June 26, 2006

Non-Euclidean Geometry in Second Life

No sooner have I re-activated my Second Life account after a long absense, do I come across this article about a hypercube construction inside a virtual world that tries very hard to emulate the real world. I'm definitely going to take my Second Life character and visit this structure!

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Posted by Ian at 07:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 06, 2006

The New Age Vigilante

Wow. Check out Stolen Sidekick. The story so far... Girl takes a cab ride and leaves her Sidekick behind by accident. Someone steals the Sidekick and starts taking pictures and logging into AOL. Girl gets new Sidekck, and when the SIM card is installed, all the pictures and AOL passwords from the other Sidekick get downloaded to the new Sidekick. Girl's friend decides to make a public fool out of the thief by posting the pictures and all email correspondence with the thief. The "Internet Vigilante" effect kicks in and people start posting tips about who the people pictured are, where they live, etc.


I can't wait to see how this soap opera ends...

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May 31, 2006

True Alternate Worlds

I came across a very interesting read today. Laukosargas Svarog has used the framework provided by Linden labs' Second Life and built what appears to be a true ecosystem. She has weather, birth and death of plants, animal polination. It's a testament both to the flexibility that Linden has built in to their system, as well as the creative imaginations of a single individual. I wonder what would happen if her virtual plants were allowed to 'escape' her garden and colonize the entire world...?

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April 04, 2006

Tech Podcasting Has Jumped The Shark

I think I'm listening to history happening. I think that podcasting is the most incredible thing to happen to online content in quite some time. I'm a big fan of tech-related podcasts - mostly from the ex-TechTV crowd. However, this week I was shocked to hear the latest from Diggnation and This Week In Tech. Diggnation episode 38 has fallen to an all-time low. This was a live podcast from Reno Nevada. Unfortunately, Kevin and Alex had already hit the bar long before taping began, and the show quickly descended into chaos. TWIT's episode 48 was an Apple 30th anniversary special. There was none of the usual TWIT crowd there. Instead, it was Leo and Woz having a love-in reminiscing about the 'old days'. This carried on for an hour and a half. The audio quality was terrible, with some of the guests barely audible.


I'm beginning to suspect that these people have been doing the podcast thing for too long, and now the novelty has worn off. The once-surprising level of professionalism shown by these amateur broadcasters has descended into meaningless drivel. I'm seriously hoping that this week was just a blip, and these (and other) podcasters will pull up their socks. Otherwise, this medium is doomed.

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March 08, 2006

Google Pays For Settlement With Adsense?

Google has announced a proposed settlement to settle claims of click-fraud. The part of the settlement that concerns me is that the $90 million isn't to be paid out in cash - it's to be paid out in advertizing credits. I haven't seen any online commentary about the impact to Adsense subscribers. Imagine if Google decides to provide the $90 million in advertizing using their Adsense program. What if they decide to pay out to the Adsense subscribers (the people who actually display those context-sensitive ads) much lower than the going rate for theat ad? They could even pay zero (like a Public Service Ad), and the Adsense subscriber couldn't do anything about it. They probably wouldn't even know!

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Posted by Ian at 06:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 16, 2006

Mesothelioma ?

Digg posted this story about top paying Adsense keywords. The top few are all about 'mesothelioma'. I had to google that to even know what it was! It appears to be a cancer primarily caused by working in an asbestos environment. You might want to check the list and see if there's some keywords you could use.

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Posted by Ian at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 20, 2005

Botnets installing BitTorrent??

A surprising discovery talks about finding rootkitted machines having BitTorrent installed, and used to download movie files (Mr. Bean for some strange reason). One angle of the story that the author doesn't discuss is the possibility that the hackers are attempting to 'muddy' the waters regarding the RIAA's power to slap lawsuits on anyone who's IP address is found connecting to a tracker. If these types of infected botnets become popular, then one could suppose that the defense of 'My machine was infected and did it itself' would be a plausable defense.

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December 19, 2005

CSS Multi Select Lists

This web site has an excellent article describing a way to use CSS to replace ugly and non-intuitive multiple-select boxes.

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November 26, 2005

Google Already Using Analytics Data?

In this story the author has taken a look at his awstats logs after implementing Google Analytics. He has found that when he implements virtual pages for tracking in Analytics, suddenly they're beeing crawled by the Google spider. I wonder what else they're using the data for?

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November 23, 2005

Optimizing Google Adwords Using Google Analytics

As a followup to an earlier posting, I came across this blog article discussing optimizing Adwords selections and viewing the results in Analytics.

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November 18, 2005

The Rise of Social Bookmarking

The phenomenon of Digg.com is amazing. I've been using it since it's early days. It started by riding the coat tails of the ex-TechTV host Kevin Rose, but now it's arguably more popular than Slashdot.


I recently came across this post that discusses the darker side of finding your site promoted to Digg's front page.

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November 15, 2005

The Web Stats Program Formerly Known As 'Urchin'

Earlier this year, Google went ahead and purchased Urchin, a web site analysis service. A few days ago, they decided to roll out the service (now re-christened as 'Google Analytics') for free. I'm sure glad I didn't advise my employer to purchase the software a few months ago!

I had the pleasure of test-driving the package when it was still Urchin. It's put together very well, and ties in to Adwords campaigns. When I saw that Google had released the service for free, I immediately signed on and created some tracking for a few web sites that I own. This was over 48 hours ago. It's still not working! I wrote to Google asking for some help. This is what I got back: 

From: "Analytics Support" <analytics-support@google.com>
To: ian@platinum.net 
Subject: Re: [#38618476] Not tracking after 48 hours

Hello,

Thank you for your email.

We understand that you aren't seeing data in your reports,
even though you your tracking code has been set up for over 
six hours. We apologize for any inconvenience.  We have 
collected your data since you installed the tracking code on 
your site, and are continuing to collect this data throughout 
the day.

We are currently in the process of creating reports from 
your data. You should be able to see your reports populated 
with data later today. Please note that this reporting delay is 
associated with unexpected demand for Google Analytics. 
Under normal circumstances, the data in your reports will 
be at most six hours old. 

For additional questions, please visit the Analytics Help 
Center at http://www.google.com/support/analytics. If you're 
unable to find an answer to your question on our site, please 
feel free to reply to this email.

Sincerely,

Analytics Support
Well, it's now 'later today' and it's still not working. The reply I got from them sure felt like a canned answer. It looks like I'm not the only one with a problem. I hope they get it fixed soon!

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Posted by Ian at 08:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 14, 2005

Map an FTP Site as a Windows Drive

Now this is really cool. A utility that allows you to map an FTP site as a Windows drive. This sure makes web site maintenance a whole bunch easier. Make sure you use the Google link in the story to find the download (not the commenter's link to Novell) - it appears that Novell might have removed the file from their site.

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Posted by Ian at 01:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 13, 2005

Turn Your XBox Into A PVR (Sort Of)

The XBox is a very nice piece of hardware. The simple addition of a modchip and large hard drive turn it into the ideal media centre. In fact, I've now got two of them in my house. One of them isn't even used for games playing - purely for media playback.


It's the media playback capabilities of software such as XBMC that make it so versatile. I use a Linux box running Azureus to acquire a large quantity of my video entertainment. It allows me to catch up on my favourite UK sitcoms and soap operas from Canada. The Linux box shares the download directory as a Samba share, and XBMC points to that share.


The missing piece is to be able to watch recorded shows from my satellite. I already own the Bell ExpressVu 5100 PVR, but it's a sorry excuse for a PVR - it can't record by show name, only by date an time, so it's not much better than an old VCR! So I decided to see what MythTV could do for me.


MythTV gives me all of the functionality of a TiVo box, but without the DRM. I set up a second Linux box as my MythTV backend server. It is connected to a Bell ExpressVu 2700 receiver. I built an IR blaster using the plans found here. After fighting with lirc for a few days, I finally got it set up and changing channels on my receiver.


The front end involves using the XBMCMythTV scripts on my Xbox. These scripts are still a little rough around the edges (watching live TV is still touch and go), but it works well enough for recorded programs. There's a problem with XBMC and MythTV at the moment. Apparently, the two projects have differing ideas about how to interpret the NUV file format standard (this is the format that MythTV uses). The scripts work fine if the video source was recorded using a MPEG2 hardware compression capture card, but doesn't work if the video is encoded in MPEG4 (which is the case for the lower end capture cards). There are rumors of a patched mplayer.dll file for XBMC that fixes this problem, but it didn't work for me.

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October 08, 2005

How to Make Free Skype Calls

I came across this blog entry today. Very interesting. It outlines how to use the 1-800-FREE411 service with SkypeOut to make a call to a normal landline without using your SkypeOut minutes (because Skype doesn;t charge for calls to 800 numbers). The only caveat with this process is that you have to have a SkypeOut account set up with a balance (even though the balance doesn;t get used for these calls). Very cool!

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September 28, 2005

Telus vs. Shaw

For several years, my main internet connection at home has been via ADSL service from our incumbent telecommunications carrier Telus. These people aren't exactly known for their customer service, and I've had many, many run-ins with them over the years (both with my residential services, as well as my company's business Internet services, voice, and cellular services). For the last six months or so, they have been sending me threatening emails explaining to me that my excessive bandwaidth usage violates their terms of service. Now please understand that I'm not talking about your everyday $20 residential service. I pay $85 per month for 2.5Mbps business service with two fixed IP addresses.


I thought that I had better do something to help with the bandwidth consumption before I lost my internet connection. My first attempts (which were quite successful) were to set up a wifi card on my main linux router machine to 'acquire' a connection from one of several neighbour's wifi connections.


This worked fine for several months, but started to become more unreliable (such as some neighbours enabling WEP, and others moving their access points, possibly to move them away from me??) Then a stroke of luck - Telus told me that I could 'upgrade' my service to 2.5Mbps for only $40 per month. As I mentioned before, I already have 2.5Mbps, as well as fixed IP addresses, which cost me $85 per month. I pounced on the offer to upgrade my service and drop my monthly fee. The sales person on the other end assured me that I would be able to keep my fixed IP addresses and drop my monthly fee to $40 per month. This sounded great, so I signed up. Everything was fine for the first month, so I decided I would take my monthly savings, and splash out on a residential cable Internet connection from Shaw. For $30 plus $40, I now had a dual homed network in my basement. Everything was beautiful for several months.


Then I checked my credit card statement. It appears that Telus was billing me $85 again. I immediately telephoned them and asked them waht was going on. They explained that their system had discovered a configuration error with my account, and fixed up the billing. After explaining the entire story, they proceeded to tell me that the employee was in error, and if I wanted to keep my fixed IP addresses (which I wanted to do), I would have to continue to pay $85 per month.


I thought 'f*ck this', and thought I'd look into fixed IP address services from Shaw, and drop Telus completely. I called their sales office, and discovered that I could get their SOHO business class service, with two fixed IP addresses for $85 per month (sounds familiar...). I decided to go for it, with every intention of phoning up Telus and cancelling my service.


I upgraded the home Shaw service to SOHO. And then the problems began. I unplugged the Telus connection, and did some speed tests using only the Shaw connection. Quite frankly, it sucked. I couldn't get anything more than 1.5Mbps, and most of the time, it was worse. I felt like an idiot. I checked the Saw website again. There it was - 'Up to 5Mbps'. I sure wasn't getting that! A call to tech support confirmed that I wasn't getting that, and after some troubleshooting, it was recommended that I replace my modem. Instead of waiting for a service call, I went to the local Shaw office, and picked up a replacement modem. I plugged it in, and discovered that the speed was exactly the same. This time, the tech told me that I was getting a perfectly acceptable rate, and I should be happy. Well, I asked for a supervisor, and explained the whole sorry story. Unbelievably, this guy was very understanding, and conceded that the current network design wouldn't get me the consistent speeds I was looking for. He was very helpful in crediting my account and closing it.


Now, I'm back to my Telus service. I'm glad I didn't get around to disconnecting! At least I have my 2.5Mbps back. But I still have the problem of not enough traffic allowance per month...

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Posted by Ian at 06:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 25, 2005

Google Talk Sucks

Google Talk. That's all anyone seems to be talking about online these last few days. What's the big deal? I must admit that I was drawn in to the hype, and even managed to get my Trillian IM client to connect the day before Google went live. (For those of you still having problems connecting with Trillian, check out Google's extremely helpful article.


Does it live up to the hype? I'm not exactly sure what everyone was expecting. It does exactly as advertised. It's an IM client that allows voice chatting. But doesn't AIM allow you to do the same thing? The biggest difference, in my oppinion, is that Google's solution is supposedly based on open standards. Well, except for the exciting part - VoIP. But they promise to release specifications "soon". It must be the open standards that everyone's excited about, because the actual delivered feature set falls short of just about every other IM service out there.


What will the open standards mean? I'm sure that some PHB at Google thinks that it will mean the end of telephony as we know it. Who knows. Skype has been at this for a little while now, but I don't think that Skype has seriously eroded any incumbent telco's profit margin.

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Posted by Ian at 02:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 24, 2005

Telus Censors to Protect it's Subscribers

Telus, my ISP and one of my work's upstream providers, is currently in the middle of a bitter dispute with it's workers over a contract. Today, they decide that a website that is maintained by supporters of the union involved in the dispute is a security threat, and they block access to the site for all of the Telus network. This means all ADSL, dialup, and leased line customers can no longer access the website. The story is just starting to make the media. No doubt there'll be many more stories come Monday.

I'm not one to take sides in a union dispute like this, but it's my opinion that Telus has overstepped it's bounds by censoring this website for "security reasons". How about blocking sites like this for security reasons? Sounds a little more dangerous than a forum for disgruntled union members to voice off about their employer.

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Posted by Ian at 09:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack