More cultural mashups from Kittahcore. It had to happen I guess. O-Hai-Ku

intraweb content

happy fur teh web kittahs

iz been teh famous - kittahcore

On September 19th 1982 Scott Fahlman proposed in a post on the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science bulletin board the use of :-) as a joke marker and :-( for messages that were not jokes.

As Scott himself points out he might not be the first as the use of coded emotion cues had existed since 1857 when the number 73 was used in Morse code to represent "Best Regards"

Thanks to an upgrade hiccup on Community Server I've decided to switch blogging platform a little earlier than intended.

I was going to wait until BlogEngine.net included a BlogML importer so I could bring all the old posts in, but that's not quite prime-time yet so it'll be a few days before we're back and running properly.

Luckily the new platform works great with Windows Live Writer so I should be back up to speed pretty quickly and hopefully able to find time to suck in the old posts and fix everything up properly. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

..... truth.

Well, mostly. I'm not sure about Wilco. They're okay but given the choice there's a lot of other things I'd listen to

I was talking to some folks today about eBook and how they were a great idea flawed in implementation.

FictionWise, Sony Reader, eBooks, Google, HarperCollins and a million other sources 

If I go into a bookstore and buy a paperback I know I can read it on any technology platform I want (at home, on the bus, in the office....except perhaps underwater) and I can lend it to a fried, trade it in a 2nd hand book store or keep it for ever

But if I want a decent eBook experience I have to pay for a reader software that is possibly limited to a hardware platform (what if I want to read using my PocketPC on the bus, my UMPC on the bus and my iMac at home) or a dedicated device (yet another thing to carry) and I loose all the flexibility that the paper copy costs me.

If I go with one provider (eg Sony Connect with their eReader) them I'm limited to the content they make available (and frankly the range isn't wide enough for me to want to commit to their platform and pay for their reader hardware).

All these downside, and the fact that distribution costs are so much lower... yet in many cases the electronic version costs the same as the paper one.

Go figure!

Update: I'm glad I'm not alone in finding this annoying. Kevin Wilson (aka "A VC") suggests that a "roaming" model (like with cellphones and ATMs) would work well for the music subscription services... if you could extend this to a common DRM platform and include eBooks I'd be a happy subscriber...

As a small business owner / freelancer one of the most annoying things for me is chasing the money. I love having the money in my account, and I love doing the work to earn it... but the bit in-between is time-consuming and sometimes very frustrating. Over the years I've tried a number of solutions and never found the right one.

FreshBooks seems to be a pretty good solution though. And it's a very low risk trial (free if you only have 3 clients or less).

Account management, payment integration and setup is very simple - took less time to catch up on outstanding invoices for about 6 jobs tonight that I usually take with basic account management each month!

For clients where it's a simple case of billing against a PO or fixed price quote the process is really simple. For clients where you need to be able to produce a timesheet to track billable hours that's also possible (though only via web based time-entry at the moment... can only hope a desktop/PDA add-on eventuates at some point - for Windows, OSX, Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian...a  tough call I guess, but no harm in hoping)

The system automates a lot of stuff that you either have to set reminders for (or pay your accountant extra to do) in other solutions and has seamless integration with a number of payment gateways (from a very simple PayPal solution, up to high end credit card processing solutions).

What makes FreshBooks so interesting is that it's not a big accounting firm, but a small 6 man team who really seem to love what they're doing (and more importantly remember what folks actually need the system to do)

Totally random thing... just found out that Billy The Kid was gunned down on my birthday (well, 86 years before I was born to be precise). It was also the day that the US$10,000 bill was officially withdrawn from circulation (2 years after I was born)

While these things probably have no direct bearing on my life it's interesting to see - in the same way as knowing what the #1 record was when you were born (it was Procol Harums "A Whiter Shade of Pale" which was at #1 in the UK for 6 weeks starting on June 8th)

... and the ramifications of some of the things that happened certainly have had an effect on the generations since.

So... why did I go looking for this? It was actually as an extension of demonstrating the interesting things you can find when ego surfing and we wondered what happened on particular important days for people.

Like ego surfing the results can be cool, but shouldn't be treated as more than an amusing waste of time (unless you discover something really startling about yourself!)

Currently listening to: Me'Shell Ndegéocello Make Me Wanna Holler

Face it. Interfacing with your computer hasn't improved much in the last 20 years.

We're still tied to the keyboard, mouse, monitor metaphor. Sure, the keyboards have media keys, gaming keys, light sensors and coffee maker attachments, the mice have laser tracking systems that the Dept of Defense would be proud of and the monitors are improving in resolution and latency to a point where the next breakthrough will probably be predictive pixel colouring...

But the GUI metaphor is pretty stagnant and common across most of the major platforms. 3D spinning windows are a cool way to waste CPU cycles, but will they really help people interface with their computer?

Hope is at hand thanks to a number of innovative projects like BumpTop but it needs to be more than just a software solution - it has to be something which addresses the logical and physical interaction with the system in a way that transcends the current object / pointer interaction.

Jeff Han, a research scientist at the New York University has started to address the project in a practical, real-world way. The first tangible fruits of the Multi-Touch Interaction Research project, quite literally, have to be seen to be believed...

I vowed to avoid the sudoku craze. Not just because it was French! ... but it turns out I couldn't escape.

I had to travel interstate the other day without my PC and so I thought to keep me amused I'd grab a Sudoku app for my K-Jam. I assumed I'd try it out for a few minutes and then happily throw it away still convinced that sudoku wasn't for me.

Well, the folks at Ludimate have a great implementation they called Sensible Sudoku which not only got me over the hype but had me buying a licence within an hour!

I think I'm hooked! But I'm sure my brain is getting a great workout

It's been a happy six weeks or so since we got married and everything is going great. Rhiannon still loves her camera (thanks to some inspiration at the reception) and I'm getting used to not looking around when people talk about my wife.

Update Dec 10: We now have the photos and they are amazing.

Update Feb 2007: Normally I wouldn't scrub an entry but in this case it's water under the bridge, so the content has been removed. It took a little longer than expected to get our photos but it was a case of mis-communicated expectations, poor communication and unforseen circumstances. The pictures are stunning (I even look quite handsome in some apparently) and out faith in Natalies abilities have been rewarded. We want to thank her for her suburb work and wish her all the best in the future.