As the witching hour approaches, I’m watching the endless parade of depraved individuals passing by my downtown Salem apartment and I’m noticing a common theme among the costumes of choice, as far as the young women are concerned. The costumes appear to fall within one of the following categories: slutty witch, slutty vampire, slutty angel, slutty devil, slutty cat, slutty nurse, slutty doctor, slutty pirate, slutty wench, slutty fairy, slutty maiden, slutty superhero, slutty schoolgirl, slutty biker, slutty rock star, and a variety of costumes which could probably best be described as “slutty slut”. I’m not sure what this signifies, but I bet Sigmund Freud would have a field day here.
Update: slutty nun, slutty maid, slutty hula girl, slutty sailor, slutty firefighter, slutty police officer, slutty cowgirl, slutty cavegirl, slutty gypsy…
Filed under Personal Notes
Pictures from Halloween in Salem. I didn’t get too many pics because 1) It’s awkward taking pictures of random strangers. 2) My camera is really crappy in the dark. Anyway, it was fun people-watching, but there really isn’t much in terms of “special events” going on, so I’m content to call it a night early. Everything will still be there when the crowds go away. I highly doubt we got the 40,000 people predicted by the Salem News, but it was still quite a scene out there…
Filed under Personal Notes
Creo Tokens are an ingenious way to send large files to people with no hassle. Basically, what it does is set up your computer as a sort of server, then instead of sending the actual files to people, you send a small email attachment, called a “token”, which provides instruction to the recipient computer as to how to retrieve the file (accounting for NAT traversal, and other similar inconveniences).
The recipient’s experience is simplicity itself - Drag the “token” from your email to a small program called the “Redeemer”. Wait a bit, and the files show up! Brilliant!
Filed under General Computing, The Internet Biz
I’m glad news about Groove usage in Iraq is reaching the media… We are doing some AMAZING stuff over there — stuff that literally could not be done any other way. Here’s an excerpt from a recent San Antonio Express-News article. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be available online.
Teams of U.S. troops deployed to Iraqi cities assessed each town’s electrical, water and waste systems. There were 300 categories of information needed to complete the assessment. In each major city, a fleet of Humvees, all equipped with laptops, were sent to do the job.
Trouble was, [Groove Marketing VP David] Fowler said, there was no network for the soldiers to use. So the Groove-equipped laptops also were loaded with wireless networking capabilities.
As the team fanned out and made their individual reports, information leapfrogged from one vehicle to another, back and forth, crisscrossing town, so that all of the laptops were recording all of the data.
Each laptop held onto the data until a military satellite came into range. Then, during a brief window, each would upload the data and send it simultaneously to commanding officers, the U.S. State Department and humanitarian agencies working in the region.
“It’s astonishing,” [Industry observer Clay] Shirky said. “You couldn’t have done that any other way. No other software could’ve done it.”
If you’re one of the people who never “got” why Groove is different from “eRoom” or “WebEx”, do you get it now?
Filed under Groove
It’s always great when you find a piece of software that fills a gaping hole in your operating system’s capabilities, and works just like it’s been built-in functionality all along. Stuff like this is pretty common on the Mac, but much more rare on Windows. Alex Feinman’s ISO Recorder Power Toy is a perfect example of this type of software. Ever wanted to “back up” a CD to a single file, so you can burn it later, as needed? Can’t do it in Windows XP… But, install this software and it’s as easy as:
1.) Right-click CD
2.) Select “Copy CD to Image File”
then…
1.) Right-click the image file
2.) Select “Copy image to CD”
This is a fantastic piece of software, and it’s free.
Filed under General Computing
I just got home from a rather LONG day at work, and saw an email informing me that “Napster’s back!” I’ve downloaded it, installed it, started it up, logged in (after filling out a mysterious dialog asking me for my “pressplay” user ID, even though I’ve never used “pressplay“. I guess I was supposed to know that’s what i was really signing up for when I pre-registered on Napster.com…
I’m playing around with it… I’m not overwhelmed… The UI is “gratuitously non-standard” (which, sadly, seems to BE the standard these days) and is very cluttered. It also flickers like crazy any time you resize anything or move around in the system. I’ve gotten A LOT of “can’t connect to server” errors - though these are probably just launch-related glitches. There are some unnecessary dialog boxes (such as one warning you that you can’t clear a playlist when one of the songs is playing — so, just STOP the stupid song, sheesh!). There are a lot of UI areas with web-style verbose instructions spelling out how they work (a really lame substitute for good design which has seems to have cropped up from the recent trend toward HTML-based application layout engines).
I recall from the launch demo that this was targeted as an application you’d use to manage your complete MP3 music library regardless of where you got the files, but I don’t see where I’m supposed to go to rip a CD.
Oh, and the “Napster Device” looks cheesy. It’s definitely no iPod. Yet they’ve got the balls to charge more per Gigabyte than the iPod. Um… If there’s ONE angle someone could use to steal HD-based MP3 (err… WMA?) device market share from Apple, it’s cost. Oops.
But it still looks like there’s some interesting stuff in here… A “history” of streamed tracks, similar to a browser history. The ability to “save” other members for later perusal of their collections… I think I’ll be playing around a bit more tomorrow. But early indications are that I’ll stick with Rhapsody for “exploring” and iTunes for buying, archiving, and organizing. One thing is 100% clear, Apple has nothing to worry about here.
Filed under General Computing
Want to get rid of Windows Messenger once and for all? (a fine idea for Trillian users such as myself) Here’s how. Check out how sleazily Microsoft is “hiding” Messenger from the Add/Remove wizard. Bleah!
Filed under General Computing
Enough about computers and other geeky stuff - now for something completely different:
My alter ego, DJ Slice, along with DJ Murphy, will be presenting, for your enjoyment, an evening of dance and merriment, which we call “This is Pop?!”, at The Common Ground in Allston, on Saturday, November 22nd.
This is our first significant DJ gig, and we need your support. I’m not entirely sure of the details, but in my experience as a CG semi-regular, there will probably be a $3 cover charge, and it will most likely begin around 11:00PM. The CG attracts a fun, low-attitude crowd. The door is 21+, and the dress code is come-as-you-are. If you want to stop by early, they’ve got great cheap food, too, which they serve until about 10:00.
The house will be rocked, with alternative hits from yesterday and today. Be there!
Filed under Personal Notes
In conjunction with a major Groove.net overhaul (more behind the scenes than visible, though there have been some design tweaks), we’ve added an RSS feed of our “In The News” section. The RSS items are link-only entries to online articles which mention Groove Networks. I’ve been dying to do this for a while, but it was basically impossible with our old Content Management System, which shall remain nameless. Lest you think this is a “skunkworks” project, check out the good ol’ orange XML button on the homepage. The silver-haired guy in the corner office is a big RSS fan, and has been just as eager to get this up and running. Enjoy!
Filed under Groove, Web Development
Unlike the Sox last night, Apple hit this one out of the park, and perhaps out of the atmosphere. This is a FLAWLESS translation from the Mac. Jobs’ “Best Windows app ever” line may sound like hyperbole, but think about it… What would you nominate otherwise?
Anyway:
MusicMatch: Doomed
RealOne: Doomed but treading water until web sites stop using their stupid video format.
Windows Media Player: Doomed with extreme prejudice (10 more dollars to encode MP3, my ass)
Winamp: Not quite doomed but relagated to playing random sound links on web pages, which it was always ideal for.
Rhapsody: Not doomed, due to its excellent subscription based streaming model, which iTunes does not offer. It’s a shame the user-hostile RealNetworks will reap the profits.
Napster 2.0: The wild card… But probably not quite doomed due to its Rhapsody-like streaming model and interesting community features (browse other users’ collections, see what people are playing right now, etc.)
CD’s: ???
Filed under General Computing
Apple is expected to launch iTunes for Windows on Oct. 16th. Napster 2.0 launches on Oct. 29th (with its own iPod-type player). I watched the launch video, it seems to be quite well done. And MusicMatch launched their so-so music service a couple weeks ago.*
Anyway, it looks like there may actually be some real competition here. How nice it will be to see competitive software innovation again. It’s been a while…
* Oh yeah, there was also that BuyMusic.com thing *snicker* *snicker*
Filed under General Computing
Threatened by a lawsuit from ICANN, VeriSign finally pulled the plug on SiteFinder. At first glance, one might think VeriSign did this grudgingly (in fact, they go out of their way to sound DEEPLY disappointed). But I will almost guarantee that they put up either a half-hearted fight, or none at all, to reinstate SiteFinder. Obviously, they knew they did something incredibly, mind-bogglingly dumb. But, to admit such a staggering level of stupidity would be corporate suicide. Conveniently, ICANN just gave them the perfect “out”. By blaming ICANN for SiteFinder’s death, and never reinstating it, they can argue that SiteFinder was a potentially BRILLIANT addition to the Internet “experience”, cut down in its prime by a big mean litigious organization. Of course, all the while they’re really thinking “Thank GOD that’s over, let’s go back to sending out phony renewal notices, like in the good old days.”
Filed under The Internet Biz
All students will use Groove and have poor taste in shoes.
Filed under Cool Stuff, Groove
You are currently browsing the