August 28th, 2008, No Comments »
On Twitter, Marshall just pointed to Tag Galaxy, a super-slick and fun new way to browse Flickr photos by tag. You enter a tag and it renders that tag as a sun, with a bunch of related tags orbiting it:
Add a new tag and it drills down into all of the photos and related tags that share those two tags. Finally, when you’re sufficiently happy with the filtering, click on the sun itself and it lays all of the photos on the surface of the sun…planet…er…heavenly body:
You can then manipulate the sphere, spinning it to browse using the scroll wheel to zoom. I’m not sure how practically useful it is, but it’s sure fun to play with. It’s kind of graphically-intensive, and brought my old Windows PC to a crawl. It was quite speedy, however, on my MacBook.
On a related note, Waxy just linked to WolfenFlickr 3D, which uses Castle Woflensteing 3-D, an old-school first-person shooter, as a Flickr browser.
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June 20th, 2008, 2 Comments »
At Web Content 2008, I gave a talk and also ran a two-hour workshop. I thought I’d share a technique I used for the workshop, which was entitled “29 Web 2.0 Tools: What They Are, How They Work” I didn’t much feel like building a two-hour slide show, and anticipated dodgy web access. Instead, I wanted to encourage plenty of interactivity and audience participation. My hope is that, if people come to the session with questions, they’ll get them answered.
For this session, I developed a very low-tech educational aid. I wrote the names of the 29 tools on 5″ x 8″ index cards, and hung them, in random order, from a long string that stretched across the room. Here’s a blurry photo of what it looked like. I was fortunate to have a 50′ clothes line in a room that was 35′ wide.
I asked the audience to yell out the name of a particular tool. I’d pull that one off the string, toss it on the floor, and then talk about it for a couple of minutes. Sometimes I’d ask the audience member who choose the topic whether they had specific questions, or I’d ask the room if anyone had a related story to tell. Once that topic was exhausted (that took anywhere from 15 seconds to 10 minutes), I asked for another topic suggestion from the line.
29 Plays in 59 Minutes
I lifted this idea wholesale from a Theatre Skam show I saw more than a decade ago called “29 Plays in 59 Minutes”. The play begins with cards numbered 1 to 29 hung on a string across the stage. Each card has the name of a very short play or sketch on the back. The audience yells out a random number, and actors perform that sketch. Another number, another play. They try to get through all 29 in 59 minutes.
Back in 1996, I wrote a review of the show for the Victoria News (wow, that website suffers under my ad-blocking plugin). Unbelievably, I see that I faxed my reviews in. Here’s a bit of what I said:
“29 plays in 59 minutes” covers a lot of ground. More ideas were present in this tiny, awkward space in one night than have been at the McPherson Playhouse all year. While it is not for the feint of heart, this is theatre as it should be: current, confrontational and provocative.
In looking for that review, I found something else I wrote–a little essay called “Random Theatre”. My favourite part of this kind of construction is the unlikely juxtaposition:
By themselves, most would be at least mildly engaging. It is their juxtaposition that makes them fascinating. How do we receive a skit about trying to get laid after seeing an affecting piece about the killing of fourteen women in Montreal? Are we touched or repulsed? Isn’t this just like changing channels?
It’s also a little like blogging.
Theatre Skam lifted the idea from the Neo-Futurists, who started it as “30 Plays in 60 Minutes”.
Next Time, Clothespins
It seemed to go over well. It’s a gimmick, though I’d prefer to call it a prop, or a bit of staging. I think it kept people on their toes, and it became obvious which topics people really cared about. It also gives the audience a preview of what I plan to talk about, and enables me to frame the topic without being limited to a prepared script.
When I do this workshop again, I’d make these changes:
- For each topic, I’d asked the audience member who chose it why they did, or whether they had something specific they wanted to learn about. I’d probably talk a bit first, then check back with them, so as to not make it a prerequisite of yelling out a topic.
- We got through all 29 topics in 90 minutes. For an hour session, I might prepare by making a quick note on the back of each card, reminding myself about a case study or explanation I could quickly rattle off.
- It would have been handy to have web access. I didn’t need it often, but explaining RSS is way easier with a live browser. I would have liked to play the Commoncraft explanation for Twitter (yes, I bought a license from their store).
- I’d buy clothespins to keep the cards on the line. I used tape, and it was unreliable. This made for a little entertainment during the talk (”MySpace fell again”), but it would make things simpler. Plus, the cards would be easier to re-use.
All in all, I enjoyed the random, slightly messy sense that accompanies this gimmick. I hope the audience did, too.
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June 6th, 2008, 6 Comments »
A couple months ago I ran two quick polls about mix tapes. I asked because I had an idea for a related web-based service. I won’t get around to creating it, so I figured I’d send it out into the universe.
It’s a simple concept. Your mix tapes are beloved artifacts of our youth. As we get older, they decay and we lose the ability to easily listen to them.
You sign up for my service, and we send you a prepaid mailing box. You put your mix tapes in a box, and send them off. They go to India or China, where each mix tape is converted in MP3 files. Importantly, you can get the files in a variation of forms:
- Each side of the mix tape as a single MP3 file, retaining the organization of the songs, and any between-song commentary.
- Individual MP3 files
- A CD
The service doesn’t replace the recordings with ‘clean’, digital recordings of the songs. It just converts the version you own to an audio file. I think this is important, as the crappy recordings, pops and scratches are part of nostalgic remembrance of the mix tape.
The service also scans the cassette sleeve, and sends you a high-res version of that. Plus, of course, you get all your original cassettes back.
There are probably lots of audio conversion services out there, but I’d position this one specifically (and only) for mix tapes.
I actually think there’s a market for this–it could become a sort of hobby business for somebody. My ad hoc survey found that 64% of respondents owned at least one mix tape, and 56% of those said they were ‘precious momentos’. That’s radically insufficient as market research, but an encouraging result nonetheless. What do you think?
I was reminded about this idea by the lovely Cassette from my Ex, which I just discovered. Totally subscribed. And I’m going to submit one, when I get the chance.
It’d be appropriate to end with a mix tape of my own. The following is a few songs from, to my memory, one of the first mix tapes I ever made. The source? My father’s extensive (and rocking) record collection.
6 Comments »
March 25th, 2008, 9 Comments »
Two and half years ago, I described a local search problem:
Yesterday, while considering going to a local public house to watch some of the Canucks vs. Minnesota pay-per-view game, I consulted this list of pubs showing the game. It’s just two big, unsortable tables covering all of BC. Unless you’re only looking to confirm that a particular pub is showing the game, it’s nearly useless.
I wondered aloud (as I was by myself), “wouldn’t it be cool if somebody could feed all this data into Google Maps, and I could use that to determine which pubs were closest.”
With some help, I almost got the thing up and running. Then I ran into some roadblocks, got busy and forgot about it.
I still have the same problem. Tonight I’m giving a talk, and wanted to be able to slip out afterwards to catch the second half of the Flames/Canucks game. I figured I’d have another crack at the problem. This time I’ve been successful–witness my l33t mashup skillz!
Er, you can check out the completed map.
Here’s how I did it (it’s not exactly rocket science):
- I went to the Canucks website and copied all the details–name, address and city–of the pay per view venues. I dumped that data into an Excel spreadsheet.
- I needed to associate latitude and longitude values with each address. I used this handy free tool to ‘geocode’ each venue. I added the location data to my spreadsheet.
- I imported my spreadsheet into Google Docs. You can see it here.
- I ran this wizard from Google (thank you, Webware) to turn my hosted spreadsheet into a location-rich Google map.
- The wizard generates some code, which I subsequently hosted on a dedicated page on my site.
Somebody has probably already done this in the meantime, but I wanted to see if I could do it myself. It was encouragingly straightforward, and only took me about an hour from start to finish. It’s not perfect–the Grizzly Bar is floating in the Atlantic south of Nigeria–but it’s a reasonable solution to my problem. Steamworks on Water Street seems like the right fit for tonight.
9 Comments »
February 5th, 2008, 6 Comments »
The Intarweb has been very slightly b0rked over the past, oh, 36 hours. Everything works fine, excepting that I can’t access Flickr.com. When I try to visit the site, my browser just churns and churns.
Interestingly, I can see static Flickr images when they’re referenced elsewhere. For example, I can see the little thumbnails in other posts on my home page (like this one).
This wouldn’t be a big deal, except that Flickr widgets on other sites don’t load. So, I wanted to do a few things on the Northern Voice site, but the Flickr widget tries to load in the left sidebar before the main content does. So, the page only loads as far as the title “Photos from Last Year” and then hangs.
I checked in Safari and on Julie’s machine, so it ain’t local to my MacBook. Weird, eh?
Of course, when the service and the access to support for the service live in the same place, I’m kind of pooched on getting help.
6 Comments »
January 18th, 2008, 1 Comment »
When website managers first discovered RSS, back in 2003 or so, feeds were often published like this:
That’s from the Canucks site. They list these two feeds on their RSS page, with no explanation of what each one contains. Which feed do I want? Is one the subset of another? Does the result of each game qualify as a ‘top story’ or plain old ‘news’?
I was guilty of something similar in 2003, when I still worked for the Man. I don’t think we were very thoughtful about how we split up our news (we had a press release feed and a corporate news feed or some bollocks).
But we’ve had five years to learn, and it’s not brain surgery. Provide one feed with everything in it, and then slice out a few feeds in ways that people might actually want to use them: game highlights, off-ice team news, corporate updates, and so forth.
1 Comment »
October 21st, 2007, 2 Comments »
My friend Todd has been writing a series of blog posts on passwords as a technology. I haven’t read the others yet, but the fourth installment is great. It discusses how to create strong (and more importantly) easy-to-remember passwords:
These improvements happen at the will and ability of the people making web and desktop applications. As such, users will always be waiting for them to happen if they haven’t already. This post takes things to the methodological side, which is more the user’s domain, by describing the rules I use to make strong yet memorable passwords that are unique for each account.
Todd provides a handy, dandy formula for creating passwords that you’ll take to the grave. I really ought to apply this advice, as I’m totally irresponsible on the password front.
I dugg Todd’s article, and thought you might want to as well.
2 Comments »
September 21st, 2007, 35 Comments »
Recently I saw Chris Brogan’s blog post entitled 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write. It’s a big list of blog posts he’d like to read, with a real focus on Web 2.0 and releated technologies. In his introduction, he writes:
People often ask me how I come up with things to blog about, and I find the question strange, because my problem is the opposite. I have too much to blog about. Why? Because there’s a whole fast revolution rolling through, and right now - today - is our time to make it all work for us.
People ask me the same question occasionally, and I really don’t have a good answer. I don’t have Chris’s problem, but I never have to look very hard for something to write about.
When people ask about the topic of my blog, I sometimes say (with a little fay wave of my hand), “whatever strikes my fancy”. And that’s kind of true. When I started this blog, I made the mistake of writing about everything (excepting the particularly personal), so it’s turned out to be a kind of grab bag.
In any case, I liked Chris’s idea of a list of posts I’d like to read. However, I read enough about bloody Twitter and Flickr and the transformational power of Ajax.
Here are fifty posts I’d like to read that have nothing to do with technology. These aren’t very original. I’ve read many of them elsewhere, and written a few of them myself. Nonetheless, I think they’d make for interesting reading:
- The Story of My Most Serious Injury
- The Person I Admire Most
- This Will Be My Epitaph
- Why I Love My Hometown
- Why I Hate My Hometown
- Why I Was a Childhood Bully
- How I Shop
- How I Choose to Spend My Money
- I Wish I Spent Less Money on This
- Why I’m in My Current Job
- My Ideal Job
- My High School Clique
- My Worst Subject in School
- If I Had a Super Power
- Here’s Where My Opinion Differs From the Majority
- Why I Voted the Way I Did in the Last Election
- Why I Don’t Vote
- The Cause I Really Believe In
- Why I Came To Religion
- Why I Don’t Believe Anymore
- Where I Find Spirituality
- My First Kiss
- My Worst Kiss
- The First Time I Had My Heart Broken
- Why I Travel
- Why I Don’t Travel
- My Philosophy on Raising Children
- Why I Chose My University Degree
- My Favourite Place on the Planet
- My Greatest Sin Against the Environment
- Why I Married My Spouse
- My Most Hated Movie
- The Book That Changed My Life
- My Unexpected Mentor
- I Couldn’t Live Without This Song
- If I Hear This Song Again, Radio Personalities Will Suffer
- I Have the Craziest Uncle Ever
- Why I Believe in Luck
- Why I Don’t Believe in Luck
- How I Earned My Worst Karma
- Where I Volunteer
- Why I Don’t Volunteer
- My Favourite Item of Clothing Growing Up
- If This Celebrity Knocked On My Door, I’d Run Away With Them
- Why I Care About Celebrities
- Why I Love This Sport
- Why I Hate Sports
- When I’m at My Most Self-Indulgent
- How To Be Selfless
- My Childhood Dreams, and How I’ve Fulfilled Them
- How I Learned Patience
- How My Hard Work Paid Off
- I’ve Never Been More Surprised in My Life
- What Scares the Shit Out of Me
- The Only Thing I Can Teach You
35 Comments »
September 19th, 2007, 1 Comment »
About five months ago, after listening to endless tag advocacy from various smart people, I started a little experiment on my blog. I installed the WordPress extension Ultimate Tag Warrior, and started tagging my blog posts. You can see the tags in the footer of each post, after “Tag Testing Project”.
I tagged my posts impulsively, without much regard for selecting the best possible terms for search engine optimization. It’s been all folksonomy, all the time. For example, this post about the cat catching a big bug got tagged “cat, insect, locust, prey”. This post about a Dolph Lundgren masterpiece got tagged “bad movie, dolph lundgren, gnomedex, killer cds”.
Tags are supposed to provide SEO benefits. Have they? Let’s compare two ‘normal’ (meaning no traffic spikes) months with similar traffic numbers, one from before I started tagging and one after:
March, 2007:
56.07% of traffic comes from search engines
137 referrals from Technorati
July, 2007:
50.73% of traffic comes from search engines
82 referrals from Technorati
Huh, those seem to be going in the wrong direction. Thus far, tags seem to be having a negligible impact on my traffic levels. Maybe I’m implementing them wrong?
In any case, after the jump there’s a tag cloud of my 200 most commonly-used tags. It please me that ‘pants’ made the list.
Read more…
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August 22nd, 2007, 3 Comments »
A couple of months back, my friend Rob Lewis had an idea for a little Web project. Rob’s the new CEO of Techvibes, and has the enticing challenge of transforming it from a creaky, Web 1.0 social network to something compelling and relevant in 2007.
Rob saw this map of the web in Montreal, and figured we could do something similar in Vancouver. I decided to use Translink’s familiar zone map as a background, so I set to work painstakingly recreating it.
We planned to announce our little project at BarCamp, so we decided to produce the first map with Vancouver’s Web 2.0 companies. We partnered with the good folks at Bluelime Media to turn my map into a site, and I really dig the retro fridge theme they came up with.
You can check it out at Techcouver.com.
Some Pretty Vague Criteria
We did our best to identify as many appropriate local companies as we could. My criteria were pretty vague, frankly, but then, so is the term itself. If we missed your company, apologies. There’s a link on the site to get added to the map–just click the fortune cookie fortune (odd, but grammatically correct, I think). I know Rob’s already received a couple of requests.
All of the companies that we found are clustered around downtown, so you kind of lose the whole Translink zone map effect. It’s a pity, too, because it took me hours to trace from Bowen Island to the Fraser Valley. Ah well, a future map will no doubt feature companies in suburban business parks.
Subsequent maps might include mobility companies, medium and large tech companies and so forth. Eventually we might even create some slick Ajax interface which enables us to fit all the companies on one map. For now, though, they’re categorized.
Here’s an interesting tidbit: in doing this project, I discovered that you can open up and modify Translink’s incredibly detailed PDF maps in Adobe Illustrator. That wasn’t any use to me and my zone map, but it’s a top tip if you need to hack up a map of Vancouver.
3 Comments »
