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 (0) | 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)

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)