Category Archives: techie

Non-techie web development

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If you or a non-technical family member wants to put up a web site but doesn’t know anything about HTML, there are a number of options available. There are tools like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and even the free Nvu which will let you build websites. However, even those tools are overkill if you just want to put some basic things online. (Nvu is also buggy to the point where I’d consider it worthless). Because my mom was looking to put up a website that she could manage herself, I investigated stuff like online content management systems, because when you’re working wholly online you don’t have to worry about uploading files, relative/absolute links become less of an issue, etc.

I didn’t find anything that looked particularly easy to use until I stumbled on SiteKreator. My mom was able to walk through the tutorial and set up her website with minimal frustration. They have a lot of built-in tools for creating image galleries (it auto-creates thumbnails, auto-aligns them, and auto-links them to big versions of the image) and laying out blocks of text/tables/graphics together. It’s an interesting UI as well – not nearly as complicated as the other WYSIWYG tools, but it still offers a “drop in arbitrary HTML” feature which would let you put a paypal button or some other fancy stuff in if you want.

IM usage stats

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(found via Dare’s blog) What do you think the most widely used Instant Messaging platform is? I would have guessed AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) since I remember it having been around back when IM was a new thing. I’d be wrong though, very wrong according to the recent stats. Even before Yahoo and MSN announced interoperability between their messengers, each of them was bigger than AOL – by a lot.

In May ’06, MSN was the leader with 204 million users. Yahoo had 77 million. AIM was down around 33 million… roughly tied with ICQ. MSN has also been growing since last year, while the other two had been shrinking.

Slate review of Apple's mean-spirited ad-campaign

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I wasn’t familliar with the actor who plays the PC-user, but I agree with a lot of the commentary here.

I recently switched to a Mac as my primary personal desktop, and although it worked fine with my digital camera and printer (no better, no worse, than Windows) I needed to chuck my Windows-only webcam. I also needed to get a new keyboard because mac minis don’t have PS/2 ports. Smug ads like this are really more aggravating than anything else.

A clever application of photo search

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Techcrunch posted an update about photo-search company Riya today that was pretty interesting.

Dating is another (if slightly creepy) use for the new Visual Search engine. See someone’s picture on MySpace that you like? Search on their photo to find single people who look similar and who have profiles up on match.com or other dating sites.

Taking their photo search and basically allowing you to create a “find more like this…” feature for people instead of products sounds pretty innovative to me. Perfect for the case where you know someone who’s attractive, but don’t care for his/her personality.

First impressions of Farecast

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I have been beta testing Farecast, and I just recently used it to book a trip to Atlanta. The service claims to predict whether or not airfare is going to go up or down, helping you decide whether you should buy your tickets now or hold off. The idea is cool. The implementation, when completed, will probably be cool too. What I’ve experienced with the beta is that it feels like more of a novelty than a useful tool.

When I first started playing with it, I couldn’t find a combination of dates and locations that would produce anything but a statement that fares would be increasing, so I should buy now. That had me skeptical – after all, why would they tell me not to buy when they make money only when I do?

When I used it to book the Atlanta trip, I found a case where it did tell me to wait. I need to be in Atlanta by noon on a Friday, which means that I’ll have to leave Seattle late Thursday night. Farecast told me a Thursday->Sunday roundtrip will be decreasing by an average of $20 over the next 7 days.

But… it then occurred to me that the information they were providing me isn’t useful. I needed a late night flight on Thursday, so I could go to work during the day. So, even if the average ticket price dropped $20 over the next week, what if all the late night tickets sold out? Or, what if morning tickets drop $40 and late night tickets increase $20? The averages aren’t useful when you care about specific times. That said – according to the site they are working on predicting how airfares will move within time ranges. The ranges will be broken up into 6 groups, which seems like sufficient granularity for most cases.

They are not guaranteeing anything with the price predictions (which is probably for the best). They tell you that they are “80% confident” in their prediction. So, there’s still some element of gambling here. If they’re 80% sure the prices will drop for your trip home for Christmas, and you wait, and the flights end up doubling in price or selling out (which is a possibility 1 in 5 times), then you’re pretty much up a creek. It seems like they’d be well served to build in some monitoring tools for the case when they blew their prediction, and they can let people know as soon as possible.

I do like what they’re trying to do though – if they work out some of these details, it could be a very useful service. I double-checked other price searches and didn’t find any better deals, so if nothing else they seem to have a top-notch flight search.

37 signals – in a continuous search for more sharks to jump.

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Another completely ridiculous statement from the guys at 37signals today regarding Microsoft:

I predict major layoffs within 12-18 24 months. Upwards of 10-20%. MS needs to light a fire and get lean and they know it. The market knows it too and would love to see it happen.

After a number of comments describing how absurd a prediction that is (including, I like to think, mine) Jason from 37s ups his prediction of Microsoft layoffs from 1-1 1/2 years to 2 years. Either way, he’s being ridiculous. They continue to speak like complete amateurs, while using the traditional tech-pundit tone. If I didn’t love the Ruby on Rails community so much, I would have unsubscribed from this blog long ago.

Ambient usability

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I just saw two neat applications of computer-like intelligence integrated with parts of our regular lives. (both via engadget)

Faucets that illuminate the water in a red shade if the water is hot, or a blue shade if the water is cold:

And this umbrella, who’s handle glows to let you know whether or not you should take it to work, based on weather reports in your area:

This kind of thing is very cool… I hope to see it become cheaper and more popular in the future.

The TechCrunch Party

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The TechCrunch party was a good time. It featured free pizza, free beer, and a free opportunity to meet up with some of the bigger names in the local tech field. John Cook was there and wrote an article about it. Michael Arrington was there of course, and I was able to briefly pitch him my startup idea. I also talked to Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine, about what it was like to start up a company, and how he went about financing it. The CEO of Wetpaint was there too, and we talked briefly about what it’s like being at a party made up of a subset of the 53,651. ie. not the real world.

The three main sponsors also gave demos : TripHub (a tool for organizing group travel), Farecast (a neat tool for predicting if airline ticket prices are going to go up or down), and Redfin (a real estate site geared towards Seattle and San Francisco). Each of the demos was fairly interesting. TripHub might be worth using for Callahan’s Bachelor Party. Farecast could be useful too, but it’s still in private beta.

My Quicken Prediction

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I recently got a fully loaded Mac Mini to replace my Windows computer, and soon I won’t have any clunky box sitting under my desk. I installed Parallels so I could run Windows in a Window, and now my desktop looks largely like this (although I’m not running Linux on it).

The primary reason I need that Windows VM running, aside from the fact that it’s probably just a prudent thing to have, is Quicken. Quicken comes pre-installed on Macs, but if you read the user reviews at Amazon, you’ll see that it is pretty much universally panned. It has very little in common with Quicken for Windows. It doesn’t look like it, feel like it, have the same capabilities, nor can it import all of your Quicken for Windows data.

Here’s my prediction for Quicken… admittedly not a bold one. Intuit is working on a web-based version of Quicken. With all the Web 2.0 apps out there, if they don’t build it, someone else will. When it comes out, they can (and should) kill the Mac version, and tout the web version as their solution for all non-Windows users. The Windows version will live on for longer than it probably ought to, because they won’t solve the offline access problem in their web product. That problem would probably be unacceptable by their hardcore Windows base.

I don’t think it’s a very bold prediction, given what they did with TurboTax this year. I used TurboTax for the web, and didn’t even consider buying a boxed version that I’d have to install. I don’t know how much longer they really want to make boxed versions of TurboTax… especially considering they are basically writing the same app twice (once fo the web, and once for the desktop). It also solves their licensing problems – because they control access to the online software. They were so concerned about piracy a few years ago that they introduced an activation scheme for TurboTax that was so restrictive and confusing that it pissed off a lot of people (they subsequently removed that scheme).

What I’d love to see is some competition in this area… a startup that could crank out a web-based version of Quicken before Intuit does. The biggest hurdles would be ensuring that you can import people’s existing Quicken data, and developing the database of financial institutions to sync to (which may not be hard, since there are some open source projects that do this already). You’d also have to convince people that you’re keeping their most personal data secure. If there are no signs of a web-based Quicken by years end, I will be disappointed in 2 ways: 1) I won’t have Quicken on my Mac, and 2) I will regret not having founded such a startup.