspot.com serving up the same content... this blog.
I have setup my feeds in Feed Burner to allow a better feed. Better why? Because of the following reasons:
I have started using Google Reader to read all the blogs I am reading these days. Google Reader has a nice share feature that is available as a feed and they also have a widget that was easy to add to my blog via blogger's API, and I think it is pretty interesting.
Blogger has added a video bar, so for now I am going to keep it on there and see if people enjoy watching random videos. When you add the widget, it asks you to type in some key words to search for videos... mine where "beebe4, funny, tech, google, blog, jacksonville, code search." Feel free to provide feed back if it is interesting.
According to Wikipedia, Twitter is:
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in October 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.
Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and also instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter web site, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, or through an application. For SMS, currently three gateway numbers are available: short codes for the USA and Canada and a UK number for international use. While the Twitter service is free, posting and receiving updates via SMS may incur charges from the wireless carrier.
If you scroll all the way to the bottom, I added a guest map which allows users to add their location, so that over time I can see (along with the rest of the world) where people are checking into read this blog from.
I switched the archive links back to listed out as I am not sure how GoogleBot will crawl the links if they are in a drop down list. My thinking is that the list will allow more pages to get indexed, and therefore get more traffic.
For those of you that are still learning how to use this fancy Internet, RSS is a very important feature that most web sites (blogs, news sites, etc) use to provide a syndicated feed of changes that have been made to their site. This allows a user to simple subscribe to the RSS feed and use a tool such as Google Reader to aggregate them and tell you when there is new content from your favorite sites.
I would recommend that if you are not doing so, but instead going around and checking out different web sites or waiting for them to send you an email you should really do the following:
Google has rolled out there answer to Microsoft Live Map's Birds Eye View, and they are calling it Street View. I took it for a test drive today and went around South Beach and it kinda felt like I was in the back of a car driving around. Some things were annoying like the fact that as you navigate down a street, typically the same car is in the same scene.
I am sure that Google will continue to add lots more streets soon, but right now I still think that Microsoft's Birds Eye View has the upper hand based on available areas of coverage.
A few months ago I went to hear Carl Smith give a talk about Google Analytics. It was interesting, to see how a consulting shop was using the information they were getting from Analytics to tailor their website to adjust to how people were using it. For example they would check out the click path of customers that they were about to go give a demo for and see which area they were checking out and tailor their presentation around that also.
Since Carl's talk, Google has overhauled the original Urchin interface for the better, and I have to say it is also noticeable faster. If you have a website and are not using Google Analytics you really should take the time to look it over. After all, it is free.
I have a problem with addition. Every once in a while i go on binges and drive my wife crazy. My father had trouble with alcohol, but I am addicted to video games. Every once in a while I will make the mistake of taking two minutes to load up a game just to check it out. I did so last weekend after reading an article on How to Get Rich Programming.
Damn you silly flash games. (WARNING... highly addictive... do not click this link.)
I have logged an insane amount of time playing this simple, stupid game. My wife is at wits end, and in complete befuddlement (is that a word?) as to how I can stay up to 3, 4, and 5am playing this game. I calmly tell her that there is no use fighting it, just let it run its course and it will pass. It will pass just like Civ III, Mini Putt 3, Lux and many others. She knows that it will, but still she hates going to bed with the same conversation every night:
I'm going to bed
Ok, I'll be there in a minute
Apple announced it's iPhone yesterday, and all I have to say is "Holy Shit!" That thing looks amazing! I haven't wanted anything so bad, since back in '84 when I finally got a NES.
Head on over to Apple and check out there iPhone section it is well worth it!
So, my friend at work, Mike, showed me Synergy today. PRETTY FREAKING COOL! It is not ready for prime time yet, as the UI is a little clunky, but the functionality works and allows me to just use one keyboard and mouse to control the laptop and computer at my desk. It is different then the hardware needed like a Belkin, and it doesn't allow you to use the same monitor for multiple computers, but it does allow you to make all monitors aware of each other, so that your mouse can jump from screen to screen to screen, regardless of your operating system.
And best of all... it is free!
I purchased some cordless headphones a while back on eBay. Two comments:
1) eBay needs to have a non-smoking symbol for products. These bitches smelled like smoke for a month after I got them, and I think it discolored some of the rubber on them. I would never buy from a smoker for any product that I am going to wrap around my head.
2) The brand is InfraSound and it basically has an ifrared base that transmits to the headphone with receivers on either ear. The work ok, but they seem to be getting interference from my monitor, and GOD forbid if I turn my head the wrong direction or raise my hand to adjust the volume (which is located on the bottom side of the ear) and block the receiver... whole fuzz sound, batman. You would think that they could cancel out the fuzz and not bust your ear drums every time the signal cannot be received.
Anyways, don't waste your money if Smoky Smokerton from Smokerville is trying to sell you some cordless infrared headphones, it will be money poorly spend.
So I had previously mentioned Skype and GoToMeeting as good tools... but here are some other open source projects that I would recommend.
Sherry and I both got new phones this week. Always fun to get a new phone :)
I am excited about this one, it seems to have access to the web down, and at much faster speeds. It is the new Samsung a900 by Sprint. My major complaint is that it does not easily sync to outlook, but that just made me look harder at ways to get around this. 
I tried different freeware programs and different services (like AirSet which is kinda cool, but I don't want to have a special app just to have my contacts and calendar up to date). But nothing yet. I did find an open source project BitPim that will eventually get around to it I imagine but they have not added support for the a900 yet.
I have already uploaded my Jack Johnson CD (On and On) and taken video of a burning car that I passed on the way to the airport, and pictures of Sherry and Noah. I will be able to send video mail easily I think so those of you in the inner circle get ready.
In my explorations I did find (and play with) some cool tools to add anything you want as a Java app to the phone. Below are the details:
Borrowed from the Sprint Users Forum
So I got bored last night and started exploring my a900's file system to see what I could see. I didn't realize it when I first used QPST, but you can in fact use QPST to upload files, this made me very happy. So what follows is how to fill up the 11mb of allotted space on your A900 without having to use uploading sites
First head out to http://www.samsung.com and search for A900 drivers. Download and install them, then reboot (Yes, you must reboot)
Next, download and install QPST if you don't already have it (seriously, just search google for QPST2_7.zip, you WILL find it)
Call Sprint (*2) and ask a rep for the MSL for your phone. They will give it to you with no problems, if you get an ass on the line, thank him/her for their time, hang up and try again.
Once you have your MSL, start up QPST from your start menu and click the "Ports" tab. Click "Add new port" and type in COM3 for both fields. If your phone doesn't come up on that one then try also adding COM4.
Once your phone shows up in the Active Phones field click the "Start Clients" menu and click "EFS Explorer"
Put your MSL in the SPC field and click OK. Let EFS explore traverse your file system.
Now comes the fun part which I'm going to copy and paste from notepad, hopefully it will be nice and complete for you
Browse to /brew/mod/obione/jas/index/ In there you'll find a bunch of .txt files, these files are references to all the custom files on your phone. 1.txt and 2.txt are OnDemand and Sprint Music Store, respectively. The rest are the various demos sprint has put on your phone from the factory.
What you want to do is find the .txt file for what you want to upload. If you want to upload an app grab 8.txt, which is the Weather Channel reference file. If you want to upload a game, grab 3.txt (tetris demo). im or email app - 10.txt. ringer - 12.txt. screen saver - 13.txt.
Once it's on your computer, save it to the next available number for that directory (the largest number in mine is 15.txt, so i would rename 8.txt to 16.txt).
For games, apps and IM/Email apps:
1. Open up your .txt file and change JARF to 16 and JADF to 16 (in my example). If you don't have a jad for the file I think you can leave the number field blank.
2. Right click on the jar you want to upload and put the size in bytes of the file into MSIZ
3. The PERM field is what you would find under settings. there are six menu items when you view settings on a file using your phone, and coincidentally there is a 0 based array of 6 fields in the PERM field with different values:
0 - Network
1 - Location (GPS)
2 - File Connection
3 - PIM
4 - Sprint Extensions
5 - Bluetooth
4. If you want you can change the download URL (DURL), but it's not that important.
5. You'll obviously want to change the NAME and VEND fields to their respective values (JAMDAT Bowling, JAMDAT Mobile, Inc. - for JAMDAT bowling)
6. After you've done that find the .JAD and .JAR you want to upload and rename them to (in my example) 16.jad and 16.jar
7. Click and drag your .txt file into the /brew/mod/obione/jas/index/ directory, and click and drag your jad and jar files into the /brew/shared/jas/content/ directory
8. Check your games or apps directory for what you've just uploaded and rejoice in knowing that you don't have to pay for data rates anymore
For Ringers and Screen savers:
*I haven't actually done either of these, but judging by the layout of the reference file it would be pretty easy.*
1. Open up your .txt file and change CONF and CONH to the next available number (16 in my example).
2. As for TYPE, the sample video ringer has video/3gpp and the screen saver has image/x-pmd. I'm guessing these are just your standard mime-types, so feel free to put whatever you need in here to get it working.
3. Right click the file you are uploading and put the size in bytes into the SIZE field
4. Change the path to shared/jas/content/16.gc (in my example)
5. And then of course you can change the NAME and VEND fields to suit your needs.
6. Change the name of the file you are uploading to 16.gc (in my example).
7. Click and drag your .txt file into the /brew/mod/obione/jas/index/ directory, and click and drag your media file into the /brew/shared/jas/content/ directory
8. Check your respective folder on your phone to see if it works.
The CATE (category) field is described as follows:
1 - Games
2 - Ringers
4 - Screen Savers
8 - Apps
16 - IM & Email
256 - Sprint stuff
