Rogue Amoeba - Nicecast for Mac OS X - FAQ
Combined with a Griffin iMike this might be a very nice way to broadcast meeting audio -- without the cost of most solutions.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Delicious Library: bar code your llife
Delicious Library
Shades of the RFID world to come -- when one knows a great deal about things in the physical world (RFID tags on mountains?). Years ago I wondered about bar coding journal articles, so I would look up the information online rather than enter it into my article database.
This app takes that idea MUCH further. They use the bar codes already on books and objects as a unique identifier to join the physical item to online data. Of course, as with CD track databases, consumers will build the data as they scan. You can use an iSight camera or a USB scanner to read the bar codes.
Very, very interesting.
Shades of the RFID world to come -- when one knows a great deal about things in the physical world (RFID tags on mountains?). Years ago I wondered about bar coding journal articles, so I would look up the information online rather than enter it into my article database.
This app takes that idea MUCH further. They use the bar codes already on books and objects as a unique identifier to join the physical item to online data. Of course, as with CD track databases, consumers will build the data as they scan. You can use an iSight camera or a USB scanner to read the bar codes.
Very, very interesting.
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Jumsoft: OS X outliner and project management software
Jumsoft
It's only version 1.0. But it sounds interesting. There's almost too much software like this for OS X -- interesting, innovative, and risky. Risky because a lot of intellectual work can end up locked down in an unsupported file format. My main question about Process will be around the file format.
It's only version 1.0. But it sounds interesting. There's almost too much software like this for OS X -- interesting, innovative, and risky. Risky because a lot of intellectual work can end up locked down in an unsupported file format. My main question about Process will be around the file format.
LaunchBar interview -- a great piece of OS X software
MacDevCenter.com: From NEXTSTEP to Now: An Interview with LaunchBar's Norbert Heger
I adore LaunchBar. I really miss it when I suffer with my XP machines. It wasn't until I read this article, however, that I realized it's supposed to index my folder names. I'd never bothered to use it beyond its basic program launcher capabilities.
Turns out it was indexing my folder names -- but the data was lost in the noise of indexed address book entries, bookmarks, file names, etc. Fortunately I've had lots of experience with indexing software over the last few months (mostly on XP -- Lookout and several others). From that experience I've learned:
1. Full text indexing of email works great. In fact, the easiest way to locate a file on my work machine is to find it as an attachment, identify the file name, and then find the current version in my file system. Why does email indexing work better than full text indexing of the file system? In a word ... metadata. Email has tons of metadata -- people's names, all kinds of dates, surrounding text, subject lines, file names, etc. Way better than any currently popular file system, and all "free".
2. Full text indexing of the file system isn't as useful as I'd have thought. Too much noise.
3. Full text indexing of folder names is VERY useful -- especially as one learns to create descriptive folder names. They provide a sort of enclosing metadata. (Yes, categories as in gmail work as well or better, but folder names are what one gets nowadays.)
4. I don't use bookmarks very much. I use them for a few frequent things, otherwise I search Google and/or my blogs. (I want a searchbar that integrates google search with searching my blogs and bloglines subscriptions.)
So I applied that knowledge to launchbar:
1. index all application names
2. index names of folders
3. ignore most everything else.
What do you know ... it's twice as useful as it was! Just by doing less -- and more.
LaunchBar's configuration UI, btw, could use a bit of work.
I adore LaunchBar. I really miss it when I suffer with my XP machines. It wasn't until I read this article, however, that I realized it's supposed to index my folder names. I'd never bothered to use it beyond its basic program launcher capabilities.
Turns out it was indexing my folder names -- but the data was lost in the noise of indexed address book entries, bookmarks, file names, etc. Fortunately I've had lots of experience with indexing software over the last few months (mostly on XP -- Lookout and several others). From that experience I've learned:
1. Full text indexing of email works great. In fact, the easiest way to locate a file on my work machine is to find it as an attachment, identify the file name, and then find the current version in my file system. Why does email indexing work better than full text indexing of the file system? In a word ... metadata. Email has tons of metadata -- people's names, all kinds of dates, surrounding text, subject lines, file names, etc. Way better than any currently popular file system, and all "free".
2. Full text indexing of the file system isn't as useful as I'd have thought. Too much noise.
3. Full text indexing of folder names is VERY useful -- especially as one learns to create descriptive folder names. They provide a sort of enclosing metadata. (Yes, categories as in gmail work as well or better, but folder names are what one gets nowadays.)
4. I don't use bookmarks very much. I use them for a few frequent things, otherwise I search Google and/or my blogs. (I want a searchbar that integrates google search with searching my blogs and bloglines subscriptions.)
So I applied that knowledge to launchbar:
1. index all application names
2. index names of folders
3. ignore most everything else.
What do you know ... it's twice as useful as it was! Just by doing less -- and more.
LaunchBar's configuration UI, btw, could use a bit of work.
O'Reilly Mac OS X Innovators Contest 2004
O'Reilly Mac OS X Innovators Contest
One of the reasons I went to OS X was the promise of innovation. That promise has been realized. There's an amazing amount of interesting software for OS X. O'Reilly has done a great job with this series of articles and with this year's winners.
Update: Maybe not as great a job as I'd thought. One of the winners is called "Process". It's a simple project/task manager with outliner features. It's supposed to allow one to link to "sources" (documents). Problem is, the link is a unix path -- not a Mac file reference. So if you move the source file, you break the link. This won a prize?!! Give me a break.
One of the reasons I went to OS X was the promise of innovation. That promise has been realized. There's an amazing amount of interesting software for OS X. O'Reilly has done a great job with this series of articles and with this year's winners.
Update: Maybe not as great a job as I'd thought. One of the winners is called "Process". It's a simple project/task manager with outliner features. It's supposed to allow one to link to "sources" (documents). Problem is, the link is a unix path -- not a Mac file reference. So if you move the source file, you break the link. This won a prize?!! Give me a break.
Role playing games and robotic simulants -- the future of games and the evolution of mind
Fantasy Economics - Why economists are obsessed with online role-playing games. By Robert Shapiro
I was discussing this topic with a colleague today. He mentioned how one company used "sweatshop" low wage Mexican game players to outsource the tedious work of building initial assets in many role playing games.
That led me to the next logical step -- robotic players. I was inspired by an old science fiction satire about a world in which the costs of production had fallen so far that consumption became a duty rather than a privilege. Only the rich could afford to live without constantly consuming goods. The protagonist breaks the viscious cycle by building robots to consume things. Ok, so it's not the same thing at all -- but that's how my brain works.
I don't mean simulated players within the game -- the game wouldn't allow that. No, simulated players outside the game. They don't have to strike keys, but they need to generate keystroke and mouse motion signals. They don't have to read the screen, but they need to be able to "interpret" the digital stream representing onscreen objects.
Observed within a game the avatar for such a simulated player might seem clumsy ... even a bit "mindless'. Or they might seem oddly smooth but "stupid". They would, however, react with lightning speed to certain stimuli. They could kill game-rabits and the like very well. They'd never advance far in the game, but they could earn a lot of low level script.
And there could be a lot of them. Thousands. Millions.
Just like robots in the real world. Or just like frogs.
Of course the game masters might come up with tricks to detect robots. mini-Turing tests that would a robot would fail. So the robots would get smarter. One human might manage a hundred robots, constantly on call to solve Turing tests the robots could identify but not resolve. The robots might be supplemented by rats responding to a rat-VR version of the game. Eventually rat tissue plated out in growth chambers would play a role.
And so it goes.
Eventually the robots/simulants become a part of the game. Other simulants compete with them. Some get their own tv shows.
And do it goes.
I was discussing this topic with a colleague today. He mentioned how one company used "sweatshop" low wage Mexican game players to outsource the tedious work of building initial assets in many role playing games.
That led me to the next logical step -- robotic players. I was inspired by an old science fiction satire about a world in which the costs of production had fallen so far that consumption became a duty rather than a privilege. Only the rich could afford to live without constantly consuming goods. The protagonist breaks the viscious cycle by building robots to consume things. Ok, so it's not the same thing at all -- but that's how my brain works.
I don't mean simulated players within the game -- the game wouldn't allow that. No, simulated players outside the game. They don't have to strike keys, but they need to generate keystroke and mouse motion signals. They don't have to read the screen, but they need to be able to "interpret" the digital stream representing onscreen objects.
Observed within a game the avatar for such a simulated player might seem clumsy ... even a bit "mindless'. Or they might seem oddly smooth but "stupid". They would, however, react with lightning speed to certain stimuli. They could kill game-rabits and the like very well. They'd never advance far in the game, but they could earn a lot of low level script.
And there could be a lot of them. Thousands. Millions.
Just like robots in the real world. Or just like frogs.
Of course the game masters might come up with tricks to detect robots. mini-Turing tests that would a robot would fail. So the robots would get smarter. One human might manage a hundred robots, constantly on call to solve Turing tests the robots could identify but not resolve. The robots might be supplemented by rats responding to a rat-VR version of the game. Eventually rat tissue plated out in growth chambers would play a role.
And so it goes.
Eventually the robots/simulants become a part of the game. Other simulants compete with them. Some get their own tv shows.
And do it goes.
Status.Blogger.Com -- not great status!
Status.Blogger.Com
This page is available even when, as happens too often, blogger and blogspot are unreachable. This page shows some significant outages over the past few weeks, and it certainly does not capture all the issues I've seen.
Blogger is going through a rough patch -- the worst I've seen since the google acquisition. Do they need to put a moratorium on new blogs until they get a handle on these issues?
This page is available even when, as happens too often, blogger and blogspot are unreachable. This page shows some significant outages over the past few weeks, and it certainly does not capture all the issues I've seen.
Blogger is going through a rough patch -- the worst I've seen since the google acquisition. Do they need to put a moratorium on new blogs until they get a handle on these issues?
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