Technobabbles - Voyagerfan5761's Blog

Google Voice App Rejections: Catalyst for Cellular Openness?

2009-08-01T14:23:00.001-05:00

If you haven't heard, Apple rejected Google's official Google Voice application several weeks ago (article from this week). However, I (at least) didn't hear the news until recently, when it became known that Apple also began pulling other Google Voice apps from its iPhone/iPod Touch App Store. TechCrunch's sources say that AT&T was behind the bans, and I'll believe it.

Now, I'm not an Apple fanboy, but I've been considering getting an iPod Touch lately. One of my roommates here at Emerson's summer program (yes I know I need to blog about that too; soon, I promise) has one, and he's graciously let me use it occasionally. It's been the perfect opportunity to figure out if I really want one, and try it out with some of my normal online activities. I do want one, though I'll wait until the new version comes out, supposedly in September, with (I hear) a microphone and maybe even a camera.

But back to Google Voice.

One good reason to get an iPod Touch would be a mobile interface to Google Voice that uses Wi-Fi instead of cell phone minutes (for checking voicemail) or text messages. Cost-saving: Check. But the mobile interface for Voice is pretty sparse, so an app would be awesome.

My plans were put in jeopardy when I got wind of the news that Apple had begun pulling apps that worked with the service from the App Store. I checked with my roommate's Touch and confirmed that they no longer appeared. For a while, I considered just skipping it. I was angered by Apple's ridiculous actions, and annoyed that my target device—the iPod Touch—could have its functionality limited by a company that didn't have anything to do with it. The iPhone and Touch might use the same operating system and App Store, but just because AT&T doesn't want an app on the iPhone doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to run it on my iPod.

Today comes news that the FCC sent letters to Apple, AT&T, and Google, beginning an investigation into this high-profile rejection. See, the FCC has a policy agenda here, one that was probably catalyzed by Google's letter to them two years ago. And in June, the FCC confirmed that it would be starting a review of exclusive contracts between handset manufacturers and cellular carriers.

The letters sent today are probably intended to use this heavily reported situation as an example, and to set a precedent. I hope that this investigation will find fault with the way Apple and AT&T conduct their business together, and will result in the FCC's restricting the kinds of apps that can be rejected, barring AT&T's involvement in the application approval process, and possibly even result in a completely open App Store (in the long term) or an unlocked iPhone (also in the long term, though the exclusive contract between AT&T and Apple ends soon enough).

Google went to bat for all of us consumers two years ago with that letter. Maybe it will turn out that they've inadvertently done so again, just by letting Apple do what it wants with the App Store. My fingers and toes are totally crossed on this one; I want an App Store that's more along the lines of the Android Marketplace or a Linux package manager.

Who's with me?

Updated Topify Gmail Filters

2009-05-06T21:08:00.004-05:00

Well, Twitter got prettier follow and direct message notifications today. Bully for them. Now I have to publish this update.

Update (05/07, 22:45): My update was broken, so the update had to be updated. The filter should now catch DMs, too. Believe it or not, I was wrong that Twitter changed the address that direct message notifications come from; it stayed the same. So that part of the filter didn't need to change. All's well that ends well, right?

Update 2 (05/07, 23:05): Well, scratch the new filters. Twitter went back to the old From addresses tonight. Y'all can use the old filters again. What a fast-paced 24 hours, eh? :P I'll leave this post up just for posterity, but please don't try to use these new filters and then complain that they don't work. ;-)

To make things easier for myself, I'll assume that everyone's seen the old filter setup I published at the end of last month.

The old method was quite convenient for those of us with multiple Twitter accounts, because the email addresses in the From headers changed depending on the address associated with each account (after October 30, 2008 and before this afternoon). Now they all come from noreply@twitter.com (as they used to last year), with the account-specific email addresses tucked away in the reply-to headers (which I can't filter on in Gmail, so that sucks).

Not only did the addresses again become uniform, but that was basically the only easy way to tell the difference between my personal account (which has Topify set up) and the others I run (which don't). Now I have to go through several hoops, and the filter string is longer.

Anyway, here's the updated updated filter string; put this all in the "Has the words" field in Gmail's filter settings:

(to:(you@yourdomain.tld) from:(noreply@twitter.com) subject:"is now following you on Twitter") OR from:twitter-dm-you=yourdomain.tld

As before, you@yourdomain.tld is the email address set in your Twitter account settings, the address to which all your notifications are sent.

I won't bother making an XML file for the new filters, because it's only one field. I'll probably leave the old one for posterity—at least until my Google Page Creator account is completely borked by the transition to Google Sites—because it's easier than deleting it and then updating my old post to reflect that.

Just for the record, Twitter, I'm not happy that I'm having to retool my filters this soon. If you want to make me happy again, put back your email headers the way they were last week. kthx

How To: Safely Use Twitter Notification Enhancement Services

2009-04-27T23:29:00.003-05:00

As you all have probably heard, Twitter is gaining popularity in leaps and bounds. All the new users mean more follower notifications arriving in my inbox, and Twitter's default messages aren't very useful. (The direct message notifications are pretty bare-bones, too, but I don't get many of those so it wasn't a priority.)

Update (05/06): Twitter prettified their emails, but I still think Topify's are better. Unfortunately, Twitter also went back to using the same address (noreply@twitter.com) for all users' notifications, putting the email-address–specific addresses in the reply-to header. So the filter setup in this post doesn't work any more. I had to come up with a new, more complicated filter... Stupid Twitter...

Update (05/07): Twitter went back to the old From addresses, so the filters from this post should now work again.

The Beginning

The first enhanced-notification service I discovered was Twimailer, created by a British developer named Jon Wheatley (and apparently later sold—shortly after I signed up—to a Romanian named Toni).

Despite the admonitions in the article above (on ReadWriteWeb) about changing passwords and all kinds of security precautions, I'm not worried about my own account. There's one simple reason for that: I never actually switched my email address in Twitter's settings. Instead, I created a Gmail filter to auto-archive follow notifications from Twitter and forward them to Twimailer. That way, I:

had all my follow notifications even if the service went down (it did for several days) or glitched (sometimes I get messages with no information)
only forwarded the messages Twimailer needed to be useful, rather than everything
made sure to keep password resets (which I haven't used for my main account in the last few months anyway) completely out of Twimailer's hands

I was very comfortable with this system. I can only guess that Jon's original intent was to simplify the setup process. After all, most people don't bother with email filters, and wouldn't necessarily know how to set one up. Changing settings on Twitter's website is a lot easier.

A New Age

Thanks to a TechCrunch post about fighting Twitter spam I read tonight, I discovered Topify, an invitation-only (for now) service based in Israel that offers all of what Twimailer did—and more.

I found an invite on the Topify blog (sorry, no link; you gotta dig through their site too so it's fair for everyone) and quickly signed up. The Twitter password field distressed me a little, but it's obviously necessary for all the extra features (like follow-back, reply to direct message, and block), all of which can be done via email with Topify. (In the future, I hope Topify will implement support for Twitter's OAuth authentication and delete users' passwords from their system. Consider this a request, Arik. :-)

Anyway, switching was pretty painless. All I had to do was change the address to which my Gmail filter forwards and add my direct-message notification From address to the filter. I'm currently waiting for something to happen on my Twitter account so I can try out the new service. (I considered running Twimailer and Topify side-by-side for a bit, but decided against it; redundant emails would increase my processing time, the opposite of the intended effect.)

Filter Details

For those who want to copy my setup (I'm telling you, it's a lot more resilient than the default instructions from either service), here are the filter settings to enter. Update (05/06): These settings are left here for posterity; they won't work anymore thanks to Twitter's changes from today. See the first update near the top for more detail. Update (05/07): These should now work again, since Twitter appears to have gone back to the old email headers.

In the filter's From box, enter:

Topify: twitter-follow-you=yourdomain.tld OR twitter-dm-you=yourdomain.tld
Twimailer: twitter-follow-you=yourdomain.tld

Replace you=yourdomain.tld with your email address, using = in place of @.

That's all you need to do for filter criteria. (If you have only one Twitter account coming into your inbox, it's even easier; you can omit the -you=yourdomain.tld part(s) of the filter criteria. It doesn't hurt to include them, though.)

For actions, I selected "Skip Inbox" and "Mark as read", and told Gmail to forward these messages to my secret Twimailer/Topify address.

Click the Create filter button, scroll down your filter list, and you should see something like the following (image is linked to full-size version):

(There's also an XML file available to import, for those with the Filter Import/Export feature enabled in Gmail Labs, but creating the filter from scratch is pretty easy. The file link might go dead in a month or two when my Google Page Creator site is moved to Google Sites, but I'll know because things like the site logo will stop working. If that happens, I'll definitely fix it.)

Note: As I was writing this, I discovered Chris Messina's post about this, published almost two months ago. My little hack is nothing new, I guess; but I'll publish anyway because his instructions are focused on Twimailer and Twimailer only.

Wrap

Let me know if you find this little hack useful. I haven't time to make a bunch of pretty screenshots (unlike Chris ;-), so if you have questions, post in the comments.

Incidentally, this is my 500th blog post. If that means anything.

I Never Thought I'd See This Happen...

2009-03-30T21:41:00.001-05:00

Fires show up on the news all the time, right? Right.

Fires happen in one's neighborhood all the time, right? Uh, no...

I never thought I'd see it happen in my neighborhood. But today, it happened. It got me out of the shower, too. (Yes, my schedule is weird, and late. Don't bother me. :P )

My mother just happened to look out the window. It was really a luck thing; otherwise, I would have missed the beginning part of it. I heard the sirens as I was getting into the shower, but sirens are common enough in this city that it wasn't anything remarkable. The smoke (that I couldn't see), however, was. I quickly cut my shower short and rushed to get dressed, grabbing my camera on the way outside.

Having my camera paid off, too; I got about two hundred shots of the scene, 132 of which I uploaded (after my mother helped de-duplicate and de-crappy-shot the set) a few hours ago. If you're interested, have a look at my fire photos. I went through a battery-and-a-half in the approximately three hours that I was shooting.

As you can see from the photo at right, the middle unit was practically gone. That tangled mass below the center fireman's yellow helmet is the roof, which is covering a burned-out car. (The car's gasoline tank—or it might have just been a tire, I'm not sure—actually exploded.

It was a pretty lucky fire, really. Nobody was home, and the two cats that lived in the fourth unit (I believe, though I'm not entirely clear) were rescued with no injuries.

Anyway, I don't have to re-hash the whole thing; KARE-11 and the Star Tribune both have decent write-ups. It's too soon to know very many details, so there are a lot of unanswered questions—like the cause. I'll watch the news for more information.

What I'm Doing

Above all else, I feel like the fact that I was there taking pictures means I have an obligation to help those involved in any way I can. In the case of the owners, it means I'm offering the use of my photos for insurance claims and such. (Lia Peterson's brother seemed appreciative of my offer, and I'll ask him to pass on the link to his sister's neighbors in my email to him. The cats rescued were Lia's.) I've also emailed the City of Minneapolis offering my photos for use in the investigation that will be taking place.

Obviously I had no place trying to help fight the fire—I wouldn't know what to do, and might end up getting myself or others hurt—so I ran around the three accessible sides of the property photographing all kinds of things, doing my best to stay out of the way of the firefighters and other officials. (Since nobody said anything, I'm guessing I succeeded.)

My mother also engaged a woman from Fire Station 17 in conversation, and I joined in. I gave this firefighter my photo gallery address, and also mentioned her in my missive to the City. She expressed interest in seeing my photos, but couldn't give me her email address, so I'm doing my best to get them to her. (If I don't get any indication that she's gotten them, I'll swing by the station at some point and ask.)

What Others Did

Those who weren't involved with the FD did their best to stay out of the way, as I did. There were one or two instances where I saw neighbors helping out, though. The most shining example was when a new supply hose was being run from a hydrant on the next block. By-standers pitched in to drag the hose up to the engine in front of the building so it could pump water on the fire from above using its ladder. I would have done it in a heartbeat, if I'd been close enough, but it was good to see people helping out.

Where Now?

The fire is out, nobody got hurt, and the cats were rescued. But the work is really just starting. The light-weight construction of this relatively new complex meant that the fire spread a lot faster than it would have in the older buildings that are common in the neighborhood. In turn, that means there are several insurance claims to be filed, rather than one, and a full investigation will be made.

Lots of things need to be done. The residents need to recover what belongings they can and find shelter. The site needs to be cleaned up and (most likely) redeveloped. But the important thing is, nothing truly irreplaceable (such as life) was lost.

Theatre Experience Q&A [via Facebook]

2009-03-19T19:17:00.001-05:00

Facebook is teeming with chain notes like this. Usually I ignore them, but this one was actually interesting. So, I'm filling it out. Facebookers, I'm giving you guys a link to this post; Facebook is still not getting any content from me, besides statuses and comments.

Without further ado, the "survey":

What was the first play you ever did?: I believe it was The Wizard of Oz. I was a munchkin. (I was also seven years old.)
What was your most recent show?: Interesting question. The last show I was really "in" was Romeo & Juliet at Children's Theatre Company (part of their educational division, not the production that just closed—which was awesome). It was actually just a series of five scenes from the show, not the whole thing.I've been involved in a couple other shows since then, including Imaginary Invalid (as a musician in the lobby, pre-show) and a selection of scenes, songs, and dance that really can't be called a "show" (it was a "revue").
What was your favorite show/role?: My favorite show would have to be Alice In Wonderland at Temple of Aaron.My favorite role was Martin in "Canker Sores and Other Distractions" from Performance Company last Spring.
What was your most challenging show/role?: So far, my most challenging show was Tristan & Yseult at Cherubs last summer. (Yes, I'll eventually get a post done. I hope.) The whole show was just so different from what I'd done in the past, it took some adjusting. Not to mention my character (Morholt, an evil Irish ruler) was actually a shadow version of another actress's part, so that was a challenging role for the same reason.
What is the most bizarre show or role you've ever done?: Morholt's "shadow", as mentioned above, was probably the most bizarre role.In some ways, TY was also the most bizarre show, but I think last Spring's collection of Christopher Durang short plays takes the cake.
Has anyone ever written a show for you?: Nope. I'm not that good/lucky/both. :P
Have you ever quit a show to accept a better one?: I haven't had the opportunity. I know people that have, though.
Have you ever completely blown character on stage?: Not that I can recall, but I can think of a few roles where I wasn't doing much acting in the first place.
What show(s) are you just dying to do?: I can only think of one, but it's not on the list any more. (Grease used to be on this list, but I'm now convinced I couldn't pull off any of the parts.)
Have you ever done one of your "dream" shows?: No.
Who was your favorite director?: I'm torn between Simon McAllister and David Chapman.
Who was your least favorite director?: Liebo! He's not even a theatre person; he's a temple youth director.
What is the most surprising role you have ever been offered?: King Duncan in the Scottish play. Me, kingly? No way. :D
Have you ever injured yourself onstage or offstage?: Once. It was last summer (dang I have to write the post!). We were in tech rehearsal and were practicing with blood packs. I had to get one on my face, because my character's eye was supposedly stabbed out. Laundry detergent sucks. (Since both of us eye-pack actors ended up with soap in our respective eyes, the packs were cut the following day.)
What show(s) have you done multiple times?: Aladdin (the British pantomime) and Nutcracker. Update (23:20): I forgot about The Wizard of Oz. Did that twice, too; the second time, I was the Lion.
Have you ever had an onstage kiss?: Nope. Don't want one. It's not that I'd be embarassed; I just don't want to kiss random people. That, I want to save for someone special.
What was your scariest moment in a show?: My monologue in Working (at StageCoach) as Rex Winship. Or maybe Tom Patrick. Both parts were kind of a stretch for me.No, wait. The tornado sirens going off during Working were worse.
What is your best show memory?: Pulling off my first real stage combat in the aforementioned production of Romeo & Juliet. (Hey, I never blogged about that one! Crap. Oh, I know why... Duh. Don't ask.)
What is your worst show memory?: I totally left a fellow actor in the lurch during a scene change in A Village Fable. (I never blogged about that one either? Double crap. I don't know why, this time.)
What is your saddest show memory?: Strike at Cherubs. That meant the shows were all over. All ten of them.
Do you have any theatrical superstitions?: Besides the obvious Scottish Play stuff? Three-night runs will always have a bad night... on day two.

GrandCentral Becomes Google Voice!

2009-03-13T16:44:00.000-05:00

It's taken 21 months—almost two years—but GrandCentral ("One number for all your phones, for life") has finally gotten an upgrade (and a new name). I'm totally excited, and happy that the long-awaited upgrade (previously known as GrandCentral 2.0) is finally here. Meet Google Voice: "One number for all your calls and SMS".

New Features

Yes, Google Voice added several new features. One of the things that always, always bugged me about GrandCentral was the fact that my number couldn't receive or send text messages. Well, now it can. According to TechCrunch's expansive overview, the same technology that powers the SMS in Gmail Chat Labs experiment (known as Gateway) is used in Google Voice.

Other new features include voicemail transcription (sounds promising), very specific per-contact settings (definitely a trap for us OCD types), a completely overhauled interface (w00t! Less Flash!), conference calling (cool factor = 100), and easy dialing out via the phone interface.

I have to stop and talk about the dial-out feature. First of all, it was nearly impossible to dial out from GrandCentral unless you either had a new voicemail from the person you wanted to call (so you could press '2' after it to call them back) or had access to a Web-enabled device. Simply dialing out wasn't considered. Now, in Google Voice, there's a "press '2'" option right in the main menu! Finally!

Also, under GrandCentral's auspices, calling out was free during beta, with the shadow of paying per minute after testing was over looming in the future. Google changed that in Voice, which allows free calls anywhere in the United States. International calls are at greatly reduced rates (compared to conventional long-distance). Each new user gets a free $1.00 credit toward international calls, though I don't know if they'll keep that up once sign-ups are opened completely—it could be something just for migrating GC users.

Migration, Stranded Data, and Missing Features

Existing GrandCentral users get (or will get this weekend) a migration link at the top of their grandcentral.com inboxes, which will begin the automated migration of a GrandCentral number to Google Voice. The process was pretty painless, even smoother than the transition to the new FeedBurner system last month.

However, much data is not migrated. Most of the settings are reset, custom greetings and names must be re-recorded, old voicemails/calls/recorded calls are left behind on grandcentral.com, and contacts must be transferred manually by exporting GrandCentral's Address Book to CSV and importing it into Google Contacts. The automatic merging of imported contacts only merged about half of the duplicates in my set, and I had very few contacts to deal with. That was fortunate, because the rest of the merges had to be found and made manually.

In the future, I hope Google will provide a utility to migrate old voicemails from GrandCentral, especially if grandcentral.com is eventually shut down or redirected. Currently, the top of my GrandCentral inbox says:

Since you have migrated to the Google Voice Preview, you can now access your new messages and update your settings by logging in at google.com/voice. Feel free to continue to access grandcentral.com for your older voicemail messages. We're glad you dropped by.

That's inconvenient. But really, how often do I visit old voicemails? Not much. Besides, a lot of them were inexplicably lost... Their listings are present, but they can't be played; I'm guessing the files somehow went missing. I'm not happy about that, but... at least it hasn't happened again.

A minor annoyance is the loss of custom ringback tones, the sounds played to a caller while the phone is ringing on your end. (Google does have a suggestion to bring this back on the Google Voice Feature Suggestion page.)

Future Ideas

Of course, Google Voice is not without holes. It can't forward to numbers that require extensions (I don't need it now, but might in the future). It can't take an existing number and turn it into a Google number (which would be eminently useful, I think, for my mother).

Image via CrunchBase

There are also no apps for iPhone or Android yet (and I don't care about Blackberry, kthx). But the feature suggest page I mentioned above has all these and more. I've suggested about 75% of the features currently on the list, including integration with Gmail and Google Talk. I'm hopeful that these and more ideas (like the two I posted on Twitter) will be implemented, and sooner rather than later.

Speaking of future ideas, Lifehacker ran a short post yesterday speculating that the reserved "Voicemail" label in Gmail is for integration with Voice. It's actually for Google Talk voicemails (GTalk has a calling feature that I almost never use because of various technological or locational constraints), but it could certainly be useful for Voice messages as well, if Gmail and Voice are ever integrated.

Reaction

Despite the inconveniences, I think I'm going to like the service. It's a vast improvement upon GrandCentral; in fact, TechCrunch's Leena Rao says (in the overview mentioned above), "Google is finally bringing us the voice service that was promised back in 2006." I agree; the old GrandCentral was convenient, but Google Voice promises to be many times as useful.

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich [Book In Review]

2009-03-09T12:24:00.000-05:00

Over the holiday break, and continuing after I got back from New York City (which I will probably never blog about, unfortunately; it's been too long now, and I have other posts to write), I read a series of books checked out from the local library on topics ranging from the history of eBay and Microsoft's hiring practices to the true economic impact of big-box stores like Wal-Mart and even a book on cosmic complexity. While all of them resonated with me to a certain extent (the latter, Big-Box Swindle, being the most compelling of those I've mentioned so far), I found myself moved the most by Barbara Ehrenreich's story of the low-wage workplace.

Cover via Amazon

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America contains a great many anecdotes that pull one into the story, encourage thoughts of "That's all they do?", "What?!" and "Oh yeah, that's annoying", and generally made me feel that a great injustice is taking place in this country. (The humiliations going on in other countries such as India and China are another topic entirely, worthy of three posts for each nation.)

Rather than summarize the book (which would probably be boring compared to reading the original), review it, or do anything of that ilk, I'll post a few passages here that I found particularly compelling. (Please note that the final section quotes from the end. If you don't want to read the "ending", click the "skip" link next to the "Working Poor" heading.) I'll begin with one particularly aggravating footnote.

Bathroom Breaks: Gotta Go? Too Bad

Until April 1998, there was no federally mandated right to bathroom breaks. According to Marc Linder and Ingrid Nygaard, authors of Void Where Prohibited: Rest Breaks and the Right to Urinate on Company Time (Cornell University Press, 1997), "The right to rest and void at work is not high on the list of social or political causes supported by professional or executive employees, who enjoy personal workplace liberties that millions of factory workers can only dream about. . . . While we were dismayed to discover that workers lacked an acknowledged right to void at work, [the workers] were amazed by outsiders' naïve belief that their employers would permit them to perform this basic bodily function when necessary. . . . A factory worker, not allowed a break for six-hour stretches, voided into pads worn inside her uniform; and a kindergarten teacher in a school without aides had to take all twenty children with her to the bathroom and line them up outside the stall door while she voided."

What hits the hardest, I think, is the mental image of a kindergarten teacher taking twenty five-year-olds to the bathroom with her because there's nobody else available to watch them for a few minutes. I don't think the awkwardness would be confined to the adult, either; I know I would have felt pretty awkward filing into the restroom with my kindergarten teacher.

At least we finally realized the omission in our laws. This quote, present on page 37, was one of the first to stir my emotions. I'm well aware of corporate greed, but to deny (or, more accurately, not recognize) such a seemingly basic right for decades after the Industrial Revolution before passing a law to remedy the situation seems a rather glaring mistake. Or is it? There are plenty of other things in the book that drew the same reaction. Besides, we Americans have been denied the right to use any cellular handset on the network of our choosing for ages.

Image by greenlagirl via Flickr

"Cleaning" Services: Superficiality to the Extreme

I've always had a rather disdainful opinion of how well cleaning services actually, well, clean, but this was still something of a shock. The following is from page 75, continuing to page 76, and contains observations Ms. Ehrenreich made during her first day (training) at a The Maids franchise in Maine.

[...] Our antagonists exist entirely in the visible world—soap scum, dust, counter crud, dog hair, stains, and smears—and are to be attacked by damp rag or, in hard-core cases, by Dobie (the brand of plastic scouring pad we use). We scrub only to remove impurities that might be detectable to a customer by hand or by eye; otherwise our only job is to wipe. Nothing is said about the possibility of transporting bacteria, by rag or by hand, from bathroom to kitchen or even from one house to the next. It is the "cosmetic touches" that the videos emphasize and that Ted [the franchise owner], when he wanders back into the room, continually directs my eye to. Fluff up all throw pillows and arrange them symmetrically. Brighten up stainless steel sinks with baby oil. Leave all spice jars, shampoos, etc., with their labels facing outward. Comb out the fringes of Persian carpets with a pick. Use the vacuum cleaner to create a special, fernlike pattern in the carpets. The loose ends of toilet paper and paper towel rolls have to be given a special fold (the same one you'll find in hotel bathrooms). "Messes" of loose paper, clothing, or toys are to be stacked into "neat messes." Finally, the house is to be sprayed with the cleaning service's signature floral-scented air freshener, which will signal to the owners, the moment they return home, that, yes, their house has been "cleaned."⁷

Many of these inane policies have actually had a direct effect on my own life, as for a time we were customers of The Maids here in Minneapolis. The propensity for housekeeping services (I do not even think of them as housecleaning services, nor have I for a long time) to rearrange things simply to create an aura of tidiness without really doing anything substantial has long bothered me. Not only are things like air freshener and making "tidy messes" incredibly superficial, they have even led to me looking high and low for something moved in the process – which I invariably find, eventually... weeks or months later, after the need for it has passed and I've already undergone inconvenience at not having it when I was looking for it in the first place.

I have long been irked by things like the "hotel fold" to toilet paper rolls, and the fact that putting toilet paper rolls on the holders in the bathroom—even if said rolls were sitting somewhere nearby, just fine and actually easier to use—seems to be a favorite pastime of housekeeping personnel looking for something to do to make the house seem "clean" without doing anything of consequence.

The ⁷ refers to a footnote that goes on to detail specific inadequacies in the housecleaning practices used by The Maids, as commented upon by various housecleaning experts. The final two sentences of the note are my favorite:

[...] But the point at The Maids, apparently, is not to clean so much as to create the appearance of having been cleaned, not to sanitize but to create a kind of stage setting for family life. And the stage setting Americans seem to prefer is sterile only in the metaphorical sense, like a motel room or the fake interiors in which soap operas and sitcoms take place.

For as long as I can remember, my parents—my mother especially—have admonished me to never go barefoot in a hotel room, never trust the countertops in a hotel room, and so forth. Somehow, before I got this ingrained into my brain, I picked up a toe infection in New Zealand (at least, I think that's where it came from) while on a tour with the Minnesota Boychoir; it proceeded to bother me almost constantly for the next two years or so. The end result, several years later, is me now wearing socks constantly, even in my own house (which I don't trust any more—and quite possibly less—than a hotel room). Fortunately, this habit ties in well with my dislike for dirty feet.

Image by Pete Zarria via Flickr

References to Movies and Friends

Page 122 brings a couple of gems. The first should mean something to anyone who's watched the 1980 movie "The Blues Brothers":

I pick up my Rent-A-Wreck from a nice fellow—this must be the famous "Minnesota nice"—who volunteers the locations of NPR and classic rock on the radio. We agree that swing sucks and maybe would have discovered a few more points of convergence, only I'm on what a certain Key West rock jock likes to call "a mission from God."

There's no way I was going to resist the urge to mention this reference; I loved "The Blues Brothers" when I used to watch it on AMC. For bonus points, this quote also references my home state and that wonderful myth that Minnesotans are super-nice. (They're usually only polite and courteous if you look respectable and aren't obviously a minority, despite the common impression.)

Image by zoom in tight via Flickr

The second—which pretty much continues where the last one left off, in the same paragraph—probably means something only to those who know my former Kumon Reading Program tutor:

[...] and an apartment belonging to friends of a friend that I can use for a few days free of charge while they visit relatives back East. Well, not entirely free of charge, since the deal is I have to take care of their cockatiel, a caged bird that, for reasons of ornithological fitness and sanity, has to be let out of the cage for a few hours a day.

My former tutor, Margaret (mother of NYC wine caper heroine Alia), has a cockatiel, too. (Sorry folks, this one was pretty superficial. No deep commentary here. I'll make it up to you soon.)

Image by extremeezine via Flickr

Rent vs. Wages: A Total Imbalance

OK, I know the last two quotes were pretty trivial, but have a look at this quote from page 199:

So the problem goes beyond my personal failings and miscalculations. Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. You don't need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rents too high.

Yeah, I've been thinking that rents seem awfully high for years, ever since I was aware enough to read the advertisements for vacant apartments. With the economy as it is now, and people being laid off, the housing market can only be worse than ever (or so I believe, with my limited economic experience).

The "Working Poor": Unrecognized, Unappreciated Philanthropists [skip]

The last pages (220 & 221) of the book holds perhaps the most heart-wrenching conclusion I have ever read (at least, in non-fiction). I don't think I'll even comment on it; the words speak for themselves:

But guilt doesn't go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame—shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on—when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more chaply and conveniently—then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, he health, and her life. The "working poor," as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else. As Gail, one of my restaurant coworkers put it, "you give and you give."

Play Comparison

Image via Wikipedia

Looking back on the book, I have suddenly realized (weeks later) that the book reminds me of the Broadway musical Working. I imagine the individual descriptions of Ms. Ehrenreich's various jobs are a bit like the interviews in Studs Terkel's book, Working, just greatly extended (the interviews in the book are only a couple pages each). The main difference, I think, if I were to compare them, would be in the sentiments. Ms. Ehrenreich was generally displeased with the conditions of her employment; by comparison, most of the characters in Working love their jobs.
I haven't read the book—merely looked at reviews on Goodreads and skimmed its Wikipedia article—but I was in an abridged production of the musical at StageCoach this past Spring that concluded my ninth year in the program. (For those interested, I wrote a summary of the production about two weeks later.) Both of my characters (Rex Winship and Tom Patrick; a "boss" and a fireman, respectively) were pleased with their occupations, though they weren't low-wage positions like in Nickel and Dimed.

Conclusion

All these quotes and comparisons aside, the book was written from a very liberal perspective. I can't help but agree with some of the reviews on Goodreads. I have some liberal tendencies, but I'm really more of a moderate. This book was interesting, and I'd recommend it if you're into this sort of thing, but I realize now it's nothing more than a creative experiment or a jumping-off point for a discussion.

Gmail Chat FAILs with Ping.fm GTalk Enabled

2009-03-03T16:15:00.001-06:00

Image via CrunchBase

Last night, I found a chat in my Gmail account that I'd never seen. It was sent an hour after I left the public library on February 26, while I was offline, but never showed up in my Inbox. It wasn't even labeled as sent while I was offline. I was baffled completely until I realized this afternoon what I'd been doing that night at the library.

February 26 (a Thursday, the day of #snowmageddon here in Minneapolis/St. Paul) was the day I discovered that Ping.fm—my very favorite social networking tool, second only to Twitter—had added support for Google Talk statuses. Of course I had to try it out; I'm an early adopter.

So I went into my network settings on Ping.fm and added my Google Talk and AIM accounts. Next thing I know, Gmail Chat is complaining that I'm no longer invisible (I like to be invisible because it minimizes interruptions). It says I'm signed in somewhere else. That somewhere else could only be Ping.fm.
By that, I gather Ping.fm actually signs in to Google Talk and receives all chats sent to one's account, 24/7. Not only is that inconvenient (I'll continue with that in a moment), but it's a bit privacy hole, especially if you don't fully trust Ping.fm. And honestly, I trust a lot of websites with a lot of things, but I like my chats to stay inside Google's ecosystem, thank you.

Anyway, the fact that Ping.fm is always signed in to one's Google Talk account means that one always appears to be online, and offline chats won't work. Invisibility in Gmail Chat is also disabled. Both of these, combined with an apparent dysfunctionality (I couldn't get my GTalk status to update from Ping.fm), led me to deactivate the integration.

What I'm trying to say is, Ping.fm has a lot of work to do before I'll even consider re-adding my GTalk account to my Ping.fm networks. It doesn't work, and causes a lot of problems.

You Gave the Wine List to Me?

2009-03-02T20:00:00.004-06:00

I told myself I probably wouldn't blog about New York, but I decided this would be a worthwhile story. (Not to mention the fact that I promised a certain person I'd publish this; you know who you are.) Of all the things that happened in New York City, this is possibly the funniest, and the most unlikely to happen back here in MN. Aside from Broadway shows, that is.

Image via WikipediaPicture this: Times Square, a moderately upscale Asian restaurant, and a party of five. Two mothers, three "children" (though none of us were under 14). The age spread for us "kids" was 14, 17, and 23.

I suppose I should explain the situation a little better. We went to New York with friends of ours from Minnesota. The mother was a tutor of mine for a few years back, helping me with the Kumon Reading program. My mother ended up in college classes with Alia (the 23-year-old who has now, with the new year, become a blogger)

We came in reasonably late, after seeing Grease on Broadway. Alia had just gotten back from a trip-within-a-trip spending Christmas with a friend in Connecticut, narrowly missing the Broadway show (unfortunately, I think; it was better than anything I've ever seen here in Minnesota). Our table received three wine lists.

Obviously our two mothers got them. However, the third one was given to me. I'm 17, four years younger than the drinking age, but I suppose it could have been an honest mistake. After all, a lot of people offer me alcoholic beverages in restaurants, and I have been mistaken for a college student many times. But Alia didn't get one. That in itself wouldn't be too weird, and could even be interpreted as a compliment ("You don't look old enough to drink, miss." That would be a compliment, no?) But the fact that I got one is very strange.

And the story gets stranger. My mother, happy-go-lucky Jew that she is (I mean that affectionately), playfully suggested that we try to trick the waitress. So I asked Alia for the wine she wanted and waited.

When the waitress returned and asked me what I wanted, I pulled my best "I do this all the time" act and ordered. She didn't bat an eye, card me, or even give me a second look; she just took the list and went away. I tried not to laugh too much, but I guess I did, because both parents shushed me so I wouldn't give it away.

I myself can't stand alcohol of any kind. I only drink grape juice on Passover, and the one vodka shot I tried one Purim a few years back made my eyes water. Needless to say I had no intention of drinking the wine when it came.

A few minutes later, it did come, and the waitress set it down right in front of me. Throughout the rest of the meal, I behaved as though it were Alia's drink, and she treated it as though we were, at worst, sharing. By that I mean she insisted on keeping it by my plate, fearful that the restaurant staff would get suspicious if it was moved to her setting. Honestly, I don't think anyone would have noticed.

This isn't exactly Abbott and Costello material, I know, but it's amusing that, even in New York, underage people still get away with ordering alcohol.

Or maybe the waitress overheard our entire discussion and decided to just play along.

Nah.

Auto-Flush: Self-Reinforcing?

2009-02-19T18:30:00.001-06:00

Image by ancawonka via Flickr

I was at a rather spiffy library today with automatic everything in the restrooms. It wasn't to the extent of some places (airports and mondo shopping malls are worse), but there were a lot of sensors in there. When someone else came, did his thing, and just walked to the sink without doing anything, it got me thinking.

What if automatic flush valves are a self-reinforcing product? Think about it. It used to be that one had to be very meticulous to always flush before leaving. Now, with all the automation, some people just ignore the whole valve and trust it to do its job.

If people ignore the valve, they might start assuming that every toilet has automatic flush and just walk away without checking to make sure it actually does (and if it has, checking to make sure it worked). So that could mean more unflushed toilets (yuck), which would spur the installation of yet more automatic flush devices.

With my reasoning, the very fact that automatic flush devices exist and are installed in restrooms across the country creates a demand for them as society becomes less aware of the existence of manual flushes. Granted it's far-fetched—there's no way people will really forget until auto-flush becomes a household fixture—but we could be on the way there.

Or am I just reading all kinds of stuff into a situation for no reason?

Update (04/06): Hmm. Today, I found one auto-flush that missed, and twice had it flush on me while I was just in there getting a piece of tissue paper for my nose. If nothing else, the sensors are a tad unreliable.

Stop Direct Mail!

2009-01-25T16:30:00.004-06:00

Image via WikipediaAnnoying. Wasteful. Downright useless.

What am I talking about? Direct mail.

Notice how that pile of paper you bring in from the mailbox (street-side, just-inside-front-door, wherever it is) is mostly stuff you bring in one door and out the other? Literally or figuratively, most of that mail ends up going right through the house and into the recycling (though sadly, some people – my dad included – just throw it away).

If one were to examine that bulk of mail, one might find that virtually every last piece is trying to sell something. From yard services to home-improvement solutions, dinner discounts to electronics, marketers just keep shoveling colorful, glossy paper into our houses, hoping that their message will be the one to catch your eye and result in a sale. Just think how much paper, ink, and energy that takes.

The practice is perfectly legal, of course. More legal even than telemarketing, since there's no Do Not Mail List (so far as I know) to worry about. At the very least, any residential address is fair game. Spam is illegal, and all it does is waste time; but why is this resource-squandering activity still allowed?

I would guess that when it comes to direct mailers, the United States Post Office is perfectly content to live and let live. Excuse me for being cynical, but just think of all the postage marketers pay the USPS to deliver their paper-wasting missives! It also guarantees jobs for postal carriers (can't say "mailmen" these days; it's not politically correct) because the sheer volume of paper being sent to homes across the nation virtually ensures that every house on every carrier's route will have mail every day.

So much for the government supporting "green" practices. What would be truly environmentally friendly, I think, is if the government changed the spam laws to allow electronic versions of direct mail, and outlawed the paper variety. Ah, but then people would complain that the government changed its mind and began condoning spam. There would be a difference, though: if paper direct mail is not paper spam, then electronic direct mail is not electronic spam. Logical? Of course. Acceptable to the public? I doubt it.

But I can provide further reasoning in favor of transitioning the massive direct mail industry to the electronic front. Consider: Every piece of paper mail that comes in must be sorted and processed by a person, generally a homeowner whose time would be better spent doing other tasks like taking care of the house or unwinding after a day at the office. When an email is received, the computer (in my case, a Gmail server farm somewhere) is already running many, many checks on the message to validate its origin, confirm that it isn't spam, etc. Many email servers have filtering rules built-in. So by simply programming a few simple rules into their email service or client program, people could have interesting direct mail delivered to their Inbox and the useless junk (probably still about 90-95% of it) sent to /dev/null – all automatically!

To be sure, email marketing is still an emerging field, but an electronic advertisement is certainly more environmentally friendly than a paper one; and to be sure, consumers could be saved a lot of aggravation if digital logic could be applied to the sorting of marketing messages. So why not go electronic? I'm game.

While we're at it, let's examine telemarketing and consider the less-intrusive alternatives. I might also write about investment reports, bank statements, and other excessive mailings at a later date.

FeedBurner Migration Troubles on feeds.swrobotics.com

2009-01-20T22:40:00.000-06:00

Image by rudolf_schuba via FlickrI didn't exactly blog about it outright, but I do remember expressing a reasonable amount of uncertainty when I announced that I moved my FeedBurner account to Google's servers. Yes I am an early adopter; the deadline may not be until the end of February, but do you really want to make something of it? Apparently Google did.

As part of the migration process, I had to ask the DNS administrator for swrobotics.com (I wish I could do things like this myself, but I can't) to change the entry for the feeds subdomain from feeds CNAME feeds.feedburner.com. — the easy-peasy old way — to <special-sub-sub-sub-domain>.feedproxy.ghs.google.com. — the (unnecessarily, I think) long new way.

The change seemed like a simple matter, and indeed I was emailed back the next day with a note that the modification was complete. Google, though, seems to have a glitch. Trying to access the feed at its usual home (feeds.swrobotics.com/swrobotics) turned up an error: "404 Server Not Found".

Research I did tonight turned up a thread on Google Groups with a solution to the annoying 404 Server Not Found errors I was getting. Apparently there are widespread issues with preexisting MyBrand (what FeedBurner's Custom Domain feature is referred to as) domain configurations. The easy solution is to deactivate the MyBrand service and re-enter the settings. Seconds after I implemented this fix, I was pulling up the feed once more.

So the moral of the story is, don't trust that automatic migration tools like FeedBurner's will fix everything up exactly right. Sometimes, hacks, kludges, and/or workarounds will be necessary to make sure things work properly.

Telemarketing Loopholes: FAIL

2009-01-18T16:30:00.003-06:00

Image by elh70 via FlickrI was relaxing at home in the evening on the Monday before Thanksgiving, around 19:30, looking through a Hebrew-English dictionary to try and figure out what the song title "הלב שלנו" means in English. (I never did find the meaning of the word הלב; it seems to be conspicuously absent from both dictionaries I possess.) But an interruption was about to occur.

The phone rang.

Normally that would be a simple matter – just pick up the phone, read the Caller ID, and decide whether or not to answer it – but this situation was remarkable in that Caller ID is unavailable at my house. Put more correctly, Caller ID is a subscription service that we do not subscribe to. The cost is several dollars per month, and the phones at home aren't used enough to justify the expense.

So, I must answer the call without knowing who is on the other end. It's usually either GrandCentral or my mother, but this time it's a "robot" call. A recorded voice begins speaking to me. On the off-chance that I will be hanging up on a real person who might at some point ask an actual question, I stay on the line.

I needn't have bothered. Upon coming to a spot in the text where a changing date is to be inserted, the voice pauses, changes, and continues in a vastly different tone. I hung up before the original voice could return.

For a fact, I know that the number I answered is almost certainly on the Do Not Call List, which is supposed to prohibit marketing calls. The only problem is, there's a loophole. Non-profit organizations, pollsters, and political campaigns seem to be allowed to dial blacklisted numbers without fear of repercussions. The content of this particular call is irrelevant; the fact remains that this is not the first time, and will not be the last.

Denying the possibility of prohibiting unsolicited telephone calls altogether (a most appealing option, actually), I honestly believe that there should be an option for numbers on the Do Not Call List (or a second list for the purpose) to block all unsolicited calls, whether made by computer or human. In addition, Caller ID should be a standard feature on all telephone lines, with no extra charge. (See "Caller ID Should Be Standard" for more in-depth coverage.)

With respect to blocking all unsolicited calls, some of us just don't want to be bothered by such an intrusive device unless we know the caller, personally or professionally. If you want to sell me something, convince me to vote for you in an election, or gain my good will and receive a donation of some sort, please take your marketing elsewhere. Interrupt me while I'm on the Internet. No, I do not mean that you should spam me or add me to an email list; I would find such practices just as annoying as unsolicited telephone calls. I mean you should advertise. Buy spots in Google AdWords or something.

See, I don't object to you getting your message out, but rather to the way you're going about doing so. The Internet provides a medium where a) people are used to being interrupted by ads, so they will be automatically less disruptive, and b) there is increased likelihood of your ad being relevant. A random telephone call is most definitely less relevant than a Web ad placed near text that relates to what is being advertised.

Feel free to ask me to donate clothing to your cause, vote for your candidate, or buy the latest and greatest in window-blind technology; just do it in a way that doesn't waste my time or interrupt something I'm already doing.

Feed Address Changed [Maintenance]

2009-01-16T20:20:00.000-06:00

Image via CrunchBaseFor those reading this site via the feed, this is just a heads-up that the feed address has changed due to my FeedBurner account being migrated to Google. Email subscribers are unaffected; all that's changed is the link I have here on the site, in the sidebar, for new subscribers.

If the address you subscribe to is on this domain (i.e. has voyagerfan5761.blogspot.com in it), you're all set. If you subscribe to the one on feeds.feedburner.com, you're set, too; but I don't know how long Google will keep the redirect up, so change feeds to feeds2 just to be safe.

Personally, I don't know why the addresses have to change, especially when the change is so trivial. It's possible that, once all accounts are migrated, the old addresses will again become the default, or there might be further changes (perhaps to feedproxy.google.com or something like that).

Given all this uncertainty, my suggestion for feed-subscribing readers who want to ensure uninterrupted delivery would be to change whatever feed currently in your reader to http://voyagerfan5761.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default so any future changes will be taken care of as quickly as I can update my settings. I say "would be" because I'm considering moving to my own domain name, which would complicate things even further. Since I don't plan to stop using FeedBurner, http://feeds2.feedburner.com/voyagerfan5761 is probably the best bet.

Comments On Google Changes

2009-01-16T08:05:00.014-06:00

Image via WikipediaOn Wednesday, Google announced changes to or shutdowns of several services. Google also shut down Lively, the 3D chatroom that I always looked upon as a rather silly Second Life knock-off, beginning January 1—just a few short weeks ago. ("Reasons Google should kill Lively" was actually a topic in my to-blog list for several months, but it looks like I didn't have to blog about it for Google to see that it wasn't a good fit with their other projects. Nice work saving effort there, self. :P Anyway...)

I'm rather unconcerned with the fate of Google Catalog Search, which was (I believe) really just a good way to work on the OCR technology Google now uses in Book Search. (Catalog Search's former homepage at catalogs.google.com now redirects to Google's main site.) I never used it; catalogs are pretty useless these days anyway what with online shopping and Froogle (now known by the much-less-punny appellation of Google Product Search and accessed by a link in the Google header called "Shopping", though I wish they'd bring back the old name).

Image via CrunchBaseAlso of little real consequence to me, personally, is the development stoppage on Google Notebook. I don't use it much, and my service will be unaffected anyway. Well, relatively unaffected, at any rate. When I do use Notebook, it's usually in conjunction with the "Clip" function of the accompanying Firefox extension—which will no longer work. But the service will continue for now as long as one already has an account.

I'm actually somewhat glad to hear of Dodgeball.com closing and Jaiku being open-sourced. Dodgeball was a premature service somewhat like Brightkite—which I occasionally use—that stagnated almost immediately after being acquired by Google in 2005. Its interface has always been phone-only (Brightkite allows use via text message, Web interface, or iPhone/iPod-Touch–optimized site). In my opinion, Google would do well to encourage Dodgeball's users to move to Brightkite. An agreement with Brightkite to ease the transition for users willing to make the switch would likely make Dodgeball's death as swift and painless as possible.

Image via CrunchBaseJaiku has also stagnated, the most notable annoyance being that it has been invite-only since its acquisition in 2007. With the transition to open-source (the service will continue to be run by a team of volunteer Googlers), Laconica might get some new features, competition, or perhaps both. Twitter may also be encouraged to develop long-overdue features like OAuth support, since Jaiku is slated to support OAuth right out of the gate when it is released to the open-source community. (Securely logging into Twitter from third-party applications and websites has long been a point of contention in the community, because the only option continues to be giving every app your username and password. Not a very secure solution, especially because there isn't even the layer of security provided by API keys such as used by FriendFeed and, yes, Jaiku. Google itself has supported OAuth authentication for its own services since as long as I can remember.)

Overall I think Jaiku's fate is the best and most (potentially) beneficial of all those announced this week. The potential for competition and improvement in the entire microblogging and status-update ecosystem is wonderful. However, potential users of the newly–open-sourced Jaiku Engine (hopefully that's the address where it will live—it 404s at the moment, but I'll watch and update if necessary) will still be dependent upon other Google amenities, namely Google App Engine. Jaiku was ported to App Engine last year, and the code base is now dependent upon being run in that environment. (This could be a ploy to get money, since App Engine charges—or will charge; I'm not sure of the time frame of the fee structure—nominal fees for applications that move beyond moderate-scale deployment—not a bad business move, if I do say so myself.)

Image via WikipediaThe one impending closure that I am really and truly saddened by is the shutdown of uploads to Google Video, which is now (and will shortly be, but for already-uploaded content) solely a meta–video-search site. I've always preferred Google Video to YouTube for a variety of reasons. Some of them are:

cleaner interface
more professional player appearance (nice for embedding on sites like swrobotics.com)

especially the lack of related videos and pop-down search bar

less cluttered site
fewer extraneous features
more focus on videos, less on social networking

(As an aside, there is also some uncertainty how the closure will affect users of Blogger who use the platform's video upload feature, which uses Google Video for hosting. I have never uploaded a video for a post through Blogger, so I'm somewhat detached from this particular concern—but I thought it was relevant nonetheless.)

I have many more reasons and thoughts on this comparison that I can't easily articulate, but I will be very sad to lose the ability to add new content to Google Video. Failing the motivation to deal with YouTube (which has limits on content length and filesize that may or may not be lifted in the aftermath of Video's shutdown), I suppose I might have to start uploading somewhere else entirely, like Vimeo (whose player I like quite a bit).

YouTube has always kind of irked me as a place to upload content. It's a great place to go to watch videos, almost always, but for hosting videos intended for display on another site... Despite the number of sites that do so, its player has always seemed out of place on the sites I'm involved with. The in-built social network (which includes profile pages, a messaging feature, "friendship", and so forth) has always seemed like an unnecessary layer to me.

I suppose I should have seen the writing on the wall when Google's own blogs, which used Google Video uploads themselves for a while even after the YouTube acquisition, all switched over to YouTube videos and left Google Video in the dust. Maybe I'm a video Scrooge, or maybe I'm just being resistant to change (who isn't?). Whatever the reason, I—honest and truly—will miss being able to add my videos to such a simplistically elegant site as Google Video has been.

Update (19:46): Some good news (depending on how you look at it) came this week, too: FeedBurner now shows a link to migrate your account to Google on the My Feeds page. That wasn't there a couple days ago...

Caller ID Should Be Standard

2009-01-11T16:30:00.003-06:00

Image via WikipediaI don't particularly like using the telephone.

Don't get me wrong; it's nothing against the concept of talking to someone who's not there – I do that all the time online. It's not the fact that it's voice-based instead of text-based. (Actually it kind of is, but that's not the point of this post.)

One of the biggest reasons I don't like telephones is that it's sometimes impossible to know who's on the other end of the line. Caller ID is considered a premium feature and carries a charge somewhere in the area of $5/month per line. (This doesn't apply to cell phones, which have it built in. I'm strictly discussing landlines here.) Since when is knowing who's trying to contact you a privilege, not a right?

I know, I know; it takes resources, it's relatively new. Telephones have been around in concept since the mid-1800s; Caller ID was conceived in the late 1960s. But let me tell you something: Flash memory was first presented at the IEEE conference in 1984 by a Japanese employee of Toshiba, who invented the technology in 1980. Prices for that technology have fallen steeply in just ten years.

How about some perspective? For as long as I can remember (five years or so, in this case), Caller ID has been a good $5-$10 per month. It hasn't changed, either, as far as I know. By comparison, flash memory prices started at a good $100 or more for a few megabytes when my mother got her first digital camera (which took the no-longer-developed SmartMedia memory card) and are now down to $100-$150 for 16GB. That hardly seems fair, considering that both prices are for technological innovations that usually depreciate very rapidly.

Perhaps the lack of price decrease for Caller ID is caused by similar factors to those which create the sky-high fees on SMS messages. That is to say, carrier greed. (I also notice that landline telcos don't include long-distance calling as part of the phone line price, but that's a whole 'nother subject; I won't go there.)

So what if Caller ID was standard? Sure it might raise the basic price of a phone line a dollar or two, but that would be better than paying the ridiculous rates currently charged to have it as an add-on feature. (I'm taking a page from my economic experience that says package deals are always cheaper than a la carte options. Not saying that's always true; it's just a good rule of thumb.)

If I had Caller ID on every phone, I could look at it and answer or not answer based on who's calling, without paying extra, and gain more confidence in answering landline phones. (It's debatable whether landlines are even still useful what with prepaid cell phones and all that, but sometimes they're required for alarm systems. In which case being able to use them as intended is a nice bonus.)

And all this because I hate listening to telemarketers and recorded messages. Huh. Fancy that: Marketing makes me hate the medium on which it is delivered. Same as commercial television and radio (I spy a future post idea...) – but not the Internet; I can block ads on the Internet faster than you can say, "I hate advertisements."

Parked In: A Yom Kippur Story

2008-12-18T16:00:00.001-06:00

I wrote this way back in October, but never got around to polishing it and posting it until now. Finally I found time and motivation to post! I hope you all enjoy this story; even now, I am still uncovering all its hidden meanings.

This year's Yom Kippur was interesting. After school, I went straight to dinner, and then to services. Specifically, we (my mother and I) were interested in Kol Nidre, a beautiful piece of music that is part of the evening service erev Yom Kippur.

The service started at 16:45, and I had what was basically a tech rehearsal for a production of scenes from Romeo and Juliet at 17:30. More importantly, we had a stage fight to completely rework, so I had to be at rehearsal as close to on-time as possible -- our fight choreographer would only be there for the first hour. It looked like things were going to work out pretty well; we'd just leave the service shortly after Kol Nidre and blast to rehearsal, perhaps catching the second half of the service later, around 20:30.

It was not ordained.

Exiting the shul at 17:27, I was horrified to find that the Temple's parking attendants had motioned congregants to double-park -- filling each passageway in the (relatively small, actually, considering the size of the congregation) parking lot with two lines of cars -- effectively hemming in those vehicles parked within the white lines on the asphalt (and each other, but I'll discuss that below). Worse, there was one BMW 525i that was just barely blocking the one possible escape route. Honestly, had it not been for that one car, I could have gotten to rehearsal five or ten minutes late -- not bad for a holiday. But that BMW was in the way, and I was stuck.

What could I do? We went back inside. There was nothing else to be done except wait for the end of the service and get to rehearsal as soon as possible.

As it happened, the rabbi delivered a very moving sermon that evening. I felt like I suddenly knew why that one BMW had been parked behind our car. If we'd been able to get out, we would have left and missed that sermon.

Even better, when I finally did get to rehearsal, everyone was quite understanding and the fight choreographer had stayed late just for me. I am grateful for that, and for the sermon that I came so close to missing. When something is supposed to happen, the universe rearranges itself to make that something possible. I find that amazing.

Badly Designed Websites: Improvement Sighted

2008-09-05T22:10:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know this post is short. It reflects my most recently added constraint: Time. I just don't have much of it these days. It makes me sad that I can't blog as much as I'd like, but I'll do what I can.

Image via Wikipedia
Remember that old post I made last October citing www.mcool.org as an example of a badly designed website?

Say hello to their redesign!

Yes, it's true! The site has been completely redone since the end of last school year, and it now features a great deal of improvements. Not the least of which are bookmarkable URLs (no more JavaScript-submitted CGI junk) and a menu structure that is fully functional without JavaScript enabled. I dare say time has been good to the site.

Well, that's one less annoying site off my list... Too bad I'm nearly done with my association with that organization; it would have been nice to have the current site about three years earlier...

Would I Ever Use BlogBurst?

2008-08-23T08:02:00.003-05:00

I wrote this post in late April, before I left for Chicago, and initially scheduled it to publish the morning of April 25. It was replaced by something else because I wasn't sure about it, but reading it again now I think it's pretty fine. I'm writing a big post to be published in the next week or two, so this looked like a good post idea to use in the mean time.

I don't remember how I initially heard about BlogBurst. It's one of those many sites I just got in my head somehow but can't trace. There's been a post idea nagging at the back of my head for a while, and I decided to let it out now.

BlogBurst is an RSS-based syndication network, where publishers submit their content and other sites can take it and display it under their own umbrella. The content producers make money (theoretically) and the other sites get content.

So would I use BlogBurst? That's a good question. There are a few problems I see. First, I probably can't sign up. (Due to the other niggling ethical issues I haven't bothered to check for an age restriction, but one probably exists.) Second, I'd be providing content for other sites to make money off of. Third, I'd be creating duplicate content, upon which Google and other search engines frown.

Putting my writing on someone else's site for their profit -- even if I would get a cut -- isn't something I want to do. I can't rationalize creating duplicates or taking traffic away from this site (or its feed).

On the one hand, it sounds like it could be some good exposure if my posts are displayed on popular news sites like Reuters, Fox News, etc., and could generate some revenue (if my writing is picked up, of course). However, it's a lot like turning blogging into a job, and at the moment I don't want to do that. (What sites would continue displaying blog posts that aren't replenished fairly regularly? Yeah, that's what I thought. I try to blog regularly, but if things get in the way I don't have to tear my hair out over it.)

I have been considering placing ads on this site, but first of all I can't (for another year) because of my age, and second I'm not sure I want to bug my readers with ads. (I wonder if I'm one of the bloggers who don't deserve to make money -- though I agree with the counter-argument from Geek News Central. Louis? I hear most sites don't make more than a dollar or two a day, anyway, if that.)

How Should I Respond to Copied Photos?

2008-08-17T09:24:00.002-05:00

All right, it's time to get this issue out there. I tweeted it a few times before, many months ago, but last night I was just reminded of the issue by an entire Facebook album of photos uploaded by someone I went canoeing with last summer -- but represented as original works. No credit, no acknowledgment, not even anything about the fact that someone else took the photos!

Fine, I did upload the photos to Picasa Web Albums and set them as public, and I did send everyone on the trip the URL of the gallery page... But still, those are my pictures that have been taken without any attribution and uploaded to a social website that claims a ton of rights to user-submitted content in the fine print of its user agreements:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

In short:

[...] this means you’re giving up copyright control of your material. If you upload a photo to Facebook, they can sell copies of it without paying you a cent. If you write lengthy notes (or import your blog posts!), Facebook can turn them into a book, sell a million copies, and pay you nothing. This deserves careful consideration!

Both of the above quotes were copied from a great post at Legal Andrew on the subject of Facebook. (See? Attribution is so easy to give, and yet it's so often left out.)

So there are issues with Facebook's terms of service. There are also issues with the emotional connection I feel with my own photos, and my desire to be credited for my work, and my wish to be recognized by others for what I've done. Oh, and let's not forget the horrible feeling that comes from knowing other people think someone else created your work.

I'm not going to mention who copied my photos, not by name. That doesn't matter; I can handle that person's abuse easily enough, once I decide what course of action to take. Which brings me to the point of this post.

Using a question as a post title isn't something I do often (despite it being advised). That means I really want reader feedback on the post, even more than normal. So, it's a simple question:

How should I handle this unauthorized, unattributed uploading of my content to Facebook?

Should I contact the person through the messaging system (or email)? Or just send Facebook a DMCA notice for the images and be done with it?

I look forward to any and all opinions on this matter.

What Does "Friend" Mean?

2008-08-16T09:37:00.001-05:00

Image by Veronica Belmont via Flickr This was inspired by a recent experience I had when I went back to Evanston, IL for the NHSI Musical Theatre extension presentation. I'd rather not talk about the details -- I've decided not to blog about that part of my life, despite its significance, as it's rather painful -- but I did get to thinking. This is what I came up with in the time since.

Social networking websites have really degraded the concept of friendship. I suppose it's not their fault entirely -- other things like amateur radio have been doing the same things (namely competing based on how many contacts a person has) for decades -- but none of the previous offenders used the term "friends" for the number being compared.

See, MySpace and Facebook both have a lot of users, and substantial subsets of those users often compare their friend list size with that of other people they know, and try to get the biggest number within their social circle. So we have people you barely know sending (and accepting) friend requests to (and from) you.

Now, I have always used the term "friend" to refer to people with whom I feel connected and with whom I have something of a relationship beyond simple collaboration and camaraderie (that is, beyond a "professional" or "working" relationship). Those with whom I feel a personal connection, I suppose. So now I see that there's no way for me to say that these colleagues, classmates, or whatever are just those; everybody I know (including family) is a "friend" in the eyes of a social networking site. That's annoying, very annoying.

See, it all boils down to this: I left Cherubs nearly two weeks ago. (And I still haven't written down all my experiences... I know, for shame.) I had thought I made a lot of friends there, but that was really wishful thinking as it turns out. In fact, I was fooling myself into thinking I had fit in much better than I had in reality. Sensing that I had been an outsider, I didn't want to accept that fact -- or admit it to myself -- and so I began thinking of all these people who greeted me courteously, professionally, in passing, as "friends".

The Facebook definition of "friend" has invaded my thinking, and it's probably affecting a lot of people.

Those aren't "friends" I made at Cherubs; what had seemed like real connections were really just the superficial, cordial niceties of working together in a focused group. They are acquaintances at best, strangers (yes, I managed to avoid even learning some people's names) at worst. The strangers are the ones I recognize as having been in the program but can't name or put in a role from the shows we did the last week of July.

Suffice it to say I was pretty disappointed, after the presentation ended, at the lack of warmth from those who had been my colleagues and cohorts for five weeks. More importantly, one boy who had seemed like a friend seemed more interested in the videos I took for him than in me. By him in particular I felt used.

So a "friend" is not a friend. Not even if you mentally drop the quotes.

I suppose managing relationships is a skill that comes with experience, and isn't innate to the human mind. My parents aren't exactly what you'd call socialites, and really nobody in my family is. So far as I'm aware, everyone I know can count the number of friends (not "friends") they have using ten fingers or less, and probably use less than five. I know I can. Unfortunately I have been unable to connect with any of my real friends for most of the summer, since we've all been busy and/or out of town.

My point here is that I've learned the hard (emotionally) way to not think of everyone as a friend, and not even as a "friend". Facebook may use the term. MySpace and Twitter can (though Twitter uses the word "Following" now). I most certainly won't. (I think I put more detail than I wanted to in this post, but it really does help illustrate what I'm talking about, so... I'll leave it all in.)

Hampton Inn Internet Issues

2008-08-15T23:32:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia All right, so obviously I managed to get online. But it took about half an hour. Let me begin the saga... (And this was after something of a disappointment at the NHSI Musical Theatre extension's presentation... but I don't think I'll blog about that.)

We checked into the hotel around 22:00, then got up to the room. I set up my computer and started looking for clues as to how the Internet access was delivered (RJ-45 plug or Wi-Fi). I finally figured out that it was wireless (the amenities book gave the impression that it was wired) and tried to find it. No luck.

So I called the front desk. Duh.

DC: "Guest Services."

Me: "I'm having trouble accessing the Internet. Is it wired or wireless?"

DC: "It's wireless."

Me: "I can't seem to find the network."

DC: "Have you entered the code yet?"

Me: "On a Web page or in Windows?"

DC: "On the authentication page."

Me: "I haven't even managed to find the network yet."

Now she figures it out. (I am not dissing girls -- there are plenty of geeky girls out there -- it's just that the guest services employees at hotels never seem to know anything about technology.) After a few more sentences, she gives up and transfers me to the Internet support call center.

One would think they'd know what's up, right? By this point I've deduced that it was an out-of-range network, but I figured I'd see if the support tech knew something I didn't. After getting in all my hotel info, I was asked what the problem was.

Me: "My computer can't find the network."

ST: "Is your connection wired or wireless?"

Me: "Wireless."

ST: "Are there any networks in the list?"

Me: *Rattles off the two that were in the list the last time I refreshed it*

ST: "Is it plugged in?"

Me: "The computer's power cord is plugged in, yes."

ST: "Can you reboot your computer for me?"

I waited on the line for a good chunk of time while my computer rebooted in its slow, cautious way. During the wait, I was asked what kind of computer I had. Foolishly I answered, "Windows XP". I thought she meant the operating system, which is what most people mean when they ask "what kind" about a computer. But no, she wanted "Gateway". Anyway...

Me: "I have access to the network properties."

ST: "Is it in the list now?"

Me: "No." (after checking the newly-updated network list)

And that was it. The tech suggested that it was a weak wireless signal in the room and said she'd have the front desk send up a bridge. (The bridge is pretty cool; it gets the 'Net from the power socket. Nice!) And the call was over.

So, all they can do is send me something to plug in? I like wireless Internet, thank you very much. Oh well.

I'm not really complaining about the support tech; I know she's just reading from a script. The woman at the front desk should be able to figure out that if I can't find the network, that means I haven't gotten to the authentication page. But maybe the average traveler isn't too bright, and refers to the Internet as "the network"... I don't know. I suppose my point is that the hotel's wireless nodes aren't placed too well. And the last hotel we stayed at (same chain) had an Ethernet cable right on the desk. Never mind the fact that I was bumped over to the table by my mother's suitcase...

Travel is such fun sometimes...

Google, Please Don't Disrupt the Continuity of Google Page Creator Sites

2008-08-09T07:00:00.004-05:00

Don't worry, I'm working on a post about my summer at Northwestern University. It's just a lot of writing, thinking, and recalling, so it'll take some time. Meanwhile, this post has a very important message I wanted to get out.

All right, someone needs to think. Hard. Someone at Google, that is. Why? Because a lot of people, including me, will be potentially made unhappy when Google Sites takes over for Google Page Creator.

Google Blogoscoped published "Google Slowly Closing Page Creator" a few days ago, which got me thinking. How much do I use Google Page Creator? For its intended purpose (creating pages), not much. But I use it quite a bit for hosting miscellaneous images and bits of XML (like gadgets and FeedFlare units) that I use all over the Web. So what will happen if Google migrates me to Google Sites?

The Bad

The bad possibility -- one that I sincerely hope they avoid -- is that I will be moved from http://voyagerfan5761.googlepages.com/ to http://sites.google.com/site/voyagerfan5761/. Links all over the place will break. Images will be missing. My blog feed will be missing FeedFlares. Countless emails will no longer look right. Sure I can fix much of the damage, but that assumes Google will migrate my files, too.

The Hope

My hope is that, using the custom domain feature of Google Sites, migrated Google Page Creator users will simply have their back-end replaced, while the public-facing part of the site (pages and files) appear to remain the same. No broken links, no discontinuity, no user aggravation.

Conclusion

I guess my point in writing this (there are other discussions, too; here's one from FriendFeed and one from Labnol) is to try and get Google's attention. Please, Google, please let us know more details about your migration plans. If migration is going to break links and change URLs, please tell us now so we can begin preparations!

Update (12:51): I nearly forgot about files! Of course accessing existing files is covered under not breaking links, but I totally forgot to mention that there's a possibility of them being deleted in the move or (worse, I think) migrated but hidden in the interface, making deletions, changes, and new uploads impossible. (Thanks, Tony!)

Update (17:46): Ionut at Google Operating System posted on this a few hours ago, and I see he found a Google Groups thread that explains in a bit more detail what will be happening. Google Page Creator sites will be redirected to their Google Sites counterparts. However, it still doesn't mention how files will be handled...

Twitter's Problems: Getting Worse

2008-06-27T13:30:00.003-05:00

I once told myself I'd never write about Twitter's downtime, because everyone in the tech blogosphere writes about it. Today I'm going against that. The problems have simply become ridiculous.

Back when I first started using Twitter, it was very responsive. (I tried to find my first tweet as an example, but there's currently a paging limit of 10 which blocks everything but the 200 most recent tweets.) Posting was nearly instantaneous, the API allowed 70 requests every hour, one could get replies to one's own tweets using a convenient tab on the site or simple call to the API, you could add keywords you wanted to track and have matching tweets sent to you (via IM or SMS), and you could even use Twitter via IM alone!

Utopia Shattered

Now all that has changed. With the thousands -- nay, millions -- of new users that have joined over the last several months, plus the increases in highly tweetlific (tweeting prolifically) power users, Twitter has had lots of downtime. There's been more downtime than I could possible list here; even linking to reports of that downtime is something I'll leave up to the reader (search for "twitter is down" in Google and see how many results you get).

Not only has the service gone down a lot, but many features have been crippled or disabled. The API is limited to 20 req/h out of the original 70 (and has been for weeks); keyword tracking has been shut off for even longer; the IM bot has been offline for so long I can't even remember what using it was like; pagination is limited to the latest 10 pages (of 20 tweets) for each section; the Replies tab has been disabled, requiring the use of search services like Summize to gather responses to one's own messages; the list goes on and on.

Perhaps the most annoying part of all this is the fact that, no matter what the Twitter developers do, the site still goes down. Twitter was founded by the engineers who wrote Blogger, for crying out loud; it should be able to handle a little scaling. But maybe the fact that Blogger engineers wrote the service is the very problem.

Code-Level Problems

The fundamental issue is this: Twitter was written to be a content management system (CMS), not a messaging service. Blogger is a CMS, too. The capability to handle hundreds or thousands of inputs every second is not part of the normal CMS design pattern. Twitter needs to be fundamentally rewritten.

I know I'm not saying anything new; in fact, some of my ideas were inspired or taken directly from other blogs (too many to even begin to remember, unfortunately). It's just that, with today's outage, I realized just how true all the criticisms are. Twitter may disable feature after feature in an effort to reduce the load on the servers that make the site run, but the underlying architecture is a huge (er, very narrow) bottleneck. Technically speaking, you cannot make a messaging system out of a CMS; it's just not possible, code-wise. The two system types have vastly different ways of handling things.

Secondary Effects

Things might not be so bad, though, if being written as the wrong kind of service was Twitter's only problem. The excessive load caused by the incorrect architecture has caused other technical failures in the system, including the loss of an entire database about a month ago and, just this morning, an overloaded load balancer (how's that for irony?). But at least they launched that nice Twitter Status Blog so they can tell us that they're down after we've already known for half an hour.

Conclusion

If I didn't love Twitter to death I'd probably have given up on it by now. Lots of people already have. The latest darling in the social media space is Plurk, which I personally can't stand (the UI is ugly). I like Jaiku better, but it's been invite-only ever since being acquired by Google, which means it's hard to get an account. Pownce is just too weird for me. All I can do for now is deal with the ridiculous bugs, outages, glitches, and all the other crap we Twitter users have to deal with. Then, during the downtimes, I can hope that when I get back in August, Twitter will be back to normal.

If only I had any confidence that it'll happen that quickly.

Update (08/17): Well, actually, Twitter got a whole ton better over the last six weeks or so. After continuing to use it for almost two weeks (back in normal, twhirl-using mode), I'm finding the upped API limit (100 req/h) to be absolutely great, and the site is much faster than it was in June. Looks like a lot of my complaints from this post are no longer relevant. Yay! I just wish that some people (*cough* possible248 *cough*) hadn't moved to other sites in the interim...

Blogging vs. Social Life

2008-06-21T06:30:00.000-05:00

I've found a pretty compelling trend in the last few months. As my social life in the "real world" space has expanded, this blog is one of the things that have suffered. Whereas a year or two ago I was writing posts a mile a minute (especially last Fall), posting is now spread out over increasingly long periods of days and even weeks.

I'm really not sure what to make of the trend, but I do know it's there. Whether it's a universal constant or something peculiar to me, I don't know. Perhaps Twitter has something to do with it, as well; I do a lot of chatting on there, along with writing short little thoughts that would never do as full blog posts.

Another thing that seems to have been affected is my focus, both in terms of my ability to concentrate and the scope of topics I cover here. This blog started as a small personal journal over on MSN Spaces (now Windows Live Spaces), moved to Blogger, became a technically oriented publication of fact and opinion, shifted more toward opinion, and is now becoming more of a personal journal again (sans most of the intimate details, because people who know me actually read it now).

Now, as I blog in the shadow of my looming departure next week, I'm finding less and less inspiration for posts. Sure, I have a list of ideas, but it seldom gets additions or subtractions any more; the ideas are more "someday" and less "do it now".

This coming school year will be my last of high school, should all go according to plan; it may also be the first in which I find myself thinking more about what's happening outside regularly scheduled things like classes and less about the classes themselves.

It does seem strange that having more of a social life has diminished my own desire to blog. Perhaps that lack of drive stems from the simple fact that I have more places to express my opinions. Why go to the trouble of typing up a few hundred words, later, when you can simply talk with a friend about it?

Hopefully I'll be able to find a better balance between my social life, school, and blogging this coming year. After all, my social life isn't going to go away.