Month: March 2005

WordPress: Lapse in Judgement

To me, what Matt did with WordPress is, without a doubt, a shameful act.  He had, in effect, pressed WordPress users into becoming unwitting accomplices in google bombing for financial gain using hidden content.  This is what Matt had to say about it:

The content in /articles is essentially advertising by a third party that we host for a flat fee. I'm not sure if we're going to continue it much longer, but we're committed to this month at least, it was basically an experiment. However around the beginning of Feburary donations were going down as expenses were ramping up, so it seemed like a good way to cover everything. The adsense on those pages is not ours and I have no idea what they get on it, we just get a flat fee. The money is used just like donations but more specifically it's been going to the business/trademark expenses so it's not entirely out of my pocket anymore.

Matt, stop babbling poor excuses like a teenager who just crashed his dad's car into a ditch.  No excuses can be made for that kind of shenanigan except a sincere admission of complete lapse in judgement.

Tagging and WinFS in the Enterprise

Tagging is useful at personal level for categorizing data of any size and type without the constrain of hierarchy.  While WinFS is more than this, adding tagging to traditional file system will deliver most of the benefits WinFS offers at the user experience level.

But IMHO the real power of tagging can be hatched only at the workgroup level.  This means introducing new ways (UI-wise) to expose and discover tags others use with the same level of ease as children learn new words.

AJAX in Flash

As I pointed out in my AJAX post, I think difficulties of writing AJAX make it a poor web application platform, particularly since there are easier alternatives.

Flash, for example, is a better platform for some applications than AJAX because it offers similar capabilities (i.e. XMLHttpRequest in DHTML) and comparable, if not better, level of availability along with much better graphics capability.  Flash tool developers such as Lazlo and Xamlon makes it easy to develop interactive web application.  Just take a look at this Google Maps like demo built over a weekend using Xamlon's upcoming tool.

Note that AJAX in Flash is inappropriate for web applications that manipulate DHTML DOM extensively and has a number of issues that makes it prohibitively expensive for uses beyond demos and small tightly-focused applications.  For example, you can't built PhotoShop with it without abandoning usability.

Beyond Flash, .NET looms with superior functionalities and flexibilities.  The only thing it lacks is the availability in several sense.

Flu-ered 360

Nothing much going on because I am floored with a flu of sort.  Symtoms are severe muscle and stomach aches.  Constant intake of niccotine lozenges didn't help with my stomach either.  Is it just me or are flus and allergies seem more prevalent these days?  Maybe I should invest in kleenex manufacturers…

Oh yeah, I did notice 360 but don't have any comment other than that it seems just like Orkut with blogging thrown in.  Note that Orkut was not useful at all, not even from the revenue model point of view.  As to the blogging side, it the same old same.  What's going on in Korea now is more advanced than this.

OOPS.  Dave quoted a part of this post which got edited out.  Well, I'll just restore some of it.

Everyone seems to be copycats these days, like all the cats who wrote three-pane news aggregators.  It's the same with social networking services like Orkut, 360, Spaces…  What's wrong with you all?  Are you all assimilated or something?

Start.com

A small team (2-3) of Microsoft engineers lead by Steve Rider is building Start.com, what looks to be a personal news portal (aka server-side news aggregator).  I see that they too found TiddlyWiki interesting too and are AJAXed like rest of the web development tippy heads.  I say they too because Start.com is in the same space I am attacking.  And they are running into same problems I have.  Hehe.  Luckily, they have Dare to help them with.

Media Player-less Windows

In my opinion, forcing Microsoft to ship media player-less Windows won't have any effect on Microsoft's media format dominance.  Instead, Microsoft should have been forced to place media player IP and code in the public domain as well as bundle several competitive media players.  Of course, the monopolist side of me still think anti-monopoly whiners are just wimps but I'll change my tune when I have a lucrative reason to.

Dokdo according to China

Xinhua, China's state run news agency makes it clear what China's position in the dispute is.  Here is an excerpt from Chosun newspaper (couldn't find an english version of the Xinhua article):

When we look at history, Dokdo has been recorded as Korean territory since 512 A.D., while Japan began considering it Japanese territory from 1905… – Xinhua News Agency

While China has their own territorial dispute with Japan and the current Chinese government has been accused of rewriting history just like Japan, my own bias tells me they are being truthful here.

Unsmoking Day 3

As I expected, I started coughing today.  Actually, it's more like dry hacking like cats do before coughing up hair balls.  It's still not bad.  Also as expected, I am not able to concentrate nor listen too well as if I am distracted by a gang of invisible monkeys on my back.  There some good sides to being distracted.  For example, I keep forgetting about smoking.  It's like: Gosh.  I wish I could have a smoke just now…  Woo.  What's that shiny thing?

BTW, this little box of 168 Commit lozenges costs $80 according to my wife.  That works out to about 50 cents per lozenge.  Yikes.  They have a big enough surface to place some ads on them though.  AdPill?  Hmm.

Unsmoking Day 2

On my second day without smoking, I am still feeling fine although I didn't follow the instruction which say I have to take at least 9 lozenges per day for the first 6 weeks.  Yesterday I needed only 4 but woke up this morning without any craving.  My appetite seemed to have improved though.

Based on my past attempts to quit smoking, I should start coughing within few days as my lung starts to recover, spring cleaning like.

Switched to Trillian

Yesterday, I had to add Yahoo IM client to communicate with team members of a project I've just joined.  With three IM clients running (MSN, AIM, and Yahoo), I had three contact lists and UIs to get confused with.  Yikes.  Then I remembered Trillian which supported all three IM protocols.  It took me about 5 minutes to replace the three IM clients with Trillian.  So far, I've had no problem at all and am happy with it.