This is really cool

Roland put me onto this new map service from Google. It really is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.

The first and coolest thing is real-time panning. You can just stick your little cursor on the map and drag it to move the map in any direction. Second, it automatically sizes to make the biggest possible map for you screen. That was something that drove me crazy about every other map service. Who was the crazy guy who thought up the idea of first offering someone a map so small you couldn't read it and then offering them a bigger map only after you click a "bigger map" button?

Check it out -- you'll dig it.

Come Wi-fi the friendly skies

It's still pretty early - 6:20 - and I've made it over to JFK a bit early for my flight. Heading down to Orlando this morning for the wedding of my good friend Aaron (aka Tuffy, aka Mudwhistle.) I lived with Aaron for a while when I was down in Florida last summer and we'd worked together several years ago in Indianapolis. Good people that Aaron Hill.

So here at JFK, JetBlue has their own little group of terminals and they've got it set up pretty nice. Free wi-fi for one thing and clever-looking little bohemian sushi-bar. The only thing I can think of more unappitizing than sushi this early in the morning is . . . well, ok, I can't think of anything worse.

My boss gave me a copy of Moneyball the other day. So far it's the story of Billy Bean, the A's GM, and how he came to have a great ball team with the second smallest piggy-bank in the majors. Two of my favorite past-times, baseball and thriftiness. Seems like a bit of a psychological thriller as well. Beane was a first-rounder for the Mets back in the day and came up with Strawberry and Dykstra, but he never quite got his game on. If I were a psychoanalyst I would say that his unique approach to how he drafts kids was built as a response to his experience of being pressured to play ball and the pressure of being over-hyped by scouts.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the book.

On a separate, but very exciting note, Steve Beard is back from who knows where.

The chicken is pre-meditated

The subservient chicken was the distraction of choice in the newsroom late last week. It's really pretty fun if you get creative with it. One of my favorites was, "Build a fort." Give it a try.

Folks were wondering if it was a live web cam, and who that crazy man with too much time on his hands was? When I first saw it earlier last week I didn't notice that it was branded by Burger King. I think it wasn't branded at all when they launched it. Over the week, if my memory serves me correctly the branding increased - now it's pretty obvious.

As for the live webcam - that was doubtful. Today's USA Today confirms that one. The online version of the story doesn't go into details, but the printed version has an inset about the chicken which says it is indeed a database driven list of pre-recorded actions.

USA Today mentions that the chicken was an experiment to try and reach the "illusive" younger male audience. Judging from the chortling young chaps I saw glued to the monitors last week - it worked.

Doug does it again

Douglas Bowman unveiled a new design on his site today - another oasis for the eyes. Over the years he has brought us many beautiful things to look at on the web. There's the Wired site and Adaptive Path redesign or my personal favorite, his entry at the CSS Zen Garden called the Golden Mean.

Doug is also super helpful and if you are trying to learn CSS design or thinking about how hard it is to design beautiful things using the language contstraints of web programming, I would suggest reading some of his articles.

I remember sitting in a fine local establishment in Columbus and talking with Doug while he tweaked his website and took joy in the little details. That's inspiring to me - someone who takes joy in the little details.

Interesting . . .

OK, I promise to stop talking about comment spam here. But one more interesting thing happened. After I installed Blacklist and there was an initial burst of spam-denied, the spammers left. I checked my site logs and nobody has even tried to comment spam for nearly two days. They must just give up when they see Blacklist. So there's some promising news - a civically-minded product that the bad guys are scared of.

On another interesting note . . .

If you drink a lot of water (i.e. you are hydrated well) it feels totally different when you get hungry. The hunger feels cleaner for some reason, it's almost pleasant. Just thought I'd mention that.

Sucka Step Off

I feel so empowered! I installed MT-Blacklist this afternoon and it has already rejected a half-dozen spam comments.

I do appreciate the cleverness of the spam comment idea, but maybe those clever cats should put their minds to something more productive. So to all the spam-spittin' haters out there - go get a real job will ya?

Spam's got a brother down

I usually get excited about spam. I love it for it's neat texture, relegation to the fringes of culinary acceptability and it's flamable qualities. But ever since I started this here blog, I've been getting a nastier type of spam. Comment spam.

It was pretty harmless at first, I would notice a stange comment on one of my entries and delete it. This would happen maybe once a week. But in the last few days I've gotten dozens of these crazy things. That's a lot of deleting.

It's interesting how this works and how the success of Google (God bless 'em) plays a major roll in content spam. Folks who run porn sites try to get links to their sites on as many web pages as possible. They do this to take advantage of the way Google prioritizes its results. Google rates a search by how many times a certain site is linked to when certain words are used. So if there a millions of pages that have the words "Happy people" and those words link to a porn site, then google will show that porn site when you search for "Happy people."

So spammers just go through blogs and post comments with nice words that link to their sites. Pushing up their ratings on Google/ That's not very nice, is it?

Well, I found this good cyber citizen named Jay Allen who has created a filter for this stuff. He calls it Blacklist. So we'll see if we can't get that baby fired up in the next few days.

Syndi-cool

I'm know I'm a bit late to the game here, but I've got to give props to the whole syndicated RSS/XML thing. This is way cool!

I downloaded Feed Reader for my PC at work and I loaded up the XML feeds from my favorite blogs and media outlets. So now I get a little alert whenever a new post of headline goes up on any of these sources. This will save hours of browsing and free me up for more important things.

Dissentors be praised

One reason I enjoy reading blogs is that you can see a dissenting opinion, in all it's splendor, right up there with the original author's opinion. That's the beauty of the two way publishing thing.

What's even more interesting is the way that bloggers who follow current event are beginning to show up the relative ivory towers that are major news networks. Working in a big news room myself, I see the way that a major news story can get handed around from paper to paper and airwave to airwave and become a major phenomena. It can be a real mess.

Take two recent examples. Howard Dean screams in Iowa after an empassioned speech. What's the big deal? Nothing until CNN plays it 600 times in four days and then every major paper must keep up with the coverage. And how about the more recent Bush 9/11 campaign ads. There were three days of gangbuster, front-page coverage on the main news outlets about the rage of the victim's families. Turns out they were talking about 6 families while more than a dozen had come out in support of the ads.

This kind of stuff really shapes public opinion. Yet it's missing any sort of peer review or any other vetting process outside the ethos of a particular newsroom.

It's a lot different with blogs. Somebody writes a story or a bit of coverage and anyone can comment in real time. The author can see the feedback right away. It's a vulnerability and accountability which makes it more likely that folks will end up with a better shaped look at the world. Sort of keeps one's personal opinions in check.

Take a look at how bloggers are becoming that peer review for ivory tower journalists here, here*, and here. These are just three that come to recent memory.

PEW for People and the Press released some survey results last month saying that folks are trending away from the major networks to get their news. Could be interesting if we (non-professional journalists) become the news anchors of tomorrow.

The new look

Hey crew - so here is the newish look of the blog. I was inspired by Doug to get my butt in gear and actually start to design my site.

Since the whole blog-thing is about sharing experience, I'll share the experience of redesigning with my vast audience. So I want you two to check in every few weeks and check out the progress. I know Roland, I totally stole that idea from you - whose public Movable Type experince inspired me to do this whole thing in the first place.

If you click on any of the sub-pages you'll see that the new design is only skin deep. You'll also notice that the right column is short and the right side of the header and the right side of the right column don't line up. Ah, the learning curve of designing with css. So be it - we'll get it straight. Stay tuned.

Mork calling Roland

I'm starting to get settled in a little up here in NYC and tonight is the first time I've been able to give my new MovableType installation some love. So I takled an issue that my buddy Roland has been looking into - categories in the side nav.

So Roland here's the answer. Drop this bit of code in your index template after the calendar, search or archive code:


<div class="sidetitle">Categories</div>
<div class="side">
<MTCategories>
<a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a>
<br>
</MTCategories>
</div>


Thanks Roland

Thanks Roland for pointing out that the templates on this Movable Type contraption are pretty easy to change.

Sprint was good to me

It's not often that you get to say how well you were treated by a large multi-national organization. I suppose that sort of scale doesn't lend itself to the personal treatment. But I must say - I didn't feel like just a number today at the Times Square Sprint store.

A few days ago I had dropped my nearly obsolete Treo 300. I do this on a regular basis, but this time it was fatal. I was just picking up my McDonalds #2 meal - no cheese - when that phone flew out of my hand and hit the floor. The flip part went flying and I dropped some fries into the mix while I was trying to catch it. End result - earpice was broken but the rest of the phone worked fine.

After about 36 hours of being paralized by the fear of having to shell out a few hundred dollars for a new phone, I got up my gumption and went into the Sprint store. Much to my surprise, the nice young gentleman with crooked gotee told me to go to the service counter and they would replace my phone. That was strange because Sprint had recently kicked me off of thier hardware insurance plan because I break so many phones. I wasn't going to argue, and after about an hour in line the nice lady behind the counter told me that my new phone would be ready in two hours.

So away I went, but certain they would change their minds by the time I returned. It was not to be. Two hours later I walked out of there with a brand new Treo, a new phone for Nicole and a few new friends. All for 29.99. That's service, and maybe that's why they are getting more folks. Goodness knows it isn't the stellar call-drop rate.