May 13, 2007
I released a new version of my iTunes Export utility.
iTunes Export exports your iTunes playlists as M3U or WPL files, allowing you to setup playlists in iTunes and use them with other software or devices.
This release is mainly due to the efforts of Jeff Donnici. He has done great work on the code base and is helping move iTunes Export forward.
The major fix in this release is for internationalization (i18n). Apparently you need to use the m3u8 file extension instead of m3u on non-US versions of Windows for the file to be interpreted correctly. Thanks to all the help from the many users who emailed us about this issue and helped us track it down. It was actually Wikipedia that finally gave us the key clue in its m3u article.
Jeff also added several other fixes (see the change log), and is already hard at work on the next release.
http://www.ericdaugherty.com/dev/itunesexport/
I have received several new feature requests and bug reports recently and I plan on getting to them soon. Don’t be afraid to ask for new features (eric@ericdaugherty.com).
May 11, 2007
Word that a new Palm based Treo (the 755p)will be released next week made me wonder if it is time to upgrade my old 650.
I’ve been a Palm user since the Palm Personal, and while I find the new WM OS interesting, it is not yet compelling. I really like the simple navigation of the Palm, and I know its apps really really well by now.
I am interested in the newly announced Palm Linux platform, but I’m not sure I’m willing to wait for something that might be cool.
The iPhone of course is coming out soon, but with no qwerty keyboard I’ll have to wait and see if people REALLY like it over time. I’m not saying they won’t be great, but I do have my concerns.
So, I think a 755p is in my immediate future, unless someone can convince me otherwise.
May 3, 2007
So, I’d comment on Silverlight, but…
I downloaded it, ran the setup file, restarted FireFox, and all the Silverlight applications either do nothing or give an error.
I’m curious, but not enough to actually launch IE.
April 30, 2007
I like to think I have a pretty nice setup at home. I have my computers, routers, and TiVos all on batter backup (UPS).
So when the power was out last night, my wife wasn’t surprised at all that the internet continued to work from her laptop. “Doesn’t everybody’s?” she asked.
Laptops also make a pretty good flashlight in a pinch.
April 22, 2007
I’ve played with Ruby on Rails quite a bit in the last year or so. Over that time, I’ve been both excited and frustrated with it.
I think RoR is a great tool, and it can be leveraged for a lot of web applications that are traditionally written in Java or .Net. A lot of developers and companies would be well suited to add it to their toolbox.
However, what I’ve personally found is that I am unable to devote the time I need to become proficient. It is pretty easy to write a quick application in RoR. The syntax is easy to pick up, and the documentation is good enough that I can muddle my way through. However, without having it as part of my day job, my one-off projects aren’t enough to for my personal knowledge to reach critical mass.
The triggering event of this decision was a recent effort to build a small application recently. It is based on an implementation of a public spec, and there were several RoR and Java libraries that provided the functionality I needed. After digging into the RoR libraries, I got frustrated and found it difficult to find the hooks I needed to build what I wanted. The usage just wasn’t natural enough. I gave up and went back to the warm comfort of the Java libraries.
So, while I believe that I COULD be more productive in RoR, I AM more productive in Java. Based on the total time I’ve spent with RoR, I’ve decided to give up and refocus on Java. It is hard enough keeping up with everything going on in Java and .Net, I just can’t spare the time to track RoR too.
April 4, 2007
Apple announced they are selling EMI music DRM free, for a mere $0.30 premium.
First, I’m excited to see mass market adoption legitimate of DRM free content. That is good news, period.
However, I find Steve’s position on DRM a bit, well, convenient. See, for a couple of reasons Steve wants Apple to sell music without DRM. However, he’s also on Disney’s board, hence the following question during the Q&A:
Q: I take it then that you are going to advocate taking the DRM off of the videos you sell on iTunes. Any particular [inaudible] you could do that with the Disney company?
A: You know, video, uh… I knew I’d get that question today. Video is pretty different than music right now because the video industry does not distribute 90 percent of their content DRM free; never has, and so I think they are in a pretty different situation and so I wouldn’t hold the two in parallel at all.
Ya, sure Steve, they are totally different. I don’t think any one can seriously argue that Steve really BELIEVES that DRM-free content is better. I’m also not sure it matters.
The deal is convenient for everyone. The labels get to sell music at a premium ($1.29 instead of $0.99), Apple gets to look good in the face of the EU anti-trust case, and consumers get DRM free music.
Not a perfect deal, but it’s better than many of the alternatives. Just don’t believe that this deal was done for any altruistic or idealistic reasons.
April 4, 2007
Season 6 of The Shield started today on FX. The Shield has consistently been an amazing show, and season 6 appears to be no exception. At the end of the (extended) season premier, I found myself wanting more, more, more.
Anyone who isn’t watching this show really should go back and enjoy the entire run. Find the DVDs and enjoy. This show demonstrates what TV should be. Unfortunately shows of this quality only seems to be found on HBO, FX, and a few other examples (Battlestar Galactica on Sci-Fi).
March 29, 2007
OpenID is quickly becoming ’the next big thing’, and so I had to take a closer look.
The goal of OpenID is to provide an open framework to allow end users to control their own authentication process, and use it anywhere. This is similar to what Microsoft’s Passport, or the Liberty Alliance tried to do. These systems both failed because no one really wanted to trust their information to a single (or group of) controlling entities.
The difference with OpenID is that you can use ANY OpenID server to manage your authentication. A simple example. Many sites offer OpenID credentials. You sign up there and get a URL that is YOU. Let’s say http://example.com/eric.daugherty. Then when you log in to Digg.com, you specify http://example.com/eric.daugherty as your login. Digg.com will then redirect you to example.com to authenticate. Once you do, you are returned to Digg.com and are logged in.
This is pretty interesting, but I think one of the advanced features are much more interesting. If you own your own URL (say, http://www.ericdaugherty.com), you can use that as your login. All you have to do is edit the HTML page to specify what OpenID server and login to use. So, I could edit http://www.ericdaugherty.com to login using http://example.com/eric.daugherty. This allows me to maintain a single identity over time but use different OpenID servers as I see fit.
One major component is that you can’t trust that just because someone has an OpenID that authenticates, that you really know anything. It seems like it would be very easy to setup an ‘open relay’ server that would authenticate any URL. So if you want to collect a ‘known good’ email address during registration for a website, you still have to manage that yourself. You can’t really trust any data from the OpenID server that you can’t verify yourself.
It will be interesting to see how this develops, and I’m going to try to find some more time to play with it and see how hard it is to implement an OpenID server.
March 28, 2007
I was listening to the latest TWiT podcast (92) and also came across a post on Vallyewag about Justin.tv. The combination of these two drove me to comment.
First, I am a fan of podcasts. Whether it is BattleStar Galactica, TWiT, or the Java Posse, they keep me entertained as I commute to and from work.
On the TWiT podcast, there was a group of podcasters and video bloggers talking about various topics related to the subculture. One interesting point was when Leo mentioned that most podcasters find that they can’t really break a peak audience (measured as downloads) of about 200k-300k. They went on to talk about how international their audiences are. When you break that down, it is actually a VERY SMALL number of Americans who consume this type of media at all, let alone a specific podcast. Contrast this with what one of the callers (yes, the podcast has callers) talked about. She does her own podcast, and was struggling with the growth of her audience from 7 to 700. For most people, this is a huge number of people to be interested in you and what you have to say. The caller was concerned about how to deal with this notoriety. The guests talked about how they started to be concerned about what public information they had posted online, etc. but continued to say that they all had pretty good experiences with their fans and enjoyed their mini-fame.
Podcasts are both huge and tiny at the same time (whereas this blog is mostly just tiny). I think this is cool, but it will be relegated to something that is done for fun, and not profit for a long time to come. Leo was very up front about the struggles that he has with his podcasts (he has more than 10 in his network) getting sponsors. Leo is a ‘famous’ personality who used to host a TechTV show and now has a nationally syndicated radio show. He is an industry guy who is a known quantity. However, his (big) audience is still way too small for advertisers to pay any real attention to. If you want to reach millions of people, negotiating deals for 200k at a time is very time consuming (which translates to expensive). I think many semi-popular websites also struggle with this as they become too popular to manage part time, but are not big enough to really attract advertising dollars outside of a network.
On to Justin.tv….
I think they Valleywag article nails the Justin.tv phenomenon pretty well. It is another illustration of how big something can be that < 1% of Americans ever know about, and how crazy we are. Why are people so fascinated with the minutia of individual’s lives? The Valleywag article makes several great points including how we’ve been here before (JenniCam) and how cruel everyone can be, when you take what we say in ‘private’ and expose it to the world. I have to admit, I’m tempted to go check out Justin.tv, but so far I’m holding strong.
Of course, this blog is my own vanity project that I hope will propel me to fame and fortune, so take all of this with a big grain of salt.
March 27, 2007
I released a new version of the Java client for SOHT today.
The goal of SOHT is to provide a simple tool that enables all types of socket communication through an HTTP Proxy server. This tool is useful for users who are behind a restrictive firewall and wish to access external servers that use protocols other than HTTP.
This release fixes a bug that prohibited the Java Client from using ports higher than 32767.
http://www.ericdaugherty.com/dev/soht/
I want to thank Danilo for finding and fixing this bug. A great example of Open Source development at work.
