General

TwitterMinder and Flickr->Twitter scripts

Lance Robinson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:58:30 GMT

If you’re an RSSBus user who is using my Google Calendar –> Twitter or Flickr –> Twitter services, you might notice a minor change to both. I changed Twitterminder so that tweets resulting from Google Calendar entries are prepended with “GCal: “. I did the same thing with the Flickr->Twitter script, it will now prepend “Flickr: “.

SUP – Simple Update Protocol for feed services

Lance Robinson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:02:56 GMT

This is cool – FriendFeed created the SUP protocol (format) for web services that produce multiple feeds. In order to reduce tons of frequent feed polling, services can offer one “SUP feed” that indicates what feeds on the service have been updated.

It works very simply. Each RSS/Atom feed includes a link tag with that feeds SUP-ID (so each feed has its own SUP-ID) and the URL of the SUP feed. The SUP feed contains a list of all the SUP-ID’s of feeds that have been updated.

Dear RIAA (aka GrooveShark and Pandora Rock)

Lance Robinson — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:57:37 GMT

Dear RIAA,

Please address your thank-you note to Pandora Radio. Pandora is where I was able to listen to a bunch of songs by Rehab, and where I then proceeded to purchase the Rehab album "Graffiti The World" (through Amazon MP3 of course, where I purchase all my DRM free music). Matt Miller brought it to my attention that Pandora may be on the way out because our the members of the Copyright Royalty Board have their eyes wide shut (just to be a little bit overly dramatic, there is no doubt in my mind that they are receiving some sort of monetary “encouragement” from the RIAA).

RIAA: while you’re at it, address another thank-you to Grooveshark, who’s ass you should also be kissing.

Fellow nerds, follow the Pandora blog and/or the Grooveshark blog.
Related: don’t forget to contact Amazon about Audible DRM.

Technorati Tags: RIAA, Pandora, GrooveShark, Amazon, Audible

Lost Phonebook – dot com

Lance Robinson — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:42:59 GMT

No, lostphonebook.com doesn’t exist. But I was thinking of buying it, and putting up a little mock “lost” flyer, complaining that I have lost my phonebook. The flyer would ask that if you have found a “lost” phonebook in your driveway or yard, that you simply return it to its owner.

Then of course, I would proceed to offer my address by asking you for your zip code, and what type of phonebook you found. The website would look for the closet phonebook publisher (ie, AT&T publishes “The Real Yellow Pages”) to your zip code and provide directions to that location, asking you to simply deposit said phonebook in their driveway or yard.

I would love nothing more than to see the front of the AT&T Raleigh offices littered with so many useless phonebooks that workers couldn’t even get through the front door.

Technorati Tags: Phonebooks

Pandora Radio

Lance Robinson — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:53:41 GMT

My friend Julie told me about Pandora Radio a while back, but I never got around to checking it out. Well, I finally did today, and she is right about it. Its awesome! Pandora allows you to custom make your own radio station, playing the music you request and other music similar to it. You can also share your station, and listen to the shared stations of other members and friends. In my case, just what the doctor ordered for a Sunday morning of background music while doing some chores around house.

High level nerdiness

Lance Robinson — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:25:42 GMT

If you’re reading this (and you’re not just one of my friends or acquaintances who is stalking me), you know you’ve done it. Yep, you know you have. You’ve spoken to someone or written to someone in various computer languages. It just happened here at /n software in an IM conversation between two of my co-workers, James and Tom. James is trying to get a group of people together to see the Pink Floyd Experience. James IM’d Tom in RSBScript (For you nerds that don’t know, RSBScript is an xml-based language used to help create and consume web services with RSSBus):

<rsb:equals attr="Tom.isGoingToFloyd" value="true">
   <rsb:else>
     <rsb:unset item="Tom" />
   </rsb:else>
</rsb:equals>

Translated into C#, this says:

if (Tom.IsGoingToFloyd())
{
}
else {
Tom.Dispose();
}

Only a true nerd could appreciate something like this, so naturally I laughed. :)

The first example of this extremely nerdy yet all too common act I can think of was a silly one that my friend Todd signed in my yearbook in high school (yep, we were nerds then too). Todd and I we were in AP Computer Science together, where Pascal (no, not even turbo pascal, the use of which actually lost me points on my final project!) was taught. Before you read this, know that me, Todd, and Luther used to all be best friends. Todd and Dana were a bit of an item, me and Aimee were dating, and Rose was this strange girl who seemed to be obsessed with Todd, and poor Luther had no women in sight. Here’s what Todd wrote (warning: do not read unless you are prepared for some serious high level nerdiness):

Lance; {Crackers is what we used to call you }

program TheEndOfTheYear (var Dana, Aimee:Babes; Lance, Stodd:Studs);

type funtype:char;

var Luther:needsagirl;

begin

{ //ok, this part was random stuff that Todd wrote, which I'll skip }

Girls:=0;
Luther:=Girls;
Joy := plenty;
Todd + Lance := Joy;
repeat
    Kiss(Lance, Aimee);
    Kiss(Todd, Dana);
until (Death or ExtremeHappiness);
for Counter := head to toe do
    LoveYourWoman;
while Rose = Alive do
    HitAndKick(manytimes);
end.

Yes, I am aware of the nerdiness level. No, I am not ashamed. Pascal Lance out. (:P Tom)

RAR and Other Alternative/Annoying Archival/Compression Formats

Lance Robinson — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:23:21 GMT

I hate when people send me an email with a .rar (or similar non-.zip) attachment. I realize that rar has some special features that set it apart - but those features are not really very important when you're just talking about sending me a small non-commercial c# project in an email.

I think I will create my own custom compressed archival format, and start sending out .lnc files (which doesn't stand for "lance", but something creative that implies its the worst compression format ever, like "loco nasty compression" or "like...not compressed" or "lame non-zip creation") instead of .rar or .zip. Then everyone who wants to open one of my email attachments will have to download and install my software.

And when someone replies back to me and says - "Can you send me a zip instead of an lnc?" I'll just be like "What?? You're still using zip? Ugh. Dude download WinLNC already, its 2008. I sure hope you're not using that 'compressed folders' crap that is built into Windows like all the other Microsoft sheep." Then I'll post information on the WinLNC website about buying the WinLNC subscription package, and false testimonials from all my "customers" raving about how WinLNC is soooo much better than all the other available tools. Then I'll upload the free trial version to download.com and similar sites and write a script that automatically passes through anonymizing proxies and downloads my software once every 5 minutes.

Before my PowerShell friends think they're immune, soon to follow will be the read-lnc and write-lnc cmdlets.

Are you thinking the same thing I'm thinking, Pinky? I'm going to take over the world [of compressed archives]!

New Stuff on the Home Front

Lance Robinson — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:30:58 GMT

On the home front:

I’m planning on trying some triathlon events, although I really would prefer to try some adventure racing instead. First I’m going to start with a tiny little super sprint triathlon, where the distances are very short. First I have to wait for my ankle to get healed though, but the swimming part will be the only tough leg for me so I can train for that even with the injury (for those who don’t know, I took a bad sprain playing volleyball about 5 weeks ago). I’m also planning on my first half marathon in November. I need to get to work training for this one ASAP if I am going to make it. I’m sure that I’m out of shape since I haven’t done any running in the last 5 weeks. For now swimming and mountain biking will be the bulk of my exercise. Got any good advice for me?

I have recently enjoyed live performances of Iris Dement, The Bowerbirds, and Tom Petty. I love live music! We also went to see Dave Attell, who was absolutely freakin’ hilarious! I went to all of these with someone I met recently, and I’m having a blast spending time with her. Her music taste is much like mine (which is not exactly common), and we get along great.

My friends keep making fun of me because I have it in my head that I want to buy a 2009 Toyota Prius. I don’t think the Prius body style is as lame as they say, but for all that mpg I don’t really care either. Right now I drive a 2002 F-150 gas guzzler, which has its uses of course…but also has its hefty gas price tag. Maybe I’ll keep it too and just park it most of the time. Maybe whatever gas money I save on a new hybrid I can throw into buying a boat! Thats not exactly a step in the carbon-neutral direction, huh? Everytime I drive over the lakes around the area I am so completely jealous of those people I see riding their waverunners, skiing, wakeboarding, etc. I want to get out there, but a ski boat is a big chunk of money to drop. Is it worth it?

Its almost time to go white water rafting! Can't wait for that! :P Then I want to learn how to do some river kayaking.

New Stuff on the Work Front

Lance Robinson — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:27:24 GMT

From the work front:

What have I been doing at work lately? I’ve been spending a lot of time at work playing with SharePoint, the PowerShellToys’ PowerShellASP which lets you create ASP.NET apps with PowerShell script, and I set myself up with a brand new openSUSE 11 (this is a great distro) machine where I’ve been spending a lot of time in MonoDevelop.

Speaking of PowerShell and ASP.NET – check out PoshBoard [at CodePlex], Antoine Habert’s PowerShell driven ajax portal. Antoine has a nice little video on his blog.

/n software has also made a small flurry of new announcements over the past week or so.

New release – IP*Works! EDI/AS2 V8. Another fresh round of Drummond cert tests are complete. On top of the insanely popular AS2 components, we’ve added OFTP, FTPS, and a new java GISB component. A new AS2 Connector application is coming out of the pipeline soon too!
New release – Paymentech Integrator v5. Paymentech Integrator is probably my personal favorite of all of our credit card processing components. With PABP/CISP compliance being so important, this new release has been highly anticipated. This release adds Canadian Debit and Health Care/FSA support.
New beta – UPS Integrator. Unlike the other /n software shipping integrators (FedEx and USPS), this one does NOT include the ability to generate shipping labels. While the technology is there, unfortunately UPS licensing restrictions will not allow us to release a component that generates UPS shipping labels, but we are trying to work with them to change this. If this is something you’re looking for, do contact me so that I can get your comments passed on to the right people at UPS!
New beta – SharePoint Workflow Extensions. The toolkit includes SharePoint Activities for Internet communications, namely FTP (ssl & ssh), RSS, email, sexec, SMPP (sms messaging), SNPP (paging), and XMPP (jabber).

A Letter to Audible about DRM

Lance Robinson — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:33:50 GMT

I still haven't found a very convenient way to listen to Audible books. I don't want to go out and buy a new phone or a new mp3 player just so that it will work with Audible's unnecessary restrictions. Burning to CD's is a bad option because at a minimum of 14+ cd's per book, its just wasteful. CDRW's are out because the cd player in my car can't read them. Audible's software players are decent, but they are only supported on the desktop (I don't want to listen to books on my desktop) and specific devices. I tried it for a while on a Pocket PC device that I had access to through work, and while it was fine for in the car it was too large and bulky to take running with me. So finally I started burning the books to a set of CDRW's (which I repeatedly use just for this purpose), then I rip each of those cd's one by one, and finally I move the resulting mp3's onto my phone (for in the car) or my mp3 player (for when I go running). Pain. In. The. Butt.

So recently I tried Audible Air, Audible's java player app for mobile phones. It isn't supported on my phone, unfortunately. So I emailed them and got a very detailed and polite response about why Audible Air won't work on my phone (the device manufacturer has to update the firmware so that it can understand the DRM blah blah blah). BS!

Then I saw a post on Boing Boing about how Amazon (Amazon purchased Audible early this year) said that it would not remove the DRM from Audible's audio books unless customers complained enough. So, if you're an Audible customer (or would like to be in the future), I hope you'll take a moment to email them and share your frustration about DRM. Here is the email I sent to audible@custhelp.com:

I hope you'll also pass along these comments about your DRM, so that things can change. I read that Amazon plans to keep the Audible DRM unless customers complain enough. Well, here is my argument against DRM:

You said - "The encryption is required by the publishers to insure the security of their book files..." While this may have been true at one time, I believe this statement is now incorrect. Random House nows allows its online retailers to sell audio books without DRM (see the following letter from Random House: http://craphound.com/DRMLetter22108.pdf). According to one well known author/blogger (Cory Doctorow, http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/21/random-house-audio-a.html) who ran into this problem, it is Audible itself who is placing this restriction. Even authors who WANT their books to be without DRM cannot do so if they desire to distribute their books through Audible (there is a well known author/blogger who has had this problem in the past).

Random House is smart enough to know that pirated copies of audio books, just like music, will exist no matter what. Amazon and Audible are smart enough to know this as well, or at least they should be. Right now, even with your DRM, I could (if I wanted to, which I don't) burn a copy of a book to a CDRW, rip the cd's to mp3's, and distribute those mp3s illegally. I could even merge them together into one large mp3 if I wanted. DRM doesn't stop the kind of people who do this - all it does it inconvenience good customers who just want to listen to good audio books on their devices or in their cars without having to burn 22 cds. As it is now, in order to listen to books the way I want to, I have to burn to a CDRW, rip the cd's to mp3's and manually copy those mp3's onto my SD card for my mobile device. Talk about a painful process. All so that Audible and publishers can accomplish what? Nothing.

Then there's the issue of Audible wasting time and money struggling to keep ahead of software applications that can convert from .aa to .mp3. Even more time and money is wasted trying to "support" x device. You would already support my device if you just gave me mp3s instead of a DRM mess.
What keeps me from buying more audio books from Audible? What keeps me from buying a Kindle from Amazon? DRM, and only DRM. I already canceled my Audible membership once out of frustration over this. I signed up again after Amazon bought Audible hoping that things would change. I hope I'm not wrong, and I hope it happens sooner than later.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Audible, DRM, .aa, .mp3