Google Toolbar Button Plugin Conflict
You may have noticed the absence of the Google Toolbar Button link my sidebar. Though I have not taken down the page to download the plugin I have removed the plugin from my blog temporarily because it was causing a conflict with another plugin I’m using and the conflict was wrecking havoc on my blog. I’ll be working on it very shortly and will post an update when I’m ready to release an update.
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Laporte’s Objectivity Questionable
I like Leo Laporte but I’ve been thinking lately that he is no longer objective. He’s always been a bit of a showman (and that’s what draws people to listen and watch him. But I was just listening to the latest installment of This Week in Tech and I’m not happy with some of the things he said.
Early on in the podcast Laporte said that he’s happy that the iPhone has been unlocked. That’s a fair comment but he went on to say Apple “forced us to go to AT&T”. This is where I take exception. Apple didn’t force anyone to do anything. Did Apple put a gun to Leo’s head and say “buy this phone or we’ll shoot!”? No. He wanted to get the phone despite it’s known limitations. I can understand his critiques of the phone and if he’s positive in talking about the unblocking since this is a major technical achievement (people have been working on this all summer) but his rationale is severely skewed.
Next Laporte totally mis-reported Skype’s position on their recent outage. Laporte reported that Skype blamed a massive reboot due to patches that Microsoft released the second week of August. Though not entirely incorrect Laporte left out an important detail which I read in several places. Skype didn’t blame the outage directly on the reboots. What they said was that the reboots uncovered a bug in the login area of the latest version of their software. I agree with Laporte when he says the excuse is just a smokescreen. When you test your software you test for load at all points especially points of entry such as login screens so this kind of bug should have been revealed in simulations. So I’ll give Leo a bit of space on this one since he got the story from John C. Dvorak‘s Cranky Geeks. (Cranky Geeks is a great webcast but the panel, including Dvorak, very often starts to crank before Dvorak finishes reading the story they’re there to discuss.) But if you’re going to rank on something then be sure you rank on the right facts.
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The Police at Giants Stadium
After 20-something years I finally got my chance to see The Police live last night at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. The show was excellent but you need to take it for what it really is: a greatest hits show. These guys haven’t put out new material as a group in over 20 years so they’re playing the old stuff and trying to add new wrinkles. Regardless of that the show was great. It confirmed something I’ve known for a long time: Steward Copeland is the best drummer ever. And as much as I’ve liked Andy Summers over the years I gained a whole new appreciation for him last night.
They started with a great one-two punch. Message in a Bottle followed by Synchronicity II. I thought Synchronicity II was probably the best done song all around when you take the solos and video screen affects into account. The had the Synchronicity yellow, red and blue lines being drawn and erased in all directions. It was very cool. After that they took it down a notch for Walking on the Moon. I always thought this song showed how good Copeland really is and he turned in a terrific performance. Other highlights included some great work on Invisible Sun and Truth Hits Everybody as well as great percussion work by Copeland on Wrapped Around Your Finger and Walking In Your Footsteps.
This show also confirmed to me why I don’t like stadium shows. Unless you’re in the first section on the field right in front of the stage your view will suck. If you’re on the field then you can’t see past the people in front of you. If you’re in the stands then you’re too far from the stage to see anything. I was using binoculars to get a better view of the video screens because we were so far away that the binoculars didn’t really help me see the performers on stage. You can check out the pictures I took on my cellphone here if you want to get an idea of what most of the stadium was looking at.
Here’s the setlist they played:
Message in a Bottle
Synchronicity II
Walking On The Moon
Voices Inside My Head/When The World Is Running Down
Don’t Stand So Close To Me
Driven To Tears
Truth Hits Everybody
Bed’s Too Big Without You
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Wrapped Around Your Finger
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
Invisible Sun
Walking In Your Footsteps
Can’t Stand Losing You
Roxanne
Encore 1: King Of Pain
So Lonely
Every Breath You Take
Encore 2: Next To You
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Add to Facebook Plugin Updated
This morning I released version 1.1 of the Add To Facebook plugin. I added an options page where you can select to use a text link or an image link or both. The image used is the Facebook logo. Check out this page for more details.
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WordBook Plugin
The other day I released my Publish To Facebook plugin. Right after that I learned from a commenter about another plugin that serves the same function. It actually does it much better. WordBook was released the same day as my plugin but unlike my plugin it actually uses the Facebook API and is a lot more elegant than my solution. I highly recommend it. I’ll keep my plugin available but I don’t think I’ll be doing any updates to it.
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