Wednesday, August 4, 2010 (busy day)

Today I 

• discovered I’m a patent holder (named in a patent granted to Quark)
• chatted with a friend about job #1
• spoke on the phone twice about job #2
• worked with Chuck Falzone to Alert Google about a Google Alert bug 
• marked the passing of Google Wave
• was served what looked like a Google Profile pop-up video ad (for Google TV)
• was invited to a LinkedIn Group, on accept noticed real-time updates & other innovations
• discussed videos about mathematics, physics, Feynman, N-dimensions
• continued yesterday’s thread about Iran’s ban on the teaching or playing of music
• spotted a suspicious search result for RDF TV: top result is RFD TV
• sent out a hot tip RE above to media pals, hope Richard Dawkins Foundation may be notified

I’m going to give myself a reward

Google Bike

Twitter needs geo tools (location filtering)

The twitter conversation below occurred this morning. I’m very sympathetic to Stephen’s complaint, and often don’t post stuff because the content is geo-limited or time-limited. If Stephen hadn’t complained, I wouldn’t have been prodded into offering a possible solution. It’s up to the geniuses who design these services to decide when to adopt @ or officially allow a feature such as described below.

I was much more vocal about my disappointment in twitter when pr0n-sters and spammers were winning the battle. I applaud twitter for progress in that area, and I would do some digging to offer old tweets, especially one where I really lost my temper. I would do that, but access to older tweets is still unavailable. Try searching your own tweets; they have still not fixed search. My point is… lost now.

Notes: “geo” is short for geographical, or “location-based.” Twitter here is shorthand for whatever micro-messaging platform wins, with @ (at-replies) and # (hashtags) being just one example of how to express such things. Unstated in the conversation is that there is no way for me to geo-limit my sphere of interest, or geo-limit the sphere of single tweet. In my profile, I could say I’m interested in #usaonly and any tweet could limit its sphere appropriately. In this case, I would add #usaonly to all Netflix ad Hulu tweets, and Stephen wouldn’t see them if he said he was interested in #canadaonly. Geo-unlimited tweets and profiles act as they do currently. Each image linked to its tweet.

 

A more expressive dialect is to either #include #usaonly (inside joke for all C and C++ programmers there) or #exclude #usaonly. This allows Stephen to register his disgust with all Hulu tweets by saying #exclude #usaonly, rather than artificially limit his sphere of interest to #canadaonly.

#canadaonly should not be needed, since Stephen is not only interested in Canadian issues… he is merely tired of being notified of content that he cannot access. I will not address the question of whether geo-limiting content is wise; it’s a very unfortunate fact.

LinkedOut: Thanks, I think

I followed this up with a “trouble ticket” on LinkedIn.

I’m not posting this to humiliate LinkedIn or Microsoft, I’m sure it’s a simple error. Also, I was curious to read the email… a pity that the link leads to a blank page.

It’s remarkable how even the big boys get it so wrong on occasion - and I find it amusing enough to be worthy of a post. The jokes write themselves…

• a “blank page” is your future at Microsoft!
• How far will you go? Not far at all, apparently!
• Come work for Microsoft - no openings available!
• Work at Microsoft - and teach us about email!

As I mentioned in the trouble ticket, I do not think either company is trying to be snarky, postmodern or cruel… thankfully I’m not conspiracy-minded or paranoid!

One final possibility: LinkedIn has developed a revolutionary new class of message … a “pending” message from the future, that will appear when mysterious pre-conditions have been satisfied. I’m calling it a bug, not a feature, until I’m informed otherwise.

Update on 20090403 at 08:21 by richardwalker

LinkedIn verified it was a “proper” message, and has notified Microsoft.

Yahoo Pipes - an "expert" weighs in and misses the point

UPDATE: Apparently I now have someone's attention. Let me take a moment to address "experts" of all kinds who would seek to maintain or attain their status... and at the same time, not be particularly "helpful." If there is a lesson here, let it be this:

I don't call myself an "expert" in many fields... but I am lucky enough to have decades of experience in several. I do however learn quickly and am familiar with teh interwebz, online forums, chat rooms,  blogs, trolls, hackers, and all sorts of people who apparently make a living being "social media experts", "SEO experts" and the like. I'll say this once: I won't be "fake friending" you in hopes of getting traffic and/or business. I don't need your traffic, and I'd rather not go on about an unfortunate incident or misunderstanding. If you missed the boat, too bad... maybe you'll get another chance to be helpful. If it turns out your expertise isn't needed during the 24 hours I learn about Yahoo Pipes, or whatever other subject, don't take it personally. If you'd like to be a part of the Soft Machine experiment, drop me an introductory comment or engage with me elsewhere. Don't expect me to entertain you in the commentary, or let you air your grievances, especially if you flubbed your chance to actually be helpful.

The Yahoo Pipes "expert" Hapdaniel (y!) (twitter) tells me I've fixed nothing, and should have read his tweet. Also, I'm apparently a terrible person for having a huge master OPML that I want to efficiently process. Too bad he's too busy being an "expert" to notice that I added the ability to "filter on folder name" while scanning the OPML! My feedback to the nice people at Yahoo:

I tried to find suitable pipes, but in the end I had to write them myself. In addition, the person who responded on the message board was most unhelpful and nasty, and obviously thinks it's a terrible thing to have a large OPML. And, he doesn't understand that one wants to filter while scanning the OPML - that's a key to having a huge master OPML that you can still use for multiple things efficiently. I doubt I'll participate here much going forward. I like Pipes though, and blogged about it, and deployed them on my site... Thanks... and nice job on the Pipes machinery itself.