Tech

It begins… People have been dying to start writing extensions for Chrome since it was first released. I’ve actually become accustomed to living without extensions when using Chrome, because the speed and other interface tweaks fit my workflow very well.

A few weeks ago I was having drinks with my good friend Greg, and the topic of social bookmarking came up. I was discussing some of my ideal features in a service, before we got back to the more serious business of catching up.

In case you missed it, Pownce announced the release of the second revision of its public API today. The new API is much more elaborate than the previous version (which was honestly kind of a joke), and promises to be robust enough that interested parties could use it to rewrite the Pownce desktop app from scratch without losing any functionality.

If you are a reader of tech blogs, you will have no doubt noticed the thorough savaging that the Amazon Kindle has been receiving at the hands of many prominent technology pundits like Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble, as well as podcasts, including the crew at TWiT and Buzz Out Loud.

Just another quick post that Dan and I just recently did a short podcast on Mahalo. Our contention is that Mahalo, while ostensibly a search engine, has far more in common with Wikipedia than anything else.

I’m a little late on this one, but it’s still worth discussing. I also apologize for the length of this post, but I had more to say than I thought!

Well, it’s official. I’ve had my first few spammers attempt to leave comments on the new site. Unfortunately for them, their efforts are to no avail. This is because I use a modified version of the Django comment application that I hacked together myself.

Just a quick post to mention that I’m a guest on today’s episode of the Creepy Sleepy Show Podcast. We discuss the recent HDDVD Digg Storm controversy, Digg’s incompetence at proper PR and the differences between traditional media and social news.

Sigh, there’s so much of this stuff in the news lately it is almost getting boring. Still, the robots and their cyborg masters are coming. It might be a good time to look into Old Glory

I would love to be writing a thorough review of Yahoo! Pipes right now. Unfortunately, when I try to visit the site I only get this error message: Yahoo’s pipes are clogged However, based on Jeremy Zawodny’s description, I have to say this sounds like one of the coolest ideas ever to hit the web.

Well, there has been a whole lot of hubbub on the net regarding Flickr’s announcement of an upcoming policy change, which if you are not a Flickr user you probably haven’t seen as it is only internally displayed.

On recommendation of far too many people to mention, I’m checking out Google Reader again. I remember peeking at it when it was first released, when I was stubbornly intent on sticking with browser/desktop based reader, and I remember being less than impressed.

Adrian Holovaty, one of the creators of Django (which you will read my raves about again and again), has posted a wonderful meditation on how online newspapers need to change. He centers his thoughts on one central point:

I was just perusing some of my Statcounter data when I came across this search string a Canadian used to find my site. It’s far from the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in my search results, but it is notable for its specificity.

Via Digg: This is an interesting story that showed up a few days ago. The very popular sex education podcast “Sex Is Fun” has been removed from the iTunes directory. “Sex Is Fun” is a sex-positive podcast/videocast that focused on educating their audience on a whole host of sexual issues.

So as I mentioned before I’ve been learning Python, and it has been a lot of fun. It says something that I can spend all day at work writing code, only getting up from the computer to scavenge the vending machines, but when the end of the day comes I find myself rushing home so that I can pick up where I left off in my Python lesson plan.

The World Wide Web turned 15 yesterday. Still one more year before it can get a driver’s license. :) Wikipedia Entry on the World Wide Web

Wow, where the hell have I been?! It’s two days shy of a month since I last posted, which is an eternity online. As is probably obvious, I’ve been really busy with work and all the other interesting things that life can throw at you.

Skype has released a new version for Linux with ALSA support built-in, which allows it to run even with other sound applications. Hurray! Get it here! However, it is important to note that the original HOWTO I wrote on recording Skype conversations won’t work with the new version.

If you have not heard about Bruce Sterling’s keynote speech at the O’reilly Emerging Technology conference, you really need to take a listen. It’s was a mind-blowing presentation illustrating the future of Internet technology and how the language we use to talk about it will guides technological development.