Like Etsy But…
October 31, 2009
Another weekend, another Halloween… but I’m getting ahead of my blogging. Last weekend saw the last SoWa open market of 2009. SoWa is a silly term for the south end of Boston’s South End.
It was a lovely sunny October day, we bumped into some friends, we bought some art… The print of dinos reading is by Eric Sturtevant: our home life sometimes resembles the picture.
The two smaller prints are by Chen Reichart, whose blog and Etsy store are called botodesigns. The autumnal print seems to illustrate that we should become a two-Android family soon. Chen and her partner were kind enough to compliment me on the tshirt I was wearing, and to ask where I got it (Threadless, Star Men in Moon’s Milk).
Indeed, the SoWa market is like Threadless, Etsy, and similar web sites come to life, in ways that demonstrate advantages of real life over the web. The market has a good selection of tshirts, crafts, etc. It also has an antique market next door, in a rather wonderful old trolley barn.
The market also provides the chance to meet the artists: that’s face-to-face, the ultimate social medium. On Sunday it had sunshine, halloween candy and other seasonal flavorings. Now, time to post this, and get ready for halloween itself.
Data Liberation Front: Many Types of Goodness
October 29, 2009
The Data Liberation Front is a team at Google with a laudable mission.
Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.
The DLF is good, in many ways. Its mission is good, in that it’s ethical. I believe that the DLF will be good for Google, the profit-seeking firm. Let me break out some reasons, starting with those most relevant to ethics (good for society) and moving toward those most relevant to profit (good for Google shareholders).
- Yes, users should be able to control their data.
- Don’t be evil is a Google motto that arouses more cynicism as Google gets older and bigger. The DLF is a Google team opposed to the evil of lockin.
- Many users are wary of where they store their data. Such users, when evaluating a software tool, will want to verify that there is a way out before they bring their data in. The DLF is building and verifying ways out.
- As Google encourages users to bring stuff into Google services and out of non-Google services, it can point to DLF to show that Google doesn’t believe in one-way streets into Google. It believes in two-way streets, with the user being allowed to set the direction. If you want an example of something that Google is offering to take over for you, how about voicemail?
- Although most of the coverage of DLF has been about moving data out of Google services if you want to, note that the mission is “to make it easier to move data in and out” (emphasis added by me).
Droid? $1831. Having the latest gadgets? Priceful.
October 28, 2009
The Droid, the new smartphone from Motogoozon, will cost $1831. Motogoozon is of course the combination of Motorola, Google, and Verizon.
The cost would be $1931, were it not for a $100 rebate: what a relief that it’s so much lower than $2K.
1831 = (299 – 100) + 24 x (39 + 29). As usual with smartphones and other fancyphones in the USA, most of the cost is in the monthly payments, rather than upfront.
I could cite many sources for this, but I’ll go with John Biggs’ post on Crunchgear. There is much rejoicing in Crunchland about the Droid.
Personally, I’m happy to see the Droid hype. It increases the chances of an Android app boom. On the other hand, there are no guarantees that new and interesting Android advances will run on my G1.
Twitter: Clothes Without an Emperor
October 24, 2009
Even Twitter Thought Twitter Was Stupid At First, reported Jason Kincaid from Startup School. Well, if Ev Williams and Biz Stone thought that, I was in good company.
The Twitter story is a mirror image of the story of the The Emperor’s New Clothes. People find uses (clothes) for Twitter, but the clothes are just empty outfits. The outfits march on, and the march picks up the pace, when inside leg and other elements are revealed: those measurements correspond to the API (“Huge,” said Biz).
Now, of course, there are so many outfits that it doesn’t matter that there’s nothing underneath. The outfits are the emperor, and the empire is strongly placed.
Singing Lala About Google Music
October 21, 2009
The speculation about the impending music-related announcement from Google seems to be boiling down to this: Full-Song Streams, Not a Full Music Service, as part of search results when the search is music-related. The link in the previous sentence is from GigaOm. Elsewhere, Crunchy Mike noted that this is a huge win for LaLa and iLike, Google, partners in the streaming.
I find this post-worthy, not because it’s a huge leap for Google-kind, or because the world needs another music service. It isn’t, and it doesn’t. Let me backpedal on the latter a little: maybe the world does need another music service, one that isn’t fragmented and restricted by nation.
The main reason I like (no pun intended) this is because it’s good for Lala. I want Lala to prosper, or at least stay in business, because I have a bunch of web songs, which I can stream whenever I like as long as Lala lives. So long live Lala, I service I like, and will continue to like while it survives to serve my web songs.
As you may have gathered, I have some concerns about Lala’s chances of survival. Those chances increase with the Google partnership. They would also increase were Lala to be acquired. I wonder if the commitment to serve web songs indefinitely is a barrier to purchase. I don’t think that it would be a significant barrier were Google the purchaser of Lala…
The Mobile Whale
October 21, 2009
Part of going mobile and setting up my G1 phone is getting a Twitter client. Guided by the results of a Mashable poll, I went for Twidroid.
First impression: looks good. In fact, it looks good enough that I might be able to get through a Twitter-related post without taking a dig at Twitter. Having said that, I seem to have taken a little dig in the post title… and, in the unlikely event I post about Digg, I’ll probably be unable to resist a dig about Digg.
I feel as though I’m finally seeing Twitter in its natural habitat. I can check tweets when I don’t have the attention span for the feeds to which I subscribe. By the way, my mobile feed reader is Google Reader, via the Android’s browser.
Thanks to Kiwi Mikex for making the whale photo available through Creative Commons.
Android: Anniversary, Avalanche, Automattic, etc.
October 20, 2009
The first Android phone, the G1, launched a year, less two days, ago. I got one about two months ago. Those who like their gadgets more up to the minute may have one of the more recent Android phones, or be eying the avalanche of new phones due out soon. TechCrunch offers a complete list of… Android phones. (That’s offers, in the present tense, because David Diaz promised updates to the post.)
Michael Arrington (also at TechCrunch) recently expressed a concern arising from the impressive number of Android phones and vendors. It’s that Android’s open source licensing may result in the platform splintering, thus creating much more work for application developers. The contrast with the tightly-controlled iPhone platform is obvious and troubling.
Closer to home, or at least to this blog, I’m interested in what Androidy things WordPress.com is up to. Will Automattic develop an Android app? There’s already an iPhone app, of which Automattic seems particularly proud, and a Blackberry app. Each of the two links in the previous sentence goes to the appropriate, Automattic-owned, WordPress.com-hosted blog.
When I typed in the corresponding URI for an Android app (http://android.wordpress.org/), I got a “blog is protected” message. That at least shows that the blog exists…
There is some Android-related, albeit not Android-specific, news about WordPress.com today. If you are viewing this blog on an Android, or other mobile device, you’ll see a built-for-mobile theme. The change was announced earlier today, with a link to the new Mobile Themes support page. I was at first disappointed to see that the CSS upgrade does not extend to mobile themes…
Sticking with disappointment, but going back to Android itself: the lack of a simple, built-in screen capture capability is ridiculous. To give just one example of how it would be used, I should really illustrate the theme news with screen captures showing this blog as it appears on my G1. I tried the fix described by Christina at Download Squad, couldn’t get it to work right away, and decided that I wouldn’t have time to write this post if I spent any more time on attempted screen captures.
That said, I’m bullish on Android, and will continue to post about it, grumbling only when it’s really merited.
WordPress.com Domain Mapping, Email, and Android
October 19, 2009
Domain mapping is one of the paid upgrades available for WordPress.com. I use it: that’s why this blog shows up as changingway.org (it was born as changingway.wordpress.com, and will still answer to that uri). I also use the custom email feature of the domain mapping upgrade: that’s why you can email me as andrew at changingway.org.
I recently got an Android phone, and I want to use my changingway.org email on it. I could of course use the Android’s browser. But I’d prefer to use its Email application. Why? I’ll defer that question until the end of the post.
This post is mainly about how to use the Android Email app with the custom email feature of WordPress.com domain mapping. Usually, Email setup is pretty much a matter of giving the app an email address/password combination. For custom email, you need to do more than that.
Instead, you need to do some manual setup. You’ll need to tell the Email app about some things you’ll find on your custom email web site. Starting at the web page from which you manage your custom email, click on Settings (near the top right of the page) and then on Forwarding and POP/IMAP. You want IMAP (see here for why it’s preferable to POP).
Make sure IMAP is enabled, and click on Configuration Instructions. This will take you to a list of email clients and mobile devices: Android is of course a mobile device. Clicking on Android will take you to some incoming settings (e.g., IMAP server is imap.gmail.com) and outgoing settings (e.g., SMTP server is smtp.gmail.com).
Tell your Android’s Email app about these settings. It’ll ask you for them after you provide your custom email username and password. Note that your username includes your domain (e.g., andrew at changingway.org, not just andrew).
You have a few decisions to make, some of them arising from the fact that the Email app can manage multiple email addresses. You’ll need to give your custom email a name, and decide whether it’s the default address when you send from the email app. For example, the app on my Android knows andrew at changingway.org as CW, and uses it as the default address for outgoing mail.
If you are the target audience – people wanting to use the Android Email app with the email they got when they mapped a domain to their WordPress.com blog – then I hope that this how-to post was helpful.
Now, from how to why, and to three specific questions of why.
- Why prefer the Email app to checking email from the Android browser? My main reason is that the Email app can display a new mail notification icon at the top of the Android screen.
- Why use the Email app, rather than the Gmail app that also comes on Android phones? After all, the custom email account is a Gmail account. I haven’t tried the Gmail app. My wife actually bought the phone, and had it set up with her Gmail. So I’m not sure whether a custom email could be used for the Gmail app. If it can, I suspect that some of the above will be helpful.
- Why use this phone in the first place? Some have said that the G1 isn’t built for email. Well, the G1 is the phone I have, and it works pretty well, for email and for other things. And there will be many more Android phones, each seeking to improve on the G1.
Fun Day, Now For Sunday
October 18, 2009
This post is partly a pretext to showcase the photo, of which I am immodestly proud. Maddie is more justly proud of the taller-than-her tower. She built it at the Museum of Science yesterday afternoon.
In the morning, Maddie braved a villain-themed 6th birthday party by herself.
Max and I went to the warm heart of Roslindale. We cut haircuts at the Rialto (I’ve just posted my 5* review at Yelp).
We went to the Farmers Market. It was the last of the year, and, judging by the weather, it’s time for this particular good thing to come to an end for 2009. Kudos to the Creek River String Band (here’s my photo, here’s the band’s MySpace) for providing music despite cold fingers.
We got back to the party just in time for Max to have cake. Then back home for a little rest, then off to the site of the construction in the photo.
Lesson For Harvard: Don’t Blow the Grocery Money on Lottery Tickets
October 17, 2009
“Don’t gamble with the money you need to pay the daily bills” is, according to Beth Healy of the Boston Globe, a basic rule of family finance.
The university [Harvard] disclosed yesterday that it had lost $1.8 billion in cash – money it relies on for the school’s everyday expenses – by investing it with its endowment fund, instead of keeping it in safe, bank-like accounts.
I found this story particularly interesting, for multiple reasons. First is the set of quotes Healy scatters through the article. A former Dean, still at Harvard, remarked on the “interesting way to handle the grocery money.”
A Stanford spokeswoman said that “it would be highly unusual for the California school to put funds from its general account into long-term investments.” Did she use the phrase “more Ivy than brains”? The Globe doesn’t tell us.
Second is the vast sum that Harvard needs for everyday expenses. The University could buy a lot of groceries for $1.8B, even if it shopped at Whole Foods.
Third, and last for now, is the question of oversight. Shouldn’t someone be watching the financial wizards who manage Harvard’s money?
