da Blog

Recently I’ve been discussing with friends what I usually do on the weekend.  My weekend isn’t completely work and it isn’t completely play, but I guess my favorites are the ones where I do a bit of both and just see where it goes.

First, I’ll go over what’s not my ideal weekend.  I guess I’m not that outdoorsy of a person that I want to be outdoors the whole weekend.  I do know people who almost need to be outdoors to relax and they seem to love to have a weekend away from everything at the cabin.  But I definitely find that to be a waste of my weekend – there’s just too much downtime with nothing to do, unless there’s a good book to read, although I can’t really read a good book for more than a couple hours at a time.

You see, to be in the web programming industry, you need to be constantly learning.  I often spend an hour or two reading up on blogs from friends mixed with blogs about industry news and trends and occasionally pick up a heavier programming book.  I also work a bit on a web programming project for myself or maybe another learning/improvement project related to administrating my server or getting things set up more robustly.  (Maybe one of these weeks I’ll get Git set up on my computer.)

Of course, the weekend needs a bit of fun.  First of all, whenever projects are going on, there is plenty of great music to listen to at a reasonable (or loud) volume.  If learning or working on a project is not going well, I’ll take a break and watch a show on Hulu or from a podcast I subscribe to.  Also, most Friday nights and at least a couple hours of Saturday and Sunday have to be some sort of activity hanging out with friends or family.

Of course, this type of weekend is not as fun as spending the weekend in Chicago, going to a MuteMath concert or a cookout at the parent’s house, but it is definitely a favorite mode of a weekend.  I feel like I have accomplished some of my personal projects and had fun in the process.  Of course, I expect your weekend to be a bunch different.  What’s your favorite way to spend time out of the office?

So, I’m not sure if this is the fault of Apple’s iTunes or the makers of all the news podcasts, but I’m sure each are at least partially to blame. You see, last night President Obama spoke and I want to watch it on the train to work tomorrow.

First, let me say that when the debates and the inagauration took place, I had no problem finding video of it later in the day or the next morning on iTunes’ Podcast area. In fact, on a couple, I already had the feed on my iTunes and it just started coming in. But now, 24 hours after Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress, I can’t find a video version to easily load onto my iPod.

iTunes is definitely to blame on at least one count. The browsing of the iTunes Podcast area is abysmal at best and unusable at worst. You can find the top things and the ones featured, but you’ve got no good ways to browse other things. And don’t think the search box is going to help you much, because every time you type in a search it searches the whole iTunes Store and you get all this other crap until you click to say, “I want only podcasts, you stupid program! That’s why I was browsing in the Podcasts section!” Even then, searching for “Obama address Congress” in the search box give you nothing but one radio station’s commentary on it. If you broaden it to “Obama address” you get a couple top podcasts that do feature Obama giving an address, but this gets me to my next point.

First, Barack Obama’s White House administration does have their own podcast, and the weekly radio address is well-presented via this podcast in both video or audio formats. I definitely am subscribed to this podcast, although I recommend doing your research afterwords through other news sources, because even if he’s the President, you can’t really take his word on everything. Second, ABC News offers the next best thing: a podcast with the exact same stuff that they host and deliver. I like that they did put the address in audio form in their audio version of the podcast, but I want video! Their video version of the weekly address podcast has no such item. For the debates, other podcasts such as Anderson Cooper 360 also put the videos in their podcast feed, but none of them are offering it up this time.

The web-savvy crowd at my blog may say, “But Dan, it’s an hour long! That’s a big file and that’s lots of badwidth!” Yeah, you’re right, but that didn’t stop them for the Inaguration address or any of the debates. In fact, the debates were longer but they were done in great video quality that was easy to load on your iPhone. Plus, if you want, throw an advertisement or two in there, I’ll watch it if it’s interesting or is only 30 seconds long. Then, there’s the others who will say, “Dan, I already watched all of it on Hulu.” Yeah, I know, but I can’t load that video into my iPhone for my daily commute. Then, as TJ said, I could try loading it up via YouTube on my iPhone, but I like being able to see Obama if I’m going to watch the video, and the only that the YouTube video quality on the iPhone is good for is videos of a cat on the Roomba. Plus, when I hit the tunnel under the airport then the streaming video will just stop playing, probably, and that’s no fun.

Hopefully, in the next couple hours, a solution will appear. If they do, don’t let any tech person from the major network that put it out say it takes over a day to encode a video for the iPod, because it doesn’t. Otherwise, I may just have to stay uninformed for the rest of my life. Or, worse yet, I’ll have to read a transcript.

I love microblogging and the social medias.  I’m always looking for little social media experiments as well.  Besides this blog, I’m always thinking up other ways to drum up interested readers, inform readers, and give out my opinions.  Of course, one of those genres that I love commenting on is movies and the crazyness of Hollywood.

Microblogging services such as Twitter, Pownce, FriendFeed and their social media friends are also another fun place to express an opinion.  Twitter has one interesting limitation – that is, all posts have to be 140 characters or less.  In some ways, this makes it as much of an art form as a short form blogging service.  For my personal account, one of the reasons I use Pownce is because I like to convey a unique thought without having to edit for 140 characters.  But, for more rehearsed messaging, I figure that the 140-character limit can be a sort of editing challenge.

With this in mind, I created the trailer_review Twitter account.  On this account, I post an 140-character or less review of the movie preview, starting with the title of the movie and ending with a link to the preview.  But, after posting a couple trailer mini-reviews, I decided that I’d want a website to go along with that I could provide more information at a later time, if I wanted.  Plus, not everyone is yet on Twitter, so maybe others would like a separate site where the could grab an RSS feed, leave comments, etc.  Thus, thanks to the power of Drupal, it took a couple hours to get a functional, decent-looking website working.  This is the store of Trailer-Review.com, my first-ever Drupal weekend project.  (Full disclosure: It took me two weekends to do all these steps because I was working on a couple paying freelance projects and doing other things, but these processes could easily be done in one free weekend.)  To paraphrase Strong Bad, “Feel free to follow along with my simple step-by-step instructions. I make [Drupal] FUN!”

(more…)

Here’s a little story of something that’s happened recently.  In the end, it goes mostly to making sure that the webmaster of the sites did his homework, but maybe I’m supposed to remember things better, I don’t know.

So, as I mentioned in the blog post about the ILikeAndy.com T-shirt, I enjoy Andy Osenga and his music.  I’ve also loved reading his blog over the last couple years in addition to his music.  He’s one of my favorite bloggers.  But what I found while writing that story was that I’ve not been reading his blog for the last six months!

How does this happen?  Well, I’ve just been reading his blog via the RSS feed in my Google Reader, so I haven’t been visiting his site.  However, about six months ago, he got a new site, and the new site’s RSS feed was not the same.  Google Reader doesn’t notify me of this, so I probably at first assumed that Andy was too busy to blog and then forgot about his blog completely.

The great thing is that Google Reader keeps track of what’s new for me.  Google doesn’t usually screw up, but what happens when the webmaster forgets a little detail like that?  I miss six months of content and have to spend a couple hours on a Saturday catching up.  Should I be checking people’s actual sites more often?  I hope not – there’s way too many sites that I follow via RSS to do that.

I guess the moral of the story is to make sure that you’re not missing anything that’s important to you on the ‘net.  Unless you’re a webmaster, in which case, you should make sure you got your stuff together.  And speaking of which, I gotta go manage some sites.

And people thought that Windows Vista took forever. About four years ago, I saw a green GoTo Card reader on a MetroTransit bus and asked a bus driver what that was. He said they were introducing a new kind of SuperSaver in time for the launch of the Hiawatha Light Rail line. Just this month, the GoTo Card has finally come out for public use, even though I’ve been using one for most of a year.

The system works much better than the flimsy paper SuperSaver passes they’ve been using for a long time. Although they say the GoTo Cards will cost $5, right now they’ll give ‘em to you for free if you put $20 on them. Like the SuperSavers, every $10 you buy comes with $1 of free value on it to encourage use over change and bills. The card just needs a quick swipe over the pad to transfer data, so it’s nice and quick. You can reload the card with value via any Light Rail fare machine or via the GoTo Card Website. Plus, it can also handle monthly passes as well. For the last 9 months or so, I’ve been using the card, and maybe for the past 6 months, I’ve been using the monthly pass without a hitch even though nobody officially said I could as a part of the early test group.

I thought that they spent some money doing some kinda fun ideas of ads to put on the light rail stations. These ads are stuck underfoot on the light rail platform and liken the GoTo Card to other common items. Too bad the website is so boring (and only viewable over an SSL connection for no reason).

It seems that, these days, you have to have some really unique, really attention-grabbing marketing to get people’s attention. And, I have to say, the folks at Fox have been pulling out all the stops in this regard for The Simpsons Movie. Here’s a couple good examples:

One of the coolest thing in a while is the official Simpsons Avatar Creator over at the official movie site. (Above are some that Andrew Osenga made to depict him and his family.) It’s fun, because you can make almost an infinite number of possibilities of characters, including all the characters in the movie and, hopefully, yourself. I haven’t played around with it enough, but I didn’t find it too easy to make whatever, or at least not make something that you say, “That’s totally my friend Isaac as a Simpsons character.” It’s definitely fun, and you can share them with your friends if you like what you came up with. As the site says, “Ready to work some yellow magic?”

Also, one of the most ingenious things is their recent partnering with 7 Eleven to transform a dozen stores into a full-fledged Kwik-E-Mart for a month or two. There’s not one in my market, but everyone who does have one seems to be talking about it. Not only does the outside look like a Kwik-E-Mart, but they’ve hired people that look like Apu to man the counter and make the usual silly comments. They also have all the signature Kwik-E-Mart foods, such as Squishies, Buzz Cola, and Krusty-Os cereal, and even a Radioactive Man special-edition Comic Book. In my opinion, this is a very creative and fun way to promote the movie, and I applaud 7-Eleven for doing something a bit risky but ultimately fun.

Via WordPress‘ Matt Mullenweg I found this interesting post about building online communities. There were some interesting points. None of them really surprised me, but they are good points to keep in mind when endeavoring to build an online community. Also, if you’re looking for more of the basics of building an online community, I recommend the earlier post he mentions as well. I’m going to keep these in mind as I’m building up inReview.net, for sure.

My life has always been close to the east side of Bloomington, MN. For the last 15 years or so, the People of Praise has had their headquarters there. I went to middle and high school at Trinity Schools in the same building. And now, I work just a mile away from there. Of course, though, the big presence in the area is the Mall of America, one of the largest enclosed malls in the United States. According to their press site, “With 40 million annual visitors, MOA has more visitors than all other attractions in the state combined and nearly 10 times more visitors than Minnesota’s second biggest attraction, Cabelas® in Owatonna.”

For years there has been talks about the proposed Mall of America Phase II. I recently found their new promotional website and it contains a lot of interesting information.

The expansion will be add 5.6 million square feet to the north end of the existing mall and will apparently be more open and let in more natural light than the original structure. The plan includes more parking structures and a skyway connection to the nearby IKEA. The expansion will integrate seamlessly with the current mall and connect to it on all four floors (including adding connections to the near-dead fourth floor).

A number of major structures are included in the mall plans. One of the main tenants is Bass Pro Shops, a major national outdoor sporting goods retailer. Major entertainment provider AEG will be building a 6,000-seat performing arts amphitheater. Some information says something about an NHL-size hockey rink, and I don’t know where that’s going to be located. The plans also leave room for an office tower and a couple hotels attached to the complex, including a family waterpark/hotel.

The new space seems to be designed to have different districts or areas of shopping, most of which look a bit more high-priced and trendy. The fourth floor seems to be devoted to entertainment attractions such as a movie theater, dinner theater, nightclubs, etc. According to the designs, there’s also a “High Fashion District” and a “Home District”. The main event looks to be a very open “Town Square” area, which looks like it may even mimic Times Square a bit. A central corridor of the new expansion is called “Canal Street” and is rumored to be a Venice-style center completed with gondola boats and everything. The plans also show an environmentally-friendly co-generation facility that will generate some heat and electricity for the building.

The annoying part is that there’s no news as to when this will be implemented, although the mall’s Wikipedia article says groundbreaking is supposed to happen in Spring 2007. The Wikipedia article also cites some concern from “outside forces” such as the city of Bloomington who are concerned about the ability for the $1.78 billion project to be completed. A state bill that aims to make the building construction tax-exempt seems to claim that construction will start in 2008 and finish up in 2011.

There are a number of improvements to the mall that seem to be a bit closer to reality and completed sooner. One is the reintroduction of a bar on the vacated fourth floor in the form of Cantina Corona, a Mexican bar/restaurant that is the first-ever place to bear the Corona brand. Also planned is the very high-end Klimpton Hotel near the south end of the mall. And finally, The Park at MOA will soon begin construction of a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter type roller coaster, to be completed in 2008. These style of rides are some of the most cutting-edge and the mall says it will be the first upside down roller coaster at the Mall of America. Nice!

I always like the pictures and diagrams, so below are the floor-by-floor plans off the website: (more…)

OK, that’s not exactly true. Google has announced the acquisition of DoubleClick, which has been the leader in Internet advertising as long as I can remember. Although most had valued the company at $1 billion, the $3.1 billion cash purchase will make Google, by far, the biggest player in the online ad game. Not surprisingly, other players in the Internet advertising market such as Microsoft and Yahoo! are crying foul.

Should you, as a consumer care? Probably. Besides Google, DoubleClick has the best profile of what sites you visit and your purchasing habits through their DoubleClick cookies. Of course, there is the possibility of Google trying to use this data to better target and identify you. Of course, DoubleClick quickly tried to destroy that rumor. However, a full acquisition from Google, a merging of systems, and/or a change in their terms of service could easily change that.

While Google by no means has a monopoly on Internet advertising, they’re quickly becoming the evil empire of the Internet that we somehow just can’t help but love. And, heck, as long as my Google stock keeps going up, I’m OK with it, I guess.

I recently ran across this article on a Search Engine Optimization site. Many may not know that SEO/SEM peoples are also interested in interface design for the best and easiest way to reach their customers. Bill Slawski of SEO By The Sea found some interesting research papers from Stanford about a point and click interface – except without a mouse. I haven’t read through them entirely yet, but somehow the computer senses which part of the screen you’re intently staring at and if you hang on it for long enough, your eye will “click” it. It’s mostly for people with disabilities at this stage and it might not be too easy to figure out, but it may become the “wave of the future”, as some say.