Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Oct 12
Survey: Only 40% of Canadians Password-Protect Their Cell Phones
Only 40% of Canadian cell phone users password-protect their phones or use other privacy options, a survey by Canada's privacy commissioner found. The results of the 2000-person survey were released in August and written up in a Globe And Mail piece entitled "How private is that text message?".
When I saw the headline, I honestly thought it was going to be something about the security of SMS messages... but in fact it was about the security of the cell phones themselves. If the phones aren't secured then someone can go in and look at your text messages. Ergo... the link-bait title of the article. (And yes, it got me to look.)
Still, it had some interesting data points such as the fact that the users from age 18 to 34 were the ones most likely to use privacy tools, which is good to see, since they are probably the ones pumping the most information out online.
Nice to see, too, that 82 percent did not think police should have access to your online usage info without a warrant.
I was surprised, in all honestly, about the 40% number... I actually might have thought of it being lower as I know MANY people who don't password-protect their phones mostly because of the "inconvenience" of having to enter the password to get into the phone.
And in truth the % who password-protect their phones may be lower... the article says that "only four in 10 people password-protect their phones or adjust privacy settings on personal-information sharing via downloaded applications". The number of people who adjust privacy settings - but don't password-protect their phone - may be driving that % up.
I wonder what a survey like this might find in the United States?
Do you password-protect your phone? (I do)
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Oct 11
Facebook’s iPad App Now Available With Gestures, Cool Places Display and More
Today, the long-awaited and long-delayed official "Facebook for iPad" application became available in the Apple AppStore. Having been an early iPad user and an avid Facebook user, this is one app I've been wanting for a long time.
NOTE: I already had the iPhone app installed on my iPad and after "upgrading", the app repeatedly crashed and wouldn't open. Following advice online, I deleted the Facebook app from my iPad and then installed it again from the AppStore. It then worked perfectly fine. It would seem Facebook missed something in the upgrade process.
Once launched, the Facebook app gives you a nice view of your NewsFeed and your list of friends available online for a chat:
Touching the "menu" button in the upper left corner - or simply swiping your hand to the right - displays a left-side navigation menu with easy access to different parts of Facebook:
I found the app very easy to use and very "iPad-like" in that it used many of the common gestures and motions of many other iPad apps. (Such as, for instance, pulling down the NewsFeed to refresh it.)
One piece that was particularly cool was the visual representation of what used to be called "Places". If you click on "Nearby" in the left menu you got a map showing you your location and who has checked-in nearby. You can of course pinch and expand to zoom in and out of the map. In this image below I zoomed out to see all of the US and I could see who has checked in around the country:
Of course, this only works if people actually do check-in and, as you can see from this map, only a small number of my friends in the US actually do use this feature of Facebook. Still, it's very cool to see how it looks in the iPad app.
I've only started using the app today, but so far I've been quite impressed. Very nice use of the iPad display space, user interface, gestures and more.
If you have an iPad and are a Facebook user, you can get the app through the AppStore (note my comment at the beginning about "upgrading"). If you have already tried it out, what do you think?
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Oct 10
Voxeo Customer Summit 2011, "Unlocked and Loaded", Launches Tonight!
Tonight I'll be thinking of all my friends and former colleagues at Voxeo as they launch the Voxeo Customer Summit 2011 at the JW Marriott Grande Lakes hotel in Orlando. With the great theme of "Unlocked and Loaded", they have an incredibly packed agenda that will make it truly an outstanding event. Lots of great technical talks mixed in with business talks... some voice biometrics... product announcements... plus a great party and other activities!
Plus the ever geeky and wacky Chris Pirillo as show emcee and Joseph Jaffe providing the keynote talk... it should be a great time for all!
While I'm no longer a Voxeon, I'll be thinking of the crew there and wishing them all the best. It's a big event and will really help the people who attend to learn so much more about building communication applications using Voxeo's platforms and services. Cool stuff!
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Oct 10
Humorous Sign Campaign: Don’t Facebook While Walking
Courtesy of a post by Jeff Pulver on Facebook, hopefully while he wasn't walking, I learned of this "etiquette project" by artist Jay Shells to post various street signs throughout Manhatten with various etiquette messages on them. The one most relevant to social media is, of course:
PAY ATTENTION WHILE WALKINGYOUR FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATE CAN WAIT
Having been almost walked into on several occasions by people intent on typing something into their phone, I can thoroughly agree with the sentiment!
The article on AnimalNewYork.com about Jay Shells also includes a brief video interview with him about the campaign.
Fun to see.
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Oct 09
Remember Perl? RWW Highlights the Future of Perl 5
Remember perl? The “scripting language” that was the one of the first that many of us used on UNIX to automate system administration tasks? And then was later used in the 1990s for a ton of web CGI programming and so much more? And that we could have so much fun with created “obfuscated” programs that looked like gobbledegook but actually did something useful?
I don’t hear much at all about perl these days… and my perception is that many folks are like me in that they moved on from perl to other scripting languages like python, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP and more.
So when ReadWrite Web published article “A Look at the Future of Perl 5.16 and Beyond“, I had to look out of perhaps morbid curiosity… “you mean, people still use perl?”
The slide set from Jesse Vincent embedded in the RWW article is interesting in that it does show the good amount of work being done by the perl faithful to bring more stability and progress to the perl language.
I commend them all for the work… it looks like really good things are happening. Is it enough to make me personally return to working with perl? Probably not, to be honest… but for the sake of all those people who still work with perl… and for people looking for a great multi-purpose programming language with deep roots and a huge base of documentation and usage… it’s good to see the language evolving again!
Oct 08
Dilbert Nails One Of The Inherent Challenges of Standards
Dilbert nails it... (back in August 2011)
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Oct 07
EU Gives Okay To Microsoft Acquisition of Skype
To I think no one's real surprise, the European Union today gave the go-ahead to Microsoft's acquisition of Skype. Given that the US Federal Trade Commission okayed the deal back in June, there should be no further barriers to the deal. Microsoft issued a very short statement:
We’re pleased that the European Commission has approved Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype. This is an important milestone, as we’ve now received clearance from both the United States and the European Union. We look forward to completing soon the final steps needed to close the acquisition, bringing together the employees of Microsoft and Skype, and creating new opportunities for people to communicate and collaborate around the world.
Jim Courtney took a look at the actual text of the EU ruling and in his post dissects how the commission viewed the consumer versus enterprise space with regard to competion - and how it reached the conclusion that it would be okay for Microsoft to acquire Skype.
For the sake of my friends working at Skype who have been hanging in an uncomfortable limbo while all this gets sorted out, I do hope that the acquisition can now proceed quickly. As Mary-Jo Foley notes, Microsoft has already been working on how Skype fits into the larger world of Microsoft, so hopefully we'll start seeing those actions start moving ahead soon.
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Oct 07
1997 Video of Steve Jobs: "Focusing is about saying no"
In all the ongoing commemoration of Steve Jobs, a friend posted to Facebook this short video clip of Steve Jobs from the 1997 WWDC event that so perfectly captures his design philosophy ... and that "focusing is about saying no":
Good summary of his design views... and also a fun trip into seeing a much younger Steve Jobs.
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Oct 06
The Internet Cries Out Its Collective Wail of Anguish At The Passing Of Steve Jobs
On an intellectual level, perhaps, we knew it was coming. When he stepped down as CEO back in August, we knew Steve Jobs was in trouble. No one who is as much of a control freak as he was would step down unless things were really not going well.
But still...
... emotionally we hoped against hopes that His Jobsness would somehow cheat death and stand up on stage yet again to give us...
"one more thing"
... one more time.
But... icon, visionary, leader, maker that he was... he was of course only human.
With all the mortality that implies.
And so ever since the word of his death started spreading last night, the Internet has been awash with the collective cries of anguish.
Techmeme, at this precise moment, is a wall of tributes to the man.
Many are incredibly moving... incredibly poignant... incredibly powerful...
"#ThankYouSteve" has been at the top of the Twitter trends. Google has changed its home page to have a link over to Apple's page. Wired has turned its home page into a wall of quotes about Jobs.
Everywhere a thousand other tributes are being posted.
A powerful day of tributes to a man who did so much to change our industry and indeed our world.
I don't know that I can personally add more than what I wrote back in August...
Thank you, Steve Jobs.
He leaves us with a legacy of design...
... of remembering that we need to focus on form as much as function (if not indeed more)...
... of thinking not of what features we need to add to a product or service, but rather what features we need to remove to make the service even simpler and easier to use...
... of remembering to focus on the user experience...
... on the need to embrace the "magic" of what we are doing and to create products and services that truly amaze and delight us...
... and to not settle and to live each day as if it were our last.
If you have never watched his powerful address at Stanford in 2005, take 15 minutes and watch this video:
One of Apple's best known advertising campaigns was the "Think different" series - and they had videos with a narration about "Here's to the Crazy Ones". The folks at 9to5 Mac found a version that Steve Jobs himself narrated:
Naturally, there have been several remixes of this commercial text (although not Jobs' narration) with images from Jobs' history. Two I found moving were this one:
And yes, I admit to shedding a tear or two as I watched these...
There were a zillion tweets about Jobs... and one that I'll close with is simply this:
R.I.P., Steve Jobs.
Thank you.
P.S. GigaOm ran a nice collection of quotes from Silicon Valley leaders.
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Oct 04
Watching Live Blogs FAIL During Apple’s iOS 5 Event
Today was a fascinating day to watch live-blogging services fail in a rather dramatic way.
Engadget... Gizmodo... MacRumors... ArsTechnica... and more...
Unless you were under a rock or otherwise hiding offline, you know that today was the big, huge, ginormous "iPhone 5" announcement event from Apple. (It turned out, of course, that there was no iPhone 5, but that didn't stop the media frenzy.)
As you probably also know, Apple does NOT live-stream these events. I think Robert Scoble nails their reasons - it's all about control. The PR folks at Apple are also masters at "creating spectacle". These "events" become the huge media events they are precisely because there is scarcity... you can't get the info unless you are in the room.
And so, the "media" get to be gatekeepers to the knowledge again.
Lacking a live video or audio stream, all the interested techies, media and fanboys must turn to live blogs and to Twitter (and Facebook and Google+) to get their updates.
But boy did those live blogs fail today!
Now, don't get me wrong..
I DO understand that providing live updates to an unknown - but very HIGH - number of visitors is hard to do.
I get that... but still it was interesting to see who survived and who didn't (and I mention both below).
Live Blogs That Struggled
One of the first I saw go was MacRumors, who was originally using a service that embedded "live blogging" directly into their web page. That seemed to fail under the load and they dropped back to simply providing bullet updates on their live page.
I was watching Engadget's coverage for a while and it was great ... until it wasn't:
Even worse, the entire Engadget site seemed to be down at times:
The site went in and out during the course of the coverage but was mostly out for the latter half of the coverage.
Gizmodo's live blog didn't give the same kind of errors, but simply stopped updating for long periods ... and then had problems loading display elements (which I missed capturing):
Ars Technica did better with their coverage up until about 40 minutes into the event when they stopped updating the site and pointed people over to Twitter:
Their coverage came back... and then froze again several more times.
I would have loved to be watching the stats on the traffic these sites were getting as it had to have been a TON of traffic.
Live Blogs That Worked
Still, some sites seemed to work well through it all. And while I have no insight into how much traffic these sites had versus the ones above, it could also be the architecture they chose to use as well as their choice of content.
Ryan Block's gdgt live gave the best experience I found, integrating both text and pictures to provide a great way to know what was going on:
They had a couple of momentary hiccups, but overall they seemed to consistently be publishing more and more content.
Mashable's live coverage was also consistently available, although they went with a more Twitter-esque series of mostly text updates. They added in polls for some more interactivity and also had links to other posts and info. They had a few photos, but not all that many compared to others. However, the coverage was consistent and always there:
Finally, GigaOm's coverage was noteworthy in that they started out from the beginning to just provide simple text updates to a blog post that you had to manually refresh. No auto-updates... no embedded widgets... just a straight-up blog post with a mixture of text and pictures. Not as sexy as other sites, but every time I refreshed it the content was there with updates.
Sometimes, simplicity can win.
(Now, in fairness, because there was no auto-updating and because I wasn't sitting there hitting the refresh (this was all running in the background on my computer while I ate lunch and was doing some other work), the GigaOm site could have gone down several times between my refreshes.)
Again, I do realize that providing this kind of large-scale coverage is hard, but in the era of "web-scale" and with the availability of content delivery networks, caching services, etc., there are certainly options available to companies providing "live blogs" of events.
Now maybe some of the sites that "struggled" had all that kind of stuff in place and still succumbed to the overwhelming traffic.
Regardless, today was an interesting experiment in seeing what worked and what didn't work. Personally, I'd love it if some of the services that had technical difficulties would write up a bit about what happened and how they were hit.
It would help all of us learn how to scale our sites.
And help people get ready for the NEXT Apple event ;-)
P.S. And yes, there were undoubtedly other sites that were offering live blogs of the event... these were just the ones that I happened to know of or find.
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