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October 30, 2005
#337 on the Feedster 500
what a joke. according to the feedster500, this blog is number #337 out of 500. that puts me above Brad Feld at #350 and Anil Dash at #380.
Rock!
Posted by Steve at 03:53 PM | Comments (193)
October 22, 2005
lego star wars
if you have a boy in the 5-6 year old range, there's no game that has been better than lego star wars. not only is this the most age appropriate game for kids of this age, but it's got a great two player simultaneous mode that will allow you to play the game with your child. the designers clearly had this in mind as the manual comes with a "parent's guide". it just does an awesome job moving two players around the screen, allowing one player to drop in and out as needed, and most importantly saving your progress as you go. we now have this on GBA and PS2 - both highly recommended.
Posted by Steve at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2005
AOL puts Mailblocks out to pasture
well, it finally happened - AOL has decided to mothball my beloved mailblocks email service and is attempting to move people over to AIM mail.
The mailblocks homepage tells the story:
"Mailblocks Announces Service DiscontinuationPer the email sent to all current Mailblocks customers, the Mailblocks email service will be discontinued on November 16, 2005.
We hope you’ve enjoyed your spam-free Mailblocks account and thank you for your continued support. We apologize for any inconvenience this transition may cause and we hope you continue enjoying our free spam-free and virus-free email service from AIM Mail. "
Mailblocks was great because not only was it a great spam deterrent with challenge/response, but more importantly, it was a rock solid POP3/IMAP server.
Now, i am an atypical user of most software.
Email is no different. i use email as follows:
1) i only use POP. IMAP is way to slow for me, and i'm on the go all the time so i want to make sure i have full copies of all email and attachments. i always leave mail on the server, and have my clients (see next) delete stuff every 30 days or so. I forward a copy of everything to gmail for safekeeping.
2) at any given time, i have 4-5 email clients hitting my mail server. my main laptop, a few computers at home, my blackberry.net service, and whatever phone/PDA i am carrying at the time (sometimes more). This is not trivial!!! Try this with any out-of-the-box Linux or Outlook server and you will get tons of connection timeouts, lost mailbox lock files, and connection kick-offs as multiple clients access the server.
3) i get a LOT of email, and my mailboxes are BIG. I can't have a server that slows down as the mail piles up.
4) i do use the webclient a lot. it's important to have a good webclient as well that i can respond from different email addresses with.
So i am trying out some different services - here are my choices as i see them:
1. Gmail - gmail has free POP access, but it's only on secure ports over SSL. I also hate their threading on the web client. their spam filter doesn't seem to really do the job for me either.
2. Yahoo! Mail - I love the new beta Yahoo! Mail interface, but POP access is a premium service. might be worth it if nothing else works.
3. AIM Mail - AOL is making a resurgence - perhaps i should put my eggs in the hands of the same team that created Mailblocks. They do have free POP.
At any rate, I plan to do a bake-off and see who does best to meet my needs. I'll keep y'all posted.
Posted by Steve at 08:12 AM | Comments (2)
October 12, 2005
Winning 11 for the PSP
while in Japan, i was lucky enough to pick up a copy of World Soccer Winning Eleven 9, which has been released there, but won't be released in the US until February.
even though it's region encoded - it plays fine on my PSP - and of course the biggest problem is that i cannot read Japanese - but having played about every console soccer game since early in my youth - it wasn't hard to figure out how to play this one.
in short - this is a great game that will give FIFA 2006 (released yesterday) a run for its money. it's appropriately difficult to score, and definitely takes some mastery, which is what makes it fun.
if you can score a copy on Ebay or something - highly recommended.
Posted by Steve at 08:52 AM | Comments (1)
Shellen was right
google reader is much better once you come back a few days later and it has time to fill up with content. my first day experience was not great, but a lot of apps have to grow on you. I'd still like about 20 more pixels on the top to move the content up, just a little.
thanks for the heads-up on this Jason - just keep in mind the first time users!
Posted by Steve at 08:20 AM | Comments (4)
October 10, 2005
big in Japan
apparently, the camera does add 10 pounds...
i have no idea what this says, but here's me talking to a CNET reporter in Japan.
Posted by Steve at 06:42 PM | Comments (1855)
October 08, 2005
grumpy old man uses google reader (or things i don't like)
i'm sure everyone has seen google's google reader, their first attempt at a fully fledged feed reader.
first of all, i'm glad they released this, because it's going to spur some good competition between goog, yhoo, and msft, and continue to bring feeds to the forefront. i like the blogsearch cornerstone and the products that are being released around it (although google blogsearch really isn't working that well, lately, i've went back to using technorati). I've really liked the feed reader attached to google desktop (are my subscriptions shared? don't think so).
that said, i've been using google reader for a day now and i probably won't be using it again; it's not for me.
here's what i don't like about it:
1. the Home page is pretty much useless. everything you want is in "My Subscriptions" or /reader/lens. why even have the home page? never take me there again
2. when you first subscribe to a feed, where's all the content? you have to click to go get the old content? that sucks. it seems to always go back to this view if you click on and off
3. just make a general setting for keeping old items - i hate the "keep unread" button. i have no idea how to keep the current items in the feed around. don't assume because an item has been rendered that it has been "read." it probably hasn't
4. you have to click on "My Subscriptions" to get rid of the "labels". i couldn't figure out how the labels got there, and i couldn't figure out how to get rid of them.
5. mostly, the "Labels," which most of us call "tags", are just in the way.
6. i have no idea how to "star" an item without using the keyboard shortcut. i do like the keyboard shortcuts, but took me awhile to find.
7. most of the content is *always* "below the fold". a lot of this has to do with the "Labels" being in the way all the time. anyway, having to always scroll down to get to the feed items is really annoying. they didn't get this right.
8. you have to bounce back and forth between keyboard shortcuts and the mouse, i think. when i did get the view configured like i wanted it to, the only way to navigate was to j,j,j then hit the mouse to "show me older content". there was never anything to read.
anyway, congrats to the team that worked on this for gettting it out there - much better to get something out there and get user feedback (hopefully this is construed as user feedback) - and i'll come back and look again once some things are improved, but for now, google reader needs to go through a serious round of user experience testing!
Posted by Steve at 04:58 AM | Comments (262)
October 05, 2005
blogpet
check out blogpet, a souveneir from Japan. (feed subscribers, JavaScript, you gotta click through).
this little guy can can live on your blog, and read rss feeds to your users. it will automatically post your blog and leave comments as well.
you can set it so that if you don't post for awhile, it will post when you don't post, and it won't post when you do post. how scary is that?
Posted by Steve at 08:42 AM | Comments (234)
October 04, 2005
back from asia
whew! Eric and I just got back from a whirlwind tour of China and Japan - it was really amazing on a lot of levels, but especially the excitement around blogging and feeds. we were glad to finally have annouced both of our partners over there - Bokee in China and GMO-A in Japan, who have both started integrating FeedBurner in different ways.
Bokee will integrate the services into some upcoming offerings, which without giving anything away, are already pretty impressive and I am sure will take the Chinese market by storm. They have some talented developers on the case. And yes, the Chinese food in China is *totally* different than the Chinese food in the U.S. - and really, really, good.
GMO-A is partnering with us to create feedburner.jp, a localized version of feedburner.com as well as be a distributor of our services for feed publishers in Japan. We will also integrate our services into JUGEM, yaplog, and Autopage - three of the leading blogging services in Japan. We met with a number of commercial publishers in Japan as well and the excitement is clearly growing there in Japan!
Finally, I probably don't have to mention how big mobile services are in both China and Japan. Having spent a few days going from place to place in Tokyo - it became so clear how i-Mode got it right - people use i-Mode like they would any other website for finding information, including navigation around the city. No click and wait experience - it's just second nature for everyone in our generation. very, very cool. the interest around 3G in Japan is also huge judging by the activity at the Vodafone.jp phone stands.
mobile content is such an afterthought for media publishers in the US right now. that is changing, but i wonder if it will ever get to the level you see in Asia.
Posted by Steve at 07:00 AM | Comments (2)