It's Fixed in the Next Release

Observations on Everything
Although "It's Fixed in the Next Release" is a mantra from software development (or rather technical support), the intent here is to apply the phrase to a broader context, for example, "It's fixed in my next reincarnation." This broad interpretation means that the entries here cover vastly unrelated subjects.

If you're looking for a tightly focused blog with short, pithy entries, you are in the wrong place (although there are some). Here, blogging is about content.

I have done one thing to make things easier on non-technical readers. All of my comments that deal with specific aspects of software development are in a category that doesn't show up in the main list. you have to select It's a Code, Code World to see these posts.

[Updated: watch my line speed improve over time!]

There's not much to say, these numbers speak for themselves. I figure I'm about 3Km from the nearest CO.





Okay, I lied 121ms pings?? Give me a BREAK!
I may just give up on DSL.

Hey my line went dead for about half an hour today (no dial tone even) and look:



Moving from "effectively non-functional" to "pathetic" Way to go.

More news... 7:40 on a Saturday morning, and finally things seem to be up to par:





Now we know the connection is definitely up to snuff, although the ping times are a little pathetic. The next question is how well does this hold up during peak demand. Even though the line isn't shared, there's network hardware at the other end that needs to keep up with peak loads. We'll see...

This one is simple. Keyboards need a key that means "swap the characters on either side of the cursor". I type words like "htis" all too often, and I suspect I'm not alone. Instead of positioning the cursor, deleting a letter, moving the cursor, and re-typing the letter, how about positioning the cursor between the offending letters and pressing "Swap". While we're at it, make variations such as Control-Swap to switch the two letters immediately behind the cursor, and Alt-Swap to exchange the two letters at the beginning of the latest word.

Now there's something I could use. A lot.

In The Conference Board of Canada's Deceptive, Plagiarized Digital Economy Report Michael Geist attacks the Conference Board for a variety of faults that call its claims of objectivity into question. Subsequently, in Conference Board of Canada Responds, Stands By Its Report he comments on their inadequate response.

What is perhaps most informative is this quote from the response "The Conference Board regularly produces custom research. Our guidelines for financed research require the design and method of research, as well as the content of the report, to be determined solely by the Conference Board." [Note to conference board: that is how you cite sources.]

This quote suggests that they take full responsibility for the incompetence, sloppy methodology, poor fact checking, and many other faults in their work. They appear to either be completely disconnected from reality or to be fully aware that they have no credibility whatsoever.

I suppose it doesn't matter which.

Abstract: A site where users can post transcripts of videos and overly wordy articles. Users paste in the URL of the original source and get transcripts posted by other users.

Problem: Lots of people are posting essentially empty infomercial-style content – frequently in video formats – posing as useful advice. The problem is you have to spend effort sifting through various introductory remarks and claims before you can determine if the advice is of any actual use. In the case where the content is a video, this can be a frustrating waste of time.

Solution: Provide a way for people who have invested their time for little return to summarize any valuable content for others. Index the summaries by source URL so that additional software, such as a web browser plug-in, can find the short version automatically.

As an example if the original transcript reads something like this, in part: "Hi, this is Joe Hacker, the PC Performance Expert(tm). We hope you catch our weekly show and daily podcasts on...[blah blah blah]", the transcript might read "To improve system performance, defragment your system disk on a regular basis with JK Defrag, available from www.kessels.com."

Cveats:

• The site will be subject to hackers and spammers who will post irrelevant content. Some sort of trusted user rating system is needed to ensure the spam is eliminated and best versions rise to the top.
  
• There may be some copyright concerns with transcripts. One way to limit this is to restrict the size of the synopsis.
  

Since my Skype Fraud post is one of the most popular here, I thought I'd throw in a few references to some other similar tricks. This one is particularly funny:

Bad Luck Facebook Scammer, You Picked A Target Who Reads Consumerist with the wonderful phrase "Once I deposit the funds, you can print it out of any colour printer and it's real money!"

Then there's the original article referenced in the one above: Nigerian Scammers Break Into Your Gmail, Ask Your Friends For Money.

We can only hope that one of these days the scammers just go out of business because everyone has enough information to spot them and waste their time. Not likely, but one can hope.

Probably everyone has seen a dozen of these by now. Usually someone has discovered some amazing way to make money, or to achieve something that makes money. He or she will tell you all about it, at great length on their seemingly one page web site.

Oh and what a page it is. Make $103,736 a month plucking chickens at home. Just keep reading and we'll tell you how. Watch our fantastic headers show up in uppercase red text. Count the exclamation points! Look at how we make everything longer with our big borders and narrow copy area.

There's even proof: here's images of copies of the Big Fat Earnings.

And now testimonials. Joe the Plumber used this system and now has two houses and three vacation properties. Maybe you can even hear from Joe in a video. Regular folk who look like losers made money with this fantastic technique.

Here's a link to get started NOW. But just in case you're not convinced, let's repeat the whole thing, saying the same stuff in a slightly different way.

Okay, let's repeat that again. And again. Maybe even again.

Well if you got all the way down here you MUST be convinced, so save 50% or more in this time limited offer by clicking on this special link! Only a fool would pass this by!

And now you're at the end.

Ten, twenty, thirty pages of essentially empty claims all jammed into one and dressed up in a loud suit. The only option for navigation is to the order page.

You've just been subjected to a Toilet Paper Pitch. If you printed it out, you'd get a long roll ready for what it's worth.

Ever notice how these things read like those old five page double-sided direct snail mail pieces you used to have to wade through fifteen years ago? That's because they're direct descendants. They try to get you in a box, lead you through their pitch. I think the same cabal of old men is convincing people that this is the way to go in the web world and cranking them out at some ludicrous price.

At some point this pitch style must have worked for someone, because not a week goes by that I don't see another variation on this theme. Style over substance, or maybe bullsh*t baffles brains, I'm not sure which.

But enough already. It's tired. It's lame. It's not Web 2.0, it's Web 0.5. It's old. It's done. It's boring. Build a useful site instead... unless of course your product is crap. In which case TP is definitely the way to go.

Do something else. Anything. Please.

Yesterday marks a significant milestone. A number of years ago I created a virtual abstract sculptural form that I've come to call "Infolds 1". I liked it enough to start casually exploring the idea of turning it into a real object. Each time I looked at the problem it wasn't easy. Even if it was possible, it wouldn't have been cheap. So it never worked out.

A few months ago, I dusted the project off once again. Thanks to a series of Internet-era connections from Twitter and sculpture.net, I discovered that 3D printing technology had made it possible to create this form in metal and plastic. The metal process is still not inexpensive, partially because any metal isn't inexpensive these days. But the plastic version is quite affordable.

Last weekend I finished the process of converting my design into an acceptable file format, uploaded it to Shapeways, and ordered it! In a week or two, I hope to see it show up in my mailbox. I'll post photographs as soon as I can. This is all very exciting.

What's even more interesting is that Shapeways lets you set up your own store, so now you too can order my art online, in three sizes. I hope you like it. Comments are welcome, but be gentle if you can.

On my main site I've also posted a longer article on the path that's led me to making sculptural art.

As either a younger member of the boomer generation, or an older member of Gen-X, I'm a member of a big demographic that seems to have a hard time understanding social media. The most common reaction I get to mentioning something on Facebook is "I will never have a Facebook account!"

I realize now that part of the bad reputation that social media has with middle-aged adults is due to the fact that most of these people are parents, and everything they know about social media sites has come from their kids.

This led me to a great insight. Good social media sites are malleable to individual users, and that's what makes them so powerful. I am certain that my Facebook experience is vastly different from that of your average teenager's, and that's a good thing.

A middle-aged friend recently asked me about Facebook and Twitter, with the subtext "I don't 'get' either of them." I've reworked my response a bit in hope that it will be helpful to others:

The main purpose of Facebook is to get found by people you already know but have lost touch with, think of the people you would invite to a high school reunion. Simple as that. It's also good for keeping up on the big stream of small things that winds up being news in a nominally mundane life. It works well if you're not "always on" the net. You can pop in every week or so and catch up. If you ignore the clever little time-wasting applications and notification noise, it's a useful tool. In short, Facebook is good at making an electronic link to people you already know.

Twitter is much more geared to making new connections and is really something for those of us who are "on the 'net" most of the time. What it's best at is finding new clever people, and getting breaking news. Information travels very quickly in Twitter, and to a large extent it's filtered to the interests of the people you follow, which means you get more information about the things you care about. As a writer, it's also superb at making you edit things down. The 140 character limit is brutal, but it enforces the practice of a clarity that can carry into other writing.

So how did I do? Is there anything else that "defines" these sites?

With the rise of social media sites and services (Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and so on), a whole new field of "Social Marketing Expert" has been created. Aside from the obvious fact that it's hard to be a credible expert in a relatively new domain, the silliness of some of these "experts" is laughable.

By far the best of this bunch are those who have been discredited elsewhere and are hoping that their bankrupt strategies can somehow find new life in a new medium. It may be true that "the medium is the message", but sometimes the message sucks universally and thus transcends all media.

The prime example here is "word of mouth" marketers. These aren't the people who say, quite correctly, that word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing communication anyone can get, but those who figure that somehow word of mouth is a tool, something that can be created out of thin air.

Surely manufactured word of mouth has been sufficiently discredited that we don't have to bear through more ill-advised campaigns in the social media space. Is there anyone still doing the "paid shill" scam, where people are paid to go into public spaces and talk up specific products? Have sufficient bloggers been roasted over online flames for accepting money in exchange for talking up products? Apparently not.

So get ready for a (hopefully brief) onslaught of bull masquerading as recommendations. It will be easy to spot, let's take a look at a quick example:

Slimeball:	Good morning.
You:	Good morning Slimeball, what's the weather like over there?
Slimeball:	Pretty good, it's a great day for DumbProduct!
You:	So, it's warm and sunny or something?
Slimeball:	Actually it's raining quite heavily, perfect for DumbProduct.
You:	I see, and how are the kids?
Slimeball:	They're happy, thanks to DumbProduct.
You:	Just hold on a second while I block you and write a negative blog post about DumbProduct's unethical marketing techniques.

Bottom line: if you're a marketer don't do this. Just don't. Build genuine word of mouth by delivering a great product and providing great service. Encourage your customers to talk about you, but please, never cross the line and start trying to pay for it. No good can come from this.