The Toy

Warning: wildly NSFW.

This should make for some priceless moments at airport security lines.

Flickr Does Printing! Finally!

This is likely already old news, but i just noticed a message on my Flickr account indicating U.S. customers can now order prints of pictures, with more countries coming soon.

This really should help them further monetize their service.

Protecting Documents from Google Accelerator

In light of the heated controversy surrounding Google Web Accelerator I'm toying around with a way to produce "links" that would be immune to those technologies.

The main issue is that most user-agent implementations tie a user interface paradigm, an "anchor", to an HTTP method, "GET".

Through scripting, there are quite a few ways to make an anchor tag more immune to accelerators, and automated crawlers. javascript: url as href attribute value, "#" as href attribute value, and onclick attribute submitting a form, etc.

In an attempt to explore alternatives to scripting, I've started toying around with the "button" HTML element. So far, I've found that Mac MS IE 5 doesn't appear to support it. Everything else is looking reasonably happy.

Here's what i'm looking at so-far.

It seems to work in: Opera, Gecko, Safari, Treo650/Blazer, Windows IE
It does not seem to work in: Mac MSIE5, SideKick (thanks Kevin).

Issues/Thoughts:
- Can anyone try more handheld devices?
- One might add a wee scripting to set window.status.
- Removing various CSS directives from that example gets you closer to the original "button" construct, as rendered by default by the user agent. Good to play with.
- You no-longer benefit from a browser's "default way of rendering a link".
- I need to test this with images. - done: it works :)
- Notice what the browser does when your mouse is "down": it lowers the text. Not sure how to override the initial "position" with CSS.

See also:

JAH, by Kevin Marks.

Rocket Boom is 1 Year Old

Congrats! - Celebratory Madness :).

On TV Tonight - KABC-TV News Channel 7 @5pm

update: 5pm: I just found the story online

Back in August, KABC-TV, channel 7 of Southern California stopped-by the house to do a brief bit on blogging.

They called me this morning, telling me they're finally airing it *TODAY 10/18/2005*. Chances are i might show-up for a whole 5 seconds :)

They're saying it should air on News that come-on at ... around ... or after 5pm. I'm never home during that time, so i really don't have a way to tape it, watch it, or see how much of a fool i made of myself, which i guess, is a good thing. heh, heh.

If you're able to TiVo or VCR it, that'd be cool.

Call an Apple an Apple: By Ian Hickson

I recently stumbled upon this causticly insightful short piece by Ian Hickson.

I share many of his frustrations, while i've come to reluctantly embrace yet another onslaught of acronyms.

These days, the surest way to call attention to your work is to file it under "Ajax" and "Web 2.0".

While a very useful tool in our shed, the almighty XmlHttpRequest object isn't a panacea for building compelling applications. It's just a newer tool, which happens to have polarized certain developers' creativity, who in turn felt compelled to create a new buzzword that would give it a more central position.

Most buzzwords to-date have either focused on the wrong technology, or put too much emphasis on a particular technology.

Just to mess with the minds of the three people who read this blog, and see whether i can either start a trend or get flamed into oblivion, I'm hereby coining one ugly acronym:

SBIIC: Standards-Based Interactive Interface Components

"sbeeek". oh yeah baby. stop the presses on those Ajax books, we've got something hot here.

ajax

got my hair cut

got my hair cut
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

Damaka: Another SIP Player?

Damaka. No OS X Client! Pshah! In any case, the more players in the SIP field, the merrier!

.Mac Upgrade

I just received this from Apple:

Dear .Mac Member,.Mac membership now comes with 1 GB of combined .Mac Mail and iDisk storage. Because you purchased additional storage for this membership year, we've increased your total storage to 2 GB (and increased your monthly data transfer limit to 25 GB) for the duration of your current membership. This update has already taken place. You can use your Account Settings to take advantage of .Mac's storage flexibility and reallocate storage to best fit the way you use the service.In addition, .Mac is now available in French and German as well as in English and Japanese. You'll also find that .Mac now includes new Backup 3 software and the ability to create .Mac Groups.We value your membership and hope you enjoy these enhancements to your .Mac service.

\o/ :D

Treo 650 and Tiger

tribulations

Why Phone and Cable Companies are Evil

As Philly is getting close to finally ink a deal with private businesses to develop a city-wide WiFi network to help bridge the digital divide, the phone and cable companies lobby and scare machines are in full-force. Once again, "studies" are "emerging" advising against the project:

His firm's analysis, which was funded by cable and phone companies that stand to lose customers to the Wi-Fi initiative, shows that providing Internet access wirelessly over 100 square miles would cost $31 million over five years. [ Read the Article from mcall.com ]

Of course phone companies are just a little bit scared. I can't say they didn't have it coming. Once residents start realizing that they can pay $10-$20/month for Internet connectivity and perhaps another $20-$25/month to a company such as Vonage, Lingo.com ( my favorite so-far ), or even EarthLink for Internet-powered phone service, allowing them to make unlimited calls to anybody in the U.S., while preserving their current normal phone number, suddenly, paying phone companies $20/month just to have a phone line (no voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding, or any of the stuff you get for free from VoIP providers), an extra $10-$20/month in metered long-distance charges, and $50/month for basic broadband will no-longer make that much sense.

See also: Video Prodcasting, Broadband, and You

Place du Tertre

Place du Tertre
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

Om Malik is Mr. 5000

Mad congrats to Om Malik for finally reaching the 5000th posts mark. He manages to juggle a very busy day job contributing insightful columns to Business 2.0 Magazine, while bringing the tech community a constant flurry of scoops and ever thoughtful commentaries.

Speaking of Business 2.0 Magazine. I recently subscribed, received my first issue, and was very impressed by the quality of its content. Subscription right now is only $10 for the whole year. With that cheap a price, I was expecting the magazine to just be a collection of ads. But it isn't!

I've also recently subscribed to the quarterly Make magazine
I've heard good things about it, and their online journal posts are always interesting. And free! I haven't yet received my first issue, but will try to report back when I do get it.

(???)Millan_Familly.getNewKid()

It's a ... MILLAN!

Ernest and Josie are so cool. :D

Live From New Orleans

Jacob Appelbaum has made it to NOLA:

What’s the plan? The plan is to help the people who’ve been without aid, without help and without hope. [Read]

Hungry Squirrel, Yosemite, CA

Hungry Squirrel, Yosemite, CA
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

Winter Waves

Winter Waves
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

Meet Jack

Jack
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

the ripper.

Vote for Om Malik!

Om Malik says:

Okay vanity takes over - Business Week is having best of the web poll and I am against some heavy hitters in the tech-sites @ Work Category. I mean up against News.com, Slashdot, Digg, and O’Reilly Radar. Not even have a prayer, but hopefully all of you can at least help me put up a decent showing. Here is the link to cast your vote.

Verizon Fiber is Here

Verizon Fiber is Here
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

Daryll, who lives right up the street from me, is among the lucky first in my area to be eligible for Verizon FIOS. He had me plug his phone number on the VZ site, and this image shows you what they're offering.

Here's an interesting disclaimer from the fine print: "The Verizon Online version of MSN® Premium is not Macintosh® compatible".

This is pretty consistent with MSN's overall message to Mac Users: "Eat Sh*t and Die". That's because they don't know how to build applications.

Whatever. Who uses MSN anyway?

If you care about online services such as 8 email addresses, free online calling, web space, spam blocking, scam blocking, spyware blocking, ubiquitous address book synchronization all nicely packaged, on Mac and PC, 10 hours of free dial-up with dial-up accelerator (convenient when you're traveling), just buy the "EarthLink Experience" for $10/month. You'll get everything other members get. It's not advertised, but if you call'em up and ask for it, they'll know. I just switched my DSL account to it.

With the above VZ $35/month package, you're still only out $45/month.

I've seen the Verizon trucks install fiber on poles around my neighborhood, so I would expect we're not far behind.

Hotel de Ville

Hotel de Ville
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

Place de l'Hotel de Ville. Christmas. Paris, France.

AWLA 2005: Team Lesser Weevils is Recruiting

My good friend Oakley is recruiting members for her Aids Walk L.A. 2005 Team:

Team Lesser Weevils

I've known Oakley for about a decade. She was one of the first life-forms i got acquainted with when i first moved here. She's a fun chick who packs 10 times more energy by herself than an entire Trojan Cheerleading Squad. Taz meets Pinky, if you will.

Here's to pain!

Tag: AWLA
Tag: AWLA 2005
Tag: Aids Walk

hermosa beach sunset

hermosa beach sunset
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

PeopleFinder Interchange Format: PFIF 1.1

PeopleFinder Interchange Format: PFIF 1.1

If you have structured information of katrina hurricane survivors, please take a look at the above specification.

Tag: missing
Tag: Katrina
Tag: Katrina Survivors

Coordinating Katrina Survivor Information

We've joined a team of developers and an army of volunteers to help organize and consolidate information related to hurricane survivors. David Geilhufe sent out this very useful e-mail outlining the various efforts in progress, asking to pass-on the information. So I'm doing just that. Feel free to copy/paste what's below and e-mail it to as many people as you can. update 9/12: duh, i just realized i had messed-up the links. sorry about that. fixed.

PLEASE FORWARD. Thank you.

Refugees can search 20 web sites for lost relatives and still miss their entry on the 21st web site. There is a need to combine all the refugee data from big databases like Red Cross, large posting forums like Craigslist and many other sources on the web. The Katrina PeopleFinder Project seeks to create a single repository combining as many sources of refugee data as possible from all over the web without interrupting existing momentum.

We need help for both regular people and software engineers. Everybody is critical to building a central repository of ALL the refugee records we can find on the web. The Social Source Foundation, CivicSpace Labs and Salesforce.com Foundation are coordinating hundreds of people and organizations, including Craigslist and Earthlink.

Please consider giving us just an hour of you your time to do volunteer data entry. The PeopleFinder Project is seeking volunteers in four primary areas:

(1) Creating a technology specification for easily exchanging refugee information. A volunteer effort is working to assist online databases in implementing the specification.
Volunteer here (techies): http://www.omidyar.net/group/katrinarefugee/news/1/

(2) Coordinating volunteers that are writing software that takes information from online databases and putting it into a central database provided by Salesforce.com Foundation.
Volunteer here (software engineers): http://www.omidyar.net/group/katrinarefugee/news/2/

(3) Organizing a massively parallel volunteer data entry project to enter refugee data posted to online bullitin boards into a central database by hand.
Volunteer here (regular people): http://www.omidyar.net/group/katrinarefugee/news/0/

(4) Market the Katrina PeopleFinder Project and recruit volunteers.
Volunteer here (marketing folks): http://www.omidyar.net/group/katrinarefugee/news/3/

Josh and Scott updated katrina.earthlink.net today with key building blocks for interoperability with the other sites, testing is still underway.

Additionally, I'm trying to get my hands on a Google Search Appliance, which I want to point at some or all of the Survivor Search Sites and Forums listed here. But those are typically hard to come-by.

There's a lot of very valuable unstructured information in many ad-hoc forums put-up by industrious developers. Volunteers are already working around the clock to get the information in a structured database (see above). Having a search appliance should add a very effective fall-back/catch-up layer: One "free-form" search box, with access to both structured and unstructured data.

Tag: missing
Tag: Katrina
Tag: Katrina Survivors

New Orleans Mayor Interview

And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun. [Read]

Another Interview Transcript of Mayor Nagin.

Hurricane Survivor Search Site

A few engineers here at EarthLink have gathered into a task force to quickly deploy a website, enabling disaster survivors to inform the world of their whereabouts and for their friends and relatives to find them in our database. We're also actively seeking and linking to other sites undertaking a similar effort to maximize chances for people to find one-another. The website can be found here: http://hurricane.earthlink.net/


Tag: missing
Tag: Katrina
Tag: Katrina Survivors

Katrina: Survivor and Relatives Search Sites

I'm gathering this list for a project at work. update: 09/02/2005 0:05:00 AM: it's live:

Katrina Survivor Search Site

Craigslist
NOLA.com
SurvivorRegistry.com
Patrick Connors
KatrinaHelp.info Missing/Found (via BoingBoing)
CNN Safe List

More sites listed at:
Katrina Covered at Wikipedia

If you know of more sites, or run a site of your own, by all means, list it in comments.

Tag: missing
Tag: Katrina
Tag: Katrina Survivors

After the Deluge / by Rick Wilking/Reuters

After the deluge
Originally uploaded by Newsblogpicture.

Photograph by Rick Wilking/Reuters. Some amazing Katrina Hurricane Pictures are showing-up on Flickr. It must be horrible :(

Announcing Google Purge

"Book burning is just the beginning," said Google co-founder Larry Page. "This fall, we'll unveil Google Sound, which will record and index all the noise on Earth. [Read the Scoop]

I knew it!@!. Those Google Guys. So hot right now.