Hiatus Over

The hiatus I blogged about a few weeks ago is over. So here's what's going to happen.

1) There will be no more entries on this blogger.com page. I'm done with blogger.com
2) dOgBOi on Tech has changed to "The Misadventures of dOgBOi." I've decided to expand my focus.
3) For now, I'll be hosting my blog on baywords. That won't last forever, but it'll do for now.

On Hiatus

I'm going on a brief hiatus to reevaluate this blog and what it means to me. It's not going to be long. Perhaps 2 weeks, no more than 3. But I have to take a serious look at myself in relationship to the internet.

My beliefs are pretty strong, and I stand by my ethics. Not everyone will agree with my ethics, and that's okay. What other people think of me is none of my business. What's important is that my ethical bar is set high and I try to meet that bar everyday.

One of my biggest concerns is intellectual property: I don't like it. Copyrights, patents and trademarks make me pretty much sick, nowadays. That's not to say that I don't think people should make money from intellectual property, but the wrong people are making the money. Trent Reznor notwithstanding, most of the money from music goes directly to the labels. If I create something and you promote it, why should you as the promoter get more from my creation than I do? When my best friend suggested I create a “dOgBOi Enterprises”, I didn't know why that bothered me so much. Now I do. It's branding, it's marketing, it's monetization. That's not what I'm about. I'd rather be well than well-off. With that in mind, I have to question whether I want ads on my blog. Probably not. The license here is Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike. Somehow, ads don't seem to fit into that model in my mind.

Another concern is that this blog is hosted by Blogger.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google.com. I think I fell hook, line and sinker for the whole “Google does no evil” line. Well, storing people's information without their explicit consent (and no, using the search engine is not explicit consent if you don't have that information clearly displayed on the search page) seems a tad “evil”. Operating in China to make a profit is more than slightly evil. Selling out ethics to profit is ALWAYS immoral Google, and I don't want to hear that you're doing a greater good there. Bull. The greater good would be to do no business there. Period. Google Apps Engine seems like a good deal, a place to build a brand. That is, until it's large enough that you have to start paying Google. Then guess what you find out. Your app won't work anywhere else without major changes because of the backend. So you're stuck with a costly rewrite or a costly subscription fee to Google. Monetization is one thing, forced monetization is another. Oh, and stop reading my email to send me targeted ads. It's annoying. I don't care if it's a bot doing it. Email is private. If I could convince all of my friends to use GPG, I would, and every message would be encrypted to prevent just that. Google's efforts to block the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is entirely self serving, and while I'm no fan of either, it's selfish to promote your personal agenda of what may be good for the web community as a whole. (Who knows if it'll be good or bad. We just don't know. Don't assume that if it's bad for Google, it's bad for the rest of the community.)

The plan, as I see it, is as follows: after the hiatus, I'll continue to blog here for a time while I write my own blog engine. Then I'll find a host somewhere (probably the EU) that does no business with China. If I can't, I'll host the thing myself. There will be no ads on this new blog, and the blogging engine will not support, nor will it ever support, adding ads. It'll be open source, of course, and freely available to those that want it. The license will explicitly state that ads will not be allowed on any site that uses the engine. Otherwise, do with it what you will.

I can't, in good conscience, continue along the path I was on. Google is the least of my issues. Most of my problem is with how I've been operating, and it ends now.

Toluu Review

There are many feed aggregators out there, but Toluu.com does some unique things with your RSS feeds. For one thing, it's not an aggregator at all. It doesn't deliver news items to your desktop or your browser. Instead, it keeps a list of all of your feeds. What makes it special is what it does with the data.

Toluu is, at it's heart, a feed recommender. It compares your list of feeds to other Toluu user's lists. It then algorithmically determines other feeds you might want to read based on the feeds you already like to read. There's a social element as well. You can find people who read similar feeds and add them as friends. When your friends add new feeds, you are notified.

You can import your current feeds through OPML. You can also add feeds manually, or use a bookmarklet.

Toluu is currently in private invite-only beta. I currently have six invites for anyone who wants one. Just send me a tweet on twitter (user name: dOgBOi).

You can see my profile on Toluu by clicking here.

Personas for Firefox

The default Firefox theme is pretty bland, and the ability to change the theme using the add-on architecture is nice. But sometimes, you want to change a whole lot more than just the buttons.

That's where Personas for Firefox comes in. It's a lightweight theming engine for Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 Beta. What it does is allow you to quickly and easily change the look of your browser without a restart. It doesn't change the buttons or layout. Instead, it adds graphical elements to the top and bottom of the browser.

A picture being worth a thousands words, here's two:





As you can see, the effect isn't very subtle. But it is very fun, and allows you to customize your browser quickly and easily. You just hit the button in the bottom left of the browser that looks like a fox in a mask, choose the theme, and instantly your browser is changed.

I haven't noticed any performance hits from using Personas, either on the PC or the Mac. I've used personas for months now, and I've been very happy with it. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a quick and easy way to modify Firefox's look.

Comments

Because I believe in free speech, I have a policy here. If a comment is not generally offensive to the community at large, whether I agree with that comment or not, even if that comment is a personal attack, I'll approve it. If someone believes in free speech, that should cross into every area of their life.

Someone commented here today, anonymously. They commented on an older post, which still has the old commenting system (pre-disqus). Since it's buried weeks back, I thought I'd share the comment and my reply, in the interest of transparency, not to mention because I find such things amusing.

So first, the comment:

Anonymous said...

... You blog sucks... i hope you get cancer, fat bastard.

Hmm, it's so nice that he cares. (How do I know it's a he? Because it's been my experience that commenters like this are generally teenage boys. I'm making a huge assumption there, but I'm rolling with it.) I just love ellipsis abuse, not to mention the clever use of "You" as an alternative for "Your". It's the little things that give me pleasure.

Of course, this was just begging for a reply, which is probably wasted, since I imagine that the commenter stumbled here and will never return, but hell, it gave me something to do for a few moments.

So here is my reply, in it's entirety.

dOgBOi said...

I shouldn't have approved this, nor should I dignify it with a response, but I couldn't resist an opportunity to get snarky.

So dude, to paraphrase Molly Wood, "the ellipsis is not a period." And it should be "Your blog sucks", by the way. But then, I wouldn't expect someone who has the time to leave anonymous rude comments on someone's blog to have had the time to complete a basic High School English course.

And if you're going to leave a rude comment, at least have enough balls to leave your name. Hiding behind anonymity when insulting others is cowardly, and morally reprehensible. (Uh oh, is that word too big for you.)

I love constructive criticism. Something more helpful than "You blog sucks" would be nice.

I don't know why. This whole thing just made my day.

New Commenting System

I've switched my commenting system here at dOgBOi on Tech to Disqus. Should make things a little easier as far as comment moderation, and it'll look nicer too. Let me know what you think.

The FBI's Rick Roll

There's this really cool video. I'm telling you, it's the coolest thing you've ever seen and it'll explain this whole post. It has laser beams and explosions! You can see it by clicking here.

Go ahead, click it and come back.

And if you clicked that link without thinking about it, as many people would be prone to do, you would have just been Rick Rolled. In the original definition of Rick Rollin', a link that is said to go to one thing actually goes to a video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". No harm done, other than a wasted few seconds (or minutes if you actually watch the thing.)

But the FBI is doing something similar, and the damage is a lot worse than a few wasted seconds. They put up a link in a pedophile message board, and the link says that leads to kiddie porn. When you click it, it takes you to a site which obviously doesn't have kiddie porn. Instead, it logs your IP address, and the FBI stages a morning raid on you the next day.

That might not seem to be too bad. I mean, it's only posted on a pedophile message board, so only pedophiles will see it, right?

Wrong. Links don't stay in one place. The move all around the internet. Between search engines, robots, and plain old human involvement, links move from point to point across the internet. It's not only possible, but likely, that this link has already moved off it's board, and there are people sick enough to find it amusing to post it in places where innocent people will click on it absent-mindedly.

So, you say, no harm no foul. It's all about the intent, right. WRONG. According to the Justice Department, just clicking on the link is illegal. This has already held up in court once. That case is full of murky details, like no kiddie porn was found on the guys computer (though a thumbnail.db file was found with grainy thumbnails.) The FBI says if you click the link, you intended to find child pornography. But what's to stop someone from doing what I did above: Just enclosing a word or a phrase in a hyperlink, and an unsuspecting user clicks on it, leading to their arrest.

This is a dangerous precedent. While I understand the FBI's need to catch pedophiles, this method is entrapment. The courts say no, it's not, but I don't think they recognize the reality of the internet.

So click carefully, or else find yourself Rick Rolled into a stay in a federal penitentiary.

Who Owns Surfing Data?

Who owns a user's surfing data? Is it the user? That user's ISP? The websites that user goes to? The Government? It's a question that really hasn't been answered yet.

Certainly one could make the argument that a user's activities are their own. If you pay in cash, no one can track what stores you shop at, what restaurants you eat at, etc, unless you share that data. (Well, a person could be tracked, but not in a cost effective manner).

But what about ISP's? Don't they, in some respect, hold a vested interest in what sites you visit. If things continue as they are, and ISP's are going to be the policing arm of the internet (as they are in France and as they soon may be in England), then don't they have a vested interest in watching where you go? In some places, they could be held liable for what a user looks at.

And websites? Well, most websites provide free content. They generate revenue through ads, and more and more often these are targeted ads. Since these websites are providing a service to you for free, don't they have a right to use your data to place targeted ads on their website, in order to monetize their service. If they can't monetize it, then they can't offer it for free.

But where are the limits? If my web surfing habits are tracked, doesn't that raise a huge privacy issue, not too mention potential monetary risks? If I'm looking at books and articles about lung cancer, and that data can be used without my permission, isn't it possible that my employer or my insurance company could find out what I'm looking at and my health insurance rates could then go up. Or what if a user is looking at porn when the kids are asleep. Will they then get pornography ads when the kids are awake?

I think there need to be clear guidelines over what data can be collected, who can access it, and how it can be used. If not, the data collected on the internet about a user's surfing habits could be become potentially damaging. This is a frightening prospect, and more step closer to an Orwellian reality.

Changes

This blog is definitely a work in progress. I've updated the template, hopefully for the last time. (I'd rather not change again, simply because I have to re-add all the links, the analytics code, etc every time I change).

I've also changed the comments setting to allow anonymous comments. I've also added comment moderation, simply because I don't want spam appearing in my comment sections. All other comments will be approved, positive or negative.

IM Etiquette

I'm noticing a total lack of etiquette on the part of some IM users. While I certainly wouldn't hold someone's 80 year old grandmother to the rules of Netiquette, anyone who has used the internet for any length of time should be able to follow a few simple rules to make everyone else's life easier.

1) Your IM Client/Protocol has a status message indicator. USE IT. If you are not at the computer, set your status as Away or Invisible, or put the client offline. It's annoying to type at people, and they're just not there. This applies to VoIP clients like Skype as well. (and it's even more important there, because if people attempt to call you over VoIP and you're not there, it's a waste of bandwidth).

2) Don't type in ALL CAPS. Just like in email, all caps is considered yelling, and it's rude. (You can type one word or a short phrase in all caps to indicate emphasis however. This isn't yelling).

3) Abbreviations are okay. Don't be annoyed, though, if people don't know those abbreviations. Never hesitate to ask what an abbreviation means if you've never seen it before.

4) Learn to read emoticons. There's a huge difference between "You suck!" and "You suck! :p" The first is probably someone being rude. The second is someone joking around. Most IM programs convert common emoticons into graphical smilies, and if your program does this, learn what those smilies mean. (for example, :p will show up as a smiley sticking out its tongue on most clients.")

5) If you can't talk to several people at once without long delays, *don't do it!*. If you can only handle one conversation at a time, that's okay. If anyone else IM's you, just tell them you're talking to someone else and you'll get back to them.

6) If you're busy, but at the computer, set your status message to indicate that. That way, if it's important, people will know you're there, but they won't bother you with trivialities. (And if they do, you can ignore them. Your status message speaks for itself.)

7) IM has varying weights of importance to different people. Some people, like myself, use IM a lot, and it's just as relevant as a phone call. (In some ways, more so, since I can log IM communications.) If you really don't consider IM important, then you probably shouldn't use it to talk to people who think it is. You are just going to annoy them.

8) By the same token, don't be annoyed by the fact that younger people would rather IM than email or use the phone. IM is just more convenient. Sorry baby boomers (and those older) who want voice, but there are many people under 40, and especially those under 25, who simply WON'T use the phone unless they absolutely have to. The phone takes 100% concentration, but I can IM and work on projects at the same time. That's not being rude. That's just efficient time management. (For many under 25 or so, getting them to even use Email is like pulling teeth. IM is pretty much the primary communication medium of Gen-Y. Gen-X's like myself still consider email the primary communication medium.)

9) If you are on the phone (because you have to be, or because you're one of those rare throw-backs who prefer voice over IM) set your status message to BRB (Be Right Back) or AFK (Away From Keyboard) or BBIAB (Be Back In a Bit). This is true even if you are sitting at your PC using a softphone. There's nothing more annoying than trying to talk to someone on IM while they're actually have a phone conversation, because that phone conversation takes 90% of their attention, and they don't respond in a timely manner to IM's (IM communication doesn't have to be instant, but I shouldn't have to wait 5 minutes to get one word answers from somebody whose status message says they are online.)

10) DON'T FLOOD! You don't need to type out the entire contents of your head in one line! If you have to say something that's long, type it in short sentences and end each sentence in an ellipsis like this ... Then hit return/enter. Computer users are used to the fact that ellipses mean more is coming (since well formed menus in graphic user interfaces use an ellipsis to indicate that if you pick this menu item, a dialog box will open.)

11) It's pretty much rude to think that someone should talk on the phone when IM is available simply because you prefer voice. What you are requesting is that they devote all of their attention to you. It's not all about you. :P

12) That being said, for those that are IM addicts (like me), do pick up the phone from time to time. It's not all about us either. But you don't have to do it when it's inconvenient for you. You can certainly talk to your Aunt Ethel on the phone because she hates IM, but do it when you have time to spare, not whenever she wants. (This isn't so much an IM etiquette rule as it is a rule for life. I'm convinced many people bow over too easily to minimize other's disappointment or to prevent someone from being angry at them. Sorry, I'm not that way. If I'm too busy to talk on the phone, then I'm too busy. Like it or lump it. What you think of me is none of my business.)


(This whole post is in response to someone who can't be bothered with status messages. For God sakes, how hard is it to use a status indicator. If you can't be bothered, then shut down the damn program. I understand that people have busy lives and all, but it takes a few SECONDS to change your status. Not minutes, not hours, SECONDS! You wouldn't drive a car if you didn't know how. Don't IM if you don't know how. Mollyrant over.)

Jack my Thingie!

Dave from Denver created the jackmythingie.com website as a response to a segment on the Gadgettes podcast. I was so impressed with his quick action and the ultimate result (a very simple and effective website), I decided there just had to be "Jack My Thingie" T-Shirts. So I contacted Dave, got his permission and his suggestions, and did it. Proceeds will go the James Kim Technology Foundation.



create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Aviary Review

Aviary promises to be a suite of online design tools. Currently only two of these tools are available, Phoenix and Peacock. Aviary is currently in invite only beta, but I was able to nab and invite to go in and play.



Phoenix is Aviary's bitmap image editor. It's an extremely versatile tool, and a great example of what is possible with online applications. It's certainly not on par with Adobe's Photoshop, but it's not aimed at the same market. Phoenix is definitely more consumer focused than Photoshop, which is aimed at the professional market.

Phoenix is currently in Alpha. That means it's not ready for production use just yet. Still, it's a very promising program with a lot of features already active. You have your standard filters like blur, and also layer based editing (which I've always thought was essential to any bitmap graphics editor). There are even "Layer Filters" which are much like Photoshop's Layer styles.



I also played around with Aviary Peacock, which they call a "Computer algorithm-based pattern generator". Basically what that means in practical purposes is that it is a program for generating patterns based on a system of Generators, Effects and Controllers. It is extremely easy to create complex patters by chaining together these various tools. The program allows you to do so with a visual layout, with "pipes" leading from one to the other, and eventually to the final image.



While I currently have no use for such a pattern generator, I immediately saw it's usefulness to both web designers and 3d artists as a way to generate backgrounds and textures.

In the future, Aviary promises even more tools, including an Audio Editor, a Vector Image Editor, and a Desktop Publishing Layout Tool. (The full list of tools is here.) In my opinion, Aviary has a bright future ahead of it, as long as they figure out a way to monetize the software. Charging a nominal fee for access wouldn't be out of line, and given the power of the tools, the ability to store the data created on Aviary's servers (for access anywhere and on any machine), and the fact that there's no software for the user to update or maintain on their local machine (other than Adobe Flash Player), I think Aviary will be a winner.

Microhoo, or YAOL?

Just yesterday I would have said that the only way Yahoo was going to survive the next five years would be to let Microsoft acquire them. Like Yahoo's CEO, I'm not fond of Microsoft, but sometimes, you have to make a deal with the devil if you want to survive (and then you fight like hell to keep your soul and stay on the side of the angels.) There have been talks of an AOL and Yahoo merger to prevent the Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo, but I never really took that seriously.

Until this morning, that is. It was announced the AOL purchased Bebo, a large social network. This is just one of many acquisition that AOL has made in the past year. They also announced a few weeks ago that they were opening up their Instant Messenging protocol so that third party developers could create applications that use the network (not that they weren't doing that already. Pidgin, Trillian, Digsby and Adium all connect to the AIM network.)

AOL apparently has big plans. Integration of AIM with Bebo will make for a very enticing social networking platform. What better way to leverage that then to use Yahoo's search, Buzz, and advertising to support the new AOL Bebo. Yahoo provides a way to monetize the new combined service, plus it would add Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail to the mix.

It's an enticing idea. AOL would be a competitor again. So would Yahoo. Whether AOL would outright acquire Yahoo or do the sort of half merger that Yahoo was discussing with News Corp. is unclear. I would expect though, that AOL would acquire Yahoo simply because they'd want control over the mail and IM services.

The combined AOL/Yahoo would of course, be no match for Google in search advertising, especially with the approval of the Google/Doubleclick deal. But, with Bebo in the mix, it would certainly give Facebook and Myspace a run for their money.

Take that News Corp.

On Intellectual Property

This post is entirely a response to Molly Wood's excellent Blog, The Culture of Ownership. For those who haven't checked it out yet, you should. Molly's opinions(well, even she'll admit they're rants) on the shenanigans of corporations and even whole nations are often hilarious, and always on point.

With that in mind, I thought it would behoove me to have a statement about how I feel about copyright. Keep in mind that while in the past I have made a portion of my income from Intellectual Property (articles for magazines mostly), I have never depended on it for my entire livelihood, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

And so, the statement: While intellectual property law at one time served a useful purpose (that is, protecting the ability of artists, writers, musicians, inventors, etc to create work and protect it from misuse) it has been warped to provide protection to the massive corporate infrastructure. Furthermore, the invention of the internet and the technology surrounding that has made most Intellectual Property law as it is currently written useless.

So why do we hold on to it. Mostly it has to do with comparative advantage, at least in the USA. The US has a huge comparative advantage when it comes to intellectual property. In fact, intellectual property makes up a huge portion of our GDP. When a congressman starts looking at the figures, he or she rapidly realizes that they need to protect Intellectual Property at all costs.

Trent Reznor's experiment with "Ghosts I-IV" should be a heads up to everyone(that means you RIAA), though, that intellectual property can still make huge amounts of money without the antiquated copyright system (Reznor released all four volumes under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License rather than a traditional copyright). Granted, it's not like Reznor was an unknown artist. His previous label had pumped a lot of money into promoting him and so this is not exactly a model for new artists. However, it could be. The day is rapidly approaching when sites like Myspace, Hi5, and Youtube could push relatively unknown artists to stardom. Even better would be sites that are devoted to music, mixing together previously unknown artists with well known artists they are similar to. (Are you listening Last.FM and Pandora?) Such sites could even sell these artists songs using a Micropayment system.

And as to enforcing copyright: It's become impossible. Every measure taken to prevent it has been easily bypassed. Encrypt the media, and someone figures out how to decrypt it. Put DRM on downloaded music, and the receiver simply burns it to CD and rerips it in Non-DRMed MP3 or OGG format. When all else fails, they can convert to analog and copy the analog signal.

The latest talk about fighting copyright infringement is packet shaping and metering bandwidth. Traffic shaping is easily beaten by encrypting peer to peer traffic. If an ISP can't read the packet, they can't tell that it contains intellectual property. And all bandwidth metering does is prevent small time crooks from downloading illegal content. Sure, it'll stop junior from downloading from bit torrent once his parents get the first metered internet bill, but it certainly won't prevent people who make a living from distributing illegal copies from downloading. They have the money to afford it, and now you've given them more open bandwidth to do it with, since most other peer to peer traffic will be gone.

IE 8 Standards Compliance Test

[There's an Update at the End of This Post]

I downloaded Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 from here. I just had to test Microsoft's claim about Standards Compliance.

First, an explanation of how I'm testing it. I'm using the acid test from webstandards.org. You load the page in a browser and you should see the following (this is in Opera 9.5 Beta, which passes with flying colors).




Firefox 2.0.0.12 gets close, but no cigar.




Internet Explorer 7 fails miserably.



Now for IE 8 Beta 1



Well, well, it passes. I then switched on IE 7 Emulation mode. I had to restart IE 8 for that to work. That's more than a little annoying. They couldn't just rerender the page?

But here's the acid test on IE 8 Beta 1 in IE 7 Emulation Mode:



And of course, it looks like IE 7.

So, Microsoft's claim of Compliance seems to be true. But really guys, why do I have to restart the browser to turn compliance on and off. Can you say annoying!

Oh, and check out the system requirements. Notice the difference between Vista and XP.



That's an eight fold difference. Nothing says "My OS is bloatware" like an eightfold memory requirement difference from one version of the OS to the next.


UPDATE: I only tested IE 8 on Acid Test 2, not aware of the existence of Acid Test 3. So I ran that test, and it failed. But then again, so did Firefox and Opera.

Twhirl Review

Twhirl is an application that allows you to monitor and post to Twitter with ease. It also allow you to post to Pownce and Jaiku. It runs on the Adobe Air runtime, and works with Mac OS X (both Intel and PPC), and Windows. No Linux yet, but according to the Adobe Air FAQ, a Linux version of Adobe Air will be available in the second half of 2008.

Twhirl comes with various skins, so there's probably something there for everyone. With Twhirl you can view the Timeline, just see replies (those you've made and those made to you), an archive of your previous tweets, and direct messages. It also lists your friends, and your followers, lets you lookup people by screenname, and allows you to search the public timeline for specific terms. When twhirl is not the active window, it becomes semi-transparent (using alpha transparency) and looks very nice. You can shut this off, of course, to save resources.

While I like this program, I have 2 beefs with it. First, you can't just watch the public timeline, which I like to do from time to time. You're stuck with just searching it. Secondly, it consumes system resources on my machine way out of proportion to the program's functionality. I think it's likely that Adobe Air is the beast that sucks up the resources. (And I believe this is true because other Air apps on my system do the same exact thing). The list of system requirements specifies 512 mb of ram, but I have 1 gig of ram and still notice lag in other software as soon as Twhirl is up and running. I'd be interested in hearing if other people have this issue, or if it's specific to my machine's configuration.

So, would I recommend it? Well, I've been using it everyday since I installed it. It makes monitoring twitter easy. I like that you can also post to Pownce and Jaiku (though you can't monitor those timelines). But I wouldn't run this on a system without at least one gig of ram. If you're not a twitter nut, the web interface is probably fine. But if you like to monitor Twitter often, a program like Twhirl is a necessity. If they added the ability to watch Pownce and Jaiku at the same time (in a seperate window, or even the same one will color coding), it would be a killer app for me.

Digsby Review

For those that aren't aware of Digsby, it's a multi-protocol IM client with a few added features. Digsby is currently in private beta. I've had the opportunity to use Digsby for several weeks now, and I have to say up front, I love this app. (Please note that the screenshots here have any identifying information removed, except for those things from public streams like Twitter.)



The added features I'm talking about are webmail, Facebook and Myspace integration. Integrated email isn't new to the IM world, but the Social Network integration certainly is and it's very handy.

Digsby supports a nice subset of IM Protocols. At this point they support AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Jabber, MSN, and ICQ, which just about covers everybody. For email support, they cover Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL/AIM mail, Pop 3 and IMAP.





The pleasant surprise for me was that my Google hosted domain mail worked just fine as a Gmail account (rather than setting it up as IMAP). Very easy to set up and use. Basically, you get several notifications of new mail. It shows up as a window on the left hand side of the screen, and I also check the number of messages in my email box at any time by looking at either the buddy list window or the tray icon.

Both mail messages and new IM messages pop up on the left, and if you see a new IM message, rather that switching to the chat window, you can simply click the text input box underneath the message in the notifier, and type your response right there. That's a very cool feature, and lets me to continue to work on whatever I want and chat at the same time, even with multiple people.




As far as social networking integration goes, I don't have a myspace account, so I can't speak for that, but the Facebook integration is wonderful. It notifies you immediately whenever something happens with one of your friends pages (like, they change status, get a wall post, etc) or when you have new mail.

There are of course some negatives to multiprotocol IM clients. Like most of them, Digsby doesn't support cams or voice chat. Since I use neither, that's not an issue for me, but if you're big on either, this isn't the client for you. Also, as it is Beta software, Digsby is a tad buggy, but that's to be expected, and the development team rapidly responds to Bug Reports. Digsby pushes out new builds often. The Digsby blog clearly spells out what changes are made to the software, so you can always check to see what's happening.

One really neat feature I like about Digsby is that all of your account information is kept on their servers, and I thought I'd mention it because that might be a privacy issue for some people. For me, it's just darn convenient. I installed Digsby on another machine and just typed in my Digsby username and password, and I was automatically logged into everything. Very nice.

Of course, now that I'm moving over to Mac, I'll have to run Digsby in virtualization if I want to use it, since it's Windows only for now. They are promising both Mac OS X versions and Linux versions, and I suspect it's only a matter of a few months before we see one or both.

Now if they would only add Twitter, Pownce and LinkedIn support....Oh, and python scripting support would be nice.

Google Mail and Hosted Domains

{Disclaimer: This blog is hosted at blogger.com, owned by google.com The ads are delivered by Google's Adsense. Since I haven't received a cent in revenue from the Ads yet, and since I receive no compensation from Google at this point, I feel I can be totally unbiased in this post. However, here's the disclaimer, just in case someone wants to pick a fight. :-) }

I'm curious as to why more people don't use gmail? Okay, the lack of folder support is a tad bit annoying, but labels pretty much make up for it, and the ability to apply multiple labels to the same message is very handy. I have a gmail account, and two of my domains use Google Hosted Domains to handle mail. I really like gmail's interface, and the 6 gigs of storage is really nice too.

But I think the really killer feature of gmail is IMAP support. For those that aren't familiar with IMAP, it's a different way of delivering mail. Here's how it works. IMAP is synced with the host, no matter how I access it. Whether I use the webmail interface, my email client, my mail checking software, or the mail interface on my iPod Touch, the changes are reflected on the server.

So what does this mean in a practical way? Well, if download my mail, and then realize that something is spam, and I drag it to my spam folder in Thunderbird, it notifies the gmail server, and it also marks that message as spam. If I create a label in gmail for a message, it creates a folder for that label in my email client (and it shows up in my iPod Touch mail app). If I flag a message as important, it gets "starred" in my gmail account, and if I "star" a message in gmail, it gets flagged as important in my client.

I do have some complaints. For one thing, in gmail, I can add colors to my labels. But even though my Hosted Domains use gmail, that feature isn't available yet. I wish that my gmail contacts would sync automatically with Plaxo (right now, Plaxo can only READ my gmail contacts, not actually sync with them.) I'd like more powerful filters at the webmail interface, but I can get over that hump with filters in Thunderbird. All in all, the limitations are minor compared to the advantages.

Now if only I wasn't so weirded out by Google accessing my mail to deliver targeted ads based on the mail's contents, but it's a small price to pay for the convenience of free IMAP and the large storage capacity. And Ad delivery is the reality of the internet. Until I set up my own mail server, or pay for IMAP, I'm going to have to look at ads. And like most internet users, the ads have become almost totally transparent to me.

Why I'm Making the Switch to Apple OS X

I'll be the first to admit it: I have Mac Envy. For years I would say "Windows sucks, Linux is too hard for normal people, and Mac is a toy." But secretly, I looked at Mac OS X and said "Pretty!" Okay, I said more that that. I watched Macs change from toys into full fledged workstations. Macs, like the rest of us, grew up.

And Macs are pretty. Beautiful in fact. But more than that, they're functional. Unlike Windows based machines, you plug most things in and they "just work". I've seen it time and time again. The days of SCSI Voodoo notwithstanding, Macs are simply easier. Mac OS has it roots in Unix, and it shows. All the power of Unix is still there, but made simple, and elegant.

So why now? What could have possibly motivated me to switch now? One word: Vista. I don't have Vista installed on any of my machines. I wasn't in the mood to upgrade to a high end graphics card, to add tons of memory, to fight with U.A.C., all to get a system that doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Vista is a great example of Microsoft's dedication to bloatware. Microsoft has single handedly created a beast that slows many of the world's fast machines down to a crawl. Well not here. If Vista is the future of PC's, I want out.

And this is where the Linux evangelists say: Join us, get Linux. Sorry guys, I love Linux, I really do, but when I spend a week trying to get a wireless card to work, and it just won't, that's too much. I'm a programmer, not a techie. I want to turn my machine on and start coding. I don't want to have to spend hours configuring hardware to work. I don't have that kind of time. Linux is great. It's fast, it's secure, it's scalable, but it's not for wimps, and I guess I'm just feeling too wimpy to deal with its idiosyncrasies.

I'll miss accessibility to cheap hardware. I'll miss the plethora of available software. But otherwise, I'll be all right. The future of PC's is Windows consuming as many resources as I can throw at it. I just don't feel like playing catch with Microsoft anymore.

And I'd like to send a special shout-out to Cali Lewis, whose Vodcast Geekbrief.tv is part of what convinced me the time was right. Watching her enthusiasm over Mac made a believer out of me.

If you're not familiar with OS X, you should definitely take a look at the Guided tour at Apple.com

Blu-ray vs. HD DVD

As everyone is well aware, Blu-Ray won the High Definition war. Toshiba announced that they would no longer be producing HD DVD players. Don Reisinger wrote an interesting article for CNet suggesting that Sony and Toshiba conspired to kill HD DVD. As evidence, he points to the fact that less than 24 hours after Toshiba announced they were killing HD DVD, Sony sold them a Chip Factory for $835 Million dollars (practically a steal.) I agree that this is suggestive of some sort of plan to bring about the final end of HD DVD, but I’d like to take the thinking a little farther.

In a format war, there is only one true loser, and that’s the consumer. While the format war goes on, prices remain high, and early adopters are taking a chance that the technology they buy will no longer be supported. (Just ask Betamax owners about format wars.) But who benefits from a format war? The proponents of the alternate formats do, at least at first. They get to sell expensive equipment to early adopters who are more than willing to shell out the money for the next hot technology. The longer a format war goes on, the longer time both companies have to recoup their R&D costs. Sure, they have expenses as well. In this case, the expense of luring studios to adopt their specific format, but it’s offset by the amount of money they can make from early adopters.

So if the clear winners here are Toshiba and Sony, what better way to ensure a successful format war than to create one and orchestrate every step in the game. Sure, it sounds like a conspiracy theory, and it is, but clearly Sony and Toshiba both benefited from the format war. So what if the Chip Factory was not Toshiba’s reward for dumping HD DVD, but a reward for getting into the format war in the first place?

All at a cost to the consumer.