Category: new!

How news reading has changed as we went from news print to computers to mobile devices (in one graph)

Notice the difference:

I find this fascinating. From the newspaper to the web to mobile, there is a definite difference in when people read the news. Now we are seeing something similar with the move from the web/computer to the web/mobile.

Some of this has to do with form factor (the tablet is easy to read in bed while computers and laptops are not) and some of it has to do with social acceptibility (it is easy to read the news on your work computer but it is generally not acceptible to read a newspaper at work).

From: Five Guardian graphs that show how tablets are changing web consumption | Press Gazette

Giant Stickers Appear to Erase the Streets of London with Photoshop

It says something about the pervasiveness of image producing software like Photoshop in that most people looking at this…

…would clue into what is happening to the face in this image. More and more of us use software like Photoshop, Paint and other tools to create and manipulate images. Seeing it used in this way makes us aware of just how much imagery surrounds us and bombards us, as well as how much computer imagery we deal with every day.

For more on this story, head over to Collossal and see more examples and background on this.

(Street Eraser: Giant Stickers Appear to Erase the Streets of London with Photoshop)

Do you want to play Play Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Frogger & Other classic video games in your browser? Of course you do.

So head on over to this link at the Open Culture site: Free Fun: Play Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Frogger & Other Golden Age Video Games In Your Web Browser and soon you’ll be playing video games like it is the 1980s. Make sure you explain to the younger ones that you needed to pay a quarter for every game.

So is @allypatterson in PR OR A REAL PERSON? What do you think?

So, I am discussing whether or not Ontario should allow stores to sell beer and wine.

One person on twitter arguing against this is @allypatterson. This person represents herself as someone who ‘sells beer and takes back empties’ 40 hours a week. So presumably a real person, working in a beer store.

Now, I think she is a PR person. I could be wrong, but here’s why I think that:

  • I noticed a few odd things about her account. First off, no bio, not even an odd one. But a photo.
  • All here tweets are advocating against stores selling beer and wine. All of them. No silly tweets. No tweets complaining about the weather, her friends or family. No pictures of cats. Indeed, no photos, other than ones arguing against liquor in stores.
  • she is followed by and followed by IPSOS Public Affairs @ipsosreidca and Premium brands @pblbeers
  • she has only a few followers/follows (143/56)

Now, I have seen alot of real people who advocate things. Strong advocates usually have a fake photo but a related bio. Others have a real photo and a limited bio. But they generally share things about themselves. Furthermore, most people have an array of things they tweet about. And frankly the ones who stick on one topic like a broken record tend to be ranty.

And how many people with such limited information about themselves and such a small amount of followers are followed by such a large corporation as Premium Brands AND a large PR firm? How many other beer store employees are both of them following.

Maybe this person is a real person. But to be so on message, to be clear and concise and well argued in their communication, I somehow doubt it.

Thanks for reading this. I’ll Le you decide.

P.S. Anyone doing impersonation on Twitter violates the ToS. A big PR firm like IPSOS would know that.

The man who couldn’t think

The man came up to my son and I outside the theatre tonight and asked me about the hockey gear I was holding. I explained it was a gift to my son who would be playing hockey in May. No, the man said, hockey was ending. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t. He listened very hard, and I could see from his eyes that he was trying to piece this together, but in the end he came back to telling me that hockey was done. He could not think through the additional information and work it into his understanding of the world.

When I was younger, I would have said that the man talking about hockey was deficient somehow. That he wasn’t normal. I believe now that this ‘normal/ not normal’ thinking is deficient and when I think that way, I am not thinking myself.

We are all struggling to understand the world we are in with the facts we have and the abilities we have. We all have varying capabilities to understand, and each of us has our own weak spots. I know I have sometimes been the man who couldn’t think. I have been the man who, when told sometime obvious, could not process it like others could.

We all think what we can, with the brains we have, the memories we retain, the facts we are given. There comes a time when each of us runs up against some limit of our brains, either temporally or permanently. There comes a time when we too become the person who cannot think.

Thanks for reading this

So Network Solutions has domains for 50 cents. Should you get one?

In searching for a new domain name service provider for a test domain, I came across this promotion for Network Solutions that offered hosting for $0.50. Sounds great, especially since most providers are charging $9.99. 

So, what’s the catch?  Well, in the fine print, you see this:

“This offer is valid for initial (new) purchase only and only on domains to be registered with Network Solutions. This offer is not valid on domain renewals and is only valid for generally available domain names, and not Premium Names of any kind. After the applicable free promotional period, then-current renewal rates shall apply. For reference, the current renewal price for a one (1) year .com domain name registration is $37.99, subject to change at the sole discretion of Network Solutions. Only one free domain is available per order and Network Solutions cannot assure domain name availability.”

$37.99 for a .com domain when most places are charging you $9.99. 

I am guessing that they autobill people after a year and alot of customers just pay that relatively higher price. I say “guess” because I don’t know and I generally avoid companies that do that.

For the record, I use netfirms.ca and namecheap.com and I am happy with them. What you use is up to you?

 

Who will be the big losers in the recent price drops in cloud computing?

Over at The Motley Fool, there is this article, The Big Losers in the Cloud Pricing Wars, that talks about recent price drops for services at Amazon and Google and how these price drops will affect the cloud computing business. (The Cloud Pricing Wars is very dramatic – I am not sure it is an all out battle at this point: we need more time to see if that becomes the case)

Anyone interested in cloud computing should check it out.

Robot Fast Food workers, automats, and food trucks: food of the future

Are low-wage workers going to replaced by robots? There are cases to be made for that happening, both here: The Shift From Low-Wage Worker to Robot Worker from FiveThirtyEight and from the recent book, The Second Machine age (pictured above). Indeed, some have argued that fast food restaurants are a form of manufacturing, and this makes the notion of replacing works with machines more plausible to me.

It is important not just to look at the future, but also the past, in particular, the history of the automat.

The automat was once the future too, and there are still vestiges of them around, but mainly they have died off. There were a number of reasons for this (see Automat – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), but inflexibility was one of them. Right now fast food establishments thrive on inflexibility and low cost.That is also the way to compete with them.  I can see how people can compete with that and win, and the way to do that is portable food (e.g., food trucks, food stalls). Barring bureaucratic costs, portable food is cheaper to deliver than traditional bricks and mortar establishments (even fast food ones). And portable food vendors can be much more flexible than fast food places can ever be.

The other way to compete with them is by being human and offering better service. No robot in the next century will be able to do that.

For more on the book, check out: Amazon.com: The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (9780393239355): Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee: Books

 

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Is the Dropbox DMCA takedown thing new? And can Dropbox even do that?

I’ve been seeing this showing up on Twitter alot lately:

And so I had two questions: 1) is this new? 2) and can Dropbox do this? I found the answers here: About that Dropbox DMCA thing … | Android Central. The short answers are 1) no 2) yes. (Click through the link for the details.)

Dropbox is a great tool for sharing files, provided they are yours. Always remember: the Dropbox folder is not “yours”, even if the files you place there are. (And if they are not your files, then you have another set of problems.)

 If your files are important, I recommend you don’t make Dropbox your one and only place to store them. The more important files are to you, the more backups you should have.

 

If you want a very simple method to track and improve your running speed over your training period…

…then try the One Magic Mile approach, featured in this Runner’s World article. As Jeff Galloway shows:

Running a timed mile provides a reality check on your current goals, helps you determine a safe long-run pace, and gives you a tangible way to track your progress during the season.

Some runners enjoy complex training approaches. Me, I prefer simple ones. If you do too, then I recommend the One Magic Mile approach.

Do you have a PC with no security? Do you have no money? Then you need this

Specifically, start here, with Microsoft Security Essentials for Microsoft Windows.

I haven’t downloaded this, but it comes from Microsoft and you will be much better off getting this from them then from some other vendor (or worse, from some site you aren’t sure of.)

I recommend this especially for people who are nervous about such things but don’t know what to do next.

Robot Fast Food workers, automats, and food trucks: food of the future (some notes)

Are low-wage workers going to replaced by robots? There are cases being made for that happening, both here: The Shift From Low-Wage Worker to Robot Worker from FiveThirtyEight and from the recent book, The Second Machine age (pictured above). As well, some bloggers like Matt Yglesias have argued that fast food restaurants are a form of manufacturing, and this makes the notion of replacing fast food workers with machines more plausible to me.

However, in considering this, it is important to look not just to the future, but also to look to the past. In particular, the past that contained the automat.

The automat was once the future too. There are still vestiges of them around, but mainly they have died off. They collapsed for a number of reasons (see Automat – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), but the chief reason was inflexibility.

Today’s fast food establishments thrive on inflexibility and low cost. One way people can compete with that and win is with portable food (e.g., food trucks, food stalls). Barring bureaucratic costs, portable food is cheaper to deliver than when it is delivered by traditional bricks and mortar establishments (even fast food ones) and portable food vendors can be much more flexible than fast food places can ever be.  There might still be robots delivering portable food, just like there are vending machines that provide food. But they won’t have flexibility of humans, and they won’t be as cheap.  Additionally, humans can offer human interaction: no robot in the near future will be able to imitate that.

I believe eating is a social act and a human act, and buying and selling food should be a social and human activity.  We humans need to think about it in ways to provide it that doesn’t dehumanize ourselves.

For more on the book, check out: Amazon.com: The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (9780393239355): Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee: Books. It’s really great.

 

Should everyone learn to code? And should they learn it from Code.org?

I am encouraged by organizations like code.org and the work they are doing to help kids (and adults) learn how to write code using an approach that is condusive to fast learning. You can see their work here: Learn | Code.org. A somewhat differing point of view is here: Thread: Why you should learn to code.  I say “somewhat” because while Winer agrees with the notion of more people coding, he disagrees with how this is being promoted by code.org.

I think there are lots of reasons to learn to code: it’s a creative activity, it helps you understand technology better, it can help you get ahead in life, and it can be fun. I don’t think everyone has to learn to code, just like everyone doesn’t have to learn to sing or draw or other creative tasks. People may be anxious about their kids being computer illerate, but that fear has been around since the early days of personal computers and it was always an overblown fear. Learn to code for the goodness it brings, not because you fear something if you don’t learn.

Phishing attack of the day

Is this:

Thank you for registering with us.
Email:
Password: ******
Activation code 70751

Please click the link below to access the video that shows how the system work.

Below is a link that I don’t recognize. Not surprising, because I have never heard of the organization sending it, never mind asked for an activation code.

Just a reminder: whenever you get email like that, delete it right away.

How to program, as explained by Samuel Jackson :)

Well, not exactly. But this website: Programming, M—–f—– – Do you speak it? is a very expletive laden and funny site for any of you programmers out there, from n00bie to experienced. Click on this especially for some great links to help you with your programming skills. 

Also not your average software development T shirts are on sale there, if you are so inclined.

Thinking of getting a fitness tracker? Consider getting this app first

There are a number of devices out there to tracking your movement, sleep and other things. But you may own such a device already: it’s your mobile phone. If you combine this with this:  Moves – Activity Tracker for iPhone and Android, then that may be all you need to get started.

If you are going to get it, look at the comments here, first: Swissmiss | Moves App. As you can see, there are some limitations to it. My recommendation: try this app first. If you find it useful, consider getting a standalone tracker from someone like Fitbit or Nike.

Anything that helps get people moving, fitter, and healthier is a good thing.

 

Looking to travel to NYC? Here’s some budget boutiques to consider

This NYTimes.com article is older (2010), but that just means that these places may be easier to get into now: Budget Boutiques in New York City – Interactive Map – NYTimes.com. (It could also mean that some of these places have come and gone.)

Boutique hotels have a feel of the city that you are in: it’s a feeling that large scale hotels rarely have. I’d recommend checking out this list if you are thinking of heading to New York. Any money you save on accommodation  can easily be spent elsewhere. 🙂

On goaltending, Five Thirty Eight and the genius of Patrick Roy

This is remarkable:

In this FiveThirtyEight | Why Gretzky Had It Easy, Neil Paine tries and I think succeeds in explaining why the save percentage has gone up year after year. The reason is: Patrick Roy. I have been watching young goalies since my son started playing hockey, and I am amazed at how different they play to when I played in the era of Dryden. Back then, the butterfly was somewhat controversial still, and goalies who played that way and were beat up high were criticized for that style. Not only that, but we were trained to get back up again fast. Now, goalies are going down and staying down. Where once we tried to stop low shots with the stick or the blade (both relatively small), now goalies have both pads (relatively big) on the ice most of the time. Roy brought that on, or is credited with it, and now all the young goalies (and older ones) play that way.

Paine is right to credit the gear too, for it is alot better.  The chest and arm protectors are much better than the old ones, and even the top of the knees and the neck are protected now (not so when I was younger). It makes it a bit easier for the goalie to use more of his or her body to stop the shot. I even think the pads make it much easier to slide around than the old pads ever could. But gear alone isn’t the reason: it is the new style and the training to do it that makes a difference.

I disagree with the title: Gretzky had it easy. Watch the video that Paine shows. Watch how patient Gretzky is with the puck, and how he find the opening, no matter how small. I think he would still be doing the same thing with today’s goaltenders. Other than that, a great piece.

 

Ulster: a study of what’s next, in maps

This post does an interesting analysis of changes happening in Ulster and what might become of it. As the Catholic populations grows and the Protestant population declines, there are a number of scenarios of what might come next, all thoughtfully explored in the piece liked to at Bigthink.com.

As progress was made in Ireland and Northern Ireland,  it is easy to imagine it forget about it and assume it is stable. Perhaps it will remain stable, but change is coming, one birth at a time.

(Map shows the areas in Ulster with a majority of Catholics (green) and a majority of Protestants (Yellow).)

Is Agile dead?

For people who work in software development, I recommend this article: The End of Agile: Death by Over-Simplification | Effective Software Design. It pushes back against what Agile is becoming. It also has some great links to others complaining about what Agile has become, including this, which I really like: The Anti Agile Manifesto | On the obfuscation of common sense in the software development community.

My belief is that there is a wide range of people using the term “agile”. Some of those people have alot of experience doing software development and can use it to create much better software. And then there are other people who use the term vaguely in order to sound intelligent and flexible. If you want to be more like the former and would like to know more about Agile, here’s a good place to start: Agile software development – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don’t think it is dead: but I do think it needs resuscitation.

 

Some suggestions on how to stop iOS 7 from draining your iPhone’s battery life

It’s a common problem: your iOS 7 phone doesn’t have the juice you need to get you through the day. If you want to tackle this problem, this article may be just thing you need: How to stop iOS 7 from destroying your iPhone’s battery life. Getting rid of things like background refreshes, 3D features, location based services can all go some way to making your power last longer. Worth reviewing.

Some thoughts on setting up Thunderbird, the email client from Mozilla. (Hint: I recommend it.)

If you are struggling with managing multiple email user accounts, or having difficulty with the user interfaces of web based email accounts, then you should consider using Thunderbird. (Plus, frankly, the ads that Yahoo! puts on their web site are awful and embarrassing.)

Thunderbird comes from Mozilla, the same people that bring us Firefox. I tried using it years ago, but the integration with Yahoo! mail and Gmail seemed more difficult at that time. This time, it was fairly simple.

You download and install Thunderbird from here. Once you do, select the option to create new accounts. I wanted to set it up with my Yahoo! and Gmail accounts, and to do this all I needed to do was provide my name, userid and password, and Thunderbird set up the rest. (If I recall, one time you needed to have the SMTP/POP settings, etc., but now Thunderbird figures out all that at least for Gmail and Yahoo! You may need to do more work if your email comes from your ISP, but that should be straightforward information to acquire.)

I would like to hear your feedback, but it was a simple process for me. Two problems I did have, though, that you should be aware of:

  • Spam! With Yahoo! mail, if you have a free account, it will download your spam as well as your regular mail. This is something I discovered as I clicked on Get Mail. I went and cleared my spam (which was being downloaded) and then it was fine. If you have a paid account, there is apparently an option to prevent this from happening. (More information on this here.)
  • 2 factor authentication. With Gmail, I had two factor authentication turned on. If you do too, you will need to generate a special password in order for Thunderbird. (More information on that here.)

Having a problem with a USB or SD drive? Use SDFormatter to format and reset it

If you have a new SD card, using the tool SDFormatter makes sense.

However, if you are having a problem with an old SD card or USB drive, it also can help you.

I was trying to install Chrome OS on my SD drive and USB drives using tools unetbootin and win32diskimager. These tools would burn the files to the drive without difficulty. But later, when I wanted to use them, Windows 7 would only recognize 1 GB of space, despite them both being much bigger (4 GB and 8 GB). Typical Windows formatting didn’t help.

I tried SDFormatter on the SD drive first. That worked great. I decided to try it on the USB drive. That worked too! Very quick, and the drives were reformatted and restored to their proper size! Whew. I successfully tested putting a file on each one as well.

It’s a great little tool. I recommend it to help you deal with flash memory.

Some thoughts on dealing with small difficulties

The problem with small difficulties is that if you get too close to them, they seem large. Like mosquitoes, even though they are small, with enough of them pestering you, you can find yourself entirely taken up with dealing with them.

With mosquitoes, you might endure them, and this is one way to deal with them if you have to. You can also endure your small problems and fight through them as if they were a swarm of mosquitoes. Or you might step back inside to a sheltered place. Stepping back is also a good way to deal with small problems. Step back and gain some perspective and see the small problems for what they are: small and insignificant in the bigger frame you view them from. You will still deal with them, but regaining that perspective reduces the irritation that they bring on, and helps you deal with them with great patience and equanimity.

(Via my iphone)

The invisible samurai sword of confidence and other ways to be awesome

It’s Monday: you need some help with feeling awesome. I recommend this not too hard to handle on a Monday post at Pick the Brain. Like all tips, some will help you more than others. I especially like the samurai sword of confidence (feel free to replace a sword with something less violent if that helps you).

Everything is amazing (late night thoughts)

It is an odd thing to conclude that everything is amazing, given that I am slogging through a quiet night with a miserable cold. But I looked at the gel cap medicine I was about to take, and I thought of the machines that can make such a precise thing as a gel cap. I thought of all the people involved in getting it to me, from the chemists that develop it to the cashier who sold it to me. The cashier handed me a debit device and I tap it with my thin plastic card and a transaction over many networks and devices all conspire to give my money to the cashier. We don’t think anything of it, but our entire landscape of high rises and subways and concrete and sewers, all of it, is sophisticated and unacknowledged as we make our way through the day. Or in my case this evening, as I make my way through the refrigerator, filled with containers from foods all over the world. We take it for granted that it will be tasty and consistent and safe to eat, no matter where it comes from, and that the fridge will keep it at the right temperature. Our houses are filled with such thing, and yet much of the time, they are anything but treasured.

I turned on a light and instantly I drew power from all over the province, into my house. People work through out the day to provide it to me and all I need to do is turn the smallest of switches to get it. I turned on my iPad, which is more powerful than computers that used to be the size of my fridge, and I checked my blog. Someone from Jordan visited it this evening. I can write something like this and people all over the world can read it. Once literacy itself was a rarity. Now we are striving to have everyone not only literate, but have access to sophisticated tech that a few years ago, only a handful of people had.

It’s not just that things are amazing, but people too are amazing. You are reading this using a range of technologies, from computers to wireless networks to the Internet to your browser. In the 1990s no one had this. In a short time we all have this. We have adapted these complex technologies into our lives with relative ease because of our intellect and our desire and our capacity to learn and improve and better ourselves.

When you finish reading this, at some point you can surf the Web and find videos from the International Space Station on YouTube or find still photography taken on Instagram taken by the Mars Curiosity lander sent to that planet from NASA. And after you see those photos or those videos, you can post your own. We don’t think anything of it, despite it all being fairly recent.

Later you can turn off the computers and the lights and just look at the stars and realize we live on this planet that is it’s own space station, and that you are a part of that.

Life can be mundane and difficult and frustrating, and yet if you are fortunate, you can catch it in your mind’s eye from just the right perspective, and when you do, you’ll see that everything is amazing.

Thanks for reading this.

Winter is for optimistic thinking

If I told you it was freezing outside, you would dress appropriately. You wouldn’t wear shorts and t shirt. Likewise, when winter comes, you should think appropriately. You shouldn’t think pessimistically: you should think optimistically.

It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking pessimistically in winter. It may feel Permanent, like it is never going to end. It may seem Pervasive, like it is dark and cold everywhere. And it can even seem Personal, as if winter has it out for you. Combine that with other negative forms of thinking and winter can bring you down.

If you think optimistically, much of winter’s overbearingness fades. If you think it is really only a short few months, then it doesn’t seem so permanent. The trick is to break winter up into short periods. The next thing you know, it is March and things are thawing and Spring will soon arrive. If you can find the chance to get away, or find ways to enjoy the indoors, then winter doesn’t seem so pervasive. Finally, if you think about it, winter hits everyone the same: it isn’t personal. If anything, if you learn to enjoy the time you have in winter, it can seem like the season for you, not against you.

Winter requires thought. Work to think optimistically about winter. When you do, it becomes the most interesting of seasons.

Everything is happening at this moment (late night thoughts)

Late at night, when it is quiet, it is easy to believe that nothing is going on in the world. The opposite is true. For every time zone that people are sleeping, in another they are waking up. All over the world people are being born and people are dying. People are making babies, having them, raising them, waiting for them to come home, wondering where they are. People are dancing in clubs, drinking in bars, sipping coffee in cafes. Some are wearing parkas while others are swimming in pools. Everywhere people are walking, drinking, lying down, getting up, working hard, resting. The world is filled with people active in some form. Everyone is doing something at this moment. Everything is happening now.

Your life is epic: you just don’t know it

If you were to ask most people if their life is epic, they would reply no. Theirs is no life of adventure, of quests, of heroism, they’d say. They do no awesome battles with great evils, nor overcome great obstacles. They might reply that they live ordinary and uneventful lives, just like you or I might, if we were asked.

Yet really, we all live epic lives. We all seek love, search out our fortune (however we define it), and set out on trips big and small into the dreadful unknown. What quests are more epic than that? What treasure could a hero in a story seek that is more precious than the true love we search for, or the great friendships we strive for? What grail could have more value than the achievements we put in so many hours to finally reach? If our aims are not famous, our reaching them are valorous and virtuous in their own way.

And ever day, in the work we do, the love we provide, the good words we say and the good deeds we do, we battle fear and loneliness, sadness and worry. Though these things are not material, they are evils nonetheless, and the things we do, however small, are great weapons in fighting such terrible things.

We all have our quests, our evils to battle. We all live epic lives.