Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Oct 26
Is Skype Soon To Release New APIs? Skype Renames Public API And Extends "Plugged into Skype" Partner Program
In Aug 2004, we made the Skype Desktop API available to encourage third-party innovation and integration with Skype. The Skype Desktop API allows Partners to access Skype functionality through the Skype desktop client via a text-based command protocol. The intent is not to duplicate Skype functionality but to complement the Skype desktop client with additional features and/or capabilities (e.g., call recording).
This is the API that pretty much all developers have had to use until recently where you application interacts directly with a Skype client. This also means that you have to have a Skype client running to use the API, which has been an additional annoyance for many developers. Developers have long desired an ability to connect directly into the Skype cloud without needing to run a client. Many of us had hoped that "SkypeKit" would be that client-less connection... but it, too, requires a client.
UPDATE: Multiple friends pointed out to me that SkypeKit is a bit more nuanced than this. SkypeKit does NOT require a "full" Skype client, i.e. a full working version of the Skype program. It does, however, require a "runtime" component to be running on a local system. It is that runtime (for Linux, MacOS X, Windows) that then makes the connection out to the Skype cloud. While this may not be a "client", per se, it does still require Skype code running alongside your application. Many of us would like to see "web APIs" from Skype that let you connect in to Skype's cloud without any kind of additional required Skype software. It is those kind of APIs to which I am referring in the paragraph below.
We know, though, from conversations at conferences and events that Skype has been working on developing new APIs... and perhaps this renaming is a precursor to the release of those new APIs. We can only hope... as they have been a l..o..n..g.. time in coming.
The other bit of news was that Skype is now promoting the use of the "plugged into Skype" logo for products using the newly-renamed Desktop API. Previously this program was promoted for SkypeKit products when SkypeKit emerged from beta back in June 2011 . Again from the post:
Plugged into Skype lets Skype users know that the application is built by a partner to work on Skype but was not built by Skype.
There is naturally a page in Skype's developer site (login required) all about how you can use the logo, original image files, etc., etc.
All of this is good to see as Skype, like everyone, is trying to woo developers to build apps on their platform (and add them to Skype's new "App Directory"). Making their program clearer can only help. (And hey, this is only their, what? ... 6th attempt at a developer program? Eventually they may figure it out.)
Meanwhile... is this renaming setting the stage for the release of some new client-less APIs? Let's hope so...
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Oct 26
Running The 2011 Harpoon Brewery Octoberfest 5K…
Even with the promise of beer and bratwurst at the end, the Harpoon Brewery Octoberfest Race on October 9, 2011, was still a very tough race.
Why? One simple reason....
The first mile was pretty much entirely UPHILL!
Not "up and down hills".... not "uphill with breaks now and then"... no, it was just solidly a hill that went on and on at a pretty good angle the whole way. This picture doesn't really show it, but that's part of the big hill:
The hill was really the worst part. You ran up the hill for about a mile, then went off into a development where you went down and then back up ... and then you followed the same road back.
So the good news was that you went back down that same hill you climbed! The other good news is that at least you started climbing the hill!
Two other points you might gather from that photo:
- There were a LOT of runners! A record-breaking 1,124 runners, in fact! The biggest race I've yet run in, personally.
- It was in the middle of the day with the sun beating down on us. I usually run in the early morning, and even most of the races I've run have started at no later than 9am, so this was a switch. Thankfully it was Vermont in October so it didn't get too hot.
As I mentioned in my previous note, registration for the race did, in fact, get you two beers and a bratwurst... right on your race bib!
The race results are now posted on CoolRunning.com and a "find" on my name would show you that I finished #574 out of 1124. I was 66th out of the 95 runners among men ages 40-49 with a net time of 33:18 and a pace of 9:15/mile.
Not my fastest 5K ever, but given the course I'll take it!
Naturally I had to indulge in the bratwurst and at least one of the two free beers:
As you can tell, I did NOT go the extra bit to run in any kind of Germanic costume... but there were certainly lots of others running in costume, including the group of men that were in the image I used in my last post:
I was actually amazed by some of the costumes... which can't have been much fun to run in!
And yes, as you might expect for an Octoberfest gathering (or at least an American version of one) there was indeed the requisite "oompah" band:
All in all it was a great race on a great day for a great cause ... and followed up by great food and great beer!
Now I'm looking forward to next year - at least then I'll know the course!
P.S. For my runner friends, here was the course as measured/shown by the Nike+ app on my iPhone... the race was actually a bit over a 5K... really more like 3.5 miles:
Oct 25
All Mobile Apps Developers (iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry, etc.) Need To Read Troy Hunt’s Post
As I mentioned on my Disruptive Telephony blog today, this post by Troy Hunt really should be mandatory reading for anyone developing applications for mobile platforms:
Yes, his post is about Apple’s iOS, but I’m unfortunately rather confident that the results would be similar if someone were to do a similar analysis with a proxy server on apps on Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7, WebOS and any other mobile platform.
These are application design problems.
As programmers, we all take “short cuts” from time to time… I’m as guilty of that as anyone… but sometimes those shortcuts have grave consequences.
Mobile developers need to read Troy’s piece… and then look at their own apps and see how they can change. Actions like:
- Securing the transport of login credentials! (DUH!!!)
- Not stuffing giant images down onto mobile devices when those images are going to be restyled in HTML to be tiny.
- Being wary about what info is gathered by apps – and also disclosing that to customers (and perhaps offering a way to opt out).
The list can go on… Troy’s article has other ideas in it, too… but the point is that in the rush to get a mobile app out there, some of these security and privacy issues (and bandwidth costs!) really do need some attention!
Oct 25
The Creepy – And Insecure – Side of iOS and Android Apps
Want to see the dark side of mobile apps? Just read this great bit of research from Troy Hunt:
Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps
As people have noted in the comments, "iOS" (Apple's operating system for iPhones and iPads) is purely the platform Troy Hunt did his research on... but he's really talking about issues with mobile applications.
I'm my unfortunately sure that these type of issues will also be there on apps on Android and probably on other mobile operating systems from Microsoft, RIM, WebOS, etc.
These are application design issues.
The article starts off with the incredibly inefficient case of stuffing large images from "regular" websites down the mobile pipe to the phone... and then simply "resizing" them with "width" and "height" attributes. This is just laziness"efficiency" on the app developers part in that they are simply "repurposing their existing content" for a mobile audience, i.e. it's too much work/effort for them to create and track a separate smaller image for a mobile environment so they will just send you the larger one and eat up your data plan bandwidth.
But Troy Hunt goes on to talk about far worse issues... he calls out the analytics sent back to Flurry.com in particular (and there are other similar players out there) that report what the user is doing. I agree with Troy Hunt's comment that where this gets "creepy" for me is not so much reporting data back for one application, but rather that all this data is being aggregated across applications inside of Flurry's databases.
And then the truly scary issue of how little security some applications use to protect login credentials (i.e. NONE!) or to protect confidentiality of the information people are seeing.
As Troy Hunt points out with regard to the Facebook app for iOS:
Unfortunately, the very security that is offered to browser-based Facebook users is not accessible on the iPhone client. You know, the device which is most likely to be carried around to wireless hotspots where insecure communications are most vulnerable.
Mobile devices are being brought to the worst possible WiFi environments... and per this article seem to have some awfully insecure apps running on them.
Every mobile developer needs to read this article - and start looking at how to secure their apps!
P.S. Thanks, Troy Hunt, for writing this piece!
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Oct 25
Sorry, Klout, But I Don’t Care At All About Your "Game"!
In one image, this is perhaps what annoys me most about Klout's Klout Score metric:
Yes, even more than the fact that Beyonce can have a Klout Score of 50 without ever having tweeted (or even knowing if that Twitter account is, in fact, actually Beyonce's). Even more than that, this bothers me:
Your Klout Score fell -1 points in the past day. Share more content and engage with your network to increase your score!
Not that my score fell. As you might have guessed, I really don't care about what my score is.
What bothers me is the implication by the second sentence that you should care about your score and that you should take actions to increase your score.
Now... DUH!... I do understand why Klout does this. They of course want you to care about your score so that you can nurture it and further buy into all their programs so that they can someday attain their motto of being "the standard of influence".
I get that.
But it doesn't mean I have to like the attempts at psychological manipulation.
What annoys me is that this attitude feeds right into those people who want to "game the system"... to figure out ways to influence the influence measurement so that they can rise higher.
It's a game to some people.
And that's fine.
Farmville is a game, too... and some people enjoy playing that.
The issue is that those of us out here in the PR/marketing space would like influence measurement metrics that we could use ... and that we can grow to trust as having some value. (In the sense of being part of the equation of assessing someone's influence online.)
But it's annoying when the company behind the metric tries to get people to play that game... to try to get them to take actions to increase their score. If history has shown us anything, it is that some people out there will ALWAYS try to game the system... it's just part of human nature.
But does the company behind the metric need to encourage that behavior?
Why not just truly rate people based on the content they produce and the interaction they have with other people online?
This is what annoys me most about Klout. Influence measurement shouldn't be treated as a game.
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Oct 24
5 Years of Using Twitter – Some Thoughts on That Anniversary…
It was five years ago today that I started using Twitter as what would come to be known as "@danyork". October 24, 2006. I remember the date purely because "10/24" in the US way of writing dates is an über-geeky number (1 Kilobyte or 210). Yes, I remember things like this.
My recollection is that Chris Brogan sent out invites to a whole bunch of us bright-shiny-object-chasers and we all joined this new service called Twitter. This was before Chris became the rock star that he is today[1] and in a much simpler time when all of us who were exploring this new world of "social media" were reading each other's blogs, listening to each other's podcasts, commenting on each other's content and generally interacting in a community of people seeking to understand where we could take all these technologies and tools. Anyway, Chris invited a bunch of us... my Mac Twitter client tells me Chris was Twitter user #10,202, I was #10,312, Doug Haslam was #10,396 and Jim Long (newmediajim) was #10,496. (Just some of the names I remember from that time.) It was a playground where all of us were trying to figure it all out.
The explosion was to come shortly thereafter.
After all these years, though, I still stand by what I wrote in some posts way back in 2007 and 2008:
- The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007... (aka Why and How I use Twitter)
- Revisiting "the 10 ways I learned to use Twitter"... and adding "Attention Lens" and "Presence"
- Business Week's "CEO's Guide to Microblogging" - and my part of the Debate Room piece (and my contribution)
A friend asked me on Twitter today: "Is Twitter really worth it, or a distraction?"
I still say that I find value in Twitter pretty much every day.
It has become part and parcel of my daily routine and how I interact with people on the Internet. It has become how I distribute info about content I write. It's how I learn of new things to pay attention to.
I still follow my general policy I laid out back in 2008 about whether or not I follow someone... and I'm still finding new and interesting people that I follow pretty regularly.
I do not though read the main feed very diligently... I may dip in from time to time... but most of my focused reading comes from various searches that I run on keywords of interest. I also use FlipBoard now and then on my iPad to browse when I just want to see what's going on.
It's been fascinating as the boundaries of our lives continue to blur to see who we use Twitter and all of these tools.
We're all collectively engaged in a grand experiment in openness. And brevity. What becomes of it none of us know.
All I can say is that I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Twitter and all of these services go over the next five years!
P.S. And yes, Twitter remains my daily practice with "brevity". Certainly a challenge for a writer like me ;-)
[1] And I mean this in a good way. Chris is a great guy and I'm glad we got to become friends over the years. His path has taken him to some pretty great heights and it's been great to see!
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Oct 24
150 Years Ago Today, the USA Got Wired!
A great article in the San Francisco Examiner today about the completion, 150 years ago today, of the transcontinental telegraph here in the United States:
150 years ago, a primitive Internet united the USA
I think "a primitive Internet" might be a bit of a stretch... but then again I'm one of those network people who think of the "Internet" as a "network of networks"... and this first interconnection was really just creating that initial network!
Nuances aside, it's an enjoyable article to read...
I found this an interesting commentary on the disruption of the communication channels that came before:
Indeed, the Pony Express, which boasted it could deliver a letter from Sacramento to St. Joseph, Mo., in the unheard of time of 10 days when it began operations on April 3, 1860, shut down 19 months later — on the same day the transcontinental telegraph went live.
Though dramatic, that was a short-term effect. "But the longer-term effect was we connected the nation in real time. ...," says Fischer. "For the first time, businesses could do business nationally. The government could communicate nationally in almost real time."
Well worth a read to understand the challenges that went into the first physical infrastructure for what would become "telecommunications".
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Oct 24
The Incredibly Tedious Monotony of Chemotherapy
Today is my wife's second (of four) chemotherapy appointments. She is sitting right now at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at the Cheshire Medical Center here in Keene, NH, with an IV of toxic drugs flowing in to her.
Many friends have contacted us/her wishing her all the best today... hoping it all goes well... relaying that they are thinking/hoping/praying all the best for her.
All of which is VERY much appreciated.
The truth, though, is that today is really not bad.
Today is really just incredibly... well... monotonous.
Boring. Tedious. Whatever word you want to pick.
This has been a fascinating revelation to me who knew nothing about chemotherapy before this all began.
Here is the snapshot of our day...
We arrived at the hospital at 9:30am. A little before 10am we were brought back into the chemo treatment area were she sat down in a comfortable recliner-type chair. A nurse drew some blood samples that were sent off to the lab and then proceeded to get some vital signs and other normal tests... and then we waited for the lab work to come back.
Once the lab results came back fine, they set up the IV with some anti-nausea medicine, some saline, etc, etc, and give that to my wife for a while. There was some other medication my wife had to take an hour before the actual chemotherapy chemicals began, so she had to take that and wait.
Sometime after noon, they administered the first of the two chemicals that make up my wife's "cocktail". It ran for over an hour dripping into her bloodstream through the IV line.
After that was all finished, they hooked up the second of the two chemicals... and that will run for 45 minutes. After that she may be done... I don't quite honestly remember if they did something else. She'll probably be ready to go home somewhere around 2:30 or 3pm.
But this is what "a day of chemotherapy" is like.
Sitting. Waiting. Sitting. Waiting. Sitting. Waiting.
For hours.
They have individual TVs there, of course. And she and I talk now and then. The anti-nausea medication makes her kind of tired, and so many of the patients, her included, take a nap for a bit... or just don't feel overly talkative. Friends have stopped by for a visit, which is a nice distraction. You can get (or bring in) food and drinks. A volunteer came by offering Reiki massage. They have free WiFi so you can use the Internet with your computer (which is what usually I do... sitting there doing work while my wife rests).
But overall it's just a long tedious day of sitting and waiting.
If her experience this time is like the last time - and like what we understand from others in the process - this afternoon/evening she may be a bit tired from the drugs but overall okay. Tomorrow she will probably be fine. Wednesday morning she may be fine.
And then sometime on Wednesday the hell will start.
The chemicals will be doing their deed of killing cells and the body will be reacting. And then will come the pain, the sickness, the fatigue...
... which will pretty much continue straight through the weekend and on into next week...
We're hopeful with some new medication that this time around it won't be quite so severe, but time will tell.
Today, though, is all about the monotony of the injection of the drugs.
Sitting. Waiting.
Sitting. Waiting.
Image credit: drhenkenstein on Flickr
Oct 24
Pondering All The Strange (Chinese?) Accounts Joining My Email Newsletter List…
I have been amazed - and I can't for the life of me understand WHY this is going on.
For my VERY infrequently issued email newsletter, A View From The Crow's Nest, I've seen probably 50 subscriptions over the last month from email accounts with very bizarre names - both names of email address and also the first and last names of the users. They pretty much all have come from accounts at:
- hotmail.com
- tom.com
- 163.com
- sohu.com
- yeah.net
Now, in looking at those sites... outside of hotmail.com, they are all Chinese-language sites.
Did my (English-only!) blogs get on some list for people to read in China?
... and some % of those people decided to actually subscribe to my (again, English-only) email newsletter?
I find this hard to believe, particularly when Google Analytics shows NO increased visitation to any of my sites from China or Chinese-language browsers.
Is something else going on here? The IT security part of my brain was spiked into high paranoia by the patterns in the last names that were entered into the subscription form. The vast majority of these "last names" were either:
- andeson
- aifseng
- billaa
- John
And the "first names" make no sense as an English name. Here's a screenshot showing some recent subscriptions (with, yes, some info deliberately hidden):
This pattern continues for several more pages.
Now, I have no real knowledge of the Chinese language. Is this perhaps a translation of Chinese characters into Roman letters by the iContact email service I use? i.e. are these perhaps legitimate subscription requests where the info is getting lost in translation?
My first thought before I realized all the sites (sans hotmail.com) were Chinese was that this was spammers subscribing to my newsletter from free email services.
But why?
I couldn't (and still can't) figure that out. What good would it do for a spammer (or other attacker) to subscribe to my email newsletter list?
Or are the subscription records bogus anyway? Are they the byproduct of attackers trying to probe the security of the signup forms? To see if they could exploit a SQL injection attack or something like that?
Or is something more widespread going on? A Google search on "aifseng", for instance, shows that "word" paired with other nonsensical (in English) "words" on a host of other sites.
Did I miss a memo about some security issue going on? Or is this the case where something is getting lost in translation?
Any ideas or info out there?
Image credit: maddercarmine on Flickr
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Oct 21
Roger Ebert’s Scary Examples of Writing From Current Journalism Students
Um, this is SCARY... (the writing, not the politicians, although admittedly I find some of their ideas scary, too...)
Can we please have some grammar? ... and maybe some coherent sentences? Please?
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