I was on the train home from NYC tonight reading tweets on the Twitterific iPhone app. I got a tweet from TUAW that said:

i.tuaw.com

This is (of course) the iPhone-optimized version of The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Is this new? If so, it's long overdue. It takes at least a minute to load most pages from the full TUAW site. The iPhone pages load as you would expect an iPhone-optimized page to load, in a few seconds.

Wish I'd seen the tweet about i.tuaw.com before I read the story about the iPhone 2.0.2 Firmware Update from the main TUAW site.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm pleased to report that I am contributing to Inside iPhone, a new part of the O'Reilly Digital Media Website. I will be posting over there once a week.

My first post is Dave Aiello's Attempt at Introducing Himself. It explains who I am to people who have never seen Operation Gadget before, and also hints at what I'm planning to talk about in my first real post next week.

There are several other good writers contributing to Inside iPhone, including Derrick Story and Erica Sadun.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

NoGrapesNoNuts.com tells a humorous story
about Grape Nuts cereal. [ Image: Kraft Foods,
reposted on my Flickr photostream ]

Jesse Gardner and a few other friends of mine sent me links to NoGrapesNoNuts.com, a website that advertises Grape Nuts cereal.

The site includes a monologue by the presentor taking a humorous look at Grape Nuts position in the marketplace and its history as a product. I think you need to see at least part of the presentation in order to appreciate it.

What I like most about this site is that it pokes fun at the notion of building a website to promote such an old-school type of cereal. This goes to show that if you think outside the box, you can promote anything.

I think the site is very well done. I wonder how many more sites like this we'll see before the end of 2008? How many are already out there?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every year I look for blogs that attempt to cover L'Etape du Tour, the Cyclosportive that follows the same route as one stage of The Tour de France. This year I found Rob Mackey's blog at The New York Times called The Climb.

Mackey is a web journalist who has done a great deal of work for major publications. (See his portfolio at http://mackey.typepad.com/.) So, you can bet that he will produce a good blog if he survives the training leading up to L'Etape du Tour.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've seen a several tweets and articles today stating that Apple is advocating a Javascript-based Model View Controller framework for web development called SproutCore. Reports indicate that Apple based the MobileMe web application announced at WWDC on SproutCore and provided details on the framework in sessions at the Apple World Wide Developer Conference last week in San Francisco.

AppleInsider has a very good article called Apple's open secret: SproutCore is Cocoa for the Web that goes into some details about why Apple is so interested in SproutCore and why Apple may be switching some of the animation and special effects on its website to SproutCore from other frameworks like Prototype and Scriptaculous.

That article lead me to SproutCore - Feature Rich Javascript Framework, which says that SproutCore is a JavaScript implementation of the Cocoa framework commonly used in MacOS X application development.

This article in turn pointed to Cocoa for Windows + Flash Killer = SproutCore from RoughlyDrafted Magazine which explains why Apple would prefer to use HTML, Javascript, and CSS rather than Flash to implement rich internet applications on the web.

It's pretty clear from this article that Apple not only wants to avoid becoming dependent upon Flash or Silverlight so that it can control its own destiny, but that it wants to use a Javascript framework like SproutCore to build web applications that usurp some of the power of the Windows platform by making Windows less and less necessary. Check out some of the comments to this article if you want to really get into why Apple is making the strategic architecture bets that it is on the future of MacOS X.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Linda Stone: Is it Time to Retire the Never-Ending List? on HuffingtonPost.com: "What did surgeons, artists, and CEO's have in common? Most of them reported that they managed both their time and their attention. In surgery, in the studio, and in the time carved out to think through strategies and issues, these professionals reported shutting down the devices and endless inputs (email, phone, interruptions), at scheduled times, and claiming those moments to focus. In almost every case, these professionals reported experiencing "flow" (a la Csikszentmihalyi) in their work." [ via 43folders ]

• Apple's MobileMe drops support for IE 6 on 37signals: "So it’s interesting that MobileMe is the first major web application (that I know of, at least) that’s dropped IE 6 support completely. It’s a gutsy move, since Apple’s billing it as a way to access your data from anywhere.

  And I’m hoping it’s the beginning of a trend. IE 6 is definitely the most painful browser for us to support – it’s seven years old and doesn’t even fully support the CSS 1.0 standard created in 1996."

  Let the cheerleading for the abandoment of IE6 begin, and let it continue with me.
• Blender Bottle on CoolTools: "The Blender Bottle is a shaker bottle with a free-floating surgical stainless steel wire ball inside. A total boon for anyone who mixes formulas, shakes, mixes or other powdered drinks... Previously I had normal shaker bottles that always, regardless of how much shaking I did, left clumps of mix, especially at the bottom of the shaker... The whisking ball is really ingenious, but this is also the first bottle I have ever owned that I can shake without holding onto the lid at the same time. The spout is that secure."

• The Tragedy of America's Disappearing Fathers on WSJ.com: "As we celebrate Father's Day tomorrow, we should reflect upon a sad fact: It is now common to meet young people in our big city schools, foster-care homes and juvenile centers who do not know their dads. Most of those children have come face-to-face with their father at some point; but most have little regular contact with the man, or have any faith that he loves or cares about them...

  This represents a dramatic shift in American life. In the early 1960s, only 2.3% of white children and 24% of black children were born to a single mom. Having a dad, in short, is now a privilege, a ticket to middle-class status on par with getting into a good college."

• Remembering Russert: Bills had a special place in journalist's life on NFL.com: "Tim Russert truly loved the Buffalo Bills. Loved them because they were his hometown team. Loved them because they were an integral part of his earliest and fondest childhood memories. Loved them because of the bond they helped create between him and his father, the subject of his bestselling book, Big Russ & Me: Father and Son: Lessons of Life. Loved them because of the direct and unbreakable link between his heart and their fortunes.

  When I heard the shocking news that his heart had suddenly stopped beating on Friday, I, like others who call Buffalo home, immediately thought about the connection between Russert and the Bills."

  What a shame that he died so young and so close to Father's Day.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over on The Apple Phone Show Blog, Liana Lehua suggested that iPhone fans buy a copy of .Mac from Amazon.com now in order to access MobileMe when it goes live in July. It looks like you'll save about $30 if you do this.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many of you know that I officiate college ice hockey, so you probably won't be surprised at my interest in a few video clips taken from interviews with four NHL Officials selected to officiate the Stanley Cup Finals:

These interviews were made available by ESPN on a website called ESPN Video.

I've never seen NHL referees and linesmen interviewed in this manner before. I think it's great because it shows the officials are human beings, just like the players.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article in its Tuesday edition about a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could have a profound impact on online fantasy sports. The article says that Major League Baseball and the Players Association have been fighting for three years to limit the number of companies offering online fantasy baseball games. They apparently attempted to use a strategy that combined strict licensing terms with high fees.

A year ago, a company called CDM Fantasy Sports Corp won the right to use statistical information without paying a license fee. Major League Baseball appealed to the Supreme Court. The Court just rejected the appeal without comment.

The article goes on to say:

In taking on the fantasy-baseball operators, and losing, MLB has likely cost every pro sports league millions of dollars. All the leagues had been getting fees from fantasy operators.

The first few times I read this, I assumed that the reporter meant that MLB shouldn't have appealed the lower court's decision. Now I suspect that the strategy being questioned question is the attempt to license statistics more strictly and increase fees.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Sixty-Six on Daring Fireball: "The idea that Apple now sells two-thirds of retail computers costing $1000 or more is simply stunning. I (along with many others) have long argued that a simplistic “overall PC market share” number has never been a good metric for gauging the Mac’s success because the “overall PC market” includes millions of commodity-level low-end machines that Apple neither tries nor wants to sell."
• Making Your Mark in a Web 2.0 World on Web Worker Daily: This article describes the building of a Social Media Resume, a personal website that includes links to your LinkedIn or Facebook profile page, as well as photos or video from websites like Flickr and Viddler. I relaunched DaveAiello.com about two weeks ago, but didn't realize that creating this kind of site is an emerging trend.
• Mac OS X Services (the menu you never go to) on Random Tech: "There's a whole hidden side of text modification that is stashed away, yet right at your fingertips. If you go to the Application menu (if you're in Safari, click the menu 'Safari') -> Services, a whole list pops down. You've probably disregarded this in the past (if you've ever seen it) because most of the options are grayed out, or unclickable. All you need to do is highlight some text. Go back to the menu and there are so many to choose from!"

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Wednesday, I visited the Panera in Levittown, PA to sip a diet soda and use their WiFi. This is supposed to be an amenity for customers. I had never taken advantage of it before.

I saw a Twitter post (aka "tweet") from someone I am following in my Twitterific window, and I wanted to know what they were talking about. I clicked on the URL that was embedded in the tweet and saw this {see the first screenshot}:

SonicWall CFS Blocking TinyURL.com:
This makes Twitter almost unusable, in my
opinion. [ Screenshot: Dave Aiello on Flickr ]

For the record, the URL depicted resolves to a YouTube copy of a Cheetos commericial. I didn't find that out until I got home and had time to look, probably 12 hours after the situation I'm describing.

At the time I thought, "There's pretty much no way I am going to remember this later today. I'll have to reread all the tweets on my 'with friends' timeline and hope that I remember this specific one." I was sure I wouldn't remember because I had a meeting with a potential client in Center City Philadelphia scheduled for around lunchtime, and those types of meetings have a tendency to clear my head of previous ancillary thoughts.

Twitter is basically unusable in this environment from a followers perspective if SonicWall decides it's not going to allow requests for any URL issued by TinyURL.com.

I considered my options and none of them looked good. I guess I could have written the tweet down and some information about the context if that was important, but I didn't think of that.

Submitting a URL Rating Request:
"... It's unfair to assume that tinyurl used in this
context is a means of obfuscation." [ Screenshot:
Dave Aiello on Flickr ]

I decided to take SonicWall's advice and submit a URL Rating Review request. In the HTML form shown in the second screenshot, I made the case that access to TinyURL should be allowed. My complete statement is as follows:

"URLs in the tinyurl.com domain are utilized by services such as twitter.com in order to minimize the total length of messages transmitted on their service. There is no way to determine what the content or nature of the ultimate destination site is. It's unfair to assume that tinyurl.com used in this context is a means of obfuscation."

I went about my business of researching my potential client and forgot about the situation until I got home. Now that a few more hours have passed, I have a couple of questions:

1. How many other actively-managed content filtering systems ban TinyURL just because it can be used to mask nasty things?
2. How does this affect penetration of Twitter into Corporate America and institutions such as schools?
3. What happens in more restrictive countries such as China? Do they ban services like TinyURL because of its potential to undermine the authority of official sources of information?

I guess it takes an experience like this for me to realize how fragile freedom of access to services on the Internet is. What I'm illustrating here is clearly a side-effect of an overly restrictive policy, but you can see the potential for this access hurdle to exist in its present form indefinitely.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I attended my first Princeton Mac User Group meeting on Tuesday night rather than stay home and watch Game 3 of the Flyers - Penguins series.

This is undoubtedly considered a sacrilege in my community, particularly because I am so involved in hockey at lower levels.

I point this out not to take myself to task, but to plug the Philadelphia sports website called the700level.com. I am really impressed with their article Outplayed, which analyzes the Flyers' performance in that game.

I spent 20 to 30 minutes listening to the Flyers Postgame Show on 610 WIP on the way home from Princeton, and I had little idea after that why the Flyers lost. Yes, the host and a number of callers said that the Flyers were outplayed, but they didn't give specific enough examples for me to understand why it happened.

Contrast perception of the WIP presentation with this excerpt from the "Outplayed" article:

The biggest problem in this game was again the turnovers. The Penguins ran an efficient trap that slowed the play down and confounded the Flyers' attempts to gain the zone and maintain it.... There were very few sustained attacks in the Penguins' zone; if the Flyers gained the line and were lucky enough to get a shot off, the Pens collapsed on it and cleared the rebound.... The neutral zone woes have been a major problem all series, and we have to begrudgingly give credit to the Penguins and coach Michel Therrien for that efficiency.

It's damn near impossible to win a playoff game in which you only take 18 shots (and about 3 of them were just hard dump-ins that went on goal). Sure, it was frustrating to see how many calls the refs made early in last night's game. The whistles slowed the play down far worse than some light hooking would, and I increasingly feel like a dinosaur who wants just a little of that old NHL back, so players on both sides could play without worrying about every little stick contact.

It's abundantly clear to an experienced hockey person why the author feels the Flyers lost, what role he feels the referees played in the game, and why he is not laying the blame for the loss at the feet of the officials. Excellent.

Another thing I really like about this blog is it's tendency to illustrate key plays with video clips from the game. They are using the service called RedLasso to embed the broadcast video directly into their analysis. I have never seen this done in a sports blog before to the extent that the700Level is doing it.

From what I can tell RedLasso itself is in private beta. I seriously want to know more about how they work and why they haven't been taken down by a major media company. I think that RedLasso's concept is excellent, and the way their service is used on the700Level is the epitome of fair use.

In short, I feel like I understand the Flyers - Penguins game far better after reading "Outplayed" than I did after watching the game highlights on NHL.com. That's a big reason why I will keep looking at the the700Level when I am looking for analysis of Flyers games.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• How to Eat Healthily at Top Chain Restaurants on Lifehacker: "The food experts at Health magazine have scoured the menus at popular restaurant chains in search of the healthiest foods on the menu, rounding up several healthy menu options at otherwise unhealthy chains."

  They found reasonably healthy choices at Denny's, Ruby Tuesday, and P.F. Chang's, among others.
• AT&T Providing Free Wi-Fi Access to iPhone Users - Mac Rumors on MacRumors: "A couple of readers have reported that AT&T hotspots are now offering free Wi-Fi access to iPhone users. Barnes and Noble, Starbucks and presumably AT&T's 71,000 other Wi-fi hotspot locations are now offering iPhone users a custom portal to access free Wi-Fi. A special iPhone formatted page asks for your mobile phone number. Once entered, you can access the Wi-Fi access for free."

• The "missing" iPhone ringtone on TUAW: "We've all seen the iPhone ads.... None are identical, but most have something in common. Namely, that peculiar ringtone. We call it peculiar because it isn't actually included with the iPhone. Luckily, most of us have it installed on our computers already."

  The article goes on to explain how to convert the Apple Loop that comes with GarageBand (part of iLife '08) into a ringtone for your iPhone.
• In search of a GTD solution on TUAW: Brett Terpstra's take on different ways you can integrate Mac apps and utilities into a Getting Things Done system. ".... This round of solution-searching began with a post by Dennis Best titled Getting things done (simply) in Leopard. It outlined a system where iCal calendars are your contexts (or areas of responsibility), To-dos are created in Mail, Mail Notes become projects, and Smart Mailboxes were used to interesting ends. It even had a tagging system, allowing for great flexibility. This was highly appealing to me given its close integration with my primary source of tasks and information: email...."
• Interactive GTD Software Comparison Table on Priacta.com: "102 Researched GTD Software Titles and Counting. Software listed here has been verified to support Getting Things Done and related systems...." Solutions on the web, Windows, Mac, handheld, Linux, and Python are documented. I'll have to look at why they breakout Python separately.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• How to link Twitter to Facebook - A Twitter Tutorial on AJVayerchuck.com: A concise explanation of how to install the Twitter app within Facebook and allow it to update your Facebook status.
• Clutter War II: Attack of the Giant Baby on 43Folders: "...you might be able to guess where my head is right now. Yep. It’s on clutter, and on what I need to do to get my face back into Peter Walsh’s excellent de-cluttering book as a means for regaining domestic sanity and striding toward the possibility of a life without tripping, piling, or losing what’s left of my sleep-deprived mind."
• Hi-Res YouTube Hacks on O'Reilly Digital Media: A great little article that covers why YouTube rocks for casual video sharing and how to force YouTube playback to the highest resolution possible.
• LCD Scrub cleans those stubborn stains from your screen on TUAW: "While LCD screens aren't nearly as likely to run into image persistence issues as older CRTs, they aren't immune to damage, as developer Daniel Sandler... learned to his dismay a year ago. After his flat-panel got munged by green static overnight, he whipped up a pattern-shifting screensaver to repair the burned-in pixels (based on Apple's recommendation of leaving an all-white image over the affected areas). Whaddaya know, it worked.... "
• Mac 101: Zoom and pan images in Quick Look on TUAW: "Is your laptop not among those that can do Multi-touch? Don't feel badly, you can replicate those great features!" I didn't know you could do zooming and panning in Quick Look.
• Media Center: Roll a Mac Mini Media Center with Leopard on Lifehacker: "We've talked about building a Mac mini media center and other ways to pimp your mini in the past, but blogger Jon Hicks revisits the Mac mini media center with a focus on using it with Leopard and EyeTV (a Mac DVR solution). While Apple TV is doing its best to justify a place in your living room, it still doesn't time-shift television, and many Mac enthusiasts still find that the Mac mini still outdoes Apple's latest media center offering."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the biggest annual stage races in the United States begins Monday: The 2008 Tour de Georgia, this year presented by AT&T.

I won't be attending the TdG this year, but I have attended it in the past and I have some friends who do an excellent job covering this race each year.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is April 15, a date that quite a few different tax authorities in the United States have picked as the deadline for filing annual tax returns. I had to file several returns today, including:

• U.S. Federal Income Tax for my wife and me
• Pennsylvania State Income Tax for my wife and me
• Pennsylvania Local Earned Income Tax for my wife and me
• New Jersey Corporate Business Tax for a company that I partially own

Due to slightly higher than expected income in 2007, my wife and I owed a small amount to the Federal, State, and Local tax authorities. I paid these taxes using my credit card through Pay1040.com, a payment provider closely associated with H&R Block and the TaxCut tax preparation program, and Official Payments Corporation, the payment provider most commonly used by tax authorities in the United States.

Pay1040.com successfully processed my Federal Income Tax payment using the Safari browser that is installed on my wife's MacBook. She is still using MacOS X 10.4, but all of the software updates have been applied so she is on Safari 3.1. That's good news, because this is the first time I have used Pay1040.com and I didn't expected a relatively small provider to have a Safari-friendly payment process.

TaxCut's Pennsylvania Tax Preparation Software didn't even offer the option of paying by credit card, so I had to file on paper and use the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue's website to initiate a credit card payment. Their chosen payment partner is Official Payments.

At Official Payments' website, I found that I couldn't make a payment with Safari at all despite the fact that there was no indication that Safari was not a supported browser. I could never get to the page where I could confirm my payment details on either my wife's MacBook running OS X 10.4 or my fully updated MacBook Pro running Leopard.

I had to switch over to Firefox on my Mac in order to pay what I owed the State of Pennsylvania.

I took advantage of web-based electronic filing offered by the local tax administrator serving my town-- a company called Berkheimer Tax Administrator, Inc.. Berkheimer performs this service for lots of towns, school districts, and emergency services districts within Pennsylvania.

Safari didn't work for interacting with their electronic filing site, and I had to use Firefox to complete the forms. When time came to pay, however, I was warned that the interaction between Berkheimer's electronic filing solution and Official Payments would only work in Internet Explorer. So, I had to save my session, fire up VMware Fusion, launch IE 7 in Windows XP, login to Berkheimer's e-filing site, pickup my session where I left off, and make the payment. Forcing someone to use a PC for any step of a tax filing process is simply unacceptable in 2008.

Surprisingly, The New Jersey Division of Taxation had the most Safari-friendly payment system I experienced. They also use Official Payments, but they created their own front end to it. This front end is very simple and apparently had none of the browser-specific JavaScript that is present on Official Payments' own site. I was surprised because other aspects of the New Jersey state government are pretty IE specific.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Ode To A Burrito -- Chipotle Mexican Grill on Fast Company: "Good food wrapped in a socially responsible message has created legions of Chipotle fans -- and a superhot business. Acquired by McDonald's in 1998 when there were only 14 Chipotles, the company went public in 2006 with 500 stores and watched its stock rise from $22 to $110 in 18 months. The now-independent outfit is enjoying an 80% revenue run-up over three years....

  "Chipotle has achieved these impressive stats by spurning fast-food orthodoxy. Workers make each burrito by hand, which leads to long lines of customers waiting far beyond the four-minute industry standard. Turns out, that's not a problem for many customers." There aren't many Chipotles in Pennsylvania, but one just opened in Warrington, in the same complex with one of our two closest Wegman's. Why can't we eat there more often? [ via 37signals SVN ]
• Forwarding voicemails? on 37signals SVN: "Visual Voicemail on the iPhone is a huge step forward for voicemail, but it still feels a bit last generation. It’s still about the static message that sits in your box. You can’t forward it along, you can’t email it to yourself, you can’t even play it to someone else who’s on the phone with you." Great points.
• 15 Features of the Perfect Work Space on LifeDev: "8. No clutter - Clutter is an aesthetic problem as well as a mental problem. Cluttered work spaces give create cluttered thinking. Your mind will never be as clear as it could be with a messy, unorganized environment. This also includes your desktop clutter as well." My only question about the article is: why is "no clutter" feature number 8 and not higher on the list?
• Household: De-Clutter with a Six-Month "Maybe Box" on Lifehacker: "I can vouch for the power of hidden non-necessities. My garage has served as a de facto "Maybe" space for most of this winter, leading my house toward a serious garage sale this spring."
• The Cost of Working In a Digital World on LifeDev: "A very important article has been written by The New York Times showing the hazards of being a web worker. Without boundaries and carefult attention to our Internet usage, we can quickly find our health declining. Prolific blogger Om Malik, who suffered some life-threatening health problems late last year, shares some insights his doctor gave as to why web workers have health problems."
• #1 Song on This Date in History from Josh Hosler: "What was the #1 song on ... the day you were born? the day you graduated from high school? the day you were married? the day your child was born? the approximate date you were conceived?" Awesome site. [ via Pogue's Posts and Alltop Gadgets ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal's Golf Journal column carried an a great interview with Frank Thomas, the former technical director of the U.S. Golf Association (USGA). Thomas makes some great points about the impracticality of state-of-the-art golf technology to the grassroots golfer. The quote that jumped off the page for me was this:

...the thing that concerns me is how commerce now dominates golf and is trying to squeeze the last dollar out of its most avid customers rather than trying to open the game up to more participants. If the goal is to improve the overall health and enjoyment of the game, that's the wrong direction.

I see the same kind of issues happening in sports that I am more involved in, namely ice hockey and road cycling. All three of these sports have grown rapidly in the past ten years, and are arguably having difficulty sustaining that growth rate because they are all expensive sports to play.

The media that helps people follow these sports focus on the personalities at the top of the elite pyramids (people like Tiger Woods, Sidney Crosby, and Levi Leipheimer), and the technology that makes greater achievements possible.

I'm in favor of talking about the technical advances in sports-- Operation Gadget wouldn't be what it is with out them. But, the key to continuing the growth of technologically-driven sports in North America is driving the technology into progressively less expensive equipment.

If all technological advances stay at the high end, growth of these games will stagnate and the gear manufacturers will fight over the people who are willing and able to pay top dollar for the latest and greatest. Some people would argue that's where we are today in all of these sports.

I was really impressed with what Frank Thomas had to say in this interview. The column mentions two places where we can hear more from him:

• His website called Frankly Golf
• His book called Just Hit It: Our Equipment and Our Game

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I got an email from Guy Kawasaki last night telling me that Operation Gadget has been added to the Alltop Gadgets page. What a great terrific break for us!

Alltop is the new weblog aggregation site that its owners call "the digital magazine rack" of the Internet. Operation Gadget headlines now appear on the same page with headlines from Engadget, Boing Boing Gadgets, Personal Technology by Walt Mossberg, and a bunch of other a-list gadget blogs.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Until I listened to this week's edition of This Week in Tech I had no idea that the Transportation Safety Administration had a blog called Evolution of Security, that Blogger Bob was one of the authors, or that they had posted a reassuring video of the process they used to test a MacBook Air with a solid-state drive.

As I said to my friend Henry Scheuer when I emailed a link to this video to him, a couple of things stand out to me:

1. Bob X-rayed the MacBook Air, but doesn't show us any of the pictures, because it's "sensitive security information".
2. The TSA blog only provides the video in Windows Media format, so actual Mac users can't watch it unless they find it on YouTube, as I did.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Scott Bourne, the host of The Apple Phone Show, saved $5750 on a new car that he just purchased by using his iPhone during the negotiation. It looks like the most productive uses of the iPhone were recalling email correspondence that had occurred between him and the dealership, and verifying the information that the dealer's salesperson offered during the actual negotiation.

Kathleen and I bought our Honda Accord in December 2006 when we both had Treo 650s. At that time, we could recall our emails with the dealership as Scott Bourne did. However I'm guessing that we had less useful information in our emails than he did.

The web capability of the Treo 650 was primitive compared to my iPhone. If the dealer had open WiFi for use by its service customers (likely at least in California), the iPhone would be that much more useful.

Scott doesn't say what kind of car he bought. I assume that in order to get a $5750 discount on the price, he had to purchase a luxury car in the range of a Mercedes or a BMW.

I think what I learned from reading this article was that I should do some introductory email correspondence with dealers before ever going on a lot. If I had corresponded with dealers prior to going to any showroom, I bet I could have gotten the ask price to move in a favorable direction.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Holy Saturday on Wikipedia: Lots of names exist for the day before Easter. I had no idea that so much thought had been put into this day over the years. Sorry if you consider this a sacrilege.
• Sk*rt: "Digg for Chicks" on How to Change the World (blog.GuyKawasaki.com): "I love Sk*rt. You can think of it as "Digg for chicks" (in the words of QueenofSpain), and it features the user-selected stories in topic such as Arts & Entertainment, Design & Crafts, Family & Parenting, and Food & Home."
• View higher quality videos on YouTube on MacOSXhints: "Many people are using a trick to view any YouTube video in high-quality -- simply append &fmt=18 to the end of the URL. This is a job for AppleScript! Here are two simple versions; the first, for for OmniWeb... and the second, for Safari...."
• Lemnis Pharox LED Bulb on CoolTools: "I have been dutifully buying the various LED bulbs being marketed as home incandescent replacements for a year or two. Up until now, all have had that weird, blue flickery LED light, and all have been expensive. The Lemnis Pharox is the first one that actually delivers as a home bulb replacement. It sips electricity pulling down a mere 4 watts, will last for 35 years, and replaces the light of a 40 watt incandescent."
• Adventures in Rechargeable Batteries on CodingHorror: "I've been a rechargeable battery user for years. It seems the frugal thing to do in the long run, and it's also healthier for the planet when we aren't discarding mountains of single-use batteries into landfills." Author Jeff Atwood provides a lot of tips on getting the most out of modern rechargeable batteries. [ via LifeHacker ]
• PimpMySafari.com, recommended by Merlin Mann on MacBreak Weekly. This is the reference site for all plugins and bookmarklets for the Safari web browser.
• First Look: Safari 3.1 adds speed and HTML 5 features on Computerworld: "With the 3.1 release, Safari has become the fastest browser you can use. If that isn't enough reason to make a switch, its strong adherence to Web standards and rapid adoption of new technologies might make you think again."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guy Kawaski, Will Mayall, and the rest of the folks at Nononina have built a new topic-based RSS aggregator called Alltop. There idea is to display the latest five stories from thirty or more blogs in each topic area. You can drill down to the topic areas that you are most interested in by using the appropriate subdomain URL. My favorites are:

• Sports
• Gadgets
• Mac

I'm also pretty interested in the Linux topic. I think there could be a market for a Web Development or PHP topic. There's already a Politics topic that probably would be a quick way to catch up on what's going on in the latest news cycle.

I think Alltop is an excellent idea and could be a mobile competitor to Google Reader if they create an iPhone version.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Simple Push-Up on NYTimes.com: "The push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness. It tests the whole body, engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs. It requires the body to be taut like a plank with toes and palms on the floor. The act of lifting and lowering one’s entire weight is taxing even for the very fit." Doing push-ups is a habit I've been trying to get into. This article is a good reminder of why.
• Your Story: Throwing new tools at a communication problem? on 43Folders.com: "...The anecdotes I hear from worker bees often focus on the frustration they felt when a wiki, a new CMS, a mailing list, or some other tool was introduced into an ecosystem that was suffering from a more fundamental communication problem. A lot of people tell me that this makes matters much worse all around, often amplifying the complexity of the original problem, in addition to piling on burnt cycles that were committed on getting everyone up to speed on the new 'silver bullet....'" Oh the stories I could tell about a Wiki I once used....
• ExpanDrive on Daring Fireball: "ExpanDrive 1.01 is a new $29 file system extension for Mac OS X, based in part on MacFUSE, that lets you mount SFTP servers as volumes in the Finder. I’ve been using ExpanDrive for a week and it is extremely impressive. I’ve never seen anything like it for the Mac. Magnetk, the company behind ExpanDrive, has a similar product for Windows called SftpDrive that’s been around for a while."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In Episode 45 of Tekzilla Daily, Patrick Norton pointed out a website called System Requirements Lab that can help you determine if your PC has the minimum or recommended hardware and software necessary to run dozens of popular PC games.

I tried this myself and the way it works is to download either a signed Java or Active X component which collects information about your PC and compares it to System Requirements Lab's database of minimum game requirements. If you pass those requirements, it also tells you if your PC meets the recommended requirements for the game you chose. If your machine comes in above the minimum and below the recommended requirements, then certain features of the game will appear degraded or won't operate at all.

I asked System Requirements Lab if my Dell Latitude C810 can run UEFA Champions League 2006-2007. The site told me that my machine failed the CPU minimum requirement, CPU minimum speed, and video card minimum requirement test. It recommended that I buy a new machine, and referred me to a customized list at CNET.com. I guess it's a good thing that one is already on order.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Apple introduces Aperture 2.0 on MacNN: "Apple on Tuesday released Aperture 2.0, a major revision of the company's professional photo editing and management application. The upgrade brings in a new, sleeker user interface that allows users to flip between Browser and Viewer modes with a single key press and a heads-up display that makes the most of the screen area while still allowing quick access to editing or navigation controls." This was the only change that Apple made at the Apple On-line Store today.
• 8 Tips For Using Running As a Productivity Booster on LifeDev: "There is a certain type of activity that is my absolute favorite for clearing the mind for some really productive thinking. It has the ultimate blend of physical activity, low mental resource usage, and a change of atmosphere. A perfect storm for some good ‘ol fashioned subconscious problem solving. Nothing adds a shot of productive thinking to the day like a spirited run."
• Make iMovie '08 find movies on other drives on MacOS X Hints: Using a symbolic directory link allows iMovie '08 to utilize movie content from secondary or external drives.
• {Leopard Update} 10.5.2 makes your {World of Warcraft} go faster on TUAW: "After hearing that the patch made reader Jason's Mac play faster, WoW Insider's Adam Holisky saw his FPS jump from 30 to 50 on his first-gen Intel iMac (he also has 2gb of RAM, and installed the graphics update with 10.5.2)."
• 30 Benefits of Ebooks from Epublishers Weekly: "Read an Ebook Week is a yearly event, and this year (2008) it runs from March 2 to March 8. To encourage the celebration of this little-known happening, here is our list of 30 Benefits of Ebooks. We love pbooks (paper books), and hope that they are never replaced by their electronic grandchildren. Yet ebooks are a worthy companion to their paper elders." [ via Lifehacker ]
• Run Your Personal Wikipedia from a USB Stick on Lifehacker: "You don't have to lease server space or keep your home computer always on to access a personal web server—you can run a web, FTP, and database server straight from a USB drive. A slim web server package called XAMPP fits on a USB stick and can run database-driven webapps like the software that powers Wikipedia, MediaWiki. Almost two years ago you learned how to set up your "personal Wikipedia" on your home web server to capture ideas and track document revisions in a central knowledge repository. Today we'll set up MediaWiki on your flash drive for access on any Windows PC on the go." It's incredible that you can run MediaWiki on a thumb drive now.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Top 7 Web Applications for Sending Large Files on Geekpreneur: "If you’ve ever had to send a large file to someone, you know the hardships that arise. Email services keep strict limits on attachment sizes. What’s more is that it’s often hard to send more than one attachment at a time. This kind of disservice has made email quite unpopular for sharing files- and thus, we have entered the age of hybrid email. The premise is simple: cut out the bulk, and just give us an easy way to send files over the internet!"

• Torvalds: Leopard file system "utter crap" on MacNN: "Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently blasted Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for having a file system that is 'complete and utter crap' at a Linux conference in Melbourne."

  The Leopard file system, technically known as HFS+, has been around in some form since the last time I was a Mac developer-- 1992. Of course Apple would like to move to something more robust. They've been building up to switch to ZFS, or some other sophisticated file system, for some time now.



• Turn Your Nokia Phone into a Wi-Fi Hotspot with JoikuSpot on Lifehacker: Who needs tethering when you can make your Series 60 phone into an ad hoc WiFi base station for your laptop? Wow.


• How to record a kickass podcast between two macs — and cheap! on A Whole Lotta Nothing: "A lot of people ask me how I do the MetaFilter Podcast.... I know they ... mean... 'what software and hardware does it take to make a decent sounding podcast?' After almost a year of regular podcasts and trying out different software and equipment, I’ve gotten the workflow down cold and I wanted to share the my way of making a good sounding podcast on the cheap. This works perfectly well for me being in Oregon and talking to my friend Jessamyn in Vermont over Skype, recording at both ends, then tossing it all into Garageband to complete the podcast." [ via 43Folders ]


• Nike SPARQ Parachute Makes You Run Faster, Eventually on Gizmodo: "The Nike SPARQ Parachute is designed to create drag 'to force athletes to push themselves harder to achieve speed' and look like a moron in Central Park." Can I use this thing on the ice sometime?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I never met Sheldon Brown, but I learned a great deal from him.

Sheldon developed a website, SheldonBrown.com, that had an incredible amount of technical information about bicycles and cycling. If I Googled for some information about one of my bikes, I often ended up consulting his site.

Sheldon passed away on Sunday, February 3, 2008, reportedly of a massive heart attack. May he rest in peace. [ via spare cycles and BikeRadar.com ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• RPI Plays Princeton tonight in the 31st Annual Big Red Freakout. RPI needs the win. In other news, the White beat the Red in the Alumni Game 9-8.
• Kipkay's Video Tips & Tricks on Instructables: "Here are 5 easy and cheap tricks for anyone who uses a camcorder. Total cost for all 5 is under $10!" [ via Lifehacker ]
• New Devices and Applications on the Wi-Fi Front on Web Worker Daily: "While many Mac-based users already have next-generation, draft 802.11n Wi-Fi technology in their homes (because they use Apple’s Airport Extreme routers) lots of other folks still use slower 802.11g Wi-Fi. This year is when official certification of 802.11n Wi-Fi is supposed to arrive, and the month of January brought some product announcements that point to what the widespread arrival of 802.11n technology might mean...."
• Review of the Nike Amp+ iPod Control Watch: "... the Amp+ isn't designed to be an all-around running or fitness watch. It's specifically designed for runners who already have the Nike + iPod kit. Similar to the Timex iControl we recently reviewed, the Nike Amp+ is a remote control for your iPod Nano, however unlike the Timex, the Nike Amp+ uses the existing Nike + iPod gadget that plugs into your iPod, so you're actually adding the iPod remote control to the Nike iPod system." [ via TUAW ]
• Crazy Apple Rumors on Hiatus on TUAW: CrazyAppleRumors.com is a site I just found out about recently. It's articles are what you might read in The Onion if they covered Apple more aggressively. Sorry to see it go dark.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Associated Press is reporting that the Lance Armstrong Foundation will extend the LiveStrong brand to a for-profit fitness-related website. The website will be called LiveStrong.com. The press release announcing LiveStrong.com says that the site will be launched in conjunction with Demand Media, a company that runs vertical market social networking websites. Lance Armstrong and Capital Sports and Entertainment, the sports management and marketing firm partly owned by Lance Armstrong, will also play significant roles.

LiveStrong.com com is scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2008.

According to the press release:

As a strategic advisor and ongoing content contributor, Lance will work exclusively with Demand Media to build and promote LIVESTRONG.com for the next four years. Demand Media will have an exclusive and perpetual license to the LiveStrong.com domain and work with the foundation to develop LIVESTRONG.com into the leading health, wellness, and fitness destination. Demand Media will provide a perpetual license of its proprietary social media tools to support the LAF army of volunteers on LIVESTRONG.org. Donors, supporters and survivors will be able to interact on the non-profit site via profiles, messaging, photos and blogs. Members of the LAF army will be invited to preview LIVESTRONG.com before its public launch in Q2.

It will be really interesting to see if LiveStrong.com can be launched as a fitness-oriented social networking site without confusing some members of the public about the main Lance Armstrong Foundation website at LiveStrong.org. I am a big supporter of the entire LiveStrong program, and I hope for the best.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am a big fan of This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, and The Apple Phone Show. They are all excellent podcasts that are have very high production standards.

What I'm most impressed with is the sound quality of each of these shows. I think that Leo Laporte, the host of TWiT and MacBreak, and Scott Bourne, the host of The Apple Phone Show, each have tremendous backgrounds in radio and TV program production, so they've had time to figure out what equipment and services work best.

I decided to do some research and see if they had ever published any how to articles on the craft of podcasting. Here's what I found:

• PodcastGearGuy.com: Scott Bourne has a blog on the subject of podcasting equipment and software called PodcastGearGuy. This blog hasn't seen a lot of entries since he started hosting The Apple Phone Show, but it makes good recommendations about semi-portable sound isolation booths to help you get clean audio, and digital recorders which podcasters use as backup devices when they are doing a multi-person podcast recording using Skype.
• TWiT's "Podcasting Equipment" Article: Leo Laporte does a good summary of the technology and services he was using during the mid-Summer 2006. I hope he updates this article if he changes his setup. From occasional mentions of different gear in his podcasts that I've listened to during the past few months, it seems like the setup he describes is pretty up-to-date.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of Frank Steele's projects for this year's Tour de France is TdFwiki.com, a wiki specifically about the Tour. A lot of the information that's been published so far is helpful to Tour fans who are following the race on TV or the Internet. The information that's been published so far includes:

• Information about the current (or most recent) stage,
• News, mainly results from previous stages, and
• Web Resources, including:
• official websites of the Tour de France and broadcast rights holders,
• blogs,
• photo galleries,
• streaming audio,
• podcasts, and
• Twitter.

I contributed the information about streaming audio, podcasts, and Twitter, and linked back to the reviews of these services here on Operation Gadget.

TdFwiki is open for your contributions as well. If you see information that's missing from the wiki, you can create an account for yourself and add it.

I think these are early days for this wiki, but it has several contributors who've been usefully blogging the Tour de France for several years. Frank and his co-authors are adding a lot of valuable information while continuing to blog the Tour in their own ways.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Note: This article was published in 2007. For the latest about how to use Twitter to follow the Tour de France, read TDFblog Publishes Comprehensive List of Pro Cyclists Who Use Twitter on this website.

This past week I started using Twitter to follow the live action during stages of The Tour de France that took place while I was at work.

I started using Twitter as a test on Wednesday and Thursday while simultaneously listening to the audio feed from Eurosport. On Friday I used Twitter exclusively for live action updates because Eurosport's audio feed wasn't available.

It took me a little while on Wednesday to figure out how to use Twitter for the purpose of following what other people say. This is because Twitter is designed to be a two-way communication service. You have the option of communicating with it in messages of 140 characters or less at the same time as you receive messages from one or more other Twitter users. The purpose of this is really for you to be able to communicate with your friends or the public in real time. However, Twitter can be used for live blogging all kinds of events as well, and this is what the people who are providing updates during Tour de France stages are doing.

I got started by creating an account for myself on Twitter.com. After I did that, I found my friend Frank Steele from TdFblog.com on Twitter at the following URL: http://twitter.com/TdFblog. It's very difficult to find someone inside the Twitter service. It's much easier to obtain the URL for someone's Twitter account from an external source than to try to find it using Twitter.

Once I found TdFblog on Twitter, I made Frank my friend and started "following" him. This means that messages from him would start appearing on my Twitter page. From there, I could have those messages simultaneously be sent to my mobile phone via text messages, or to an IM account of my choice. I chose to use one of my IM accounts because my Twitter page doesn't automatically update itself and I wanted to see the messages in real time.

The TdFblog page on Twitter shows Frank's messages plus any messages from other Twitter users that he's following. That's how I found TdF_Updates, a Twitter user in London. I added him/her as a friend and followed his messages as well.

I learned about DailyTour from The FredCast Cycling Podcast although Frank is also following him.

The biggest issues I've seen with using Twitter to get real time updates on Tour action are:

1. People say the same thing or something very similar when they are relating action that they see on their televisions.
2. Twitter sometimes gets behind in reporting updates. At the end of Wednesday's stage, the Twitter messages were 10 to 15 minutes behind the Eurosport audio feed. The updates were on time on Thursday. Not sure about Friday.

Twitter is an alternative to the live coverage pages on VeloNews, Eurosport, and other cycling and European sports-related sites. At this point, I don't think it's better than those sources.

Twitter could turn out to be more useful in the future, particularly if people begin using it at races in the USA and Europe where there is no live TV coverage, or if websites start integrating these live feeds into their pages.

Update on July 16, 2007: There's an article on early Twitter uses by TV networks in today's Wall Street Journal. Perhaps Versus and other rights holders will start using Twitter to connect with viewers who are at work during the 2008 Tour.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm spending more time at work during the 2007 Tour de France than I am watching the coverage on Versus. For this reason, I have become a voracious consumer of non-TV information about the Tour. One of the things I've been doing is grabbing Tour de France-specific podcasts from iTunes and listening to them on the commute to work. This way I get 45 to 60 minutes of total immersion into yesterday's Tour news, so it's a good substitute for the Tour Pre-Race Show.

Here are the podcasts I'm listening to at the moment and why:

1. ITV Tour de France Podcast: Approximately 15 minutes of stage highlights and analysis from Matt Rendell and Chris Boardman. The advantage of listening to ITV's podcast is that they are a Tour rights holder, so they can grab excerpts of race action and rider interviews that the other podcasts really can't. Also Boardman is a very good color man.
2. Velonews TDF Podcast: 10 to 20 minutes of analysis with Joe Silva and Thomas Prehn. Prehn is the author of Racing Tactics for Cyclists. You can imagine that this podcast focuses on race tactics. It's probably the most analytical podcast I've heard so far.
3. The Daily Tour Podcast from The FredCast: 20 minutes of stage summary and analysis by David Bernstein. This podcast includes some useful information about Tour information resources and a section on basic information on the Tour for beginners. (The FredCast is a year-round weekly podcast for cyclists, so you may be interested in that podcast in addition to or instead of The Daily Tour).

This is the order in which I listen to the podcasts, which is probably proportional to the value of the information that I get out of each one. Your mileage may vary, depending on the amount of TV time you have, the experience you have in cycling, and the experience you have as a pro cycling spectator.

There are several other Tour-related podcasts that I haven't had the chance to listen to, and I'm not sure when or if I will be able to do so. If you have information about some of the other podcasts, feel free to post it in the comments to this article.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I was reading O'Reilly Radar, I noticed the article by Artur Bergman that discusses some of the developments at the iPhoneDevCamp over last weekend. The most interesting part of that article for me was the discussion of Safari's handling of calls to Google Maps:

Most offensive is, however, Apple's claim to integrate with Google Maps, which means Safari intercepts requests to "http://maps.google.com/" and sends them to the Google Maps application. No other high-end phone manufacturer even comes close to this level of arrogance.

I hadn't thought about the Google Maps Widget integration in that way before, so I decided to test the iPhone's behavior while trying to use my Google Maps Mashup RinkAtlas.com. RinkAtlas demonstrates the exact behavior on the iPhone that Artur is talking about. When you get to the point of generating directions to a hockey rink in RinkAtlas, we make a call to Google Maps and pass the two encoded endpoints. The iPhone redirects this request to the Google Maps Widget running locally.

I'm pleased to note that the Google Maps Widget handles all of the parameters passed correctly, including the ones where I spoof URI options to get around API calls that didn't exist when I wrote that part of RinkAtlas. I'll eventually (hopefully) get around to extending RinkAtlas to include the directions live on our site using the new Google Maps Directions API, but Artur's analysis is absolutely correct.

I'm not as upset as Artur is about Safari redirecting calls to the Google Maps website, but I can see how this wouldn't be ideal if the Google Map Widget ever fell behind in terms of its API support. I also know that Google talked extensively about how the ability to call specific versions of the Google Maps API was a feature that developers on the cutting edge should use. I think this approach has been undermined by Apple's interception of calls to the Google Maps Website.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My wife Kathleen is finally going to get the new Apple MacBook that she's been eyeing for months.

This purchase will be a major liberation for her in the sense that she will be able to manage photos from the main family digital camera, the Canon PowerShot A540, sync her Treo 650 to her own machine, and so on.

The concern that has been hanging over us since we started talking about buying a MacBook is: What will we do to get Microsoft Office on this machine? I'm starting to think that this is really the wrong question to be asking ourselves, and that we should be looking at Microsoft Office alternatives that are free, because they are better than ever before.

I'm thinking specifically of Google Docs and Spreadsheets now that Google Gears has been announced. Google Gears is a JavaScript library that provides off-line persistence for web applications so you can use them when you aren't on-line. We probably wouldn't need this capability when working in The Home Office, since we have abundant Internet connectivity, but it would be handy for working on word processing and spreadsheet documents while on a plane or another place where wireless Internet access is sporadic or non-existent.

Google Gears is not currently integrated into Google Docs and Spreadsheets, but it's very likely to be rolled out soon.

Microsoft Office 2004 does exist for the Macintosh, it just hasn't been updated in a long time and must be run in emulation on Intel-based Macs. I think everyone who is buying a Mac today ought to wait before buying Microsoft Office, at least until a native Intel version of the software is released. There are some indications that Microsoft Office 2008 for MacOS X will ship in the second half of 2007 and that version will finally provide native support for Intel-based Macs.

I'm not saying that Google Docs and Spreadsheets with Google Gears will be a 100-percent replacement for Microsoft Office on a Windows Vista or XP box, but I'm think that these applications will be a better solution than running Parallels or VMware Workstation for MacOS X on that laptop just to get word processing, spreadsheets, and an occasional presentation.

Whether the new version of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh is worth purchasing in the first place is an open question. I suspect that it won't be worth it to me. We'll see what Kathleen thinks when it finally ships.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The Stanley Cup playoffs are in full swing. I can't see every minute of each game because I'm busy at work, and when I get home I need to spend some time with my family. This means watching at least part of some of the appointment shows that are recorded on the TiVo.

One thing that's helped me keep up is a program from The NHL Network called NHL On The Fly: Final. This is a 30-minute program that's devoted to highlights and analysis of the playoff games that took place that day.

The NHL Network doesn't air in the United States, but Versus has picked up the show for the duration of the playoffs and is airing it at 1:00am Eastern Time. This is not a good time for me to watch the program live, but it's ideal for my TiVo.

NHL On The Fly: Final was vital during the first round of the playoffs. With half as many games to cover in the conference semi-finals, the hosts can devote more time to each game.

If I don't have time to sit in front of the TiVo, I can watch NHL On The Fly: Final on demand at http://onthefly.nhl.com/. The worst aspect of this is that the on-line version has 15-second interstitial ads that can't be fast forwarded.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen and I have been searching for a clear, concise statement of the weather conditions and short-term forecast for our area. I found a site that seems to do the job quite nicely, and it's called SimpleWeather.com.

This site presents data from The Weather Channel which is normally displayed through Weather.com. However, SimpleWeather doesn't bother displaying the ads or the portal widgets that I didn't ask for and can't really control. [ via Jonathan Greene at atmaspheric | endeavors ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

BallHype is a community-oriented news site
revolving around professional and college sports.
I'll be watching it to see how well it evolves.
[ Image: TechCrunch ]

Yesterday, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.com pointed out BallHype a new community-oriented news site that focuses on professional and college sports. This site has just exited a private beta, so the user community is still pretty small.

I'm interested in sites like this because community-oriented news sites like Digg haven't been able to build reader interest in sports-oriented stories. I'd like to have a site that I could go to that ranked stories about sports I'm interested in based on fan interest. BallHype might become that site.

One of yesterday's big stories in hockey was the firing of Claude Julien as head coach of the New Jersey Devils. When I hit my computer this morning to do my Operation Gadget research, I checked out BallHype, and this was the top hockey story on the site.

It's a little hard to use as a source site at the moment because it appears that they don't consistently place permalinks on their home page. I'm not sure if I'm missing something or if they did here.

I'm going to keep an eye on BallHype to see if it evolves into a Digg-like site, with its own community of passionate sports fans. It looks like it's off to a good start.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday John Hanke, director of Google Maps / Local / Earth, responded to the public outcry about the revision of Google Maps satellite imagery of New Orleans to pre-Katrina appearances. His response was published on The Official Google Blog.

Hanke said that the satellite images were actually changed in September 2006, but the outcry only took place in the last week or two:

... {The} storm imagery was replaced with pre-Katrina aerial photography of much higher resolution as part of a regular series of global data enhancements. We continued to make available the Katrina imagery, and associated overlays such as damage assessments and Red Cross shelters, on a dedicated site (earth.google.com/katrina.html). Our goal throughout has been to produce a global earth database of the best quality -- accounting for timeliness, resolution, cloud cover, light conditions, and color balancing.

Hanke went on to say that Google decided to expedite the process of replacing the pre-Katrina images with "recent (2006) aerial photography for the Gulf Coast area (already in process for an upcoming release) that is equal in resolution to the data it is replacing."

In my previous article about Google Maps' New Orleans satellite imagery, I had reported that images of the Lower 9th Ward were showing storm damage on Monday morning. This was confirmed by Hanke when he said, "That new data was published in Google Earth and Google Maps on Sunday evening." I'm glad to hear that Google reacted so quickly.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Criticism of Google Maps emerged from a number of places over the weekend because the service replaced many of its satellite images of New Orleans which had shown damage from Hurricane Katrina with images that pre-dated the hurricane. This resulted in an unusual letter from the Chairman of the House Science and Technology Commitee's Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight to Google CEO Eric Schmidt requesting an explanation for the change.

Google appears to be pulling out the stops to rectify the problem. On Saturday, the maps I looked at looked like they were pre-Katrina. This morning, however, I started looking at New Orleans neighborhoods I had heard of before, and at least some of the satellite images I saw showed significant damage. A good example of this is the one I found when I searched for 9th Ward, New Orleans.

I worked extensively with Google Maps satellite images while I was developing RinkAtlas. Google Maps' satellite image quality is very uneven, as I suggested in What is "The Middle of Nowhere in the Google Maps Era?. If you really care about finding the highest resolution, most up-to-date satellite image of a specific location, you need to compare the images available from Google Maps, Google Earth, Yahoo! Maps, and Windows Live Local, and probably a few other services I haven't included.

Having said this, I understand the uproar this caused in certain circles. I read somewhere that it's been 19 months since Katrina hit New Orleans. Imagine if a service like Google Maps suddenly and inexplicably started showing The World Trade Center intact on its website in April 2003, after showing what Ground Zero actually looked like for 19 months. There would have been an uproar at that too.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Signal vs. Noise pointed out a terrific comparison of cost of various methods of do-it-yourself electronic tax preparation. This article is excellent because it attempts to compare the so-called out the door price of doing your state and federal taxes. Out the door pricing is defined as the total cost of tax preparation and electronic filing of both a Federal and a single-state tax return.

There are a number of electronic tax preparation options that I was unaware of before reading this article. The major tax preparation brands TurboTax and TaxCut have both packaged software and on-line tax preparation and filing services. These are delivered in several different bundles, each at different prices. In addition there are several smaller competitors included in the review.

My brother Scott has been touting the benefits of on-line tax preparation and filing for several years. This comparison proves that this option is worth trying, because the on-line versions of the major tax preparation and filing services are sometimes noticeably cheaper than their packaged software equivalents.

With two and a half weeks left until the personal tax filing deadline, a lot of people still have to buckle down and do the work. I hope that they can benefit from this handy comparison.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Am I the last blogger to make the switch to Google Reader from Bloglines? Here are the three key features that Google has implemented that made me switch:

• Google Reader handles read/unread entries much better. I can look at the latest entries on a blog with a lot of posts and only mark as read the entries that I've actually seen. How many times have you looked at the Lifehacker feed in Bloglines, only gotten through five entries, and lost the "newness" of the remaining unread entries? That's happened to me quite often.
• Google Reader's "star system" helps keep track of things that I need to act on. Whether it's a blog post I want to write, an email I want to send a friend, or a job I want to apply for, stars in Google Reader become a sort of a feed entry to do list for me.
• Google Reader's home page calls my attention to things I might have missed. I'm not sure if it tracks change in entry-creation velocity on my feeds, or if it watches what I have clicked on previously, but the home page surprises me at least once a day.

I hope my change over benefits Operation Gadget readers in terms of stronger, more relevant, and timely articles.

If you are still using Bloglines or any other feed reader, you owe it to youself to give Google Reader a try for a few days. You may find it to be as much of an improvement as I did.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I noticed the other day that PVRwire.com reported that it will be retired by AOL today. Speculation among readers of the blog (see the comments attached to the story) is that the content that has appeared on PVRwire will instead be found on a site similar to EngadgetHD.

AOL owns Engadget through its acquisition of Weblogs, Inc..

I did a quick check and the domains EngadgetDVR.com and EngadgetPVR.com don't appear to be in use, so it doesn't appear that the content is just going to move over to its own Engadget-related domain.

The author of the retirement announcement post on PVRwire hints at some announcement that will be made today. Presumably AOL/Weblogs, Inc. intends to consolidate this sort of content into one of their existing TV-related blogs. I'll try to keep an eye on this.

PVRblog, the niche technology blog that got me started in this business, is still a great source of information. The problem with it is that Matt Haughey and his friends are incredibly busy and they don't get around to posting articles with the kind of frequency that blogs with full time editors do.

Update: Weblogs, Inc. has decided to publish PVR news and information on TV Squad, a blog devoted to TV industry news and gossip. I'm not sure that there is a fit between these content streams, but I'll check the TV Squad a few times before I make a final judgement.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of weeks ago I talked about the successful replacement of the screen assembly on my Dell Latitiude C810 laptop. I did this without the aid of a great article from Instructables.com called DIY - Replace Broken Laptop LCD.

This Instructables article takes a more complex aproach to replacing the LCD on an Apple iBook G4 than I did with my Latitude; The article shows how to replace the LCD but leave the upper case and the surrounding components intact. I didn't do this because:

• it's potentially a lot more difficult,
• there was a possibility that more than one display component was malfunctioning on my laptop,
• there were a number of complete display assemblies that are compatible with my C810 available on eBay at reasonable prices.

I think that articles like this one are really helpful because they help laptop owners to realize that display component failures are fairly common, and that you don't necessarily have to buy a new laptop or spend hundreds of dollars on an out-of-warranty repair at a computer repair shop. I found more specific instructions on how to take my C810 apart in the Dell Latitude C810 Service Manual, but I never would have realized that replacing the entire laptop display assembly was a viable strategy by reading the service manual.

I'm going to delve more deeply into Instructables.com to see if other articles they've published are equally useful. [ via Lifehacker ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some Operation Gadget readers know that I do a lot of consulting work on other people's weblogs through my Weblog Improvement business. In order to succeed in this line of work, I need to keep lots of small projects organized and on-track.

The best tool I've found for this purpose so far has been Basecamp from 37Signals. It lets me break down projects to milestones and to do list tasks, and share work with my clients when appropriate. Since I am a heavy Basecamp user, I depend upon their time tracking feature for which 37Signals charges a small premium.

What Basecamp has been missing up to now is a lightweight timer widget that knows about the projects that I'm working on. That feature still doesn't exist in Basecamp, but I found a third party web application that will do the job nicely for the time being.

SlimTimer is a free timer widget that handles multiple tasks. It also allows me to run reports from its website that I can give to clients as backup for my billings. I can also export the data to Excel. Hopefully, I will be able to import that data into Basecamp at some point.

If you're a heavy Basecamp user, I think SlimTimer is a must-have accessory. I wonder if 37signals is aware of this site yet. If I were them, I'd be doing a make or buy analysis right now. [ via LifeDev ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The "hybrid" map of Van Buren Ice Rink in Van Buren, ME.
[ Image: RinkAtlas.com ]

Jason Kottke gave us his thoughts on "The Middle of Nowhere", prompted by an article in En Route Magazine. I have a different perspective, since I'm in the process of geocoding all of the ice rinks in America for my RinkAtlas project.

The Middle of Nowhere, in my opinion, is just about any place where Google Maps doesn't have a satellite image that lets you identify buildings. There are quite a few places in America that meet that definition. Places like:

• Van Buren, Maine
• L'Anse, Michigan
• Morgantown, West Virginia

Why do I say that these places are The Middle of Nowhere?

It has to do with the fact that the company that Google contracted with for satellite imagery didn't deem these areas worthy of a high resolution satellite image. This may have to do with the pace of economic development rather than isolation. After all Google has high res images of Bad Axe, Michigan, which is unlikely to be considered the Center of the Universe.

Places like Morgantown are strange because you can see high resolution map segments very close to low resolution ones. Dorsey Avenue in Morgantown goes from Civilization to the Middle of Nowhere in the time it takes to drive from Don Knotts Boulevard to Morgantown Municipal Rink.

For those of you who like to compare map services, Yahoo! Maps often has high resolution photos for rural areas that Google Maps is missing. I guess The Middle of Nowhere is a different bunch of places from their perspective.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

RinkAtlas.com is a new Google Maps mashup
that I've been building over the past few
weeks. [ Image: RinkAtlas.com ]

A few Operation Gadget readers have been asking why I'm not writing as much about The Tour de France as I have in past years. The reason is that I'm building a new Google Maps mashup called RinkAtlas.com, and this is taking up a lot of time.

RinkAtlas will eventually provide door-to-door directions to all of the ice rinks in North America. Right now it has information about all of the rinks in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

I built RinkAtlas because I go to a lot of ice rinks and there wasn't a single website that provided door-to-door directions. There are a couple of older-technology websites that provide less specific directions, like "from PA Route 309, take exit 35...", but I had trouble using them when I moved to Pennsylvania last year. I didn't know the roads that were more than 20 minutes away from New Jersey. What I would do is go to one of these sites, find the street address, then go to Google Maps and get directions from my house. After doing this a couple of times I said, "There has to be a better way."

It takes a while to enter rinks into the RinkAtlas database because I'm looking at the satellite image produced from each rink's street address to make sure that there's a hockey rink-sized building down there. I'm finding errors in other websites this way. I also found that a lot of rinks don't have street addresses, so I need to look at other information sources in order to find their exact locations. An example of this is Baker Rink on the campus of Princeton University.

One of the cool parts of building RinkAtlas is that I needed to learn to do AJAX programming so I could reposition the pointer that the geocoder put on the map for the street address to the exact location of the rink. I got some ideas for how to do this from Google Maps Hacks, but that book is a little out of date since Google revised their Google Maps API a month or two ago.

I hope you'll give RinkAtlas.com a try, and that you'll come back often if you need directions to ice rinks the way I do. Let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: mashup, Google Maps, ice rink directions.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chris Brewer of ThePaceline.com published a great interview with Anthony McCrossan of Cycling.TV. This is the website that provides streaming video access to many of the smaller road cycling events that don't make it on to U.S. television.

I think it's great that The Paceline is coming out with articles like this. It seems like they realize that cycling fans have a huge appetite for behind-the-scenes info and always seem to be asking themselves, "Wow, how did they do that?" It's not just the riders and their performances that fans are interested in, but the whole scene.

McCrossan talks candidly about the role they play in the cycling community, including their negotiations with host broadcasters over Internet rights to major cycling races, their dealings with OLN, and how Cycling.TV's backend works. [ Registration required to read articles on The Paceline ].

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, Cycling.tv.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Paceline is the best pro cycling team-specific site on the Internet. You can find out practically everything you want to know about The Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team there. Chris Brewer and his co-workers eliminated the biggest obstacle to monitoring The Paceline for new content: they published an RSS feed.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed at the following URL: http://www.thepaceline.com/rss/rss.aspx.

You still need to register and log-in to The Paceline website in order to read the articles, but at least you'll know how when new articles are published. I'm sure I'll be quicker to point out their cycling technology articles now.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nike and Apple team up to create
a running computer that consists of
a pair of shoes, a motion sensor, and
an iPod nano.
[ Photo: Apple Computer, Inc. ]

On my son's birthday, Nike and Apple announced a collaboration that will initially allow a pair of Nike running shoes to talk wirelessly to an iPod nano. Over the long run they hope to expand the product line to include more products that bring fitness and entertainment together.

I would have loved to be there for this announcement because it was held in New York and because Lance Armstrong and elite marathoner Paula Radcliffe participated. I wondered how long it would take for Lance Armstrong's involvement in the New York Marathon to result in a marketing opportunity for one of his long-time sponsors. I guess this is the first.

What's cool about the Nike+iPod Sport Kit is that it will only cost $29. Nike and Apple both have other high margin products to sell you if you like the idea of using your iPod as a running computer.

Converting the nano into a running computer is a radical departure from the approach that Polar and Adidas are taking to equipment integration, and a lot of pretty serious runners could be swayed by it.

Technorati Tags: iPod nano, Nike iPod, running computer, fitness gadgets, Lance Armstrong.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When I heard that Google Maps had expanded its coverage to Europe, I thought of my friend Ramona Morel who recently moved to a new condominium in Zurich, Switzerland. I went to Google Maps, typed in her address, and didn't get the map I expected.

I thought, "Maybe I need to type her street without a number," so I typed Sophie Taeuber-Strasse, Zurich, Switzerland, and Google Maps responded:

Your search for Sophie Taeuber-Strasse near Zurich Switzerland did not match any locations.

That was frustrating. I did a couple of tests of addresses I knew in other countries in Europe and most of them worked. This didn't make any sense to me.

Then I read the Google Maps in Europe article on The Google Blog and read that Google Maps is only fully operational in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

Other countries have street-level maps, but apparently not driving directions or integrated local business searches. It looks like Google will roll out a localized Google Maps website as they get these features implemented in each country.

Now I know to look at The Google Blog whenever I have a question about the specifics of a new Google service.

Technorati Tags: Google Maps, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

VeloNews Ticker: This is the latest
advancement in live coverage of pro
cycling events, brought to us by
VeloNews.

Earlier today I spoke to Jeff Henderson from One Million Revolutions who developed the VeloNews Ticker that's being used for the first time at the 2006 Tour de Georgia cycling race.

VeloNews has provided running commentary on each stage of many international cycling races for several years. That commentary was presented on a static web page that contained an HTML meta tag that instructed visitors' web browsers to refresh (reload the same page) every few minutes. That periodic client refresh directive was the extent of the interactivity of their previous live system.

When VeloNews editors saw the gorgeous Tour Tracker that Adobe sponsored for the 2006 Tour of California, they decided that they needed a more sophisticated live results page to retain their share of the Internet audience for major cycling races. That's when they spoke to Jeff.

Henderson, who is also the Interactive Editor of Inside Triathlon Magazine (a sister publication to VeloNews), pulled the VeloNews Ticker together in the weekend before the Tour de Georgia began. The core features of the VeloNews Ticker are:

• Stage Results and Current General Classification Standings
• Live Race Commentary
• Live Course Map, implemented using the Google Maps API
• Stage Elevation Profile
• Latest Photos

The Live Race Commentary pane is pretty similar to the commentary that was previously provided by VeloNews. The rest of the features of the ticker are new.

Read on for Jeff's comments on how reorganization of VeloNews' on-line databases helped facilitate the implementation of the ticker, information on how the photo stream and race commentary are created during the stage, little known features of the Ticker, and prospects for future use.

Technorati Tags: Tour de Georgia, pro cycling, VeloNews Ticker.

Continue reading "How VeloNews Built their Cycling Race Ticker" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Download.com recently published Optimizing Firefox, a special section loaded with tips on how to improve the performance of Firefox. I found a lot of information about Firefox in it that I didn't know. For instance:

• Download performance can be improved by deleting the record of old downloads from the Download Manager.
• Overall browser performance on slow machines can be enhanced using the FireTune plugin.
• Memory usage can be decreased by changing the "Back-Forward cache" value, particularly if your computer has more than 512 Megabytes of RAM.

I'm definitely going to set some time aside to play with my Firefox configuration according to these guidelines. [ via Random Thoughts ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

... you can turn to the following resources for replays and critical analysis:

• AdFreak from AdWeek.com: They live blogged the ads and had some interesting stats and asides thrown in.
• AdJab the advertising blog from Weblogs, Inc.
• Google Video has the ads available for playback
• USA Today has posted the results of their 18th annual Ad Meter
• The Wall Street Journal has its Super Bowl ad analysis (probably for subscribers only)

[ some of these ideas via Josh Hallett at Hyku.com ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Associated Press reports that Howard Stern bid his terrestrial audience fairwell today and encouraged them to tune in to him on Sirius Satellite Radio on January 9, 2006. According to the article, Stern began his show by saying, "Good morning, and welcome to the last show on terrestrial radio," while the sound of "Taps" played in the background. HowardStern.com has a countdown to the day when there is "no more FCC, no more boss, no more interference...."

Whether you like The Howard Stern Show or not, you have to have a certain admiration for Stern's willingness to walk away from one of the most popular syndicated radio programs in the United States. He will attempt to recreate it in the context of a subscription service.

I'm wondering if lifting the speech and content restrictions that have been the bane of Howard Stern's existence since at least 1995 will be entirely positive for the show and its audience. There will have to be limits, but what will they be? I guess you'll have to tune in on January 9 to find out.

But, before you do, you'll need a Sirius-compatible radio. So check out a few options:

• SIRIUS Sportster Replay Plug-and-Play Satellite Radio, 6-line LCD display, 44-minute memory buffer
• JVC KT-SR2000 Plug 'n' Play Sirius Satellite Radio Receiver, smaller and less expensive than the Sportster
• Sirius S50 Satellite Radio Receiver System Pack, 50-hour recording capability, MP3 capability, built-in FM transmitter

Technorati Tags: Howard Stern, Sirius, Sirius Sportster, JVC KT-SR2000, Sirius S50, Hanukkah gifts, Christmas gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Poplife Media, the company that brought you Popgadget (the personal technology site for women), has just rolled out Babygadget. Babygadget is a blog about gadgets that mainly appeal to a baby's parents, not necessarily to the baby him or herself.

White Hot Infant Feeding Spoons are a good example of the kind of technology that Babygadget will be talking about. From the sound of the description, these are a great idea:

... Munchkin's White Hot feeding spoons have a heat-sensitive tip that turns white if the food is too hot for a baby's sensitive mouth. They also have suction-cup bottoms so the spoon can stay upright, and not touch potentially unsanitary surfaces.

I've heard stories about how my sister and brother-in-law sample my niece Emma's baby food to ensure that it's OK to eat sometimes. At this point in my life, I'm interested in technology solutions that allow me to avoid doing that, at least with pureed meats and vegetables. I guess I'd be OK with apple sauce once in a while.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A friend of mine told me that Rush Limbaugh has been raving about the Sony Cybershot DSC-N1 digital camera. Apparently, he got one from a national sponsor that is a computer retailer, and he was struck by the high resolution and the 3-inch touch-sensitive screen on the back of the camera.

I did some research into the camera and found that it has a pretty unique design. The DSC-N1 is supposed to be both a digital camera and a portable photo viewer. In spite of the small size, the Cybershot N1 can shoot an 8.1-Megapixel image that's optically zoomed up to 3x. It's also designed to allow you to organize your photos into albums so you can play slide shows of your recent photos. To me this means that it's unlikely that a DSC-N1 user would also have a Video iPod, but I doubt that most DSC-N1 or Video iPod users would push the limits of either machine for storing and showing off photos.

The DSC-N1 has very few controls other than the touch screen. This is probably a good thing in the minds of people who like to take their camera out of a pocket and snap a picture immediately. It would take getting used to for a lot of veteran camera users. On the other hand, on-screen menu navigation can be quick once you get used to it, thanks to the large screen and absence of buttons. The N1 also comes with on-board photo editing tools, including tools for simple line drawing and cartooning. So, the Cybershot DSC-N1 actually has more UI features than could easily be represented in physical switches and dials.

Another potential issue I see with the DSC-N1 is that it requires Memory Stick Pro add-on memory, such as the 1-Gigabyte Memory Stick Pro. The price of this memory has come down a lot, but it's still more expensive than widely-used SD cards.

More good information about the Sony Cybershot DSC-N1 is available on The Digital Photography Blog.

Technorati Tags: digital cameras, Sony Cybershot DSC-N1, Video iPod, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, Rush Limbaugh announced on his syndicated radio show that two music videos from Sgt. Clay Smith are available in iPod Video format exclusively on RushLimbaugh.com. The music videos videos were discussed on Rush Limbaugh's program on November 23 when Limbaugh replayed a call he took during a podcast that he refers to as The Fourth Hour. The caller, Sgt. Clay Smith of the U.S. military, called in from a U.S. base somewhere in the United Kingdom. The songs, called The Ones and Wings of Freedom were written by Clay Smith with music by Mark Salatin and video by M.R. Rodwell.

Whether you agree with Rush Limbaugh's politics or not, this is another indication that third parties are producing content for the iPod with Video Playback and that tons of content will be made available in this format in the near future.

The Rush Limbaugh Show has pushed the envelope of subscription podcasting for quite some time. The service called Rush 24/7, which began as a way to monetize live audio streaming of the program, has now evolved into a podcasting delivery program. They are extending the service on December 12 to support regular video podcasting as well.

Technorati Tags: Rush Limbaugh, Video iPod, iPod music videos, podcasting, video podcasting

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

If you are a regular radio listener in major cities in the USA, you've probably heard several ads for TomTom Go portable navigation systems. TomTom has a different strategy in France. They are running a two team road rally called TomTom Raid. The teams were given no food, no money, no credit cards, just a TomTom GO 700 and a Smart car to travel across France. The teams left Paris on Monday and the race will continue until December 8.

You can follow the progress of the race daily at the website TomTomRaid.com. The site is entirely in French, so it may make more sense to our readers in Quebec and people who studied French in school than it does to me.

My father asked me what a TomTom was the other day. For those of you who haven't seen one yet, they are portable navigation systems that can be moved from car to car. They are simple in that you plug them into your car's electrical system, mount them to your car windshield, turn them on, and go. There are two models of the TomTom GO that are being marketed in the United States:

• TomTom GO 300, a turnkey GPS device that gives door-to-door directions between any two addresses in the United States, maps included on a secure digital card. The system includes spoken turn-by-turn guidance.
• TomTom GO 700, including all of the features of the 300 plus faster CPU, more memory, a hard disk for larger map and route storage, and bluetooth for handsfree phone integration.

[ via Operation Gadget reader Alexander Baarde and Alt-Buzz ]

Technorati Tags: Tom Tom, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few Operation Gadget readers have written since we redesigned our pages to point out that the page sidebars are out of alignment on their browsers. Most of the people who are experiencing this are using Firefox 1.07 or earlier. These alignment problems are fixed in Firefox 1.5.

Firefox 1.5 has just been released. To get it, visit http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal reported in its Monday edition that Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network will make some of their shows available on-demand for $2.99 per episode. According to the article:

The episodes will be tailored to work exclusively on toy maker Hasbro Inc.'s VuGo portable media player, a kind of video iPod for kids that began appearing on store shelves in recent weeks and sells for about $100 at discount retailers.

In an earlier article, I said that I put an iPod with video playback on my Amazon.com Wish List because I concluded that "video playback is going to be a very hot feature of portable media players in 2006". This deal between Viacom, Time Warner, and Hasbro is another indicator of the willingness of media companies to offer content for use on portable media players.

I think some of these initiatives will prove that there's a market for inexpensive content delivered on-demand. This will result in the availability of a wider variety of content, which will be its own demand driver. Whether lots of parents will pay $2.99 per episode for the right to download SpongeBob SquarePants episodes to their child's VuGo Multimedia System remains to be seen. { Subscription required to read most articles in The Wall Street Journal. ]

Technorati Tags: VuGo, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, SpongeBob SquarePants, Hanukkah gifts, Christmas gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

A report in this morning's Wall Street Journal indicates that Google will rollout a mobile phone version of Google Maps today. According to the article:

Google... is tailoring some popular Internet services for use on wireless devices. Starting today, for example, consumers using some types of cellphones will be able to access satellite maps wirelessly and scroll through them as they can on the Google Maps service.

This service is going to require Java on the mobile phone and is supposed to work on "more than 100 different cellphone models"

Update: The URL to download Google Local for Mobile is http://www.google.com/glm. It currently supports a bunch of different carriers and handsets, but not Blackberry or Palm handhelds. [ Subscription required to access most content from The Wall Street Journal ]

Technorati Tags: Google Maps

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I wasn't paying attention when Microsoft announced its Windows Live initiative, but more than a few people see parallels between yesterday's event and the announcement of Internet Explorer ten years ago.

Microsoft was forced to move into the web-based application space because so many innovative applications have been delivered recently as websites. I'm talking about things like Flickr, Gmail, and Basecamp. Companies large and small are building user communities around well-designed, limited-purpose applications like these. The revenue models are a mix of monthly subscriptions and context-sensitive advertising.

I think it's unlikely that Microsoft will displace any of these Web 2.0 applications anytime soon, but I expect Microsoft's offerings to be disruptive if they offer decent functionality and integration. Since Microsoft has control over the default settings of a lot of PC operating systems and desktop applications, I expect them to point to services at Live.com. Many PC users do little to customize their desktop environment, so this may hurt the growth of non-Microsoft web services over time.

On the other hand, Microsoft will have to get any services they offer through Live.com to the point of reasonable functionality quickly. Remember how Passport, Microsoft's security and ecommerce service, failed to catch on? Six months or a year after its initial deployment, I chuckled to myself whenever I saw a website with a Passport login button. The Passport infrastructure lives on in Microsoft's network of websites, but support for it is by no means considered the must-have feature that Microsoft once hoped.

The Passport fiasco should be a cautionary tale for Microsoft. They should avoid trying to be all things to all people from the very beginning of the Windows Live initiative. I think this is a huge risk for them, since they see small successes in the web space everywhere they look. Microsoft will not be successful at competing with all of these services. It also probably won't profit from competing with some of them, no matter how they they go about it.

Microsoft could succeed if they approach the market for online applications in a piecemeal fashion, as Russell Beattie suggests. They could build tiny applications like to-do lists and calendars before taking on things like contact management and customer relationship management. If they executed on a business plan like that, they would be a major threat to every Web 2.0 application out there.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Flickr Offers Photo Printing at Target
[ image created by Dave Aiello, courtesy of Flickr ].

Flickr announced the introduction of a photo print ordering service for users in the United States. The service is offered in conjunction with Target Stores. You have the option of picking your photo order up at your local Target store or having the order mailed to you.

One nice feature Flickr added was the ability to control who is allowed to order prints of your photos. This is done through a Photo Printing preferences page where you can choose:

• Only You
• You and your family
• You and your friends
• You, your family and friends
• You and any of your contacts
• Any Flickr member

I think Flickr is a great service. I use it all the time to share photos with my friends and family. I'm sure the pressure will be on me to enable this feature and upload my photo backlog before Christmas.

Update: I posted on Operation Gadget this with the BLOG THIS feature of Flickr. It was an interesting experience. Flickr timed out waiting for a response from Operation Gadget confirming that the post had been successful, so I mistakenly triple posted this article. Flickr also doesn't check to see if you wrote all of the necessary HTML for the article; It goes ahead and adds line breaks for you and inserts some inline CSS for good measure. I had a bit of clean up to do when I came back to this site. [ via Atmaspheric | endeavors ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was IMing with Hubert from Ubergizmo today who pointed out that Ubergizmo is publishing a PlayStation Portable-specific version of their site. The URL for it is psp.ubergizmo.com.

I haven't been following the development of the PSP market too closely, but I think that the PSP has the potential to transcend the gaming market in the way that the Apple iPod product line has redefined what people want to do with their portable music players. Still I have to ask the question, are enough people surfing the web with their PSP to justify a PSP-specific version of a gadget site?

Hubert is looking for feedback about his site from anyone who accesses the web with their PSP, so if you're interested, check it out.

BTW, I was also curious about how the PSP-specific site would handle hits from PC-based browsers. I tried hitting psp.ubergizmo.com from my Blogging Workstation, and I was redirected to the Ubergizmo home page.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

2005 Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Ride:
This is our best guess at the 50-mile
route map. I used Gmaps Pedometer
to convert a cue sheet to a map. Click
on the picture of the map to see the route
in a Gmaps Pedometer window.
[ Image: Gmaps Pedometer / Google Maps ]

Bryan Katz, a fellow Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Rider and Rensselaer alumnus, sent me a cue sheet for the 50-mile route of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Ride along with the following question:

OK Mr. Gadget... is there software anywhere that would translate the route sheet to a map?

The easiest way I know to do it without a GPS tracking file is to plot the map using Gmaps Pedometer, which is what I did. Kudos to Maria Norton who told me about Gmaps Pedometer back in August.

There are a couple of unresolved issues with the route as I've plotted it:

1. The route through Rockville is a little messed up. The cue sheet isn't clear on the turns when you're skirting around the downtown area. I'm guessing that the route will go from Norbeck Road/MD 28 onto Wootton Parkway, but the cue sheet doesn't say that.
2. In that same area, I followed the wrong road between Muncaster Mill Road/MD 115 and Norbeck Road. This is probably why the route length I've plotted is only 47.78 miles long.

I'll correct those problems and update the article when I have time.

Updates:

1. Bryan Katz provided the URL for the cue sheet: http://www.tourofhope.org/ride/2005_dc_ride/dc_ride_route_log.pdf.

Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dr. Kaye Trammell, an assistant professor of visual communications at Louisiana State University, has set up Kaye's Hurricane Katrina Blog and has been blogging regularly all night from Baton Rouge. That's about 65 miles west of New Orleans.

From what I've been able to read, Baton Rouge is west of the path of the storm. Katrina made landfall east of New Orleans earlier this morning.

I think this blog is interesting because Trammell is critiquing local television coverage, comparing it to what's been airing across the country, and reporting on what she's experiencing at her home. [ via Josh Hallett at Hyku.com ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Andrew Carton of Treonauts published a good summary of RSS reader options for Treo 650 users. The headline readers include PalmOS applications that have paid licenses, browser-based RSS readers that are free, as well as email and Java-based offerings.

Of the RSS readers I've tried so far, Bloglines Mobile (part of Bloglines.com) is my favorite. However, if I was more into podcasting, I'd probably be using QuickNews. QuickNews has robust RSS attachment support, which means it can do things like download podcasts directly to an SD card installed in your Treo and play them in Pocket Tunes.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

del.icio.us direc.tor: I'm trying to use a
new AJAX application called del.icio.us
direc.tor to manage my web bookmarks.

Last week I said that leaving a browser window open to an interesting web page can be a productivity killer. Since then I've been looking for ways to better manage and track all of the interesting stuff I find on the web that I'd eventually like to mention on Operation Gadget or I want to refer to later.

The easiest thing for me to do would be to bookmark all of the pages that I want to remember for later, then close each browser window. However, dropping bookmarks on the desktop or into a toolbar isn't really an answer for much of the work I do.

I think the desktop metaphor works for pages that I need to work with all the time such as Paypal, my bank's on-line banking application, and e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com. The metaphor definitely breaks down for pages to which I will make infrequent reference.

Bookmark management sites like del.icio.us are designed to keep track of those infrequently used but still useful or interesting web pages. I've never gotten into using del.icio.us, however, because I couldn't comprehend the home page and didn't see the personal organizational benefits.

I don't honestly remember where I stumbled across del.icio.us direc.tor, but John Udell wrote the kind of description of it that caused me to give del.icio.us direc.tor a try:

The top item today in my experimental del.icio.us affinity feed is del.icio.us director, an alternate interface to del.icio.us from the the guy who created the Gmail agent API last summer, Johnvey Hwang.... It loads your del.icio.us bookmarklets into the browser and creates powerful new modes of navigation and search.

I saw the potential power of bookmark tagging in a screenshot like the one I've included in this story, so I created a del.icio.us account for myself and started migrating the bookmarks out of my browser and into it.

Probably the most confusing aspect of del.icio.us direc.tor is the fact that you have to be on a del.icio.us page before you can invoke it. This has to do with del.icio.us director's nature as a client-side web service broker. I understand that it capitalizes on a del.icio.us API and creates an alternative AJAX-based interface between your browser (Firefox or IE) and del.icio.us. Beyond that, it's easier for me to focus on what del.icio.us direc.tor does rather than how it does it.

When I'm done migrating my bookmarks over to del.icio.us, I'll only have links to frequently-used web applications left in my Firefox bookmark toolbar. I will have a separate place where I can keep bookmarks that can be retrieved by searching for them according to keywords.

I've come to the conclusion I am more productive when I find a definite place to keep things that I need to use or refer to again in the future. This type of organizational system can work in the physical world (clean desk) and in the electronic world (clean desktop). For the moment del.icio.us and del.icio.us director are part of my organizational system. I will try to report back in a couple of weeks on how well they are working as a personal bookmark management solution.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today my friend Maria Norton sent me the following message:

Hi Dave,

Hope you're getting settled into the new place.

Just wondering, have you heard about the Gmaps Pedometer? It's a pretty good to map out routes and mileage.

Also, on the Google maps website {http://www.google.com/help/faq_maps.html}... you will find the ability to create custom Google maps on your website (you must register and get an API key to do this).

For other Google maps hacks, see: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/

Take care, and good luck with the training.

I've been thinking about training route mapping since I moved to Newtown and started scouting for cycling and running routes. I checked out the Google Maps API and it looks like I can definitely use it to make maps of my training routes for the Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope Fundraising Ride in Washington DC.

I'll let you know when I start experimenting with the API. [Thanks Maria!]

Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Subaru is sponsoring a website called RaceToTheTour.com where they are offering a contest with two chances for the winners to travel to France during this year's Tour de France, ride along with a Trek Travel bike tour, meet the members of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, and contribute to their Race to the Tour blog.

This is not just a contest site, it's also a multi-author weblog about the Tour de France. It's getting a lot of feedback from readers already. Here's the comment I made:

I think this contest is one of the most interesting things I've seen any Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team sponsor do to generate some buzz.

There are only a few people out there who know how hard it would be to do justice to the task that the contest organizers are placing before the winners. I blogged from both the Tour de Georgia and the Wachovia Cycling Series this Spring. It would be hard to write interesting stuff for a blog and ride for several hours a day at the same time.

At the Tour de Georgia, I spent 16 or more hours a day interviewing people, traveling between the start and finish of each stage and the hotels, and writing about the race. I didn't even have time to ride my bike during that period.

I wish the winners a lot of luck in the effort to blog the Tour de France. There will be so many stories to cover, whether you choose to focus on the race itself, what goes on behind the scenes, what the spectators do to get to the roadside and entertain themselves during the long wait for the riders, or what you experience as a result of winning the contest.

Ride at your own pace and don't try to be a hero. You can't go from being a spectator to being Thomas Voeckler overnight because they hand you a bike and say "go".

I told Kathleen about this contest on Saturday or Sunday and she said that I should enter it. I entered this morning. If you are interested in getting your shot at blogging the Tour, you should try to enter the contest by 11:59 Eastern Time tonight. They will choose their first of two winners at Midnight.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At around dinner time on the East Coast, my wife Kathleen called from Harrisburg, PA. She and her sister Mary planned a weekend away for the two of them and were looking for directions to a movie theater. I tried to pull up Google Maps and got a DNS error. Then I tried Google and got another DNS error.

I was in my living room using my laptop, a floor away from the WiFi access point, so I figured this was some sort of glitch related to latency on my WiFi network. After all, most sites I hit were responding. I used Mapquest instead, gave Kathleen the directions she wanted, and went back to watching the Prologue of the Giro d'Italia on OLN on my TiVo.

A little later I went back upstairs to the Home Office and learned that Google had been unavailable due to a DNS glitch of some sort. As Om Malik reported, many people initially thought that Google had been hacked.

I find the tone of Om's article kind of funny, but I guess Google's Internet properties are depended on by so many people on a 24-by-7 basis that even a momentary outage is like a major television network going black for the same period. Then again, the media has treated momentary outages at Amazon.com and Ebay like major news events for several years, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I stumbled onto a website called CustomSublimation.com last night. They offer custom cycling jerseys (sleeveless, short and long-sleeves), skin suits, BMX jerseys, shorts, shells and vests, triathlon, and cross-country ski apparel.

The great thing about this site, which is a division of Mt. Borah Designs, is that they allow orders as small as six jerseys. This means that I could probably afford to buy Operation Gadget team jerseys if I could find someone to produce graphics for me in Adobe Illustrator format.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Make is a new quarterly magazine about gadget modification and electronics-based hobbies from O'Reilly Media that's mainly available at Amazon.com at the moment. I'm planning to subscribe but the subscription will not begin until Volume 2 (the second quarterly issue), so I looked for it at the Barnes & Noble in Freehold, NJ last night.

I couldn't find it anywhere. The women at the information counter hadn't heard of it.

I was under the impression that Make would be available at bookstores like Barnes & Noble nationwide beginning on March 15. Was I wrong about this?

I'm subscribing and ordering the first issue via Amazon.com. This is probably the quickest way to get Make without having to run around to find it. I'm sure I'll see it on the newsstand within a week or two. I hope to have Volume 1 in my hands at that time.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been meaning to point out HOW-TO: Make your own annotated multimedia Google map that was published on Engadget a couple of days ago. This is a really terrific tutorial on how to make Google Maps do things that it wasn't designed to do.

The Engadget tutorial sort of takes off from where John Udell's annotated walking tour of Keene, NH stopped. It generalizes some of the techniques that Udell needed to work with in order to make the walking tour and distills them into a recipe.

I pointed out some of the information from John Udell's weblog in the article I wrote called More Cool Info about Google Maps. My article focused on the server-class software that Google used to build its map tool. I saw the Keene, NH walking tour article at that time, and I think I meant to come back to it in a day or two after I wrote the server components article, but I forgot.

Regular Operation Gadget readers may remember my attemps at GPS data projection: How I Generated a Tour of Hope DC Fund-raising Ride Map and Toolkit for Turning Garmin Forerunner 201 Data into Overlay Maps. I'd like to apply the Engadget tutorial to some of these datasets from my Forerunner 201 and see what kind of maps Google Maps can generate with them.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The more I look for details about how Google Maps was implemented, the more interesting stuff I find out.

The latest example is the fact that Google based its mapping service on Telecontar's Drill Down Server, a highly scalable geospatial application aimed at companies that have the skills and resources to customize it. Although Ask Jeeves, Rand McNally, and Yahoo! Maps all reportedly use the same underlying GIS server, it's Google's aggressive use of DHTML and XML combined with data from both NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas that give Google Maps its unique look and feel. [ via Jon Udell's Weblog ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

John Udell wrote an excellent piece for InfoWorld pointing out a lot of the technology behind the rendering of maps in the Google Maps service. Udell points to an article by Joel Webber that really gets into the details of how a Google Maps page is constructed. There is lots of discussion of the intricacies of DHTML and XML for you web design geeks.

The details of Webber's analysis are beyond my level of experience at the moment. I'm not looking to hack Google Maps or create a similar service, but I'd love to see documentation of how to call it and pass street addresses to it so I can generate maps and directions from my websites.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, I reported on the publication of Paris Hilton's personal information that was stored in her T-Mobile Sidekick II. I did some more research and learned that the information published today is at least similar to information that Nicolas Jacobsen stole during the period from August to October 2004.

This information and a good deal more was reported in the article Secret Service Hacker, How Did He Do It? on the Ethical Hacking and Computer Forensics weblog.

Included in this article are a whole series of illustrations of potentially dangerous vulnerabilities in the my.t-mobile.com website's login page. This is the gateway to T-Mobile's website for customer-facing mobile Internet applications. These vulnerabilities lead Jack Koziol of the InfoSec Institute to conclude that my.t-mobile.com's login page may be vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks.

Many of the my.t-mobile.com vulnerabilities documented in this article are still problems today. This is very disturbing given the huge amount of information that T-Mobile has stored in their database, and the fact that the relationship between my-tmobile.com and the server at Danger, Inc. that serves as the repository for Sidekick II data is now explained.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've just completed a one month trial of a Flickr Pro account. I got the folks at Flickr to provide me with this one month trial so I could see how well the service worked when I had a nearly unlimited photo upload quota.

I've reported on a couple of Flickr's advanced features, including Flickr Notes which allows customers to attach notes to regions of their photos. I mentioned the Flickr Uploadr desktop uploading tool and Organizr web-based photo stream manager when I pointed out how to access my Flickr public photo stream. These are really cool features that extend the Flickr website in a manner that I used to associate with desktop photo library management software.

I think the fact that I subscribed to Flickr during its beta period speaks for itself; Flickr has what it takes to be successful and have a lot of customers. My friends and family who have used Flickr to view Kathleen's and my personal photos have said they like it. I think Operation Gadget readers who are digital photographers should give Flickr a try.

See what I've been posting on Flick at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_aiello/.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Google Maps: A new service from Google
that will light a fire underneath Yahoo! Maps
and Mapquest. The local maps produced by
this service are more helpful than those
produced by competitive sites. (Click on the
image to see more detail.) [ Image: Google ]

I noticed that Google announced a new component of its Google Local service called Google Maps.

I did a couple of quick tests to produce maps of my local surroundings. Google's single point maps such as this one of downtown Hightstown, New Jersey seemed more useful, with more local landmarks than Mapquest. Yahoo! Maps had similar landmark detail, but the Google Maps user interface seemed fresher.

I also plugged in a 75-mile trip from East Windsor to Vineland, NJ that I make when I officiate ice hockey. I liked the Google Maps presentation of the route better than the Yahoo! Maps presentation, primarily because Google made the map the focus to a greater extent than Yahoo.

I feel similar about Mapquest's presentation. Their directions include graphical road signs that I don't find necessary. The "Distance" column on Mapquest has always confused me. Every time I look at it, I have to think about what that distance means, then I realize that I am supposed to stay on the road for whatever the specified distance is. I didn't describe it well, but that's because it's hard to describe.

Google is early in the process of connecting Google Maps to its other services. They also haven't included any Google AdWords areas on the map pages yet. I assume that we'll see that incorporated sometime soon.

I liked my first experience with Google Maps, and I'll be using it regularly when I need driving directions for the next few weeks. If I see anything unique, I'll post it here on Operation Gadget.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Flickr Photo with Notes Attached:
John Cloninger added notes to a photo
that he posted on Flickr. I took
a screenshot of the photo and cut it down
to accentuate one of the notes. Follow
this link to view the complete photo.

My friend John Cloninger used his Flickr account to publish an interesting photo called storm2 which had a more informative description DOGGIE SMELL COFFEE!!!! The photo depicts a dog and his master standing in front of the Starbucks Coffee in Summit, NJ.

To the photo, John added two rectangles with notes attached: "Doggie" and "Overpriced coffee". When you view the photo on Flickr and mouse over one of the rectangles, both of them are highlighted and the rectangle overwhich the mouse sits shows its attached note (see the photo attached to this story for an illustration of this).

The "notes feature" in Flickr adds an additional entertaining or educational dimension to photos that employ it.

According to Corrante Many to Many the Flickr Notes feature is intended to be read/write compatible with Fotonotes. This is a technology that Greg Elin has been working on since at least 2003, but Flickr is the first place where I've seen it deployed in a way that's accessible to me.

I think Flickr Notes is really interesting and I'm going to try adding some to a photos I post in my Flickr photostream.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salon published a really good article about the many uses of Flickr, the on-line photo sharing site that I've been using for the past 10 days. The article points out some interesting statistics:

• 176,000 members,
• 2.2 million photos, growing at a rate of 30,000 per day,
• 82 percent of those photos are available to anyone, so the photo owners chose not to keep them private to friends and family.

This is interesting because I made most of the first photos I uploaded private because they were taken on Christmas Eve and Christmas when my wife and I were exchanging gifts with friends and family. I like keeping photos of family events mostly private, while I make public my photo blog / moblog-type photos available as soon as I can in my Flickr photostream. I also separate the photos that are specific to Operation Gadget into Operation Gadget's own photo gallery. This is the best of all worlds for me.

Salon makes you buy a subscription or sit through a little commercial before being able to view the complete article. It's worth reading if you are interested in the social aspects of Flickr, like I am.

Oliver Travers pointed to the Salon article from his weblog. His article also contains some a couple of links to the FlickrBlog (written by the folks that run Flickr) that discuss the complexities of running a rapidly growing site and upgrading on-the-fly.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Apple Tipping Point: Paul Nixon
explains Apple's pricing strategy
in a chart.

While browsing Philip Torreone's Flickr Photostream, I came across a really effective infographic developed by Paul Nixon of Nixlog. It explains the evolution of the pricing of Apple computers and iPods in terms of all the products that they have currently announced or are already on sale. In other words, it illustrates the range of iPods from the iPod Photo to the iPod Shuffle and the Power Mac G5 to the Mac mini.

Paul explains the thoughts behind his graphic in a separate entry in his weblog:

The Sweet Spot. Until January 2005, Apple had no iPod or PC products that served the mass market. With the launch of iPod Shuffle and Mac mini they have finally converged two product paths with the mass market in mind. This will not only drive more iPod sales (via the Shuffle), but also fulfill the promised "halo" effect of the iPod products as PC users jump to the Mac mini. Over the course of 2005, Apple will continue to dominate and grow its MP3 player market share, while steadily growing its PC business through the Mac mini. As with the original iPod, the Mac mini could build slow, but serious momentum in the market place.

I never heard of Nixlog before I stumbled on to this graphic, but I'm adding it to my Bloglines feeds.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bryan Greenway of Home Theater Blog and Jonathan Greene of Atmaspheric Endeavors are teaming up to launch a new blog called Mac HTPC to explore the potential of the Mac mini as a home theater system.

A number of people (including me) think that the Mac mini has many of the features necessary to make it an excellent home theater system. It's good that two experienced bloggers have moved to fill the need for a blog in this emerging niche.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Home Office in Snow: One of
the photos I uploaded to Flickr
for Operation Gadget readers to look at.
[ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

Earlier this week, I promised that I would point to my Flickr account when I had some digital camera photos to share with the public. The account is mine, not Operation Gadget, hence the URL:

http://flickr.com/photos/dave_aiello/

Right now there are about 30 photos of hockey, ice rinks, and Christmas festivities. There will be more later.

Flickr has been a lot of fun for me so far. I like the Flickr Uploadr desktop photo transfer tool a lot. It turns the process of getting photos uploaded into a background task. I also like the Organizr photo viewer very much. At times, it's hard for me to believe that Organizr is a web-based application.

Comments about the photos can be posted on Flickr. If you have any thoughts that you want to share with me about how the Flickr Photo Sharing Service works, email me at daiello [at] operationgadget.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lance Armstrong's professional cycling team, the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team or "Team Discovery", made its 2005 debut on Monday. TDFblog raved about the team's new website:

They've got a really nice website, with a number of high quality 5-minute streamed videos, and much of Lance Armstrong's appearance on "Overhaulin'".

FYI, The Learning Channel (TLC), where Overhaulin' appears is also a Discovery Communications channel.

It's great that Discovery Communications has put so much effort into the Team Discovery website. Streaming video will probably be one of the biggest benefits of the team's new sponsorship deal.

Now that the dust is beginning to settle, doesn't the best professional cycling team in the world deserve to be sponsored by a commercial enterprise and no a quasi-governmental entity?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although Operation Gadget has its own Coppermine Photo Gallery, I wanted to find a different web-based solution for casual photo sharing. I decided to give Flickr a try, uploaded a few test photos, and invited my wife, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, and my sister to view the photos.

Anyone can have a Flickr account, but the free accounts being issued have relatively small monthly upload quotas. I wanted to do a much more in depth test of the service, so I contacted the people at Flickr and they offered me a Flickr Pro account for a one month trial.

I uploaded about 100 photos from my new Canon PowerShot A95 already this morning. I'll be inviting more friends and family to view them and to comment on how they like Flickr. I'll take this feedback, incorporate my own feelings about it, and let you know what we think of the service.

I'm also planning on uploading at least a few public photos, so Operation Gadget readers can participate in this test. When I've got some photos up there that you can see, I'll let you know.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dave's Bloglines Account in action:
Click on the screen shot for a more
detailed image.

Can any website make a person 100-percent more productive in their day-to-day tasks? If that person is a heavy duty weblogger and the site being talked about is Bloglines.com, the answer is yes.

Over the weekend, I redesigned my desk adding a PC with a 1280 x 1024 display as my second computer. That machine is more or less my dedicated weblogging workstation. Since I haven't used a PC on a fulltime basis for over three years, I had to find an RSS reader that was powerful and flexible.

I briefly surveyed the market and decided that I'd try Bloglines first. You can't beat the price, since it's free. Within an hour, I added about 100 different feeds to my account. I organized them according to the Operation Gadget categories, which is a vast improvement from my previous RSS feed arrangement in which the feeds were uncategorized and unalphabetized.

The biggest thing I like about Bloglines is the logical way it discards headlines that I've already looked at, unless I click the Keep New checkbox that's attached to each headline. This allows me to see that I've already read the important content on many sites while simultaneously helping me keep track of what I plan to blog later in the day.

Since my Bloglines account is server-based, I can hop on to one of the three other computers in my office anytime I need to, quickly pull up the feeds I am watching, and not lose a beat.

I think Bloglines is a great companion for the Movable Type backend. This means it would also work well with WordPress, Slash, and a number of other browser-based, weblog-oriented content management systems.

The proof of how much an RSS reader will help me will be if I can consistently turn out more high quality Operation Gadget stories in the same amount of time. So far, that's been the case by a wide margin.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, let me know by email: daiello [at] operationgadget.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

The National Weather Service got the forecast for Central New Jersey exactly right today. It called for rain beginning at around midday, so I got my cold weather gear out and hit the road between 10:00 and 10:30am for a 14-mile ride on my mountain bike. It took me about 54 minutes because the wind slowed me down a bit.

I got home about 11:20. By the time I got out of the shower, it was raining hard enough to make the ride unpleasant if I was just heading out.

A lot of people I know look to other websites for their weather information, but The National Weather Service's site has plenty of detailed information. They aren't always as accurate as they are today, but I think they do a great job.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Operation Gadget reader Chris Sansom wrote:

I am VERY excited to get the 'flashback' Atari {7800}, it sounds very fun. In your article Atari Bringing Back the 7800 Console for the Holidays with Atari Flashback (Gaming Gadgets 9/9/04) you characterized the {7800} as Atari's "second generation" gaming system. That designation should belong to the Atari 5200, I would think of the {7800} more as their "3rd Gen" box.

Good points. The site Chris points to, Atari7800.com, provides some excellent background on the classic Atari video game systems, as well as new, refurbished, and after-market products for sale. The site contains information about:

• the Atari 7800 ProSystem,
• the Atari 5200 SuperSystem,
• the Atari 2600 Video Computer System, and
• the Atari LYNX Color Portable Video Game System.

It's amazing that people have taken the time to put a site like this together. This is probably the best evidence of why companies like Atari are bringing their classic games back out in a variety of new packages. [ Thanks Chris. ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal is now syndicating its headlines via the RSS file format. This means that you can use an RSS aggregator to monitor the publication for newly published articles.

Operation Gadget has used Personal Technology and other columns by Walter Mossberg as sources for a long time. So, we point out the Personal Technology RSS feed as a service to our readers.

The links in the RSS file point to the subscription area of the Wall Street Journal website. But, even if you don't subscribe, you can use this RSS file to remind yourself when new content is published, then surf over to the free Personal Technology website to read it.

[ Via Scripting News. Subscription to the Wall Street Journal is required to read some items pointed to in this article. ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the techniques I've relied on this year while watching the Tour de France is reading non-English publications with the assistance of Google Language Tools. As a result, I've been able to read articles that appear in L'Equipe, Le Monde, Marca, and Gazzetta dello Sport, all major print publications written in languages that I do not speak.

This technique is greatly aided by Google Toolbar which provides a "Translate into English" function on the Page Info pop-up menu. The big problem with Google Toolbar is that it only works with Microsoft Internet Explorer, a web browser that I cannot recommend due to its vast security problems. However, the Mozilla Project has a tool that emulates the Google Toolbar which is called Googlebar. It also has the "Translate into English" function.

When my wife and I saw the Tour in person in 1998 and 2001, I bought L'Equipe on a regular basis. This was the best source of Tour news available in some places, because the International Herald Tribune isn't always available in small towns in France. In spite of the fact that my wife studied French in high school, it was often difficult for us to understand the nuances of stories in L'Equipe. As a result, our understanding was often limited to what the headlines and photo captions said.

The Google Translation Tool is an advantage that people watching at home have over people who are seeing stages in person.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Several weeks ago, Lance Armstrong and the U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team launched a new fan club site called The Paceline. This was promoted on LanceArmstrong.com, and I quickly found out that the Paceline site was:

1. membership-based (you have to provide personal information), and
2. fee-based (you have to pay a fee to become a member).

Now that I have looked at the site carefully, I've found that it is membership-based, but there is no cost to creating a membership. It's hard to tell that because the user interface of the site is so confusing. When you register as a member, the instructions say that it's free, but you are directed to the Paceline Store to create an account. I think this is because the site was originally intended to be fee-based, but the operators changed their minds after implementation.

My next problem with the Paceline site is that the login or activation process after you create your Paceline account failed when I tried it. I got a really complex-looking server error page when I tried to log in with my user name and password. I got around this by going back to the home page (http://www.thepaceline.com/) and it recognized me as a member.

If you are interested in joining the USPS Cycling Team fan club, by all means join Paceline. There is some very good information about the team there, including a good selection of pictures and desktop wallpaper for people that like that sort of thing. Don't worry about the fact that it looks like you are going to puchase something at the end of the registration process. I hope that my experience with account registration difficulties helps a few people to get through it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Phillip Torreone, the guy behind The Geek Gym, has consolidated most of his fitness technology information into a site called /run. He's done a lot of interesting research on fitness gadgets, and I think his site is definitely worth putting in your RSS aggregator. It's going in mine right now.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Friday, the Home News Tribune reported that a Jersey City man avoided having his car impounded by renewing his auto registration after having been pulled over. According to the article, "Using the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission's online registration, {Sean} Leach, 36, got his car renewed while patrolman Jason Zier was writing him up. The upshot: Leach got the ticket for having an unregistered vehicle, but he beat the towing bill."

Although the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission's web site, www.accessdmv.com, is available using some mobile phone's web browsers, Leach called a friend who was by a desktop computer and walked him through the registration renewal process. [ via Gizmodo ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rael Dornfest has started MobileWhack, a site that's "about squeezing every last ounce of mobility out of your mobile device." He is joined by Brian Jepson, Nat Torkington, and Emory Lundberg, and Marc Hedlund in this effort.

It seems like they are trying to do a website devoted to the content of an O'Reilly book called Gadget Hacks, if such a book existed. Well, maybe that will be interesting and different enough from Operation Gadget that we can all be friends.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)