Saturday 7 July 2007

Moving on

I've decided to up and move this blog to wordpress.com

For all future posts please visit my new blog at techblog.wordpress.com

Friday 1 June 2007

Blog or not blog?

Personal Web sites have been around for a very long time. Running commentary on subjects such as movies and sport isn’t a good enough reason to call your Web site a blog and I'm not sure this site qualifies as a blog either, regardless of the fact I'm using blog software!

As Wikipedia states
A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) or sexual topics (Adult blog), and are part of a wider network of social media.
The bit that interests me most is, “The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.”

Calling a Web site which allows two-way conversations a blog, is a way of benchmarking time, technology and/or techniques. The very same can be said for Web 2.0. Although, Web 2.0 principles have been around longer than the term itself, Web 2.0 enables us to talk about the same stuff, well, sort of. Most of the confusion in my opinion, appears to be around whether people are talking about technology or marketing.

One could argue that if your comment is worthy enough, it should in fact warrant its own post on your own blog, thereby mitigating the need for comments in the first place. However, this is a cop out and doesn’t counter my argument to use the term ‘blog’ when referring to Web sites that enable comments from readers.

Sethi Godin, Dave Winer and Russell Beattie are just 3 people who call their Personal Web sites blogs. Perhaps people like Winer can get away with it as people are very likely to write posts on their own blogs and then link back to his original article.

Perhaps a few people should be given a ‘get out of jail free’ card? Can they get away with being an exception to the rule?

Friday 25 May 2007

Why "free" isn't important

In one of the best posts yet from one of my favorite ZDnet bloggers, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes offers Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user. It’s a great primer on the significant difference in mind set between hobbyist and uber-geek computer users and the “average user”.

Here are the five things. Please do read the post and the unbelievably long comment thread (or at least some of it – it does end up getting kind of repetitive).

  1. On the whole, users aren’t all that dissatisfied with Windows
  2. Too many distros
  3. People want certainty that hardware and software will work
  4. As far as most people are concerned, the command line has gone the way of the dinosaur
  5. Linux is still too geeky
Best quote from the article:
The PC market is extremely cut-throat. It has to be because consumers will go to great lengths to save a few bucks when buying their latest system. But it seems that this thriftiness hasn’t resulted in hordes of users choosing to buy PCs without Windows installed and instead choosing to install Linux instead. In fact, there are plenty of users who would rather break the law and install pirated copies of Windows than go the legal route and install a Linux distro. On the whole, most people would rather spend the money on Windows (or Mac) than take the time to experiment with Linux.

Why?

It seems that a lot of people are wondering this. Since starting to dabble in the world of Linux I’ve seen this question posed on innumerable websites, forums and blogs. Why is it that when consumer satisfaction with Windows is at a low (at least according to many in the pro-Linux community it is) is the Linux market share so low? It’s pretty sad, but beyond a certain small segment of computer users, you can’t give Linux away.
A followup to the post was just published. Point number three is the essence of what Platform Agnostic is all about:

Chill out. It’s just an operating system.

I’m not sure if it’s just a case that there’s a small subset of the Linux community which is both aggressive and vocal or whether the problem is much broader, but this is a major turn off for people considering making the transition to a Linux OS. Even back when Mac communities were considered by many to be pretty hostile and unfriendly places Steve Jobs was clever enough to make sure that this kind of fanatical nonsense didn’t make it onto the Apple site and sales literature (although Apple is perfectly capable of coming up with their own fanatical nonsense, at least it’s not that aggressive). Negative campaigning seems to work for political parties but it doesn’t work for Linux - and the numbers prove this.

Seriously, given the passion behind some of the comments I come across from some Linux users, you’d have thought I was talking about something with life-or-death importance like a heart machine and not an OS.

Brilliant job Adrian!

Sunday 25 February 2007

Gmail as a personal hub

I was lucky enough to get in on the Gmail beta when it launched and I haven't looked back since. Even though I've had an account for almost three years and I get over 100 emails a day, I have chewed up only 18% of the generous 2.8 gigabytes of storage.

However, in recent weeks I have started using Gmail as much more than an email host. With its gobs of storage, speed and tremendous search/tagging capabilities, you can transform it into a personal nerve center that's available from any computer or mobile device. When you tap into this power and combine Gmail with some other tools, it is perhaps the most essential site ever developed. Most of the following life hacks have not been documented.

This series has several parts...

  • How to turn Gmail into a massive personal database (Gmail + the Google Toolbar)
  • How to get real-time news updates in Gmail (Gmail+ Google Talk + Twitter)
  • How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail (Gmail + del.icio.us + Yahoo Alerts)
  • How to manage Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail (Gmail + Backpack + GCal + GTalk + iMified)
  • How to blog from Gmail (Gmail + Wordpress/TypePad/Blogger + IMified)

Using Gmail as a Massive Database

I revel in information. Can't get enough of it. I like that I get a lot of email. I scan 275 RSS feeds in Google Reader and I use dozens of bookmarklets and shortcuts to help me manage it all.

Everyday I come across soLinkmething on the web that I want to save for future reference. While previously I was using Yojimbo to manage all of this information, I found the solution wanting since I travel a lot and need to access my bits from a mobile device. Google Notebook also doesn't work on a mobile device and its search functions are rather lacking. Enter Gmail and the Google Toolbar.

The latest version of the Google Toolbar has a send to Gmail function. Select some text or graphics, right click on it and send it to Gmail. The Toolbar then automatically feeds it into a new message.

Now, when I find something I want to save I use this feature and send it to a secret contact in my address book. This is basically a steverubel+[secretphrase]@gmail.com email address (Lifehacker explains the value of these here).

Once the article arrives in my Gmail inbox, I have a filter whisk it a way into the archive and tag it with an @Database label. Further, I am toying with having the same filter also forward these to a premium Google Apps account that has 10 gigs of space. Now all I need to do to call it up later is enter label:@Database and a keyword. Whammo - an instant personal database.