Earthling

Another Friday afternoon's worth of heh:

• How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie - A pie recipe worthy of enjoying the misfortunes of others, complete with step-by-step before, during and after photos. [via splodinvark]
  
• Use your PC and Webcam as a security camera setup - All in all, a very useful how-to article on a nice security setup. The heh comes several pages down, where you get to see actual images taken by this person's camera.
  
• What geeks will be calling cookouts from now on - [via Brian]
  
• Roll your own Big Mac - "Full price is for chumps." How to build a better Big Mac from dollar menu items.
  
• Raider Nation Encounters Problems - My NFL team is in trouble, and this Craigslist entry really says it best. Sigh. [via Gregg, a Chargers fan and suspected Raider hater]
  
• Zombie Rights March Flickr set - "Zombie rights march to city hall that was protested by pirates"
  
• Camellia Grill Love Notes - After coming across this photo of love notes to the Camellia Grill in New Orleans, I just read the good news that it is planning on reopening in 2007. My love note to the C.G. would probably focus on the wonders of liquid butter poured from syrup pitchers.
  
• (late entrant/update:)Giant bug in Google Earth - I mean bug like insect, not bug like programming error. Creepy.[via Ken]
  

Posted by dave coustan at 2:11 PM |

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I'm headed to San Francisco next week for the first two of eleven public neighborhood forums EarthLink and Google are holding about the city Wi-Fi project. The goal of the meetings is to tell you more about our proposal and hear your ideas. The first meeting will be held on October 3 at the Ocean Avenue Presbyterian Church at 32 Ocean Ave. between Mission and Alemany, and the second will be October 4 at Southeast Community Facility at 1800 Oakdale Ave. at Phelps St. Both will start at 6 p.m.

If you have questions or ideas about the plan, it'll be a great opportunity to meet people from EarthLink and Google in person (and yours truly) and be a part of the conversation. There's more information and a full schedule here.

Posted by dave coustan at 3:30 PM |

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School- and company-based social network Facebook just opened up their registration to just about anyone who wants to join. Since I was previously not a facebook-er, I decided to sign up and time the registration process to see how long it would take if you filled in all of the profile fields they give you, giving at least minimal thought to your answers.

Elapsed time: 12 minutes, 9 seconds.

This includes registration, uploading a photo, the full profile, and the required e-mail and SMS verification. At 9 minutes, 54 seconds, I was done with the profile setup. I even put in some fake information to make the process a little faster and not have to think about whether I want my physical address available to friends. That all feels a little on the long side for something that's supposed to be fun and social.

While you can skip as many profile fields as you want, there's no "express lane" path that only gives you what Facebook feels are the best profile attributes to start with. So if you want to shave time off of the signup process, you'd have to go through the whole thing and just pick and choose what you want to answer. I'd love to see something where if you chose, you'd be presented with a few indicative or useful questions to answer, and then you're sent straight to the verification and "you're good" screens. I tend to flail or bail when I get caught in a long profile setup purgatory.

Continue reading "Zero To Facebook in 12 Minutes"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:15 PM |

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Between BlogOrlando last week and an IABC panel discussion on Blogging today, I'm a little out of my usual rhythm on Earthling. Rather than let the day completely go without anything new, I'm switching over to linklist format today, to share a few from what's come through the filter of my bookmarking habits lately. It starts off with a straggler from my most recent "heh" list:

• A true mobile computing platform - I was saving that punchline for Friday, and then forgot about it. I think I found this at Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht's blog about teaching and technology in China. I've also bookmarked a blog entry from Jeff about how dating has changed for teens.
  
• Ask Farecast when to buy - Farecast is kind of like a mortgage rate tracker for Airfares. It tells you when fares are likely to go up or down, and helps you find your best window to buy in.
  
• TurnHere Atlanta - Interesting video-based city guides delivered by locals. I've bumped into the guy who does the Little 5 Points Atlanta guide many times around town.
  
• Sizeasy gives you a reference to how big or small things are - Lifehacker.com brings a gem to anyone who deals with physical objects they don't get to see in person. At Sizeasy, you enter the dimensions of an object and it helps you compare it to reference points like a deck of cards or a wine bottle.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:58 PM |

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I've been to a few unconferences as an attendee, but BlogOrlando was the first one I've done where I've led one of the discussions. I titled my discussion "How did you get this job, and what does a corporate blogger do all day?" because those are the two most common questions I get when I tell people that I'm EarthLink's corporate blogger. As for the the second question, other than the boring straightforward maintenance kind of stuff, I think the number one thing I spend my time on is something like being a beat cop. I try to build my own on-the-ground body of knowledge about everything that's going on in the company. I have as many conversations around the offices as I can. I'm pretty nosy, and I ask a lot of questions.

The BlogOrlando crowd (photographed and uploaded by Josh Hallett)

Like many rookie conversation leaders, I probably spent too much of my time on the topic set-up and not enough in getting group discussion going(group discussion over monologue being one of the defining features of unconferences). But once we got things rolling, we had an interesting conversation about the role of blogs within companies. A lot of people wanted to know about my experiences at EarthLink, and where and how I fit within the organization. One participant mentioned that her company has set up a separate "community" division that encompasses both product-related and communication-related social media stuff. I think the general consensus in the room is that where to situate a blog within a company will vary depending on what it's being used for and the culture of the company itself.

When I presented at Web Wednesday in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, many of the questions were about the various ways blogging can be used at companies other than a straighforward single-author corporate blog. Perhaps because the audience at BlogOrlando had a significant PR professional bent to it, lots of the questions were about how the process works at EarthLink, and how a similar setup might work elsewhere.

Continue reading "Highlights from BlogOrlando"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:03 PM |

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I'm writing from the BlogOrlando (un)conference this morning, where I'll be leading a discussion on Corporate Blogging. There's a conference blog, and attendees will be uploading their photos all day here.

I've also got another Friday heh list for you this morning:

• How Not To Become A Blogger - In honor of BlogOrlando and to do my part to curb the burgeoning blogger population, this list from wikiHow gives you several good thoughts to ponder before you take up with a new blogging habit.
  
• The Popularity Dialer - Several steps beyond having a friend ring your cellphone to get you out of a potentially difficult situation, this site lets you set up a customized pre-recorded cellphone call at the date and time of your choice. You can even choose the scenario.
  
• MySpace Custom Style Remover - "..if you've ever used MySpace, you've definitely been exposed to the CSS atrocities that some users employ on the site. I'm not one to discourage a little creative styling, but when you start worrying that a MySpace page might trigger a seizure, you know something has to be done..." This script for Firefox at least puts things back to the standard MySpace look, taking away one of the better excuses for why you haven't gotten around to visiting your friend's MySpace page.
  
• Hotel Bed Jumping - BedJump.com is a blog devoted to hotel beds, the jumping that's done atop them, and the people who do the jumping. [via Scobleizer]
  
• How To Explain RSS The Oprah Way - I got a 'heh' out loud from this article that goes through a helpful explanation of RSS, making it friendlier by claiming the acronym as "Ready for Some Stories." [via Gregg]

Posted by dave coustan at 8:10 AM |

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There's now a way to keep an eye on the sources in your Reader from your myEarthLink Start Page. The new Reader widget shows you all of your recently updated Reader feeds at a glance. It's a similar view to what you get on the side within Reader itself, and when you click a source it takes you to that source's content in Reader.

The myReader blog has more information and a quick add button to get it to appear on your myEarthLink Start Page. And if you're new to Reader, there's more background on what it is and what it does over here.

Posted by dave coustan at 8:49 AM |

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"Tagging" in the web context means attaching words or phrases to things as a way to keep them organized. When I tag a URL as I bring it into myFavorites, I create a way to find that URL later, based on the word or words I chose to remember it with. It has benefits for groups and sets of information, but what I'm most interested in in this blog entry is the benefit to the person doing the tagging. To me, the power of tagging for the individual is in it's flexibility and openness, but also because it's actively associative. It involves a split second of deliberation on my part as to what to tag something, and that makes all the difference when it comes to recalling what's there later. I've called your set of tags your overflowing costanza wallet in previous entries.

In this way I see tags partly as mnemonic devices. Because I went through the process of deciding what words to attach to this thing (photo, url, bookmark, etc.), it's likely that when I look over my list of tags, I'll remember what kinds of things I put in each one. It doesn't take long; once you've gone through the process a few times, the act of tagging becomes about as trivial as hitting "save".

In a blog entry about why people tag, Matt McAllister makes the case that tagging is still an edge activity and has too little return to interest regular folk. He thinks it should be more automatic, and more informed by what your browser history knows about you. He writes:

What’s missing from the tagging world is automatic learning. People shouldn’t have to find the ’save’ button, click it, fill in tags, and hit save. My browser history says a lot about what interests me. The time I spend on a page says a lot about what I value. Any social activities I initiate or receive can inform a machine what the world around me thinks about.

The influencer is clearly willing to work harder to ensure information flows through the Internet in sensible ways, but everyone else will need something more personal to happen as a result of tagging to warrant the amount of effort to do it.

Continue reading "There's No Shortcut To Remembering Stuff"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:54 PM |

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There are lots of people blogging in New Orleans. I got to meet a handful of them in person at Rocky's Pizza on Magazine Street last Thursday.

More photos from the dinner in this Flickr set

I tend to be kind of a slow blogger. By Saturday Maitri had already written a good and lengthy blog entry about the evening, and here it is Tuesday and I'm finally getting my thoughts together. We talked about the details and roadmap for the EarthLink Wi-Fi project, and I heard from several folks at the table including Schroeder and Maitri about flooded areas that would benefit from affordable Wi-Fi access. Alan and Ray also told me about how they and other bloggers have been pitching in to help gut homes.

It was also nice just to sit down and meet everyone and hear about their jobs and their Katrina stories and what their everyday lives are like today. Here's a list of the blogs of the people who stopped by on Thursday:

• Maitri
  
• Alan (and ThinkNOLA)
  
• Schroeder
  
• Ray
  
• Sarah
  
• Oyster
  
• Becky

Thanks to everyone who came out to dinner, and to Alan and Maitri for setting it up and getting the word out. I hope we can do it again soon. Please put me on the notification list for your next geek dinner!

Read on for my thoughts about local blogging in New Orleans.

Continue reading "Hyperlocal in NOLA"

Posted by dave coustan at 4:10 PM |

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It was great to meet Mid-City New Orleans residents Editor B and Michael Homan. They invited me for a conversation at Finn McCool's, an Irish pub in Mid-City that also has set up its own free Wi-Fi access. They're both rebuilding there, and wanted to show me what their neighborhood is like and talk to me about their interest in having EarthLink include the area in future expansion of Wi-Fi service in New Orleans.

Finn McCool's was about a 10 minute drive from the French Quarter. On my drive over, I noticed that although the area did sustain terrible damage from Katrina, there were lots of people and lots of activity. Unlike some of the neighborhoods I saw on my trip in May, I could see the signs that Mid-City has a lot going on. We started out on foot and I had planned to take some photos, but it started to rain and we had to head inside. If you want to get some more context for what the area is like, you can check out Editor B's Flickr photos tagged with mid-city.

Although things are coming back in Mid-City, rebuilding is still an uphill climb. Michael has been trying to get a phone line hooked up, and was told by the phone company it would take them 2-3 years. People seem to rely on internet-enabled bars and cafes and mobile devices as a means of communication and connectivity. It seems like for household connectivity, affordable Wi-Fi would really make sense there, since it doesn't rely on infrastructure repair so much.

I didn't get a chance to ask him about it, but Michael and his 11 year old daughter just finished a great video about the city's rebuilding, a year after Katrina. She has her own blog as well.

Editor B told me about how a blog entry he wrote about a grocery store overrun with rats got discovered first by the local paper and then the national tv press. Many of the bloggers I spoke to expressed a similar sentiment that they don't really write with a big anonymous audience in mind; in many cases they write to share local information or to publish something and direct it towards one specific person or organization. But increasingly, they're aware that their stuff is getting read by a much broader audience, including academics and journalists in other parts of the country.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:07 PM |

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It's early on a Saturday morning and I'm outside of my usual blogging schedule, but I received the following update from the product team and wanted to get it out to Earthling as soon as I could. Several commenters on the previous update have been asking patiently (and a few not so patiently) for more information, so I'm publishing this now and will catch up with everything else -- including any pending comments that may come in over the weekend -- when I'm back in the office on Monday.

"As Dave mentioned last week, we've been working to tune the configuration of dead domain handling to address the issues some EarthLink customers have been experiencing during the rollout. We've been able to mitigate a number of issues, but we've also recognized that some of them such as certain problems with VPN access are not easily addressed through configuration changes in our dead domain system. For customers who are still experiencing issues, we've set aside a pair of servers that will remain outside of our standard DNS system. If you have a need to stay clear of our dead domain handling, just point your DNS servers to:

207.69.188.171 (west coast)

207.69.188.172 (east coast)

If you're west of the Mississippi, use the west coast DNS server as your primary and the east coast as secondary. And vice-versa for those of you in the eastern U.S.

This is a self-service solution, and it creates a mechanism for those users who choose to opt out to do so. These servers have been set aside to resolve problems you may be having, but this isn't something that you'll be able to get customer support help with."

-Ken Womack
Senior Product Manager, Search

Update (9/29): Our support team has created a set of Knowledge Base articles about how to make the change:

DNS Opt Out Servers
http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?article=187117

How to Specify DNS Information in Mac OS X
http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?article=173670

How to Specify DNS Information in Windows 2000
http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?article=187078

How to Specify DNS Information in Windows XP
http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?article=187109

Posted by dave coustan at 9:39 AM |

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I may not get the chance until Monday to write up my Web Wednesday talk from yesterday and everything I've been up to since. I've met a lot of great people and heard some interesting stories about technology and rebuilding and daily life. I've got a lot to say about the trip when I get back. I figured while I'm here it's better to spend as much time as I can doing things and meeting people, and then finding time back home to write it all up. I'm off-duty today (other than meeting some local bloggers for dinner tonight hopefully) and then heading back to Atlanta on Friday. I'll be catch-up blogging the trip on Monday and Tuesday, and in the meantime, I've been uploading my photos to this Flickr set.

Posted by dave coustan at 9:47 AM |

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There was a good crowd last night for the Louisiana Technology Council's EarthLink Wi-Fi Tech Tuesday event. Donald Berryman, President of EarthLink Municipal Networks, explained the roots of our municipal Wi-Fi initiative, how it came about in New Orleans, how the network will work, and what it will mean for residents and businesses in New Orleans. It was a pretty comprehensive presentation, and addressed everything from strategic to practical to technical issues. There were lots of good questions afterwards, and it felt like those who came in with an incomplete understanding of the project left with a better sense of what it's all about. I enjoyed the opportunity to meet new CTO Mark Kurt, and speak to many of the members of the LTC as well.

Don presenting to the LTC

One of the more interesting topics Don covered are the special radios (4210's) that can be mounted in police, fire, and rescue vehicles and draw power from the vehicle. This makes an individual vehicle into a mobile hotspot, allowing rescue personnel to download things like blueprints and building plans at the scene, and a group of these vehicles can provide a temporarily internet access zone wherever it's needed.

There's now a toll-free number for New Orleans citizens to use for information and support on the network, 866-936-WiFi, and a site that has more information about the rollout and a place to sign up to be notified when it's up and running.

Posted by dave coustan at 3:16 PM |

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The official announcement on the expanded DSL and Home Phone Service came out this morning (see this blog entry for more background and links). Unlike other types of DSL and Voice over IP phone service, you don't need an adapter between your phones and standard wall jacks, it works even when the household power goes out, and it offers speeds up to 8 mbps.

The service is coming to the 8 new cities -- Atlanta, Chicago, LA, Miami, NYC, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Washington DC -- and the serviceable areas in the original cities of Seattle, Dallas, San Francisco, and San Jose are expanding as well. We'll continue to expand the coverage areas in these cities through the end of the year.

I just called 1-877-ELNK-VOICE to check availability at my house in Atlanta and see what the qualification process is like as a regular customer. I already use EarthLink TrueVoice, so when I got on the line with the rep. I specifically asked about the new DSL and Home Phone Service. I gave them my address and the number for my current landline (which I'm about ready to dump). It was a pretty quick process and the rep told me that I'm not serviceable today but should be soon, and I'll be notified via e-mail when my address is serviceable.

If you're in any of the cities above, you can check to see if it's available to you here or if you'd like to get the service on an existing number, call 877-ELNK-VOICE. There's more information on the features, pricing, and service at www.earthlink.net/voice/bundles/dslhomephone and in this blog entry from March.

Posted by dave coustan at 12:32 PM |

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Hello from New Orleans! I'm borrowing some internets from Blake at the Voodoo Ventures offices this morning. Here's a photo from the drive in:

Posted by dave coustan at 11:56 AM |

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Next week EarthLink DSL and Home Phone service will be expanding to the additional cities we announced back in March. This is the combination high-speed DSL and voice (VoIP) service that works through regular phone jacks with no adapters needed. I'll have more detail on this soon.

Update: Jon Van at the Chicago Tribune wrote a piece today about the service coming to Chicago.

Posted by dave coustan at 9:01 PM |

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A quick on-the-road note -- I'll be in New Orleans all next week, so I'll be blogging but may be off the usual schedule a bit. On Tuesday evening Donald Berryman, President of EarthLink Municipal Networks will be speaking at the Louisiana Technology Council's Tech Tuesday event. I'm giving a talk about Earthling and corporate blogging the following morning. I'll also be meeting some more of the EarthLink Wi-Fi team and getting a quick tour of the New Orleans project.

I'll be catching up with some of the people I met in May while I'm there. Blake and Chris of Huckabuck are auctioning off their web 2.0 search application on eBay (it ends today) and I hear they have several big new projects on the way. Alan has been very prolific with his ThinkNOLA project, and the associated Wiki is a really useful resource. I'm hoping to sit down with him to hear about their work and the outcomes of the Rising Tide conference. I also hope to catch Brian before he heads off to a conference in SF next week.

And I'm also looking forward to meeting Peter at Trumpet Advertising, and saying hello to Earthling reader Dave, who has been following the Wi-Fi project. I'm talking to Alan about trying to organize some kind of meetup for local bloggers and Earthling readers. Drop me an e-mail if you're interested.

Posted by dave coustan at 11:51 AM |

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Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and concerns about our dead domain handling system (see this blog entry for the background), through blog comments, e-mails, and in the conversation on Slashdot. Please don't take my relative absence from the back-and-forth discussions as anything but my interest in being a good listener. Behind the scenes, I've been tracking down individual technical issues, taking notes on the concerns and issues expressed, and helping the project team and EarthLink as a whole stay on top of the conversation.

The goal of the system is to provide a helpful error page in place of a dead-end, and we think this is a benefit to the vast majority of those who use EarthLink internet access. You probably won't see too many comments from most of the users who are helped by it, because by design it's just a brief signpost to help you on your way to where you're trying to go. But we recognize that not every user has the same needs and expectations, and those who weighed in on the previous blog entry don't see it as a benefit. We're listening, and we're working on some changes that should minimize some of the problems that have been raised.

We're continuing to tune how the system works in response to our analysis and the feedback you've provided. Part of the reason we're rolling the changes out to a small number of servers at a time is to catch and correct any anomalies before we scale the service to a larger user base. I want to take a moment to run down some of the major questions that have come up. Read on for the list.

Continue reading "Update on Dead Domain Handling"

Posted by dave coustan at 10:26 AM |

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Just as I was saving a site into myFavorites yesterday, I got an IM from EarthLinker Gregg H. noting the very same article. The headline was "Remember The Milk Adds Locations". I was in the middle of adding the tag "[this is good]",which is a practice I've borrowed from Vox, when the message popped up from Gregg. It was a total online jinx moment. I think he owes me a coke.

I think we both liked it because it's a small but powerful way that location information has made something easy even easier and more useful, without being obtrusive or needlessly fancy. I'm notoriously wrong about predicting the course of history, even in the short term. But I can imagine that in a year's time anything that can be crossed with location will be, including both where you are and where the things you might want are. And by then, the best ideas will have bubbled up. We've always(well, since at least 2000) assumed that getting a coupon to pop up on your phone near your favorite coffee shop would be useful, but i imagine a year from now we'll start to see some really good examples of what's best served by the combination of knowing: (a)where the services/goods/people/reviews/content/things you want are and (b)where you are currently in relation to them or where you want to be. it probably even calls for some rethinking of familiar interfaces.

Online to-do lists site Remember The Milk is a good example, because the way they've added integration with Google Maps lets you organize your to-do list and your day based on where your tasks are in relation to each other. They've added space as a dimension to something that was previously just a linear, list-based tool. If you're office-bound, it's not all that helpful but if as part of your job, your errands, or your daily routine you traipse all over town, it can be a really useful tool.

Flickr's new geotagging system is also a decent example, although I haven't yet figured out the reasons I'll be using it other than how damn cool it is. I'd think on the citizen journalism side, finding "photos near" a location could be useful when you want to find alternate views of an event. Or if you were sightseeing and you wanted to know what's worth seeing wherever you're going, that could be a good use too. They did have lots of usage right away -- according to their blog within hours their system had over 1.6 million photos geotagged.

As an aside, lately I've found Lifehacker is on some kind of hot streak. They're ferreting out really useful sites, lists, ideas, and conversations, and I find myself bookmarking a high percentage of what they publish. If you don't have them in your Reader I highly recommend their feed.

Posted by dave coustan at 4:30 PM |

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Back at the end of May we announced a challenge for podcast listeners to help us make advertising better by coming up with their own EarthLink ads. Today, the winners have been announced.

Congratulations to David Ippolito, Steve Webb (and his son Timothy), and Dennis Gray -- the three winners in the EarthLink Make Advertising Better Challenge. They'll each receive $2000.00, and the finalists will each receive $250.00. You can find out more about their stories on the challenge main page, and listen to their winning ads along with those of the finalists here.

Posted by dave coustan at 3:15 PM |

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• The very first Dragon*con 2006 photo - Dragon*Con comes but once a year, and it brings with it some of the best photo opps in Atlanta. Keep your eye on the "dragoncon" tag or category for the next few days to keep up with the insane costumes and shenanigans. In fact add this feed to your Reader to grab photos on flickr tagged "dragoncon" (disclaimer: some people make skimpy costumes. Many photos may not be safe for work browsing). Here are some photos I took at the 'con a couple of years ago. [via Chris]
  
• Knit a slice of pizza - Thank you, I think I might.
  
• The uncanny valley - I know the "uncanny valley" as a computer science problem having to do with how our brains perceive the behavior and look of animated characters. There's clearly something more going on in this informative graphic. I love the name Robotobot, too.
  
• Tree ruled over the top - I consider this a swing and a miss. The potential for a good pun headline is off the comedy charts in this story about the Stanford Tree mascot being sanctioned by the NCAA. I feel like the SF Chronicle could have done better here. "Tree Cut Down To Size," maybe? I know there's a great pun here somewhere. [via Deadspin]
  
• The evolution of speech balloons - I'd never stopped to consider where the tradition of representing speech in a bubble or balloon came from. This gallery traces a transition from speech "bands" to speech balloons in art from the 1400's to the 1700's. [found via jzawodn, I think]
  

Posted by dave coustan at 2:14 PM |

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