I wonder what a true voice IM clent would look like. The beauty of I’m that is lost in clients like Skype is it’s impossible to maintain several asyncronous near real-time conversations at once. You can hear this problem is you ever listen to a taxi radio. Perhaps when you focus different windows it could catch up on the discrete voice clips since the last time you were on that window. The whole chat UI could be a button you hold down while speaking, like a HAM radio.
Category Archives: Asides
In Las Vegas
After a near-miss and frantic rush this morning the American West flight to Las Vegas was great, the pilot did a small deteour after leaving SFO that took us around the coast of San Francisco and over Fisherman’s Wharf right as the sun was coming up, it was one of the more beautiful things I’ve seen in my life. San Francisco is just one of those magical places and I’m grateful for every day I spend there. Now I’m in Las Vegas and it’s surprisingly nippy, I might end up getting one of those awful tourist sweatshirts to stave away the chills. Wifi in McCarran airport is free and fast.
Command Line via Email
Silly idea of the day — I want a script that listens on a secret email address and executes commands I send it via email, and then emails me back the results. Email is the universal API.
Go Amazon
“Free Two-Day shipping should be applied automatically to all qualifying items as a benefit of your Amazon Prime subscription. We’ve investigated your order and found that it qualified for free shipping, and you should not have been charged. Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience. We have requested a refund to your credit card to reimburse you for the shipping fees you were erroneously charged. This refund should go through within the next 2 to 3 business days and will appear as a credit on your next credit card billing statement.” Another reason to love Amazon.
Round Top
Writing this from the beautiful town of Round Rock Top, TX. There is nothing quite like the open roads of Texas to clear your mind.
Panel Blogged
Shel Israel has been blogging the conference, and he liveblogged the panel I was on. He’s on the stage right now (with a lawyer and the woman from Delta who was fired for the pictures) so I’ll stop blogging and pay attention.
Shure to Break
I’ve been mostly happy with my Shure E3C headphones, but I only got them because I had some E2Cs which the cable went bad on. Now, right before I get on a plane and need them most, one of the heads just broke off the E3C and I highly doubt I’m going to ever buy a Shure product again, and I’m no longer recommending them to friends. Fool me twice…
Paper Shredder
I just realized that I use a paper shredder not because I’m particularly concerned with the sensitivity of anything I deal with, but rather because it makes going through mail so much more fun and satisfying.
Jeff Nolan on Service
Jeff Nolan goes off about his washing machine. (Also, datacenter moves are rough, we’re doing one this weekend. I also moved photomatt.net a few days ago.)
Keys
I’m reminded of Mark Pilgrim’s post on keys as I take one off my keyring for the last time and simplify life just a little bit. Current count? Four: home, mailbox, car door, car ignition.
Out of Commission
I’m going to be a bit slow or absent on blogging and email for a few days because I’ve injured my left hand and my thumb is in a splint which makes it pretty tough to type. (One-handed mostly.) There is a ton I want to write about, but the doctor said pushing it too hard might aggrevate the injury, so it’ll mostly have to wait. To keep things interesting around here I’ll send a WP.com invite to whoever comes up with the best story about how I did it.
What is Web 2.0?
Dave Hornik asks “What is Web 2.0?” for his podcast to dozens of people you may have heard of. Pretty entertaining, usually.
South
South is a community sponsored journey to the South pole by foot, a feat that has not been attempted since 1912. You can donate and “own a mile” of the trip. Far better use of the money than that silly million-dollar home page thing.
At Web 2.0
This conference is really great. Right now Barry Diller is on stage fielding questions and it’s pretty high quality conversation. At the “launchpad” most of the demos were pretty unpolished, but one that stood out was Zimbra, which I blogged a few weeks ago. The best part, as with most conferences, is running into people outside of the sessions.
Web 2.0 Conference
Blogging may be light as I’ll be at the Web 2.0 conference and the surrounding activities the next few days. Since I couldn’t afford to attend it last year (a couple of grand is high for a college kid in Houston) I’ve been really looking forward to everything this year. I’m part of a workshop on “Open Source Infrastructure” at 9:45 AM, Wednesday. If you’re going to be at the conference I would love to meet you, so please don’t hesitate to introduce yourself!
Web 1.0
I got a pass to Web 2.0 this year (Open Source Infrastructure workshop) but I’m also going to check out Web 1.0, which looks like the most promising conference of the year.
Nano Scratches
I got an iPod nano a week or so ago and I’ve been very happy with it ever since. I even got it engraved with one of my favorite jazz quotes because I thought that this would be a device I would keep for a long time. However it has gotten pretty badly scratched, and I haven’t been too hard on it. Kind of a bummer. Update: Just to clarify, I’m fairly hard on electronics but I haven’t treated this iPod any different then the last one and yet it still looks pretty bad. It scratched when I wiped it with a microfiber cloth.
Small World
A few hours ago I was walking out and I ran into Adam Curry in the lobby of my building. I had forgotten that the “Curry Condo” is upstairs from me! We caught up for a few minutes and exchanged numbers, it sounds like Podshow is doing some pretty interesting things and it’ll be good to have Adam in SF.
Webzine Approaching
Webzine is this weekend and looks like it’ll be a blast. It’s only 22 bucks (!) but I heard they might sell out so it’s worth ordering your ticket online soon. I’ll be on two panels, Making Media with Open Source Tools and “Blog Wares Dance Off,” the latter of which I promise not to dance. (Too much.)
Stop Spam Better
Got enough testers for now. Thanks! I’m looking for a few people who do (or used to) get a lot of comment spam who are willing to turn off all of their other spam prevention methods and try a new plugin I’m testing out. Drop me a note on my contact page with details about your blog and how much spam you get. I’ve been dogfooding it for the past few weeks and it’s been working great.