I’m a long-time user of Bloglines, a RSS feed reader. I always have a browser tab open, reading feeds throughout the day. But, after reading Gina Trapani’s article at Lifehacker, where she compares Bloglines to Google Reader, I’ve finally decided to give Google Reader a try.

Google Reader is a web-based feed aggregator/reader, just like Bloglines, but it’s user interface is done in the Gmail style.  It has its own quirks and the earlier version of it didn’t really make me want to switch, but my biggest complaint with Bloglines is that when you select a feed to read, it marks all the new entries as read–this can be really annoying with high-volume feeds with lots of new articles.

Moving my feeds over was easy: just export the OPML from Bloglines and import it into Google Reader.  Google Reader imported my feeds pretty nicely, and the whole tag/label scheme in in Google Reader is pretty nice.  Except: there’s no way to rename a tag?!  If you can, I sure can’t figure out how.

So, I’m going to give Google Reader a try, using it to read all my feeds for a week or two, to see if I really want to switch permanently.

Tags: Bloglines, Google Reader, RSS, feeds

I was given some good news this Easter: I will take over maintenance of our church’s website, The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Our Saviour. Only just over a year ago, on December 11, 2005, I was baptized, and since then I’ve been playing guitar with the Sunday school kids and now I’m taking on the responsibility of the website.

I’ve moved all the site content into a WordPress setup. This should make it easier for me to keep it up to date and possibly enlist the help of other folks to add and update content on it. Here’s a screenshot of what the site looks like today, now that the new site is live:

I may be biased, but I’d suggest if you’re looking for a Lutheran church in the area, do come visit us! All the information you need is available, right there on the website. If there’s something you can’t find, just ask.

Tags: website, Lutheran, church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Our Saviour

MySQL 5.0 for Beginners
May 7-10, 2007
Edison, NJ

Katina Lackey at MySQL sent me an email the other day letting me know of a newly scheduled MySQL training class scheduled for May 7-10 in Edison, NJ.  This is a beginners class in MySQL 5.0, instructor-led and hands-on, covering the fundamentals of MySQL and relational databases.  It’s a four-day course and costs $1,995–register before March 30th and you may be eligible for a 10% discount.

This session isn’t listed on the MySQL training schedule yet, so if you want to register, email Katina and let her know you heard about the class from my blog.

If you’re looking for a MySQL User Group that meets in Northern NJ, I’d also like to invite you to attend the Northern NJ MySQL Meetup, which meets on the first Wednesday of every month from 6:00-10:00 PM.  The meetup is free and we welcome everyone to join us–we only ask that you RSVP to let us know you’ll be coming.

Tags: MySQL, training, Edison, NJ, meetup

I blogged about Scribd back in November 2006 during their beta launch, recognizing that the bright folks behind this startup were on the right track.  In February, they announced some new features and they’re all very cool, but one really jumped out at me:

• Audio downloads. We have a very high quality text-to-speech converter and the play button icon below “download as” let’s you download the audio version as an mp3. This means you can use Scribd to convert a book to a format you can listen to on your iPod.

When they say “very high quality text-to-speech converter” they’re not kidding.  It’s not quite like having Majel Barrett-Roddenberry pretending to be the computer’s voice, but it’s closing the gap.

I’m ashamed to say I didn’t check out this feature when it was first announced!  I only caught it when the Scribd team shared some link love thanking bloggers, linking to my early blog entry.  I’m quite hypercritical and most attempts at computerized speech have been pretty disappointing (to me) over the last 10 years, but I let my curiousity get the better of me and I decided to give it a listen and I’m so glad I did.  You can either download the audio as MP3 or use the embedded Flash MP3 player widget, both in the right-hand navigation as you can see in the screenshot below:

(Click for full size.)

I bet you’re asking “so, who cares?  Text-to-speech isn’t such a big deal.”  Oh, but lets not forget what really drives commercial progress on the Interwebs–porn.  As I titled this blog entry, “rec.arts.erotica + Scribd’s text-to-speech = profit!”  To prove the concept, I’ve taken an excerpt from a lovely little story by Sorissa titled “First Date Slut” and uploaded it to Scribd (which, hopefully doesn’t violate Scribd’s terms of service as it should be considered Fair Use and not infringe Sorissa’s copyright).  Here’s the snippet of text I uploaded:

“Actually, I was hoping we could try right now to turn my evening around. Are you willing?”

“Oh, Kevin, of course I’m willing.  The evening doesn’t have to end right now. We could just stay here and talk.”

“Mei,” he said, as he put his hand on my bare shoulder. “I think we should do a bit more than just talk.  I don’t think you dressed this way, just to have me kiss you on the cheek and go home, now did you?”

“No,” I breathed, completely taken by someone who was so honest and forthright, and not afraid to get right to the point, “I was hoping we’d get to know each other a bit better.”

After much hamster-wheel spinning, as Scribd’s conversion process takes a considerable amount of time at the moment, my lovely MP3 audio transcription was produced!  You can listen to it, all 36 seconds of it:

I know, you’re saying, “who cares?  This isn’t making me hot.”  But, how long do you think it’ll take someone to model a few popular porn star voices and texturize it so it converts the text in a way that is hot?  Would you pay, say, $0.99, to hear your favorite pornstar read your favorite erotic story?  Well, a mechanized version of, but who’s counting, right?

Like I said, keep an eye on these guys–they’re smart, talented and they’re moving fast.  Just check out the progression of their site header:

  
(Old -> new.)

Tags: Scribd, audio, text-to-speech, porn

Jason Calacanis twitters:

JasonCalacanis Anyone know of phone that’s does flash/video/youtube? Blackberry doesn’t support right?

I don’t know for sure, but I’d look at OpenMoko.  According to their wiki, OpenMoko will be a smartphone platform based on Linux, leveraging the work that the TomTom folks have done for the Samsung 2410 application processor.

According to Emmy Huang, Product Manager for the Flash Player at Adobe, who blogged back in May 2006, there will be a Flash Player 9 for Linux.  According to the developer blog, Mike Melanson announced that the final version is now available for Linux x86 back in January 2007.

It would make a lot of sense for the OpenMoko team and Adobe to work together to make sure there’s a Flash Player for OpenMoko-based smartphones–it’s a win-win for both.  Of course, the world has a long history of ignoring really smart strategic plays due to any number of stupid reasons, so naturally there’s no guarantees that it’ll happen, but the possibility and opportunity are certainly there.

According to this announcement, they were planning to sell the FIC Neo1973 handset (which would run OpenMoko) for US$350 in March 2007:

2007-03-11 Phase 1: Official Developer Launch
We will sell the Neo1973 direct from openmoko.com for US$350 plus shipping. Sales and orders will be worldwide. We are specifically targeting open source community developers.

Perhaps you can pull some strings or use your celebrity status to get your hands on a few developer units for us?  I doubt I could … I’m just a nobody.  :-)

Update 2007-03-19: Frank de Lange on the OpenMoko mailing list informs me that Adobe’s Flash Player EULA expressly prohibits use of the Flash Player on embedded/mobile devices, anyhow:

3. Restrictions.

3.1  Web Player Prohibited Devices. You may not Use any Web Player on any non-PC device or with any embedded or device version of any operating system. For the avoidance of doubt, and by example only, you may not use a Web Player on any (a) mobile devices, set top boxes (STB), handhelds, phones, web pads, tablets and Tablet PCs that are not running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, game consoles, TVs, DVD players, media centers (excluding Windows XP Media Center Edition and its successors), electronic billboards or other digital signage, internet appliances or other internet-connected devices, PDAs, medical devices, ATMs, telematic devices, gaming machines, home automation systems, kiosks, remote control devices, or any other consumer electronics device, (b) operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television systems or (c) other closed system devices.

I really wonder what the rationale was behind this restriction.  My guess is that Adobe wanted to strongarm mobile and embedded device manufacturers into paying to license the technology?  Who knows, but as more and more network computing capability is available on mobile/embedded devices, it’s a pity there’s such a restriction.

Tags: Jason Calacanis, OpenMoko, smartphone, Adobe, Flash, Linux

The shiny new toy at SXSW this year was Twitter, a “social away message,” where you send all of your “followers” a short (140 character) message.  I’d joined Twitter (you can follow me here) back in January 2007, long before SXSW, and was frustrated by the lack of local Twitterers–those in and around northern NJ.  Of course, I figured this had to be a function of my living on the bleeding edge of technology: the late adopters would eventually catch up and catch on and I would finally discover some geek neighbors.

If anything, SXSW attracts geeks from around the country and around the world and the “SXSW Interactive” part ended two days ago.  I’m guessing that folks who are likely to check out Twitter after hearing about it at SXSW have done so by now.  Right?

One of the cool things about Web 2.0 is the likelihood of open APIs, which Twitter has.  Open APIs combined with Google Maps yields a very simple but effective mashup, Twittermap, which plots public Twitter activity on a map.  Perfect, I thought, I can finally discover what other geeks are nearby!  Look below for a screenshot of the Twittermap of northern New Jersey:

(Click for full-sized version.)

Disappointing doesn’t even begin to describe this.

Tags: SXSW, Twitter, Twittermap, New Jersey, geeks

So, I received an invitation to 8apps this morning, and it appears to be another Rails-based web app.  Those of you who are familiar with BaseCamp probably have a good idea as to what features are currently available.  Right now, only 3 out of the “8apps” have been implemented: Handshake (social network), Orchestrate (task management), Blueprint (brainstorming).  It’s an interesting approach, dividing the functionality out into separate applications–I wonder what impact it has on overall usability.  Generally, design gravitates towards related functionality being neatly integrated, not separated.

If you’d like to check out 8apps, leave a comment here or otherwise let me know you’re interested and include what email address you want the invitation sent to.  Once you’re in, don’t forget to add me as a contact.

Tags: 8apps, Web 2.0, Rails

I was playing with the WebEx recorder and wondered if I could do something similar with VNC on Win32. It turns out that RealVNC 3.3.7 libvncauth and rfbproxy compile under Cygwin and can be used to capture a VNC session’s video pretty easily. But, what do you do with the recorded file and its non-standard format? Google didn’t turn up much help, so now that I’ve figured out how to convert it, I figured I’d share what I learned with everyone.

I’m going to assume that you can figure out how to compile and install stuff under Cygwin. If you don’t, it’s probably too difficult for me to explain in a general manner. To get started, you’ll need the following packages installed:

• mjpegtools (for ppmtoy4m)
• ffmpeg

First, capture your VNC session with rfbproxy. I saved mine to a file called test.rec. Once you’re done, you’ll want to convert it to YUV4MPEG format:

$ rfbproxy -x test.rec | ppmtoy4m > test.y4m

Then, you want to convert the YUV4MPEG to MPEG format:

$ ffmpeg -i test.y4m test.mpg

There you have it! Simple as that … if, you can get all the necessary prerequisites compiled, which is definitely the hard part on Cygwin/Win32. It’s a lot easier on Linux, where you should be able to just pick up the binary packages for your distribution and install them.

Tags: Win32, Cygwin, VNC, rfbproxy, MPEG

Last night I attended the March
2007 LOPSA North Jersey cluster group meeting at the Park Wood Diner in
Maplewood, NJ. LOPSA-NJ is what was formerly known as $GROUPNAME, an
organization for system administrators. There were eight of us there and you
can see us in these photos that were taken:

(Click to enlarge.)

(Click to enlarge.)

The meeting started in typical geek fashion: a bunch of us exchanged contact
information by IR beaming and Bluetooth sending them between our phones. We
then moved onto the agenda of discussing key tools that we find valuable which
started a quick discussion of screen, a tool that no
Unix-based sysadmin should be without. The conversation then shifted focus to
issue and bug tracking systems and their role in managing work queues. It
seems that the preferred system for issue tracking is RT. The awful monstrosity known as Remedy was maligned by everyone who had
the misfortune of having it inflicted upon them.

Tom Limoncelli wrote up his own notes for the Maplewood cluster group, as well as William Bilancio for the Princeton cluster group.

If you are a system administrator in the New Jersey area and are
looking to meet others for socializing, networking or to share your
experiences, you might want to consider joining us at our next meeting.

Tags:
LOPSA,
$GROUPNAME,
New Jersey,
system administration