MBoffin.com - Recent Posts

Browsers and Color Correctness - dcormier

6/20/2008 4:15:56 PM

As some of you may be aware, Firefox 3 was just released. One of the really nice things they added is support for ICC color profiles embedded in images (though you have to enable it).

In a nutshell, this means that you'll see images more like how the person who created the image intended. Considering I see many, many images from my web browser (as well as allowing others to see my images), I think this is pretty important.

As Firefox is one of the most popular browsers in use today, a lot of people should see benefits from this.

You can go here to see if your browser of choice implements this feature. Mine doesn't.

For you Apple fans, this isn't anything new. Safari has supported this for some time.

Website Designers - rnewhouse

6/8/2008 7:25:47 PM

Well, I am doing some research to find some top-level web design firms (client project), and I am encountering the phenomenon of WAY too much data, not enough information. Seems like everyone who can spell "HTML" is billing themselves as a web design firm, and it is difficult to sort out the serious contenders from the fly-by-nights.

After a brief foray into a series of so-called "top designers" I was able to eliminate about 90% of them with one click. My rule of thumb is, if I gag on the index page of the company's own website, I am not going to put them on my list.

It's interesting how many "top designers" are still using 50 paragraphs in 3-point font, meditation music, elaborate flash renditions of blooming flowers, elaborate and/or too many fonts, and more colors than Baskin Robbins has flavors - on their index pages. Not to mention page after page after page of marketing hype with NO product-price listing, inconsistent links from page to page, pop-up windows and PDF pages... not to mention crappy proofreading.

As Dylan once observed, it should be required that people have a license to design web pages.

Anyone have any particular recommendations or notes about some of the truly substantial web design firms? I'm looking for companies with substantial numbers of clients and significant annual revenues.

Sattelite internet recommendations? - bnoel

5/29/2008 11:16:26 PM

I think the title says it all.

This will SO totally work, guys! - CJO

4/11/2008 7:49:34 PM

Newsflash: public schools are completely incompetent at finding effective ways to keep teenagers from drinking and doing drugs.

Granted, this was a student's senior project. Granted, any effort to keep students from drinking and driving is better than none. But come on, this sounds like a bad SNL sketch.

I'm sure there were a lot of students in that assembly thinking, "Wow, this morning I planned on getting wasted after Prom. Now I realize that if I do, the Grim Reaper might blow out my candle."

Robert Scoble Is Wrong - Dylan

3/30/2008 11:16:51 PM

Well, wrong is a strong word, but I know he's subscribed to an RSS feed of his name and, having read his blog for years, I know that posts that go against the flow and tell him he's wrong are the posts he actually enjoys reading. So this will probably get his attention and I hope he finds it interesting.

I use Twitter and follow a limited number of other people. I used to follow Robert but as I posted just before unfollowing him, it was too much volume.

Robert follows over 16,600 people. He writes, "@PurpleCar it also gets to why people complain that I'm spamming Twitter. Those people don't have enough friends so their experience isn't as good." That's where I think he's wrong. I have a great Twitter experience. Following more people certainly alters your experience, but I don't think following more people particularly makes it a better experience.

If I'm following someone on Twitter it's because I want to hear what they have to say. When I had Robert on my list, his posts would fast drown out what other people were saying. He told me, "@MBoffin if I'm drowning out your other people, you should get better tools. I'm following 16,000 and no one is drowning anyone else out." Of course that's not true. He doesn't read every post by every person he follows. I do. He does read every post by every one of those 16,000 people when he's signed onto Google Talk but even by his own words, that's only about 5% of the time.

Robert argues that you get a better experience the more people you follow. I argue that you simply get a different experience. His experience is a firehose of information that gives him a valuable "finger on the pulse of the community" so to speak. He feels trends and waves moving through Twitter in a way that I will never experience. He's more like the Hari Seldon of the Twitter universe. Conversely, I'm getting a totally different experience out of Twitter, but just as valuable. I read every post from every person I follow, not just when I happen to have TwitBin or Google Talk open. If I check in after a little bit and the last twenty posts are from one person, they've effectively flooded off anything anyone else had to say. So from my perspective, it's now gone from signal to noise.

Social media is still a space that's finding its own. Robert is at one end of the extreme of its use, and I suppose you could say I'm at the other. We're both early adopters and both getting a valuable, worthwhile experience. Our experiences are polar in nature, not quality.

Well, that was pretty meta. Back to our regularly scheduled millweed-esque silence.

Dang. - rnewhouse

3/19/2008 4:58:20 AM

Another cultural icon bites the dust. Arthur C. Clarke changed the face of the science fiction landscape - and made a considerable impact on science in general as well.

iPhone SDK Restrictions Filed as Bugs - Dylan

3/12/2008 3:21:35 PM

David Bisset pointed to a great article on the iPhone SDK limitations. Basically they are submitting the problems/limitations they see as bugs. It's a great article that runs through a lot of the key limitations of the iPhone SDK. (And for those who are wondering if they are being jerks/trolls about submitting these things as "bugs", know that this is the way Apple wants feedback of this kind to be submitted to them. Apple is requesting this kind of feedback.)

So here's the quick list of what they cover. Check the full article for all the details on each one.

Allow applications to be installed at the user’s discretion, not Apple’s
Allow applications to run in background on iPhone
Allow access to root user on iPhone
A MediaPicker API for accessing the iPod music files is needed
Add option to allow iPhone applications to access entire filesystem
Allow iPhone applications to access the host computer when docking
Permit Voice over IP on the cellular network
Allow iPhone applications to access the docking port

Frankly, I can't say I disagree with any of the points they lay out. I mean, hey, you can do all of the above with Windows Mobile already. Then again, this is Apple and they are not a company known for making concessions to others doing much of anything with hardware they create and sell.

I have no doubt that the iPhone will see a major surge in popularity due to the SDK, but I think the popularity of the iPhone would be an unstoppable juggernaut of titanic proportions if they conceded to even just the items listed above.

Questions I Still Have About the IPhone SDK - Dylan

3/6/2008 4:57:29 PM

I read the liveblogging from a couple of different sites. The scope of the SDK is the one thing I was waiting for before either deciding to consider an iPhone or write it off as not something I'll ever get. So here are the questions I still have about it...

They say it has access to "all the same APIs" that Apple uses to make apps. Does that mean it can access the Bluetooth stack? I can't figure that out. If not, that's a deal-breaker.
Apple says the App Store (via iTunes) will be the "exclusive" way to get apps for the iPhone. Does that mean I need to shell out $99 to be on the Developer Program so I can give away a free app? Or is the $99 only for developers who want to sell their app?
Will apps have access to the Internet via the EDGE network?

That's all for now. But they are deal-breaker questions for me.

Don't Smoke Weed and Watch Star Wars - Dylan

2/11/2008 3:26:06 PM

I came across this news article via Jason Kottke's twitter stream.

This guy's name is Landocalrissan Butler. And he's 27.

You know what that means? It means his parents were probably high as a kite while watching Empire Strikes Back in the theater and named their kid NOT after Lando Calrissian (and note they spelled it WRONG), but after his little head-gear sidekick, or "butler" if you will.

Landocalrissan Butler. His parents should either be given a medal or evicted from society in general. Or both.

Misleading marketing??? - lidge_34

2/10/2008 5:14:35 AM

I was at the Apple store tonight, wasting some time before a movie. I was playing with the Mac Book Pro, which was pretty loaded with Final Cut, CS3, etc. It was running everything pretty smoothly, which I found interesting, because the specs sheet with the price that was sitting between the two computers had it listed out as 2gb RAM. This isn't anything special, and as someone who uses Photoshop on a 2gb laptop (HP) with a tendency to leave a lot of programs open, it can bog down pretty easily. So I figured these demo models had more memory. Sure enough, they both had 3gb.

This brings up the question: is this misleading marketing? I think it is. A customer is going to be playing around on one of these computers, and get a feel for how it works, and decide whether to buy it in large part due to this testing. Most will never check to see if the demo computer has different specs than the spec sheet sitting next to it. After all, why would it be different?

I wasn't really being a customer, since I was really just wasting some time in the store, but I was in the mood to be somewhat of a jerk, so I found the closest sales rep and confronted him about this. His reply was that, of course, he or a fellow sales rep would let the customer know the difference, and he pointed out that the computer also wouldn't come loaded with all this software either. Which I don't find as a valid argument because people generally know what software will come with the computer, but they are relying on the spec sheets to know what they are getting computer-wise. Secondly, I doubt it would be brought up that the display model was 3gb. The sales rep would no doubt encourage the customer to upgrade the memory, but I doubt they would go about it by pointing out that the customer was being mislead.

My point to the guy was not that it was wrong to have the 3gb model as the demo (I probably would have put a 4gb one out) but that the spec sheet should have said this. And it could have put the 2gb model on the sheet with the lower price, but it should have been explicit in saying which one was the demo. Otherwise it is a bit of a bait and switch operation.

In the end I got him to agree with me, but that since he wasn't the manager, he couldn't do anything about it. Yeah, too bad.