ShortenURL Application
I just whipped up a new Windows application to allow a user to shorten a URL without having to go to a shortening service’s website. This was something that annoyed me, because I do not like to have a ton of bookmarklets installed on my browser.
Here’s a screenshot:
The application is written in C# and is available under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Please feel free to download and give it a try.
Can You Be a Thought Leader Without a Blog?
Robert Scoble, asked on FriendFeed yesterady, “Can you be a thought leader without blogging” and I commented there but I’ll givemy short answer here: no, you can’t. At least not long term. Allow me a few moments to clarify.
First off look at blogging for what it is, at it’s deepest core, it’s writing. It’s conveying ideas using words. Before the internet this was done on paper, before that stone. People who have been thinkers always wrote down their thoughts and captured them using whatever medium was available to them at the time. In some cases that was just telling a person, who then told another person, who then to..you get the idea.
In an era where we limit our thought capacity to 140 some-odd characters to send to the internet via a messaging system we “didn’t know we needed” it is possible to condense some thoughts down to this paliatable size. But not all thoughts work in the confines of 140 characters or less. Some require exposition, they require explaination and context. Not everyone reads, listens, and watches the same stuff you do. So sometimes you have to provide context for your thoughts. Why did you have it, what led you to it, how did you arrive at a conclusion. All these are important to the overall thought process, they can also be instrumental in accurately conveying that thought.
That’s not to say you can’t be a thought leader of some kind if you limit yourself to services like Twitter or FriendFeed (which Scoble has taken to doing lately). Robert Scoble is blogging less and using FriendFeed more. He has found a medium that works best for what he does. Scoble understands technology, and he understand the it’s changing world quite well. This is perhaps the outcome of being a part of that world for so long. He watches so many avenues of thoughts from other people that he can see trends and routines a lot of people can not. Since he’s blogging less, does that make him less of a thought leader? Probably not. He’s simply adopting a new method for conveying his thoughts. Will it work long term? Well that’s what we’ll have to wait to see. I for one thing that it might, but it’s going to be a few more years before you can not blog, write, or something of the sort and be a thought leader. You have to be able to provide context, that’s hard to do when space is limited.
State of Wireless in Linux Distros
Over the past few days I have downloaded a few different Linux Live CDs. If you don’t know what a Live CD is, it is a bootable CD that boots into a completely working Linux desktop, allowing the user to test the Linux distribution without having to install anything to a hard drive. It’s a nice way to try distributions without formatting or installing anything.
The reason I downloaded these Live CDs is so I could test other Linux distributions (distros) and check to see if they would work with my wireless device, since all the computers in my house run on the wireless network. I can’t install a Linux distribution unless it allows my wireless device to work “out of the box” (without needing to download additional drivers).
Sadly, I have to report that attempting to install Debian’s latest stable version from a DVD or a Live CD, neither had my wireless USB adapter working. Same goes for the Fedora’s latest (released just this month). Also sad, my wireless USB adapter uses a chipset who has released driver source code specifically for Linux, so it not working on two major Linux distributions is disheartening. Ubuntu seems to be the only major distribution that supports my wireless adapter from the get go.
There in lies the problem. Wireless is now an important part of computing. While my main concern is my desktop, none of the CDs I tried had my wireless working without major hoops on my work provided laptop either (Dell Latitude D830). And wireless is pretty much standard on laptops these days. Wireless has to work and it has to be painless. Fedora had my wireless network working, but it wouldn’t find my wireless G compatible access point for some reason. Even typing in the SSID (network ID) manually didn’t help get it to work. The Debian Live CD didn’t even activate the wireless at all, and the install DVD said I needed to install firmware off of a removable drive, but it didn’t tell me where I could download said firmware.
Just to note, yes, I can do a google search to find the firmware. And yes, I could install the distribution and then download, compile, and install the wireless device drivers manually. I’m quite capable, but that’s not the point. The point is that, since driver source code is available from the chipset manufacturer, it should be included already. I understand something not working because of lack of support from the manufacturer, but when they are already making the them available in a Linux friendly fashion, why do I need to download, compile, and install? Shouldn’t the distro handle that? What if a non-geek has the same hardware I do, would you expect them to know how to compile? Even if you do expect them to, they won’t do it. They’ll simply move on.
Again, wireless needs to work out of the box, you can’t expect non-geeks to go and download wireless device firmware especially if you don’t tell them where to go online to find it. I understand that the main reason this is still an issue is because manufacturers are not opening up their drivers or releasing drivers that can be used in Linux. We’re in the year 2009, can’t we just please have the drivers so we can run the operating system we want to run? I guess that’s a taller order than we thought.
links for 2009-06-26
Will Crowdsourcing News Online Kill The Newspapers?
As the newspapers meet in secret to discuss how they are going to increase revenue and look at suing various online news aggregators (like Google News), I have discovered something that will probably only increase the speed at which newspapers will die out. I recently posted about reaquainting myself with FriendFeed. I mentioned in that article how FriendFeed’s shining gem is in how it helps crowdsource the news and as such can help people find news that really matters to them on a wide range of topics.
Social news aggregaters have been around for a few years, one of the most popular being Digg. Digg is one of the few that really aggregates a large number of topics under a single site. Other aggregaters exist and some are even topic specific (like DotNetKicks). Social news aggregaters allow news items to be crowdsourced and have only the most popular (and hopefully the most relevant) bubble up to the top of the heap. This allow users to only grab the best (as decided by community) and never have to see the stuff that no one cares about (they can of course choose to browse these if they want).
So if I can subscribe to the RSS feeds of these aggregaters main pages, I can essentially only see news items that a large number of people deem important. I’ve cut out the newspaper, CNN, BBC, almost completely (one would assume that links to these things would pop up on these aggregaters). This means that I get real news and avoid the fluff.
Of course the downside to this is I am at the mercy of the masses. Digg is a perfect example of a news aggregator that has become little more than a mouth piece for the American left-wing. In fact, I had to stop using Digg altogether because it was so hard to get away from people spouting left-wing propaganda and refusing to listen to facts when presented from a different view point. When that happens the news source becomes worthless. It can no longer be trusted. In order to have a well balanced news intake, one must look at all viewpoints to determine truth and accuracy. There are ways around this, and I’m sure someone will eventually be able to come up with a aggregation site that can’t be gamed (or at least one that is difficult to game).
People have already (mostly) moved to getting their news online. My local newspaper has raised it prices 2 times in recent memory in order to combat fewer print readers. Long term, the general public will come to look towards the educated masses to help them select what news to read, most (if not all) of it will be done online. The printed newspapers are attempting to hold onto their dying media with a tight grip, but it’s usually when you hold on to something tight that you start to you lose your grip on it.