February 2015 archive

Feb 17

Video: VUC 528 Provides An Update On Matrix.org And Wire

Vuc logoLast Friday's VUC conference call / podcast / hangout provided some interesting updates about the ongoing work at Matrix.org to build services for scalable, distributed and federated collaboration systems as well as some discussion of Wire, the app I've written about here. Guests included Matthew Hodgson and Amandine Le Pape from Matrix.org, as well as the usual cast of characters and a couple of live demonstrations, too.

You can view the episode web page and listen to the show here:

I joined the show about mid-way through and naturally wound up talking about IPv6, the Internet of Things (IoT), ICANN, DNS and other topics.

FYI, some good info about Matrix.org can be found in their FAQ. Back in November 2014, there was also another VUC episode focused around Matrix.org.

It was an enjoyable show and I'd encourage you to give it a listen.

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Feb 17

How To Turn Off Sounds In The Facebook iPhone / iPad App

Do you want to turn off / disable the sounds that Facebook just added to the latest version of their iOS app for iPhone and iPad? If you are like me and find these kind of sounds associated with actions (such as "keyboard clicks") annoying, here's what you need to do.

1. Go Into The Settings Inside The App - First you need to tap on "More" in the lower right corner of the app and then tap on "Settings":

Facebook ios settings

2. Go Into "Sounds" - Next tap on "Sounds":

Facebook ios sounds setting

3. Turn Off "In-App Sound" - Finally, just tap the slider to turn off the sounds.

Facebook in app sound

Now, maybe you like these kind of sounds... but I personally don't. I'm the guy who turns off "keyboard clicks" because I do NOT want to hear a sound whenever I tap a key.

I don't want aural feedback.

Some of you may... and that's fine. I don't.

Someone at Facebook seemed to think that we all wanted this and so they added it in to one of the recent releases and... ta da... as soon as we updated the Facebook app on our iPhone or iPad we started getting clicks and swishes and other sounds.

This points to one of the larger issues with our new world of mobile "apps":

We are at the mercy of whatever the app developer wants to do.

If this were a browser-based "app" (a set of web pages), we could typically configure the browser to not play any sounds - and then all web pages would be subject to the settings in the web browser.

But we've left that land where the web browser serves as our window to content. Instead we have custom-designed apps where we have to figure out where the settings are in each of the different apps.

For instance, when the sounds first started in the Facebook app, I went into the generic "Settings" app in iOS to try to find out how to turn them off. I looked under:

  • Facebook
  • Sounds
  • Notifications

and couldn't any settings in any of those places to turn it off. Only then did I tap on the "More" inside the Facebook app to see if there were any settings there.

Now... the good news is that at least Facebook gave us a control to turn the sounds off! They didn't have to and could have just made that a mandated part of the app.

But that's back to the point... for the convenience and simplicity of using a mobile app, we've surrendered control to the whims of the application developers.

I'm personally not really thrilled about that evolution of the mobile Internet, but it's hard to see how we walk back to a different path...

An audio commentary on this topic is also available:

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Feb 17

TDYR 225 – How To Disable Sounds In The Facebook iOS App

Do you want to turn off the sounds that Facebook recently added into their iPhone/iPad/iOS app? Here's how you do it... as well as some commentary about how the user experience is changing as we increasingly use mobile apps. Read more: http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2015/02/how-to-turn-off-sounds-in-the-facebook-iphone-ipad-app.html

Feb 17

Anyone Else Having TweetDeck Not Show Search Results?

Anyone having trouble with TweetDeck not showing results for some columns? Today 5 of my 12 columns are failing to load with this error:

No recent Tweets.
New Tweets will appear here.

You can see part of what I'm seeing here:

TweetDeck NorecentTweets

They are all columns that are configured to show search results for certain terms. They've been working wonderfully until last night when I opened up TweetDeck on a home computer (an iMac) after being away for a week. I've tried:

  • Closing and restarting the application (multiple times).
  • Changing the search query to trigger a reload of the column.

Nothing works... and I know there are new tweets to show for some terms, in part because I can see them in other working columns... and in part because I have sent out tweets using the search terms.

TweetDeck's Twitter account shows some issues with logging in, but that works fine for me. Tweetdeck is working fine for sending tweets, sending direct messages and for some of my searches... but just not for others.

I've tweeted TweetDeck asking about this, but not heard anything yet, so I'm just curious if others are experiencing anything like this.

Anyone?

P.S. And yes, I know there are now many other tools... but I've been a TweetDeck user since its very early days and have my searches and systems that, until today, have worked wonderfully for me.

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Feb 16

FIR #795 – 2/16/15 – For Immediate Release

Quick News: Vint Cert warns of lost digital data, will UK introduce eBay-stile online courts?, Snapchat Discover an early success, France demands future leaders speak English; Ragan promo, News That Fits: would you pay to comment?, Dan York's Tech Report, employee ambassador program case study, Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop, listener comments, Forbes puts native ad on its cover, the last week on the FIR Podcast Network, Igloo Software promo, five hashtag best practices; music from Hot Buttered Rum; and more.

Feb 16

FIR #795 – 2/16/15 – For Immediate Release

Quick News: Vint Cert warns of lost digital data, will UK introduce eBay-stile online courts?, Snapchat Discover an early success, France demands future leaders speak English; Ragan promo, News That Fits: would you pay to comment?, Dan York's Tech Report, employee ambassador program case study, Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop, listener comments, Forbes puts native ad on its cover, the last week on the FIR Podcast Network, Igloo Software promo, five hashtag best practices; music from Hot Buttered Rum; and more.

Feb 12

Is It Finally Time To Dump Feedburner? All Subscriptions Go To Zero…

Is it finally time to suck it up and dump Google's Feedburner for RSS feeds?

The writing has been on the wall for quite a long time that Google doesn't really care about Feedburner. There haven't been any substantive updates to the service in years and in fact they've removed services and integrations.

Tonight Dave Delaney posted an update to Facebook that let us know that Feedburner's stats were now showing 0 subscribers for all his feeds. I logged in and sure enough...

My Feeds

I can't find any mention of an outage or issue on Google's pages... and so we have no clue whether this is a temporary transient outage - or whether this is a sign of a further decline in Feedburner's service.

I'm one who has continued using Feedburner for most of my sites, in part just out of sheer inertia (i.e. having many other things I want to do that take higher priority to fixing things that aren't broken) but also because I've liked the service provided by Feedburner, particularly around statistics. I've tried other services (although not in the last year) and hadn't really found anything that gave as good a view into who is probably reading your feed.

Obviously I can just start promoting the raw RSS feeds that are the ones I added to Feedburner... but they don't give a sense of how many subscribers they may be.

But if the statistics are no longer working, then perhaps there is no longer a reason to stay at Feedburner... and so maybe I do have to actually make the time to make the move.

What do you all think? If you used to use Feedburner and don't, what are you using as a replacement?

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Feb 11

TDYR 224 – Leaving Singapore and ICANN 52

TDYR 224 - Leaving Singapore and ICANN 52 by Dan York

Feb 11

ISOC at ICANN52, Thursday: Public Forums and IANA Transition and Accountability

On this final day of ICANN 52 in Singapore, the main events will be the Public Forum and the Public Meeting of the ICANN Board. Both of these are events where any member of the ICANN community can ask questions of the ICANN Board, staff and other leaders. They operate under very strict timelines (2 minutes per speaker) and usually provide an interesting view into the concerns and interests of the wider ICANN community. You can follow along remotely at:

Dan York

Feb 10

Streaming Live Now – DNSSEC Workshop At ICANN52

Right now the DNSSEC Workshp is streaming live out of ICANN 52 in Singapore.  You can watch and listen live at:

http://singapore52.icann.org/en/schedule/wed-dnssec

You can also download the slides that will be presented today.  As you look at the agenda, please note that all times are Singapore Time which is UTC+8. (So, for instance, the 8:30 am SGT start time of the DNSSEC Workshop on Wednesday, 11 Feb, will be 1:30am Wednesday in Central European Time and 7:30pm Tuesday evening in US Eastern time.)   Here is a view from the room today:

ICANN 52 DNSSEC Workshop

We’re looking forward to a great day of discussions!