Simpable

Saying Goodbye to the Non-Essential

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:33:12 GMT

I expect we will be hearing many announcements like this from Google and many others in the coming weeks and months.

In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it's the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people's lives. But we've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.
That's why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.

I never used Lively, so I have no idea if it was any good, but I am guessing Google looked around and realized they were not going to make money here. I wonder what is next? I wonder if it will be one of the many companies they bought (Jaiku) and essentially did nothing with?

Posted to Business and tagged as google , lively , economy

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Live Search API "Silk Road"

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:37:48 GMT

Yesterday, Microsoft announced the release of Live Search services "Silk Road".

Silk Road is Live Search's new set of search APIs (version 2.0 beta) and services for developers. With Silk Road, you can build applications without restrictions around presentation. Getting started is simple: decide what search content you want, choose from JSON, SOAP, or XML output, and then customize them according to your needs to build your own search application. All you need to get going is an AppID.

The API is very thorough and will enable some very interesting scenarios as well as an opportunity to monetize your search results (as well as enhancing your site's 404 experience).

Earlier this week I wrote about Yahoo's BOSS which provides API access to Yahoo search. Google also has a horse in the race, but as of today has not offered the same level of service as Microsoft or Yahoo. Then again, when you effectively own search, I guess you get to make your own rules.

Graffiti 2.0 is going to offer support for search providers. I am looking forward to leveraging one of these search API's and providing my visitors some more advanced search scenarios.

Posted to Code and tagged as live , search , graffiti

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Apology-Based Computing

Scott Watermasysk — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:42:27 GMT

I was watching Max Feingold's PDC talk, Designing Your Application to Scale and one particular quote really stuck out to me.

"At global scale, getting the truth is really really expensive".

What he is referring to by "truth" is knowing exact details such as exactly how many "widgets" you have in your inventory. While there are obviously times you do need to know this, most of the time it is not necessary and you can potentially gain a lot of scale, if you can design your application to handle the times when it may be wrong.

The more I dig into Azure (and related platforms) the more apparent it is to me that the hardest part of leveraging them is going to be changing patterns you are comfortable with. In many cases, the code it takes to run on these platforms is disgustingly simple. The hard part is moving past the things you are used to doing today.

Posted to Software and tagged as azure , scale , pdc , quote

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Video Cameras For Sale

Scott Watermasysk — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:49:10 GMT

I am looking to sell to video cameras to make room for the new Flip Mino HD. If you are interested in either, ping me at scottwater@gmail.com.

Flip Mino

I love this camera. It is super easy to use, fits into your pocket, and works on PC/Mac with no software to install.

An HD version was just released, so I am looking to sell this one so that I can justify the new purchase. :)

Amazon Details.

Asking $120.

Note: This camera is also the one which filmed the Ohio Arm Challenge so it's may be worth a lot more than $120. :)

Sony HDR-SR5

I originally paid $800 for this camera. It is in great shape and has only been used a couple of times. It is a waste to have it just sitting there, so it is time to find it a new home.

Sony HDR-SR5 AVCHD 4MP 40GB High Definition Hard Disk Drive Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom.

Product Features

Record high-definition (AVCHD) video directly to a 40GB HDD
1/3-inch ClearVid CMOS sensor for high-quality HD or SD images
2.7-inch widescreen hybrid touch-panel Clear Photo LCD Plus display
Professional-quality Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* lens
Easy one-touch disc burn; Handycam Station included

Technical Details

Brand Name: Sony
Model: HDR-SR5
media_type: Hard disk drive
Lens Type: Zoom lens
Optical zoom: 10 x
maximum_aperture_range: F/1.8-2.9
Shooting Modes: Digital photo mode
Video Input: Camcorder
Display Size: 2.7 inches
Optical Sensor Resolution: 2.1 MP
optical_sensor_technology: ClearVid CMOS
optical_sensor_size: 1/3"
Viewfinder Type: LCD
Audio Input: Microphone
microphone_operation_mode: Surround
Height: 3.0 inches
Weight: 2.0 pounds
Depth: 5.5 inches
Width: 6.0 inches

Asking $550.

Posted to Life and tagged as video , flip-mino

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FeedBurner – Not Dead Yet?

Scott Watermasysk — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:15:59 GMT

Maybe FeedBurner isn’t dead after all. I received the following email this morning:

We’re contacting you to let you know that we’ll be migrating your FeedBurner account [removed] to your Google Account [removed] on 11/13/2008 .

Please rest assured, this change won’t disrupt your current feeds service. As part of this migration, all of your existing FeedBurner feeds will automatically redirect to Google feeds. You won’t lose any of your current subscribers in the process nor will this affect any email subscriptions.

All of your feeds will be moved to your new account and an initial batch of your most recent 30 days’ traffic stats will also be added. Your entire history, should it go beyond 30 days, will be added at a future date.

Once a part of the new Google FeedBurner systems, you’ll immediately be able to take advantage of our AdSense for feeds product. AdSense for feeds helps you monetize your feeds by delivering ads that are relevant to your content and your readers.

The email was sent by the AdSense team, which I guess makes sense. The only way for Google to justify the expense of this kind of service to make it really easy to serve ads from it. Regardless, it is nice to see some kind of movement here. FeedBurner is an awesome service and I was starting to get very concerned.

Posted to Technology and tagged as google , feedburner , rss , adsense

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The New White

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:21:24 GMT

Ahh, so many title choices, all of them would have haunted me in Google for many years. Anyway, I recently realized that four of my recent gadget purchases had one thing in common, they were all white.

iPhone – I went with the white model based on the assumption there would be a lot less noticeable finger prints. Unfortunately, this does not help the screen when my toddler daughter places it in her mouth.

Flip Mino – this one I would have rather had in black, but Amazon charged less for the white version and I did not care enough to pay more. Overall, a killer gadget. You never know when you are going to need to record an historic event.

Kindle – no other choice at the moment. Again, the best device I do not use often enough.

Lenovo S10 – There are now other color choices available, but when I got my first netbook white was the only option. So far, this thing has been a pure joy to use. New netbooks seem to be released daily, but at ~$400 there is very little risk. I have also seen the Dell Mini in person which is also impressive. I went with the S10 because it had more disk space. The 16 GB Dell mini wasn’t going to cut it for me.

Posted to Technology and tagged as netbook , s10 , kindle , flip-mino , iphone

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Papercut – Easy Email Testing

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:50:40 GMT

Email is an incredibly important aspect of many applications. While most programming languages make it trivially easy to send email, debugging/testing is often a tedious and boring task…until now. Ken Robertson (of the Telligent product team) has released a tool called Papercut which should make this process a lot more tolerable.

Papercut is a simplified SMTP server designed to only receive messages (not to send them on) with a GUI on top of it allowing you to see the messages it receives. It doesn't enforce any restrictions on addresses, it just takes the message and allows you see it. It is only active while it is running, and if you want it in the background, just minimize it to the system tray. When it receives a new message, a balloon message will show up to let you know.

Papercut is completely free and should a very helpful tool for your utility belt.

Posted to Code and tagged as papercut , email , smtp

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SEO in Blogs is Overrated

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 02:42:25 GMT

I have spent way too much time in my life discussing SEO in blogs. For blogs like Engadget, SEO is a big deal. However, for the other 99.99% of people you are way better served creating great content and interacting with the visitors you already (yes, I can see there is a bit of chicken and egg) have visiting your site.

What got me thinking about this was a post “Advanced comment systems are bad for SEO: IntenseDebate, Sezwho and Disqus”. The author is correct that rendering comments via JavaScript lessens the chance they will show up in a search result.

But consider the following:

Using one of these systems enhances the visitors’ experience and makes it far easier for them to come back in future.
In many cases, you do not want comments by people you do not know affecting your Google rank.
If there is good content, Google will find it. If more and more folks continue using these comment systems, it is very likely Google (and others) will figure out how to include the content.

And to be clear, I am not saying you should purposely ignore SEO, I just don’t think it is where you should focus your attention.

Posted to Technology and tagged as seo , disqus , blogging

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Follow the Chefs

Scott Watermasysk — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:56:52 GMT

With all the news about a crappy economy, I found the video below by Jason Fried of 37Signals very interesting.

In particular, at the 20:06 marker he quoted Kathy Sierra,

When it comes to marketing, you can either outspend or out teach your competitors.

In the video, Jason Fried, was using an example of how some famous chefs had taken the approach of “out teach, out share, and out contribute” their competitors as a way of getting ahead. In hindsight this is obvious, but it is still a really smart observation. The chefs are very skilled, but it is not rocket science. The barrier to entry is very low in cooking and as it is (at least today) in most things. So how you do get ahead; share. Teach others what you know. Enable others with similar interests to get together and interact. Be part of the conversation, even if that means enabling it to happen more easily.

I am certainly biased towards Community Server and Graffiti, but by using a tools like these, you can really turn a large part of your marketing efforts into something that helps drive and sustain your business for a fraction of what you would typically spend on marketing.

Even as I write this, it is really apparent that this is something you should be doing even when times are better in the financial world. Sometimes it takes a difficult situation/time to make it easier to see the light.

Posted to Business and tagged as quotes , cs , telligent , ning , video

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Yahoo! Search BOSS C# Implementation

Scott Watermasysk — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:24:07 GMT

I saw some mentions about Yahoo’s Boss a couple weeks ago, but I didn’t have time until recently to try it out for myself.

BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is Yahoo!'s open search web services platform. The goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start- ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index. BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!'s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure. By combining your unique assets and ideas with our search technology assets, BOSS is a platform for the next generation of search innovation, serving hundreds of millions of users across the Web.

I could not find a C# implementation, so a couple of nights ago, I decided to put one together.

The Boss REST API is just a couple of Get requests, so there was not a whole lot to implement, but this should make it pretty easy for anyone looking to add Boss search to their application.

As far as I can tell, my implementation supports all of the Boss API except for spell checking. This includes Image, News, and Web searches. Search results are returned in three formats: Xml, JSON, and an object set.

Here are a couple examples.

Example 1: Search for “Telligent”:
var result = new WebSearch(“BOSS_ID”).Query(“Telligent”).Get();

Example 2: Search for “Telligent” and limit the results to 5 and get the second page of results.
XElement result = new WebSearch(“BOSS_ID”).Query(“Telligent”).Take(5).Skip(5).GetXML();

Example 3: Search for “Telligent” but limit it to it to a couple of sites:
string json = new WebSearch(“Boss_ID”).Query(“Telligent”).Site(“simpable.com”).Site(“telligent.com”).GetJSON();

Example 4: Search for “Telligent” mentions in the news for the last week.
var result = new NewsSearch(“Boss_ID”).Query(“Telligent”).Age(7).Get();

Example 5: Search for “Telligent” images:
var result = new ImageSearch(“Boss_ID”).Query(“Telligent”).Filter(false).Get();

There is built in support for language, region, content type, etc filters as well.

I labeled the assembly version 0.9 since there are some API tweaks I still want to make. The biggest of these is the “Query” method. Having a query method makes the code a bit more readable, however, since it is required before you can execute a search, I am thinking it needs to either be in the constructor and as part of the “get”.

Examples (non-working):
var result = new WebSearch(“Boss_ID”, “My Query”).Get();
var result = new WebSearch(“Boss_ID”).Get(“My Query”);

Anyone have a preference?

Download Assembly and Source.

Posted to Code and tagged as yahoo , boss , rest

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