Indeed, it's been quite a while. About 3-1/2 years since the last post.
It's been a busy time. And mostly I've been hanging out on FaceBook, or a bit on Google+. My personal server had some disk problems a couple years back, and I decided it wasn't worth fixing. It was costing quite a bit each year to do the server housing. However, it was still WAY cheaper than going with a hosted server. But all I needed was some web hosting.
Still, I needed to do a bit of data recovery. I eventually got around to doing it even though I was busy doing other things for the most part. But I got the data back, and then just ignored it.
Eventually, I thought that FB was getting a bit too much of my attention. Of course, this is over at Google, technically... Anyways, I figured I would put a couple of my websites back so that they at least had a bit of the old content.
I might end up doing more of this. I might not do too much more here on Blogger. It's pretty easy to post things here though. And I don't have to deal with maintaining any code, which is good.
The Sonos boxes are still providing me music, and they do a great job at it. They still get music from a ReadyNAS, albeit a newer version that has Intel Atom processors instead of the open-source Sparc hardware. The Atom processor is quite a bit faster though.
As for work stuff. I probably won't discuss too much of that. Other to say I've been doing a bit with PostgreSQL, an open-source relational database that's pretty good.
Showing posts with label Techie Stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Techie Stuff. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Logitech puts the Squeezebox out to pasture
This is a bit of sad news for Squeezebox fans. I myself had moved on to a Sonos setup awhile back. Though there was always a little bit of doubt if it was absolutely the right decision. With the decision of Logitech to discontinue the Squeezebox, no more doubt exists that I made the right decision.
Still, I loved the sound of my Squeezebox Boom. And it was always nice to be able to see what was playing on it by just looking at it, which was the major advantage over the Sonos.
Still, I loved the sound of my Squeezebox Boom. And it was always nice to be able to see what was playing on it by just looking at it, which was the major advantage over the Sonos.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Squeezebox Boom!
And then I found a job. Which was bad for me writing stuff on this blog, but it was great for my cashflow.
During the first couple of months working, I decided I needed to upgrade the my music player from the Noxon 2 to something else. Many of my friends loved their Squeezeboxes, and since the Squeezbox's server ran on the NSLU2, I decided I'd take the plunge and buy one. The model I bought was the Squeezebox Boom.
First the good things. The Squeezebox Boom is pretty much self contained, with one big exception. There is the possibility of using either a wired or wireless network connection. The display is easy to read. The size is convenient. And, the sound is great.
But, there were some serious drawbacks. First off, the version of the Squeeze Server that supported the Squeezebox Boom didn't work on the NSLU2 so well. Second, I have most of my music encoded as Apple Lossless formatted files, I found out that my music files were required to be transcoded on the way to the device. I was surprised, as the Squeezebox was advertised as being able to play Apple Lossless files. And, it still is advertised as being able to play Apple Lossless files. You may have to go and select the 'features' part of the website. With this, I'd expect that the device should be able to play the music. However, the transcoding is to FLAC, so it sounds decent when it gets to the device.
So, a big issue with the Squeezebox devices is that they are more or less 'dumb' clients. That is, most of the work is taken care of on the server, with the device pretty much just a set of speakers and a display with a remote. This means that you have to have a server doing the heavy work. You can use your desktop PC to do this, but then it has to be turned on. Rather than use my desktop to serve up the tunes I decided to get a NetGear ReadyNAS Duo network attached storage device and stream the music files from that. Well, it worked, but not so great. After doing a bit of research, I discovered that the MySQL database that the Squeezebox Server was using to keep track of the music files was horribly tuned. Adding a bit of RAM to the device and tuning the database fixed most of the problems. There were still a few problems with the Squeezebox not playing as instantly as desired, but worked okay. Okay, that is until Logitech released an update to the server. This new version took more resources than my little ReadyNAS had, so I remained with the old version. However, the NOXON worked great with this setup, other than it couldn't play the Apple Lossless at all.
Another option for the Squeezebox is to use it with Logitech's online service, which works pretty good. However, it does occasionally drop out, which can be annoying.
So, that was pretty much it, until Apple came out with Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard has what's called the 'Bonjour Sleep Proxy'. And what the Bonjour Sleep Proxy does is to sleep your system until you need it, for things like printers, your iTunes server or whatever you might connect remotely to your mac for. Suddenly, the Squeezebox Boom could just start the mac when it needed to and not require it to be on all the time.
During the first couple of months working, I decided I needed to upgrade the my music player from the Noxon 2 to something else. Many of my friends loved their Squeezeboxes, and since the Squeezbox's server ran on the NSLU2, I decided I'd take the plunge and buy one. The model I bought was the Squeezebox Boom.
First the good things. The Squeezebox Boom is pretty much self contained, with one big exception. There is the possibility of using either a wired or wireless network connection. The display is easy to read. The size is convenient. And, the sound is great.
But, there were some serious drawbacks. First off, the version of the Squeeze Server that supported the Squeezebox Boom didn't work on the NSLU2 so well. Second, I have most of my music encoded as Apple Lossless formatted files, I found out that my music files were required to be transcoded on the way to the device. I was surprised, as the Squeezebox was advertised as being able to play Apple Lossless files. And, it still is advertised as being able to play Apple Lossless files. You may have to go and select the 'features' part of the website. With this, I'd expect that the device should be able to play the music. However, the transcoding is to FLAC, so it sounds decent when it gets to the device.
So, a big issue with the Squeezebox devices is that they are more or less 'dumb' clients. That is, most of the work is taken care of on the server, with the device pretty much just a set of speakers and a display with a remote. This means that you have to have a server doing the heavy work. You can use your desktop PC to do this, but then it has to be turned on. Rather than use my desktop to serve up the tunes I decided to get a NetGear ReadyNAS Duo network attached storage device and stream the music files from that. Well, it worked, but not so great. After doing a bit of research, I discovered that the MySQL database that the Squeezebox Server was using to keep track of the music files was horribly tuned. Adding a bit of RAM to the device and tuning the database fixed most of the problems. There were still a few problems with the Squeezebox not playing as instantly as desired, but worked okay. Okay, that is until Logitech released an update to the server. This new version took more resources than my little ReadyNAS had, so I remained with the old version. However, the NOXON worked great with this setup, other than it couldn't play the Apple Lossless at all.
Another option for the Squeezebox is to use it with Logitech's online service, which works pretty good. However, it does occasionally drop out, which can be annoying.
So, that was pretty much it, until Apple came out with Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard has what's called the 'Bonjour Sleep Proxy'. And what the Bonjour Sleep Proxy does is to sleep your system until you need it, for things like printers, your iTunes server or whatever you might connect remotely to your mac for. Suddenly, the Squeezebox Boom could just start the mac when it needed to and not require it to be on all the time.
I ended up getting a mac mini server for all sorts of reasons, and one of the things I used it for was to run the Squeezebox Server software. This worked okay, but the Squeezebox Server software had a memory leak that wrote something like 20GB or more of swapfiles.
Eventually, I started looking at upgrading the ReadyNAS, which at this point is doing duty as the backup server for the mac mini. I noticed that Netgear had done some significant updates to their product line, and I got a ReadyNAS Ultra 2. This device is many, many times faster than the old Duo, and many times quieter too. So far the Squeezebox Server seems to work pretty good.
Then, there is the issue of what to use for a remote. The web client for the Squeezebox is okay, having gone through a recent update that allows one to choose the volume a bit more granularly. But a big issue is that Logitech doesn't provide a remote iPhone/iPad app. I've been using iPeng, which is pretty good, but this is something I think Logitech should really provide with the system. It'd be great if Logitech underwrote iPeng.
All in all, the Squeezbox Boom is a great sounding system. But the infrastructure required to get music to the actual box is involved. You either need to have your PC feeding it files, or you have to set up a dedicated server. It would be great if you could just access files from a file share and be done with it, but you can't.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The Noxon
So, I got to the point where I didn't want my music server to run on my laptop. The little iBook was pretty good, but I didn't want to deal with music playing on it at all times. I just wanted something to play music from the NSLU2.
So I did a bit of research and considered players from Terratec, Roku and SlimSystems.
Roku had the soundbridge. It was a fairly cool looking cylindrical player. There was a smaller, cheaper version as well. The big problem was that my home network was now 802.11G, and the soundbridge only did 802.11B. That meant slowing down my wireless network. That wouldn't do.
Slim Systems had their Squeezebox, which is still a popular system. The problem with the Squeezebox is that it was still way too expensive, and it only had support for 802.11B networking.
Then there was the Noxon 2 from Terratec. It was basically a Phillips Streamium. Swisscom had a decent deal on the Noxon, so I got one. I was able to configure the Twonky UPNP server to feed music to the Noxon 2. The Noxon also supported more modern wireless and wireless encryption, so that it would work with my wireless network much better. I could run Elgato's EyeConnect software to allow the Noxon to play from iTunes. This worked okay. But I tended to use the Noxon to listen to Internet radio stations, especially to NPR when I had my bike set up on rollers to do some exercise. I'd use the Noxon for a couple of years. I was never really happy with it, as Terratec had made a special model for Swisscom and then abandoned it while upgrading the firmware for all of the other Noxon 2 units. But the Noxon did have pretty decent sound.
So I did a bit of research and considered players from Terratec, Roku and SlimSystems.
Roku had the soundbridge. It was a fairly cool looking cylindrical player. There was a smaller, cheaper version as well. The big problem was that my home network was now 802.11G, and the soundbridge only did 802.11B. That meant slowing down my wireless network. That wouldn't do.
Slim Systems had their Squeezebox, which is still a popular system. The problem with the Squeezebox is that it was still way too expensive, and it only had support for 802.11B networking.
Then there was the Noxon 2 from Terratec. It was basically a Phillips Streamium. Swisscom had a decent deal on the Noxon, so I got one. I was able to configure the Twonky UPNP server to feed music to the Noxon 2. The Noxon also supported more modern wireless and wireless encryption, so that it would work with my wireless network much better. I could run Elgato's EyeConnect software to allow the Noxon to play from iTunes. This worked okay. But I tended to use the Noxon to listen to Internet radio stations, especially to NPR when I had my bike set up on rollers to do some exercise. I'd use the Noxon for a couple of years. I was never really happy with it, as Terratec had made a special model for Swisscom and then abandoned it while upgrading the firmware for all of the other Noxon 2 units. But the Noxon did have pretty decent sound.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Backing up your blog
Just because I was reading a story about some blogs getting deleted from a hosting service, and it's just a good idea to make backups. You can make a backup by looking at the instructions on how to make backups from Google.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
More music server stuff.
So, after awhile of living in Switzerland, I decided it'd be nice to be able to access my music over the network. To do this, I'd have to rip all my CDs, what I brought to Switzerland and have in some nice storage cases, though they do take up a bit of space.
I thought it'd be nice to have some sort of server to store the music. At first I thought a PC would be good, but they were to expensive and too loud. At some point I stumbled upon the Linksys NSLU2. This is a great little device with a 266mhz processor and 32mb of memory. It draws something like 3 watts of power when not connected to the USB drives that one can connect to it. It runs Linux as an OS, and as the source was available, people figured out how to modify and replace the OS. When I think back, this little machine is several times the machine that the VAX 11/780 we had in college. It has no fan, and is absolutely quiet. I found a fanless external disk drive that was also fairly quiet and that was my hardware configuration.
The next thing I needed was a way to serve the music to iTunes. The answer was what was called mt-daapd at that point, and is now called the firefly media server. Firefly does a great job of serving up to iTunes. The only big drawback is that you don't get coverflow. But, if you just want to fire up iTunes and play random music, this is a good way to do it.
This was a great solution for a bit, but my little G4 iBook didn't have that much power, and so I started thinking about another way to listen to music....
I thought it'd be nice to have some sort of server to store the music. At first I thought a PC would be good, but they were to expensive and too loud. At some point I stumbled upon the Linksys NSLU2. This is a great little device with a 266mhz processor and 32mb of memory. It draws something like 3 watts of power when not connected to the USB drives that one can connect to it. It runs Linux as an OS, and as the source was available, people figured out how to modify and replace the OS. When I think back, this little machine is several times the machine that the VAX 11/780 we had in college. It has no fan, and is absolutely quiet. I found a fanless external disk drive that was also fairly quiet and that was my hardware configuration.
The next thing I needed was a way to serve the music to iTunes. The answer was what was called mt-daapd at that point, and is now called the firefly media server. Firefly does a great job of serving up to iTunes. The only big drawback is that you don't get coverflow. But, if you just want to fire up iTunes and play random music, this is a good way to do it.
This was a great solution for a bit, but my little G4 iBook didn't have that much power, and so I started thinking about another way to listen to music....
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Music over the net.
One thing you miss incredibly when you're living in a country other than your own is the radio that you had in your country. I suppose there are some interesting Swiss radio stations. And, actually I rather like Radio Swiss Jazz, but one channel isn't really enough. Sure, there's World Radio Switzerland as well, but the music they play on the station is stuff I just can't stand, even though I like the content. There was also the English Show in Basel, but they had the same problem.
After awhile I decided it would be good to check out the options on the Internet. At first there were a few stations on iTunes. It's still a pretty good option. Stations like those of RadioIO are pretty decent, even if they're all music and no news. Of course for news there's always the option of listening to NPR, which I can get over iTunes, various network players and even my cable TV box. However, I still end up watching CNN or Swiss TV for most of my broadcast news these days, even if it's just for the background noise.
But, the listening to of music on a computer isn't always a great experience. It's okay to use iTunes at work with some headphones, but at home I want to just kick back and listen. I'd also like to listen to something played over some nice speakers and not have to deal with the headphones. So it was gadget time! :-)
The first thing I'd actually tried was iTunes with a Airport Express. I bought my first AX before leaving from the US. I was using it as a extension wireless router at first. It worked quite nicely for this. I also tried using it with my iTunes collection, then on my little G3 iBook. The iBook didn't have enough room to store my entire collection, which I wanted encoded as a lossless collection, but it did play some stuff nicely. It was fun to play with for a bit but I ended up deciding I needed to use the disk space on my iBook and so ended up going back to just using my five disc changers. However, in Switzerland, I no longer had my five disc changers....
After awhile I decided it would be good to check out the options on the Internet. At first there were a few stations on iTunes. It's still a pretty good option. Stations like those of RadioIO are pretty decent, even if they're all music and no news. Of course for news there's always the option of listening to NPR, which I can get over iTunes, various network players and even my cable TV box. However, I still end up watching CNN or Swiss TV for most of my broadcast news these days, even if it's just for the background noise.
But, the listening to of music on a computer isn't always a great experience. It's okay to use iTunes at work with some headphones, but at home I want to just kick back and listen. I'd also like to listen to something played over some nice speakers and not have to deal with the headphones. So it was gadget time! :-)
The first thing I'd actually tried was iTunes with a Airport Express. I bought my first AX before leaving from the US. I was using it as a extension wireless router at first. It worked quite nicely for this. I also tried using it with my iTunes collection, then on my little G3 iBook. The iBook didn't have enough room to store my entire collection, which I wanted encoded as a lossless collection, but it did play some stuff nicely. It was fun to play with for a bit but I ended up deciding I needed to use the disk space on my iBook and so ended up going back to just using my five disc changers. However, in Switzerland, I no longer had my five disc changers....
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Back to posting
It's been awhile. I've been busy. Mostly busy working.
The job is quite interesting. I'm working while speaking pretty much nothing but German. It's not so easy, the German part, but it keeps me on my toes, and I'm never bored.
I won't say too much about the job on the blog. However, it gives me the chance to look at and evaluate technology. I find this pretty cool. And...where appropriate I might even comment on a few thinks. Expect me to say stuff about things like my iPhone for instance.
I've also been playing around with Facebook, which I find cool for the most part. However, it's not a good platform for more than short snippets of information. That's better to do with blogging. But I do like the way I can post pictures. The stupid games are sometimes fun as well. Still, it's Facebook is easy for the most part, and my friends all can reply with ease.
The job is quite interesting. I'm working while speaking pretty much nothing but German. It's not so easy, the German part, but it keeps me on my toes, and I'm never bored.
I won't say too much about the job on the blog. However, it gives me the chance to look at and evaluate technology. I find this pretty cool. And...where appropriate I might even comment on a few thinks. Expect me to say stuff about things like my iPhone for instance.
I've also been playing around with Facebook, which I find cool for the most part. However, it's not a good platform for more than short snippets of information. That's better to do with blogging. But I do like the way I can post pictures. The stupid games are sometimes fun as well. Still, it's Facebook is easy for the most part, and my friends all can reply with ease.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Customer Service...
Yesterday, I woke up to find my DSL line no longer working quite right. I was cut off from the net. Well, mostly, I did use the dial-up to get to the football score I was looking for.
Eventually, I decided to call up the big phone company and after about 15 minutes I was connected. The guy answering the phone was obviously first-level windows support and tried his best to help me. The first bit was to have me reset and power on and off my modem/router. I'd done this about ten times already, but I gave it another try. Didn't work. Then he tried to escalate my call. Being Sunday in Switzerland, this wasn't the easiest thing for him to do, and it ended up being impossible. So, he then started with my router configuration. I'd mentioned it'd been working fine for several months and that I'd not changed it. It was possible that it could be a hardware problem, but not the configuration.
Not having any other options other than my suggestion that there was a problem with the DSL line, he suggested I do a factory reset of the router. There was no way I was going to do this, after all, it'd been working fine for months. I suggested again that it was probably the line. He decided that he'd make a call to see if this was a possibility.
Yep. There was a problem with the line, and a number of folks in the neighborhood had already called it in. So there goes an hour of my life and I ended up with a cold pasta lunch yesterday. Magically, this evening the un-reconfigured DSL modem was once again functioning perfectly....
Eventually, I decided to call up the big phone company and after about 15 minutes I was connected. The guy answering the phone was obviously first-level windows support and tried his best to help me. The first bit was to have me reset and power on and off my modem/router. I'd done this about ten times already, but I gave it another try. Didn't work. Then he tried to escalate my call. Being Sunday in Switzerland, this wasn't the easiest thing for him to do, and it ended up being impossible. So, he then started with my router configuration. I'd mentioned it'd been working fine for several months and that I'd not changed it. It was possible that it could be a hardware problem, but not the configuration.
Not having any other options other than my suggestion that there was a problem with the DSL line, he suggested I do a factory reset of the router. There was no way I was going to do this, after all, it'd been working fine for months. I suggested again that it was probably the line. He decided that he'd make a call to see if this was a possibility.
Yep. There was a problem with the line, and a number of folks in the neighborhood had already called it in. So there goes an hour of my life and I ended up with a cold pasta lunch yesterday. Magically, this evening the un-reconfigured DSL modem was once again functioning perfectly....
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Remote maintenance of servers...
I'm going to geek out a bit with this entry. Apologies to you non-techies.
To keep myself entertained during my time between jobs, I've decided to get myself a server to host a few projects I've been working on. I don't want to host them on a home sever because a home server is too noisy and too warm. Besides, I'd have to share the outbound traffic with my web surfing. So, rather than getting more bandwith at home, I can just put the server in a data center for just a little bit more money.
And there's the issue. It's in a data center. Behind locked doors. No monitor or keyboard. So, how do I access it? An Serial-over-IP device would be cool, but they're expensive and don't do much. I've looked into IPMI, which my server supports, but It needs a VPN to get out of the local network. I've found a KVM-over-IP device that looks pretty cool, but I need to get it shipped out from the US.
But, there's always the option of putting a DVD in the DVD drive. Most of the time it won't be used. In fact, I'll probably not use it unless I need to do an install from the console. So, I'm thinking having a Linux live dvd might be a good thing to keep in it, just in case of an emergency. I got Puppy Linux to work, but it doesn't have LVM in the package, so it looks like I'm off to figure out another option with a different distro, or trying to work out how to get LVM into Puppy Linux...
At least it keeps me out of trouble.
To keep myself entertained during my time between jobs, I've decided to get myself a server to host a few projects I've been working on. I don't want to host them on a home sever because a home server is too noisy and too warm. Besides, I'd have to share the outbound traffic with my web surfing. So, rather than getting more bandwith at home, I can just put the server in a data center for just a little bit more money.
And there's the issue. It's in a data center. Behind locked doors. No monitor or keyboard. So, how do I access it? An Serial-over-IP device would be cool, but they're expensive and don't do much. I've looked into IPMI, which my server supports, but It needs a VPN to get out of the local network. I've found a KVM-over-IP device that looks pretty cool, but I need to get it shipped out from the US.
But, there's always the option of putting a DVD in the DVD drive. Most of the time it won't be used. In fact, I'll probably not use it unless I need to do an install from the console. So, I'm thinking having a Linux live dvd might be a good thing to keep in it, just in case of an emergency. I got Puppy Linux to work, but it doesn't have LVM in the package, so it looks like I'm off to figure out another option with a different distro, or trying to work out how to get LVM into Puppy Linux...
At least it keeps me out of trouble.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Copyright - Copywrong: Michael Gisinger at BlogcampSwitzerland_2.0
I'm getting around to a few things I've dropped. This one I should have taken care of quite some time ago. I still have a couple more videos from BlogcampSwitzerland_2.0 that I haven't processed. They're in German, though, and I wasn't all that excited about the topics. However, the exception to all of this is Michael Gisinger's talk on copyright, which I thought was excellent, as was his High German presentation. Michael gives a nice history of copyright and discusses a few views on how copyright is viewed. Unfortunately, if you don't understand German, you won't understand the presentation. If anyone out there wants to tack some subtitles on it, feel free to do so. I can even provide the original video file for some better quality.
Es ist ein bisschen spät. Ich hätte ein video von Blogcamp_2.0, und ein presentation von Michael Gisinger gemacht. Dieser presentation ist sehr interresant. Er spricht von den Geschicte des Copyright. Als das Video ist auf Deutsch, wenn jemand kann Subtitle machen, dass gut ist.
Es ist ein bisschen spät. Ich hätte ein video von Blogcamp_2.0, und ein presentation von Michael Gisinger gemacht. Dieser presentation ist sehr interresant. Er spricht von den Geschicte des Copyright. Als das Video ist auf Deutsch, wenn jemand kann Subtitle machen, dass gut ist.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Thoughts on Google Video
Last year I used Google Video to host the video I shot of the sessions I attended at BlogcampSwitzerland. It's mostly worked pretty well. However, I did have a bit of trouble uploading one of the videos.
This year's Blogcamp videos aren't getting along so well with Google Video. Google Video requires that you use this uploading client. The support for this client seems pretty low. At first I couldn't seem to get any of the video uploaded at all, then I noticed that the program had been updated. So, I downloaded the update, and then tried uploading the video. One of the presentations has uploaded okay, but the other I tried uploading hasn't been as lucky. As such, I'm now looking at alternatives to Google Video. YouTube isn't an option, as they limit you to videos of 10 minutes or less.
I'll probably end up hosting the video on another server someplace.
This year's Blogcamp videos aren't getting along so well with Google Video. Google Video requires that you use this uploading client. The support for this client seems pretty low. At first I couldn't seem to get any of the video uploaded at all, then I noticed that the program had been updated. So, I downloaded the update, and then tried uploading the video. One of the presentations has uploaded okay, but the other I tried uploading hasn't been as lucky. As such, I'm now looking at alternatives to Google Video. YouTube isn't an option, as they limit you to videos of 10 minutes or less.
I'll probably end up hosting the video on another server someplace.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Quick Thoughts on Blogcampswitzerland 2.0
Back on October 20th, I attended Blogcampswitzerland 2.0 held here in Zurich at ETH. I had attended the conference last year and found it quite interesting.
This year was a bit different. To start out with, nearly all of the presentations, with the exception of the start-up segments, were in German. Dannie Jost's presentation on "The Swiss Myth", a nice play on "Swiss Miss" - the chocolate drink, was probably the only exception and was in English. Well, most of Dannie's presentation was in English. As you will see when I finally post the videos, the discussion did branch out into a bit of German. I suppose this isn't surprising given that this is in a German speaking part of the country. Fortunately, my German has progressed to the point that I could understand most of what was going on. Dannie's presentation was quite interesting and I'll comment more on it when I post the video.
The other really good talk was Michael Gisinger's talk on copyright and it's history. Michael did me the great service and presented in that mythical language 'High German', as so I could understand it better. And, users that speak a non-Swiss German will also be able to understand the presentation when I post the video. As for you anglophones, well, perhaps someone will add appropriate subtitles. You can't really run audio through babelfish at this point...
It was mostly a good conference, but not as good as last year. I wonder if a conference on blogging is a bit limited at this point. Perhaps a more general technical (while still having a track on blogging) Barcamp is in order for Zurich?
Many thanks to the BlogcampSwitzerland 2.0 Organizing Committee for all the hard work putting everything together!
This year was a bit different. To start out with, nearly all of the presentations, with the exception of the start-up segments, were in German. Dannie Jost's presentation on "The Swiss Myth", a nice play on "Swiss Miss" - the chocolate drink, was probably the only exception and was in English. Well, most of Dannie's presentation was in English. As you will see when I finally post the videos, the discussion did branch out into a bit of German. I suppose this isn't surprising given that this is in a German speaking part of the country. Fortunately, my German has progressed to the point that I could understand most of what was going on. Dannie's presentation was quite interesting and I'll comment more on it when I post the video.
The other really good talk was Michael Gisinger's talk on copyright and it's history. Michael did me the great service and presented in that mythical language 'High German', as so I could understand it better. And, users that speak a non-Swiss German will also be able to understand the presentation when I post the video. As for you anglophones, well, perhaps someone will add appropriate subtitles. You can't really run audio through babelfish at this point...
It was mostly a good conference, but not as good as last year. I wonder if a conference on blogging is a bit limited at this point. Perhaps a more general technical (while still having a track on blogging) Barcamp is in order for Zurich?
Many thanks to the BlogcampSwitzerland 2.0 Organizing Committee for all the hard work putting everything together!
Thursday, May 10, 2007
It's all so simple....
As I look for a job here in Switzerland, I have a lot of time to think. Lately, I have been thinking about some of the big web companies; Yahoo, Amazon, Google etc.
One thing connects all of these companies, and that is they all started out as really simple ideas. Good ideas, but really simple.
Take Yahoo for example. Yahoo basically started out as a single page of interesting links that people could visit. Then that page grew too long, and the page turned into categories of interesting links, then came a portal, mail and search. But it really started out just as links to sites that one guy found interesting.
Amazon started out much the same. A list of books that this guy was selling, at a good price. I think he was selling and mailing the books from his home. He might have even been using email for the orders at one point. Then he automated the ordering process, and went from there. Again, though, it just started out with one simple idea. Sell books from a webpage.
Google started out a bit differently, but it had roots in the same sort of idea. Google's first ancestor was Webcrawler. Remember Webcrawler? The first search engine? It was a Perl script that contacted webservers and tried to figure out what the pages were about. A Perl script written by one guy, Brian Pinkerton. The site had a cool name, and a simple idea. Webcrawler was eventually purchased by AOL. Then came other search engines; Ask Jeeves, Infoseek, Inktome, Excite, Yahoo!, Verity. Then came the metacrawlers like Dogpile that searched the search engines. But the guys at Google had a better way to do searching, and a cheaper way hosting things. They have taken what was a simple idea and have grown it into a huge enterprise.
All of these successful companies have started out with really simple ideas, but have kept growing and have become the beasts that they are today.
So, now all I have to do is come up with the right simple idea! ;-)
One thing connects all of these companies, and that is they all started out as really simple ideas. Good ideas, but really simple.
Take Yahoo for example. Yahoo basically started out as a single page of interesting links that people could visit. Then that page grew too long, and the page turned into categories of interesting links, then came a portal, mail and search. But it really started out just as links to sites that one guy found interesting.
Amazon started out much the same. A list of books that this guy was selling, at a good price. I think he was selling and mailing the books from his home. He might have even been using email for the orders at one point. Then he automated the ordering process, and went from there. Again, though, it just started out with one simple idea. Sell books from a webpage.
Google started out a bit differently, but it had roots in the same sort of idea. Google's first ancestor was Webcrawler. Remember Webcrawler? The first search engine? It was a Perl script that contacted webservers and tried to figure out what the pages were about. A Perl script written by one guy, Brian Pinkerton. The site had a cool name, and a simple idea. Webcrawler was eventually purchased by AOL. Then came other search engines; Ask Jeeves, Infoseek, Inktome, Excite, Yahoo!, Verity. Then came the metacrawlers like Dogpile that searched the search engines. But the guys at Google had a better way to do searching, and a cheaper way hosting things. They have taken what was a simple idea and have grown it into a huge enterprise.
All of these successful companies have started out with really simple ideas, but have kept growing and have become the beasts that they are today.
So, now all I have to do is come up with the right simple idea! ;-)
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Joost Invites
I've got three Joost invites. Joost only works on Windows and Macs, and then only on Intel/AMD systems with enough resources. I'll give preference to folks I know, or that I know that have already commented on my blog. Then it'll pretty much be first come, first served.
Update: Since I've now got unlimited Joost invites, I'll give them out to anyone now.
Update: Since I've now got unlimited Joost invites, I'll give them out to anyone now.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Video: Evgeny Morozov
This presentation by Evgeny Morozov of Transistions Online is the final in the series from BlogCampSwitzerland 2007.
For the last presentation of the day, I had looked at the board and decided that "Blogging in Dangerous Places" sounded pretty interesting. I took a few classes in Russian/Central Asian studies while working on my undergraduate geography degree. I thought it would be interesting to find out something about contemporary issues there. Evgeny Morozov's presentation covers issues and challenges of blogging in Russia and Belarus. Evgeny also touches upon the topic of local bloggers as a way for more mainstream media to access local content, much in the same way as the Bondy Blog from Bruno Giussani's talk.
Enjoy the video.
For the last presentation of the day, I had looked at the board and decided that "Blogging in Dangerous Places" sounded pretty interesting. I took a few classes in Russian/Central Asian studies while working on my undergraduate geography degree. I thought it would be interesting to find out something about contemporary issues there. Evgeny Morozov's presentation covers issues and challenges of blogging in Russia and Belarus. Evgeny also touches upon the topic of local bloggers as a way for more mainstream media to access local content, much in the same way as the Bondy Blog from Bruno Giussani's talk.
Enjoy the video.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Video: Dannie Jost
And now the latest in the series of videos I took at BlogCamp in Zurich on Saturday. In this video we have Dannie Jost leading a lively discussion on the question of "Why is it that Blogging is not about Blogging?"
Right now, there seems to be a lot of hype around "Blogging", but Dannie suggests it's not all about the medium, it's really the messages being sent over the medium that are really the important thing.
Right now, there seems to be a lot of hype around "Blogging", but Dannie suggests it's not all about the medium, it's really the messages being sent over the medium that are really the important thing.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Video: Stephanie Booth
Stephanie Booth's presentation about Multilingual blogging given at Blogcamp Switzerland is now online. Stephanie discussed blogging in multiple languages. Her own blog is in English and French, however, she doesn't post translations. Sometimes she writes a post in French, and other times she will write in English. She also discusses the difficulties encountered with posting in different languages and how differences in language and culture can separate people.
My question for Stephanie is: Do you notice that people often have a different personality when the speak (or write) in a language different to their own? I think I myself am a bit different when I'm speaking German than when I am speaking English. Another example I've noticed is the difference in Michelene Calmy-Rey's (a Swiss political leader for you folks not here in Switzerland) persona in German vs her persona in French. The first time I saw Calmy-Rey speak in French I was amazed at the difference to the way she spoke in German.
My question for Stephanie is: Do you notice that people often have a different personality when the speak (or write) in a language different to their own? I think I myself am a bit different when I'm speaking German than when I am speaking English. Another example I've noticed is the difference in Michelene Calmy-Rey's (a Swiss political leader for you folks not here in Switzerland) persona in German vs her persona in French. The first time I saw Calmy-Rey speak in French I was amazed at the difference to the way she spoke in German.
Video: Bruno Giussani
Bruno's video is finally available. This was my first time posting something to Google Video, and while it is available, I think I might look into tweaking a few more things. Like the size and quality of the video, for example.
Bruno Giussani's presentation about the Bondy Blog at BlogCampSwitzerland 2007. The Bondy Blog is a blog originally created to cover the unrest outside Paris in 2005. After the unrest had subsided, the blog was turned over to local young adults to write. It has since become quite a success in France.
The video can be downloaded now and is 54 minutes long. Enjoy!
(edit: Dyslexia strikes! Sorry about the misspelling Bruno, your name is now correct)
Bruno Giussani's presentation about the Bondy Blog at BlogCampSwitzerland 2007. The Bondy Blog is a blog originally created to cover the unrest outside Paris in 2005. After the unrest had subsided, the blog was turned over to local young adults to write. It has since become quite a success in France.
The video can be downloaded now and is 54 minutes long. Enjoy!
(edit: Dyslexia strikes! Sorry about the misspelling Bruno, your name is now correct)
Monday, March 26, 2007
Google Video
I guess I can't complain too much, after all, I'm not paying for the service. They're also providing a good deal of bandwidth should the videos need it. But, it does take a while for Google Video to process an upload.
I was at the BlogCampSwitzerland in Zurich on Saturday as I mentioned in earlier posts. The night before I noticed that the organizers had made a request for folks with video cameras to bring them along. So, I packed up my miniDV cam and brought it with me. I had not done much in the way of taping since a High-School film making class back in 1982! But, I made sure to bring my tripod, and tried not to fiddle with the camera too much.
The talks I taped were quite interesting. I've just uploaded the first, by Bruno Giussani on the 'Bondy Blog' which is a citizens' blog in one of the areas in France that experienced riots in 2005. I also taped Stephanie Booth's talk on the challenge of doing multilingual blogs, Dannie Jost's discussion on why blogging isn't about blogging and Evgeny Morozov's talk on blogging from dangerous places. All the talks were quite interesting, especially if you consider this was a free event that was more or less informally put together.
It turns out I didn't need to make the video as small as I thought I would need to. So, I'll probably put Bruno's video up in better quality after I finish uploading the other talks.
I was at the BlogCampSwitzerland in Zurich on Saturday as I mentioned in earlier posts. The night before I noticed that the organizers had made a request for folks with video cameras to bring them along. So, I packed up my miniDV cam and brought it with me. I had not done much in the way of taping since a High-School film making class back in 1982! But, I made sure to bring my tripod, and tried not to fiddle with the camera too much.
The talks I taped were quite interesting. I've just uploaded the first, by Bruno Giussani on the 'Bondy Blog' which is a citizens' blog in one of the areas in France that experienced riots in 2005. I also taped Stephanie Booth's talk on the challenge of doing multilingual blogs, Dannie Jost's discussion on why blogging isn't about blogging and Evgeny Morozov's talk on blogging from dangerous places. All the talks were quite interesting, especially if you consider this was a free event that was more or less informally put together.
It turns out I didn't need to make the video as small as I thought I would need to. So, I'll probably put Bruno's video up in better quality after I finish uploading the other talks.
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