July 2008 Archives

The wollaston car wash sign says 'happy birthday america' ... Today. Awesome.

I can't believe how long that took. I mean, really. Link

Do you think Red Sox GM Theo Epstein thinks Overstock.com's slogan "It's all about The O" is a reference to him? OK, back to Blue Manny Day.

Artest says he's "still ghetto", won't change Link

Thanks to everyone who already wished me a happy birthday. FYI, I am postponing No. 35 for a few more weeks. I apologize for any confusion.

Random rant: The CDN / streaming provider that can de-mystify pricing issues associated with their product has much gain in the marketplace.

In a Missing Manuals planning meeting. What book would you buy a Missing Manual for? Careers, Going Green, Longevity, Daycare, Bail Bonds?

And to the AH who slashed our @BarakObama bumper sticker in Falmouth MA, thanks for CONFIRMING that we will be volunteering on Election Day.

And to the AH who slashed our @BarakObama bumper sticker in Falmouth MA, thanks for conforming that we will be volunteering on Election Day.

to my Facebook friends who also play Scrabulous ... here's the company your misery might love Link

I just unfollowed @bostonupdate partly because it only follows 6 people. What a missed opportunity to keep tabs on your coverage area. Sigh.

"McCain's answer to 'Yes, we can,' seems to be 'HEY YOU KIDS. GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN!' Link

haha @rcherny ... "I took a CSS book on vacation once. My wife has never let me live it down..."

OK I'm bringing Website Optimization Link

I just imagined a world where tv stations had set-compatibility issues like many sites have with browsers ... Then I laughed an evil laugh.

After many recent reports claim commercially viable rappers are not trying to "Fight the Power" anymore, Nas represents! Link

A funny email from the Obama campaign starts "As you may have heard, Barack has been in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia this week."

My friend Mike: "These damn GUIs. If I was using command line I could go into my history and see what I just did." hehe

@donford74 wow you just blew my mind. I never thought I could be an optimist and a pessimist at. the. same. time.

@spampy I think many have had their followers list trimmed. Mine dropped, and I didn't even venture into that dangerous @wegmans territory!

If I have the twitter fail whale as my desktop background, does that in and of itself make me a pessimist?

Sending tornado alerts from Link

Can someone please put something new where the old Ground Round is in Fresh Pond in Cambridge?

I couldn't help but feel a sense of irony skipping over the advertisements while watching Mad Men on my DVR last night

Just found vyew.com while to helping another Terp figure out next steps for an online math tutoring business. Impressive at first glance.

If your Wordpress xml file is too big (< 8MB) to import, try removing all comments with<wp:comment_approved>spam</wp:comment ...

My first trip to roxies in quincy ... Erin is strangely excited about this

George W. Bush: "Wall Street got drunk" Link

hehe @spampy ... dramatic tarsier Link

This is a list of 699 (and counting) instances where John McCain gets a free pass Link

My HuffPo account got created. Like a couple weeks after I hit submit. These are the mysteries of the Internet that continue to perplex me.

If i had eaten a fortune cookie today i am sure the fortune would have had the letters p h and another p in it

From Talking Points Memo Blog: It's also worth noting that the difference between Maliki and McCain's plan is 1200 months. Link

Fun ESPYs show tonight, but the lack of A-Rod jokes seemed a bit suspect considering Justin Timberlake's friendship with Madonna. Hrmmmm....

I used to think Molly Shannon's Superstar character was too over the top to exist in real life. But that was before yesterday. Oh. My. God.

bwahahah ... Link

As summer dates go it is tough to beat the T boat into town for dinner in the north end and a nightcap on the ride home.

Does anyone know if former weekly dig editor Joe Keohane is on twitter? @baratunde ... anyone? I feel a MeatNormous need to read his tweets.

My boss just said "I'm not in the mood to be rude today." Me likey.

Sitting on opposite sides of my computer are Javascript: The Missing Manual Link

Congrats to Erin on her new gig ... Hoping she was kidding about thinking of new nicknames for me during her two week break between jobs.

OK so if they add extra players to the All-Star Game lineup just in case of extra innings, shouldn't it then be called the Mostly-Star Game?

McCain explained skipping NAACP last year as 'a bit distracted' by GOP campaign ... So it's now ok for him to pander to black people? B.S.

CTRL+F isn't too helpful when your spelling is off. Or if you assume the author of the file knew how to spell when they wrote it.

It's tough to top an unsolicited call from a slightly illiterate recruiter who gets your name wrong for quality mid-afternoon entertainment

@robpegoraro if this is for a story, you should check with @tempo, a.k.a Thor from Link

My random recollections from O'Reilly's Foo Camp and/or #foocamp Link

I was lucky enough to attend a wonderful event called Foo Camp, which is hosted by my employer, O'Reilly Media. I'm convinced I would have called it wonderful even if I wasn't working for the host. Anyway, here is my roundup that I believe fits within the off-the-record nature of the event.

I helped organize and speak at two sessions: "The Future of News" and "Beyond Content: Managing Expectations with a new CMS" and both were very lively. The news one was very heated (and more "star" studded with the likes of Esther Dyson, Tim O'Reilly, Steven Levy among others). After the fact, a fellow attendee said to me "It seemed as if people were violently agreeing with each other. I, on the other hand, felt as if people were attempting to address four issues surrounding the death of newspapers:

:: The business of news

:: The demise / evaporation of investigative reporters and the impact on journalism

:: The tools needed to move newspapers forward (THANK YOU Nick Bilton) for an amazing tour of what The New York Times is up to)

:: Whether or not it's the reader's fault for the decline.

I regret not recognizing these classifications earlier and attempting to steer the discussion along one of these themes. Especially considering I've been hearing versions of this discussion for nearly 10 years now.

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The session on CMS systems was not as strongly attended, but I was grateful to hear from those who came.

Two thoughts popped into my head after the session that I wish I would have said in it:

 :: My favorite John Wooden quote: "Never let what you can't do interfere with what you can do."

 :: In a follow-up conversation about CMS, I posited that even if you were able to build the perfect CMS for an organization (The "impossible" task I listed on my short bio form), there is not another organization on the planet that your CMS would be perfect for without some tweaking.

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I found a title for a living person that I actually like better than the "Senior Editor, Obits and Fun" I once had: "Former Cult Leader." I didn't know such a title was possible while living.

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While I might like to experience the feeling of having a magnet in my finger to detect magnetic fields on surfaces, I would probably be as likely to embed that into me as I would be to swim on top of a pool of water that had a small nuclear reactor at the bottom of it.

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While it might be an expense, one way to bridge multiple geographic locations is to have couches and big-screen TVs with webcams pointing to the couch and showing what's in the other office. It can provide a "wormhole window" to the other office, and can make bride many divides and office cultures.

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Having former drama club members at your event can only raise the "interestingness" level of the environment, especially after the sun goes down over drinks.

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Printing names on both sides of a name tag is a simple, brilliant move that helps people connect. I regret not adding my twitter @chadrem to mine.

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According to the job descriptions bandied about in a session on the need for designers and engineers, I might actually be a designer. This worries me.

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When playing Werewolf, the healer can heal himself. Would have been really handy to know this ahead of time, but I'm not bitter.

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Hearing people who have become targeted Internet celebrities is a chilling, gripping experience. I thank them for their candor.

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To avoid public speaking disasters, it's a good idea to know your audience, including the country that audience is in/from. It's also very helpful to use a service like Slideshare BEFORE your talk so you can access your slides on any connected computer ... just in case.

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Camping is much more comfortable when you bring your favorite bed pillow. Perhaps it's a way to trick your head into thinking you might actually be on your mattress.

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Tony Stubblebine is a great guy and I wish him much success. Coming to Foo Camp after just one year at O'Reilly is a rather head-spinning experience, and hearing what he had to say about his experience was very, very re-assuring.

Ten years with my wife and I just discovered a new facial expression from her: The "so you think you're funny with your status, huh?" look.

My wife thinks Josh Groban's jeans are too close of a blue to his All-Star Game shirt. I have no such concerns.

"appearance of conflict of interest is too damaging to ESPN to let logistics trump news credibility in event programming." Link

Seriously, if you were a recruiter and you saw this Link

@emileifrem I echo your foo camp sentiments. Only regret is not adding chadrem to my badge.

Anyone and everyone ... feel free to ask me anything about foo camp ... The exercise would be a fun way for me to remember a great time

Want a ride from foo camp to san fran? Meet me at the big tarsier @ 4

Thanks to all who came to our cms foo camp session ... Even the movable type haters :)

Wow, Stephan Spencer and Vanessa Fox confirmed for me that I in fact did all I could do for SEO on the susanmernit.com blogger migration.

Sitting in a "fix your Wikipedia page party" with some cool folks at foo camp ... Wikipedia is starting to dominate my life these days

at foo camp Robert Stevens time saver: If biz dev person wants to talk, they must donate $500 to his charity for a 15 minute phone call.

at foo camp, @merci said there's a difference between listening to your users and letting them know you're listening to them

Information is not the problem. Process is the problem. People don't know how to learn.- Scott Gray Dir. O'Reilly School of tech @ foo camp

"Any time you have the beginning of a massive social change, you're going to have clampdowns" ... Jimmy Wales at foo camp

at foo camp I'm feeling similarities btwn the move to the web for journalism and open education platforms. Tools and user experience are key

Fyi foo campers, a small off-white child's sweater was found and is at the registration desk

Apture.com demo in foo camp future of news session brought order and awe to a room that was getting pretty animated and argumentative. Whew!

At Foo Camp, the elephant in the room is an actual literal elephant in a room. Interesting ...

Room filling up for Foo Camp news session I'm chipping in on. Hope the video loads over the wireless in time ;-)

Counting down to a future of news session. Revising in my brain what I think I want to try to contribute. You know, kinda like breaking news

Chatting with the author of puppet and the founder of geek squad at foo camp ... So surreal

Leading a foo camp session beyond content: managing expectatrions with a new cms ... and one on online journalism

Foo camp is feeling like field of dreams ... Except that it's geeks instead of ball players ... And they're not dead ... And not in Iowa

Hmm i apparently have the largest tent at foo camp ... Oy

Great time mingling w/ O'Reilly folks in Sebastopol including Laura, Laura, Laura, Linda, Laurel, Mark, and Marsee. Now to mingle at Foocamp

Just saw the new Link

A little ditty from a pre-Foo Camp virtual conversation about newspaper companies and the web. Link

What's this? An actual blog post that isn't just a piped-in Tweet (tweet? ... still not sure on the capitalization of that)

Anyway, I'm heading to Foo Camp and I am getting psyched.

In my preparation for the event, which begins tomorrow, I've been immersing myself in the social networking platform Pathable and through it I've had to determine who I am based on a list of Star Wars characters (I chose R2-D2 ... but should have chosen Han Solo simply because I brought Erin's "Chewy is my co-pilot" t-shirt. Oh well.

I also have been enjoying who the system says I am similar to and opposite of based on the tags I chose to assign to myself. Through that process, I stumbled on (as apposed to Stumbled Upon) an "online reporter" for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer named Mónica Guzmán. One of her stated goals for Foo Camp is to explore the gap between the print and online worlds, which is a space I was very familiar with nearly 10 years ago from the inside.

Guzmán started at the Seattle P-I (It's nearly impossible to find the full name of the paper on the site without scrolling to the bottom of a page — I found this interesting) in 2007 and I left my combo Washington Post (union) / washingtonpost.com (non-union) gig in 1998.

I mention this because she is leaving the paper, without leaving the company. She writes about it here.

"[I]t's one thing to be a reporter who has a blog," Guzmán wrote. "A lot of reporters have blogs. But it's quite another to be a reporter who has only a blog, and nothing whatsoever that one can roll up, tuck under one's arm and wrap a fish in, if one were so inclined."

This made me laugh because I feel at the core of Guzmán's lament was one of becoming invisible to large parts of her audience by going online-only. I had pretty much an opposite experience, on the opposite corner of the country, nearly a decade ago.

When I covered University of Miami sports for The St. Petersburg Times, it was sometimes a print-only experience, and I often felt invisible to the people I most wanted to read my articles.

I often had to call up the paper and ask them to post articles online, sometimes to no avail. The policy back then was to not put the whole paper online for fear of giving it all away. I personally wouldn't have cared if they ever put my articles in print, so long as I had an online version to quickly show the people I was writing about, as well as family and friends (and other potential employers) many miles away.

Guzmán prefaced her description of the Big Goals of her new year-old P-I project "The Big Blog" with this wonderful little nugget about the timeless responsibility of newspaper companies, whether online or in print: "You should let us know what you need from us, but we must make you want to."

As she described the goals of the Big Blog, my mind started racing with ideas for what such a project could include and should have as part of its DNA.

The first one, and one that I feel is absolutely vital for all newspapers to eventually embrace, is a more frequent use of Google Maps in geo-archiving stories, especially local ones.

I attemped a Google Maps hack for a freelance client that adds content on a map through a simple Movable Type interface. Such an interface, improved by people with much more skills in this area than me, would be addictive for an online audience addicted to and starving for context.

It's easy to think about the fact that not writing for a print newspaper means you lose the abilty to touch your work. But then again, there's so many more ways the online version can touch the audience, there's really no comparison.

My new standard answer to "have a safe flight" is "I'll do what I can" ... now, onward to Foo Camp etc. for 8 days of stuff crammed into 4.

Is it too early to start making new year's resolutions for 2009? I mean we're in the second half of 2008 now, right?

@spampy put me down for $10 for that kid who got shot playing kickball last week. Lemme know how else I can help.

wow, if i wasn't allowed to type " ;-) " a lot of people would be annoyed after taking what I IM the wrong way

WaPo's Security Fix blog reader finds data breach with LimeWire that affected Supreme Court justice Breyer, among others Link

Looks like I'll be checking this Fios map frequently Link

Looking for some good in the world? Try asking someone to help you gather photos of a baseball player to make a six-year-old happy.

Wow, how does Wilbon not even mention Sharapova? I mean, she was the ONLY female player in TV ads during the ladies final Link

Putting finishing touches on the Missing Manuals monthly newsletter. Are you a subscriber? Link

Re-watching the fifth set of the Federer Nadal Wimbledon final ... this time in HD. I'm actually anxious watching it.

I feel your pain @fling ... if pain is an appropriate description Link

HGTV has got nothing on my wife. Came home to an Extreme Home Office Makeover - and I love it, despite the guilt I feel for making that mess

Foo Camp seems much, much closer after getting the 8-person tent I'm borrowing (that fits into the cooler I'm bringing) Thanks Catherine N.!

Maybe the environmentalists and the free m n m ice cream guy at the foggy bottom station could join forces ... And give green mnm ice cream

Saying bye to your folks for an undetermined amount of time is never easy - but getting a seat on the train and a connection helps a little.

My new explanation of Twitter to newbies (from Princess Bride): Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Thanks Inigo Montoya!

@damienstolarz "I thought that fear mongering was the new leadership. Just kidding." Awesome.

Having fun and frustrations trying to transfer files from my Samsung u740 to my Mac running Tiger ... via Bluetooth. Any suggestions welcome

Wow how great would it be if everyone's voices from the 80s held up as well as howard jones? This is a really good show.

That last quote is followed by a Big Rock n Roll ending ... Three times :)

Thats the nice thing about electronic music it doesnt have big rock n roll endings and i like that ... Howard jones at state theatre

Going to see an electric Howard Jones show tonight!! Thanks Dana Eve!! Link

Thriller is now playing over the first fight scene of karate kid ... Brilliant

Take these broken wings is playing in chi cha lounge whilst top gun is on ... They shoulda used that song instead of take my breath away

OMG who do I pull for? Venus or Serena? I guess I just hope for 9-7 in the third.

Agent Zero: I want to have a parade that goes right past the White House. Me and Barack Obama. How cool would that be? Link

AP: Our bad. Leona more evil than originally reported Link

Just sent in yet another request to be notified by Verizon when FiOS will finally come to the classy part of Quincy known as Wollaston.

I am having an awesome conversation about converting docbook xml to mediawiki xml with wikipedia: the missing manual's author John Broughton

If you get TV through the air, on an analog set ... and you're on Twitter ... I'd really like to meet you.

From Bank of America's web site "Online Banking in Spanish is here" ... Pero no es en Español. ¿Por qué?

retweeting @anildash Gotta give props to the 13-year-old in the Mars Blackmon t-shirt. He was clearly raised right.

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find ... Oh crap, why was I looking for that anyway?

on Makezine.com - 3D failwhale Link

good thing this is a ProJo ripoff and not AP, and that it's Boston.com and not a random, lawyerless blogger Link