Dan York

Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...

Author's posts

Sep 07

Video: Chris Pirillo to Emcee Voxeo’s Customer Summit, Oct 10-12

As I mentioned previously, Voxeo's annual Customer Summit 2011 is coming up October 10-12 in Orlando, Florida. One of the latest bits of news is that Internet entrepreneur and über-geek Chris Pirillo will be the emcee for the event. He recently recorded this video intro talking about his upcoming trip to Orlando:

Chris is a high-energy and highly entertaining guy... and it will be fun to see him in action at the event!

P.S. If you want to attend Voxeo's Customer Summit 2011, space is filling up quickly but there are still a few slots open - register today!

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Sep 07

Amusing Video Tutorial: Let’s Suck at Github Together

If you want to learn more about using git and Github, or are a fan/user of git/Github (as I am) and want to pass along a video tutorial for others to see, you may enjoy this episode from Chris Coyier entitled “CSS-Tricks #101: Let’s Suck at GitHub Together“. As you can tell from the title, Chris doesn’t mind poking some fun at his own abilities – and his own aversion to the command-line and preference for GUI utilities.

For me personally, I’m rather “old skool” and typically prefer the command-line, but I appreciate that many people don’t… and I enjoyed Chris’ entertaining episode. Sure, as some commenters noted, there were a few minor inaccuracies/faults… but overall it did the job well in helping introduce people to what git and Github together can do. I can’t embed the video here, but if you click on the image below you’ll be taken to his site where you can view the episode…

Csstricks github video

And if you are over on Github, you can follow me there as github.com/danyork.

Sep 07

Running A Half-Marathon – One Year After Starting Running!

I did it!

On September 4, 2011, I ran the 13.1 miles of the Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon!

Swanzeyhalfmarathon 2011

I came in at about 2 hours, 27 minutes for an average of 11:16 per mile.

More on that in a moment, but I thought I'd mention that one driver for me to do this particular race was because the first time I recorded a run on my iPhone was September 7th, 2010. Here it was...

Sept72010

1.6 miles! And a year later here I am at 13.1. I'm admittedly pleased with how that has worked out!

In truth, though, I had been doing some running earlier in August 2010 using my Garmin GPS "watch", which I actually still use as a double-check with the iPhone. I was amused to see courtesy of Facebook's new "On This Day in 2010" feature this juxtaposition:

Oneyearlater

It's been quite a journey... and amazing to see what happens when you just keep on doing something day after day after day.

Now, as to this past weekend's half-marathon, it turned out to be quite a humid morning. We've had spectacular weather in recent weeks, with beautiful sunny days, temperatures in the mid-70s Fahrenheit and with almost no humidity.

Sunday was not one of those days.

I made the classic mistake of starting out WAY too fast! Caught up in the pack of people, I was running up about 8 minutes/mile, which is faster than even the fastest 5K I'd run! Not sustainable... and I dropped it back a bit... but not far enough... and the pace graphic below shows how that hit me in the last few miles:

Swanzeyhalf2011 distance Swanzeyhalf pace

Indeed, that red part in the upper right of the image is where I walked from the 12 mile aid station until about 12.25 miles or so when I willed myself to get back underway to finish the final mile.

The race itself was quite beautiful to run. It started off going through a covered bridge and then onto about 2 miles of trail running along an old railroad bed that's now a trail. When the course returned to the road it took us through parts of Swanzey I'd never known about and through three more covered bridges. It was admittedly fun to run through those purely because I'd never done so before.

After laughing at someone pulling out their phone and taking a picture of the first bridge, I did have to do the same for the next three:

Swanzeybridge1

Swanzeybridge2 Swanzeybridge4 1

The race had a good bit of roads through wooded areas and all in all was quite beautiful to run. There were "aid stations" set up every 2 miles or so with water and/or Gatorade and while I ran with a belt with water bottles, I also drank from all of the aid stations. They were much appreciated and some of the folks staffing the stations had fun costumes, music, etc., which was enjoyable to see.

When the race was over, I was definitely tired... and I didn't do a whole lot of walking the remainder of the day. But the next day I was back out walking a 5K with the family and have felt pretty decent since that time.

Would I do it again? Definitely. Do I have any interest in going further and running a full marathon? Not right now... although I won't rule that out. That just seems like a huge time commitment... and hard to practice for with small kids in one's life.

But I'll do another half... ;-)

Swanzeyhalf2011

P.S. Thanks go to my wife for taking these photos of me coming in to the finish area.

UPDATE: The race results are up on CoolRunning.com and it turns out that I was 171st out of the the 203 runners - and 24th of the 26 runners in my age range (male 40s).

Sep 07

Video: What’s New in Voxeo Prophecy 11 and VoiceObjects 11?

Want to know the newest ways to build communications apps using Voxeo products? Want to know about IPv6, wideband audio, fax support and large-scale management of servers?

In a recent Voxeo Developer Jam Session, I explained what is new in Voxeo's Prophecy 11 and VoiceObjects 11 and how you can use them to build even larger-scale communications apps than before.

The session is available for download, as are the slides. It is also available for viewing on YouTube. If you don't know anything about Voxeo, this is also a great way to learn more about its core products.

Oh, and when you're down watching, you can download Prophecy 11 or VoiceObjects 11 for free for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. :-)

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Sep 06

John Battelle On The Importance of Aggregating The Digital Content We Post In Walled Gardens

The Internet Is Open
As we spread our digital content across the Internet, through separate services that we do NOT control, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Quora, how do we aggregate all that information somewhere where we DO control the content? So as to preserve our "identity" formed by that collective work?

That is at the heart of John Battelle's great piece yesterday, "We Need An Identity Re-Aggregator (That We Control). I've written at some length over the years about the re-emergence of online "walled gardens" and the need for us to maintain our own identity on the web. I've also spoken about this on any number of FIR reports I've submitted... and to me John really nails it with this paragraph:

The downsides of not owning your own words, on your own platform, are not limited simply to money. Over time, the words and opinions one leaves all over the web form a web of identity - your identity - and controlling that identity feels, to me, a human right. But unless you are a sophisticated netizen, you're never going to spend the time and effort required to gather all your utterances in one place, in a fashion that best reflects who you are in the world.

As he notes further on in the piece, even if you link to your contributions on one of those services, should that service disappear all your content is lost.

Over the past few months, I've been trying to change my behavior a bit and revert my own writing to how it used to be. I'm trying to post messages on my own blogs FIRST and then linking to it from the other services.

Even this post... I could have left it as a comment on John's blog, or as a reply inside of Facebook or Google+... but instead I am posting it here it is on a platform that I control.

It's hard... the various services make it seductively convenient just to have all your interaction within the walls of that service. And I certainly do have some level of conversation within those walls. But for longer content - or commentary that I want to preserve, even in the form of links to other sites with some comment, I'm trying to do more of that from my own sites. Kind of like how "blogging" was back about 5+ years ago before we got all caught up in these new shiny services that we all enjoy so much.

Meanwhile, I, too, would love to have a "meta service" along the lines of what John suggests...

Image credit: jeremybrooks on Flickr

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Sep 06

Skype Now Using "@SkypeSupport" on Twitter

Given that last week I received two more phone calls from people looking to speak with Skype, I was very pleased to learn that Skype has recently started providing a support channel via Twitter - @SkypeSupport. Sure, it's not a phone line - which probably means I'll still be Skype's unofficial receptionist, but at least now I have another channel to send people to in addition to Skype's community forums.

Skype support on twitter

Great to see Skype providing this channel to support customers.

P.S. Jim Courtney noted last month on his site that Skype also now has a Facebook page for customer support as well

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Sep 06

Want To Help Guide Git’s Development? Take the 2011 Git Users’s Survey!

Git logoDo you use the git version control system? If so, do you wish it worked a bit differently? Or did you find it hard to use in some way? If you don’t, did you try to start using it and found it difficult to understand?

If you are a git user in any way (or are trying to be), the Git community is LOOKING FOR YOUR INPUT in the Git User’s Survey 2011 at the address:

http://tinyurl.com/GitSurvey2011

As the main page of the Git community wiki asks:

Please devote a few minutes of your time to fill out the simple questionnaire; it’ll help the Git community understand your needs, what you like about Git (and what you don’t), and overall help us improve it.

The survey runs from now through October 3rd and the results will be posted on the Git wiki.

Being a git fan and user I did complete the survey which, true to the notice, did only take a few minutes to complete. As more of a “casual” user of git in that I use it for a variety of projects but don’t live in it as a full-time developer might, I actually found the survey quite educational in that I found names of a whole number of projects I want to explore.

If you do use git and have a few minutes, the folks behind Git would love your input!

Sep 02

Running The Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon On Sunday…

Coveredbridge elijahsraceI went and did it... continuing my running adventure, I went ahead and signed up for the Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon, a.k.a. "Elijah's Race", this Sunday, September 4th, 2011. (UPDATE: The website hosting provider experienced a server crash and is still trying to get the site back up - meanwhile a cached version of the site is available.)

I've never run 13.1 miles.

In fact, if I'm honest about it, I'd never even thought about running 13.1 miles until recently.

But here I go! Farthest I've run is 11.28 miles and when I was done I still had "gas in the tank" and could have run farther... so I'm going to assume that the adrenaline of the race will pull me through those last two miles.

I thought I'd try this race because it's local... and hey, what can be more "New England" than running a race through not one, but four covered bridges!

If you want to participate, you CAN register on race-day. The race starts at 9:00am on Sunday morning at the Monadnock Regional High School on Old Homestead Highway / Route 32 (see the Google map) and registration opens up an hour or so before.

For those curious, you can see the course mapped out on Google Maps (although people who have run it tell me that it starts and ends at the same place - the high school):

Elijahsrace course

We'll see how I do!

Aug 30

Why The "Nym Wars" Matter – Preserving Pseudonymity On An Open Internet

Identity (Clone trooper Tales #44)

There's an identity war going on out on the Internet right now... there are multiple aspects to it... but the key is that:

it is a battle for control of YOUR identity!

Think of any website you've visited lately that has offered you the ability to "Login with Facebook" or "Sign in with Twitter".

It's simple. Easy. Convenient.

And dangerous.

Because in embracing the convenience of such services (and I am certainly guilty of this myself), we surrender control of our identity to the identity provider.

But that is a broader topic for a much longer piece I want to write...

Right now I want to touch on the point:

What if the "identity provider" won't let you use what you consider your "real" identity?

What if the identity provider requires you to use your "birth name" (or "real name") instead of the name that everyone knows you as?

Welcome to the world of pseudonyms... persistent identities used by people instead of the names they were given at birth.

Pseudonyms have been with us for eons... as noted above, authors and entertainers have long used them. In fact, a pseudonym was involved with the founding of the United States.

And this pseudonymity is exactly what is at stake in what is being tagged as the "#nymwars" on Twitter.

This latest battle in the much larger war really began back on July 22nd, when Kirrily Robert, a developer (and former co-worker of mine) who has gone by the pseudonym "Skud" for many years, was suspended from Google+ for not using her real name and took to her blog to publicize this fact. There have been literally hundreds (and maybe thousands) of articles on the topic posted between then and now... with the most recent wave being about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's comments that Google wants you to use your real name because they want to be an identity provider... and do things with that "real identity" of yours.

This battle isn't just about Google+, though. Facebook would also like you to only use your "real name" and to have you assert only your "real" identity.

I could go on at great length about why this is a bad idea, but would instead point you to this excellent but lengthy piece:

Read it... and then go back and read it again. A powerful piece laying out so many of the reasons why pseudonymity is important.

And a key point is:

Pseudonymity is NOT anonymity.

There is an entirely separate discussion to be had around true anonymity... and the value therein - or not.

But that is entirely different from the idea of a persistent identity that one uses as a replacement for one's "real name".

Should we not have the right to use the name that people know us by on these services?

The response, of course, is that using these services is optional and you can, of course, choose NOT to participate in Google+... or Facebook... or whatever other service requires you to use your "real name".

And obviously that is an option.

But what if many of the conversations I want to participate in have moved to one of those services? What if all my friends are sharing photos using some new service... and I can't because I'm forced to use a different identity than what I want to use?

What if I am an author or entertainer and want to engage on that service with my fans through the persona I use?

What if that service is the only way to communicate out of my country or region and using my real name may get me killed?

Pseudonymity matters.

Control over our identity matters.

The ability to control the identity we choose to use on services on the Internet matters.

The war for our identity will continue to rage... will the victor be the organizations who control the services we want to use? or will we retain the right to control our identity?

Your choice...

Other good articles worth reading:

Image credit: koisny on Flickr

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Aug 29

Happy Birthday, Skype! Celebrating 8 Years of Disruption

skypelogo-shadow.pngIt was 8 years ago today that the first public beta version of Skype was released... and so began the amazing journey of a product/service that has truly disrupted the telecommunications industry. The Wikipedia page on Skype has a good record of the history, which is interesting to look back upon now.

I started using Skype sometime in early 2005 or so... working in Mitel's Office of the CTO charged with evaluating new technology - and seeking to understand what Skype was all about. I started writing about Skype then... and still continue writing a good bit about Skype as it is certainly one of the more disruptive players in the industry. Skype today is a HUGE part of my daily life and truly is one service that is integral to my daily workflow and life online.

Skype's blog post today, of course, focuses on their current fixation on video calls... even including the strange text (my emphasis added):

What started off as a little idea to connect the world over video calls has turned into something so much more, and we believe this is making a huge difference in making the world feel smaller and a lot more connected.

I don't actually know the ideas of the original founders of Skype, but I do know that in the actual early days of Skype it was all about audio versus video. Perhaps they had the grand dream then of video and had to focus on the reality of audio... or perhaps this is just the current Skype marketing trying to focus on their current messaging around video.

From my perspective, the 8 years of Skype thus far have:

  • completely destroyed the expensive costs of international telephony;
  • provided people a real viable option to use video telephony;
  • introduced people to the idea that you could have audio calls that sounded FAR better than the PSTN via wideband audio codecs;
  • gave people a true multi-modal "unified communications" experience with the ability to easily migrate between chat, audio, video, file sharing and screen sharing;
  • provided the industry with a solid example of secure communications using SRTP (while the carriers were whining about how they couldn't use SRTP because it would be too demanding on their infrastructure);
  • provided an incredible example of the power of persistent group chats;
  • provided an example of what a simple and easy user experience could be in a world of cluttered interfaces; (although some may argue that ended with Skype 5.x)
  • gave we who are fascinated by networks and amazing example of a peer-to-peer communications system; and
  • provided an example of a product that can "just work" from behind pretty much any network configuration including layers of NAT, firewalls, etc., etc.

... and so much more. It's been a fascinating service and company to watch, write about and use their products.

Oh, it hasn't all be great, of course... the business side of Skype has been all over the place. The partner/developer programs are on their 7th or 8th iteration. Various other programs have come and gone (SkypeCasts? Extras?). Skype has pursued it's incredibly fractured product management strategy across the multiple different operating systems.

But all in all it has certainly been fun to have Skype around ... and it sure has disrupted the industry!

What lies ahead now that Skype is slated to become part of Microsoft? Much remains to be seen... but odds that when their 9th birthday rolls around they won't be quite the same disruptive troublemakers that they are today. We'll see.

Meanwhile... Happy Birthday, Skype!

And two other friends have shared their thoughts today:

And here is Skype's birthday video... slickly produced with a message that does indeed celebrate the communications power that Skype has brought to our world:

I'm looking forward to seeing where the next 8 years of Skype takes us...

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