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.
Lucky Orbitz
I just booked a flight to Vegas for the IP4IT conference, where I’m on a panel with Mr. Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, and the Orbitz waiting graphic popped up a talk bubble that said “Say hi to lady luck for me.” How nice! It’s little things like that which make me use Orbitz more and more, not to mention the prices it gives me are great. I’m not looking forward to booking a Thanksgiving ticket to Houston, though. (BTW, if there are any Vegas WP users drop me an email and we may be able to get together, though I’m only there for the day.)
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.
Wayfaring
Wayfaring is an interesting new site that lets you tag and create your own routes and places on Google maps, for everything from a good date night route to someone marking their favorite beer joints. (In fact I’m going to 21st Amendment later today.)
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is what I’ve been saying a search engine should have done years ago, provide hosted stats to any website that uses it. People love stats so this will get huge uptake, and probably provide Google really invaluable information. A year or so ago I hoped Technorati would do this for blogs, but they probably saw it as outside their core business. Interesting note: this is the first stat tracking javascript I’ve seen that validates as XHTML Strict. Good job, guys. (Most examples leave the language attribute.)
Customize Yahoo Maps
Customize Yahoo Maps. Okay that’s cool, I just wish the new Yahoo maps didn’t slow my comp down so much.
Plazes on WP
Plazes is running WordPress. Hat tip: Tim Lawrenz.
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.
WordPress RSS
Since a couple of people have asked about it, I’ve already written a blog response to Scoble’s WP RSS post here. Part of it was definitely our fault, related to a web server problem and the datacenter move. (LiteSpeed has already released a new version that fixes the bug.)
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…
Ringnalda on WordPress
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.)
Blogebrity Interview
I did an interview with “Blogebrity” the other day covering a pretty wide range of topics from CNET to splogs, and a little bit of Akismet at the end.
Better Desktop
Better Desktop is a usability blog by Novell using WordPress.
Codex Blocked
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.