Blogger.beta

Everyone knows that blogger has recently announced Blogger in Draft and a blog which discusses the features that will be avalable in the opt in beta service.

The most important addition so far is support for uploading video directly to Google Video. Quite convenient I think, especially when considering the recent interest in a video project of some sort.

Today there was some sort of show of things. I think that so many things that people think about normally should be thought about differently.

Time Pices

I found something really nifty called Wiki Clock.

Also some cool ideas were mentioned today by a colleague.

1. Websites that sleep some times
2. Websites that get old in ways

I think both of these ideas have a lot of potential to be used in interesting ways.

Film Projects

A friend just showed me this quick little movie on a site. I think the cause is not that good but I think it a fun little project.

I also think that people, especially me and company should take on more video projects. Is anyone interested?

By the way. I have started a projects database on Dabble DB. It is not public at the moment but it might move so at some point. If people are interested in project teams and the like to take on and manage large and hopefully interesting projects then please say so and arrangements will be made.

Blogs and English

I just came across the Blog Readability Test, a cool tool that determines various statistics about the english used on one's blog. This interests me for a few reasons but one in particular is because at some point I wanted to know how many words there were in one of my blogs. I ended up copying and pasting each post into a single Pages document and performing a count there. This tool, among other things, informs us of the total word count in the last 20 posts. I would love to see this tool with a few more options, for instance one to determine how many posts to evaluate and also some way to in bed the statistics in one's blog or web page but for a start it is quite interesting.

This blog's stats can be found here.

Also, take a look at blog of the software's author.

Finally, does anyone know a good way to get a word count or any other tools like this for blogs?

Embarrassingly Bad Service in Australia

Recently Qantus was voted by its passengers to be one of the worst airlines of all time. I do not know the details of the vote but I do know that Qantus's response was a blind cover up of fault. A representative publicly rebutted that Qantus employees are the best in the world.

I don't mind that a company is proud of who what it tries to be but when consumers, the ultimate user, get together and tell a company that their product is substandard, I think it is completely out of the question for that company to pretentiously discard their customers claims.

One report in particular mentioned how in the past Qantus would care for there customers quite rigorously, even going so far as to include a kit of temporary solutions when a one's luggage was lost. Now, on the other hand, Qantus staff are quite rude and it is impossible to get them to ever admit fault little own provide something even slightly resembling concern and customer care.

I have not had this experience however I have been exposed to Qantus and Jetstar's grave shortcomings on many occasions.

Similarly many other airlines in Europe and Australia offer completely pathetic service and very little recourse for their mistakes.

A recent post by on NussbaumOnDesign details a better interaction set with an airline in the states.

I hope Qantus and Jetstar go out of business and are severely punished for their lame attempts at being impressive and reassuring anyone with their awful public relations.

What do other people think about this issue? Has anyone ever had a good experiance on a plane?

The Real Technical Support

As was recently discussed, technical support needs to fixed. The level of rigger is completely below what is acceptable when dealing with businesses and people who need solutions fast and cleanly. Similarly the persistence of data is often not addressed well by these people and this often leads to loss of valuable information or inconvenience.

By they way, the Apple store near the corner of Elizabeth and Abeckett Streets is completely crap and I strongly suggest a fully boycott. The offer pathetic service by a staff of surly gentlemen who know are completely incompetent when it comes to fixing anything or being in any way helpful. This is a great example of the worst imaginable technical service.

What is needed by good technical service, why is it no longer something that exists, and how can something change so we are happier in this situation?

I think there is some truth that some things are not worth fixing and there is a lot of truth that it is hard to be the "computer guy" however I do not agree that there is not a system in which computer service persons are greatly valued and offer a good service to the people around them. I think part of the problem is the social acceptance of buying new things but another significant element is the fact that peoples things and their work are important to them. Perhaps a solution is to look at a broken computer more like a wet sketchpad. It is a problem that has to be fixed with minimum interaction. Once the problem is fixed the range of solutions is large.

What do other people think?

Harvesting what we mine

Some things were found. Ideas on harvesting from the many data mines we have. Using Google to answer questions it was not designed to answer or using it's answers in an unexpected context.

I am sure there are some really tricky and smart things to do with this but I am not sure what they are.

Perhaps one would be to use Google trends to get past data on locations or some other relevant search-able thing and then a 4 dimensional representation could be made of the data which would indicate how interest has evolved and how it has done so comparatively. I think there are surely better uses.

Here are a few samples of this idea in place:
1. Chess and things
2. Go keyboards
3. Suicide

In addition to mapping things like this there is a lot of work to be done with connecting images and videos based on search. Photosynth is a early effort at making this realistic.

Any ideas?

The image is one I made from a video off my phone. It demonstrates the idea of dimensional reduction to add richness. I think similar tools have great application in vibration removal.

Portfolios with no pictures

Today discussion of my future and a portfolio for my work came up again. It seems evident that graphical assets are not my most valuable and that non graphical things will need special treatment of sorts. The discussion lead to creating a body of content that can act as a portfolio for me that most well represents me in the context of what I want to do.

Discussion also covered dealing with images well on the internet. Intellectual property is a problem that is going to have to be dealt with. It is starting to seem that now is a good time to begin drafting and thinking about this issue.

For the Love of God, Pray

I think this thing is wonderful. Some one buy it for me or buy me a print, or make me one.

It is by Damien Hirst and prints are available at White Cube, which is where this image is from.

Old time never

I think this video is quite a decent look at what people should think computers should be and what people should be working to make them. That said, this is a 20 year old movie. What is not represented here that should be, in our modern dream of future computing?

Think Differently

This is an new apple advertisement that I like quite a lot