My opinions on all things tech related
There are 271 posts filed in Tech (this is page 18 of 28).
I’ve been playing with Synchroedit a bunch today. This is a collaborative ‘net-based word processing tool. Theoretically multiple people can work on a document at the same time, in real-time. I say theoretically because I can’t figure out how to invite anybody else to work on my document with me…
Anyone have better luck than I? An application like this would have been very handy for the dreaded “write this essay with a partner or group” homework questions in grad school.
The New York Times today has a great overview of various digital music formats. iTunes, WMA, their respective portable players, and more. Very useful for anybody who is confused about all the different options out there. I’m a little surprised they talk about jHymn, a program used for stripping copyright protection from iTunes songs, given its dubious legality.
My one big question remains: how is it possible to sync an iTunes song to more than one iPod? I’ve heard anecdotal stories of libraries allowing patrons to load songs or audio books onto iPods, and don’t understand how this is possible – to my knowledge each iPod is linked to one, and only one, computer.
As part of a puzzle for the Last Call Poker game I mentioned before, I managed to look up and trace back a Flickr picture to its poster’s account. I didn’t run into a guide on how to do it, despite searching for one. So now I set out to create what I wish I’d found.
Flickr photos can be posted around the web with URLs in this format:
http://static.flickr.com/22/31607655_da0d33a150_m.jpg
Looking at the numbers, there’s no obvious way to tell whose account it came from. For the puzzle, a picture with a URL in this format appeared on the game’s website. Our goal was to discover the full name of the character who took the photo, which I assumed was located in his Flickr account page.
After researching Flickr’s URL structure a bit, I discovered that the the first portion of the last chunk of the address (in this case ‘31607655’) is a unique ID number for the photo.
Flickr themselves provide a method to look up the owner of the ID in the Flickr API. It isn’t well publicized, but is located here.
Plug in ‘31607655’, and it returns an XML file full of all kinds of info on the photo. The account, tags, description, notes, etc. From there its just a matter of copying and pasting the account holder’s URL.
Simple in retrospect, but it took a bit of digging to uncover. As an added lesson, I now know not to assume my flickr pictures are anonymous just because I post the scrambled URL.
Starting tomorrow, I’ll be running down my list of top ten multiplayer video games.
I’ve always had a natural affinity for top ten lists, and their organized absolutism. So this is my random contribution 🙂
I’m aiming to post about one each day, but that may slip a bit.
I’ve been discovering a bunch of quality net-published fiction recently. Here’s a couple worthy of your time.
David Wellington’s Monster Planet is on track to wrap up this Friday. Wellington started the ambitious blog-based trilogy in April of ’04 with Monster Island, a story of a zombie-infected Manhattan a few months after the outbreak.
He followed it up with Monster Nation, the prequel of just how the zombie outbreak progressed across the United States.
Monster Planet brings everything to a head – grand fantasy, horror and characterization on a global scale. The pentultimate chapter hits on Wednesday, and the finale on Friday.
You might think that zombie stories = mindless crap. And in some cases, you’re right. But Wellington wisely focuses on his characters, and just how the situation affects the ensemble cast. He’s got a couple of “big ideas” that play with the genre conventions too, which I won’t spoil.
Half of the fun has been following the comments readers leave after each chapter. In some cases Wellington has subtlely shifted his story arc thanks to audience input. Not an entirely collaborative story, but there are elements. In perhaps the most obvious one, the main villain of Planet is named after a very frequent and loyal commenter. Elsewhere, when fans felt that it was left up in the air whether a particular character survivied, the author made sure to spell out in a later chapter just what fate had befallen the man. One reader was having a rough time with his relationship, and Wellington obliged him in a cathartic bit of fun by making the girl a zombie-ized background character. The list goes on.
The serialized, ‘cliffhangerized’ format is addictive. I plowed through the first two novels in just a few days after discovering them. And hey, its free!
In other options, there’s Cory Doctorow. I’m a bit of a latecomer to the BoingBoing founder’s fiction, but he’s got a pretty decent archive up on Salon.com.
Currently, Themepunks updates with a new chapter every Monday. This is a story of Doctorow’s vision of the 21st century economy, and where collaborative technologies and abundance of raw tech materials will eventually take us. There’s a thousand and one points in here where I paused to think about the implications of the astonishingly realistic setting.
If you’re at all interested in the development of societies in massively multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft, 2004’s Anda’s Game is fascinating. You have to trudge through Salon’s somewhat clunky ‘sitepass’ system to read these stories without subscribing, but the result is worth it.
In other news, Harvey Danger released their newest album (for free!) in MP3 format today.
During my morning news rounds, I ran into Clive Thompson’s most recent Games Without Frontiers column on Wired.com.
This guy truly Gets It. This installment focuses on the portrayal of video games in movies. He makes an excellent point that a recent rise in realistic portrayal of gaming on the silver screen can help to normalize the public’s perception of gaming. It isn’t all Hot Coffee mods in Grand Theft Auto and spastic antisocial teenagers, you know 🙂
Thompson’s previous columns are worth a read as well.
This morning I was doing a bit of Google searching, as is common. I noticed in my results that there’s a new option: “Remove Result”. Click the thumbnail for a larger screenshot.
I can remove a page from a single list of results, from all future searches I do, or remove everything on the domain entirely. Once a site has been removed from search results, an easy-to-overlook blurb at the bottom of the page informs that “Results have been omitted”, and offers a link to restore them.
I did a bit of searching on the topic, and discovered that “a small percentage” of users currently have the option.
I’m still trying to decide if this is a good idea or not. I have nightmare visions of the system being beaten (as greasemonkey gets around Google Print viewing restrictions), and companies removing their competitors from Average Joe’s search results.
That’s probably over-reacting. But something deep down inside of me cringes at the idea of users having censored searches, self-controlled or not. On the other hand, spam-site blocking does seem like a useful application.
I regretably can’t remember where I ran across this item this morning, but wanted to share it nonetheless.
Behold: The combination Fork and pizza cutter!
http://tinyurl.com/9xuyu
Its this kind of simple innovation I can really get behind.
Yesterday I posted about the problems inherent in DRMed music files, and one specific example.
Amazingly, Fox has listened to the fans who had problems downloading and enjoying the Firefly soundtrack!
According to a post on the same fan forum I mentioned last time, Fox now sells the soundtrack in unencrypted MP3 form! I haven’t accessed it myself yet, but plan on re-downloading very soon.
Quite simply, I never thought I’d see a major publisher listening and reacting to fans on this level or this quickly. Granted, this is still just an isolated incident. But maybe if I cross my fingers and wish really hard, it’ll be a sign of things to come.
As I’m sure I’ve ranted about before, Fox cancelled Firefly a couple years back after a mere 13 episodes were produced. Later, DVD sales were so high that Universal decided to make a movie out of it – Serenity – which hits theaters a week from friday. (glee!)
Today, Fox finally listened to fans and released the wonderful western inspired soundtrack from the TV show. For reasons unknown, it is an online downloadable purchase only. In DRMed wma format.
Here’s a link to a Firefly fan forum’s thread on the topic. This is a group of pretty rabid fans who are desperate to give Fox their money. Unfortunately, they’ve met with limited success in the ability to purchase and/or listen to the files. Mac users are shut out entirely for example, and only IE can be used to purchase the tracks. Users outside the U.S. are unable to purchase at all. Once purchased, a number of owners have been informed that their license is invalid.
I don’t disagree with DRM in principle – copyright holders are entitled to protect their work after all. But the state of this protective technology is still far too primitive to be put into practice. The only ‘successful’ protection I’ve ever seen that works reasonably well is iTunes. Its cross-platform and seems to just work. Providing you have an iPod of course, but that’s an aside.
When DRM prevents customers from listening to legitimately purchased music on this scale, the system needs an overhaul.
