Monthly Archive for July, 2009

Seeking Mississippi

Published on July 27, 2009 in General and Projects. Comments

Last week marked the two month anniversary of digiwhack’s public launch, it’s been an exciting ride so far. There has been solid press to date in the blog-o-sphere, as well as engagement from the world community.

Some of the coverage so far has included a feature on iheartchaos.com who identified the experience as “The worst, most profound bathroom wall on the Internet”, and YepYep who called it “[...]a digital version of a gas station’s bathroom stall wall”, as well as mentions on Lemondrop.com, Urlesque.com and The Corey and Jay Show radio broadcast and website.

Digi Whack is truly a global community. It’s being used on every continent, with the exception of Antarctica. Digi Whack has had over 2,000 unique visitors worldwide who viewed over 21,000 pages. Over 11,000 votes have been cast, declaring messages either clever or stupid and over 300 unique new digiwhacks (aka messages) have been created, an amazing testament to how engaged the audience is.

With all this exposure, Digi Whack has only been in used in 49 of the 50 states. One state in the US has been noticeably absent, Mississippi. Not sure how to reach those Mississippians, but if you know anyone who lives there, please pass Digi Whack along. And, if you live in Mississippi, please check us out!

Stealing My Information

Published on July 24, 2009 in General. Comments

I was a little shocked today, when I got an @ reply on twitter to check out my profile on a some new service called twitreferral.com. I landed on an URL that had scraped all my information off twitter and wanted me to sign up.

Not only did they suggest I get an account for something that had stolen, they also stated if I paid them, they would remove the ads.

I have to admit, this made me a little upset. I completely understand that my public information is just that, public, but I put it on twitter.com. Now, some other service scraped all that data and auto-generated a page I didn’t want or ask for. I couldn’t find a way to opt out. This is more than just annoying, it seems crude and dishonest.

The big difference between something like twitreferral and a search engine, is I can prevent search engines from indexing my data via the robots.txt, but this service did this without my permission. This is exactly the opposite of the data portability we all dream about. It actually makes me want to make my twitter profile private, or worse yet, not use twitter at all.

Perhaps I am the lone voice in the wilderness when it comes to stuff like this. I know there have been several other projects that created similar services, but twitreferral seems especially offensive to me. I contacted Whiz Bang Zoom Labs and asked them to remove the information that hey hijacked. We’ll see what they have to say, or if they are just another group of spammers masquerading as a legitimate business and riding on the backs of the skyrocketing twitter.com band wagon.

Open Letter to The Makers of Google Chrome OS

Published on July 8, 2009 in General and google. Comments

Dear Google,

Thank you for your latest announcement to modernize and webize the P.C. operating system through the introduction of Google OS Chrome. As a web developer and software engineer I welcome the news with open arms. I am happy to see another company compete with Microsoft.

Microsoft Internet Explorer (I.E.) has caused me grief for over 10 years now. From when I built my first web page back in 1998, optimized for Netscape, and my friend called to tell me it was broken in I.E., to my latest projects, Internet Explorer has been both the source of both hours of frustration as well as a steady paycheck for many years now.

When Mac released OSX, I happily switched from Windows to Mac. But I was one of the few and I continued to need a P.C. running Windows so I could test my work in Internet Explorer. As Linux grew from the relative obscurity of the ubergeek to common enough that even my doorman uses it, I happily installed it on my P.C. as a dual boot with Windows so that I could continue to test my web applications in Internet Explorer.

As Firefox was released, I happily used it. But I still needed to test my work in Internet Explorer. As Safari and Google Chrome was released for P.C. I gladly used both of them. But, I always keep my trusty copy of Internet Explorer so I can test my web apps for the large number of users who either refuse to switch away from Internet Explorer or are unable to download and install anything on their computers.

So Google, I ask you, heck I’ll even beg or plead, please write something that doesn’t just emulate Internet Explorer, it is Internet Explorer for Google Chrome OS so that I can actually ditch my ‘trusty old copy’ of Window and Internet Explorer.

I know this is not a trivial ask. I know it doesn’t serve Microsoft’s interest at all to allow Internet Explorer to run on another operating system, but unless I can continue test my work in Internet Explorer, Google Chrome OS will be just another competitor in a crowded space to me.

I realize that allowing Internet Explorer to run on another operating systems might give it more of a boost than it deserves, but please understand the perspective of a web developer – I must test all web applications in Internet Explorer – regardless of how I personally feel about that browser, people use it and will continue to use it for many, many years.

I wish you the best of luck Google in your endeavor to compete with Microsoft. I will gladly try the Chrome OS, just as I have tried Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, Mac OSX and many more Operating Systems. But Google, please be know this, if you really want me to ditch my ‘trusty old copy’ of Windows in favor of Google Chrome OS, you will have to build something so that I can test my web apps in Internet Explorer.

Thanks
-gregory tomlinson
Web Developer