Now, I’m not really sure why that happened. Gordon Ramsay is about as far from Beethoven as you can get. I mean, they sort of *look* alike (crazy hair, mean face), so perhaps there is some facial recognition thing going on? Even weirder – there was a link for a sushi video right under it.

My algorithm-orientated mind is having a really hard time trying to figure out how the heck Google thinks those videos are “related” Even weirder – when I refresh it shows a different video of Gordon Ramsay each time, but all the other “related” videos remain exactly the same.

Sometimes you just gotta love Google quirks.

Over the past couple of weeks I have moved down to Atlanta to fulfill some contracts with a marketing company. It has been nuts, but incredibly fun and rewarding. As a result of this massive change I will no longer be taking on as much extra work – not because I don’t want to – but because I honestly don’t have the time. My week days are shot, and the last thing I want to do is fill up my fun Atlanta weekends with the drudgery of work. Little things here and there are fine – but no major projects!

As much as I love money – health and happiness always come first before work! I’m just keeping it real, and being honest.

I know this news has been a bit disappointing to those of you who I have already contacted, and I do appologize. While most of you have been very happy about this news – a few of my now “former” clients have chewed me out, claimed I’ve sold out, and said some really nasty things. One person even asked me to justify my decision… who asks something like that?

Anyway, thanks again to all of my past, present, and future clients! Stay tuned, for this is surely just the beginning of a really wild ride!

I’ve been an Internet user since 1995, when I was just 6 years old. Back in the 90s browsers were pretty awful, at least when compared to modern versions. If you resized a window the entire page had to reload (which on dial-up took forever), designs were purely frame and table based, if a page had more than a few images it was pretty much impossible to display due to memory restrictions (16-32 megs ram), and they were insecure like you wouldn’t believe.

Let’s not forget about the “walled garden” of AOL, where you had to literally dial into the world wide web to surf any non-AOL sanctioned content. Those were the days…

Nowadays we can go on facebook and post a video of our cat jumping onto a balloon and comment on our friends’ posts with no reloading and very minimal network traffic – all thanks to the breakthrough transition to dynamic AJAX-based layouts. There was also the amazing advances in CSS that made it possible to literally create a WYSIWYG design in Photoshop. Back in the 90s you could sure make a sweet layout… but it would look nothing like it in reality… with CSS, it can.

Even the editor I am using on my WordPress install to write this now is a testament to how far browsers have come. It would have been 100% impossible to make a web-editor work this well on a browser in the 90s. Heck, an editor wouldn’t have worked this well in 2002!

However, even with the advances there are still quite a few predictions that haven’t come to complete fruition. Back in the early 00s when dynamic browsing really took off I often read tech articles and watched seminars about how all of our applications would be on the web, and the browser would be the new “desktop environment” to use these apps.

Yeah… it hasn’t quite happened that way. The biggest obstacles in the way are security issues and the lack of functionality in many of these apps.

Functionality Challenges

Take Google Docs for instance – sure it does 90% of what the average person may want, but they are seriously lacking on that extra 10% of  features that forces so many of us to use desktop apps like LibreOffice or worse… Microsoft Office. The other major challenge with online apps is offline access. While HTML5 has gone a long way toward solving this… it still isn’t quite there. It’ll take another generation or two of markup and scripting languages until this works flawlessly.

And what about games? Unless you are happy with the (terrible) framerates and quality of “cloud-based” gaming services, or unless you are a farmviller, you won’t be able to game through your browser for many years. Sure WebGL is nice and all – but javascript just isn’t as fast as the compiled C++ that most major games are written in.

Until the day comes when we have a real cross-browser “compiled”  language -  full gaming on the browser just won’t happen. Again, this is slowly changing… but it isn’t quite there yet.

It’s a shame flash was so terrible – it could have met this need.

Cloud Security

I dare you to ask 100 people in the general population of non-geeks if they would store their personal data on the cloud. I would bet you at least 50% of them still don’t feel comfortable with it. Despite how many statistics you quote that say it is safe… they won’t do it.

The biggest challenge with moving all apps to the browser will surely be convincing the public it is safe… especially when they are constantly bombarded with stories about malicious users going around taking down sites and stealing data.

The fact is it’s pretty darn safe. I would reckon you are more likely to get a check stolen from your mailbox than you are getting an online bank account cracked. This is of course assuming you follow common sense security procedures (long passwords, change passwords often, avoid phishing, etc), and assuming you are using a reputable service.

Sure, stuff does happen… but you know what… banks and other physical locations get robbed all the time by creeps in ski masks (or painter’s uniforms, man I love that movie!)

I think people are slowly getting more used to the idea that the Internet is safe – but I know from dealing with the general public in both my personal and business life we still have a long way to go in this regard.

Plain Ol’ Browser Views

For whatever reason – many developers still refuse to accept the fact you can develop an app using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that is just as good looking as most iPhone and Android apps.

A few months back I took on a little project for a friend. His previous developer told him it was impossible to do certain things, such as convert it to a fluid layout with anchor points so certain elements stay in place (like a desktop app – try resizing one sometime!). It was a slightly complicated layout – but in 5 minutes I did just that with some css tweaks.  No problemo.

You can do nearly everything in a web view that you can do in a desktop app, as far as the UI goes. This includes creating custom controls. Whether or not the backend will work the same is another topic entirely…

Conclusion

Browsers have come a long way since the 90s, but they still have a long way to go before they become “the” app platform for everything. It’s getting there – but it is a slow and arduous process.

Oh and yep, I took the background pics. Gotta love Letchworth State Park in CNY.

“RIM isn’t cool”

“Blackberry is for old people”

Yeah, we’ve heard all those quotes over and over the past years. Unfortunately it’s all true – RIM isn’t doing too hot because they’ve made some major mistakes since Apple launched the iPhone back in 2007. It’s all part of the circle of (business) life, however. First you start the company, then you get a hot product, the product takes over the market, then someone else comes along and makes a new company or an existing company creates a *better* product, and you become irrelevant. There’s a few exceptions to that – but it’s a good generalization. Nothing lasts forever.

Every time a major company starts to sink I can’t help but look at their situation and find some valuable business lessons. RIM is no exception – here are 3 valuable lessons that we can learn from RIM’s current financial situation:

The Status Quo

While many business scholars believe it is a mistake to change a successful product – I truly believe it is a mistake to not change. There is a thing in this world called evolution. Time shifts, people change, and markets move. It just happens and there’s no way to stop it. To put it simply: RIM has not changed in the past many years.

A blackberry today is hardly different from a blackberry of five years ago. Sure they have a simple (bs) app store, better email support, slightly better design, etc – but for all intents and purposes they haven’t changed much. This, unfortunately, is RIM’s #1 mistake: believing the status quo is good.

Being Afraid To Embrace New Technology

Could you imagine what the market would look like these days if RIM stopped all internal software development for mobile devices and simply switched to Android when it first came out all those years ago? They would have instantly gone from creating the “old man’s phone” to creating a hip phone that everyone wanted. The fact is companies who ignore perfectly good 3rd party technologies are the ones who fail. Always. Even Apple and Google utilize 3rd party technology in their most successful products (or nowadays they just buy out the 3rd party, but that’s another story).

I truly believe RIM was afraid to make such a drastic move for one big reason: alienating their existing market. However, they were too stupid to realize by following the status quo (see above) they were already alienating their users. It’s becoming increasingly rare these days to see a business person carry a blackberry – most of them use iPhones or Androids.

Why? Because that’s the world we live in nowadays – and it will be that way until some other company comes along with the next hot mobile device.

Know When To Change

It took RIM a good 4 years after the iPhone launch to finally start competing on a more head-to-head basis. I cannot imagine it took them that long to develop the products they have been releasing lately. Their leadership over the past half decade simply hasn’t had a good feel for when to change – and that has led them to their current situation. They waited too long and missed the boat.

The sad part is I bet if you asked their old CEO about their financial woes he would make up some lame-ass excuse about the economy. The real excuse is “we fucked up” – not “oh well the economy is bad”. If that were true please explain to me how apple is now one of the most valuable companies in the world and still growing. They are in the same market these days – if Apple (and Google, actually) could achieve such success in the mobile space then why couldn’t RIM.

It’s because they had no idea they needed to change. Plain and simple.

(Ignore the cat5e cables)

Unfortunately, it has become old and worn out. The paint on it is so rough that I literally have to scrub the board to erase it. Plus it has screw holes in it (I hate using the hanging kits that come with these things, they are cheap and break easily. So I screw it to the wall, much more sturdy )

Luckily there are many ways to fix this problem:

• Buy a new whiteboard – $25-$40+
• Repaint it – $13-$25+
• Fix it the poor man’s way – $5

In this day and age saving money is ultra important – so of course I will be using the poor man’s method of restoring a whiteboard:

Supplies

You will need an adhesive. I used a glue stick for the edges and a can of spray adhesive for the middle. A cheap 99 cent glue stick from the dollar store will get the job done on its own, however.

You will also need enough sheets of dry erase poster board to cover your existing whiteboard. I found mine at my local Joann Craft store for $2 a sheet.

Step 1) Measure & Cut

Measure out your poster board and cut it. I used scissors, but a good straight edge and x-acto knife would have worked better.

I am very fortunate in that my whiteboard has a very small (1 or 2 mm) gap around the entire thing – so I could cut the poster board larger than needed and fit it into the gap in the frame. If yours does not have a gap try to be as accurate as possible!

Step 2) Glue It!

Make sure your whiteboard is clean and dry. Put the glue all over where the first sheet of poster board will go. Be VERY careful, however, or you may cause discoloration if you put too much in one spot:

Rub it to keep it from popping up, and hold it

Step 3) Repeat

If you need multiple sheets to cover your board (like me), simply repeat the last steps. I overlapped mine quite a bit. If you overlap them, be sure not to spray the adhesive too close to where the edge will be – or you may ruin the visible drawing area on the sheet underneath it. I used my glue stick to get the edges to avoid that problem.

Done!

And now you are done! Is this a perfect fix? No – it won’t be as durable as a regular whiteboard, it isn’t as bright, and you will have lines where the sheets overlap, but it is much cheaper than buying a brand new whiteboard or buying expensive whiteboard paint.

Tips:

• You can even attach the poster board to a wall or cork board with a few thumb tacks. That’s a super-poor man’s whiteboard
• If you have a business, the poster board may be a tax writeoff
• Don’t use harsh cleaners on the new surface, to avoid damaging the poster board. They may work, but personally I wouldn’t want to try it.
• If you use spray adhesive, don’t over spray one area (see above)
• If you use spray, don’t get high off it. Seriously, that stuff is potent!

I just can’t imagine I’m the only person who hates those one-photo-per-page photo lists (you know, the “top 10 beaches” “top 100 computer pictures”, etc). In fact, I know I’m not. Go on Digg.com and view the comments for such an article and you’ll see at least half the users are complaining about only having one photo per page. I’m at the point now that whenever I encounter such a horrible creation I will just leave the site, and never go back. It ticks me off that much. Here’s why:

For starters: it is incredibly annoying. It is no longer the 80s and we have the technology to display multiple images on a screen without any difficulty. Most people who surf around looking at those “top 10″ or “top 100″ lists will have a somewhat decent connection too. Even if you have dial up, it’s going to take forever either way. If you want to get technical, it is actually more efficient to list more on one page vs having it on multiple pages (less repeated html, less http packets, etc)

Not to mention, it is terrible for advertisers. A few years back I offered to put a few ads on a “friend’s” site, and I payed him per 1,000 views. He got around 15k views a month, not a ton, but it got me some extra exposure. Then he released an evil “top 100 celebrity images” blog post with one photo per page and suddenly my ads were shown over 100,000 times. Unfortunately, those 100,000 times were less valuable than the usual 15,000 requests. The CTR was terrible. In fact, there were fewer unique views that month than any other month.

I asked him why he didn’t put even 10 images per page, instead of 1 per page, especially since many comments on that post were from users complaining about that very thing. His response to me: “to get more ad revenue”.

Needless to say I only payed him for 15k views then cancelled the contract (which had clause allowing me to limit payments under certain circumstances btw). It would be nice if major ad companies would start doing that as well, just to discourage such crap. If your curious; his other advertiser (who contacted me a while after) quit the next month after having the same thing pop up again, and I’m pretty sure his site went down shortly after.

So can we please, for the love of the Internet, kill off those evil lists. There is absolutely NO reason you can’t list at least 5 items per page, Heck, 10 would be optimal. And if you want to give people the option to view just one image, fine, do that, it would be good for mobile users.

Since I hate ranting without solutions, here’s the perfect solution to this problem:

For non-mobile browsers: show 10 images (with an option to show only 10/5/2/1, etc).

For mobile: show only 1 or 2 (with options to show 10/5/2/1, etc, also).

There ya go.

My heart goes out to all of my upstate neighbors who got hit by Irene and are now facing some pretty horrible flooding thanks to several days straight of heavy rain from the remnants of Lee. 6 more inches of rain are expected tonight, and they’re already cancelling schools.

I’ve lived here my whole life and I’m used to shoveling out from under 3 feet of snow, but the weather lately has been nuts. Heck, just a few days ago there was a pretty bad tornado too.

Hopefully the winter isn’t too bad this year… but the experts are predicting it’ll be as bad if not worse than last year. Last year was so bad the DPW couldn’t plow some roads for weeks at a time!

In case you haven’t heard, there is a battle going on over TechCrunch between Michael Arrington and Arianna Huffington. There’s stories about it all over the place.

Normally I don’t like blogging about news stories, but this is a pretty major one that has even hit big media outlets. Because of this I figured what the heck, why not chime in with a few little thoughts:

Contractual Obligations… Or Not.

In his post yesterday, Arrington mentioned the following:

I believe that Aol should be held to their promise when they acquired us to give TechCrunch complete editorial independence.

Out of his entire post, that quote really struck me as being peculiar… mostly due to his wording. His claiming that AOL made a "promise" to TechCrunch leads me to believe that the so-called "promise" wasn’t actually a part of the acquisition agreements. AOL could have "promised" the world to the former TechCrunch shareholders, but all that matters is what was actually in the contract.

He also said it once more too:

Reaffirmation of the editorial independence promised at the time of acquisition

Maybe it is just me, but if I were in his shoes and if the "promise" was actually part of the legally-binding agreement, I sure as heck would make sure I said something more like:

Reaffirmation of the editorial independence, as agreed upon, at the time of acquisition

It’s a minor detail, but the wording can really change the intention of the sentence. And Arrington isn’t stupid – he is a good writer – so there’s a reason for his wording. If the promise was just a promise and not an obligation then too bad, welcome to the world of business. If it isn’t in writing then you’re going to get screwed, especially if one of the parties is a shady wonderfully awesome company such as AOL.

Conflicts Of Interest

If Aol cannot accept either of these options, and no other creative solution can be found, I cannot be a part of TechCrunch going forward.

At the end of the day, that would be a good thing for AOL. Arrington is a part of TechCrunch, and now he is also an investor in several startups. I find it highly ironic that over the years he has called out others for having conflicts of interest, but now that he himself is part of one he is suddenly immune to the traditional journalism rules.

There’s a thing in this world called integrity. Just saying…

Anyway, I’ll finish off this post with one of the best videos ever: Leo vs Arrington:

Full disclosure btw: I own zero stock. In fact, I invest all of my money in ice cream. Ice cream is damn good. I may die in three years from eating all of this ice cream, but at least I will die happy. And full of ice cream. Mmmm…. tasty wonderful delicious (great website by the way) ice cream. Best investment evar.

(But I do own the company that owns this site. So there’s that.)

What a relief – Firefox 4 has been a pain doing web development (dare I say it… it was nearly as bad as IE 6). After about an hour of loading/reloading pages it would start running incredibly sluggish, and on occasion it even crashed.

I did a quick test and loaded about 10 tabs and one of them had a lot of AJAXy/Jquery goodness, the RAM went up to 600 megs, then I closed all of the tabs and it went down to 300. Definitely a lot better than FF 4, which would stay at 600 and only go up from there.

On top of that – I’ve noticed firebug has also been a bit more stable. I’m still using the same version as before – so I’m guessing it has to do with the better memory management. On FF 4 while inspecting an element firebug would be completely unresponsive and would lag behind a good half second or so. With the update it is instant.

As an added bonus it now includes a brand new “do not track” feature. If an advertising network or website supports it, any users who enable it will not get tracked (via cookies). While it is optional so far, I would bet it won’t be long until Congress steps in and requires all online ad networks to support it. Safari for Lion is supposed to support it, as well as the next IE. It really is the beginning of the end of tracking cookies.

It is so nice when software works the way it is supposed to.