Comments on: The Global Geek Podcast #79 :: Invaded by the UK

By: Herne

Herne — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:15:40 +0000

I spelled “nonsense” wrong! How annoying that I can’t preview my comments!

By: Herne

Herne — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:13:14 +0000

Yeah, so I’m writing out a long rant about Google docs and here in Toronto we were in the middle of a March blizzard and the silly power fails on me, so I lost the whole ruddy post. How annoying. We got hit with about 25 cm (10 inches) of snow in my area…in March for gawd’s sake.

Anyway, JotSpot–who cares. What can Google Sites do that a good blog can’t do? And some of the stuff they offer should be kept safely behind the company firewall on your company’s servers and password protected. Why would you want to give Google access to your company’s data anyway? I don’t put personal data “in the cloud.”

Re Google laying cable; How long before we have a two-tier Internet anyway?

Re Network Solutions sued; Huzzah!

Re Adobe Air; I haven’t tried it yet. I may have to check it out for a Twitter client, although Twitter is becoming very annoying.

Re the PS3 “Supercomputer”; You know they’re just playing Halo 3 over a huge LAN.

Re the new segment; Techmeme doesn’t really interest me. I do check in now and again to see if there’s anything interesting going on, but not everyday. I’m still trying to decide if I should blog and why I should blog and what the purpose of blogging is. As Kieth mentions “everyone and their dog” is setting up a blog, chucking Google Adsense on it and figuring they’re going to make hundreds of dollars a month. Do blogs really matter anymore? Does your blog have any value if you’re not a “Pro Blogger?” Isn’t it all just a popularity contest now with your Scobles and your Calacanises, etc? Do I really care what “Pro Bloggers” are thinking and doing anyway? I keep getting Twitters saying “Streaming live now, come watch” from ProBloggers, and I find out they’re streaming video of them talking to their dogs and somesuch nonsence. How entertaining…

Re Lifestreaming; No thanks, I’m opting out.

And as I continue to shop for a new computer, I see yet another story from the NY Times explaining how Windows Vista doesn’t perform properly, and this story quotes problems that actual Microsoft Execs are having with the OS. I also see that Microsoft has dropped the price on Vista in the hopes that more XP users will “upgrade.” Link: http://tinyurl.com/277zto

I also read an interesting article that asks the question, “What happens when mom or dad (or brother, or sister, or uncle, etc) asks to be a Facebook friend?” Do we really want our family members or parents to know what we’re doing on Facebook? If I friended say, my mother, she’d have access to all the other people I’ve friended as well… Thankfully, my mother is not computer-savy anyway, otherwise I’d be constantly over at her house fixing her computer problems. Link: http://tinyurl.com/37mj22

Oh, I should also mention that I just registered a couple new domains through GoDaddy and I used the TPN code to get a 10% discount. I also registered a dot-ca domain, but I had to use a Canadian registrar. I still haven’t found a host service I like yet though… And I should probably design a website so I have HTML to upload when I do find a hosting service.

By: Global Geek

Global Geek — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:07:03 +0000

@Matt yup showed up in mine as well. It appeared after I did another post. Almost like the feed was “stuck” - why and how - who knows - but it might have snapped out of it - that is the first time it has ever happened.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:12:43 +0000

This show finally showed up in FeedDemon. I’ll see what happens for next weeks show.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:15:48 +0000

There’s a jotspot appliance at work that gets some use from the “labs” folks. Seems OK. Not sure what the deal is with sites. Honestly if the search appliance supported more of google’s IP like Apps and blogspot I’m pretty sure my division would have one. Oh well. They cant miss the boat forever?

By: Google Sites Isn’t A Website Builder : Awakened Voice

Google Sites Isn’t A Website Builder : Awakened Voice — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:11:27 +0000

[...] The response to Google Sites has been lukewarm. Dan Farber of CNET wants to know, “What’s all the fuss?” Dennis Howlett wasn’t impressed. Ditto for The Global Geek Podcast. [...]

By: George

George — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:26:32 +0000

Guys

Have not got to the end of the podcast, was interupted by a call of my mobile from Keith’s neck of the woods.

Feedback to follow tomorrow.

By: Raf

Raf — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:05:17 +0000

To be honest, I could not grasp one solid topic of the new section at the end. If you hadn’t told me, I would have listened to the end thinking that it was just some random chat and not a new section.
The name could be something like ‘Tech buzz & blogs’, but I’m sure you come up with a better name :].
To me, the more you add to the show the better. I am too lazy to go through the news and you always keep me up-to-date. I could even do with over 2 hours per episode. I always listen in one go.
The only thing about the new section that surprised me is that it was very short.
I hope none of the usual segments get shorter once the new segment expands.

Hope this helps!
Raf

By: Global Geek

Global Geek — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 09:29:26 +0000

@Rob thanks for the info mate! Nice work there and also for clearing up the Google Sites issue. And yeah the whole thing seems marketed at a different user base, I agree.

@Matt Glad that George let us know that, but I have to say I have not got it yet either! I am going to unsubscribe then subscribe again and see if that makes a difference. Yeah, weird no response - usually doesn’t take that long… I’ll let you know when I do.

@Everyone I would like some more feedback on the new trial segment that we did this week - I have had a few emails but I would like some more feedback to make the best decision about continuing it. Or do you want a poll? (Feedback is better though!!)

Cheers guys and keep the comments rolling

By: George

George — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 09:15:13 +0000

Turned up on monday in FD for me.

Cheers

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:57:57 +0000

Podcast #79 still hasn’t shown up on FD.

I’m not going to go for iTunes - Google Reader is doing the job without having to install more software.

Dave Gray - I saw your post in Newsgator Forum - still no response from anyone

By: Rob Safuto

Rob Safuto — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:04:12 +0000

Heard your review of Google Sites. This is meant to integrate with Google Apps domain email service. Its obvious that this is not meant to be a standalone website creator, but rather an intranet style collaboration tool that leverages Google mail, docs and calendar.

They aren’t going after WordPress or anything like that. They are going after things like intranets.com. I use Google Apps for my family domain so I checked it out and built a sample site. The tool struck me as very business oriented.

Also, you don’t need to change DNS to use the service. You can make a DNS change if you want to create easy domains. A standard apps account would have a calendar at http://calendar.google.com/a/yourdomain.com. If you add a CName record at your host you could replace that with http://calendar.yourdomain.com.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:29:41 +0000

I believe my Cowon players have speed options. I really need to visit South Korea. btw - piclens is beautiful!

By: Raf

Raf — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:35:26 +0000

The thing is, it would be good to have it in iTunes.
He uses Zen mp3 player or something and it has this speed option built in. Apple probably think people would be scared if the iPod stared talking too fast and dropped it. Lots of n00bs at Apple stores reporting a failure instead of a feature.
I’ve stopped using WMP as soon I ditched Vista for the iMac. I still need to use VMware to develop for ASP.NET, though.

By: Global Geek

Global Geek — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:50:57 +0000

Love it! lol.

Yeah good point on the podcast listening - you can do that with WMP as well - not sure about the iPod though or any portable device for that matter…

By: Raf

Raf — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:44:42 +0000

@Matt - just use iTunes, mate!

I found another CAPTCHA.
http://hotcaptcha.com - this is even more fun!
Choose hot girls not the animals :].

Neon Tango looks great! Thx!

Linkblip is sold by some designer at http://0at.org. He should be using his .org domain if not the linkblip one. I agree. A little bit unprofessional for somebody working on the net.

As for the google adword. I think people will be clicking less and less as they have realised by now that the links are not part of the website. And usualy the author doesn’t recommend them. They just pop up at you go along. I believe google should make them less apparent. I haven’t tried that yet, but to what extent can you customise the looks of them? As far as I guess, not much. Just the background, really.

Keith - have you ever heard of am iTunes plug-in or a separate application to play audio files on the Mac but with a higher speed? A friend recommended a portable mp3 player with a speedy listen option. People on the podcasts sound like chipmunks but you can listen to half as much in the same time. He covers a lot of podcasts every week at work this way. I believe people with sight impairments speed the screen readers as well and this works nice for them. Why can’t we do the same with podcasts?

Cheers,
Raf (also the UK)

By: Dave Gray

Dave Gray — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:38:55 +0000

@Raf yeah this is what I was saying on the show - this system will see changes and I think that they are around the corner - bots will break CAPTCHA and this incident last week shows that spammers are nearly there. Looks like MS are thinking ahead on this one and it is not too bad at all - be interesting to see how a computer goes against it in time. I have seen others similar - choosing multiple images etc - but this is a reflection of where this is going. Nice one.

By: Raf

Raf — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:35:40 +0000

I’m not done listening to this episode yet, but as for the Captcha validation you were talking about this is a very interesting project by Microsoft.

http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/

This is a way to recognise humans by asking them to select only certain type of animal among 20 different images. That’s better than jumbled fonts I guess.

If you’re a developer like me and are reading this, check it out! It’s not only for C# but Python and other languages as this is a web service.

Raf

By: Global Geek

Global Geek — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:09:04 +0000

@Doug smartarse

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:55:36 +0000

Is my calendar wrong or is the GGP out on a Monday?
Will listen and comment later:D

By: Dave Gray

Dave Gray — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:43:32 +0000

@Matt if it is any consolation I have had FD open all day and not yet got the podcast through on it. It is usually delayed a bit, but I’ll let you know when it comes through.

So which cutter did you settle on then?

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:29:07 +0000

Feeddemon/Newsgator have failed again to pick up your RSS feed (up to 3 March 8.20pm Aust Eastern Standard Summer Time)- looks like it’s back to Google Reader for a while until things are sorted out.

I tried out the Audio Book Cutter because I always cut up my podcasts into 15-20 minute bits. I do this because sometimes I will switch between the radio and MP3 files - saves me having to scroll for ages to get back to where I left off.

ABC is a bit slower than the program that I have been using - Mega MP3 Splitter 1.1 (http://www.megax.it/) but it does allow you to automatically pick how big each segment is to be (have to do this manually in Mega).