Splunk: Cool Post-Log Tool

Check out my mobile review of a "Splunk" demo I was treated to during a brown bag lunch.

Wii Balance Board Controls Robot: How About Space Station?

OK, so maybe the title is a bit sensational and obviously, who would really allow the thrusts of the ISS to be controlled by a Wii Balance Board? But in the following video a man shows how he made a robot move according to his hack. What cool things will come of this innovation?

Is it Legal for the Gov to Spy on You Through Your Mobile?

Well, if you're talking about WMD, then according to new legislation, yes. According to the bill, companies and the government can legally spy on your conversations if you drop words like Weapons of Mass Destruction and talk of "incendiary explosives," "poison," or "toxins" that may ave the intent to incur "significant number" of injuries or death. The definition of a WMD has been updated under Title VII section 110 of the Thomas government database.

The article from wired that outlines these definitions makes the point that "significant number" of injuries or deaths is still a fairly ambiguous term and is not defined within the legislation but remains to be defined. The UN in 1948 defined a WMD to be on the "scale of an atomic bomb." But according to the legislation a few grams of "ricin or a cylinder of chlorine" can be considered WMD "if someone threatens to use it against the public."

Is this legislation just a smoke screen to increase the government's ability to spy? Does it get companies like AT&T out of the doghouse for snooping on conversations (can somebody say corporate lobbying?)?

What do you think?

If you like the photo above, give 'er a Crank :)

Web 2.0 Neat, But Can Be Frustrating

Ever have that, "oh, if i could only do that," moment and you set about googling for the right approach, at times ready to give up? That was me for the last two days. I stumbled upon PhotoCrank, a nifty little mashup that allows content to be blast, or "Crank'd", on a layer above an original image on a website, and I knew this would be a great addition to my main site and mobile site. Since most of what I blog on my mobile site is on the run and mostly images captured from my iPhone, having others Crank the images would draw people to the site and keep them there as well as promote the blog as they may want to share their cranks.

I started out by installing the requisite javascript code on both sites and voila, the main HansonHarmony site worked just great on a couple of existing images. But the mobile site's post images were not "crankable." I uninstalled and reinstalled the javascript to no avail.

About this time, Hup, the self proclaimed "Crank'r Evangelist Numero Uno", sent me an e-mail welcoming me to the CrankTown posse and to send him some feedback. I did just that and he offered some suggestions which I tried. To no avail.

The main problem was the image size of the mobile image posts were too small to be crankable. But blogger's Mail-To-Blogger feature doesn't allow for the customization of the image size being posted. It always formats the thumbnail according to it's liking and not according to the will of the blogger. Bad bad bad Web 2.0 design. Don't they know the user is in control?

The solution? Flickr

Something that Hup mentioned in an e-mail made me think I could yet again make the blog do something else than what was it's original intention. With a little investigative research on Flickr, I found out they have an e-mail option as well but their integration with blogger is good enough to post directly to a designated blog with customizations. Bingo! Not only could I e-mail, but I could customize the post, add body text and tags for the post. Mother load!

So in order to achieve the desired Web 2.0 effect with PhotoCrank, I had to integrate Flickr with Blogger. Ah, the joys of Web 2.0 :)

Scaling a Hyper-Growing Super App

Considering I'm a light user of Facebook, I know very little about how much some users actually utilize the application. But reading that 250K new users sign up for the a FB account per day, it would seem that scaling the application is a mammoth challenge.

How do you actually manage 10K servers, and thousands of DB instances? How do you synchronize the DB instances?

How you manage all of those sessions?

Nice problem to have. FB is more than a viral app; it's an epidemic of gynormous proportions.

Btw, if ya wanna connect, here's your invitation :)

Ringtones for Dogs?

So I saw this come through the Twitter wire and found the concept just preposterous enough to actually click on the link. A Japanese company is actually marketing ringtones that are out of the audible range of humans and are catered to our canine friends. Obviously one would question how useful such a technology could be. If I can't hear it, why buy it.

Here are some uses for such a technology:

• You are upset with your significant other and need a distraction. Issue the "bark incessantly" ringtone command and you're free to give way to the canine distraction.
• You want to impress your house guests and secretly activate the "Beat It" ringtone to which your friend with paws is taught to moon walk and possibly lick his unmentionables in tribute of the gloved one.
• Your book group is over discussing the latest Grisham novel "Appeal" and with every mention of the word "lawyer" you activate the ringtone that commands your furry friend to flatulate.
• Finally, and for no good reason, you just want to laugh and activate the "Chicken Dance" ringtone to which Rover decidely performs this timeless polka.

OK, so my ideas aren't terribly hillarious but you get the point.

What ringtone-dependent ideas can you come up with that could be useful for man's best friend?

Geek Squad City Staffers Compared to Mormon Missionaries

How appropriate for the writer of CNET's Geek Gestalt (Dan Terdiman) to compare Geek Squad City's employees to Mormon Missionaries. He describes the "well-groomed young people in dark pants, white shirts, and narrow black ties" as "stylized kind-of-Mormon-missionary, kind-of-G-Men" appearing staffers. I find this to be a very descriptive and complimentary comment on the good grooming of the LDS missionaries. And having served as a missionary for 2 years I would consider this to be a positive nod to our young people serving the Lord today.

What does this have to do with technology? Well, not a lot, other than to say that the technology behind the city is quite sophisticated, efficient and provides a meaningful service to the likes of Best Buy which employs the "Geek Squad" in house (you can sometimes catch a Geek Squad patrol VW Beetle roaming around our neighborhood).

So for the techie geek that may happen to be just returning home from the LDS mission, don't worry about readjusting to the world around you. Just head on over to St. Louis and hire on at Geek Squad City: no adjustment necessary :)

YouTube for 6month olds?

Have you ever been on YouTube and had to abruptly either close down the browser make your kids close their eyes. Admittedly it has happened to me before, much to my embarrassment. The reason was not any insidious attempt to watch inappropriate material on my part but merely a "gotcha" that was unexpected and completely out of place with the context of what was being watched.

The solution (or at least a communal attempt)? Totlol.com. For a newsworthy perspective on this service click here.

Flash for iPhone?

I must admit that it has been a little frustrating to go to flash embedded websites to see a "won't work" icon on the Safari browser from within my iPhone. I do realize that only about 10% of sites actually use Flash, but it's a cool technology and used a lot for embedded video, not just website wizbang. So content on Facebook or other communual sites are rendered useless on the iPhone.

Well, the boys at Adobe claim to have a working product in the lab but the Apple powers are complaining that the mobile version of Flash may not be powerful enough for the elegant iPhone. Sounds like Apple is power-playing and may either have something cooked up for a more thick client or just stalling until it's mature enough and they can take over Adobe.

Who knows. But in the meantime, I'd like to have a little more content on the iPhone via Flash and let the power plays fight it out behind the scenes.

Thoughts?

Web 2.0: Providers Wake Up!

Dr. Windley on his Technometria blog shares some insight from David Friedman of Avenue A | Razorfish. The gist is providers of e-commerce either need to be in the Web 2.0 space or they're dead. Consumers want to not just be talked to, but want to play with services in order to be satisfied. But that's only part of the equation. Your services should be portable and useful contextually outside of your own offering.

I would agree and pretty much everything I'm thinking about right now is centered around services, SOA, how to consume and how to provide. What's more, I'm thinking in terms of my everyday interactions and how this same model impacts real world experiences. Maybe I'm approaching a breakthrough? Hope so!

What is the best 2.0 site you've experienced?

Grumblings on Tech World

This is merely a template entry to hold a place for tech grumblings.