|
|
By Rip Rowan on
11/14/2008 9:56 AM
I was looking for a power antenna replacement for my car today, and the top site returned for my search was Installer.com. The web site is so horrific I refuse to shop there. I opened it and immediately closed my browser like I’d accidentally clicked a pr0n link. It’s like walking into a store with ultra-bright lights playing loud death metal, with salesmen shouting at me – I’d walk right out. SEO is good, but someone needs to seriously reconsider this web site.
|
By Rip Rowan on
11/14/2008 9:38 AM
|
By Rip Rowan on
11/14/2008 7:54 AM
This is probably much funnier for me than for others, having actually played Zork compulsively on an actual Apple ][+. Lyrics here.
|
By Rip Rowan on
11/13/2008 4:40 PM
This morning Google announced its new video chat capability with an eye-catching link at the top of the Gmail window. Clicking the link takes you to this page, where you can see a nifty video that makes video chat look pretty cool. But the link to “Get Started” takes you to a dead page (http://mail.google.com/videochat). The interesting thing isn’t that the service coughed up blood on its first day out. The interesting thing is that, ten hours later, http://mail.google.com/videochat is still 404. It can be hard to revive an overwhelmed application, but it’s really, really easy to put up a page to let users know what’s going on. I wonder why Google is leaving this page 404? It doesn’t inspire confidence.
|
By Rip Rowan on
11/12/2008 12:06 PM
The DotNetNuke Blog module has had a checkered history with Permalinks. The earliest versions did not use them, so old blog entries never had a Permalink created for them. Instead, links to entries were generated programmatically, on the fly.
It’s been trouble ever since.
Read More »
|
By Rip Rowan on
11/3/2008 10:09 AM
Taxonomy is one of the least understood weapons available for SEO. We all know the basics of effective SEO:
- URLs constructed with relevant terms, avoiding parameterization
- Each page can be accessed by only one URL
- Effective use of keywords in the title tag
- Use of keywords in H1 tags
- Links back to the page from other pages
How does taxonomy fit into all of this?
Read More »
|
|
|
By Rip Rowan on
10/31/2008 7:21 AM
 Well, that didn’t take long.
HP is already rolling out its new line of multi-touch enabled PCs. Take a look at the advertisement and see what you think. Here’s what I foresee: the thing is cool looking, and multi-touch is certainly popular. So they’ll sell. HP includes a touch-enabled application suite, which I’m guessing will suck generally compared with the applications it’s designed to replace. Some people will use the suite, others won’t. People who use a personal computer as a toy will like it, people who use it for work, not so much. Here’s what they don’t show. You have to put the thing close – in easy reach – so it won’t “sit right” for some people. You’re always reaching for the screen, then back to the keyboard. And really, most of the time, you’re using the mouse and keyboard. I’m betting that the allure will fade. But, then again, a lot of people thought that the mouse was a fad. I’m interested in your opinions. Check out the PC and post a comment. Let me know what you think!
|
By Rip Rowan on
10/29/2008 10:28 AM
In a previous post I stated that the Blog module would offer an interim 3.6 release to provide users with a few more features before the team undertook the full-on rewrite to move the module to version 4. Well, as it turns out, plans change. The team has decided to go directly to version 4. There will likely be a 3.5.1 release to patch up any bugs that surface after 3.5 is released, but no 3.6 “feature upgrade”. This is really great news. The team has grand plans for this module which are currently stymied by a few factors, including a lot of old deadwood in the code and poor developer productivity in the older VS 2003 environment. Of course, the key reason is that DotNetNuke has officially left the .NET 1.1 environment so all new releases must be based on .NET 2.0.
|
By Rip Rowan on
10/29/2008 7:02 AM
 Last night I was desperately seeking help for some DotNetNuke core classes, and I came up short. Fortunately I was able to resolve my problem with a little help from Antonio, but I still wished I had a better help file available.
Well, today I discovered that Ernst Peter Tamminga has put together an MSDN-style help system for DotNetNuke. Exactly what I was looking for. If you do serious DNN development, this is a must-have. Thanks Ernst!
|
By Rip Rowan on
10/21/2008 6:56 AM
Just read a great article about the future of Flash on the iPhone. At its core the article is dead-on: the issue with running Flash apps on an iPhone isn’t technical, it’s business. Apple wants to own the multi-touch UI paradigm and is fiercely guarding it. Flash apps, written for the WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer) UI metaphor, will break the seamlessness of the multi-touch experience on the iPhone and dilute the value proposition. I think that’s a fair and true assessment. About a year ago I wrote about the JazzMutant Dexter: a brilliant multi-touch mixing device for use with most popular DAW software. On publishing it, I realized that there are a great many people who don’t understand the fact that multi-touch isn’t a technical issue, it’s a UI issue. A lot of the comments on the Dexter review heralded the imminent arrival of multi-touch displays for the PC, at which time anyone could just “mix with their fingers” on a multi-touch screen using their current software. The notion is absurd, unless one happens to have needle-sized fingers. There is a notion out there in the Big World that one day, multi-touch screens are going to replace keyboards and mice. It’s true that iPhones – and their multi-touch user interface - are compelling. But if you think that multi-touch displays are going to replace the WIMP metaphor, you’re gravely mistaken. They can’t.
Read More »
|
By Rip Rowan on
10/16/2008 11:56 AM
Daniel Miller turned me on to ZuiPrezi, a nonlinear presentation environment built using Adobe Flex. It’s really cool, but not just because it knocks PowerPoint back on its butt. It’s cool because of what it suggests about the future of content presentation.
Read More »
|
By Rip Rowan on
10/16/2008 8:42 AM
After a few months delay, the Blog team is set to release the 3.5.0 version of the DNN Blog module.
I won’t go into the details of the reasons behind the holdup. Our team leader has done a good job of that here, if you’re interested. Suffice to say, sometimes, there are circumstances beyond one’s control.
I am not sure at this point if there will still be a 3.6 interim, or if we’ll proceed directly to version 4. I’m sure everyone knows my opinion! At any rate, it’s good to be back on track.
|
By Rip Rowan on
10/4/2008 1:10 AM
Last night, Joe Biden said of global warming, “I think it’s clearly man-made,” while his opponent, Sarah Palin, said that she believes that the evidence shows that both human and cyclical changes account for climate change. So, which one is the scientist, and which is the religious fanatic? But before I get into the question of climate change orthodoxy, the exchange between the two caused me to reflect on my observations of pollution in Europe. It seems to me that many in this country think that Europe must lead the way in cleaning the planet, and the the US is lagging hopelessly behind. Hardly.
Read More »
|
By Rip Rowan on
9/29/2008 12:55 PM
I’ve been away for a few weeks touring the western Mediterranean. Stops included Barcelona, Marseilles, Monaco, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Corsica, Gibraltar, and Tangier. Photos of the trip are here on my Picasa site. Highlights? Relaxing on the French Riviera. Touring the sites of Rome like the Pantheon and St. Peter’s Basilica. Verifying that the Leaning Tower actually leans. Stopping for a photo-op with the “apes” atop the cliffs of Gibraltar. Walking the narrow streets of Tetouan. Spending a couple of days soaking up Barcelona, including the simply astonishing Sagrada Familia. But the best part was spending two weeks with a couple of dear friends, my CWSS compatriots Russell Lutz and David Gaw. Good times.
|
By Rip Rowan on
8/17/2008 3:22 PM
The DNN Blog team has announced plans to release an interim 3.6 release to provide some final changes before undertaking the effort to rewrite the code for the version 4.x release. The 3.6 feature set has not been made official, but current plans are to add support for BlogML, tagging, 301 redirects, and custom RSS URLs. All effort will be made to minimize scopecreep, since it is a high priority to move forward with 4.x, but we felt that these critical changes needed to happen sooner than could be provided by 4.x.
|
By Rip Rowan on
7/30/2008 11:37 PM
There's a fascinating discussion taking place right now over at Marginal Revolution (and on the WSJ blog) centered around a probability problem I call the "2 daughters" problem posed by Leonard Mlodinow in his book "The Drunkard's Walk." I've quoted Alex Tabarrok's summary of the problem here: Suppose that a family has two children. What is the probability that both are girls? Ok, easy. Probability of a girl is one half, probabilities are independent thus probability of two girls is 1/2*1/2=1/4. Now what is the probability of having two girls if at least one of the children is a girl? A little bit harder. Temptation is to say that if one is a girl the probability of the other being a girl is 1/2 so the answer is 1/2. That's wrong because you are not told which of the two children is a girl and that makes a difference. Better approach is to note that without any additional information there are four possibilities of equal likelihood for the sex of two children (B,B), (G,B), (B,G), (G,G). If we know that at least one is a girl we can remove (B,B) so three equally likely possibilities, (G,B), (B,G), (G,G), remain and of these 1 has two girls so the answer is 1/3. Ok, now here is the stumper. What is the probability of a family having two girls if one of the children is a girl named Florida? You'll want to have a look at the discussion over at Marginal Revolution (answers at WSJ), because there's a lot of interesting and informed opinion being shared. Then I'll share an even more bizarre example.
Read More »
|
By Rip Rowan on
7/6/2008 12:03 AM
I really like Windows Live Writer. But what's up with the installer? 
Why should it take long to determine which Windows Live applications are installed? Hey, Microsoft developers, I've got a new word for you: manifest. Would it be too hard to just have a file that contains the Windows Live applications and their versions? I'm sure it would take a lot less time to "Search". 
Oh, yeah. A loooong time. Just under 15 minutes. Seriously, folks. If you can't write better apps than that, I have grave concerns for the future of your company.
|
By Rip Rowan on
7/5/2008 12:49 PM
I stumbled across a bit of text that clarified an earlier discussion on tagging:
Hierarchical: indicates a parent-child (vertical) relationship like cat and dog are children of mammals)
Association: indicates a "similar to" (horizontal) relationship like mammals is similar to animals.
Bingo! This is what people think of when they create categories and tags. Categories are hierarchical, and tags are associative. The problem is - they're both right and wrong.
Read More »
|