It's Winter!

Feign your mock-happiness here.

Oh, it's not all that bad.  Winter is technically the time some very good things happen: there's some major holidays (Christmas, Hannukah, New Years) and all the parties that ensue (that's a good thing, right?)  For some families they even invite a fat man in a red suit to come into the house in the middle of the night withthe vague hope that he'll leave presents (I know - scary, right?). There's the comaraderie among friends and family and the general well-wishing. Some folks even like the cold weather and the different sports and activities it offers, like skiing and sleigh riding. See also: pelting your family member with snowballs.
Oh, who are we kidding? Winter is barely tolerable.  It's cold, it's miserable, and the time change that occurred in November will have everyone going stir crazy by the time March comes. At least you can do things without the humidity. That's a plus. We're just going to have to make it through this.

While we're discussing the seasonal change to winter, here's some sites that explain it in more detail. Enjoy. Stay warm and celebrate.

• The Farmer's Almanac:First Day of Seasons: 2011 and 2012
• Wikipedia: Listing of Equinox and Solstices  
• Time and Date -- December 22 is a Solstice Day in 2011

Daylight Savings Time

A great explanation, tongue in cheek at times but on the whole quite accurate, of Daylight Savings Time: it's origins, ramifications and usefulness in our current world.  Recommended.
http://blog.cgpgrey.com/daylight-saving-time-explained/ 

And change those clocks today, if you live in one of the affected areas.

Happy Halloween!

Is This the New Windows Explorer?

Techcruch today has a story on a mock-up that looks like an updated Windows Explorer. Only one problem: it looks nothing like any version of Windows Explorer ever released. While most die-hard Windows users can readily admit that Windows Explorer was in dire need of new features (witness the plethora of third party makers like Explorer++ and PowerDesk that are quite popular) a facelift certainly wasn't one of them.  In fact, Microsoft seems to have done the unimaginable: taken the basic workhorse but quite fine interface of Windows Explorer and given it the (gasp) Microsoft Office interface treatment. The bastards! It's almost as if they want to annoy their users or reduce productivity. Maybe both.
Personally, this looks like something that was overthought. Too many buttons, too many features, all displayed on the GUI. Designed by Committee perhaps, or maybe a small team gone wild.  In any event, it's certainly not a great interface and does not help the user do their job or easily perform their tasks. And make no mistake:  these are things a well-designed interface should do.

Read the full details and see it for yourself.

Putting up a Paywall.

 
Couldn't resist. Something in this reminded me of The Revision Bar.

Is abandoning your blog the new "it" thing?

The Revision Bar has a long history behind it, dating back to the 1990s. Content creation was no problem in the early years. The Internet was in full swing and there was no shortage of new sites, new topics, and new inventions. Most of them found their way onto the main page of this site, along with witty commentary.

Longevity is an odd thing and is only good for the specific time period of which the item is being assessed. Most of the time this site has been going, there had been plenty of content and new items being added on a regular basis. The last two years or so, as other opportunities have emerged, that flow has diminished. Trickled even. Slowed to a drop this year in particular.

This is of interest because it seems to be a phenomenon that happens to most bloggers at some point. We leave old blogs scattered throughout the net like used cars on the side of the road; abandoned, apparently unwanted. It's typical to hear a blogger rattle off the lists of their old blogs with a laugh. Left behind, nothing more now than a reference point on the list of things they've written.

However, there's also a movement to keep these blogs alive; to revive them and ensure that the site remains relevant and flush with new content. After all, if it was a worthy idea when the site was first created, it may well merit further investment and content. Sometimes tweaking is in order, so that the new site better serves the designs and needs of present day. Often it's these changes, that take considerable time and effort, that originally made their owners abandon them in favor of new sites to start with. But after some time passes, the lure of the old familiar site returns to their mind and makes them think about it anew.  One recent example is a site called Foldedspace. They've outlined their history quite well,  how the site fell into decline and their plans to revive it.  In this endeavor we wish them the very best of luck and hope that other blogs, long left for greener pastures, find their writers returning to dust off their dashboards and resurrect an old friend. Abandoned sites may well have some life left after all, and serve their audience better when the writers are still minding the store.

And perhaps there is hope for the Revision Bar as well.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day

For all those with someone to share it with, enjoy today (to all the rest: sorry, but you're not alone. There's enough grousing on the web today to waste tons of your time -- and by then the day will be over. See? Problem solved).   For those wondering where this god-awful cards and flowers holiday came from in the first place,  a quick Wikipedia scan shows that it originated from Christian martyrs, then evolved into a day where lovers profess their affection for one other. Bonus points if you can establish the thread that ties those two together (we've tried and our heads hurt). In the spirit of helping out, CNN has tips on how to avoid the holiday, and Gizmodo has a list of some Valentine Day disasters. Check it out to see if your experiences make you worse off than others, or if you've gotten off easy.
And, for those that want to eschew Valentine's Day but still have a laugh, check out Star Wars Valentines. Chewbacca is one hairy valentine.

NORAD and Santa Claus

A great story on how NORAD, the top-secret military installation got involved first with Santa Claus (you can blame Sears for that) and then with tracking the big guy while he does his job on Christmas morning.

Personally, we love the idea of the Santa Cam network.

How We're Killing the Newspaper

It's a growing trend: move more information online and remove it from the location it's been traditionally published. We've been seeing this more and more lately. It started with catalogs, which seemed like the best fit for the internet. You could look at the items and shop anytime. However, then came something more near and dear to many people's hearts, the television listings. We all know they're available online, and that's great when you're working and want to plan out your evening and see what's going to be on. However, when you're in your living room in front of the TV, and you want to see what's on now, don't you really want to grab the television section of your Sunday newspaper and just look it up? For those people that don't have Guide-enabled TVs, and don't have Tivo or any other on-screen directory listing, the Sunday TV section was the mainstay of their television experience, the trusted friend that shared couch space but never grabbed for the chips nor balked at the channel selection. But no more. It's been axed long ago, in just about every major newspaper and many smaller ones. Readers were urged to "check their local listings online", never mind that there's still a large contingent of (mainly older) folks that wouldn't know how to navigate to tvguide.com if they had to.

Now another blow has been delivered to these same folks: the removal of the movie theater's listings from the newspaper. In a recent story that shows the progression of this, it's detailed that papers are pulling the movie listings mainly because of one thing: they never had any control over it in the first place. Rather than the community service most folks assumed it to be (after all, movie listings had always existed in the paper) it was instead something very different: it was a paid advertisement put there by either the theaters or the movie studio in general. That being the case, the financial environment lately has necessitated lots of cost-cutting measures, and this was one of them. Apparently the movie theaters and studios think that they're already reaching most of their potential audience members via the internet.

But are they? According to recent statistics, internet usage has indeed grown to encompass the majority of the country, sitting at 74.7% as of this year. While this may initially seem to back up the action to move more data online and remove it from newspapers, consider this: that leaves 25% who don't use the internet. Or, to put it another way, a full quarter of our population. We all know who they are; they're our grandparents, maybe even our parents. They're aunt Sophie who's the nicest person you'll ever meet but never got into computers. They're the guy down the street who stubbornly refuses most technology. They're also the guy who spent years in the technology field during his career, and now shuns all high-tech gadgetry as a way to get back at the career he spent so long toiling at, a kind of middle finger as he collects his pension. These are the people who are being left out, now robbed of their ability to flip open the newspaper to see what movies are playing.

This move also pushes us more and more into the mobile internet territory. While the newspaper used to deliver all this data to us everyday, and it was totally portable and able to be accessed from just about everywhere (i.e., you could buy a newspaper in just about every town, big or small, in the country) now that data is being pushed online with certain expectations. The expectation is that you'll be able to access it, not only from your computer and your easy-chair, but from wherever you are, via your internet-enabled phone. That's right, this is the final piece of the puzzle, the cell phone. As cell phones become more like smartphones, and everybody has one with a data plan, it's expected that we'll all be able to get to this data that's been ripped from the newspaper and plunked online. It's expected that you can get your movie listings, sports scores, weather, and television listings anywhere, at any time, from your phone. While this might certainly leave out the same non-participants we listed before, that list certainly grows shorter when you're dealing with a cell phone. After all, grandma might not have any interest in computers or the internet, but she does have a cell phone in that purse of hers, and certainly someone could show her how to retrieve basic internet from it, even if it's not from a web browser but instead by something like Google SMS, which will return internet data to you in a text message. See, there's many sneaky ways to get the data you need, and not all of them involve a browser. But more and more lately, none involve a newspaper.

And when you put all that together, along with the decline in advertiser dollars in newspapers across the country, and the overall decline in their subscription base, you've got the perfect storm for the decline of the American newspaper, set out to pasture by the arrival of the internet and your cell phone.

MI6 Boss's Identity Revealed on Facebook

For those using social networks, especially twitter, URL shorteners have become a way of life and a staple of their tool set. They allow long URLs to be pasted into status and messages using a minimum of characters. While there are many services to choose from, there's inherit risks involved, so be careful what you click on. It is interesting that there is money to be made in this space, due to all the demand, and that's a bit more than some of the other services can say. Twitter has yet to make any real money, although they say they're working on it.

Meanwhile, who knew social networking had a dangerous side to it? Sure, there's always the risk that you'll say something that offends, or that the high schoolers out there will post - ahem - inappropriate photos, but that was largely the extent of it. However, consider the case of the head of MI6 (that's 007's boss for all your James Bond fans out there) who's wife ousted his identity on Facebook. Wow, all those spy movies were right; you really can't trust anyone!

Guerilla Drive Ins

Summertime; just the mention of the word brings images to the mind and an almost uncontrollable smile to the face. One of the great traditions of past summers is the drive in, which has all but vanished from the landscape these days. Sure, there's still some around, but nowhere near the amount there used to be. That's why some enthusiastic people, eager to relive this experience, have set up their own. This may in fact be the beginning of the open-source drive-in. We wonder if there's also an open-source popcorn movement.

Meanwhile, what says summertime more succinctly than going to that drive-in on your new motorcycle? Even if you did get it at Best Buy, that is.

Unlimited Coffee Time

Ever feel like you're overstaying your welcome when you grab a coffee at Starbucks and then stay there for hours while you whittle away the afternoon? Ever had (or feared) the barista coming up to you and escorting you out because some unseen timer expired and you exceeded your limit? Well, fear no more. Starbucks is proclaiming you can stay as long as you want. We're still not sure how the while "free" wifi works though. According to the story, "Customers (with Starbucks cash cards) get two hours for nothing". Is this just one of their re-loadable cards, and who's checking?

While you're sipping your coffee enjoying your unlimited wifi (or two hours, whichever it really is), check out one of Esquire magazine's best albums, one that every man should own, Van Halen's Fair Warning. But hey, don't feel excluded -- this is also for the ladies out there, since Diamond Dave always was a ladies man. Queue it up and enjoy it, but be ready for the opening track, 'cause it's rough and fantastic.

iPhone Artwork and Breakfast

So who says you can't create artwork using anything but Photoshop? Bah, we say -- check out this New Yorker cover created by the iPhone. Well okay, it was created on an iPhone by a real human, but it's still very good. Come to think of it, maybe the iPhone just kicked in some artificial intelligence and did this all by itself? Now that would be a story.

We've now recommended something for you to read, and to complete your breakfast we suggest you go to McDonalds for an egg mcmuffin. Specifically the one in Chicago, where they'll let you know in no uncertain terms when it's ready.

The Smartphone Soccer Mom has No Privacy

It's been a while since we've talked about Smartphones, but meanwhile they've kept chuggin' along in sales. So much so that they're the single hottest category in cell phones right now, due to their growth. While normal cell phone subscribers seems to have just about peaked, with seemingly every citizen of every country carrying one, the hottest market is the upsell to smartphones. Heck, now there's reports that soccer moms are one of the largest groups now flocking to smartphones, using the devices to keep track of their broods and their business. Technology's great when it lets you actually achieve your goals. Take that Microsoft, with your endless security patches and driver updates; I'll get my info from my phone, thank you kindly.

While these moms, and everyone else, are busy using their smartphones, they're not just checking calendars and schedules. They're twittering, facebooking, and using all the usual social networking their data plans can handle. There's reports now that twitter may have to adapt to survive, or be sacrificed completely to pave the way for what comes next. This seems doubtful, but it very well may adapt, and even become more mobile-central. There's also reports that past fan-favorite Myspace may be making an offer for iLike.com, which would combine two powerhouses in the online music / social networking world.

Meanwhile, all this data being funneled through your cell phone means a bottle-neck of one thing: your privacy. With all that data coming through one pipe and one provider (whatever cell company you use) some are saying that this could be the end of privacy.

Fun and a Little Weird - Amazon and Zappos

It's just been announced that Amazon and Zappos have joined forces. It will no doubt be considered a buyout, but it's an all-stock deal that enables Amazon to help Zappos expand it's brand. As the economy continues it's belt-tightening, expect to see more deals like this. The recent renewed talks between Microsoft and Yahoo (yeah, that tired old story again) just underscore this, and show that to survive, many of the top companies must buddy up and marshal their defenses. In truth, this latest rumor doesn't have Microsoft buying Yahoo as previous rumors this past winter, just an arrangement for a search deal. And wouldn't that make Bing just that much sweeter?