Archive for Internet
Time’s Top 25 Blogs 2009
February 19th, 2009 •
Tags: blogs, Time, weblogs
If you’re struggling to find feeds to add to your Google Reader, first add mine. 
Then go to Time and check out their 25 best blogs. You probably won’t like all of them. Most of them are pretty specific to a particular niche, but I’m sure you’ll find something to subscribe to. My favorites from the list are Lifehacker, BoingBoing, Metafilter, Mashable, and Zen Habits.
The Facebook TOS controversy
February 19th, 2009 •
Tags: Facebook, Mark Zuckerman
Facebook recently updated their terms of service to include language which made users of the service a little uncomfortable. The new terms gave Facebook “perpetual worldwide license” to any content shared on the service. There was an outcry from the community regarding the open-endedness of these new terms of service. I can attest that, upon sharing content on any social network, my intent is not to relinquish ownership of that content but to expose it to a different audience. Most users agreed with me leaving Facebook with a multitude of disenchanted users.
As such, Facebook had to respond. Founder Mark Zuckerberg issued a statement about the new terms. This statement basically said they would never actually use all the rights granted to them by the new TOS. Their intent was only to be able to continue displaying content that had been sent to friends even after a user leaves Facebook so as not to upset the continuity of the friend’s experience. In fact, Facebook claims the terms do not allow them to use your content in any way they wish. I’m certainly no lawyer, but I have trouble seeing the limits of a “perpetual worldwide license.” I can understand the desire to allow friends to continue accessing content even if the contributor has left the community. It would be jarring if messages and shared items were to disappear as friends leave. However, I think Facebook’s approach is a bit of overkill. It seems to me they could have reserved their rights to continue displaying user content in the way that user intended even after departing by merely adding that these were in fact the rights they had to the content rather than the blanket statement that actually ended up in the terms.
Luckily, your voices did not go unheard. Facebook launched a poll to gauge user response to the new terms. Fifty-six percent of users preferred the old TOS, and alas it was restored. The new terms would have granted Facebook too much in the way of rights to user content. However, the deft response to users’ concerns is encouraging for a company so large. Certainly, Facebook could have maintained the new TOS and probably suffered very little as a result. Online communities have come to realize that their most vocal users are the hardest to please but are also their greatest assets. They are often the first and loudest to complain, but they are also the most frequent contributors to the ongoing conversation amongst users that is the sole reason these services can exist. I, for one, applaud Facebook for listening to user concerns and responding. As a content creator myself, I understand that if I give up rights to my content online, I have nothing.
The Space Game: a deep Flash RTS
February 17th, 2009 •
Tags: Flash games, games, Gaming, RTS, strategy, The Space Game
The Space Game is a deep and satisfying RTS developed on Adobe’s Flash platform. It has a bit of a tower defense flavor with the resource collection of an RTS. You start with a solar station which provides you with energy to use for building resource collecting structures. Then, you must build lasers to protect your resource collection structures from pirates trying to destroy them. The graphics are simple but functional. It has an excellent and quick intro tutorial. This seems like a Flash game that could really become quite a time-sink.
Three great gaming blogs (two new to me)
February 15th, 2009 •
Tags: blogs, casual games, coop, cooperative games, flash, games, Gaming, gaming blogs, Indie Games, News
Awesome gaming blogs are coming out of the woodwork. I have found two excellent blogs in the past week that were not at all on my radar before.
The first is Play This Thing! That’s their exclamation, not mine, but it is well-deserved nonetheless. The blog covers games that are otherwise starving for coverage. They cover indie games of all kinds including downloadable games, Flash games, and even board games (which makes me very happy). If you’re interested in trying games that are small and virtually unheard of, this is the site for you. I strongly suggest you try it. There are really quite a few gems out there.
Next up is Co-Optimus. Thanks to one of the podcasts that rose from the ashes of 1Up (I can’t recall if it was Geekbox or Rebel FM.) for pointing this one out to me. This blog is perfect for fans of cooperative play in games. Cooperative play has been gaining more traction in recent years. Gone are the days of multiplayer being almost exclusively competitive… and good riddance! I’m as much a fan of competing as anyone, but I don’t want that exclusively as the only multiplayer experience. This covers news and information for games that can be played cooperatively.
Lastly comes a blog I have read for some time and just realized I had not yet subscribed to in Google Reader: Jay Is Games. The blog covers casual games of all flavors (albeit mostly Flash games). Don’t let this turn off any hardcore gamers as there is plenty of fun to be had here. I’m sure you have all played Tetris and know that a hardcore gamer doesn’t have to interface with a steroid-hyped space marine with a gun the size of the typical geek’s entire body to get satisfaction from a gaming experience. The games here are fun, easy to get into, and great for a few minutes of play. Please note: if you view this site at work, your productivity may suffer greatly!
Do you know any awesome blogs that me or my readers may be missing? It can be related to anything covered on this site. Just post them in the comments. I love finding new blogs to read!
Jinni invites for your favorite movie
February 14th, 2009 • 5 comments
Tags: film, invites, jinni, movies, recommendations, suggestions
Jinni is a really cool movie suggestion engine. It has developed a movie “genome” that defines certain traits in movies in much the same way Pandora does for music. I have five Jinni invites for the first five commenters who post their favorite movies. Go to it!
Purchase and download old PC games on the cheap
February 14th, 2009 •
Tags: Computer Gaming, games, Gaming, good old games, old games, pc games, Retro Games
Good Old Games is a digital download service offering PC games that, while they aren’t going to tax your new GTX 295, are some of the greatest titles of their time. Fortunately, they also won’t tax your wallet much. We’re not talking Ultima 2 or anything like that. Everything I’ve seen on the site was published in the last 15 years, and the quality of the games shows through in spite of the dated graphics.
Games are currently topping out at $10 and often include extras like books of artwork in PDF format, strategy guides, and other supplemental material. There is no client software eliminating a common step from the digital distribution model. Just buy and download the game you want, install, and play. The games work out-of-the-box with either Windows XP or Vista so you won’t have to manually run DOSbox to get your game working. It’s a pretty slick system.
I have to admit the beautiful web site is as much a draw for me as anything. The presentation is done with a level of care that frankly makes Steam look like a dog. (Note: I really do love Steam in spite of it’s ugliness.)
The site also seems to have a pretty strong community around discussing and reviewing the games offered. True to form, users of the site have setup an IRC channel on irc.quakenet.org. They offer forums for each game, and the catalog displays the average user review for each title.
If you’re itching for something new (to you), check out Good Old Games. According to the site, they actually screen for goodness, so you’ll at least get something that is worth a play. Just remember, good gameplay transcends and doesn’t need to rely on bleeding-edge technology.
Posterous: minimalistic microblogging and sharing
February 13th, 2009 • 2 comments
Tags: Blog, microblogging, Posterous, tumblr
Ready to start a microblog at Posterous? OK. Send an e-mail to post [at] posterous [dot] com. Now you’re done! They will reply with your Posterous URL, and your blog setup is complete. Of course, you can go to the site and flesh out your profile, but the initial setup is done without a single form to fill out or password to create. Most anyone who uses the Internet is familiar with e-mail making Posterous the every-man blogging platform.
Being a power user (not to mention a control freak), I created my Posterous account on the site in the more traditional way of registering for web services. I did so because was unsure how the e-mail account creation would determind what URL to designate for my blog. I registered raddevon.posterous.com, got my confirmation e-mail, and started composing a quick post in Gmail. I sent the post in and received a reply asking me to click a link to confirm my address and post. I did so, but the post never showed up on raddevon.posterous.com. After noticing that my profile page still said my e-mail was not confirmed, I realized I had created a new blog by e-mailing a post before confirming my address. Sure enough, I had overlooked a confirmation link in the original e-mail I got after registering on the site.
At this point, I was prepared that I might have to recompose my post as the old one was on the other blog which was created, but, after I confirmed the address, my posts were moved over to raddevon.posterous.com! I am very impressed that the service knew I would probably want the posts on the blog I registered via the site. If you plan to use the easy e-mail method to create your blog (or even if you plan to read the registration e-mail after your web registration), you probably won’t run into this issue.
Posterous takes the minimalist philosophy to its logical end. You don’t design and tweak your Posterous page. You have the option to write a bio and upload a profile picture, but that is it. The Myspace crowd may not like the inability to customize and personalize, but the Facebook crowd will appreciate the simplicity. Every Posterous blog looks the same so you can really concentrate on making posts rather than tweaking designs.
E-mail posting is also very minimalistic. Posterous doesn’t parse any HTML in your e-mail posts. Instead, that all gets put right into the post verbatim. It will automatically link URLs even if you don’t include the protocol (i.e. raddevon.com as opposed to http://raddevon.com/; both will be linked automatically). You can, however, edit existing posts or make new ones from a web interface at the Posterous site which gives you access to a slick WYSIWYG post editor that allows for linking words and some basic text formatting.
When I first register for a service, I have trouble discerning if it’s really a cool service or I’m just enamoured with the newness of it. Right now, I’m really excited about both Posterous and tumblr. I will continue to use the services at least for a little while so that I can write a proper comparison of the two. If you’re interested in seeing the comparison, subscribe to the blog so you will get it as soon as it’s posted!
Tumblr: more than a Tweet, less than a blog post
February 12th, 2009 •
Tags: Blog, microblogging, sharing, Social Web, Tumblelog, tumblr, twitter
Occasionally, I would like to post a quick thought or idea, but I can’t really fit it into Twitter’s 140 characters. It also doesn’t justify the trouble of making a blog post or it otherwise doesn’t really fit there. Tumblr is a microblogging service that may fill the gap between a tweet and a full-fledged blog post.
The service has been around for a while, and I have heard of it before. It just didn’t entice me to try it. Now that I’m signed up and have my tumblelog setup, I’m really liking it’s unique featureset. It has support for a number of different post types which will embed content directly into your posts. Instead of having to link to every piece of media you’d like to share, you can embed them directly into your tumblelog.
E-mail posting is supported. Once you register at Tumblr, you are given a unique e-mail address for posting directly to your tumblelog. This e-mail address can even be used to post media including photos, MP3s, and videos. Add this e-mail to your mobile device to allow for posting on the go.
Users have a lot of flexibility in the design of their tumblelogs. There are a number of themes provided, and users may also write custom HTML and CSS to style the blog themselves.
The service is very accessible. It’s easy for users to get up and running with a quick blog, and this may be a viable platform for your blog if you don’t need a robust blogging engine. It also offers a few power features like the aforementioned custom CSS, the ability to import your own blog and/or RSS feeds, and the ability to embed the tumblelog elsewhere on the web.
For someone like me who already blogs, tumblr might be a good place for posting unrelated things or stuff that doesn’t warrant a full post, but only time will tell if it will become a part of my daily workflow. I plan to give this and another similar service, Posterous, some airtime to see if they are services I want to use regularly. Check back tomorrow for a quick overview of Posterous. After I have had an opportunity to try both of the services a bit, I will post a comparison of the two services.
If you are on tumblr, please follow me. I would also love to see comments from anyone who has used both of the services on which they prefer and why. If you use only tumblr, post a comment telling how you use it and how it fits in with the rest of the social web services you use on a regular basis.
Read Digg’s top stories? Subscribe to Feeddit
February 11th, 2009 • 2 comments
Tags: digg, Feeddit, feeds, Internet, News, rss, social news, Tech
Lost In Technology has written a post on a feed I have been using for a while now called Feeddit. I like to track the top stories on Digg. However, Digg’s RSS feed is really a mess if you ask me. The biggest problem: each story’s link tag goes to the Digg page rather than that story. So, here’s the scenario. I’m surfing along through my feeds with Google Reader (check out my video tutorial). I see a Digg post I want to read. I press the ‘v’ key to open the story. This opens a new tab with the Digg page for the story. I click the title of the story, and only now do I get yet another tab to read the actual story. This may not really sound like a big deal, but when you’re staring at an unread count of 1000+ (the highest count that registers on Google Reader) knowing that a good chunk of those are Digg stories, you want to burn through them pretty quickly so that you can filter out the good stuff from the crap. Those extra clicks, page loads, and tab closings really slow the process to a crawl.
Feeddit provides a remedy to this problem and them some. The feed item’s link is now directed to the actual story. Hurray! In addition, the poster’s name is included underneath the title of the story. The Digg count is included under the summary along with the comment count. Both of these link to the Digg page for the story making it easy to participate on Digg without shoving it down your throat every single story. I always want to view the article before I comment or digg it. Feeddit gives me a feed that makes sense for that workflow.
Now, where is the reddit analog to this?
Caps return us to the days of limited Internet access
February 11th, 2009 •
Tags: bandwidth capping, cap, Internet, ISP
ISPs everywhere are making it known that they do not intend for Internet access to be unlimited. It was a popular marketing term in the days of time-limited Internet access. Everyone has seen the old AOL disks and CDs that offer 500 hours for the first month. Users hated having to count hours (and even minutes prior to that). Some ISPs realized this and started offering unlimited Internet access plans as a way to lure users away from the ISPs that limited the amount of time a user could access the service. That was fine in the days of dial-up. You could max out your 28.8kbps connection for the entire month and still transfer very little data. However, broadband brought speeds that, when used to capacity for an entire month, cost the ISPs a little more to deliver the copius amounts of data that could be transmitted. Enter bandwidth caps.
In other countries, bandwidth caps are old news, but the major US broadband providers have only begun to cap users’ monthly bandwidth allotment. Comcast instituted a cap of 250GB on its residential Internet service which began in October of last year after several years of an invisible “bandwidth ceiling.” Before the cap was instituted, there was, in fact, a cap, but no one knew exactly what it was. Even users who hit the cap would never be told exactly what line they had crossed to cause their service to be halted. It seems Comcast wanted these users to, rather than knowing the limit which they would undoubtedly reach every single month, drastically reduce their usage unaware of their actual allotment. They then decided that the Bittorrent protocol was most likely the root of their problems at which time they began throttling data transferred over the protocol. This garnered a good amount of bad publicity and drew the ire of the FCC who ruled that throttling of a particular protocol was illegal.
No one wants to try to sell a service that has previously been unlimited as “limited.” Comcast had tried every way it could to covertly reduce its bandwidth costs, but it essentially had no remaining options but to be forthright with consumers. In September, Comcast informed them their services would, as of October, be limited to 250GB monthly. This move seemed to open Pandora’s box for US terrestrial ISPs to begin instituting their own bandwidth caps. Time Warner had begun testing a 40GB monthly cap in Beaumont, Texas back in June of ’08 but only on Wednesday of last week announced expansion of the program to new cities. AT&T announced in November of last year tiered caps ranging from 20GB to 150GB. Charter just last week announced a cap of 100GB on speeds of 15mbps and slower and 250GB up to their 25mbps offering. Cellular data providers have been capping service for a while now with most currently at 5GB per month.
No one likes caps, but the consensus seems to be that Comcast’s cap is fair. I can attest that I would really have to try hard to exceed it in a typical month, and I am a pretty heavy Internet user. Time Warner’s cap is ridiculously low at 40GB. I could see even average users exceeding this cap on a regular basis, and, at $1 per GB over, they aren’t going to be very happy about it. Charter’s caps are low considering the speed. Even Comcast’s cap will become less and less reasonable as speeds increase and online video gains ubiquity. I venture a guess that, in two years time, 250GB will not serve the needs of even the average Internet user. We have to assess the probability of Comcast increasing the cap to keep up with the times. Barring some competition from a new national broadband ISP offering net-neutral and unmetered access, it seems unlikely they would increase the cap.
Another issue to consider is that, when bandwidth is capped, increased speeds are no longer really a selling point. An increase in speed effectively reduces the portion of the month for which you will have access if you fully utilize that speed. ISPs will undoubtedly continue to market new speed increases as a selling point never pointing out this fact. Deceptive? Sure. Illegal? Doubtful.
As consumers become more aware of the limitations, content providers who depend on this bandwidth to connect with customers (like Hulu or Netflix‘s Instant Watch) will have to scale back offerings to fit within consumer limitations. We won’t ever be streaming Blu-ray movies from Netflix on a 250GB cap whether or not speeds will support it. This will stifle growth, innovation, and creativity among Internet content providers.
We have essentially returned to the days of being ever-mindful of our Internet usage patterns. Now, instead of counting hours, we count bits. The days of carefree Internet usage are most likely over. Here’s hoping for an ISP in shining armor to deliver us great speed unfettered at a reasonable price. It’s our only hope.