December 19, 2005
The Powerbook I Want
I've been talking to a few friends recently about the imminent launch of Apple's Intel CPU base Powerbooks and realized there's a good chance I'd want to switch back.
What would it take for the new Powerbooks to win me over (again)? Three things:
- A version of Virtual PC (or something like it) that allows me to run Windows apps a nearly native speed. This was a major reason that I left the Powerbook. I have Windows apps that I absolutely need to run with reasonable performance (think small scale 2D and 3D real-time animation rendering). And with a real Intel CPU under the hood, why shouldn't that be possible?
- The exceedingly long battery life that Powerbooks have been known for. That means at least 4+ hours of light to moderate work.
- A screen with resolution that's on par with modern laptops from other vendors. That means 1400x1050 or better on a roughly 15" display.
That's really it. Everything else about the existing Powerbooks and OS X are a-okay in my book. I already know that the new powerbooks will be dramatically faster than the current crop of Morotola based machines, and that was my only other major beef (I think).
What would you need to switch to a Powerbook?
Podcasts from The Long Now Foundation
One of the many good things that The Long Now Fondation does is organize a series of free seminars (email list) in the San Fracisco area. I've wanted to attend many of them but have been unable due to scheduling conflicts most of the time. Luckily they're making audio archives of their talks available on-line.
All of our seminars are recorded and archived. This page supplies links to the media associated with each speech (mostly audio). Note that both Vorbis and MP3 files contain the same content, so only one or the other is necessary for download.
If you haven't heard about The Long Now or the 10,000 year clock they're building, here are a few tidbits:
The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.
The term was coined by one of our founding board members, Brian Eno. When Brian first moved to New York City and found that in New York here and now meant this room and this five minutes, as opposed to the larger here and longer now that he was used to in England. We have since adopted the term as the title of our foundation as we are trying to stretch out what people consider as now.
Good listening.
December 18, 2005
Responding to Konfabulator and Yahoo Critics
One of the things I really didn't notice in the craziness of last week is the negative sentiment expressed by some bloggers and technology journalists about the new release and re-branding of Konfabulator as Yahoo! Widget Engine. It reminded me of the negative attacks we saw on the del.icio.us acquisition announcement.
In both cases, critics are working with several unfounded assumptions.
Team Assimilation and Brainwashing
Some seem to think that we assimilate teams from smaller companies and then either break them up or inject them with a bunch of suits who then set about ruining the previously cool product or service.
Here's what Arlo of the Konfabulator team has to say about that:
Here’s the thing. We’re still the same people running and working on this project. We don’t have a long line of random mysterious faces telling us what to do. As many of the folks that would be those people can attest, I’m quite firm about how I want this project run, what goes into it, and how it comes across to the end user and Widget developers.
In fact, read his whole post.
In the case of Flickr, Stewart is still running the show. Andy and crew are still running Upcoming.org. And a lot of folks have asked me what's going on with del.icio.us as well. Simple. Joshua is going to keep doing what he's been doing: building a great service.
The goal is to help these services get bigger, better, and faster while also learning from them. If we wanted to destroy them, that'd be obvious by now.
Outages and Bugs
Somehow bugs and outages are suddenly attributed to malice at Yahoo once a company has been acquired. You might be surprised to learn that we don't drop a truck load of servers off on the day the papers and signed and force new acquisitions to migrate to the "Yahoo platform" as soon as possible.
In the case of the recent del.icio.us outages, there was a power loss at the data center. (If you remember back, LiveJournal had a similar problem earlier this year.) And now there's a failed disk in a one-off piece of specialty hardware that needs to get replaced. Joshua has been dealing with that as best he can and we're accelerating the process of getting del.icio.us some new infrastructure.
Flickr still gets a massage once in a while too. Such is life. Scaling is hard but growth is good. The outages are becoming less frequent. (It's not like Google didn't have problems with Blogger for a while too.)
Oh, and let's all cut SixApart a little slack for their recent TypePad outage(s) too.
Re-branding
I don't think you'll ever see Flickr renamed "Yahoo! Photo Sharing Engine" as some have joked. Personally, I'm not thrilled with the name "Yahoo! Widget Engine" but that boat has sailed. I think Konfabulator was a cool name and we could use more cool product names and less of a focus on the generic formula of putting the name Yahoo! in front of a semi-generic term like "answers" or "music" (remember Launch?). It just feels so... Microsoft.
But that's me and I don't get to make those decisions.
(Sorry, I couldn't resist including that.)
The good news is that the trail we blazed by NOT changing the name of Flickr has taught us a little bit about how names and name changes affect perception. It was a good thing to do and I think people are happy about it. Notice that Upcoming.org hasn't been changed to "Yahoo! Events" or "Yahoo! Calendar 2.0" or anything like that?
Hanlon's Razor
Though I often forget the source, I'm a big fan of Hanlon's Razor, which says:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
It's not because I think our company is full of stupid people (a few morons maybe), but because it makes us realize that there are far fewer Big Evil Plans floating around than the detractors would like you to believe.
Sometimes I wish they'd just stick to reading Slashdot.
If you don't think we've made a lot of progress in the last year, you haven't been paying attention. A little faith goes a long way. Trust that the folks who created these great services still have the vision and conviction to keep 'em on the right track.
I do. Otherwise I'd give up and find something else to do.
December 17, 2005
Citabria Flying Lessons: Final Supervised Solo Flights
Today was my third and final "supervised solo" lesson. On a supervised solo lesson, you start off by flying with the instructor in the back seat. He'll have you fly a few takeoffs and landings. And if you don't screw up, you get to drop him off and do a few more on your own.
I had done this twice with Dave, my normal instructor. But he was unavailable today, so I flew with Jim. And I also flew in a plane I'd never flown before. It's a Citabria 7ECA like all the others I fly, but N53893 (the Orange Citabria) and I were not yet acquainted. It doesn’t seem to matter how many of the same make and model aircraft one flies, they all their own personalities and my orange friend was no different.
We had a 10-20 knot wind blowing (mostly right down runways 13 left/right) and N53893's brakes and rudder felt a little different than I was used to. And the seat is different. So I had a bit of trouble on the ground. In fact, my first takeoff was embarrassing. I was weaving all over the runway like a drunk driver, but once I got in the air it flew very nicely. For some reason it seemed easier to stay coordinated in this plane (or I'm actually improving).
Into the Air
I took off on runway 13 Left, flew a pattern, and did a full stop landing. We then taxied back to runway 13 Left for another takeoff. The second time was much better. I had the feel of the plane, so I managed to mostly stay on the centerline. Again, I flew a left pattern and back to land. This time, however, Jim asked me to perform a touch-and-go, so we were back up in no time.
Just after takeoff, the tower directed me to switch to a right traffic pattern and use runway 13 Right. That turned out to be perfect, since Jim was going to ask them for that anyway. I guess they knew the routine.
We did a touch and go on 13 Right and back around for another landing. This time Jim asked me to turn early so that I could make the runway without having to add power. I had been coming up a little short due to the headwind. So I turned early and got to show off my slipping skills.
I did a full stop landing and Jim asked me to drop him off by the terminal so I could go do a few landings on my own. I taxied over to the terminal, let him out, and headed back to runway 13 Left.
Solo
I again took off on runway 13 Left, staying nearly on the centerline, and was climbing like crazy before I knew it. It's always nice to have a bit of weight out of the plane. ;-)
My full-stop landing was good and I taxied back for another go. However, I ended up following a Cessna that was flying a really wide-ass pattern. I did what I could to follow him while staying out of his way but was coming really close to busting San Jose Class C Airspace. The tower noticed and cleared me to land on 13 Right.
I headed toward my new runway and was a little high. After I crossed onto airport property, I again got to demonstrate my ability to slip the plane and burn off altitude. I rounded out over the numbers and proceeded to bounce the plane down the runway.
Nothing broke and I knew how to handle it, but I still felt like a moron.
The tower cleared me to back taxi and takeoff again. I decided that I was going to make up for that landing.
I took off, flew the right pattern, setup for a slightly high final (strong headwind still) and managed to get the height almost perfect. I need only the slightest slip to get on the glide I wanted.
My landing was... one of the best I've ever done! :-)
After a nearly perfect 3 point landing, I decided to call it a day. No sense going for a forth and having to end the day on a less than high note.
I taxied the plane back, shut it down, parked it, and tied everything down.
Now I’m officially allowed to do pattern work on my own, assuming the weather is reasonable. After getting a few more hours under my belt, I should be able to fly to a couple of nearby airports on my own as well. And after that it'll be getting into cross-country time.
Woohoo! The fun continues.
An RSS Feed For Steve Gillmor
Steve Gillmor has his panties in a bunch (yeah, we blogger non-journalist types can say stuff like that) because he's subscribed to my ancient RSS 0.91 feed which contains only excerpts of each post.
However, the default feed for my blog has been my fancy new RSS 2.0 creation for a while now. It appears I'm not the only one impressed by his lack of research.
The folks over at TechDirt had this to say:
Normally this is exactly the type of post I wouldn't even read, but something seemed odd -- and it took me a few seconds to realize that two things didn't make sense. (1) I came across Steve's post in the ZDNet blogs RSS feed which (whoooooops!) is a partial text feed -- so, yes, his attempt to make fun of partial feeds is, indeed, cut off itself by his own partial feed. (2) I read Jeremy Zawodny's feed as well, and it's full text. So, here we have someone who has a partial feed complaining about the partial feed of someone who actually appears to only offer full feeds...
Now, it's true that I still offer the old partial feed for folks who use it (most do not), but the full-text one is what I've been promoting for a while.
Looking at Steve's feed, I see that he offers both at once. The "description" section for each post contains an except. The "content:encoded" bit, however, contains the full post. I wonder which aggregators prefer the "description" over "content:encoded'?
December 16, 2005
Quote of the Week: Hand in Garbage Disposal
Earlier today we had a holiday party up at the Yahoo! Research Berkeley Lab, which turned out to be a good low-key way to end the week. For reasons I don't quite grasp yet, this week has seemed exceedingly long. On Wednesday I actually believed it was Thursday. And before the end of the day, I thought it might even be Friday.
Anyway, at the end of the day I was trying to decide what to do. Getting back to San Jose from Berkeley in the evening is a matter of timing. Sometimes it pays to wait an extra 15 or 20 minutes before hitting the road. Doing so can result in saving a half our or more in the car.
I had a brief discussion myself about checking my email or hitting the road early when Chad uttered the quote of the week:
Checking email now would be like putting your hand in a garbage disposal.
Heh. I guess I wasn't the only one to have a long week.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of good stuff happened. But somehow the combination of a load of email, three round trips to San Francisco, one to Berkeley, and a few late nights all added up.
I've got a flying lesson tomorrow afternoon. That always takes my mind off everything else. :-)
December 15, 2005
Night Flying in Citabria 07S
This past weekend I had the chance to go flying with one of my glider pilot friends (Jonathon) in a Citabria (N7807S) based at the Watsonville Airport. The plane is co-owned by four glider pilots and has been getting a lot of use recently. My flying lessons have been less frequent recently due to scheduling problems and being very busy, so I jumped at the chance to go up.
Engine Work
First things first, we had to finish up after the previous day's oil change. The engine cowling was still removed so we had to make sure everything looked right (no leaks), the engine ran smoothly, and button the plane back up.
That ended up taking quite a bit longer than expected, mainly because of a slightly bent throttle control. The throttle was sticking when Jonathon tried to test the engine, so we spent time futzing with that. After a lot of minor adjustments, it loosened back up and the engine seemed to run nicely. We put the cowling back on and prepared to go flying.
Departure
We took off from runway 20 at roughly 3pm and flew one pattern Just In Case. We wanted to make sure that we'd be very near the airport if something was going to go wrong.
The pattern was uneventful, so we took off again and headed southward toward Salinas. From Salinas, we headed a bit more eastward toward King City and somewhat following US-101. It was around then that I got the controls and did most of the flying until we were 50 feet above the runway 3 hours later.
En Route
We flew around the hills near Pinnacles National Monument and on toward Coalinga. At Coalinga I turned us northward to fly the typical return flight we'd use on a glider cross-country day, going back to Hollister.
A few times we managed to spot new landing strips. That information comes in incredibly useful when we're flying our gliders during the soaring season. If you know there's a good strip "just over that ridge" you're more likely to venture out into previously unexplored territory.
Darkness
On the way back to Hollister the sun set and it started to get darker and darker. I had never been up in a single engine plane (let alone flying one) at night. The world really looks different at night. Most of the prominent geographic features vanish. And at the same time, previously sparse looking areas end up being sprinkled with the lights from the houses and cabins hidden in the hills.
I took us within a couple miles of the Hollister Airport and then made the left turn to head back to Watsonville. Once back, we flew along the beach for a little while. The moon was out and lighting up the Pacific Ocean nicely. But before long it was time to head into the landing pattern and call it a day.
Ritual
I flew the pattern and gave the plane back to Jonathon just after we crossed the runway threshold. He landed the plane and taxied over to the fuel pump. We gassed up the plane, put it in the hanger, and began the ritual of cleaning up the plane and tucking it in for the night.
It was a fun day. I learned more than I expected to about the Citabria's engine, got to fly from the back seat for the first time, and finally got to try some night flying. Now I'm looking forward to the night training that I'll have to complete before getting my license early next year.
December 14, 2005
A Toolbar For Jonathan Schwartz
I was chatting with some fellow Yahoos after Doc's closing keynote at the Syndicate Conference tonight when I learned something amusing. Apparently Jonathan Schwartz said that the Yahoo! Toolbar was only available for Internet Explorer.
Now Jonathan is a busy guy, so I'm not surprised that he missed the launch of the Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox back in February of this year.
In that post, Duke said:
If you've been following Asa's blog, you probably already know that Firefox is well on its way to 25 million downloads worldwide. Well Yahoo! has certainly noticed and believe me, Firefox is very popular here at Yahoo! too.
Wow. It's hard to believe that Firefox had only 25 million downloads back then. We've come a long way since then.
Go Firefox.
Hey, You Can't Link To That!
Alright, it's pretty clear to me that I've stirred the pot on a never ending debate. I might as well have come out arguing against (or for) abortion and legalizing drugs.
So I'll make a final pass through some reactions I've seen since last night and then go back to my regularly scheduled random blogging until this trial runs its course (roughly two weeks from now) and the Lemur Auction begins...
Struck the Sponsored Links Nerve, Did I?
Well, judging by the reaction to my sponsored links post I've struck a nerve. And I have to say, it feels like there's a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of FUD out there. I'm still trying to digest everything. But so far I've found that there are at least three sides to this issue.
Three?
Yeah. I've since heard directly from three of the advertisers. Advertiser #1 said "we're outta here!" and pulled their link. Advertiser #2 said "we're with you man!" And advertiser #3 said, "hey, give us a nofollow on our link."
Interesting, huh? I sure couldn't have predicted these results.
In fact, if I had merely asked what people thought of this practice, I probably wouldn't have received even 20% of this feedback. And speaking of feedback, it's my turn to point at and respond to a bunch of what I've read so far in no particular order. (Bear in mind, it's 1am as I start to write this…) As a bonus, you don't have to track down a bunch of this on your own.
December 13, 2005
Vote For Me in the Search Engine Journal 2005 Blog Awards
A co-worker pointed this out to me the other day (I've been waaay behind on blog reading). The folks over at Search Engine Journal have opened voting for their 2005 Search Blog Awards. And, believe it or not, I'm up for an award!
Question #4 on the ballot is:
Matt vs. Jeremy: Which Search Employee Most Likely to Flame You For Spamming?
Heh. This is quite amusing. All because of this?
Just between you and me, Matt really needs to take the flaming up a notch if he's gonna win. He's letting me off way too easy!
Come on, man... To quote Road Trip, Uleash The Fury! :-)
Update: Tim Bray just emailed me to point out that Matt and I are merely following in his footsteps. :-)
At Syndicate Conference on Wednesday
Tomorrow I'll be at the Syndicate Conference in San Francisco most of the day. I'm part of Charlene Li's "Corporate Blogging" panel, which she describes as:
Blogging - it's fast, cheap and effective. Customers are coming to expect it. Marketing should love it, so why aren't more corporations doing it? Probably because senior management is uncertain and the legal department is scared. Even if you get permission, who should write the blog and what should they say? And should you really let anyone comment on your corporate blog? Learn how to get through these roadblocks and develop best practices from veteran corporate bloggers.
Other folks on the panel are: Greg Reinacker (CTO & Founder, NewsGator Technologies, Inc.),
Jodi Baumann, Senior Manager (Corporate Public Relations, Network Appliance), and David Geller (President & CEO, WhatCounts, Inc.). I was on a panel with Jodi once before and am looking forward to meeting Greg and David.
If you're there, drop by and say Hi. Or come to the panel and harass me. :-)
