Dev::Blog

I’ve been out with deadlines and (possibly) the black plague, so I might have missed this when it first made the rounds: Stripe Generator. Web 2.0 actually has a “funny because it’s useful” category…

Following up on the “OMG, feed stats way up” theme, FeedBurner has a writeup that might interest you: Link (via A VC).

Have I mentioned lately how much I love teh Google?

Overambitious server tweaking seems to have mangled my php installation. No problem, the interweb’s full of instructions for upgrading. If I run into an error, I just Google the error text, find the package I need, and keep going. Sometimes these pages aren’t even in English. Doesn’t matter. If I’m worried that I’m about to run something malicious, I just need to read a few more pages to generate a consensus.

Sure, there are cases where an incredibly detailed knowledge of one’s infrastructure can be essential. For the rest of those one-off admin jobs that aren’t a core part of what you do, teh Google is awesome.

Lots of people have been writing about how Google Reader has started reporting number of subscribers in its crawls, but until I actually went and checked I had no idea how many people actually used the thing.

(And no, that’s not for this blog.)

Technorati Tags: Google Reader

Just signed up with IMified - they let you interact with a bunch of online services over instant messenger. While I don’t use most of the systems enough to bother, one thing I do need is a simple bare bones to do list system, and I don’t want to have to remember another URL and login.

As luck would have it, IMified has a basic set of organizational tools built in. including to do list management. The interface is basically a set of menus, and you drill into them with successive messages back and forth.

But enough about IMified - it’s just that it happens to be a perfect example of how a multiple message SMS (mobile phone text message, natch) session would work. The next time I have to put one of those together, I’m making a bot to prototype it and hopefully leave in the wild once things go live (except for premium rate (pay) SMS I guess). It’s a great way to get the message (sorry) across to clients without having to explain how to send a text in the first place, though granted, you’d probably have to do it in front of them, as I imagine the number of chatters at that level are about the same as the number of (non-BlackBerry) texters…

Technorati Tags: IMified, SMS, mobile

I got a WTF in the mail yesterday:

We recently noticed that you may have had trouble using your password to sign in and administer your site.

We’ve fixed a glitch that affected your account, and have temporarily reset your password to “123456″.

Please log in to your site and reset your password to something that only you will remember.

It had the look of a form letter, so it appears like there’s a good chance that I now know a significant number of passwords for this service. Of course, the login is the email address, so I’d have to know that, but for this particular site I don’t think it’d be too hard to figure a few out… Guys, a simple “click here to get a link that’ll take you to a reset password page” would’ve probably done the job a little better…

Oh, and when I did log in? It took me 5 minutes to find the place where I change my password.

Web 3.0 is gonna be all about openness. No passwords for anything, I tell you.

No, I’m not claiming credit just because I asked for it (unless my mom read the post and told them) BUT I am happy to see that Google Reader now supports embedded YouTube (and other) videos: Link.

Google Reader: The most productive way to lose productivity.

Technorati Tags: Google Reader

Somehow I stumbled across this one: Stats Canada Summary of Daily Internet Use in Canada, 2005. The facts are kind of interesting, but moreso to me, because I think I was one of the people they surveyed.

For a while I seemed to be on the government’s list of people in the know, so I did a bunch of surveys over the phone, although I guess I was really just considered an “average Canadian.” Pffft. They don’t call anymore, which means I’ve either been promoted or demoted.

Anyway, this survey was about 1/2 an hour of questions, and I remember one part clearly - the part where the asked me what kinds of things I did on the interweb, but he didn’t read from a list - I had to name stuff like pay bills, read email, etc and he’d then check them off somewhere. I named some stuff, and he’d be like, “is that it?” so I’d name some more things, and he’d ask if that was it, and after a few rounds I got the feeling he was waiting for something obvious, and I thought I was missing something like “email” or whatever, but I ran out of items and we moved on.

About an hour later I realized he was probably waiting for me to say porn.

Anyway, read the survey results with that in mind, and try to figure out which category porn was under. Was it “Download or watch TV or a movie over the Internet?” How about “Any other personal non-business reason?” Or maybe “Ordering personal goods or services?”

Actually, every item on that list looks dirty after a while.

Technorati Tags: statistics, internet

Via Global Nerdy, I found out about Aime Street. This might be old news to everyone else, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it. Basically it’s a music store for independent musicians with a unique pricing model - the songs start out as free, but then once they gain some traction (via user recommendations), they start to cost money (capped at 98 cents). The idea’s explained by one of the founders in this comment.

This is a neat answer to the chicken/egg problem facing indie musicians, and I suppose it provides some incentive for users to try more music out while it’s still cheap/free. What else could the model apply to?

Technorati Tags: Amie Street

Robert Scoble notes that Google Reader’s got a new “trends” page that shows your reading stats for the past 30 days. I thought I was reading too much news, but it turns out I’ve only read 1455 items, which might seem like a lot until you see Scoble’s count of 25,000+.

More interesting are the bar graphs in the upper right, which show, among other things, time of day stats. According to Google, most of my reading occurs early in the morning, at noon, and at the end of the work day, so my addiction isn’t cutting too much into my productivity, but there’s a nasty spike around 2pm that I need to work on…

Oh, if you use Google Reader, here’s the link to the trends page. And YAY! They’ve added “sort by oldest” to the view settings!

Technorati Tags: Google Reader, Internet Addiction