Archive for October, 2006
My oldest daughter started kindergarden this year and also started playing soccer. Well she kind of just watches right now, but we’re working on that.
I know one of the dads, Andy, from the local tech scene. Andy is VP of Technology for a local software shop and is an incredibly sharp cat. When we start chatting at the games, we talk about things like RSS, YouTube, P2P, streaming, etc. Now, I also know a few other soccer dads. Steve is the team manager of the Excel Sports Cycling Team. Steve, his teammates, and I have crossed paths on many occasions racing bikes. When Steve and I chat, we talk about criteriums, carbon fiber, AT, power, EPO, components, etc. John, another dad, and I go back a ways. We were initially connected through a mutual friend. We have threatened to go fly fishing on many occasions over the years, and when we talk we have our own set of terminology.
So, my point is that each conversation has its own geek speak that to an outsider sounds completely Greek. For me that geek speak which is foreign to me is soccer. I played football my whole life and the rules and lingo in soccer leave me baffled. When folks are talking about soccer, I feel like a shmoe and sort of drift off. I wish I knew more about the game.
There is clearly a problem here looking for a solution. I have my cell phone with me and would love to be able look up some of the soccer terms on the fly, get answers, and get involved in that conversation.
To that end, on the way to Emma’s first game we stopped at Barnes and Noble. I picked up a cup of coffee and an issue of Business 2.0. One of the articles was about Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers had 12 million uniques in June (YouTube had 13 million). This is clearly a hot and valuable web property and for a reason. It is a great resource for learning things in a hurry.
I could instantly become a soccer expert with Yahoo Answers on my cell phone. However, Yahoo Answers is just unusable in my mobile browser – the page took forever to load ( 3+ minutes for the landing page, and 4+ minutes to get a lis of related questions… yikers) and the extensive scrolling made the experience too painful. I could run the Answers site through a transcoder and get the page load times down, but I still end up scrolling and having to enter some long munged up URL. But not to worry… I spent a few weekends and evenings building the Mobile Ask mashup with the help of the Yahoo API, and it is now here for you!
I can now be a real time Cliff Clavin (or at least impress my buddies) no matter where I am or what the topic of conversation… and you can too (just don’t be as damn annoying as Cliff)! You can get a Windows Mobile Smartphone or Pocket PC or Pocket PC build here. IT IS A SIMPLE BUT POWERFUL MOBILE APPLICATION and it is FREE!
Check out the screen shots to see what it is all about:
 
 
And get Mobile Ask here, now! I hope this helps you in some way…
October 12th, 2006
I drove my Trek Madone into the garage over the weekend - ouch… well, my wife was driving but I was in the car, so I take all the blame as I put it there in the first place. Some carbon fiber splintered and my heart fell to the floor. Major bummer.
While I am getting that all in order, I have been riding the cross bike… a fine steel Kelly. Today I left Boulder in the dark at about 5:30 am on a crisp morning and rolled out on some of the bike paths. The cross bike is not as fast as the Madone, but it does allow me to get off the streets and onto some dirt!
I did some Google Map satellite action on Monday and found some really interesting routes w/ lots of off road action form Boulder to Denver… this morning I took one of those routes. It was an insanely fun ride with a fair amount of mud and lots of air time.
But the best part of the ride came right at the end… I was flying down 20th street heading into downtown Denver and saw what looked like a camouflage jacket in the middle of the bike path that dips under an overpass. I was cooking and getting ready to bunny hop this sucker and realized @ the last minute it was some dude crashed out in a camo sleeping bag. I backed off… I shoulda hopped the sleeping man.
October 11th, 2006
My wish to have my wife and daughter video and stream their experience at the CU football game may not be too far off in the weeds.
Cell phones are going to be WLAN enabled, cities are getting unwired, and folks are already capturing video on their phones (I haven’t had French class since High School, but it looks like there is a festival around videos shot on mobile devices) and there are plenty of options for serving up streamed content.
October 10th, 2006
… or maybe for my birthday since it is on Monday. What I want is a piece of software for my Windows Mobile phone. I’ll get to that in a minute.
This part of the story sucks big time but is related… Tim DeBoom dropped off case of Red Bull on my porch yesterday (the kids do NOT need this, so I will be good to go w/ Red Bull for a while). Maybe I can find some wings and build this software myself. Tim is going off the grid for a bit, and I guess won’t be needing as much Red Bull. Tim is a two time Hawaii Ironman champ and was hoping to kick some butt there again this year as the favorite, but a foot injury has him sidelined. He is totally bummed so he hit the road with his wife Nicole to get away while the event goes on without him. Tim is the coolest dude you’d ever meet. If you didn’t know he was one of the greatest athletes to walk the earth, you’d never know it – he certainly would not tell you. Class act guy, and my family is totally bummed out about this. Why does this crap happen to such good people?
(Before my epic ride/run this am I pounded a few Red Bulls - RED BULL #1 and RED BULL #2 and this theme will continue)
Anyway, back to the software… Holly and Emma are the CU Buffs football game right now. Yeh, how jacked up is that. The boys are at home (Asher is being a little shit, so he stays home) and Ava is napping. So, I volunteered to hold down the fort while Holly and Emma get some girl time. RED BULL #3
So here is what I want; I want Holly to be able to whip out her Windows Mobile device, start shooting stuff with the built in camera (some of the game and mostly just them having fun), and stream it to me. I want to see it now (and so would my Mom and Dad and Holly’s folks and you get the idea)… Throw VOIP on top of that and we can have a really interesting interaction. As I express my thoughts here - RED BULL #4
Boulder doesn’t have city wide WiFi yet… yet. But the game is on campus, and I imagine Holly could get a signal and get on w/ my old CU credentials. All the pieces are there. The technology and the Red Bull are in place, so what’s the holdup, hey?
If I could only pull RSS into this somehow, I could add this feature to NewsGator Go! 
Okay, that’s a stretch.
Just my ramblings as I try to tame the raging boy (hey, he is just like me - what did I expect) and now Ava – she just woke up - time for RED BULL #5
I am amped now… and should be seeking out Red Bull for a sponsorship of my own. Red Bull? You know where to find me.
October 7th, 2006
So what is under the covers for the next version of NewsGator Go!? Here are the high level features that I am shooting for:
 
- Enclosure Support
- Scheduled Sync
- Viewing Clipped Articles
- Subscribe/Remove Feeds
- Compression (if it makes sense)
- Emailing articles
- Navigation Enhancements - Jason Clarke has been helpful in giving feedback here
- Custom Fonts
- Today Screen Integration
I can’t promise all these features will be in the next version, but this is the hit list!
On top of that I have talked about feed level formatting and also have been working on a River of News - well, I call it a Stream of News cuz it’s not really a river. More on that in a later post.Â
Finally, integration with NGES (the enterprise server) is also high on the list. Mauricio from Geekzone has been asking about this for quite some time.
October 5th, 2006
I am still seeking a venue, a yoga instructor (you’ll have to come to see), and someone to provide drinks and food… others may want beer. I want coffee!
Check out the wiki which we will keep up to date - http://barcamp.org/BarCampBoulder
October 5th, 2006
… so why oh why can’t I!Â
After posting about my noodling with YouTube this am, one of the first folks to respond was Nick Bradbury… Nick had some suggestions for me; unfortunately, they don’t get me to the goal. But that is not the point.
Nick, the author of FeedDemon, works for NewsGator but is living somewhere far far away where birds like to crap on your car. Check out this screen shot from FeedDemon which shows how Nick has done a killer job of integrating YouTube. This looks sweet. If you want the best Windows desktop reader get FeedDemon.
 
Nick is clearly a sharp dude, but he is also a great guy who cares about his product, all the other NewsGator products and people, and the RSS space as a whole. That is cool and something to aspire to!
I still want YouTube vids in NewsGator Go!
October 5th, 2006
One of the features I am working on now for NewsGator Go! is support for fetching and consuming RSS enclosures. The most common use case for this is to download podcasts (typically mp3’s) for later playback. This works very well.
Another great use case would be to consume YouTube videos on my device… YouTube has a bunch of great RSS feeds, so I thought it would be a clear winner for NewsGator, YouTube, and ultimately consumers.
No such luck, there is no way to playback the videos on the mobile device. I can get at the underlying .flv stream but have no way to render - the existing Windows Mobile Flash Player does not support the encoding. Doh! There are ways to do this manually, but it is a pain for non-geeks. That just doesn’t cut it.
Here are a few links that describe this manual process if interested…
http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=124559Â - you can do this all from your device by basically using a proxy service as the converter and then launching the file from your device
http://max.limpag.com/2006/09/15/from-google-video-youtube-to-your-phone-in-3-steps/Â - download to desktop, convert, copy to device
So, I can get this to work, but my wife wouldn’t have a clue how to pull this off. If she had an app like NewsGator Go! where she subscribed to a YouTube feed and it automagically appeared and played, that would be a winner.
I was also poking around the Adobe site and found this:
Can I use the File Format Specification to create a SWF interpreter or player?
–> No, the File Format Specification is provided for the specific purpose of enabling software applications to export to the Macromedia Flash File Format (SWF).
Can I use the File Format Specification to create a Flash Video encoder or a Flash Video streaming service
–> No, the File Format Specification is provided for the specific purpose of enabling software applications to export to the Macromedia Flash File Format (SWF).
That is a bummer.. it sure would be nice to make this a frictionless process…
I still have a few ideas I am persuing, so stay tuned for that.
October 5th, 2006
Tonight was the second installment of the Boulder Tech Meetup and it was very interesting… I got to hook up with a ton of folks who I have met over the years through the Boulder/Denver tech scene and see some cool demos. It was a full house - there were a bunch of people jammed into the confrence room.
My buddies from id345, Danny and Austin, made the trip up from Denver. I am sure they are out now as I write this tearing up the late night Boulder scene. These guys just ooze with energy, brilliance, and excitement. Also on hand were Adam, the authority for biotech in Colorado, and Dave, from the Onion fame, two smart and motivated good buddies of mine.  Adam, Dave, and I went out for coffee after the gathering – that’s our beverage of choice.
Ask Dave Taylor was on hand to answer and ask questions – I owe Dave a t-shirt btw. Dave what do you really think about Agile??? Dave is impressive. CEO of Six88, Jason Eckenroth (we go back to our days at CU) was there as well. Jason is a sharp dude and one heck of a nice guy. Peter and Liz from 5o9inc were in the house – Peter was quiet; he must have been tired
Joe Pezzillo was first to demo… Joe is a super cool and smart cat and proud new poppa – lil’ Pascal is very cute. Joe showed Anthracite – a very slick app. Anthracite is a powerful utility for mining web data and processing text. Of course, the output of the processing can be an RSS feed ready to be consumed in a NewsGator product!  BTW, Joe and I are organizing Barcamp Boulder which will be rolling in early November. Stay tuned for more info on that.
Dave Cohen, who helped get me started in this whole software mess many moons ago, showed off Earfeeder. If you are into music, you gotta check this out. It is awesome. Earfeeder figures out your musical interest based on your existing collection and serves up RSS feeds with new release info, concert info, and other important info about your favorite artists. Dave fired up NetNewsWire to consume his Earfeeder feed. Go NewsGator once again! Rolling Stone and iTunes are a few of the sources that feed EarFeeder. Check it out… There’s an interesting side story here with Dave and I. When I was in graduate school, I was a Linux snob and didn’t get introduced to the world of Windows programming until I started working for Dave’s startup after seeing his mug in the local paper. Funny thing, I am now mostly a Windows/.NET programmer and Dave is now all about LAMP (well he calls it LAMJ w/ Java replacing php)… in a few years it’ll be interesting to see what development tools we are using.
Alex Komarnitsky showed how he pulled of wiring his Xmas lights for remote control. This project has garnered a ton of press locally and nationally over the last few years and Alex has done a great job leveraging this press to help raise money for an affliction that his kids suffer from – that’s cool! Yeh, you guessed it, I have a connection to Alex too. I took a software engineering class with his brother Mike (who I learned is now an MBA grad) and also built a search routine (in Perl) for one of Mike’s web sites back in the day (it’s the search dealio in the bottom right corner of the home page - glad to see it is still in production many years later).
Jean McAuliffe talked about Agile development - a technique used at NewsGator.
I am always reminded how small the world is… especially in the tech space. There are a bunch of smart and interesting people in and around Boulder – it’s cool to get a bunch of those folks in one room. Many thanks to Medium for putting this on (looking forward to the Medium demo next month)!
October 4th, 2006
Dave Winer notes that Denver has the RSS football team. Dave forgot to mention that we also have the RSS Company. Go Denver, the RSS City!
October 3rd, 2006
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