Cloud Computing, Life

When you send "HELP" to a sms short code, you are supposed to get back a message telling you what keyword options are available to use. The "HELP" keyword should work on all short codes. The other night while watching "Dancing With The Stars", I tried to send "HELP" to the short code for one of the couples and was expecting to get some generic message back. Instead I got back this: "Thank you for your vote.....normal text charges will apply...." Wait, "HELP" was not a vote, it was a request for information. Zillions of dollars are generated by the promotions, yet it doesn't look like any of that is invested in testing the quality and features of the service. One thing interesting about the current crop of top SMS aggregators is that there isn't any information that a subscriber of their service can use to compare one aggregator to another. Which one is the fastest? Which is the most reliable? There is no benchmark to c...

Mid December I was fortunate enough to get a Seesmic invitation. After logging in, at first I didn't understand what was happening, but after watching what was going on for a while it finally clicked. Seesmic in simplest terms is a way to post video clips like a video blog. Everyone posts their clips one at a time, and they are all listed in a sequential time line. It is "Alpha" so there aren't advanced features like threaded conversations, but that will come. Right now it is one continuous time line of posts and many conversations take place in that time line, in many ways similar to Twitter. In order to sort out the chaos, as a general rule almost everyone participates in whatever is the current set of "topics". When the discussion of the current topic trickles off, the next topic pops up and everyone starts posting on the new topic. There is overlap of several discussions going on at once, and in general there are about 6 different topics that are "c...

The Apple philosophy of showing screen fonts in a way consistent with printing is opposite of the Windows way of displaying screen fonts for readability. This issue has been discussed at length in the past, but because of the recent surge in popularity of Apple laptops and desktops, I wonder if this issue will resurface as more ex-Windows users switch to the Mac and find out that the fonts might look very different to them. I am a "dual mode" user. I have a XP machine I have to use at work, and at home I have a Mac. Since I was a Windows users for a long time before I started using the Mac, my brain is "wired" to think that the Windows way of showing the fonts looks best. My XP machine is a Thinkpad X60. The Thinkpads have always had really great laptop displays that are really clear and easy to read. Because of this, I run Windows with no font smoothing. To me it looks "pixel perfect" and I can stare at the screen all day with absolutely no eye strain. W...

So apparently there are lots of users on Seesmic that just watch, but don't post. For some reason that creeps out a lot of people who think these "watchers" are doing something sinister. Here is my "video" response. For those that don't know, with Seesmic, you work it like a blog, except your posts are video clips. Imagine all the comments that form under a popular blog entry, instead of each person typing in an entry, they just record a video clip and post it. There are still conversations just like Twitter, they are just video messages. Some are really clever, some are really boring. Just like any other service, you get a mixed bag. I'll do a full overview on Seesmic sometime soon, I definitely see why it is so popular. In the social networking realm, this is about as personal as it gets. Everyone gets to see the "real you", and of course every little word you say and how you say it is what everyone else sees. Seesmic Post

Twitter Down. They have a big banner up saying "down for maintenance" with promise of some new features being put into production. This was the first time I was totally locked out of Twitter when I wanted to be on, so it made me think of what Twitter is all about, and why I like it. When you first try Twitter, it is confusing in that it isn't structured like so many other Internet destinations we visit. At first it is like listening to the thoughts of 1000's of people. It is all mixed together with no way to sort it out. Then as you figure out how to be a "follower" and also be "followed", you find that you can tap into a more personal understanding of the people that interest you. Instead of a carefully thought out statement, you get the real-moment-in-time happenings of the other participants. And those "real time" statements is what makes it fun. It is different than a traditional chat application in that your statements are added to w...

The virtual world and game interface will eventually become our default user interface to the internet. Second Life offers a way to "get away from it all" in a virtual sense, but it is interesting just how much the real world mirrors itself in second life. Second Life is no Utopia, and has its share of cultural and societal problems as well as positive opportunities. 1) Pick Pockets It was recently discovered that it is possible to steal someone's SL money which is called "Linden Dollars". Infected objects like videos that begin to play when a user is near can trigger the theft. So from the real world we have "CRIME" 2) Real Estate Speculation It is possible to buy raw "land" in second life which is just space that has not been populated with any virtual content. It is just "empty space". You can then create content and improve that space and then resell it to other players. It is a basic free market economy which makes up a big par...

Update: ====================================== After creating this original post I discovered the explanation of what is happening. Look here Apparently it is a Windows problem. The same results can be obtained with other strings like "Matrix can not lie". No conspiracy after all! ====================================== In Windows XP try this: 1) Open notepad.exe and create a new file 2) With no quotes type "bush hid the facts" (no quotes) 3) Save the file 4) Exit notepad 5) Re-Open notepad and open the file with the line from #2 above What is up with that? Regardless of your political beliefs, if this was done intentionally, it has got to be one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen in the technology world. Are we so divided as a country that individuals now resort to injecting their political beliefs into the most atomic actions they perform in their professional lives? What if I'm wearing something that is colored Red or Blue? Am I now a Crip or a Blo...