BASEMENT.ORG
Posted by richz at 9:57 AMMass Media, Mass Murder And The Narcissistic Web
At the end of last year, Time magazine anointed their Person of the Year. Surprisingly, it was you (or us, or me, or whatever). In essence, the Social Web was Person of the Year. The collective community that is sharing ideas, photos, videos, thoughts, writings and such. It's a bold and intriguing choice.
There's an uglier side to this however. An ideal view of the Social Web has us thinking and collaborating together. A less than ideal view casts us as celebrities that feed on the attention and validation of being seen, read or heard. The Last Psychiatrist (a fascinating blog, by the way) said it best:
Being on YouTube, having a blog, having an iPod, being on MySpace-- all of these things are self-validating, they allow that illusion that is so important to narcissists: that we are the main characters in a movie. Not that we're the best, or the good guys, but the main characters. That everyone around us is supporting cast; the funny friend, the crazy ex, the neurotic mother, the egotistical date, etc. That makes reminders of our insignificance even more infuriating.
Youtube, Myspace, Flickr and blogging, they are, in many ways, a massive infrastructure that breeds and feeds an unhealthy level of narcissism. The result is an unquenching desire to be the lead in our own film, the star of our own show. The problem with promising narcissism is that, for some, the notion of not being recognized and acknowledged is nearly unbearable. It's a slippery slope.
During his killing rampage in Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-Hui found the time ship a multimedia package to NBC. It's a disturbing collection of writings, photos and videos that look more like a sliced-up movie trailer than a manifesto of some twisted ideology. It is the modern day Zodiac letters. Except this time, it isn't an article in a local newspaper. It's an all-out media blitz.
Cho knew full well where his media package would end up. This was his movie. Everyone else was an actor. With a bit of work, you could take any one of his photos and turn them into a movie poster. His desire to be seen, to be the star, spiraled to an extreme.
I'll close with another, frighteningly prophetic quote from the same Last Psychiatrist post cited above:
If society chooses to make narcissism the default, it's going to have to deal with society-wide narcissistic injuries - when we suddenly realize that it isn't solely our movie and we're really not the main character. And no one wants to see this stupid movie anyway. This inevitably leads to violence[...]Posted by richz at 10:22 AM
Here Come The Flex Components
Without a doubt, we're starting to see a migration from various development circles towards the power of Actionscript 3 and Flex. The first of hopefully many component library sites. Flexbox already has over 100 components. And over at Google Gode you've got Flexlib, another nice collection of components.
I've got one gripe with both sites: where are the RSS feeds for the latest additions???
Posted by richz at 3:48 PMBlog Junk Food
Over the past month or so, since Anna Nicole Smith's death, the media has been criticized for spending way too much time on what is effectively a sensational bit of news that is hardly newsworthy. The cable channels like MSNBC and CNN have spent countless hours dissecting, analyzing and reporting on the mildly ridiculous sequence of events since her death. Meanwhile, a a fairly serious war plays second fiddle.
As a result, the time-tested argument that the media is irresponsible rears its ugly head. "This isn't journalism. This is entertainment." or "The news media outlets are failing us." In these arguments is a tinge of high-mindedness towards the masses. The masses, the argument goes, should not be patronized in such a way. We're way too smart and scrupulous to be served such drivel.
Well, it turns out there's a really great way to get a sense of what the masses really want to talk about: search queries and blogs. What information are people seeking and what kinds of conversations are happening out there? Let's take a look:
The most searched term for the week ending February 25, 2007 on AOL is: Antonella Barba. What's the top topic on blogs last week? You guessed it: Antonella Barba.
Who's Antonella Barba you ask? She's one of the finalists on the wildly popular American Idol TV show. Apparently, some provocative pictures of her have surfaced on the Internet and people are going insane showing them, talking about them and even dissecting them for authenticity.
So much for blogging being the tool that elevates us to some sort of higher collective consciousness. Whether it be trash television, tabloid newspapers, or blog junk food, they're all mere symptoms of the underlying condition: most people don't really care about all the serious things in the world. Well, they may care. They just don't care as much.
Posted by richz at 9:11 AMWe Me Apologize For The Inconvenience
Something went wonky with DNS yesterday and basement.org was effectively down for about eight hours. It's now back up and pointing to the proper "stuff."
Posted by richz at 10:38 AMA Blogging Milestone (?)
Well this is sort of neat. Basement.org, your favorite blog (ever) has reached something of a blogging milestone. Feedburner reports 1,000 subscribers today.
I'd just like to thank everyone for reading, sharing and providing feedback to basement.org. It's been much fun so far. Hopefully it'll stay that way. :)
Posted by richz at 9:19 AMJobs: DRM Is Dumb
Steve Jobs has put out a pretty gutsy memo that essentially lays out Apple's stance regarding DRM and what an immense waste of time and energy it is for everyone involved. In short, Jobs asserts that if the big record labels agreed to drop DRM protection altogether, Apple would wholeheartedly embrace it.
I for one have never and would never buy music from iTunes precisely because of the restrictions associated with that music. Put another way, if iTunes sold plain vanilla MP3's, I'd be all over it. I may actually never take advantage of the "freedom" of purchasing unrestricted content, I just like knowing that I can. I think this is partly why CD's so drastically eclipse online sales even to this day. People know that when they buy a CD, they truly own it and can do with it what they wish.
I also think this is less about the DRM restrictions that are in place than it is about the lack of knowledge around DRM. People don't feel good about what they don't know. They're confident about their ownership when purchasing a CD, not so much when buying a song on iTunes.
Also, Jobs points out that the entire DRM cat and mouse game is a losing (and extremely costly) proposition for everyone involved. The gain is nowhere near the cost.
Oddly, this isn't about legal minutia and content ownership. It's about human nature. Hackers love the challenge of cracking the code as an end in itself, not as a means to steal music. And consumers want to know that when they buy something, they really own it. Acknowledging these two nearly obvious facts can get everyone to a better place.
Posted by richz at 3:21 PMBasement.org's Greatest Hits
Basement.org's first post happened on October 22, 2004. While on some days I do have that "s#$t, I really should blog" feeling, it's usually a blast. And some posts definitely blasted off more than others. Some posts have been served hundreds of thousands of times. Frightening.
And so, thanks to my trusty server logs, here are Basement.org's Greatest Hits:
10. Working Some New Muscles
9. Taking RSS Beyond Headlines - Part Two
8. "Uh Oh, Your Browser Is Leaking"
7. Give'em Room Folks : The Importance of Open Space In Design
6. Stealing Metadata
5. Google's Laser-Guided Missiles
4. I Don't Hate Macs, I Just Hate Mac Users
3. Reality Check 2.0
2. Taking RSS Beyond Headlines - Part One
1. Why Do We Love Rounded Corners?
I Hate...Myself
The Apple fanboys will be frothing at the mouth today. As I type this, Mr. Jobs is picking up his legendary dry cleaning as he gets ready for the big show today. What could it be? More new iPods? More new iPod colors? Macbook Pro "Ultra" (or something)? Apple knows how to generate buzz. And the sound of Apple-related blog chatter is absolutely deafening.
But if you're looking for the big announcement today, it's not happening at Macworld Expo. It's happening right here.
I bought a Macbook Pro.
Yes, the man who doesn't hate Macs, but just hates Mac users, bought a Mac. It took quite a bit of energy to conjur up enough self-loathing to purchase one, but I finally did.
So have at it people. The target doesn't get much bigger than this. I finally gave in to all smoothly transitioning shininess; all those drop shadows and rounded corners; all that...brushed metal!
I'll blog again some time soon to explain why I finally caved in. For now, all I ask is that I not be likened to that smarmy pseudo-hipster from the Mac ads. That's not me. Really. I swear.
Posted by richz at 2:11 PMMerry Christmas...Sorta
"You should have seen the look on her face"
"His expression alone was priceless."
"Her eyes just lit up."
It's a pretty awesome thing to watch someone you care about open a gift - a gift they really wanted badly. The younger they are, the better. With age comes the sobering ability to mute our emotions with "refined judgment" and a dash of cynicism. When we're kids, that filter isn't really in place yet.
Even for grownups like ourselves, it's always fun to see the kid in us come out when we open a gift. It's fun to experience - whether you're opening a gift yourself or watching someone else.
As the Internet continues to seep into our lives, we're watching a transformation of sorts that is compromising the experiences we have with one another. Things that we give each other are no longer really "things" anymore. We're digitizing everything. Google is indexing everything. Movies. Music. Writings (like magazines and books). The physical artifacts - the things we carry, and cherish, and wrap, and give one another - are disappearing.
Gift cards. Spending credits. "Points" of some sort or another. It really takes something away from the entire experience. With the digitization of things comes an inability to really appreciate the things themselves. There's so much stuff out there we're overloaded. I'm as guilty as anyone else for wanting a 60GB mp3 player.
What the hell am I going to do with 60 gigs? It's an incomprehensible amount of music. I find myself never letting songs finish. Flipping around aimlessly. There's simply too much stuff and it's everywhere and easily attainable. Yet, we seem to have less to really enjoy. Will Sheff, lead singer of Okkervil River and an eloquent writer, sums it up nicely:
The internet – with its glut not only of information but of misinformation, and of information that is only slightly correct, or only slightly incorrect – fills me with this same weird mixture of happiness and depression. I sometimes feel drowned in information, deadened by it. How many hundreds of bored hours have you spent mechanically poring through web pages not knowing what you’re looking for, or knowing what you’re looking for but not feeling satisfied when you find it? You hunger but you’re not filled. Everything is freely available on the internet, and is accordingly made inestimably valuable and utterly value-less...These days, with all the choice in the world, it’s hard for me find the attention span for a single album. I put my iPod on shuffle and skip impatiently to the next song before each one’s over. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.
I don't think we realize it just yet because we're still adjusting to all this change. But something has changed. Even though there is this wealth of digital "stuff" out there, there is somehow less to enjoy. Less to focus on and dive into. Less to truly savor and appreciate. Less to give one another.
In software, it's oddly ironic that we seem to be reproducing how the real world works and feels. Apple's latest iteration of iTunes has a great little feature where we can flip through virtual CD cases in our collection. It's a convincing reproduction of the real life experience - except it's not the real life experience. We can't throw that CD in a bag. More importantly, we can't wrap it in gift wrap and give it to someone to borrow.
Today, retailers are enjoying record-breaking gift card sales, and the funny thing is...many people don't even bother using them.
So get out there. Shop! Buy someone something they can rip open and get all giddy about. That's half (if not more) of the fun...
Posted by richz at 10:49 AMCreative Gift Ideas
Need some great gift ideas? Tired of sending gift certificates and those awful Russell Stover pre-wrapped boxes from your local drug store? Wanna really impress your friends, colleagues, girl/boyfriend, wife/husband?
A great place to start are Core77's (for gifts under $77) and Inhabitat's (for gifts under $30) gift guides.
There are also some great blogs out there that somehow always find the cool stuff that you're not going to stumble on at your local Target. Dig through these ultra-cool, design-inspired sites:
If you're looking for some nice geek gifts (and if you're reading this blog, you probably are), check out Thinkgeek and Firebox.
So get out there and help fuel our relentlessly disposable economy by buying more stuff for the people you love (and like).
Posted by richz at 10:03 AMThe Weird World Of Comment Spam
Maybe someone can help me out with this...
I've come to accept comment spam as a general part of life here on basement.org. A handful of Movable Type plug-ins has taken the daily number down to a much more manageable number.
There are really two categories of spam. The first is just outright offensive. Sex, drugs and...umm...ringtones. Then there's the manic depressive spammer. These guys just can't find the motivation and are really down on life. My guess is they're depressed because they make a living submitting comment spam, but that's just a theory. Here's an example of a depressed commenter:
I haven't gotten anything done recently. I've just been hanging out doing nothing. I haven't been up to anything these days, but it's not important. Today was a total loss.
Pretty uplifting eh? I've actually blogged about this phenomenon before. It's just plain weird.
Now just last night, I got a comment that really doesn't fall into either category. I'll just drop it here and see if anyone can make heads or tails of it:
It is a very good site and I want to know some more about it ..... that's why I want become a member of this basement mouse and this is the reason of my first visit to basement mouse I have been a member of mumbai hangout and from there I am know that this basement mouse is very good site and that 's why I finalised that I want to become the member of this basement mouse and from this first visit I think that this is a very good site and I am not even think that there is not any problem with this site and every person fears that a harmful virus would enter his or her computer and I am not sure about this that If any virus will enter my laptop enter my laptop then what will I do for this this but this not to worry ..... ok ......
I'm not sure if it's a language barrier. He keeps calling my blog "basement mouse" which sort of freaks me out. He did leave a link behind to the Indian Institute of Information Technology Design & Manufacturing (or IIITDM for short).
Hey, at least the comment isn't depressing.
Posted by richz at 2:08 PMI *BLEEPED* her on *BLEEP*
I envision a bizarre beeping sound. It comes in out of nowhere and momentarily overwhelms your conversation. You mis-spoke. Well, you mis-spoke in how you used the word "google." You mis-spoke because Google said so.
Yep. You heard it right. Google wants you to speak a certain way when you use the word (and yes, it's a word now, not just a brand) "google." People are already pretty annoyed about this.
Is this unprecedented? Asking the general public to speak a certain way? Probably. Before blogs existed, how would a company even try to get the word out without appearing like a bunch of jerks?
As far as I know, trademarks exist so other businesses don't piggyback the goodwill you've built atop your brand. We are not businesses. We are people talking. Is this blog entry a warning? What if we keep doing it? Do we get sued? I particulary enjoy the "Our Lawyers Say" bit in the entry. Why are lawyers involved at all?
Frankly, I'm surprised this not-so-subtle warning to speak a certain way got past Google's PR people. Google's brand is pristine these days. This bit of blogging can't do anyone any good. Especially Google.
So let's ask again. Is Google evil? Nah. Well, maybe.
Posted by richz at 9:47 AMLawyers Are Like Programmers (Or Vice-Versa)
With apologies for the title...
I was mired in reviewing, commenting on and drafting portions of a contract this past weekend. While I bask in the world of technology and design (I couldn't imagine being anywhere else), work often demands that I dust off my law degree and play lawyer for a little while.
As I was reviewing an old contract and folding in agreed-upon terms, it dawned on me how similar contract drafting is similar to writing software (bear with me on this). I've often been forced to justify my law education in light of my sharp left turn after law school. But oddly, the parallels are there.
You don't learn the law in law school. Most exams are open book. It's not really about memorizing and regurgitating information. Instead, it's about thinking a certain way. It's about gaining an ability to understand, deduce and optimize rational arguments. It's also about foreseeing weaknesses in your adversary's arguments.
Just before I dove into the contract, I was coding and I couldn't help but notice a few parallels:
- Define Your Words And Reuse Them. In contracts, you'll often see something like "Seller, as referenced in this agreement is defined as..." and from that point on, a capital 'S' Seller is referenced with clarity. In code, rather than "restating" portions again and again, we create functions that allow for reuse throughout. Much of contract writing is made less painful with this sort of "re-factoring."
- Use Your Words Efficiently. In the law, the less you say the less room there is for ambiguity or (re)interpretation. Think through your words and sentences so that they're airtight. You don't want to leave loopholes. In programming, the more efficient and tight your code, the less likelihood of bugs and errors.
- Write The Outline First. Depending on how complex your contract/program is, if you're starting from scratch, you'd be a fool to start writing out of the gate. Instead, step back and lay out the landscape. Draft an outline n-levels deep that accounts for all the pieces of your code.
- "Exception" Handling. Any lawyer will tell you that a primary role of a contract is that of a reference document for when things go bad. If all is well in a business relationship, the contract is seldom ever referred to. But when things go sour, every word or phrase may be picked apart. As such, it's wise to think through how scenarios would play out against your contract. When coding, a similar premise applies. How much load will this object have to withstand? What if a particular transaction (which is dependent on an outside service) fails? What if the database goes down? Good code insulates itself from or gracefully addresses these "bad scenarios."
Windows Live Writer
This entry was submitted with Windows Live Writer. A new blog editing tool by Microsoft called Windows Live Writer. I've just started playing with it so I'm not sure how reliable/useful/powerful it is. It looks somewhat promising.
Update: After playing around a bit, the app caused some minor issues, but after some tweaking it seems to work pretty well. Stay tuned...
Posted by richz at 5:27 PMLink Thumbnail Craziness
As you gracefully glide your mouse over the links on basement.org, you'll notice that you'll get an oh-so-subtle preview of where that link will take you. It's the Link Thumbnails tool from the Arc90 Lab. No, I didn't manually create thumbnails for each link. It does some sort of cross-service craziness and whips out a thumbnail automatically
I've set it to default to all links. Let me know if you find it too annoying. Credit goes out to Joel Nagy of Arc90 for the excellent work here. Very impressive stuff.
Posted by richz at 9:35 AMTwo Great New Tools From The Arc90 Lab
My colleagues at Arc90 are right to call me a "filthy bastard" for not pointing basement.org to the last couple of experiments to come out of the Arc90 Lab.
First is the deceptively cool Link Thumbnails (example). It's a simple little script that turns your hyperlinks into little screenshots that display on hover. There was some confusion at first as to how this worked. People thought they had to actually create the thumbnail images. They don't. The script actually calls out to a service and automatically retrieves them for you. Very sexy ("Sexy" is one of our goals at the Arc90 Lab). The tool has been Dugg over 1800 times and the response has been great.
A lesser-known but also very cool little experiment is the Image Captions tool (example). This one is pretty sweet too. With a simple script, you can drop images into your flowing text with captions without having to deal with much CSS or div positioning trickery.
The Arc90 team did a great job with these...and there's still more to come! Check into the lab and blog regularly for updates. The easiest way to stay on top is to subscribe to the Lab RSS feed.
Posted by richz at 10:17 AM3D 2D Racing Games!
As a kid and through a good chunk of adult life, I was really into video games. Now that I'm an...ahem...adult, I've sadly more or less given up on them. I got into the PSP for a bit, but now that I no longer have a commute, I rarely use it.
I also don't think it's entirely my fault. Really great games have very little to do with all the graphical wizardry we see these days. Most games are overwhelmed with Hollywood-style production and unnecessary complexity - thus making it all the more difficult to really convey - or capture - the essence of a really good game. I've played many of the fancy new baseball games, and none seem to capture the essence or sheer fun of the sport as Earl Weaver Baseball, Electronic Arts' 1987 classic for the old Commodore Amiga. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but none of today's titles are anywhere near as fun.
With all that said, and with apologies to Gran Turismo 4, I've always loved good ol' classic top-down racing games. This morning I stumbled on a great list of freeware 2D racing games (a la Super Off Road and such). Get your old joysticks out! Or maybe...paddles?
Posted by richz at 10:06 AMAvailabot Now Available. Act Now!
Do you have that extra-special buddy in your instant messaging buddy list? Do you always want to know when your buddy is online? Too tired to just look up at the screen like everyone else? Is this sounding like the rapid fire questions that kick off a TV infomercial? Then read on!
The Availabot is a little USB-powered toy thingie that stands at a attention when a particular buddy is online and crumbles into a heap when they're offline. Here's a video of the Availabot in action. The product is just a prototype so it isn't actually for sale. Regardless, we can all appreciate it's relatively useless yet oddly appealing qualities.
Posted by richz at 9:29 PMThe Harm of Industry Gossip Memes
So the web is all abuzz right now because Amanda Congdon the girl behind Rocketboom, a popular video podcast, will no longer be...booming or rocketbooming (or something).
It's fascinating to watch this unravel in the blogging community. It's an absolute soap opera that I thnk highlights how truly immature the blogging world really is. I enjoy movies, but I don't really care who Russell Crowe is dating (or marrying, or divorcing). I also don't care about how much Colin Farrell got paid for his last movie, or whether he's still with his agent or not.
For me, this highlights a key and rarely spoken of motivator behind blogging: the need to be heard and noticed. Partnerships and work relationships come apart all the time, but in the blogging world you get out there and take your stand. It's cheesy and disingenuine. The community, strangely, jumps on the bone like a pack of rabid dogs. Jason Calacanis has offered Amanda a job at Netscape via an oddly slimy blog entry. Dave and Robert have chimed in.
The general strategy seems to be: take your personal conflicts public and build consensus that way - at the expense of others. Administer the first blow before your opponent knows what happened. It's a strange type of PR attack that the community seems to assemble and riot around rather than just ignore. It's too bad. I think these types of "industry gossip" memes take blogging a step away from the broader population. There are plenty of interesting topics to talk about. Just because people like TV and movies doesn't mean they read Variety.
Posted by richz at 2:41 PMCan Digg Sue Netscape And Win?
A quick glance of Netscape's new beta front page and one thing comes to mind: it looks and works a lot like Digg. The differences aren't even subtle. It's a blatant rip-off. And so, the question arises, can Digg protect it's creation in some way? Or more specifically, can you legally protect a user interface?
I can sort of speak to this issue because I have a law degree and my essay for my Copyright Law class was about the copyright-ability of user interfaces. I'm by no means an expert, but I'll try to sum up what I learned there as it would apply to Digg and Netscape.
The answer to the above question takes us into the world of copyrights and patents, the only two viable options for protecting the “look and feel” of an application.
Copyrighting Digg
From the U.S. government’s own copyright FAQ:
Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works.
Copyrights protect:
…original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.
Now don't get all giddy at the sight of “computer software” in the excerpt above. What they’re talking about there is the actual source or object code of a piece of software. That code is filed as a “literary work” (go figure) and is protected under copyright law.
But what if the code is entirely different but the result is clearly similar? It’s obviously the case that Netscape did not steal the Digg codebase but rather studied the end product and wrote their own code to create a similar end-user experience. Can Digg protect itself, under copyright law, from others copying the “look & feel” and general functionalty of Digg?
Under U.S. copyright laws, no, they pretty much can’t. While there is no perfectly concrete basis for this rule of law, the case precedents of previous years have made it pretty clear that you can’t copyright a user interface. From the same FAQ, under what cannot be copyrighted:
Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or illustration.
Ouch. There are some seriously broad and general terms there. You can make a pretty strong argument that the “Digg experience” is a “system” or “concept” that is comprised of a set of functionality (i.e. “methods” or “procedures”). The Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. case that ended in 1994 seemed to primarily assert that you cannot copyright the “look & feel” of a software application. In that case, Apple went after Microsoft’s Windows product asserting copyright infringement of its Macintosh operating system, and lost. Wikipedia nicely summarizes it here.
There are public policy arguments against protecting user interfaces under copyright law. For one, a good user interface makes us all more productive and it’s a better thing for society if others can benefit from it. Another argument against copyrighting user interfaces is that they’re not really creative works – the primary domain of copyright law – but rather tools or devices in and of themselves. Which brings us to the patent option.
Patenting Digg
A patent is the grant of a property right to an inventor for an invention. An inventor can patent an invention under various criteria (listed here) but the one that best relates to Digg is the ability to patent “any new and useful process.”
Now unlike copyrightable works, where by simply completing the work and calling it yours it is copyrighted, the patent process requires the inventor to be a lot more proactive about filing a patent. In other words, even if you invented something, if you don’t patent it, it’s not protected.
As to whether user interfaces can be patented, that’s also debatable. Amazon successfully patented and has since defended it’s patent for 1–click shopping. The patent caused a pretty widespread backlash against patenting on the Web but the patent itself is still standing today. Apple, on the other hand, failed to patent the famous iPod interface (blocked due to a prior application).
As for Digg, well we can spare ourselves the discussion on patent protection because it doesn’t appear that Digg has attempted to even to try to patent it’s service. There is no mention of patents or patents pending on the site and a search of the patent database reveals no such filing.
And so, it seems that Digg will just have to bite it’s tongue and watch as the, umm *cough* “new Netscape” makes it out into the world. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
All Sorts Of Drama In The Digg World
So AOL/Netscape put out their Digg clone (and you really can't call it anything but a "clone"). Techcrunch has a good summary. Meanwhile, Digg is upgrading (maybe to this?). I'm not sure. But as of this posting, Digg is down. In it's place are favorite links of the various Digg members. It's resulting in an absolute slamming of servers on the other end.
One observation about Netscape going this route: to the rest of the world - the legions of Internet users that are not 2.0-savvy, this very well will be perceived as a new, neat invention. However viral ideas may be within the realm of the tech savvy, it is a huge population outside of it. You think Netvibes is doing well? Let's compare it alongside live.com. Ouch.
Posted by richz at 2:38 PMUmm...Hello Netvibes Users?
Looking at my Feedburner stats today, something pretty flippin' weird is going on. It's showing over 50,000 (yes 50,000) subscribers. The great majority of them, according to Feedburner, are coming from Netvibes?
Does anyone have any clue why this is? The Feedburner folks say the stats look real. Did basement.org's feed end up on some default page? Ah. So many questions.
Posted by richz at 1:49 PMAn Inspiring Photoblog
I share a lot of links here on basement.org and every so often I'll stumble on something that, while not necessarily informative or educational, is inspiring. A site i stumbled upon recently is Kathleen Connally's photoblog A Walk Through Durham, Township Pennsylvania. Kathleen takes photos within a 10 mile radius of Durham, Pennsylvania. The photography is, in a word, stunning. They look more like paintings than photographs. Very impressive.
Posted by richz at 4:21 PMIntroducing...
Basement.org has been cited/quoted a fair amount by other sites and blogs. On occasion, others will refer to a basement.org post as written by "them" or "the writers at basement.org." Well, there is no them (except for the other voices in my mind). It's just me: Richard Ziade.
I've never really said much about myself on here (I'm not exactly sure why)...until now. I've added an about page that briefly describes myself. You'll also notice, on the right-hand column, some new links...
Today, I'm a lead strategist and partner at Arc90 - a New York-based technology and experience design firm. We've just debuted our web presence, including a blog where we'll share our ideas, thoughts (and occasional rants) with the community, and our lab, a place where we'll introduce code, examples, standards...and the occasional experiment.
Posted by richz at 10:37 AMOminously Depressing Comment Spam
Below are the last four comments posted to Basement.org:
My mind is like a bunch of nothing, but I guess it doesn't bother me. I haven't been up to anything recently. I've pretty much been doing nothing to speak of.
My life's been basically bland today. More or less nothing seems worth thinking about. My mind is like an empty room. I've more or less been doing nothing to speak of. Not much on my mind recently.
Not much on my mind lately. My life's been completely boring these days. I've just been hanging out not getting anything done. So it goes.
I haven't been up to anything these days. So it goes. I can't be bothered with anything these days.
Can anyone out there shed light on why my comment spam filters seem to pity and thus spare comments posted by unmotivated, completely depressed, borderline-suicidal posters? The impact of such gloomy commentary goes beyond just cluttering this blog and reaches to my very soul - bringing me down a notch or two as I scan through them on a daily basis.
What we need is a Cry For Help Movable Type plug-in that somehow detects joyless, melancholic tone and promptly deletes it.
Posted by richz at 2:20 PMIs Flickr Protecting Photos From Download?
A friend of mine pointed me to this oddity. If you visit a Flickr page (for example this one) and try to save the displayed image either by dragging it to your desktop or right mouse-clicking "Save Image As...", the downloaded image isn't there.
I'm sure this is pretty easy to hack. It might be some sort of weird layering trick where the image is overlayed with another blank image or something. Regardless, it's sitting there in my browser so it can't be too difficult.
The real question is: why is Flickr even bothering?
Posted by richz at 5:28 PMI Despise James Blunt
The great majority of posts on Basement.org have dealt with things like RSS, Web 2.0, the Semantic Web and the like. Because of this, I was hesitant to post a rant of any sort. But I couldn't hold out any longer. I'd exhausted all of my own social circles yet still felt the need to express myself.
I can't stand James Blunt.
For the unfamiliar, James Blunt is a UK singer/songwriter type that sings mostly ballads. He's our generations Michael Bolton. Woefully cheesy. Devastatingly sappy. Predictably formulaic. Maybe it's because his music sounds like a Kodak commercial. Maybe it's because he's been featured on a Starbucks compilation CD. I'm not really sure.
I am hoping that this post will help start the healing and extinguish the deep, seething hatred I feel towards James Blunt. I'll make it through this. My only fear is that there will be others.
Posted by richz at 1:27 PMParanoid Rich
So the previous posting on Google's impact on privacy got Dugg yesterday (nearly 700 times) and the comments on both Digg and here have been, to say the least, entertaining and somewhat enlightening.
Some thoughts...
First, I'm apparently a paranoid conspiracy theorist who is freaking out for nothing. This may be true. I'm not even going to bother trying to convince anyone otherwise. I'll only look more paranoid.
Nevertheless, the argument often brought up about how our privacy is compromised everywhere (online, credit cards, mobile phones, etc.) and that it's unfair to single out Google has some merit. What I think people are missing about Google is that there is very little prerequisite to using its various services. We have to do a fair amount of work to sign up for a mobile phone or credit card (though it is getting a lot easier). Also, these are very often specialized services. While Amazon is gathering a lot about my buying habits, it's fairly limited to just that.
Google on the other hand is trying to be everywhere. It wants you to search, shop, write, store, email, chat, publish, sms...and the list goes on. They want to be everywhere because they have to keep growing. And they've made it very clear that their ambitions are not small by any means.
The other observation I'd make is how many people (to my surprise) strongly defended Google. It's testament to the loyalty and trust they've been able to generate thus far. People genuinely believe that Google is going to do the right thing. And for me, that's the rub. The "right thing" lies in a very murky, subjective place. Will Google sell your habits and content to a cartel in Central America? Obviously not. Will they triangulate your search habits, documents and emails to deliver a targeted ad? Probably. Is that bad? That's up to the person I suppose. But I'm guessing that for most, they wouldn't even guess that Google was doing such a thing. It's nearly impossible for Google to convey all the things they're doing with our data in a clear and concise way.
So it's up to us to have some faith or simply stay away.
Posted by richz at 8:58 AMPerformancing Metrics
The freaks at Performancing have released yet another blog tracking tool: Performancing Metrics. Solution Watch has a good summary. It looks promising.
Winamp + Ajax = Mmmm, Tasty
Gabriel Levy is obviously a lunatic. He went and created a web/Ajax interface to Winamp that allows you to control Winamp over a network in any browser. The web version of Winamp looks nearly identical. It supports media libraries, playlists and such. Slick.
I'm guessing this would work over the Internet as well? I'm not sure how it sends the music across (streaming, etc.). If anyone toys with it and finds out, I'd love to know.
Posted by richz at 9:05 PMMeasure Map Acquired By Google
Adaptive Path's Measure Map has been acquired by Google. Congrats to Adaptive Path and the Measure Map team. Basement.org has been beta testing Measure Map for a couple of months now and I enjoy using it. It feeds the blog writer's ego. Why do we blog after all? To be heard and validated. It's also good to see a company like Adaptive Path - which stands for the virtues of good interaction design - get this sort of validation.
As a side note, I wonder if Google, and Yahoo for that matter, are going to be more aggresive with acquisitions since their stock value has been on the skids of late.
Posted by richz at 8:51 AMYahoo Buying Digg?
So the rumor mill is churning this morning on news that a Yahoo! buyout of Digg is imminent. If it happens, Yahoo! will be the undisputed Big Chomping Monster that ate all those neat folksy Web 2.0 startups.
Maybe I'm just not picking up the right signals regarding the merits/value of these acquisitions. I've talked about it before. With a Digg buyout you've got an even more interesting scenario: from what I can gather, Digg's primary source of ads is from...(dramatic pause)...Google.
I can see the headlines now...
Posted by richz at 1:41 PMGoogle, China And Murky Waters
At the risk of trudging into the murky and sticky waters of politics, somebody help me understand this: Google agrees to censor certain content on their new China service but refuses to cooperate with the U.S. government on turning over search histories.
Mind you, I don't even want to get into the merits of the U.S. government's request. I know too little about it. It's just sort of curious to see obviously different standards applied. The cynic in me says that the China decision is about money and the U.S. decision isn't.
Regardless, the cynic in me uses Google all day long and doesn't want my search patterns passed along to the authorities. Then again, the cynic in me isn't in China...
Posted by richz at 1:42 PMWidgets Via Firefox : Firefoxit
Here's an interesting alternative to Yahoo! Widgets (formerly known as Konfabulator). Firefoxit is a Firefox extension that allows you to create widgets that live outside of Firefox. I haven't tried this yet so take it all with a grain of salt. But the download is 600K - far leaner than the 11+ megs required to run Yahoo! Widgets. It's probably worth looking at.
Posted by richz at 7:30 PMBasement.org Operational Again
Subscribers to basement.org may have noticed their feed readers tripping on retrieving this site's feed. A few days ago, Movable Type barfed up on me. I've moved the whole site to a new hosting provider and a new MySQL instance of MT. All is well now (so far). Hopefully its smooth sailing from now on.
Posted by richz at 10:28 AMBasement.org's New Home
Welcome to the new home of basement.org. The site crashed yesterday so I decided to move hosting providers and finally use MySQL instead of the embedded database that comes with Movable Type. Hopefully this result in much less pain in maintaining the site.
Posted by richz at 11:55 AMI Don't Hate Macs, I Just Hate Mac Users
Ok, before I dig into the substance of this post, I’d like to preface it with an explanation of the title. I don’t really hate anyone. Hatred is an awful thing. When I say “hate,” I mean it in a casual, chatting-over-lunch sort of way. Like when we say “I hate the Red Sox.” It doesn’t mean you wish to kill them all (though you may say that as well). It just means you, well, hate them. It’s like…Hate Lite. Now on to the substance of this post…
I consider myself a tinkerer. I enjoy opening up a PC box and just messing around. I’m into the intricacies of the different components and how they can be tweaked and optimized and customized. Hell, there’s a whole subculture of PC modding out there. I mean, who wouldn’t want to trick out there PC case with neon lighting and water cooling? Yeh, I subscribe to Maximum PC. What’s wrong with that? In fact, I think there’s a lot right with it. The willingness to crack open your “rig”and replace the hard drive controller is a virtue. There’s something inherently endearing about someone willing to roll up their sleeves and work on something.
Yes, I know it’s not for everyone. Sure, you can hire someone to do it. Of course you can just buy a custom PC with all the bells and whistles. The hardcore techies of the world scoff at the masses that brush this sort of stuff aside. “They don’t understand us. We will make them pay handsomely for their ignorance.” They are the Left Brain.
At the other extreme is the bratty computer user. They simply can’t be bothered with such details. They don’t have time (or better yet, their time is too valuable to be wasted on such trivialities). They have…more important things to do. As such, they “love” and “adore” their Macs. Because admittedly, Macs are inherently better designed. From hardware to software, things just seem to work. As a designer, I often reference Apple for their unwavering belief in the power of good design. It really is the differentiator.
It’s a great thing when you can design products that make your users feel good about themselves. Good design is inherently complimentary, subtly flattering the user as he interacts. People wonder why there is such rabid loyalty towards Apple. This is why. Apple has spoiled them. They’ve been treated with such dignity and high regard that their collective self-esteem has been inflated beyond belief.
So now the rest of us (your humble blogger included) are left to hear their ramblings about how great Apple products are. How much they love their Macs and iPods. And how lame it is for us to have to worry about things like PCI slots and firmware. The Mac population’s view of the PC user base is nothing short of elitist. All those hugs and support growing have led them to snarl at the “lower class” PC users of the world.
The misunderstanding arises from the fact PC users actually like defragmenting their hard drives and upgrading their firmware. We enjoy replacing our graphics cards every six months. We love TweakUI! We share a firm belief that our struggle in this world will lead us to heaven. You Mac users, on the other hand, are on your way to hell. A weird, glossy white plastic hell.
So there you have it. Mac users are the bourgeoisie of the computing world. PC users are the lowly, struggling proletariat, harboring bitterness and resentment towards their snooty counterparts while they toil away at their machines.
And what of the Linux users? Well, they’re just lumpen.
Updated January 9, 2007 : Yes, that weird glossy white plastic hell has frozen over. I bought a Mac.
Netvibes Introduces Delicious Module
The Netvibes crew continue to churn at a frightening pace. They’ve just released a nice implementation of delicious. I like how the tags lay out. Nicely done.
Another reason I like Netvibes over the Google/Microsoft/Yahoo! variety is that, unlike the others, Netvibes doesn’t have their own services to position above others. Instead you get a more “neutral” front page experience.
Posted by richz at 10:46 AMRight-Mouse Click Package Tracking
Here’s a neat little Firefox extension for all you shopping freaks out there. Simpletracking.com’s Package Tracking Extension allows you to track a package with a right-mouse click. It supports UPS, FedEx & USPS.
Posted by richz at 10:07 PMGoogle Pack : Umm....Ok?
Somebody help me out with this one. CES is all about getting a peak at the next big thing. Hardware and devices. New tools. New software. It's the stuff that isn't out yet. Neat new gadgets and devices and such.
Amidst all this stuff is....(long dramatic pause)....the Google Pack. A collection of already available software and trialware all bundled together. The release of the Google Pack isn't what's interesting. What's interesting is the leeway and deference allowed to the Google name right now. Who else could introduce what is essentially nothing at a CES keynote speech? What's also interesting, is the oddly warm reception the blogging community has given it. A few have shown some skepticism. Nicholas Carr thinks it's a trojan horse - a way to get an updater on your PC so Google can pump its wares right into your desktop. That's sort of icky (and possibly evil?). But I'll avoid the conspiracy theory bait for the time being. I'm far more interested in the strange state of sedation the Google brand has cast upon so many.
Over the past 24-36 months, the Google Brand stockpiled a lot of goodwill from just about everyone - and it was often well-deserved. The search really was (and pretty much still is) second to none. And Google Maps - well that was just plain sexy.
But this thing? In my eyes at least, they've cashed in some of that brand equity. Somebody should tell the Iranians they're not missing much.
AJAX Desktops : A (Very) Quick Comparison
The Second Coming of personal portal pages has been fun to watch. I'm not a big fan of portals from an interaction design perspective. I find them to be too...generic (that's for another blog entry). Regardless, they can be very useful if designed correctly and with the right set of features.
Of course, the big players have their offerings:
- Microsoft's incubation experiment Start.com (and it's sibling Live.com)
- Google's Personalized Hompage
- Yahoo's My Yahoo.
Then you've go some of the lesser-known upstarts:
- Protopage (a sort of virtual desktop for the Web)
- Netvibes
- Goowy (a Flash-based desktop with an impressive email and calendaring piece).
- Eskobo (which looks eerily similar to Microsoft's offering).
In my oh-so humble opinion, the hands-down winner is Netvibes. It's fast, straightforward, and constantly growing. It can pull in your email (POP or IMAP), supports sticky notes and to-do lists, along with your usual weather and RSS support. It handily took care of my 200+ OPML feed list import (many throw up on it or hang). What is really impressive is the speed with which the Netvibes team is improving upon and fixing Netvibes. Their blog provides insight into an impressively agile development process. Take a look at how many features were introduced in the last 20 days alone. Frightening. The big boys should stop and look at what these guys are doing. Very impressive.
Google Safe Browsing Extension For Firefox
Google keeps spreading that Firefox love. They've released a useful little Safe Browsing extensing for Firefox. It nicely highlights the URL box when the web address ain't what it seems.
Posted by richz at 1:13 PMPerformancing For Firefox
Performancing for Firefox is a blogging tool that integrates with Firefox. I'm using it right now and really liking it. It integrates with most blogging tools (Blogger, Movable Type and others). I'm a big fan of Blogjet, but I'm liking the in-browser drag-and-blog capability. If you're a blogging fiend like me, check it out.
Google Homepage API Now Available
Google has just made available their homepage API. In short, it's a simple XML syntax that wraps existing web content or applications for display on Google's personalized home pages. There are already a few modules available.
This is effectively Google's version of Microsoft Gadgets - a similar technology that drops modules onto their Live.com personal start pages. Wow, Google came in second on this one. Funny.
Posted by richz at 12:25 PMWe're Outsourcing The Good Stuff Too!
I'm all about equal opportunity. In our globalized world, if there's a capable and ambitious dude 11,000 miles away who wants to contribute to the World Economy, hey, why the hell not.
But now, we're outsourcing softer, less tangible parts of our lives. Fleeting, ephemeral things like Fun and Understanding and "Time Together." The New York Times reports that we're now outsourcing video game playing to China.
What's left? Love? Chivalry? Or maybe even more abstract notions like Warmth and Kindness. Wait, someone actually already tried this...
Posted by richz at 6:56 AMYahoo! Answers Debuts
Knowing full well that machines can't do everything, Yahoo! just released Yahoo! Answers, a service that allows people to ask questions that can be answered by other real people.
I'm not sure about the purpose of this, but it's interesting nonetheless. I think people love to share knowledge. We are social anmials after all. It makes us feel good to talk to each other. This is partly why Wikipedia and Amazon's vast collection of product reviews are so compelling.
As to its utility, that's yet to be seen. Yahoo! seems to have taken the categorization route (a la Ebay) for organizing the stuff. Will there come a day when humans are contributing to search results? Why the heck not.