Wiki Wiki

Everyone who knows me well, know that I love some wiki action. Usually when I say that, I'm of course talking about the super fantastic wikipedia.

However, tonight I found myself in need of just a general purpose wiki. I wanted one I could setup, with a variety of potential topics, and get a group of people together for collaboration. I googled for about 30 seconds (I sometimes forget how lazy I have become over time courtesy of Google) and had about 4 potential sites. I checked out wikisites, wikispots, and probably something else named wiki. In the end though, Zoho's wiki solution proved to be exactly what I wanted.

No ads, nice clean design, and ability to create my own sites for collaboration. Very nice.

Blowing it off

Sometimes there is nothing more soothing or relaxing than working on something completely pointless and fun. I'm trying to do more of this, as silly as that may sound.

You might notice my (hopefully) growing list of links on the side of this blog to my other various sites and projects. One of those has actually been around for a while, but I just added to it again tonight.

Here is my latest t-shirt design: http://www.cafepress.com/floydpink.105916729. In this particular case, I resurrected an old web classic, and brought it to textile form. Why? Because I can.

5 + 1

Rock and Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) - Handsome Boy Modeling School featuring Lord Finesse, Mike Shonoda, Chester Bennington, Rahzel, Qbert, Grand Wizard Theodore & Jazzy Jay - White People
I had to start with this one, as it really kicked off my listening for nearly the past month. I originally found this song when Ryan first introduced me to "Handsome Boy Modeling School". I was hooked immediately, but this song in particular is awesome. References and performances by some of the true greats of Hip-hop. These are the creators of the whole genre, and most of them still kick ass. I recommend taking down names, grabbing some Wikipedia info, and then working your way through some of their works.

Missy Elliott - Supa Dupa Fly - The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)
The song that pretty much kicked off her career (and continued to prove that Timbaland was really on to something). This track holds up perfectly yet today, I never tire of it. My kids never tire of the "Beep beep, who got the keys to the jeep?"

Shooter Jennings - The Wolf - Slow Train
Anyone knowing me or paying attention to my blog for any period of time knows Shooter might very well be my favorite artist right now. The perfect mix of country lineage and southern rock. I've been impressed as usual with his latest album, but this track with the Oak Ridge Boys takes it to another level. Nothing like working with some of the best to bring out the best in an already great artist.

Kanye West - Graduation - Homecoming
I've flipped on my opinion of Kanye completely over the years. I disliked him at first when "Gold Digger" was being overplayed. I slowly started to get into his music though, all the way until he teamed up with DJ Premier for the kickass "Classic" single. After that, buying "Graduation" seemed like an obvious move. I wasn't expecting it to be so good though. The Daft Punk-sampled track would be the obvious pick for a 50tn with its incredible energy. However, I went with a bit more intriguing track. His collaboration with Chris Martin of Coldplay would be intriguing by itself, but I find the lyric play in the song fantastic also.

Z-Trip - Kiss (Remix / 2006)
Raise your hand if you like free music. Okay, raise your hand if you like hip-hop and rock mashups done by the best in the business. Even if I'm the only one still raising my hand, you still need to check this out. Z-Trip invented and perfected the modern version of the rap/rock mash-up (Aerosmith and Run obviously creating the original...). On top of that though, he provides some great mixes for free on his site. His remix of Prince featuring Murs is more than worthy of a listen.
If you don't feel like browsing, here is a direct link to the song

Holiday Bonus (since I've had this post waiting for so long)
Sarah McLachlan - Wintersong - The First Noel/Mary Mary
It's that time of year, where my wife attempts to drown me in holiday music. I generally just ignore it, and sometimes become a bit annoyed. However, this CD and this song in particular are a different story. Her version of Noel is about the darkest Christmas song you will ever hear, bordering on a very Celtic sound. Incredible.
(Note: You can now get this for free right here)

Silly Bowling Team Names

A group of us at work are going to be doing our annual Bowling for Kid's Sake event again this year to help out the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program (click here if you actually want to donate to me).

In doing so, we needed to come up with a good team name (there is swag on the line...). So, we came up with the following list:

• I'm with Stupid
• Head Bangers
• Nuns with Guns
• Than we shall bowl in the shade...
• ...and the horse you rode in on
• Overstuffed Windbags
• Smoka Bowl
• Jason types like Shit
• Bowling John Malkovich
• Ebowla
• Off Constantly
• Victorious Secret
• CloscoresEX
• The Muffin Stuffers
• Shocker
• Huge Racks
• Mines in the Gutter
• RTFB
• (10 balls and a split) or (10 balls, 1 split)
• Bowl Movements
• Freshly Waxed
• Snarky Self-deprecating Elitists
• The CN4's
• I Can't Believe It's Not Gutter
• Off in the Gutter
• Muppets and Naked Breasts
• If it weren't for my horse
• Richard Craniums and a Female

In the end, we narrowed it down to the following 2 choices (our team has 5 males and 1 female in case you were wondering):

• Mines in the Gutter
• (10 balls and a split) or (10 balls, 1 split)

Although I still find the 2nd choice particularly awesome, we decided on the first for a good team name. Why am I sharing all of this? Because sometimes you just need a good, stupid post on a Friday. Alternatively, why not?

Go Away!!

Before falling off the deep end and admitting he liked the blue light, Thaddeus had reminded me of a post that I had been meaning to write.

He talked a bit about the "Do Not Call" list, and wondered if it worked. While I obviously don't have hard and fast evidence, I would have to say that it has worked very well for us. I signed up on the first day that you could do so online, and within about 2 months our unsolicited calls had dropped off almost entirely. Anymore, other than the stupid political, highway patrol (usually fake), and alumni calls, we don't get any crap calls. If I could find a way to stop those entirely, I would be extremely happy.

The real point of my post though is that the list expires every 5 years. If you registered early like me, that means you are nearing the time where your number will fall off the list. You can renew your spot early, so I strongly recommend you go update your number. Actually, make sure to update ALL of your numbers.

The Future is Simple

(Click here to go straight to the webapp creation details)
(Click here to grab the template webapp file)

Web-based applications are all the rage currently (if you haven't heard, you're either under a rock or better at avoiding hype than I). Creating a functional application that makes use of HTML for a UI makes a lot of sense, and can greatly speed up development.

An idea based upon this that has intrigued me recently is the idea of SSB (site-specific browsers), and specifically Mozilla's Prism application/framework. A site-specific browser has also been called a distraction-free browser. The idea is to take the presentation aspects of a web browser, but remove all other associated web-browser nuances/distractions (i.e. toolbars, navigation controls, etc.). Basically you end up with the equivalent of a single, desktop application that still uses a web browser underneath.

I finally found the answer for how I would try this out while trying to solve a separate problem. My son (currently 7 years old) has been using email off and on for about 3 years now. I started him out with Gmail, but initially had him use a POP3 client. However, after moving the rest of the family to solely use the web interface I wanted to remove the installed client. This left me with 2 options:

1. Teach him how to open a link to Gmail, logout the current user, and type his username and password.
2. Find a way to give him his own access to the web browser interface that didn't interfere with anyone else in the family.

The first option was not a possibility. This was both too much work, and potentially too disruptive to other Gmail users in the household. So, I had to determine the best option for #2. After briefly considering having him use IE (since none of us use it), I regained my senses and realized that Prism could be the perfect solution for him.

5 minutes of learning how to create a Prism configuration file, followed by about a minute with "view page source" to figure out how to directly log him into Gmail, and I was ready to go. Now, couple that with a slick Gmail icon from one of my favorite free icon sites, zip it all up into a "webapp" file, and I was done. I ran it once to install into Prism, and then used the "Install Shortcut" option in the bottom, right-hand corner of Prism to install it to the desktop for him. It turned out very slick overall. I might yet make use of some of the scripting and styling features of Prism to automatically resize the window to a given size (currently it remembers between sessions just fine though), and remove some of the unnecessary UI elements from Gmail for him. For now though, this solves the problem very nicely.

One final tip. I wanted to host the template webapp file for all of this someplace permanent so that I could link to it. It turns out that Google Groups fit the bill very nicely for me, up to a 100 MB limit. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't handle .webapp (or maybe it is the zip file format) very well so I can't directly link to the file. You'll have to right-click and save it.


Now, for the implementation details.

1. Create a file named webapp.ini, mine looks like this
   

   [Parameters]
   id=gmail@localhost
   uri=https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?
       service=mail&Email=YOUR_GMAIL_LOGIN&
       Passwd=YOUR_GMAIL_PASSSWORD&continue=
       https://mail.google.com/mail?ui=html&zy=l
   status=no
   location=no
   sidebar=no
   navigation=no
   icon=gmail

2. Find an icon file (in this case it would need to be named gmail.ico, but you could modify the "icon=" line if named something different. The "icon=" line can be removed entirely to use the default Prism icon.
   
   
3. Zip up the .ico and .ini files with your zip program of choice (I use 7zip). Once you have created the archive, change it from a .zip extension to a .webapp extension to have it automatically load with prism upon double-click.
   
   
4. Double-click the webapp to load it in Prism.
   
   
5. <optional>Verify that everything is working correctly, and then drop-down the gear icon in the lower-right and select where to create a shortcut.

Finally, here is a template webapp file you can customize to do this yourself. All that needs to be changed is to open the webapp file up in your zip program (again, 7zip for me), and edit the webapp.ini file. The only things that will need to be changed are the YOUR_GMAIL_LOGIN and YOUR_GMAIL_PASSWORD values (to your Gmail email prefix and password respectively).

One last note. I needed this to work on a Windows PC, so the instructions are very much tailored for that. There shouldn't be any reason this won't work on Linux or Mac though.

UI Consistency

Ryan had a post about "Inconsistent Time Sliders", specifically with regards to Apple software products. I had enough thoughts on it that it eventually just turned into a post of its own.

First, I think that Ryan notices UI components more than is healthy for the average human being.

This is actually a good thing though, and it usually Apple is the company who takes care of this. Is diversifying their product line taking its toll? Are they losing attention to small details such as this? Not sure.

I really don't think there needs to be more than perhaps 2 types of sliders. Shouldn't we be able to figure out pretty quickly if circles, triangles, or squares are the best marker? In reality, how does pushing a triangle or square down a round tube make sense? Stick with the round markers.

Given that we know the marker, I think the only thing that might change is dependent on whether transparency is allowed or not -- Ryan mentions this as well.

In general, these are the type of thing that get overlooked, and in the grand scheme of things
won't really hurt a product. Conversely though, paying some attention to these details can lead to a highly coherent and strongly-branded product (that which Apple has done the best at in recent years). Also, as Ryan mentions, usability can be greatly increased even with new products if a consistent UI is presented.

It takes a strong attention to detail, and some time commitment from a company to address these issues. However, overall it is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase marketability and sales of product.

In my opinion, the cover flow (and perhaps the new DVD player) slider is the best. I like a very unobtrusive slider that only shows when I need it, with the rounded slider. Buttons can be reduced to three, the play/pause, and a previous and next. Anything else is auxiliary and be hidden behind a click or menu, or perhaps available in a separate interface.