Breaking News: Slashdot Reviews Flickr

Slashdot | Flickr Online Photo Service Reviewed.

In related news, Slashdot commenters prove once again that they just don't get it.

This... makes my head hurt

Inverting the Inversion of Control. (Warning: nerdy by nature.)

Worst. Holiday specials. Ever.

Whatever: The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time.

A marriage made in heaven?

Yesterday, I had one of those "million dollar" revelations that I occasionally have. The problem is, that I invariably have them too late to do anything about them. (This explains why I'm still working for someone else instead of sitting on a beach, drinking beer and getting a tan. But I digress.) Nevertheless, I'm still going to commit this one to the ages, so if it comes to pass I can point at it and say, "Look how smart I am!".

The latest rage seems to be Microsoft's Media Center PCs—computers that integrate into your home entertainment system, bringing the multimedia capabilities of modern PCs to the living room. With one of these, you can (I gather; I haven't seen one of these in person yet) play CDs, MP3s, DVDs, and PC games, view photos, and probably just about anything else that doesn't require a keyboard, while sitting on your sofa. The display is your TV, and the input device is a remote control. Built-in networking means that you're not limited to what's on the Media Center PC; you can pull data from any other computer on the network.

This feels like it's smack in the middle of the "digital convergence" space that Apple has been talking about for several years now. As a result, one is starting to hear rumblings about when they're going to move into this market. For example, The Register reports that "Merrill Lynch looks to 'killer' Apple home media server". This is why I figure that I'm too late with this idea; I suspect that Apple either has soemthing in the works already, or has decided to move in a completely different direction altogether.

Almost everything Media Center PCs can do, Apple hardware and software can also do, today. (I have used a 1999-era Powerbook as a DVD deck for our TV and an MP3 jukebox for our stereo in the past.) The only things missing that I can think of are the ability to run PC games, the hi-fi stack form factor, and the TV/remote control interface. I'm not going to spend any time on the first one; PC games won't run on Macintosh hardware, and while some games have Macintosh versions, many more don't. We're going to have to write this one off as unsolvable—although I have a peripheral idea that I'll get to at the end, assuming I remember to.

Apple tried the stereo component form factor before, with the Pippin. It failed to go anywhere, probably as much for being ahead of its time as anything else. Nevertheless, there's no magic in this form factor; it's just a laptop without a display or keyboard, and with more (but not substantially different) jacks and sockets. There's no technical reason Apple couldn't produce a Macintosh in a stereo component box.

As far as the TV/remote control interface goes, very few companies do user interface like Apple. They're not perfect—just ask Tog—but in my (admittedly biased) opinion, they know how to do simple, clean, usable interfaces. Just as important, they recognize good interfaces when others create them, and put them to good use; for instance, the iPod interface originally came from Pixo. So, while Apple could produce their own interface for a "digital convergence hub", I think they'd be better off turning to another company who has already done it, and done it well.

TiVo.

The CPU in TiVo PVRs is the PowerPC, same as in Macintosh. They run Linux, but I suspect that it could be replaced with Darwin (the foundation of Mac OS X). (Conversely, the Mac OS X applications that would power such a box could probably be ported to Linux without much difficulty. I'm not saying we'll ever see Linux versions of them outside of any such box, but porting from Darwin to Linux should be a lot easier than, say, porting from Darwin to Windows.) Series 2 TiVos already have many of the hardware bits necessary to make this work, so all that really remains is to get Apple and TiVo together.

Imagine that Apple licenses the hardware reference design and software from TiVo. They add the "digital convergence" applications that already exist—iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, GarageBand. Put Apple and TiVo logos on the front. Call it "iTiVo". Watch them sell like iPods. :-)

I've got some ideas for some new synergies that could come out of this, but I'm already running long. Two final thoughts, one of which was referenced above.

• Series 2 TiVos have jacks for cable TV and Ethernet. Add a wireless Ethernet connection (and why wouldn't you?) and cable modem hardware and you have a broadband router/firewall for the whole house.
• Remember how I said that a Macintosh-based box can't run PC games? While you could do it by emulating a PC in software, I doubt that the performance would be acceptable. Instead, consider that gaming consoles like the PlayStation/2 could probably be condensed to the size of a PCI card....

Barenaked Ladies: Barenaked for the Holidays

Our holiday CD this year is Barenaked for the Holidays by Barenaked Ladies, and let me tell you, this may be the holiday CD to end all holiday CDs. On one (one!) CD they give us:

• a rendition "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" recorded backstage at a concert (with guest vocals by Sarah McLachlan)
• "Green Christmas" from the soundtrack to How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• their own version of "Do They Know It's Christmas" that, while sounding sincere, makes you think that they're poking fun at Bob Geldof
• "Jingle Bells" and "O Holy Night" performed on the Hammond organ (Angela's reaction: "It sounds like they're at a baseball game")
• and "Deck the Stills"—the tune is "Deck the Halls", but the words are "Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young" repeated over and over

That last one has to be heard to be believed.

Enabling SSH access through the firewall

This isn't going to make any sense to the vast majority of you, and the others will point and laugh at something that can be looked up elsewhere. But I've been carrying this little piece of paper around for almost a year now, so I figure it must be important enough to write down somewhere a little more permanent.

At home:

    ssh -R 9722:localhost:22 servername

On the server:

    ssh -p 9722 username@localhost

How to de-stink a Volvo

From David Weinberger: How to de-stink a Volvo. It reminds me of how Dave Barry used to write:

Our Volvo has heated seats ("The Warm Ass that Cluetrain Bought"), so you have to remove some electrical bits first. On the bottom of the seat are two black boxes, each held on by a single torx screw. Remove and deposit at the bottom of a storm drain, just to teach yourself a lesson.

Trying out ecto

I'm giving ecto a spin 'round the block. Not that expect a fancy tool to make my blog posts any more interesting... or frequent, for that matter.

And so it begins

The turkey carcass is barely cold, and we already have our Christmas tree. We took advantage of the fact that we have an SUV for the week (long story, not worth repeating) to save ourselves the trouble of trying to cram it in the trunk of my Civic this year.

One bittersweet note is that our favorite tree farm is closing its doors (gates?) after this season. Granted, we've gotten a fir, imported from Michigan or some such, every year for the past 5 or so instead of a locally-grown Scotch pine (we got tired of the itchy, swollen hands that result from trimming the latter, with its stubby, inflexible needles). We should be able to go just about anywhere to get a fir, imported from Michigan or some such. Anywhere else we go, however, is going to lack the atmosphere that Warren's has. They will be missed.

We got snow

That's not why I didn't post yesterday. Yesterday was spent running around making preparations for today.

This wasn't just a light dusting of snow, either. We got about 6 inches. Not a bad way to start the holiday season.

First pass at the new layout

It's still a little rough, but it's most of the way there. Serious thanks to Tonico Strasser for his flexible layout; the good stuff is his, while any CSS bogosity is all mine.

We're all nit-pickers about something

My wife used to hate watching a movie with me where computers figure prominently in the story line. (That's probably incorrect. I'm sure she still hates it, but doesn't bother complaining to me anymore.) I've been a computer professional for about 15 years, and an enthusiast for almost 25, so I have a hard time suspending my disbelief long enough to swallow some of the computer-related nonsense we're shown—and a harder time keeping quiet about it. (I'll refrain from posting any specific examples; if you know computers, I'm sure you can think of your own examples. If you don't, a simple rule of thumb is this: If you find yourself asking, "Can computers really do that?", the answer is usually "no".)

Not that she's entirely guiltless herself. She used to work in television, so that's her area of relative expertise, and the topic for which she can't let inaccurate representations slide. I remember when we saw Up Close and Personal, and Michelle Pfeiffer's character broadcasts live from deep within a prison during a riot. My wife kept shaking her head. "How are they transmitting live footage? They left the live truck outside the prison walls. Did they drag cables all the way with them? If so, where are the cables?"

I bring this up because, well, I can. Someone once said that everyone is an expert on something. (According to Google, apparently everyone has said this.) And whatever you're expert at, you can nit-pick at.

Case in point. Mark Simonson, a professional font designer (and, therefore, an expert on typography), has catalogued on his website "the use (and misuse) of period typography in movies". In other words, what he notices is whether a movie set in the 1950's shows a typeface that wasn't designed until the 1980's.

An expert after my own heart.

It's beginning to smell a lot like...

I'm not going to finish that. It's bad enough that I'm alluding to (Holiday+1).

We've had a zip-top bag full of cinnamon sticks in the cabinet for several years now, waiting for a reason to use them. Now we have a reason, but we figured they're probably too old, so we bought a fresh new bag at Penzey's. It seemed a shame to throw out the old ones—just because they're old doesn't mean they're worthless—so I dropped five or six of them into a pan of water simmering on the stove. Instant ambiance!

Some of my 43 Things

I've started making my list. Have you?

Eating your own poorly-styled dogfood

I know what you're thinking:

If you're spending so much time lately learning CSS, why don't you apply some of that newfound knowledge to your own blog? Huh?

Part of the answer is in the question. Time outside of work has been scarce lately, and since this blog is apparently just me talking to myself, it's not exactly at the top of my list of priorities.

Still, one of the joys of newfound knowledge is learning how to wreckchange the world with it, so a redesign will take place. Someday. Maybe.

In the meantime, I leave you with some links to how I'd rather be spending my free time.

The first day of the rest of my life

See, I'm already blogging on a daily basis. :-)

We're getting geared up for having Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year. Whether we're getting sufficiently geared up remains to be seen. Fortunately, our only guests are Angela's brother and sister-in-law, so it's not like we'll set off an international incident if dishes fail to be ready to eat at the same time.

You never write anymore.

And there's a perfectly good reason. Well, at least a reason, if not perfectly good. Okay, there's really no reason. Sort of.

I keep not writing, because I'm thinking that there's nothing I'm thinking that's worth writing about. Or else I think of something worth writing about, but only when I'm not at the computer. Recently, however, I've run across two things that I hope will help break me out of this endless cycle of whatever it's an endless cycle of:

1. A blog entry at thinair entitled "Don't think. Write.".
2. 43 Things (warning: potentially non-PC, but we're all big kids here, right?). Their basic premise is that "...by writing down your goals you greatly increase the chances of actually completing them. Part of it is just knowing what your goals are. Another is being able to hold yourself accountable."

So I've decided that one of my 43 things is to post to my blog regularly. So volume will go up, hopefully. Not making guarantees that any of it will be a reasonable expediture of electrons.

Talk about your minimalist website

On one hand, it's a refreshing departure from the usual graphics-and-Flash-laden corporate website. On the other, it's just about as usable.

http://www.surplusexchange.com/

AskTog: The High Price of Not Listening

Bruce Tognazzini is an interaction designer and a principal with The Nielsen Norman Group. He has a monthly column called Ask Tog in which he addresses various interaction concerns—often human-computer interaction (aka user interface), but not always—much like Alertbox from Jakob Nielsen (yes, as in Nielsen Norman Group). His latest column is called The High Price of Not Listening, and it's about why it's important for companies to make it easy to receive feedback from their customers, and return feedback to their customers that they've been heard.

I can't take issue with the bulk of this column; I think he's spot on. It's mostly common sense, but as a friend of mine used to say, "common sense isn't". Unfortunately, if Tog falls short, it's in that he addresses only part of the conversation between customer and company, and appears to place the bulk of responsibility on the company without addressing the customer's responsibility.

He even provides what I think is a near-perfect example in his column, in the form of a letter from a frustrated Mac OS X user from Canada who is having trouble getting valuable feedback to receptive ears at Apple:

There are three Canadian options in the International System Preference: Canadian CSA, Canadian ISO, and French Canadian. All three are French. Why is there no Canadian English option? Why are there three French options? HELLO!!! Over 90 percent of the Population of Canada speaks English as their first language.

HELLO!!! Only 10 percent of the population of Canada speaks French. It is like having all US Macintoshes default to Spanish because 10 percent of the US population speaks Spanish.

Virtually every new Mac user in Canada chooses the Canadian CSA option (the preselected default option with the Canadian flag) on their first startup in OS 10, unaware that this is French Canadian. How much effort would it take to change the text from “Canadian CSA” to “French Canadian”, so people would at least know what they are selecting? FIX THIS!!!

And it goes on like that, in similar vein.

I agree that the problems he describes should be fixed. I understand the writer's frustration at not being able to get this message to someone who can do something about it. And I get Tog's point that a company can't afford to ignore this kind of feedback if they want to keep their customers happy. But while I was reading this letter, agreeing in the front of my brain, in the back of my brain one phrase kept bouncing around: "petulant whiner".

In twelve paragraphs, the writer types phrases in all caps eleven times. Six of them are "FIX THIS!!!"; two are "HELLO!!!". Nine end with three exclamation points. He uses the word "idiotic" twice, and even writes

…and giving Apple computers a bad name for no reason at all, except that somebody at Apple is too lazy to FIX THIS!!!

To recap: he yells (in text); he uses inflammatory language; and he accuses the entity he's addressing of being lazy.

I used to work customer service in the circulation department for a local newspaper. We were the paper's "first line of defense"—most complaints about the newspaper ended up in our department, whether or not they had anything to do with the customer not getting his or her paper. I like to think we handled every complaint professionally, and didn't intentionally give preferential treatment to the ones who were calm and reasonable over those who were abrasive. However, I'm sure that it happened unintentionally. If nothing else, when you hang up the phone after taking a complaint from a calm, reasonable customer, you feel pretty good about yourself and your job; here's a person who needs help, and by golly you're the person who can help them.

I understand being frustrated when something's not taken care of in a timely fashion. I agree that there's a time and a place to raise your voice. I had to do this recently with a billing clerk who told us three times that she'd taken care of something when she hadn't, and as a result we were getting thinly-veiled threats from a collection agency. The fourth time we spoke to her, I raised my voice—I honestly hope I didn't actually yell—and not only did she finally take care of it, she sent hard-copy confirmation with a handwritten note of apology.

My point? Companies have a responsibility to their customers to make it easy to submit feedback, to receive that feedback and act on it in a timely fashion, and to let the customer know that he or she has been heard. At the same time, while customers don't have a similar responsibility to the company, there are things they can do to make the process more pleasant (and thereby more efficient) for everyone. In a way, customer service representatives are customers, too.

CSS will be the death of me

Like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, I have been visited by an apparition which has shown me my ultimate fate. Unlike Scrooge, however, my particular harbinger was not the Ghost of Christmases to Come, but Inconsistencies in How Various Browsers Implement CSS 2.0. Also unlike Scrooge, I haven't been offered the opportunity to alter my ultimate fate, no matter how much I scream: "Wait, spirit! I can change! I can change!"