/dev/null/kevin

If you don't care about Twitter then stop reading.

A while back I posted that Twitter needs to delete the follow-spammers.  There were three kinds of responses:

• Agree!
  
• Disagree!
• Then follow me on Twitter out of spite.
• "Why should I care?  It doesn't bother or affect me."

BTW, one of the comments from that post left a great link to Stop Twitter Spam!  Check it out for lots of details.

For the "It doesn't affect me, why should I care?" crowd, here is your answer: It does affect you.

Let me first acknowledge that, yes, this is all Twitter's problem, and they need to fix it.  But it is also our problem and we should assist where we can.  Twitter, after all, is a social service so we must behave like social creatures.  A community is always stronger as a whole.

If you saw an arsonist lighting a fire would you try and stop them and/or put out the fire?  Or would you just say that this is the fire department's problem and ignore it?  Would you at least report the fire?  Would it make a difference if the fire was near your house or favorite winery?

If Twitter matters to you -- has value to you -- then you should care that your service could go away if Twitter can't fix the problems.  Are you just willing to jump to the next service, like plurk, FriendFeed or identi.ca?  If you are then you are forgetting that the value of Twitter is not the technology, but the social network itself that you've created.  Just because you are willing to switch to a different network doesn't mean that your other friends all will.  You won't be able to rebuild what you had.  It will be different, even if the underlying technology is better.  Remember that Twitter itself had no value until it reached a critical mass.  Twitter also has many useful tools built on top of its API.  Those tools also go away.

Thus, if you think that the follow-spammers don't affect you then you are wrong.  Even if they don't send you messages they are breaking the service that you use.  They are also making it more difficult for the Twitter staff to fix the problem if they are dealing with outages all of the time.

Finally, there is a new wrinkle to this story.  Since the whole point of follow-spammers is to ultimately get followed themselves (so you see their spam), the spammers have added retweeting to their arsenal of tricks.  What they are doing is taking normal tweets from the public timeline, or from people they are follow-spamming, and retweeting the text, plus their spam link.  This gives them the illusion of being a legitimate user and of having "meaningful" content, and that increases their hit chances.  How does this affect you?  They could be retweeting your posts.

Do you want the picture you sent of your child linked to porno-spammers site?  If anyone does a google (or summize) search they would be linked together, forever, along with you since you never blocked them as a spammer.

So, bottom line: everything affects you in a social network, so you should care.

While uploading a spreadsheet to Google Docs I got this error:

We were unable to upload this document because of this error:

conversion request did not return an error or a new document

This error message comes from the converter we're using, and hopefully tells you what you need to know to fix the problem.

That's one of the worst error messages I've ever seen.  I'm surprised they didn't draw it on a blue background.  The fact that they suggest that it could actually be helpful is just insulting.

In spite of that error message, I was able to track down the legal thing I was doing and remove it.

On to actually using the spreadsheet.  I updated a few numbers and then tried to resort some rows.

FAIL.

I cannot sort by number.  I can only sort A-Z or Z-A.  Are you kidding me?  Do they really expect that people won't use numbers in a spread sheet?

I also cannot sort just a range of rows, unless I only want them sorted by column A.  The only was to sort by any other column is to sort the entire sheet.  Yes, I can freeze some of the top rows, but if there are any rows I don't want sorted, I am SOL.

It just might be possible to do these things, but I can't figure it out.  Maybe it's just a UI fail, but I don't think so.

Twitter's performance problems are well known.  Twitter, and everyone else, are trying to fix the problem.  Here is my quick and dirty fix:

Kill the Spammers.

This is not a long term solution, but it may buy twitter some time to really fix the problem.

Twitter spammers don't actually spam, the don't send messages to you.  What they do it follow you, and everyone else.  Their hope is that you'll investigate their profile and then click on the web link (mine comes here to this blog).  It may also boost their search engine ranking, I don't know.

However, this also puts an extra burden on twitter.  Twitter's scale problems stem from the fact that the workload increases geometrically as every message people send is forwarded to each follower.  The more followers people have, the slower twitter is.  The follow-spammers just increase that load.  Some of these spammers follow 25,000 people.  That's 25,000 extra message each time any of those 25,000 tweet.  There are hundreds of follow-spammers, so that's hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of extra tweets.

Again, removing the spammers won't solve any of Twitter's problems, but it might give them some breathing room to work.  I think it would be easy to auto-detect most of these spammers.  If you follow more than 10,000 people and have less than 1000 followers yourself, you are probably a spammer.

I have blocked some of my more obvious spammers, but I'm not 100% sure this helps.  It depends on how Twitter implemented the blocking feature.  Hopefully they aren't checking for blocks all of the time and that the block just removed the spammer from my follow list.

I checked the Twitter forums to see if this (seemingly obvious) suggestion has been made, but I didn't have too much time to look.  I did find other people who have spammer problems, but I didn't find a discussion about Twitter removing them, or what kind of impact it would have (maybe it's just worth the trouble to them).  So, lazyweb, if you know, give me a pointer.

Update 1: I posted my own suggestion to the forum, we'll see what the response it.

Update 2: Twitter has admitted that uses with lots of followers/followees severely tax the system.  Then Rober Scoble (with his 20K+ of both) gets "blamed" for the problem.  So, I think it's only a matter of time before the spammers get the spot light.  To be clear, I don't blame Scoble.  He is a legitimate user.  Non-human spam listeneres and spam bots can be eliminated to (temporarily) free up resources so Scoble is free to tell us he is safe after earthquakes.  It's all still on Twitter's shoulders to fix the scaling problems.

For Earth Day, I am retiring my old (and dangerous) Sun Blade 2000.  I'm replacing it with a new Ultra 24.  Granted, it's not up the drool-worth specs of Rama's system, but it will do for now.  I expect my office to be much cooler now (and quieter).

This will also allow me to use the latest xVM Server hypervisor technology, which is good because I'm on the xVM Ops Center team and I need to get some of this stuff to work. 

Flickr launched its new video service today (Tuesday 08 April).  For me this is awesome because I already use flickr for my photos.  Like most people, my digital camera also takes decent quality videos and it is very nice to have them in the same stream as my photos.

There are two features that really make flickr better for personal video clips over YouTube.

1. Better image quality - See below.
   


2. Can download the original - I liked Google Video for this same reason.  It's very valuable to have off-site backups of your photos and videos so now I have both in one place.
   

Of course, with only a 90 second limit, YouTube, and other services, are still better for longer and professional vids.

Compare the quality of the same video uploaded to both YouTube and Flickr.

YouTube:

Flickr Video:

Update: Found one strike against Flickr: The embedded video doesn't appear/play in Google Reader. If you don't see the Flickr video window try here.

Update 2: According to Kellan of Flickr, this is a known problem.  You can work around the Google Reader problem by subscribing using the RSS feed and not the Atom feed. 

Java + Twitter = JavaOne2008

Tag your tweets with #JavaOne2008

Tag everything else with JavaOne2008

If you're old school Web 1.0: JavaOne

Is there any real value in flickr collections?  Please tell me what I'm missing.

A flickr set is a group of pictures.  I can view a set together, make a slide show, and edit the set together.  It's a very useful feature.

A flickr collection is a group of sets and it provides some organizational structure for sets that are related.  I can add or remove sets from a collection, as well as add a description.  The collection also gets a special mosaic badge made up of images from the various sets. 

However, other than those very basic features (which I admit, have some value), it seems that collections should allow me to  do so much more:

• No collection tools - With a set I can perform multiple actions on the whole set, but there are no actions for a collection.
• I can't view the whole collection as a slide show.
• I can't edit the whole collection.
• I can't add tags to a collection.
• I can't view the whole collection as a stream.
• I can't load a collection into the flickr organizer.
• Collection mosaic icon is useless.
• The mosaic's URL changes if I edit the mosaic (select different images) - This means I can't use the mosaic for anything like a thumbnail for a link to the collection's page.  If something exists, but I can't use it, does it have any value?
  
• The mosaic icon doesn't even appear on the collection's own page!

Sometimes less is more.  It's a cliche, but an accurate one.  Such is twirl, an AIR-based twitter client.  Twhirl (a really hard word to type, btw) has lots of features, most of which I don't need.  Its also missing some basic features that I need.

The irony is that, like twitter, a product with few features that still dominates, twitterific is still a better client than twirl.  i.e.

twitter : pownce :: twitterific : twhirl

Twitter, with its small feature set is still better, and more popular, than pownce or jaiku (two technologies that have more features, but are still inferior and much less popular).  Twitterific, with its elegant feel, is still better than feature-packed twhirl.

Twhirl Pros

1. Multiple twitter accounts - I tweet as myself, but also as my daughter.  I put cute things she says in there, mainly just for myself and wife.  It's a bit of a pain to switch back and forth, so it's nice to have multiple twhirl windows open for each account.  I also know a certain someone who occasionally tweets as his wife by mistake.
2. Lots of display options - You can customize the color pallet and font easily.  You can apply filters, and you can select from several different view panels such as timeline, replies, friends, followers, direct messages, and archive.
3. Search - twhirl leverages existing services TweetScan and Terraminds for searches.
4. Retweeting - If you're into forwarding tweets, it's easy with twhirl.  Just one click.

Other than Pro #1, I don't use or need those extra features.  #2 is nice, but I just selected the one that looked like twitterific.    Search would be nice, but those two services don't work that well.  Terraminds was not even up as of this writing.

Twhirl Cons

1. Unread vs read messages not easy to distinguish - A tiny white dot in the corner is the only way to detect an unread tweet in twhirl, while the whole message is bold in twitterific.  It's much easier to visually scan with twitterific.
2. No real keyboard shortcuts - Yes, it has *some* keyboard shortcuts, but for things that don't need shortcuts.  The shortcuts that I miss are "Reply" and "Mark all as read."  If I used retweet, I'd probably want that, too.  Also, while I can scroll up and down using the arrow keys, that action doesn't cause the tweets to be marked as read.  I either have to click on them or click on the mark as read button.  In general, there is just too much clicking required.
   
3. Cluttered display - This might just be personal preference, but twitterific will display either the twitter id or the "real" name of a person in the header.  twhirl's display is more like the web display.  It puts the twitter id in with the tweet and appends the date stamp along with the "real" name.  See the attached image.
4. AIR is clunky - Maybe it's AIR and maybe it's twhirl, but the application has a slow and unsteady feel to it.  It's not horrible, but it's not as crisp as twitterific.
5. Breaks MacOS click behavior - In Mac OS X, if you click on a window that doesn't have focus, that click is not passed to the application.  The idea is that you don't accidentally click on something that you didn't intend to when you switch focus to another window.  This differers from Windows behavior which does pass the click to the application.  I expect that this behavior is a by-product of using AIR, since AIR also runs on Windows.  Still, it's annoying to have an application behave differently that every other Mac app.  Also, this problem is magnified when you consider that your clicks might lead to the next problem...
   
6. Web links open new windows, not tabs - Even though Firefox is set to open new links in a new tab, URLs launched through twhirl open a whole new Firefox window.  Not only is this not what I want, but it's also slower.  Is this another AIR-ism?
   
7. Does not pop down - Twitterific will pop up when there are new tweets but then pop back down if you don't click on the window.  Twhirl just stays up until you manually make it go away.  Anyone who actually gets work done knows that sometimes you just have to ignore twitter.  Not only does the window not go away, but all of the twhirl windows open up for all of the accounts you have open.  So even if my daughter's account doesn't receive a tweet, it still opens up when my account does.
8. Does not pop up - Depending on how you minimize twhirl it may never pop up.  If you close it with Command-H (Hide) then it will pop up with new tweets.  However, if you use Command-M (minimize), or the _ icon on the bar, then it won't pop up.  Twitterific disables minimize, I believe.
   
9. No spellcheck - Twitterific leverages the auto-spellcheck feature that applications using text windows get.  Perhaps it's an AIR limitation, but twhirl doesn't do this.  I need this feature.  I suck at spelling and typing (count the errors in this blog!) so I really need a spell checker.

Speaking of poor writing, read this part of the twhirl documentation.  Scroll down to the "connection settings" section.

So, the verdict is that twhirl is not for me.  Yes, they could fix some of these problems, but the one's linked to AIR might take longer to resolve as Adobe works to get AIR more widely adopted.  For now, it's back to twitterific for me.

Here's the screen shot comparing the two twitter clients.  Note that there are two twhirl windows for my two twitter accounts.  The top window has the message area hidden.

Warning: Spoiler for the movie Stargate: The Ark of Truth ahead.

I watched the movie Stargate: The Ark of Truth and there is a scene where the Replicators (evil, self-replicating robots) are being reprogrammed to self-destruct.  A screen shot shows that the language used is Javascript.

Stay tuned for the sequel, when another ancient programming language is used, Stargate: The Awk of Truth.

The latest iPhone commercial tells me it's great to have an iPhone because I can "see the trail map while I'm on the mountain."

Really?

I feel so foolish carrying around that free paper map!

<sarcasm>
When I'm sitting on a chair lift, 50 feet over deep snow and wearing bulky gloves, my first inclination is to take out my $600 iPhone to look at the trail map.  After I drop it, I'm sure that, in four months after the snow has melted, the friendly hikers bears who find it will return it to me.
</sarcasm>

Also, does anyone really expect to get 5 bar signal strenth and WiFi at the top of a mountain?

This is almost as bad as Bryce, the pilot, who had the tower move up his plane's departure time because he could see weather maps on his phone.

Since a Twitter post is called a tweet, what is a Pownce post called?  I "pownced" that question, but the audience was too small.  I'm hoping to get more answers here.

Possible Pownce "Tweet" Names

• poonce?
• pownce?
• ponch?
• punch?
• paunch?
• pinch?
• poop?
• pop?
• poot?
• puff?
• pump?
• pout?
• peet?
• pee?
  

With Twitter broken (not delivering all tweets), a few of us have been trying Pownce.  We tried Pownce once during its beta, but it didn't catch on.  Our return trip hasn't been much better, but perhaps I'll write about that later.

Starring Thin Guy as Sun Ray.  Inspired by a tweet from acworkma.

[Original]

I'm just putting this out there so people who have the same problem I did might find this solution in a Google search.

Problem: On MacBookPro your VPN fails.  Get error "Driver Failure" 

If you use Cisco's VPN client then you just get an immediate failure.  But if you open the Notifications window you will see this error:

Shimo prints this error:

 
Solution:

Check to see if you are using the built-in Ethernet port and have the AirPort turned on.  If so, the solution is to turn off the AirPort while you use the Ethernet port, or unplug the Ethernet port and use the AirPort if there is WiFi available.

My guess is that the VPN client is trying to use the AirPort to make the connection but your MPB is using the Ethernet port.  This causes a conflict and the error.

Note, this is for Tiger (10.4).  I don't know if this happens with Leopard (10.5).

Proving that you're never too old to learn, or too young to teach, my four year old daughter taught her grandparents how to use a computer.  Granted it was a Mac Book Pro, but Ang Ang was a pro in no time.

Here are some photos and a short video of them in action:

Here a few of the results (they took dozens):

Yes, Steve Jobs, they are available for your next marketing campaign.

VeriSign, a company who millions of people trust to encrypt their most sensitive data, recently bought a company whose only business plan seems to be to scam people.

In 2006 VeriSign acquired m-Qube, "a leading mobile channel enabler."  To put it another way: they sell ring tones.  That would be well and good, but m-Qube's tactics are deceiving at best, and certainly very questionable.  Typically, m-Qube (or some other shill) offers "free" ring tones, but in the process enrolls the user in a "club" that bills the user $10 to $20 per month.  Most people don't even notice the additional fee until it's way too late.

The number of complaints against m-Qube is growing and VeriSign's own FAQ includes several questions dealing  with m-Qube's practices.

The most questionable practice (and why I feel safe to call this a scam) is that even if the user cancels the process they are still enrolled, and still billed.  After noting a $20 increase in my cellular bill I called my provider who immediately knew what was going on.  I remembered back a few weeks being offered a free San Jose Sharks (hockey) ring tone.  The process to get the ring tone started asking for too much information, so I bailed on it.  I never received anything, but was still enrolled in this "club."  Fortunately, the customer service rep knew exactly how to unenroll me, and how to request a refund for the now TWO months of services I'd been charged for (and received nothing for).

It didn't take much to find lots of people with similar stories about m-Qube's scam.  But I didn't expect that a reputable company like VeriSign would be associated with them, let alone own them.  How can I trust a company who supports a company like m-Qube?  If they are willing to scam people $20 a month then who is to say that they won't sell the private keys to the certs they distribute?

Update [01/30/2008]: I received my latest bill and it included a credit for everything, so the process worked.  Also, as noted in the comments, m-Qube is really a billing service and it's their clients who are pulling the scams.  I don't think this completely exonerates m-Qube, or VeriSign, but it sounds like the process is improving.