Jon in Seattle

We all know the woman behind the Eliot Spitzer scandal today, Ashley Alexandra Dupré.  But how she was discovered isn’t as widely known.  After she left the federal court house in New York to sign a deposition against Emperor’s Club VIP, her anonymous face was shown walking out of the court house.  Video circulated.  Friends of friends recognized her, started blogging, and suddenly links to her MySpace page are spreading through IMs and Twitter.  The Smoking Gun published her MySpace profile and link at 2pm on Wednesday.

But how does traditional media write a story about a web site?  The first traditional media article was published by the New York Times at 4pm.  Both it and the Associated Press article that followed were 50% quotes from her MySpace page.  (Articles have since been updated to be less obvious rip-offs.)  NBC’s Today show brought on two "friends" of her’s, which seemed barely to be acquaintances during the interview, and proceeded to use them as an audio backdrop while filling the screen with scrolling shots from her MySpace pictures and her blog posts.

Few press outlets simply told people the link to the MySpace page.  Many articles didn’t even identify that the primary source is MySpace — solely MySpace, in fact.  And the New York Times gave no credit to the Internet for uncovering Ashley’s identity, and every other press outlet graciously credited the New York Times for breaking the story — not The Smoking Gun, not the people writing small blogs about where additional photos were found.

To me, it’s almost as if traditional media is scared.  What value do they provide if I can hop on my computer and see for myself?  They don’t want me going to the primary source, they want me to keep going to them — but it won’t work forever.  This time I knew before traditional media reported it, and I liked it.

After reading Robert Scoble’s post, "How is the Web screwed up?," I’ve been thinking more about how my data spreads throughout the Internet.  He complains that "there are too many silos that don’t know about each other," but I find that many of the applications I’m using are quite open to aggregation by other services.  Here is how all the services I’m using are playing together as of today:

The problem I have is that the points where my data finally comes together — mostly FriendFeed and Facebook’s News Feed — aren’t where I need the data, or where I want people to view it.  I don’t want people to view "me" through Facebook, I want them to view me through my web site.  I can’t use my picture viewer of choice through Facebook’s photos application.

Plus, right now all data is glommed together.  My ideas about tech are merged with photographs of my friends on vacation, and as we get to Facebook, merged again with spam about friends of friends playing Scrabulous.  I would actually like a data flow for my social activities, like photos, Yelp reviews, and Upcoming events to be viewed in one place, with some access restrictions, my blog posts about home improvements someplace else, and my tech ideas yet another place.

Once I have all this data organized by purpose, I want to pull together all my friends photos of their parties and vacations and open them in a slide show viewer or Photoshop.

The good news is that FriendFeed now has more data from more places than Facebook.  It has the beginnings of what can make the world of consumption applications possible.  But until I can start building applications on top of FriendFeed, Facebook news feeds, or emerging competitors, we have a ways to go.

Sites like FriendFeed, Google Reader, Tumblr, and Facebook’s News Feed are defining a new type of web applications: aggregators.  They primarily pull together data from lots of different sites, allowing you to view them together without hopping all over the Internet.  In my previous post, I mentioned how there’s actually three types of web applications emerging: Creation apps, aggregators, and consumption apps.  What is a consumption application?

Imagine that instead of viewing your Facebook news feed in a terse, textual list, with images reduced in size, you could view pictures from all your friends, whether they’re on Facebook, MySpace, or Picasa, in a single application designed for viewing photographs.  Imagine if people could visit your personal web site and see what you’re up to from across the web, with a personal style specific to your site.  These are consumption applications: applications that take data already pulled from across the web, letting you use it in new ways.

Sites like Google Video are starting to show how aggregated content from across the web can be displayed in a single application.  The most blogged about videos and the recommended videos are not just from Google Video and YouTube, but from MySpace and AOL Video too.  Remember: Google Video started as a stand-alone site with only it’s own videos.

Truly useful, truly social consumption applications haven’t been possible until recently, though.  The data social networks are collecting and the social graphs they are growing are inaccessible to other applications.  And without their social graphs, it’s very time consuming for a user to configure aggregation himself.  But the new openness I’m hoping to see from FriendFeed, Tumblr, and Google OpenSocial as aggregators will make consumption applications possible.  They will define social graphs based on people and their ownership of third-party data, breaking our dependence on social networks themselves.

So now that we know what a consumption application is, it’s time for us to start building them.

The web is changing.  No longer will users use one site for their photos, another for reading and writing blogs, and another for networking with friends.  Instead, sites are beginning to specialize in either the creation, aggregation or the consumption aspect of content.  An early example an aggregation and consumption application is Google Reader, and RSS readers in general, where instead of going to Blogger, LiveJournal, or individual blog sites, people could just read them all in one place.

The next step was Facebook’s idea of aggregating all your friends activities, Facebook Posted Items, photographs, and status updates and displaying them mixed together as a diary of what your friends are doing. 

Today, FriendFeed and Tumblr are going even further.  FriendFeed, in particular, pulls together the content created by you and your friends throughout the web to to create for you your "News feed for the entire web."  In one place, suddenly I can see all my friend’s Twitter updates, their Yelp reviews, blog posts they’ve written or favorited, vacation photos they’ve uploaded to Picasa or SmugMug — all best of breed applications, not applications that happen to be embedded in Facebook.  And my friends can see what I’m up to just by visiting my FriendFeed page.

But this, as with anything, is not yet the perfect experience.  I don’t want people to view "me" through the inflexible FriendFeed status feed.  I want to style it, I want people to view it on my web site, and I want to chop it up into "here are my photos" vs. "here are my restaurant reviews," with different experiences for both.  FriendFeed, or the next competitor (Google Reader? Tumblr?), needs to open up.  Give us an API.  Let me make my web page my friend’s portal into my online life.  Just like Facebook can’t possibly have the best app for every media type, FriendFeed can’t possibly display the data it’s collected the best for every user.

But why should FriendFeed open up?

Here’s where FriendFeed should take a page from FeedBurner.  FeedBurner lets people wrap their RSS feeds, from their blog, Picasa, etc., and clean them up while injecting contextually relevant ads into them.  The ad revenues get split between the user and FeedBurner.  If FriendFeed created an API for me to retrieve my data, I’d gladly also query their API for ads I should display on my web site.  I’d display them because they can be more relevant than Google ads for an entire page, since FriendFeed knows exactly what’s the content and what’s fluff. 

Ads could be specifically targeted at a specific event in my feed.  Say I went to Hawaii and FriendFeed pulled in my pictures through Picasa.  I’d sure put an ad for Hawaii vacations on my site, right below my Picasa pictures, if I’m paid $1 a click.

So, in my view of the web’s future, there are three kinds of web applications: 1) Creation apps, where I write my blog, set my Twitter status, upload pictures. 2) Aggregation apps, like FriendFeed, that pull together data from throughout the web for consumption elsewhere.  And 3) Consumption apps, where I actually read and annotate what’s been found for me.  Today most apps are still trying to be all three, and there are few (if any) apps dedicated only to the display of data for consumption.  FriendFeed is in a powerful position to own the aggregation layer, if they open up, but who will identify and own the consumption layer?

This week at a European tech conference, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer made a reference to a watch that would push advertising to you based on where you are and the time of day.

“Once that ecosystem is in place, Microsoft thinks it will be able to target consumers anywhere, anytime with advertising. Ballmer said he went for a jog in Paris the morning of the conference and wondered why it was not possible for a message to be piped to his watch that would say ‘Bonjour, have you bought breakfast yet?’ and then suggest where he could go.”

My ex-Microsoft friends and coworkers love to talk about Bill Gates’ and Ballmer’s irrational love for watch-based mobile devices.  Even after the abysmal failure of the Microsoft SPOT watch, their love continues.  But could this be Microsoft’s vision for SPOT Watch 2.0? Instead of a $9.95/monthly fee, people will get advertisements pushed to them a couple times a day.  I’ve heard rumors from inside the company that the SPOT watch team still exists and is working on
something — and Ballmer’s announcement (or testing of the waters, as the case may be) confirms it for me.

But a SPOT Watch 2.0 is a bad idea.

Why?  The amount of information I can physically intake and divulge using a watch is minimal.  I can only use one hand. The screen has to be small in order for the watch to look presentable.  And having advertisements tacky! — watches are status symbols and style definitions.  Meanwhile, the mobile phone is better in all measures.  It can be interacted with using two hands, has much better network transfer speeds than SPOT watches, and is something I need to carry around anyway. So it’s nonsensical that consumers would use a SPOT watch, even if it’s for free, since alternatives are already more effective and stylish and do not force advertising.

What advantages does Ballmer see for consumers in having an advertising delivery watch?

This week I compiled a list of some of the more popular social networking sites and their distinguishing features. Currently MySpace has the highest market share, but other sites quickly carving out niches and stealing market share with cleaner interfaces and unique features. Here is the list, sorted by market share according to the March 2007 Comscore Social Networking total unique visitors numbers. Continue Reading »

This afternoon I was setting up an Apache/MySQL/PHP system on my laptop, and I kept getting this error message:

httpd: Syntax error on line 115 of C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf: Cannot load C:/php/sapi/php4apache2.dll into server: The specified module could not be found.

I followed every step in the PHP installation manual, and searched Google for twenty minutes before I found this useful post explaining that PHP4 Apache2 modules do not work with Apache 2.2 — only with Apache 2.0! Unfortunately I can’t find php4apache2_2.dll anywhere on php.net, but there’s a couple places to download it elsewhere on the web, including from this site.

Following news that the Microsoft Zune market share has yet to exceed 2.5%, a spokesman for the Microsoft public relations agency declared that a new polyethylene box for discarding broken iPods must be management’s latest “morale booster” while the team ignores the product’s failure. Also of interest, “In light of the highly anticipated release of the ‘Halo 3′ Xbox game later this year, Microsoft unveiled a limited edition, ‘Halo’-themed Zune.” The Halo 3-theme will also help remind owners that when they share songs wirelessly with the Zune, they can only listen to them 3 times.

Kristen Nicole on Mashable wrote, “Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg is promoting the social site’s news feed function as the world’s biggest source of published information. With people constantly uploading information about themselves, and with their Facebook activity being automatically dispersed to friends and acquaintances, Zuckerberg says in a Wall Street Journal interview this morning that over 300 million “stories” a day are being posted throughout Facebook.” Interestingly, this blog post will syndicate over to Facebook and become one of those 300 million stories . Continue Reading »

The past two weekends I’ve been installing new doors in the hallway (master bedroom so far) and drywalling everything I’ve been creating. Here’s pictures. It’s pretty boring straight-forward work. But one thing I noticed that the bedroom door was an inch out of center on the hallway!! So I reconfigured the studs to center. Interesting part: the hallway’s walls aren’t straight up-and-down, they’re about an inch out of level. It’ll be interesting to see if the slight angle is noticable once everything’s painted and the trim is put on. But the new door is amazing, it sounds beautiful when you close it (very sturdy), and it cuts out traffic noise when it’s closed!

A lot of progress has been made on my bathroom in the past two months, and most of it has failed to reach my blog until now . Here’s pictures. The latest progress includes completing the concrete subfloor in January, installing drywall on the ceiling in the closet, and installing a pocket door on the bathroom and a solid oak door on the closet. Ongoing work is the drywall around the closet exterior, the bathroom exhaust fan (duct work completed), and getting a plumber to call me back! I also have to decide on cabinets for the sink area and a vanity sconce. So much to do!!

According to Lou Dobbs’ recent CNN article, “The war within, killing ourselves”, “nearly 8,000 people are trying drugs for the first time every day.”  I find this hard to believe, solely for the fact that Monday doesn’t seem like a day that most people would start using drugs.  It seems like Friday and Saturday would probably be the most popular days.  So, how did Dobbs come up with this assumption anyway?  Based on his follow-up sentence, “that’s about 3 million a year,” you can see that if the US has X drug users, and they die or stop using drugs at a certain rate, then an average of 8,000 people start per day.  But that’s not nearly 8,000 people every day!!

Here’s a simple example of using Javascript to insert a dynamically created HTML node before an existing node. The example adds one hundred nodes to a document, numbered zero to 99. Each node is placed before the previously placed node, resulting in a page that counts from 99 down to 0.

View Example - Code

There are many inconsequential moments I remember from my five years working at Adobe, but today one popped into my head that continues to confound me.  Adobe, like any company really, has a company policy that employee must wear their badge when they’re in the office.  As a good new employee just six months into my employment, I followed this policy to the T.  However, one day my sliding string badge holder broke.  The string frayed and scrolled up into the winding area.  I went down to the Service Center to get a new badge holder, and the people there wanted me to pay $5 for a new one!!  I’m sure Adobe doesn’t pay anywhere near $5 for a badge holder.  What are they doing minorly profiting off of the badge policy?  It didn’t make sense to me, so I just put my badge in my pocket.  And that’s where I kept it for the next four years.

Today my big project was to redo the subfloor in my bathroom, which I previously mentioned was rotted out. In order to put in the new subfloor, I also had to finish doing the drainage plumbing. I moved the toilet 5″ to the left and installed a tiled shower floor drain centered on the 32″ wide shower that I’ll build. It’s about 9″ out from the wall. Then I put down two layers of 3/4″ plywood, which provides a pretty firm floor on which to put concrete and tile. Here’s pictures of the plumbing installation and new subfloor.

My next project is to setup the frame for the tiled shower with 2×4s, and then concrete the new subfloors. After that I’ll put down PVC sheeting to prevent future water damage, which will chemically seal to the shower drain system. I’m also thinking about putting some cool platforms in the shower for sitting and putting shampoo bottles.

This week Quality Home Exteriors came to install a vinyl replacement window in my kitchen.  It’s a garden window, probably around 4′ wide by 3′ high.  The existing aluminum window’s seals had failed, causing the glass to be cloudy and the view to be basically unnoticable from the kitchen.  In addition, the basin of the window was cheap particleboard, causing highway noise from outside to come into the living area.  While the existing window was 12″ deep, the new one’s 14″, so it sticks out of the house a little funny.  My sales person actually said they’d replace it with a 12″ window, but that’s not what they delivered!  Oh well, it’s nice enough, and the side windows would be oddly skinny considering the frame size of vinyl windows.  Here’s the before and after pictures.

This weekend I removed the existing tub from my master bathroom in order to install a new shower basin. Removing the tub was a major hassle because the tub drain was glued in with plastic cement, probably improperly, so it couldn’t simply be screwed out to disconnect the plumbing. Instead I managed to lift the tub by 3″ and saw out the black ABS piping underneath with a PVC saw. As you can see from the pictures, once the tub was removed, lots of mold was apparent and the subfloor was rotted out from water spilling over the side of the tub. It was seriously rotted — the back-end of a hammer went right through the 3/4″ plywood. I used my new reciprocating saw to saw out all the water damage, and I removed the moldy drywall.

In the coming week I plan to redo the plumbing to bring the toilet 4″ to the left and bring the shower basin drain line out 5″ to meet the drain of my new Swanstone 60″x32″ shower basin. Then I’m going to put two sheets of new 3/4″ plywood over the sawed out subfloor, which will match up to the existing concrete floor. This time I’m going to tar the subfloor so more water damage doesn’t happen in the future! I’m not looking forward to fixing the second bathroom.

I just found out on Slashdot that Microsoft Windows Live Search seems to be filtering out Google’s presence from its search results. If you search for “Microsoft” on Live Search, “Microsoft” on Google, or “Google” on Google, you always get over 39,000,000 results. But if you search for “Google” on Live Search, Microsoft only returns 749 results!! Is Microsoft filtering out Google web sites? News stories about Google? Blogs talking about Google?

What else is Microsoft filtering from its search results? OpenOffice, Firefox and Linux stories?

I received Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium in the mail today.  I’m very excited about it because I’ve been doing basic image editing at Google using GIMP and basic color correction tasks take absolutely forever.  Even once I learned GIMP’s counter-intuitive menus, the basic steps simply take longer to complete than using Photoshop.  But the installation process wasn’t as braindead simple as it should have been. Continue Reading »