My Personal Infocloud
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Overplot is a hilarious mashup between the 'Overheard in New York City' site and Google Maps that lets you place the quotes on a map. Some are stupid, some are dark, some are profane, but they are reflect the weirdness that is reality in a big city.
Warning: this is a tremendous time waster.
technorati tags: mashup, googlemaps, nyc
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I am not sure what to make of the new Diigo service that just launched this week. Seems to be yet-another digg meets google notebook idea. The ability to attach sticky notes to sites that others can view reminds me of a similar (IE-only) function that a startup floated back in the mid-90s that crashed and burned due to legal actions by sites that had unfavorable comments attached to them.
Overall, Im struggling to find a reason to use this tool versus what I already have.
technorati tags: diigo, googlenotebook, webtools
So
I came across this handy posting that explains what RAW files are and why you might want to use them on your digital camera.
I make no claim of being a great photographer (evidence here), but if I just had a dime for every time I hear someone knowingly say 'Yeah, I shoot everything in RAW and post-process it in Photoshop' but their in camera composition is absolute crap. Please, learn some basic camera and composition skills before you go blowing wind about your 'post-processing workflow'. And having a $2000USD camera that you shoot everything in auto-mode isn't terribly impressive. Oh, don't get me started...
technorati tags: photography, raw, jpeg
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Considering my previous rants posts regarding the Newton, this article on cnet UK is all the more vindicating. The gist of the article is that a new 'innovative' MS-based Samsung portable computer can't compare to the capabilities of a ten year old Newton. In fact, the article goes on to point out numerous times how the Samsung appears to be a very close copy of the Newton on several features.
I can only imagine the hotness that was the Newton tuned up with a high res color screen, built in Wi-Fi, and all the other modern conveniences in my hand today.
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As I stated in a previous post, I checked out Zooomr this past week and now I have returned to expand on my previous brief post. Let me start with one word of advice: just make sure you go to Zooomr with three o's and not the dirt-bag typo-squater site at the two 'o' URL.
One of the strongest features is the ability to easily geotag photos — it is well integrated with Google Maps and doesn't rely on entering in fiddly GPS coordinates and using third party tools like Flickr does. This feature is a lot of fun to use, much like wikimapia, except you get to add your own photos (not just text).
Great as it is, the geotagging capability still needs a few tweaks because there were a few times that I was tinkering with it that it 'forgot' what photos I was geotagging when I got to the end of the process. One huge enhancement for the geotagging capability would be to add a feature that would let you save locations as 'favorites' so that you don't have to go re-find them in the map display constantly. This would be a real time saver for locations that aren't at a particular address like campsites, hike photos, specific locations inside of parks/national forests.
Another feature that I like is the ability to access various functions right from the thumbnail of an image. When you hover over a thumbnail, it is overlaid with tiny icons that provide the ability to show the geotag info (if available), the ability to lightbox the image (see a larger view) and inspect the details (among other functions). To me this is a well thought out means of reducing page refreshes while providing valuable features in a concise manner.
As you would expect, Zooomr supports the usual tagging functions; though the only opportunity you have to apply tags to more than one image is at upload. In fact, probably one of the weakest areas for Zooomr is the lack of batch editing features and the (current) dearth of bulk uploading tools. Granted, Zooomr 2.0 has only been 'live' for less than a week — I am sure the upload tools will be forthcoming. I would especially like to see one comparable to the excellent flickrExport plugin for iPhoto. I poked around a bit and found this info for developers regarding the API for Zooomr. They have taken the open and intelligent approach of adopting the Flickr API to make it easier for developers to support both sites — well done.
SmartSets allow you to make a grouping of all photos with a certain set of attributes (tag, location, etc) making it sort of like a live RSS feed for a given photo attribute. What you don't seem to be able to do is to create sets of just your own photos, say to group together photos from a vacation or social event.
Oh and of course, Zooomr has all of the feed goodness that you would expect including the ability to grab a feed for an individual, smart sets, specific tags and so on.
The site could certainly use some better explanation around the terms and functions provided. These could be simple links or tooltips right where the term is used. For example, what do they mean by trackback?, zoomertations?, smartsets? What do the color circles on the tagmap represent? Soothing out these minor usability issue will definitely make it easier to on board new users to Zooomr.
As of this writing, they are still providing free 'pro' accounts to those who host at least one photo and link to it on their blog. That's how I got my pro account — thanks guys! The free pro account has certainly made it easier to explore the functionality of the site. I've got to say that I have been a dedicated Flickr user for more than a year now and Zooomr 2 has been the first viable alternative that I have found.
technorati tags: zooomr, zoomr, photography, webtools, flickr
So
I just tried out zooomr and very much like what I have seen so far. More later (I have to run, its my daughter's birthday).
Here is one of the test files that I uploaded:
technorati tags: zooomr, photography
So
The posting Does the US suck at design? focuses quite a bit on currency design, but brings up some other points that remind me of a conversation my wife and I had while we were in Spain in June. As we travelled around, we were constantly struck with how much attention to design and detail was taken. From the presentation and packaging of your morning pastry, the abundant (modern) sculpture to the style of the people you pass on the street it was a refreshing change from what you would encounter in the US.
My first trip abroad was our belated honeymoon trip to New Zealand. It was then that I started to take note of the differences in attitudes toward design and presentation. One of the first things that I noticed was that food that you would get in a pub in NZed was often much better that what you would get at a restaurant in the US — always fresh, well made and very, very tasty. The other thing I began to notice was the attention that was given to public spaces and buildings. As we have traveled the world from Dunedin to Bergen, I am often struck by how train stations have fabulous facades and thoughtful layouts within. Squares are built to sit and enjoy and are frequently enhanced with sculpture and stylized lamp posts. Even in the narrowest alleyway, there are colorful flower boxes to brighten the space — people take it in their own interest to add these touches.
One comment in the original posting that I don't necessarily agree with is that 'beautiful things work better'. I don't think that it follows that they work better, but they may be more fun to use and, as such, come into your hand more frequently that the 'ordinary' would. I also recognize that this notion can go too far — just look at nouvelle cuisine and any of the bling crapola like diamond encrusted ipod cases. When it becomes more about form than function, a thing can become confusing/unsatisfying to use.
So what accounts for the difference in the US? Part of me wants to say it is the pre-packaged, short attention span society that permeates the US. It seems that everyone wants to be an individual but they take their cues from television so they just wind up largely being one undifferentiated mass. Sadly, this seems to be particularly true of many of the 'creative types' that seem unable to create a style of their own and are happy to simply endlessly rehash goth, punk and hippie themes. Equally sad is that this lack of creativity is not just in the younger generation; it is a trend among adults to rehash youth culture with staggeringly bad results. It is sort of like the old joke about Elvis impersonators — none of them really look like Elvis, but they all look like each other.
It is somewhat amusing to spot the trends in other countries and try to forecast when they will show up in the US and from there, when they will make their way into the Midwest. For most things, it seems to take about 3-5 years. For the most part, it is quite easy to spot an American abroad due to the differences in style and behavior.
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I had a look at a few new dashboard widgets this weekend and the experience led me to the question of 'what makes a good widget?'
I'll start with answering the flip side of that question, what makes a bad widget.
Bad widgets are really sort of banner ads in disguise; their purpose is not to provide you any useful information. Rather they are really just tar-pits that reward any click on them with a trip to either some flash-advert-incrusted web site (to drive their hit count) or to some site offering you a 'premium service' for a fee. The most egregious do both.
Good widgets on the other hand are well thought out single (mostly) taskers that provide you with a good deal of information in a concise manner. I would put the weather, local traffic, package tracker, and flight tracker widgets (among others) in this category. With each of these, they either tell you what you want to know at a quick glance, or after a simple interaction (say, typing in a tracking number for a package).
It seems to me that the same 'chunks of functionality' that would make good widgets would also make good porlets (and vice versa). In both cases the developer needs to be focused on providing some real utility in a concise display and not simply creating another loathsome form of banner ad.
I should note that good widgets aren't confined to Apple's Dashboard and Java Portlets. The same concept could be implemented in Yahoo Widgets, Netvibes or even Wordpress widgets (which I use extensively on this site). Alas, each of these has a different means of implementing so it is a bit of work to make your 'chunk of functionality' available on more than one.
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If you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro and a need to do a bit of seismography, you are in luck. SeisMac is an application that lets you use the Sudden Motion Sensor in the laptop to display real time graphs of motion.
technorati tags: mac, osx, seismograph, freeware, suddenmotion
So
Timeline is a very slick open source, Ajax-based widget for representing timeline information in an interactive pane (much like Google Maps). More information about data points on the timeline can be viewed by clicking the data point. I like that the additional data can contain images and links and not just straight text.
Be sure to check out the additional examples that are linked in as well.
technorati tags: timeline, dhtml, ajax, simile, visualization