In West Virginia, last spring, we happened upon this small book store/library that was completely open with no one on staff at all. Just a building along a road with the door open, actually open not just unlocked, where you could go in grab a book or two. Totally awesome.

I hadn’t realized how many Web sites I’d been missing out on until this update rolled through. Then I found myself browsing Web sites in Polish, Chinese, and other languages I have no idea how to read. Surprised it took this long for a browser to natively support a translation API.

In the beginning your actions to help the company build its brand, or simply spread the word about something, may have a sizable impact. But as you continue you will notice your actions having a less and less of an impact. Sure, the metrics may stay the same (ie. the number of people you’re able to make aware of something) but it will be less noticeable than before.

This is a good thing. It means the company is growing up.

Tweetie for Mac still has a few standout features that draw me to using it – but any software that runs on a public social service that isn’t updated in months tends to fall behind rather quickly. Echofon keeps up.

Last night while watching the Oscars I saw this iPad commercial, which Engadget has shared, and I immediately thought it was too fast. I have seen the Keynote announcing the iPad and have poured over its features on the Web site – so I’m pretty familiar with what the iPad will do out of the box – yet I find this commercial too fast to really keep up with. If someone saw this having never seen much about the iPad then I’m wondering if they’d be left wondering what it was. But, perhaps that is the point?

Am I alone?

This hasn’t been too much of an issue since I haven’t been playing any games using the Xbox 360 (we’ve been playing a lot more Wii though) and haven’t needed any of the Live features. But, Netflix has an Xbox 360 application that makes it simple to stream any movies directly to your TV in HD. Daddy wants.

I didn’t want to spend the money for the “dongle” or whatever it is to give the Xbox 360 Wifi capability so I was very pleased when I came across Alex King’s blog post about using the Airport Express to provide a wired connection. I already have an Airport Express that I use for Airtunes to my surround sound set up which is right next to the Xbox 360. I’ve had Alex’s tutorial ’starred’ in Google Reader for weeks and today I finally took the time to get it set up.

It works great. (And the Airtunes capability remains.)

Alex links to an Apple Support article that, inexplicably, isn’t complete. Where the article lacks Alex provides some tips so be sure to read both the support article and his blog post in full before you begin to help alleviate any headaches.

When I awoke Saturday morning to the news of the quake, which I first saw via Twitter, I immediately sent a tweet to both Roxanne and Shane and called their phone to let them know a wave was on its way. At the time they had well over 12 hours before the wave would reach their island of Oahu and it even turned out to be a nonevent. However, after seeing this animation of how the wave moved around the Pacific Ocean, and its scale in comparison to Hawai’i, I’m glad that I reacted as quickly as I did and that they did too. A few subtle changes to any of the circumstances regarding the tsunami could have easily turned a nonevent to a devastating one.

Great to see the Social Web play such an integral role in providing people with warnings, information, and communications during times of disasters. Much of the time the Social Web is looked at as a waste of time but all the time spent “playing” on these services ends up being extremely valuable when they are put to other uses.

One of the best places to track the tsunami that will be hitting Hawai’i in a few hours is the #hitsunami tag on In Hawaii Now.

The earthquake, which had an epicenter just offshore in Maule, Chile, has sent tsunami warnings across the entire Pacific region including Hawai’i, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and many other countries.

Additional resources

• CNN.com has a lot information but no single URL.
• USGS map of South America. Tons of aftershocks.
• The Pacific Tsunami Center.

(more if I find any)

Kids + Snow = Generally an awesome time (and soreness).

Five years ago today: We were at a hockey game.

Cape Lookout off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina in October, 2008.

/via Simon Willison.

/via John Gruber (who called it “Spooky”.)

The vineyards on Franklin Hill. Credit: Eliza.

Eliza, my mother-in-law Carla and I took a drive last week to visit a few wineries along the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail. Due to winter hours, a long lunch, and some shopping – we only got to two wineries along the trail.

The first winery was Amoré in Nazareth, Pa. Although having recently been through a fire that ripped through their tasting room – they were still open for business. One of the things I enjoyed the most about Amoré, besides their decent selection of wines, was that they offered crackers, pretzels, and even chocolate with some of them. During the summer months, we were told, they sometimes have cheese too. More wineries should do this. Although some do have crackers it is rare that they are of any quality or that they have other things available.

The second winery was Franklin Hill in Bangor, Pa. and my favorite of the day. Franklin Hill Winery sits far back off the road, nearly a half mile I’d say, and was recently renovated. This was my favorite of the day because we got a tour and got to meet the woman winemaker while she was working on some of their wines. Everyone there was very free with information when I asked questions about winemaking and the wines were good too.

We ended up coming home with a few bottles of wine. One thing I enjoy about buying wine directly from the wineries is that you have a chance to taste the wines before you purchase any. This way when you’re home and wondering what wine to have – you know exactly what each of them tastes like.

Hopefully we’ll find time this year to get to the other seven wineries along the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail.

We made our way to McDonald’s and, of course, I thought it would be a good idea to have a nugget eating challenge. This time, though, I would only attempt to eat 50 nuggets. As I said on Twitter, I was trying to eat 50 just so I could see how hard it would be to eat 100 at a later date. I thought I could eat 50 with little problem. Boy was I wrong.

About 12 nuggets into the challenge I knew that I would fail. I wasn’t full. I was disgusted. The grease on the nuggets is positively revolting after only a few nuggets. The few times that I’ve order McNuggets in my life I’ve only gotten 4 nuggets at a time. Obviously not enough to be prepared for a 50-nugget (let alone a 100-nugget) challenge. Yuck.

So, I quit at 28. I had 2 nuggets left in my third box of ten and, although I could have eaten those, I thought ‘what is the point?’. I gave up and I will now not eat McNuggets until at least 2020. I’m glad I tried and now know that eating 100 nuggets – at least by me – is impossible.

My two fellow nugget-challengers, Sam and Austin, did better than I did with 40 and 32 nuggets respectively.

Photo credit: Ben Wagner.

I can’t have much more of an opinion on Google Buzz because I can’t use it. You see, I use something called Google Apps for Domains. Google Apps allows me to have Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and other services by Google for the CDEVROE.com domain name. My colin [at] cdevroe.com email, in other words, is simply a glorified Gmail account. But, for some reason, Google handles these accounts completely separate from all other accounts.

Google Reader Header

Take Google Reader as an example. I use Google Reader everyday. On the top right hand side of Google Reader (see the image above and click on it to zoom in), where it tells me whom I’m logged in as, it says colin [at] cdevroe.com. One would think that would mean that my Google Apps account was being used to authenticate me for Google Reader. This isn’t so. On the left hand side of the page there is a link for Mail (presumably my Inbox). If I click on that it asks me to sign up for Gmail. Wait, what?

To make matters worse Google does this for all of its services. Google.com, Maps, Adsense, Analytics, and more. I have accounts for all of these (using my same email address) but I don’t have a Gmail account. I have a Google Apps Gmail account.

Chris Messina, someone whom I admire very much, recently went to work full time at the GOOG as an Open Web Advocate. I know he’ll be busy striving to get Google to become the foremost example in the open Web but I also know that he understands this whole Google Accounts fiasco as well if not better than I do. I hope that, while he’s changing the world from the inside out, he’s also able to convince those at Google to consolidate all Google Accounts into a single-account-sign-on-something-or-other.

I look forward to one day playing around with Buzz but I’ll wait until it is available in my Google Apps for Domains flavor of Gmail.

Addendum: So I thought I’d try my hand at following through the Gmail setup process to see if, like with Google Reader, it just used my colin [at] cdevroe.com account as its primary account. Now I have no idea what it did and I have a new email address and Google Profile that are unrelated to my normal Apps account but it is linked to it somehow. I’m a professional Internet user and developer and I have absolutely no idea what Google is trying to accomplish. Wow.

NOOO! Now all of my accounts are associated to a new account.

Saw this at 12:30 on Sunday afternoon at the intersection of Routes 106 and 247. Everyone seemed to get out OK though.

A few more hands before our friend Burke goes away for two months.

“If it was a hidden ranking system then people wouldn’t be driven to do things only to increase their rank and it could still be used for valuable things like Tumblr’s directory.”

I don’t know if Tumblr repurposed Tumblarity to help power their new Directory but credit where due I’m glad it isn’t on Tumblr in a way that motivates spamming any more.

What makes this podcast awesome (besides the fact that sidekick22, Jorge’s lady friend Bethany James Leigh Shady, and Jorge himself are doing this themselves) is that they started putting together this podcast in August 2009 when LOST began shooting Season 6. They’re releasing these episodes now, since LOST has premiered Season 6 Episode 1 already, and anything they talk about (the script, the shooting, etc.) wouldn’t be considered spoilers anymore.

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again – Jorge’s character on LOST, Hurley, is my second-favorite character on LOST. Charlie, is my favorite and probably always will be. This is now my second favorite podcast too. Terry Gross’ FRESH AIR on NPR will more than likely always hold that top spot.

Jorge & Beth – if you’re reading this; this was a really great idea and I sincerely appreciate you sharing it.

Not anymore. I’ve been wanting to switch to the Google Chrome Developer channel (or, the still pretty darned bleed edge releases) for a few weeks but hadn’t had the time to figure out how. After I saw my friend in bleeding edge Chromium releases Justin Blanton take the plunge I began hunting. Turns out, it is pretty easy once you found the right link.

I found this link via the Chromium Blog – but there is an Early Access Release Channels page that explains what each release channel is, its purpose, and how you can get involved. The nice thing about these channels is that these are releases of Google Chrome, not just Chromium, and as such are slightly more stable and refined then the Chromium nightlies I’ve been using. Updating to the next release is also easier in that it happens within the application itself and it continues on the same channel you choose be it beta or developer.

Left: Chromium Right: Google Chrome Dev channel

For example, remember how I complained about Chromium’s Bookmark Manager? Remember those hideous buttons? Well, they are much nicer in Google Chrome then they are in Chromium. Take a look at the graphic that shows the difference between the two. Though the action button doesn’t do much (yet) it does fit much nicer into the Mac ecosystem. Obviously the source list on the left is much nicer as well.

Switching from Chromium to Google Chrome was made all the more easy due to Google’s free Bookmark Syncing service. If you’d like to help test the very latest build of Chrome follow the links on that Early Access Release Channels to download your flavor of Chrome based on which channel you’d like.

Who says blogs are dead? Lets have a live discussion about tonight’s upcoming episode of LOST Season 6, live, right here in the comments on my blog.

To participate simply leave a comment below and wait for some replies. If you want, share a link to this post via Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else you’d normally have this type of discussion nowadays.

(Consider each comment the beginning of a discussion. Click “reply” to reply to a specific comment.)

Dan Benjamin, who like me has always been a very big fan of talk radio, has launched a new network for audio podcasts called 5 by 5 Studios. I’ve listened to the first few episodes of each of his shows and so far so good. If you’re a fan of talk radio give Dan’s new network a listen.

• EE Podcast – ExpressionEngine news and discussion.
• Tack Sharp – About photography with co-host James Duncan Davidson.
• The Conversation – A livestreamed show about all types of stuff.
• The Dev Show – Software development discussion (mostly Web related it seems).
• The Pipeline – Interviews of software developers, designers, entrepreneurs, etc.
• The Ruby Show – aka Rails Envy – discussion about Ruby.
• Utility Belt – Five minute long review of five mobile applications. Interesting.

Something for everyone.

Be sure to check out their other products. Thanks Icon Dock.

/via David Kaneda.

Kyle Slattery, whom you all should know by now, has also published a post about comparing the physical keyboard input with that of his DROID and the challenges faced by device manufactures that provide both a physical keyboard and a multitouch interface.

“One problem I see quite often in the #git channel on Freenode is that beginners get confused as to why a file doesn’t disappear from history when they place it into their .gitignore file.”

Well, I’m that beginner he speaks of.

To ignore a file from being tracked by Git simply create a .gitignore file in your root working directory with a list of files or directories that you want Git to ignore the changes of. Typically this is good for configuration files, error logs, or temp directories that might be filled with junk.

Pretty simple. However, I had a config.php file in my project for quite a few commits before I wanted to remove it and stop tracking changes. I didn’t go about this the right way and I actually ended up publishing sensitive information to a public place. Eek! So, to help all of you, here is how you do this properly (using my config.php as the example).

1. Ignore changes by placing the file’s name in the .gitignore file. (ie. config.php)
2. Remove the file from the index but not the working directory: git -rm cached config.php
3. Strip this file from every single commit you’ve ever made: (use with caution!) git filter-branch –index-filter ‘git rm –cached config.php’ HEAD

I know that it is bad form to remove a file from the commit history as general practice however in this case I had very little choice. I hope this saves any of you that find this the time and stress it temporarily caused me.

“If a player uses all seven of the tiles in the rack in a single play, a bonus of 50 points is added to the score of that play (this is called a “bingo” in Canada and the United States, and a “bonus” elsewhere). These bonus points are not affected by premium squares.”

Well, that settles that.

So, it has finally been announced.

Now, what do I think about it? I have to admit that since it was announced, about 36 hours ago now, my opinion of the iPad has swung back and forth like a blade of grass in a stiff breeze. I sit here (on the couch no less) wishing I had an iPad to write this on while at the same time thinking the device is utterly frivolous. I have a Macbook Pro and an iPhone, why would I ever need an iPad?

But, who cares if I actually need one. What do I think about it? Here are the surprises, the bad, and the good.

The surprises

• The price. I have to admit it. Even though I guestimated that a tablet device from Apple would debut at somewhere between $699 and $899 I never thought that it’s base price would be $499.
• The name. I’ve tried to let iPad sink in and I still think it will (it will have to) but I am still surprised.
• The 250Mb per month limited 3G price plan. If you are of the sort that only sends a few emails or downloads an app or book a two a month – I suppose 250mb per month is enough. But I’m willing to bet that most will either go the unlimited 3G plan, for only double the price, or with no 3G at all (for no monthly fee and an even cheaper purchase price).
• The reactions. Overall, I think the reactions I’ve seen across the Web are positive that the iPad is a very cool device. But as far as the device being an easy purchase the sentiment is anything but shared.

There were good surprises too but I’ll just throw most of them into “the good” list.

The bad

• The aspect ratio. It has been stated that they iPad’s screen has a 4:3 aspect ratio and is probably the result of the device being optimized for portrait use. If I were to have an iPad I could see myself watching a lot of video on the device and so I would have liked to see the aspect ratio at 16:9.
• The 3G pricing plans. Thirty dollars per month is a lot of money for me. Two hundred and fifty megabytes per month of bandwidth is no where near “enough” for my usage. That leaves me with no option to get 3G.
• The number of native iPad apps (surprise). This will no doubt increase dramatically prior to launch. Apple obviously spent a considerable amount of time nailing the applications they showed in the announcement. iWork, Mail, and iBooks (and even the iCal redesign) are absolutely incredible UIs such the world has never seen. But I was surprised we didn’t see a point of sale system, educational and healthcare applications, or any other application besides Brushes (which looks great though) and games.
• That Steve Jobs didn’t also announce a way to convince your wife that you need one.

I haven’t had an opportunity to use the iPad yet – which I presume won’t happen for months – but I didn’t see much that was bad about the device. Nearly everything I saw was incredibly well thought out and looked easy and dare I say fun to do.

The good

• The UI. Though some will say that the iPad is simply a big iPhone the user interface is obviously different given its specific size. Being larger means being even more precise and detailed. The UI, from what I’ve seen so far, is second to none. The best user interface for any device in the world.
• iWork. The amount of work Apple put into bringing iWork to the iPad is obvious. Some of the gestures that Phil Schiller was using to create some quick iWork documents were – if I may say so – perfect and natural. To get a gesture to be perfect and feel natural is – for most people and companies – a near impossibility. Somehow most interface gestures miss the mark. The iPhone got more right than it did wrong but it still got a few things wrong (mostly related to the limitations of the device itself). The iPad leaves all of those mistakes at the door.
• Typing. My main wish for the iPad was for much better input. Again, I haven’t used the iPad yet but nearly everyone that has remarked that typing on the iPad was much better than they expected.
• SPEED. Speed is so important. If pressed about what the most important thing in technology was I’d probably say speed. Computers, devices, Web pages, applications, – even cars – are nothing without speed. No matter how good something is, if it is slow, it won’t work. The iPad is remarkably fast.
• iBooks. I’ve wanted a Kindle from the very first day Amazon announced them. I haven’t bought one because I, like Steve Jobs, couldn’t see owning a device that only allowed me to read books. For the price of a Kindle I could buy 1,000 books at yard sales and give them to friends as gifts. But the iPad, with its incredible screen and ability to do just about everything else you want, is well within the right price range to make buying a Kindle look like a dumb idea.
• The battery life. 10 hours on a single charge? My 15″ unibody Macbook Pro gets around 6 to 7 hours of battery life right now – which is absolutely amazing. To have a device that you can actually use for 10 hours is remarkable.

All this and I haven’t put so much as a thumb on the device yet. I can’t wait to get my hands all over this thing though I’m still not sure I’ll buy one.

• I want a big iPhone too – Of course, I just had to include my own post about what I’d like to see in an Apple Tablet. I’ll add one more thing too, if this proximity sensitivity field is real, I want that.
• Derek Powazek hopes that Apple unleashes something that makes “print-like” work worth doing again.
• John Gruber mused about the Tablet a few weeks ago about where The Tablet would fit.
• John Siracusa’s Antiacid Tablet has a great perspective based on Apple’s current position with iTunes, the App Store, etc. and why they are uniquely positioned to have a successful Tablet device.

That is really about it. We’ll see how all of this stacks up in about 4 hours and 10 minutes.

“Work for free
or for full price.
Never for cheap.”

/via we(heart)it.

This is pretty great and something I’ve never seen before. The ColorADD System is a system of ‘codes’ that can be used to identify colors for people that are color blind. By knowing each color’s specific code, as well as a particular syntax, the person can discern just about any color in the spectrum.

/via Colour Lovers.

“Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection. Once or twice or maybe three times a day I connect and transfer mail in and out. Before sending mail, I always review and revise the outgoing messages. That gives me a chance to catch mistakes and faux pas.”

I try to edit emails before I send them but I admit I don’t do it with every email. I also only try to only check email once per day for a fixed amount of time but that ends up in some major email stacking so then I’m forced to take an entire morning to catch up during the week.

After 16 years of reading and writing email I’ve yet to find the right way to handle it. I’ve found that it is typically those that send you email that are at fault for email problems.

/via The Setup.

What can I say, it has been a bird feeder weekend. Something I learned from my father is that it is very easy to put together your own bird feeder. Using what I remembered from him, I grabbed a branch of Birch tree and hollowed out a few holes, filled them with a peanut butter and bird seed mixture, popped in some nails as posts for the birds to perch on when they are eating and hung it from the tree.

Now we have five different types of bird feeders and I hope it will attract a wide variety of birds.

Left: bird seed mix, Right: suet.

Suet

Bird seed

The temperature has finally gotten above freezing. I took it as an opportunity to get two more bird feeders (in addition to the one we have on our deck) up.

I’ve now finally been able to update, sort and delete my bookmarks (which are automatically synced with my Google Account). Something I wasn’t able to do for months and has taken my already fairly bubbly adoration of Chromium and taken it to the next level. A clean browser is a happy browser.

I was surprised, though, at the overall design and implementation of the Bookmark Manager in Chromium. It feels very rushed. Even though I use a nightly build, which is as cutting-edge as you can possibly get, I expected to see a very different approach than what is pictured above.

Chromium’s New Tab, History, Downloads and Extensions pages are very different from what we see in most other browsers. The New Tab page, as an example, is much more like Safari’s Top Sites page (although not nearly as cool). The Downloads page I find particularly useful. It shows up like a Web page and shows you everything that you downloaded recently, by day, with a link back to the page it originated from, a link to the file itself on your own system, etc. Functionally it is very much the same as Safari and Firefox’s Downloads pop-up window but Chrome’s is altogether nicer, in my opinion, because it shows up in a tab.

I expected Chromium to have the same sort of “Web page” feeling to its Bookmark Manager. Maybe this is a case of ‘don’t fix it if it ain’t broken’ but I think there is huge potential for browsers to reinvent the way bookmarks are managed. Why not plug into some social bookmarking sites? (I know there are Firefox plugins that do stuff like this) Why not give us an unlimited amount of metadata to attribute to a bookmark? I remember when Firefox implemented shortcodes for bookmarks, like ‘gr’ for Google Reader as an example, and you could just type ‘gr’ + Enter and off you went to that bookmark. I would love to see that in Chromium (and Safari).

And what about the plus, minus, and eye buttons on the toolbar? I have never, ever, ever seen anything like those on any operating system. Perhaps I’m looking too far into what are basically alpha level builds. Maybe what will end up being released with Chrome for Mac will be vastly different than what is appearing currently in Chromium (I hope so).

And don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely happy to finally be able to edit my bookmarks in Chromium and I always look forward to the next nightly update.

Phil compared writing the same 221-word passage using six different devices (including Pen & Paper) and shared the results on his site. It is very interesting to see the results and how far text-input on devices has come over the last few decades and even the last few years.

/via John Gruber.

I wish Google Reader did this for people that subscribe to my feed (which is also available on Twitter by the way). According to Google Reader there are a few hundred people that have subscribed to this site that use Google Reader. This certainly isn’t everyone that has subscribed to this site but it’d be nice to know who these people are. It’d be nice if Google Reader, optionally, told me the usernames of the people that subscribed. A simple email notification that says “So and So has subscribed to your site via Google Reader” would suffice. This would give me the same opportunities as today’s popular social networks and I think that’d be great.

As you may recall Bernie has a support control center on his desk. Today I came into Viddler HQ to discover that he’s pretty much a switcher.

After searching on GitHub for scripts that did the same thing I didn’t come up with much. Hopefully this both fills that void and gets better because it is now out in the open.

• On Viddler I save videos that I like, that I want Derek (our Community Leader) to see, or that I want to promote to the front page.
• On Flickr I save photos that I like, would like to paint or draw, or want to find again easily.
• On Twitter I save tweets that I like, would like to read later, or that I think are notable in some way.
• On Tumblr (no permalink?) I save posts for the same reason I do tweets. Reading later.
• On Google Reader I star things I want to read later.
• On Facebook I like things that I agree with but have no comment on.

And that is about all of the services that I use on a regular basis or that I favorite things on. With my recent addiction to Instapaper I like less Tumblr and Google Reader items but I still do occasionally.

What about you?

“It’s by far James Cameron’s finest pieces of work and although I’ll be one of the many to grab a Blu-Ray copy, seeing it in theatre is an experience you should not miss out on regardless of how big your Hi-Def TV is. Even the 3D-glasses supplied were a considerable upgrade from the tradition paper and plastic ones so I kept them as a souvenir.”

Agreed, I will too, yes you should, and I did too (twice).

Lets look at the last 7 days as an eye opening example. In the last 7 days there have been:

• 291 recorded earthquakes
• several have been over 5+ magnitude
• most of which has been under 5 magnitude.

To the best of man’s knowledge this is nothing new (at least since the relatively early 20th century). While more earthquakes are being reported with a fair amount of accuracy, it is generally believed that the actual number of earthquakes (especially those above the magnitude of 7) have been fairly consistent year over year since they’ve been recorded.

The USGS says:

“According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 17 major earthquakes (7.0 – 7.9) and one great earthquake (8.0 or above) in any given year.”

So recent earthquake news is pretty much par for the course as far as the Earth is concerned. However, the detection, recording, and reporting of these earthquakes is now more accurate and quicker than ever. We are seeing more reports of earthquakes because we’re getting better at “feeling” them with seismic technology and because the news of these earthquakes spreads over the Internet quicker than ever.