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Topics - KenR [ switch to compact view ]

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126
Living Room / The limits of attention
« on: March 05, 2007, 03:49 PM »
Here's an interesting article that discusses the impact of increasing amounts of information on attention.

It is no secret that we live in an information overload age. The explosion of new types of information online is a double-edged sword. We both enjoy and drown in news, blogs, podcasts, photos, videos and cool MySpace pages. And the problem is only going to get worse, as more and more people discover the new web. Consider the two charts below, illustrating the growth of the Blogosphere at large...


127
Developer's Corner / Browning's 20 top tips for surviving life in the workplace
« on: March 05, 2007, 03:28 PM »
If only I'd known while I was still part of the corporate world...

1 Never offer to make coffee
In an open plan office there is a ritual where everyone waits hours for the first person to say: "Who wants a coffee?" That person then finds themselves in the kitchen for the rest of the day working as a junior catering manager. Also remember that nobody ever gets to the top of an organisation by drinking stinky teas. No one wants to have a serious meeting in a room that smells of peppermint/rhubarb/aloe vera.
2 Ignore all emails
Working in the post room is not generally a career choice for most people. Yet with the epidemic of email most people spend half their working lives slaving away in their own personal computer post room...


128
Developer's Corner / Wordpress 2.1.1 - Dangerous, Upgrade Immediately
« on: March 05, 2007, 03:22 PM »
If you updated your software recently, do so again as a security exploit was added recently by a cracker.

...This morning we received a note to our security mailing address about unusual and highly exploitable code in WordPress. The issue was investigated, and it appeared that the 2.1.1 download had been modified from its original code. We took the website down immediately to investigate what happened.
It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file. We have locked down that server for further forensics, but at this time it appears that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched by the attack. They modified two files in WP to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution...


129
General Software Discussion / I Bought Votes on Digg
« on: March 05, 2007, 03:10 PM »
Interesting story about a person manipulating the popularity of an article on Digg. You can also see a related article at: http://www.wired.com...e/15.03/herding.html.

...A new story about a blog dedicated to showing photographs of crowds had just gotten enough diggs to make the "popular" list on the tech/design page, and several people were commenting on it.
"How the hell did this get to the front page?" Pawperso wondered.
I can tell you exactly how a pointless blog full of poorly written, incoherent commentary made it to the front page on Digg. I paid people to do it. What's more, my bought votes lured honest Diggers to vote for it too. All told, I wound up with a "popular" story that earned 124 diggs -- more than half of them unpaid. I also had 29 (unpaid) comments, 12 of which were positive...


130
Living Room / Schmap: Dynamic Travel Guides
« on: March 02, 2007, 09:14 AM »
Use this freeware app to select a spot and then "dynamically" explore it

The Schmap Player is a small and easy-to-use piece of freeware. Install it on your Windows PC, select from our growing range of  interactive  Schmap Guides  and then...   get Schmapping!
-Dynamically explore a city, island or region
-Play virtual tours of recommended hot spots
-Find restaurants, bars etc. to suit your taste
-Bookmark as you browse to plan your trip
-Custom print your own destination guides
-Enjoy many more unique...


131
Developer's Corner / Stratagus: A real-time strategy engine
« on: March 02, 2007, 09:07 AM »
Use this open source engine to build your own realtime online strategy games.

Stratagus is a free cross-platform real-time strategy gaming engine. It includes support for playing over the internet/LAN, or playing a computer opponent. The engine is configurable and can be used to create games with a wide-range of features specific to your needs. See the Games page for a list of current games using the Stratagus engine.


from http://www.all4you.dk/FreewareWorld

132
General Software Discussion / IRCLink: Relays information between channels/networks
« on: March 02, 2007, 09:00 AM »
This bot will connect to multiple networks and relay information between channels

About IRCLink
IRCLink is an IRC bot which connects to multiple networks and acts as a relay between channels on those networks.
Originally released as closed-source freeware, I have recently made the decision to reprogram it and re-release it as Open Source under the GPL License, I am hoping this will fill the full potential which IRCLink has.


from http://www.all4you.dk/FreewareWorld

133
General Software Discussion / LanguageIdentifier.com: Does just what you'd expect (probably)
« on: March 02, 2007, 08:45 AM »
This is a free service that tells you the language of a website.

Have you ever come across documents or websites and not known what language it is written in? The Lextek Language Identifier is capable of identifying not only what language it is written in but also its character encoding and what other languages are most similar. This will alleviate your wondering of what languages you are working with or looking at...


from http://www.freedownloadaday.com/

134
General Software Discussion / Tools to enable vitual teams to connect and collaborate
« on: March 02, 2007, 08:30 AM »
Interesting article on online office collaboration tools that allow virtual teams to work together despite being physically separated

It's 2007 and no longer do startup employees, or even those of medium-size and large companies, need to be located in the same place. Instead, more and more companies are going virtual. The answer to long commutes, inner city traffic, tapping into creative minds in other geographies and combating global warming is: a 'work from home' policy.
But in order for working from home to be effective, certain things need to be in place. The most critical is technology - a set of tools, along with the infrastructure, that can replace the traditional office...


135
General Software Discussion / Vista: Download Disaster?
« on: March 02, 2007, 02:08 AM »
A reportedly, increasingly common tale of the not-so-smooth switch over to Vista.

In the world of operating systems, Microsoft Windows Vista is just a baby. It's just now toddling along on new systems being sold throughout the U.S. And, like a small child being dropped by the stork to new parents, it's available to older desktop PCs via Microsoft's download-to-buy program.
Giving early adopters such easy, unfettered access to the somewhat untested OS was a bold move by Microsoft. The company had to know that people like those who work at PC Magazine would be among the first to test-drive this new installation option.


from http://www.osnews.com

136
Living Room / Extensive Description of Windows Services
« on: February 26, 2007, 01:49 PM »
While I have seen other descriptive information about the Windows services, none of the other presentations were nearly as comprehensive.

What are services? By definition, it's a program that runs invisibly in the background. But can't the same thing be said for a number of programs that run in the background such as anti-virus programs? Yes, but the real difference is that services load and start running whether or not anyone logs into the computer, unlike a program that is launched from the Startup Folder under All Programs.
There are two ways to view Services on your computer. The first is to use the MS Configuration Utility by typing msconfig.exe in the Run box accessed via the Start Menu, followed by clicking the Services tab. If you want a quick visual of which items are running or stopped, this is fine, but the information is limited. The preferred way to make changes to services is to launch services.msc from the Run option on the Start Menu. The Services window shown below will open.


from www.download.com

137
Living Room / Blog Essay: You Want a 10,000 RPM Boot Drive
« on: February 25, 2007, 12:32 PM »
Here's a fun essay to lighten your day.

You Want a 10,000 RPM Boot Drive
I don't go out of my way to recommend building your own computer. I do it, but I'm an OCD-addled, pain-loving masochist. You're usually better off buying whatever cut-rate OEM box Dell is hawking at the moment, particularly now that Intel has finally abandoned the awful Pentium 4 CPU series and is back in the saddle with its excellent Core Duo processor. PC parts are so good these days it's difficult to make a bad choice, no matter what you buy.
If you really must build your own computer, sites like Tech Report provide excellent advice in the form of their system guides. However, their guide sets the bar a little too low for my tastes. There are a few baseline requirements for any new computer build that aren't negotiable for me:
    * current dual core chip, such as the Core Duo 2 or Athlon 64 X2
    * minimum of 2 GB of memory
    * modern PCI express video card with 256mb or more of memory, such as the NVIDIA 7600GS, or the ATI Radeon X1650. Both of these cards can be found for about $100. Whatever you do, avoid on-board video, because it's universally crappy. The rule of thumb I use is this: if you're spending significantly less than $100 on your video card, you're making a terrible mistake...


138
General Software Discussion / Vista Start Menu Search gets more FARRified
« on: February 25, 2007, 12:11 PM »
Since FARR is probably the most important program in the world, this is likely the most significant improvement to Windows that's ever been made. :)

...you can assign both keyword searches that open in your default web browser, or you can have it open a program/file. The only catch is that right now there is no “Browse” command to browse for the program or file that you want to open. I also noticed that it doesn’t support spaces in the file path even if you put quotes around it, and looking through the comments I see that someone else was having a similar problem...


139
General Software Discussion / Empty Folder Nuker: A freeware program that will find and delete empty folders
« on: February 25, 2007, 11:46 AM »
Great easy tool to use. Have it find the empty folders from the base folder you specify and then have it delete them.

# Finds folders that contain only empty subfolders too
# Allows you to choose which empty folders to delete
# Uses the Recycle Bin where applicable
# Shell integration: right click on any folder in Windows Explorer and find empty folders within it
# No setup.exe: allows simple XCOPY-style deployment...


from http://www.all4you.dk/FreewareWorld

140
General Software Discussion / Documeron on Freeware Genius: A great free program and website!
« on: February 25, 2007, 11:32 AM »
Here's a website that reviews very nice software. The program that's listed, Documeron, is a free, sophisticated "My Recent Documents" type program. I would recommend looking at this program and taking a look at the other software on the site.

Documeron is a small memory-resident program that keeps track of all the files and documents you access at any time in order to enable you to find and/or locate these later on. It provides a number of functions such as filtering by date and type and tracking of deleted or moved documents....


from www.freewaregenius.com

141
Living Room / Hewitt: Adventure, flash game
« on: February 25, 2007, 10:55 AM »
Here is a long, good, flash adventure game.

... After having a foretelling dream of loneliness, Hewitt decides he needs to get his act together and find a gal to take to the school dance. Hewitt’s not exactly the popular type though, so he's going to need as much help as you can give him. Personally, if I had to go through as much trouble as Hewitt to find a date to the dance I’d probably think twice, but that’s just me. Use the arrow keys or [WASD] to move Hewitt around and the mouse to interact with the environment. You can examine, use, and combine the items in your inventory, but from there it’s all up to you to figure out just what you need to do...


from www.Jayisgames.com

142
Developer's Corner / Software Development Team Issues
« on: February 21, 2007, 08:45 AM »
Here are some nice blog essays on small software team management. See if you agree with them.

Building a software team: Wrong! There I said it!
The development team that I managed the longest -- the one with the Gumby -- was a typical bunch: a group of people with varying strengths, interests and personalities. In different combinations they mostly liked, sometimes loved and occasionally hated each other. And after a couple of reasonably successful projects, I led them off a cliff.
I committed them to a schedule they could not keep, based on a technology that did not work. I made the call and it was wrong.


143
Living Room / Online Dictionary that visually shows relationships among words.
« on: February 21, 2007, 07:18 AM »
Here's a very cool graphical dictionary which shows word relationships in a node-link type chart.

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node.

    * Its a dictionary! Its a thesaurus!...


from alex3f

144
General Software Discussion / ZoneScreen: Expand your desktop on the network
« on: February 20, 2007, 11:22 AM »
Here's an interesting program that allows you to expand your desktop on networked machines.

Solution for extending your desktop display using displays of another computers (including Pocket PC), having network connection with main host. In some features it is similar to NetMeeting, Remote Desktop and VNC, allowing mirroring local desktop to another computer in the network. The main difference is that it also allows extend desktop, not only mirror it. Also, you could use ZoneScreen for Windows Mobile to extend/mirror your desktop to screen of your handheld.
All you need for ZoneScreen to work is...


145
Living Room / Google Releases Paper on Disk Reliability
« on: February 19, 2007, 08:01 PM »
Troubling news about the effectiveness of SMART

Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported...


146
Developer's Corner / Alternatives to Charging for Online Commerce
« on: February 19, 2007, 07:54 AM »
The authors discuss how encryption can be used instead of charging fees

Transaction fees for micropayments threaten the booming online and mobile economy. Changing how the e-commerce industry imposes online transaction fees can provide a quick fix to the micropayment problem—which occurs when processing fees on such widely purchased small items as iTunes and parking exceed the merchant's margins. However, that simple business approach will provide only a stopgap measure at best because it fails to address the fact that each transaction carries fixed costs.
Implementing applied-cryptography approaches is decidedly more difficult, but it provides a far superior long-term solution. The approaches range from aggregating payments and using tamper-resistant devices to delegating policy decisions and letting users generate payment tokens...


147
Living Room / Thoughts on why Digg failed
« on: February 16, 2007, 08:45 PM »
David Marcus thinks he knows why Digg failed. Do you agree with him. On the other hand, I'm just going to give him the benefit of the doubt since I didn't know it had failed. :P

As I write, the top story on Digg is "Transparency in Social News", a newspaper-as-blog item that the Digg community have used as a little self-congratulatory pat on the back. I understand why Digg's users feel like they deserve to toast themselves now and then -- after all, they've made the place one of the Web's Top 100 sites, and they've made Digg, Inc. upwards of $200 million.


148
Living Room / How Google Killed Search
« on: February 16, 2007, 01:54 PM »
This page has some very insightfull comments and suggestions on how to fix "the mess that google has created".

It's official. It is now completely impossible to find things on the web using a search engine. Try this out. Go to Google and see if you can find a cheap hotel in new york
What comes up? Any hotels? Not really. Just page after page of spammy affiliate sites that promise to find you great deals, but will really just send you off to other affiliate sites. Click along and you'll fall down this black hole of non-content and Google Ads with no hope of ever finding a real website where you can book a cheap hotel in New York.
I blame this phenomenon on Google's Pagerank algorithm and its reliance on link counts. The quickest way to get to the top of the rankings is to produce tons of empty pages all across the web, all linking back to your thing.


149
Developer's Corner / Yehuda: Winning is Incompatible with (Almost) Everything
« on: February 16, 2007, 12:44 PM »
This is an interesting article about the meaning and implications of winning.

To summarize some of my earlier thoughts, most games have scores which indicate relative success to other players, as well as relative success to our own previous scores. Yet, at the end of most games, we discard these scores and simply assign a "1" (for win) or a "0" (for loss) to all participants.
Or More Specifically
My goal is to separate "winning" from "goals" and "competition". Consider a game of Chess.
In the game of Chess, the goal is to checkmate your opponent. The game is competitive, in that one player works to thwart the other from doing so. The game is designed to end as soon as one player achieves their goal, thus preventing the other player from achieving theirs.


150
Developer's Corner / The Open Company Test
« on: February 15, 2007, 12:05 PM »
A brief essay on the type of "openness" in a software product.



After writing that last post damning Apple's lack of transparency, I thought it might be a good idea to actually come of with a list of questions with which we might identify an open software company. I don't think it's necessary that a company meet all of these criteria, but the more the better.
   1. Open Sourcecode: Do you have access to the sourcecode? True open source is great, but simple access to the source code, even if it's not under an open source license, is often enough.
   2. Open Data: Can you easily get your data into or out of the application, should the need arise?
   3. Open APIs: Can your other software interact with the application? The best applications provide different means of access: GUI, command-line, RSS, SOAP or REST, for example...


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