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March 30, 2006
PowerToys for WindowsXP
i had forgotten about this batch of utilities provided by Microsoft themselves for XP - but i needed the image resizer for something and it came through in a pinch.
take a look...
Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP
Posted by Steve at 10:17 PM | Comments (44) | TrackBack
March 26, 2006
Google Reader Tidbits [via Googler's Blogs]
More on google reader sharing...I think this is a resyndication from somewhere, but I don't have time to take it all the way home. 
Google Reader Tidbits | Googlers' Blogs
Posted by Steve at 06:53 AM | Comments (37) | TrackBack
March 23, 2006
ajaxWrite
I really don't like michael robertson for what he did to mp3.com (now owned by CNET, unrelated) - but this is pretty cool.
I work on a lot of documents while disconnected however...on the plane, train, etc. In fact, that's when I work on docucments the most, so I hope someone figures that one out.
Just click the icon above to try it out.
Posted by Steve at 05:43 PM | Comments (40) | TrackBack
March 22, 2006
sharing in google reader, cool
if you are reading this in a feed reader, you goota click through, but google now allows you to splice feeds together into a piece of javascript for re-syndication. over at FeeBurner we call this BuzzBoost. but google reader does a great implementation of this, because you can just keep adding feeds to one of your "labels" and they will just keep coming in. here's one for the FB employees:
Posted by Steve at 09:46 PM | Comments (843) | TrackBack
Struwwelpeter
If you watched "The Office" last week, there was a good reference to Hienrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter. I vaguely remember these somehow from when I was a kid. It's like the Brothers Grimm but a lot worse....Follow the link to check it out.
The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb
Posted by Steve at 02:41 PM | Comments (270) | TrackBack
March 20, 2006
different feed readers for different markets and content
one of the points i made in my presentation last week in korea was how feed reader breakdown varies wildly across markets and type of content. the readership breakdown we see in europe versus north america, as well as what we see in china, japan, and korea are all very different.
in addition, the readership breakdown we see across text and podcasts are totally different (naturally) - but it is also much different when you look at blogs versus commerical publishers, and even tech blogs versus "gossip" blogs.
lunamoth, one of our korean publishers, published his or her ( i haven't learned to read korean, yet) readership breakdown - so i thought i would point to that here, as it serves as a good example of how in korea, one feed reader, HanRSS, has a plurality of the subscribers, just edging out bloglines. my hat off to mark fletcher, who created localized versions of bloglines very early on, and was able to capture market share across many markets in many languages.
again, this is one example, and is not necessarily representative of the korean market's feed readership breakdown. lunamoth, thanks for sharing!
lunamoth 3rd ~ 태터툴즈 FeedBurner 플러그인, RSS 구독자 통계
Technorati Tags: rss, feedburner, feeds, bloglines
Posted by Steve at 08:17 AM | Comments (222) | TrackBack
March 19, 2006
countries i've visited
create your own visited countries map
not cool enough to permanently make the sidebar, but still cool
Posted by Steve at 09:06 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
March 17, 2006
speaking of edgeio
spelled right this time...but check out these job listings for "it configuration" - it is ALL for jobs in Karachi Pakistan. yep, that's useful for all the Pakistanis that i am sure are pouring over edgeio looking for an it job. tee hee.
edgeio: it configuration
Posted by Steve at 11:55 AM | Comments (365) | TrackBack
Web 2.0 or Star Wars character? [via valleywag]
I thought about doing a "Web 2.0 or Brazillian soccer player? " quiz. "edgio...Edgio...EDGIO"
Valleywag: Web 2.0 or Star Wars character?
Posted by Steve at 10:35 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
March 16, 2006
Web 2.0, Korean Style
Earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to have spoken at the WEB 2.0 + Mobile conference in Seoul. It was quite amazing to see the fervor in which the Korean development community is following this phenomenon. Of course, they are also interested in how the web converges with mobile business - like, they care about it about 100 times more than anyone here cares about that convergence, except maybe Russ.
First and foremost, .this conference was perhaps the most well organized and accomodating i have experienced as a speaker (for a conference this size), from the instructions and help while creating the presentation, to the logistics of getting to a city 6500 miles away from home. It was put on by BORA EnC at the COEX Conference Center, a place where the most technologically advanced contrast with the Buddhist shrines across the street (as seen below).
But while in a country that was very different from the US in many ways, was also a culture that is amazingly accomodating of American culture, and extremly welcoming to guests and visitors. Below is a translation device that was provided to all participants, 
with an earpiece that could be tuned into English or Korean during every presentation. Here I was, sitting in a room of 1000 Koreans, enjoying presentations in English via a translator by the likes of Nakyang Seong, CEO of Yahoo! Korea on how Flickr and del.icio.us was going to change their experience on the web, and the folks at onnet.co.kr, who launched a P2P feed reader called Fish so the Korean web community can experience the power of feeds.
Even thought the thirst was there for learning more about the new world of the web, one got the sincere feeling that South Korea was not far behind in understanding the open APIs of the Web 2.0 world - prepared to create their own crop of mashups and businesses that might go well beyond the tired examples of oneupmanship we see in the U.S. week after week. It was refreshing to see some new faces up on stage presenting instead of the same old Scobles and Searls, and refreshing not to have the audience pounding away on laptops during the presentation (no WI-FI !).
And let us not forget mobile. In a country where things like streaming video at 15 FPS are old hat, this crowd was defintiely interested in how to create applications that merged user-created content with the montezation stream provided by mobile devices. It was so refreshing to see this from a society where mobile is so baked into the web economy, where mobile services are not an afterthought. And it's a case study of how mobile and home broadband can coexist together, in a place where penetration of both into society is among the highest in the world.
So what else is different about the Korean web economy?
For one, the industry clearly looks beyond South Korea for providing its services. Every startup I talked to was not only creating services for Korea, but also was extremely interested in launching products in China, Japan, and the U.S. One company, nhn corporation, famous for the NAVER search engine and portal in Korea, also has a very successful online game, hangame (which i think literally means "Korean Game" oddly enough) and has recently opened an office in Mountan View to try those services in the North American market.
Most Koreans I met had been to the U.S. at least once, and are generally more proficient in English than anywhere else in Asia where English is not a primary language (e.g. Hong Kong, Phillipines).
As one Korean internet CEO explained to me - Koreans are in the middle of China and Japan more than geographically - the Chinese think very broadly and abstractly, and the Japanese are more focused and precise, but Koreans are exactly in the middle - seeing the big picture but also putting a focus on execution.
I thought this was apt, and very much followed my own perception of the three cultures. I'll definitely be following this market more closely having experienced this conference, and look to see some very cool things coming out the Korean internet and mobile communities in the near future.
Posted by Steve at 12:05 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
March 14, 2006
finally, eligible for valleywag
i keep getting asked, why are you guys never in valleywag?
my stock answer is always "well, we aren't in the valley."
as of today, i can't use that one anymore. with the addition of Don Loeb to the team - we are now officially in the valley. Don was the first person I met at Yahoo! when we started FeedBurner over two years ago, so it seems somehow appropriate that he be the first person to join us out west. anyway, welcome Don, we are excited to have you on the team.
while we are at it, I'd like to welcome another new member - Jake Parillo. according to Rick, he plays for the other team - yes, he's a republican.
Jake rounds out a great team, which also includes the Eric Olson, our resident Red Sox fan. Eric is famous around here for working with my favorite podcast, ask a ninja. Eric, you are ninja too.
okay, off to think of a new witty answer to the valleywag question.
Posted by Steve at 11:33 PM | Comments (36) | TrackBack
March 13, 2006
Just like Chinese click farms, but in games!
We've all heard about the terrible problems Google is having with people setting up "Chinese click farms" of content surrounded in AdSense ads with cheap labor randomly clicking on ads.
Here's the online gaming equivalent...Online role playing games are huge, huge, huge, in Korea - so much that there is now a black market for items found within the game that have value. Chinese are stealing Korean resident Id numbers, using it go get accounts, trolling through the game to find items of value in the virutal world, and then selling them back to Koreans for real money!
check it out:
Police order a game site to close accounts
Posted by Steve at 04:49 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
March 11, 2006
totoros
totoros
Originally uploaded by steveobd.
if you have kids and a netflix account, you should definitely rent My Neighbor Totoro.
Posted by Steve at 05:17 PM | Comments (51) | TrackBack
Japanese for "sold out"
Japanese for "sold out"
Originally uploaded by steveobd.
The lines were gone by the time I arrived in Akihabara. I did get to try a DS Lite though - pretty cool. More compact, brighter screen, a good revision I surmise.
Posted by Steve at 08:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 10, 2006
Happy Tree Friends
I'm late to the game on such things - but if you haven't already, check out the Happy Tree Friends podcast which is available on iTunes. Hee-larious.
Happy Tree Friends
Posted by Steve at 03:30 PM | Comments (82) | TrackBack
March 09, 2006
Labels for stairs
Labels for stairs
Originally uploaded by steveobd.
Even in Japan, up is up, and down is down. Good. Got it.
Posted by Steve at 08:05 PM | Comments (248) | TrackBack
twitching blowfish video
ah, the best thing about Tokyo is that often food is put in front of you that still has synapses firing.
Posted by Steve at 04:00 AM | Comments (182) | TrackBack
March 05, 2006
Google GDrive - yes, please
ars technica is spreading the good rumor that Google will soon launch unlimited storage for its users and they propose the question "will users trust Google with their data?"
I sure will. My experience in having worked with Google engineering in the past is that they are pretty rigorous about security and try to think through all the ways their systems can be gamed. They have some pretty ingenious engineers whose job it is to just try and hack things - and I'm pretty sure they usually succeed on the first try with most projects.
More than that though, Google demonstrates bar none that they know how to scale systems infinitely on a global basis, and if they want to throw ads around my search results when I search for a word doc on my GDrive, so be it if that's what it takes to underwrite the costs of unlimited storage.
Google Desktop is great, but a 2 Gig index file on my hard drive is a bit bulky for me...but I sure loved having those file results up there on top of my web search results. If this were all server stored and indexed and I could quickly get to archived files via some secure WebDAV equivalent, bring it on!
see the story at ars technica:
Is the GDrive Google's next big thing?
Posted by Steve at 11:23 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
cocomment
very cool - someone has come up with a centralized blog comment service. if they architected this right, this could be a really interesting service for tying context together across publishers and their readers/subscribers.
Posted by Steve at 09:28 AM | Comments (628) | TrackBack
March 04, 2006
iTunes Agent
I think i gotta try this out. my two main devices are those pictured above.
iTunes Agent
Posted by Steve at 09:14 PM | Comments (127) | TrackBack
March 03, 2006
when you know blogs have jumped the shark
The Office, in both British and American flavors, is my favorite show. But do they really need a blog supposedly written by a character? and c'mon, there's no feed.
Dwight Schrute's Schrute-Space
Posted by Steve at 04:10 PM | Comments (1839) | TrackBack
March 01, 2006
Rails' Ridiculous Restrictions, a Rant [ via Joel on Software]
boy, i haven't seen this kind of software bigotry happening since the very early days of Java vs C++. i've never read "Joel on Software" before, and to be honest i am not sure how i happened upon this, but it makes me glad i'm not involved in such discussions anymore. i used to manage a few distinct groups of software bigots, and it makes one realize why there will never be peace in the middle east.
read on if you if you dare, and witness the zealotry of those who consider Jason Fried and DHH as the second coming of Christ.
The Joel on Software Discussion Group - Rails' Ridiculous Restrictions, a Rant
Posted by Steve at 08:28 AM | Comments (71) | TrackBack