November 2006 Archives

Is there anyone else out there who loathes digg.com as much as me? I've found that as time has gone on, the content on digg is getting not only worse, but more and more skewed from one political viewpoint or philosophy to another (and I really mean one or the other because it has gone both directions). I frankly don't care for a site that has Britney Spear's bare ass as a front page topic next to dogmatic political spew about 'pubs versus dems' or how we're scorching the environment. My admiration for the founders of digg (ahem, Kevin Rose, et al) is great, indeed, but their product has lost its edge as time has passed. Not only do the stories on digg get recycled ad nauseam, you never really know whether there is any validity to the content or not. I really have a hard time keeping digg around when my rss list is close to breaking the hundred feed barrier and yet one of the chosen ones is not only unreliable, but slightly boring.

thought provoked via Daring Fireball Linked List: Valleywag: Three Reasons Why Digg Gets Its Numbers Wrong

With the redesign (thanks Aaron) of my "start" page, I wanted to slowly move changes into the different weblogs I write. Those changes include:
• Coming up with a unified search for any and all of the sites. (Done through the use of Google's customized search tools - not yet added to the sidebar, though.)

• Coming up with a unified rss feed for any and all sites. (I have some leads, but I'm not even close to understanding how rss is actually produced by MovableType and WordPress.)
• Coming up with a new color scheme for stevenfettig.com/mythoughts/. (This is getting really old.)
• Coming up with some way of dealing with comment spam. I've been desperately avoiding this issue for a long time now and simply need to find a way to deal with it. I miss the comments I received for some of the howto postings I've put up over the years. The comments have not only been helpful, but have led me to meet new people. Comment spam is such a waste of time and right now, I receive well over 200 a day on the two weblogs that have been around the longest (stevenfettig.com/mythoughts/ and rescogitans.net/blog/). So, what I've decided to do is remove mt-comments.cgi all together. Once I have learned a way to deal with the crap, I'll put it back in service and hopefully reconvene commenting.
One of the reasons I still even pursue weblogs is that, 1) I'm an avid reader of around 10 and skim through over 60 different ones in a a week's period of time and 2) I like the outlet. We have had a number of things occur at work and with a business venture I ended and whose remains I used to start a new one. Both of those activities have produced a lot of experience and a lot of thought on various topics. In a way, I really do this all for myself. For the two people out there who actually look at any of my writing regularly (thanks dadLaw and naked guy in a lawn chair who is really freaking me out), I really do appreciate the readership and someday, I'll maybe be consistent enough to generate content on a regular basis. So, I want to keep doing it and while putting some energy into it, I'd like to make the experience "nice" for the readers out there.
Step one was the new entry page. Step two... well, that's a conglomeration of things.

Reading a post by Allen Searls (Doc's son, I assume) about the idea that the Desktop (i.e. your main screen after logging in or booting up your machine) is slowly being replaced or supplanted by the browser is not a new one (no criticism, just a thought). I was praying like mad this would happen back when PointCast (the link does not lead to the original, push news and content company I remember from 1996) brought out their push content client in 1995/6 (I can't remember exactly when it was but I do remember playing with it when working at Hillsdale College). I was excited because the PointCast service could be integrated with Microsoft's (then) new ActiveDesktop concept. The Desktop was not a static image, but a multimedia, ever changing landscape of information, etc.
The problem related to an active or ever changing Desktop is practical(ity), however. I think many people treat the Desktop on their computers just like they treat their wooden/glass/steel Desktop in their offices or homes (or school, etc). While interesting at first, it eventually becomes a distraction that we want to remove (or we go crazy not realizing what it is that is forcing ADD upon us). Think about it this way: what if your Desktop was replaced by your plasma or LCD display? Do you really want a constantly changing stream of content in a place where most of us would like some amount of consistency and calm? If so many of us did want the constant bombardment of new information (news, email, etc), then why would a program like WriteRoom be popular (perhaps it's not a shooting star product, but it has gotten its share of good reviews and commentary along the lines of, wow, that is a great idea!).
The main problem, however, is reliability. What killed PointCast for me (besides the company's apparent lack of ability when it came to creating bug free software) was the fact that when it failed, it failed miserably. Most of the time, failure involved locking up my machine and forcing a reboot. Other times, it failed in gathering content even though my connection to the net was wide open. I think of how often I travel. I depend on consistency with the machines I take with me. Because the internet is not ubiquitous - especially for anyone trying to watch what they spend - it becomes even more problematic because if I come to rely on a system, and in this case, it is a system of information delivery, what happens when the plug or "wire" to that system is pulled and I can't access the content? I lose the functionality that I've come to rely upon. This is a function of availability and reliability - e.g. can I rely on getting the content I want wherever?
I must agree that the browser is becoming a more and more powerful tool in how we create and communicate. It is a major part of the Desktop as we use it today. I would argue, though, that the same was true in 1993, when I first signed up for Prodigy. The browser was always getting more powerful and it always will, but standalone programs still seem to have the best chance at over-all success because of their stability - hence, their reliability.

via Wondiring: Is the browser the new Desktop?

I stopped the Tablet PC experiment early. I really tried. I traveled with it, I read on it, I wrote notes on it, but there was one thing I couldn't deal with: Windows. I'm not a Windows hater. I think my problems had more to do with poorly written programs than the OS itself - but the way the OS is built certainly contributed to the problem.
My switch back to my MacBook came down to two issues: 1) I had to restore back to a previous restore points on eleven different occasions (because the Tablet PC functions suddenly stopped working) and 2) programs crashed and I could never really figure out why because the logging system in Windows is horribly inept. The constant restore point issue was the last straw Saturday night at 1 am. I had just finished installing VLC when I realized that I lost buttons and functions on the handwriting recognition part of the OS. I had already restored the system twice and simply was sick of it. My first experiences of OS X go back to the 10.1 days and I never had issues with OS X like I had with the Tablet (at the time, I had very, very little experience with Apple products - at this time, I've worked on a semi-regular basis with Windows machines for well over 10 years). There were many issues with not being able to find applications that did what I needed, but I didn't have the constant stability issues.
I wanted to write a longer posting about my experiences, but it really doesn't matter. The end effect is the same. While I really enjoyed the tablet functions of the X41, the trouble of dealing with the OS was not worth the effort. Until Apple (as a hardware and software manufacturer) or another OS that is like OS X is today (Tiger) comes up with a tablet device, I'm done. This is the third time I've experimented with the Tablet PC and each time has ended in utter failure. When I get back up to date with my work, I'll try to explain more.