February 2008 Archives
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I needed a new one since my last one got blocked.
Lukas wrote an excellent post on how he uses online tools and his iPhone to live a truly mobile life.
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Just when I started thinking about switching to Comcast.
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No more tethering with bluetooth and figuring out a modem script. Use wifi!
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Another way to rely on my mouse a little less.
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Just when I started thinking about switching to Comcast.
I don't have a whole lot to say about this, just a big wow. I guess I'm not alone in not considering the ramifications of the actual production of biofuels, instead focusing on the way they burn. I remember how proud the University of Vermont always was of using Biodiesel in their shuttle buses. How now, brown cow?
I've heard similar with regards to hybrid cars, but I have no links to back that up.
I made the leap a couple of days ago to start using del.icio.us for the bookmarks portion of my cloud. Though I've discussed google at length with regards to my cloud, especially with Gmail and Google Calendar in mind, I had been leaning toward using the Google Bookmarks solution because of the concept of a unified solution.
My decision was swayed, though, by the whole Web 2.0 model. It's true that I missed the boat on social networking early on and didn't quite understand it, but that's not really the case anymore. I'm finding time to learn its value and I'm getting on board. Del.icio.us has its flaws, for example I sure do wish tags were comma delimited instead of space, but by and large it's a good, working, social solution that allows me to keep a cloud and interact with others'.
If all goes well, we'll see the first bookmark post tonight.
And that about wraps that up. In one last spontaneous move, I did change something. I changed the links at the top for syndication and the feeds for the site have been updated. I think I've got it set so the old feeds still work, and the atom feed (which most people probably use anyway) is the same file, so this change shouldn't really affect anyone. And if it does, well, then you're probably not seeing this anyway.
Anyhow, I feel pretty good about what I've done here.
Between last night and tonight I have worked through rewriting my blog's templates using more MT4 friendly methods. What does this mean to you? Very little. Commenting will be easier, so if you've ever had something to say to me now is the time. A tag cloud will appear on the right side. That'll be more interesting as I use tags more. I cleaned up my blogroll a bit and put it into one single links section. If you want to be in there, give a shout. Oh yeah, and searching should work better, too.
Overall not a whole lot changes here. I will start deploying the new stuff in a few minutes. I will post again when deployment is complete.
I spent a bunch of time working on rewriting this blog's templates tonight to leverage some of MT4's latest and greatest. I have not finished yet, so the templates aren't in place. When they do go into place there won't be many noticable changes other than this: comments will become more open again. I plan to take advantage of some built-in protections as well as allowing authentication through several different methods. The result should be easier commenting for anyone who wants to.
Pursuant to my talk of having my very own cloud, I have been investigating ways to sync my google calendars with my mobile phone. As I use Nokia phones, I need a solution that runs on Symbian. The device I use now is S60v3. I am wide open to sugestions.
For now, I have found GooSync. GooSync works like SpanningSync - it depends on a third-party server. I don't particularly like that model and will keep right on looking. The important thing is that there are options.
I've spoken about my personal cloud - my corner of the internet, reachable and usable from anywhere at any time. I've thought on it long and hard, and I think it's the right way to go. I should not be sitting at my office thinking to myself, "Gosh, I wish I had my personal laptop with me so I could look at this bookmark I have instead of having to track it down all over again."
And should it really be this hard to keep my calendar up to date? Remembering everything until I get home and updating things there and hoping not to double book myself, which is an inevitability for me.
And then there are tags - this wonderful new way of making my cloud searchable. It's the way of the future and you'll start seeing more of that here, too. Sure, they apply to bookmarks, but why not everything else? Why not email?
Google has really embraced a lot of this and has created a great set of tools accordingly. But even these tools have their failings and drawbacks.
First question. Is it better to stick with a unified solution, such as Google, rather than picking and choosing tools that might be a better fit but require more work to integrate? That's a hard question for me to answer right now.
Second question. Can device independence negatively impact the user experience? My answer is yes. By now anyone who knows me knows I am a happy Mac user and I love the core set of utilities provided. Unlike many of my friends, I do use Apple's Mail.app for my email rather than Thunderbird. I do use iCal and Address Book. I do not use Safari because I do not like its rendering engine, but that's another post. The point here is that I enjoy using client-side tools, and I don't feel good about abandoning that. I prefer to maintain local copies of my data and, when possible, manipulating that data locally when possible.
What happens if a server is down for maintenance, or for some outage. What happens if my internet connection is down. What happens if Google experiences data loss. We can reduce this to one big question - what happens when I give up control.
So I appeal to anyone who has read this far along. Have you chosen to trust Google with your personal data? What were your other choices, and how did you come to terms with such a massive change?