Digg takes a stand, and 86 people aren’t happy about it

September 19, 2008 · Filed Under Recent News · Comment 

Reports are bubbling up that Digg has permanently banned over 80 users for running scripts that help them automatically perform certain tasks on the site. This is called “cheating” in many circles, but on Digg it had become accepted practice. 

The mostly lengthy account has been published on the Get Smart Blog under the title The Grim Reaper has visited Digg. The post lists 86 usernames that were banned from the site without warning. The tone of the author and the comments, all apparently mostly ex-Digg users themselves, is rather grim and melodramatic: “So many brave and valiant Diggers…it is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions to see such wasted talent.” You’d think a team of dedicated scientists curing cancer were suddenly shut out of their labs and kicked into the street.

Among those banned was a user named Diggboss who developed and used a ‘GreaseMonkey’ script for checking up on friends to see whether they’ve dugg the items that you’ve submitted or shouted. The script used Digg’s own APIs and did not automatically digg stories, yet Digg’s rather vague terms of service prohibits “automated means to access the Site” and any “organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services.” I’m not sure this tool qualifies, but there you have it.

In an official message on their blog from last week, Jen Burton from Digg suggested that scripts were primarily forbidden because they “place additional load on Digg servers (slowing things down for everyone)”. It’s quite clear, however, that the real reasons is that Digg is concerned with using the system and abusing it by recruiting their friends. The Diggboss script may not have automatically submitted stories, but it did help users pursue a strategy of offering favors for homepage hits, something Digg has to prevent to keep the system running and worth the value of the service it offers. This perspective has merit, but try telling that to the displaced users.

Many users are defiant that Digg should dismiss long-time contributors on the grounds that they had run scripts. Like ’seniority’ allows them to violate the rules willy-nilly and be able to do what they want. Some may say, hey, it works on EBay (where, let’s face it, the larger Powersellers violate the spirit of EBay’s rules every day and get away with it).

IMHO, Digg did what they had to do: enforce the rules. Perhaps a stricter definition of what violates their rules might be in order, however, to keep the uprising from creating a user backlash and ultimately hurting the site in the long term.

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Microsoft and Zune gain ground against the iPod

September 18, 2008 · Filed Under Product Reviews · Comment 

It’s been no secret that Apple’s iPod has dominated the portable music player scene for awhile now, and even less of a secret that Microsoft’s Zune has been an afterthought next to the iPod.  But that hasn’t stopped MS from innovating, even a bit past the features offered by the iPod. Their latest release is no exception.

MS announced a new lineup of Zune players with new features, including being able to buy songs from the FM radio feature by “tagging” them. It’s a little imperfect, according to several reviews, but it’s a big step towards total integration of music and instant buying power (using wi-fi, if available), a recommendation feature based on your listening habits called MixView, and different “channels” that can be wirelessly added (again with Wi-Fi) to your player, each with 20 different songs, updated weekly.

It even allows you to download and listen to songs as often as you want with a $15 monthly subscription (a feature I wish the iPod had).

Physically, the players haven’t changed much; there’s a slick touch menu and a few new colors. Price ranges from $79-$250 or so, depending on storage capacity. They’re a bit bigger and thicker than an iPod, but some larger hands may welcome that development (speaking as someone who’s dropped an iPod a few times).

Microsoft is defintely beginning to give the iPod a run for its money, based on their latest products. No longer are their players an afterthought.

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True Internet/TV convergence - It’s almost here

September 17, 2008 · Filed Under Product Reviews · Comment 

As an avid TV viewer and internet junkie, I’ve always had that dream, the dream of a television-viewing experience where the Internet was not only always accessible but integrated right into the experience. There was no switching back and forth between environments. I viewed what I wanted when I wanted online or via broadcast and tapped into information about what I was viewing through a small bar or window that could either sit on the screen or be safely minimized. If I saw something that I wanted to buy, I didn’t have to grab my laptop or switch out to Windows. I simply accessed the information about the product right on the TV screen, and bought it right then and there.

Now, a group of events appear poised to make this dream a (partial) reality. Last week, Intel and Yahoo! announced a somewhat unlikely partnership that would result in Internet-enabled HDTVs that play and use on-screen Yahoo! widgets to give viewers direct access to Web-based content, applications, and contextual advertising. It could be the germ of what might become my idea, brought to life. In fact, execs at Intel and Yahoo! did note that viewers might be able to, say, buy the shoes Lauren is wearing on an episode of The Hills, or anything similar to that sort of thing.

The digital TV part is pretty much going to be taken care of soon. The FCC’s decision to strong-arm the nation and broadcasters into the digital spectrum is probably the best thing to happen to television since color, IMHO. Sorry, all you people still fiddling around with your rabbit ears, but it’s an idea that really needed to happen at one time or another, for a lot of reasons. Those complaining about next year’s switchover on February 17, 2009 might end up feeling quite differently once they see everything the programmers and partners can do with a digital screen.

The Intel/Yahoo! tool and the Sidebar feature look like a really good start. I love that these toolbars can slide on and off the HDTV screen, providing you with instant access to content you’ve stored online. What’s missing, of course, is the deeper integration that would offer direct interaction between your live TV show and the Internet as I mentioned earlier, but I know that’s coming. So, for example, on Deal or No Deal, you could play along with the contestant, select your cases, and even see what’s in them (via an overlay). You could also select a winning case and, perhaps, be entered into a live drawing—maybe you’d compete directly against the on-air opponent for a million dollars! This is the type of digital world I always envisioned.

So do these exciting developments represent true integration and convergence? Not quite yet. In fact, significant hurdles remain. Few of the glowing reports about the Internet TV revolution and the surprise Intel-Yahoo! partnership mention that not enough people have broadband access anywhere near where their TV is located (or have broadband period in some areas of the country). So consumers either need to wire their homes (not gonna happen) or add access points near their TVs. An obvious alternative would be for these Internet-ready TVs to come wireless-ready, too. But these hurdles will be overcome. Eventually.

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Google App Engine

May 15, 2008 · Filed Under Recent News · Comment 

Google and free are synonyms right? I mean - who isn’t tired of hearing about some google ‘product’ that is beta and free to customers.

Of course when I say free - I mean in exchange for your privacy and ad attention..

So Google announced its long-awaited App Engine a few weeks ago. The Google Application services will directly compete with Amazon’s ever-growing S3 and Db services. Think Cloud Computing.

What is Google App Engine?

Well, the Company described this as an application-hosting tool by which developers can make use of in order to put up scalable web apps on top of Google’s infrastructure. There are no servers to maintain. All you have to do is to upload your application and you are ready to serve your users through a free domain name on the appspot.com or simply use Google Apps itself if you want to serve it your own domain.

It is easy and you will have a choice whether to share it with others or limit access to members of your organization.

The free account can give you up to 500MB space with sufficient CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month. If this is not enough for you Google offers a paid increase (price unknown).

Is it reliable? You are kidding, right? Has google every been down for you ?

The App Engine development environment comprise of outstanding Web serving, automatic scaling and load balancing, large space for better file storage, Google APIs for authenticating users and sending e-mail and a full packed local development environment. With all these, one can surely assume that the service is possibly reliable because Google is known for being almost invulnerable to widespread outages.

There are a few reasons to dislike the service - the most notable downside is the fact that developers can only make use of Python as their programming language. Google assures the public that Python is merely the first supported language, and that the whole infrastructure is intended to be language neutral.

Data Portability is increasing - as is the availability and ease of use of cloud computing services.

Amazon really set the pace with S3 and continues to lead in the area. Competition and choices are always a good thing - so we should all welcome google into the game.

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Adobe Flex

April 12, 2008 · Filed Under Product Reviews, Technology · Comment 

Adobe Flex is gaining more traction as a  development platform.  The framework produces a flash based output which can be consumed universally by clients agnostically to browser, OS or type.   Flex is much easier to edit and create then native flash formats, using an easy to learn scriptable language.

As a web developer, you may always find yourself looking for possible web development applications that would suit your needs, providing a balance of rapid development, easy maintenance and wide cross-compatibility.

Most make use of JavaScript, Active-X and/or  AJAX in order to make your sites dynamic and interactive.  These traditional frameworks allow for rapid deployment - but necessitate heavy graphical work to make the app user friendly.  

To answer the need for better application, the Adobe flex was released which is an open framework for creating significant web applications that that can be installed on major browsers, desktops, and operating systems.

Adobe Flex paves the way to make advanced application that can be used by traditional programmers. Before its release,  traditional flash programmers spent hours with actionscript creating customer friendly but difficult to maintain flash-based apps and sites.  The Flash platform  was innovative and gained critical traction as a default standard over years. 

Taking the next step Adobe’s Flex seeks to reduce the problem through the means of providing a workflow and programming model that is familiar to developers. It is programmed with MXML which is an XML-based markup language offers a way to rapidly build and lay out graphic user interfaces. Furthermore, one can also take benefit of interactivity by using ActionScript which is essentially the core language of Flash Player which was made using ECMA Script standard.

Like any other applications, the Adobe Flex has also its limitations. It is still a Flash application and therefore it is limited to what a Flash player can do. True interaction with the desktop is difficult - the Flex platform is not a browser, but is usually a web-based delivery (ie. drag and drop from Desktop to a Player is not feasible).  This should be made possible through the release of  Apollo.

The Flex popup window is limited to being shown within the dimensions of the player that created it. Incomparable to the popup window in a browser in where you can relocates them to your desktop, the Adobe Flex popup windows can’t go outside the area occupied by the player. Also, the Flash SWF format is a published specification meaning, it is doable for other vendors to create tools that produce Flash files.

Because the introduction of Adobe Flex was favored by the public, the Flex 2 which is an improved version of the first was made which is programmed with command-line compilers and a comprehensive class library of user interface components and utilities.

This program can be downloaded for free and it has no limitations or restrictions compared to the first. There is also the Flex 3 which was launched on April 26, 2007 and is equipped with Flex Builder IDE and the LiveCycle Data Services.

Adobe  proclaims that in the near future they will launch the Flex 4 with Gumbo as a code name. The product plan has yet to be completed and although no one really knows what feature this one has, it is surely better than the other 3.

Flex is worth a look as a development and delivery platform if you are willing to work with a Flash based system.  Take a look if you were turned off by Flash years ago and haven’t kept up with it.

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