Two Slashes

It doesn’t take a meteorologist to predict the tsunami that a preview of Google’s new Wave platform would cause.  I can’t click one link without seeing three different remarks referencing the hot new app, though I can’t seem to understand why people are so excited about it.

In case you’ve got a bad memory or hearing loss, I’ll quickly give an overview of Wave to save the sanity of my remaining readers before delving into just what about the platform I don’t like.  For the uninitiated, Wave is a platform Google announced this summer that combines document editing, an e-mail-like environment, live collaborative capabilities, and enhancements provided by “robots” (as opposed to the generally used “bot”) into a single unified experience.  Everything is done in real-time, so modifications you’re in the middle of can be observed by anyone else in that particular thread (referred to as a wave).  It’s an open platform, so anybody can write a “robot” or extend the API, but so far I haven’t seen anything remotely productive beyond a Twitter bot or various games.  (Maybe I’m just ignorant.)

Along with Google’s original announcement, they offered developers early access as they tweaked a few things so that when preview time came about (now, in other words), there would be plenty of examples and enough bragging rights to go around.  It was also a great way to acquaint people with an enhanced interest in the product (like myself), and I was one of the lucky people selected to get in on the sandbox.

I never developed anything for Wave, let alone used it for anything productive, but I did spend a few minutes chatting with a few friends who also found themselves with sandbox access and a little too much boredom in their lives.  I also watched as several people immediately decided to turn their sights towards robots geared to spam ads and utter nonsense (including one bugger that kept embedding YouTube videos of Rick Astley’s hit song…yeah, that one).  All the same, with just a handful of friends and a low signal-to-noise ratio, I really didn’t see a point in regularly checking the site.

When Google finally announced their semi-public preview (read:  everybody sends invitations everywhere), I was unsure of whether I even wanted to bother with it.  It’s not to say that I don’t like Google (I have several domains running Google Apps, a few Gmail accounts, a Google Voice account or three, and some extra paid storage to boot), but the nasty taste from the developer’s preview combined with the fact that I didn’t think too many friends would bother with it left me undecided but leaning towards not bothering to move my account into the preview.

It goes without saying that I got bored and ported the account anyway, and I’ve asked myself why I bothered ever since.

The way I see it, Wave is something of a novelty at this point in time and in its current state.  It’s not useful to anybody (at least, anybody I know), and it doesn’t do anything I find worthwhile that I can’t already implement or find support for, either in another Google app (think Docs and Gmail in particular) or elsewhere.  And the fact that it isn’t integrated with Gmail is a disappointment, as I feel that they could have turned Gmail into a legitimate killer app by adding Wave as a Gmail Labs option (which keeps the opt-in approach for people who decide they want to “catch the Wave”).

In fact, I’m wondering why Google didn’t opt for the b@$*@&d-child approach in the first place, because as-is Gmail just isn’t the innovative utility it was when it first launched.  Yahoo! offers more space (namely, as much as you want for free), and there’s really nothing of note at this point that the Google/Gmail experience offers that can’t be found elsewhere.  Being a plugin for a service that a good number of people use, though, offers a much wider userbase and might pull in some people who otherwise might not even be aware of Wave’s existence.  Google’s always touted Gmail as the “revolutionary” e-mail platform, but there’s nothing revolutionary about being second fiddle overall.  (A free Exchange server?  Seriously, this is the best they can offer?)

And, rather than forcing the user to keep two tabs or windows open so they can monitor both their incoming messages and Wave updates, the integration would be a step in the right direction.  (I really think they should look into developing Google Insight, the Google-powered, web-based alternative to Outlook with one-click access to everything.  Outlook…Insight…get it?  Bah!)

And I know I’m not the only person thinking that Wave is really over-hyped.  I’ve talked with several friends who were excited to get their invites, only to have their hopes and dreams wipe out, and the people who start threads with me seem to abandon them after just a few minutes.

Like the beach, Wave is just one more thing I don’t see myself visiting regularly.  It’s not to say that I won’t try to check it (on occasion), but there’s really no compelling reason for me to do so.  If I really had a need for a collaborative environment where the features Google provides are exactly what I’m looking for, maybe I’d feel differently.  But, as of now, I can’t see this taking off until someone finds a better use for it.  I’d sooner pay for an Evernote subscription than have to deal with any more water metaphors.

This really sums it up.

It’s been three months since I last reviewed a game for my BGS “series” (I put it in quotes because you can’t really call something a series if you’ve neglected to do it for a quarter of a year).  Oops.

Anyway, I found Snapshot Adventures:  Secret of Bird Island at Big Lots and decided that, with a price tag of just $4, it would be something reasonable to review and then set aside, and that I really wouldn’t be wasting anything in doing so.  When I posted a picture of the game box to Twitter, the responses I got (all two of them) were mixed.

When I finally opened and installed the game, I was expecting something along the lines of a Pokémon Snap game.  I wasn’t disappointed in that respect from a concept standpoint, though the implementation is far from fun.

The game itself is rather wacky in that it only runs at an 800×600 resolution, which caused a few problems for me with the game being weirdly cropped (until I managed to come across a “widescreen” option in the options menu; this is the first time I’ve seen a game get cropped rather than scaled) and blank screens happening from time to time.  Despite the fact that I’m running a PC that can churn through Team Fortress 2 without breaking a sweat, I was also a little concerned that the game startup took much longer despite the game itself being tiny and designed to run on the PCs of yester-decade.

The back-story the game provides is as perplexing as why I thought this would be a good game in the first place.  The game asks you for your name, then quickly tries to lure you in by saying that your grandfather died and that you eventually happen across his old camera and a mysterious journal entry that you (well, the “you” in the game) want to investigate.

She looks thoroughly convinced that I'm a great photographer, doesn't she?

In order to solve the mystery, you have to take pictures for some of your grandfather’s friends that all seem to end up on the covers of regional ornithology journals.  For someone who happened upon the camera only a few minutes ago, that’s quite a feat.

Of course, the game also takes a draw from Ian Fleming’s James Bond series and coughs up random gadgets for you along the way, including “magic” bird seed, a model airplane that seems to cause birds to fly, and (my favorite) the “electronic satellite-based bird identification system” (which simply tells you what bird you’re about to take a picture of, even though the game will tell you what to look for in the corner of the screen).

To go along with the questionable story (which I left halfway through because I couldn’t tolerate it) and the overuse of Comic Sans is the create-a-bird mode, which the game won’t even let you check out until after you’ve played through some of the story.  I was confused as to the presence of create-a-bird mode, especially the fact that you can upload your designs to the Internet (and download others, obviously), as the game seems quite adept at making what you design look more like a winged fish than a bird.

If birdwatching is one of your interests and you would love nothing better than to spend all day “taking pictures” of birds, I suggest you go find yourself a cheap digital camera and actually go out and do it.  This game is a poor substitute for anything, including entertainment, and I highly suggest mass burnings (of the fire kind, not the CD-R kind) of this game.

Now to go find a cure for my boredom…

I was shocked to sit down at my computer this morning only to find that AT&T had gone above and beyond the call of duty with their self-imposed 4chan ban.  Now, I’m not a fan or visitor of the site in any way, but I am still a little irked that they thought it was necessary to restrict access to (parts of) the site.  I’m not a fan of censorship, especially because anything “blocked” because it “could be used for ill intent” could also be used for good.  (Of course, the good uses of 4chan are up in the air, but I digress…)

However, having just heard about a new VPN service promising unlimited and unfiltered anonymized access to the Internet at the awesome price of free, I figured it might be good to get an account and look into the service before AT&T decided that there were any more sites they wanted to block access to.

ItsHidden may not be the most creative name I’ve heard for a VPN provider, and the website could use some retooling (and perhaps a proofreader), but they do function exactly as promised, and without requiring the installation of any software to get online.

Taking into account a comparison in performance between my raw DSL line, a tethered connection with my cell phone, and the VPN through both, there is a noticeable loss in the amount of available bandwidth.  Of course, this is expected when the traffic is going to the Netherlands and back (I ran all speed tests against the same server in Chicago), but it’s not unbearably slow.  Of course, this could change once the public gets its hands on it and the word spreads a little (not unlike ImageShack’s torrent downloader).

I do have a slight concern with the privacy you “gain” by using this service, and whether it might be worth looking into, though.  ItsHidden seems to meter your VPN usage.  I don’t know if this is the first hint at a freemium model they might be looking to pursue, or whether they simply think it’s a numbers game, but I question the meaning of its existence.  Furthermore, any user of the VPN should be worried about the decrypted traffic on ItsHidden’s end.  It would be trivial for them to sniff any data off the wire before they pass it along, and, even though they claim they don’t collect any information, I can’t help but wonder whether they’re actually doing so.

Realistically, I can’t say I trust a company that doesn’t run spell-check on their own site enough to think they would be a good idea for any mission critical data (and why you would be allowing yourself to tunnel through something you can’t verify the setup of anyway is beyond me), but if you need a VPN to get at anything unimportant or for your file downloading needs, this might be a reasonable solution for you to look into.  (Read:  This might be a good idea if you’re heading to DEFCON but don’t have any other means available to secure yourself.)

Update (7/29): According to a bunch of news outlets, AT&T was acting on behalf of customers they thought were being targeted by a denial-of-service attack.  While the thought of protecting your customers is a nice one, a heads-up might have made things a little happier and calmer for everyone.  Heck, maybe communicating through the proper channels could have picked up some help from moot and the 4chan crew.  So, AT&T, the gesture was nice, but you really can’t go around trying to pull stunts like that without letting people know.  One giant secret is enough.

When people think back to all the time they spent playing video games as a kid, they think back to all the time they wasted trying to rescue the princess in Super Mario Bros. or how many times they defeated the Covenant in Halo.  There have to be a few games they considered crap and played only briefly, though, right?  Those games they thought sounded interesting, but were perhaps too good to be true, or picked up from a bargain bin in hopes of getting a cheap thrill, then sold right back to the used game store of their choice?  Why don’t they mention those?

In an effort to share that side of my life as a non-gamer with you, as well as these horrible excuses for entertainment, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and review old and lame games once in a while throughout the summer as a semi-regular feature.  (Of course, I have many to choose from thanks to my siblings, but I’d rather review games you had an interest in, so feel free to leave suggestions in the comments or my e-mail inbox.)

Seriously, doesn't this read as Speedball Tournament 2?

This week’s game is Speedball 2 Tournament, Speedball Tournament 2, or something of the sort, and it comes from November of 2007.  (Alright, so it’s hardly old, but I doubt you’d heard of it until just now.)  I really can’t figure the name out, because the logo clearly reads Speedball Tournament (to me at least), but Wikipedia, Steam, and most other sites seem to agree on the first version.  To avoid having to worry about that, I’m just going to refer to it as Speedball.

I wouldn’t have even known about the existence of this game if a friend of mine hadn’t found an online magazine giving away CD keys (and informed me that the game was on Steam, which means this game will be following me to the grave).  I can’t say it’s a bad thing, because I can’t argue with free stuff, but I’m sure they could have picked a better game to give away.  Obviously, this also means that I have never played the original.

If I had to sum this game up in as few words as possible, I would call it the older-teen equivalent to the Backyard series for little kids.  Essentially, it’s the same thing as a game of soccer, except made to be all futuristic, the characters carry the ball rather than kicking it up the field, and there’s definitely some language I wouldn’t expect to find in a kids game going on in here.  There are even little power-ups all over the field.  And, just to take the name into consideration (as well as the opening video and all of the violence), you could similarly compare the game to Unreal Tournament with a metal ball instead of Redeemers and a closed-in pit rather than Morpheus.

Speaking of fields, there are four (at least, four that are unlocked when you start the game, and I’m not expecting there to be any more) for you to play on.  They call come complete with a cute little animated crowd cheering you (or the other team, you don’t really know, do you?) on and booing and cheering as appropriate.  There’s not much to them, because, little things like the general shape of the outer stadium (which you won’t see) aside, there isn’t that much difference between the four of them.

The controls aren’t that hard to pick up, though you’re probably going to resort to what I did and just start clicking buttons and pounding on the spacebar in hopes of watching the little animated characters do something.  It won me a match or two, but it probably isn’t what the developers were intending for you to do.

The difficulty levels are definitely labeled appropriately.  Easy made it seem like the AI wasn’t even on half the time, but step it up to advanced and suddenly you won’t have to worry about who’s carrying the ball, because it most certainly won’t be you.  Unfortunately, it’s a little disheartening to watch the computer score so easily against you in so little time (or maybe I just play a poor defense), which is another reason to put it down rather quickly.

Given that I couldn’t even beat the computer AI, I didn’t want to bother spending the time checking out the multiplayer aspect of the game.  Given that the game’s rated so poorly on MetaCritic (and it’s not hard for me to see why), there probably aren’t that many people sticking around waiting for someone to play.  Of course, there’s some law that states that there’s that one devoted fan signed in and waiting for someone to play against, but he or she will have to keep on waiting, because that most certainly won’t be me.

If there’s one redeeming quality to the game, it’s the music.  It’s of a techno-rock variety, and it’s not that bad to listen to (or perhaps it’s just me). It reminds me more than a little of the older Need for Speed games (think Porsche Unleashed or older).  I may actually go through the effort of ripping it out at some point just to have something more to listen to while I’m doing homework or coding.  But we’ll see.

Would I play this game again?  Maybe.  But I’d probably rather play Half-Life 2, or at least something with a little more polish.  For the little time I’ve actually bothered to play this game, I’d probably give it somewhere around a 5 out of 10.  (Note to self:  Come up with witty grade chart for next review.)

If you’re interested in getting a copy of Speedball for yourself, you can pick a copy up on Steam for $20.

Wanted:  two hours of my life back.  Wasted them watching S.Darko, looking for someone with time machine or means to reclaim time.  Will compensate handsomely.  Please contact me if you can help.  If you can’t help, I’d like to take this moment to warn of potential spoiler alerts for both Darko movies.

It’s funny how something you had just a little hope for (just a little, mind you) can turn out to be so disappointing.

Somewhere around a year and a half ago, I was introduced to Donnie Darko by a bunch of guys in my dorm.  We watched one or two movies (occasionally as many as five) every Friday night, with our choices usually being something at least one person in the group hadn’t seen before.  It worked out well, because the movies were all enjoyable, and we tended to lean towards the thought-warping titles (think The Matrix if you need a well-known example) more than the cheesy action flicks.  (Alright, maybe we had a Die Hard marathon in there at some point, but…well, yippie ki yay, I seem to be running off in tangents here.)

Is it me, or does the smaller "S" almost remove the idea that this is about Samantha rather than Donnie?

To quit beating around the bush, suffice it to say that I enjoyed Donnie Darko at least as much as any other movie I watched with that group.  It had a certain ring to it that, at some level, I hoped would be carried on, though I knew that ultimately any attempt to extend the story would ruin the mystique, just as the Wachowskis are blamed for doing with The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions.  And that’s where S.Darko, and the point of this post, come into play, as they do just the same thing.

I’ll try not to give too much away as far as this review goes, but suffice it to say that I found the film rather ridiculous right from the get-go.  The movie starts off with a Star Wars-esque block of text scrolling up the screen to give you the backstory for the film, though I felt that it really didn’t do much explaining:

Middlesex, Virginia. 1988.

Donnie Darko was killed when a jet engine fell from the sky and crushed him while he was sleeping.  The government never located the plane from which the engine fell, nor did they even admit the incident ever occurred.  But that was just the beginning of the tragedy…and the mystery.

Now, 7 years later, Donnie’s youngest sister, Samantha, seemingly alone and lost in the world, has run away from a home shattered by the death of her brother.  Drowning in sadness and unable to dream, she has drifted deeper and deeper into the darkness of her sleep.  And when darkness consumes the starlight, nightmares rule the night.

The first pair of sentences neatly sums up the first movie for those who never saw it.  Except for, you know, the whole government admission part.  (Weren’t those workers there removing the engine and investigating at the end of the movie? )  Ignoring that nasty, comma-filled sentence about Samantha running away, the rest of this blurb reads exactly like I would expect it to if I were watching a horror film.  (That’s funny, I don’t see ‘horror’ listed at IMDB.)  “And when darkness consumes the starlight, nightmares rule the night…”?  Seriously?

Of course, that’s just the first few seconds of the movie.  Things don’t get much better, as just about everything has some special effect to “enhance” it (extreme overuse of time-rewinds, anyone?), and they reuse a lot of the concepts from Donnie Darko so blatantly that it gets hard to tell whether any original content even went into this film.  There are also numerous plot holes, such as how Roberta Sparrow’s book comes to be in Samantha’s ownership as it was never given to Donnie in the first place (thinking through the timeline of the first movie).

This isn't the best pair of images to be using for a comparison, but they look similar to me (compensating for the age difference, of course). Yeah, Jim, I'm just as surprised as you are.

Some of the actor choices seem almost intentionally designed to get your memory drawn elsewhere.  One character bears (what I call) a strong resemblance to Jake Gyllenhaal, while another looks almost like a younger version of Jim Carrey in his role as Edward Nygma (“The Riddler”) from Batman Forever.  In one scene of the movie, I almost want to say there’s a slight resemblance to Javier Bardem in there, too.

At times, I also got a subtle preachy vibe, almost like the movie was trying to be an infomercial for God rather than a source of entertainment (HAHA!  HA! Ha…ha…eh…), which I found an amusing juxtaposition with the supposed supernatural components of the film.  I couldn’t identify exactly what the writers were trying to go for given what little development the characters involved went through, but it certainly could have used a little work.

In short, I was rather disappointed with the movie from all aspects.  It’s not the worst thing I’ve seen, but I would much rather watch something else.  If I had to place it on a scale somewhere, it would probably land between “I’d rather walk around in public wearing a bikini swimsuit” and “I’d rather listen to Ben Stein sing in the shower.”  (I love arbitrary scales, don’t you?)

Oh, and if you want a lesson in how NOT to design your user interface, you should check out the movie’s web site.  I particularly recommend trying to read the synopsis and cast lists they provide in their entirety without shooting yourself.

I actually had another (much more interesting) post lined up for today.  I sent the post to two friends for opinions, but I haven’t heard back from one of them yet.  (And yes, you know who you are!)

I have a hunch...

A few weeks ago, I got wind of a new startup called Hunch.  Without even taking a glance, I dismissed the site as being only minimally useful. Crowd-sourcing only works so well, and it doesn’t take much to game the system (see Mechanical Turk) and get people to dismiss your site just as easily as 4chan.  I was also highly skeptical of the idea of leaving all of the suggestive power to the users.  (Yes, there’s a difference between having a company provide results that might have been sponsored or biased, as that’s identifiable, and having a spammer help push up results that are biased differently, potentially anonymously.)

After reading about some of the interesting correlations Hunch was making about its users, I decided that it might be worth a quick stop by.  (To be honest, I just wanted to see if they would share any more wacky associations that could be made between users. I’m lame like that.)  For someone who finds useless trivia mildly entertaining, it seemed like a good choice at the time, if only to kill some.

However, I quickly realized that Hunch is an excellent aggregator of  personal information.  After all, the entire point of the service is that you voluntarily cough up details about yourself to a corporate entity.  It may not be things like your social security number or your mother’s maiden name, but it’s still personally-identifiable information all the same.  Furthermore, when you think about it, all that’s standing between any other company in the world and your information is a few bucks.  I haven’t heard anything about how Hunch plans to monetize the service, but I see selling information as the only really profitable option.  And I won’t even get into what the ads could be like if the company serving them knew that you were a sucker for brunettes…

The site is also only as useful as the information that gets submitted to it.  (That’s the point, of course.)  Most of the questions are supposed to be user-submitted and users can recommend responses to these questions, but I found that some questions were poorly answered or didn’t properly take all of the responses I had given into consideration.  One question regarding instant messaging clients, for example, suggested I use Adium after I blatantly told the website that I was using Windows.  The last time I checked Adium’s website, the only version of the client available (and it’s quite good, by the way, don’t get me wrong) was the OS X version almost every Mac user already has.  (Also, I should apparently try Botox even though the number of answers against it is greater than the number that support it.  Go figure.)

Really? You're going to tell me what video game I should play based upon a few simple questions and the fact that I like green eggs and ham?

The lack of feelings of legitimacy I get from the site gives me a rather creepy feeling that I’m still hanging out on MySpace, the social network just about everyone with a brain ditched years ago in hopes of avoiding survey after survey detailing how many movies you’ve seen.  Like I said, a lot of the quizzes are pointless or leave much to be desired, and it’s only a matter of time before Facebook and Hunch pair up to display people’s suggestion results in their timeline.  Social suggestion is nothing new (#followfriday, anyone?), but something tells me you’ll get better suggestions from people who actively know and interact with you than you ever will with a website that pairs people off by their love of vegetables.

Site content and utility aside, I know creativity is really hard to find these days (Hollywood, I’m talking to you), but it’s not difficult to avoid ripping off the design of another Web 2.0 startup. Anyone who’s been reading this blog since February has probably realized by now that Hunch seems to have taken a design cue from Plinky…by copying the navigation system.  (To the developers:  I realize that the organization scheme you’ve chosen is natural, but you barely bothered to change the order of anything and it just looks tacky.  In the future, you might want to do a little more research before you end up plagiarizing bits and pieces of other newly-released applications.)

Hunch may be backed by one of Flickr’s co-founders, but I get the feeling that Caterina Fake is more of a one-hit wonder than a repeat trendsetter.  Only time will tell, but this is one website I’m not expecting myself to come back to.  And I have a hunch that most of you won’t be bothering to head over, either.  (I have three invites to hand out if you REALLY want to check it out, though.)

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Since ancient times, seven has been the number of choice for everything.  After all, there are exactly seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  There are (obviously) seven days in the week.  James Bond‘s agent number is 007.  (And what list of numbers would be complete without a blogger throwback to Brooke (more commonly known as Oh My Seven)?  Alright, that was corny…)

But while I’m either pleased with or indifferent to the aforementioned items, there’s one thing tarnishing the number for me.  And (to what I assume is Justin’s eternal glee), of all things, it’s a Microsoft product.

If you’re waiting on me to rant about Windows Mobile 6.5 and my Treo Pro, you would be half-right.  Literally.  Just one-half away from the appropriate version of Windows.  (Well, and a gigantic platform jump over, but who’s counting other than me?)  If you thought I willingly put myself into a position beta-testing the Next Big Thing™ to come out of Washington (other than the Mariners), you’d be right.  Seven points to you.

You might ask why I did it.  Back in October, I posted about how I have no problem whatsoever using in-development software.  (In fact, I’m writing this post using one of the latest nightly builds of Firefox, but I digress…)  Of course, that was before I willingly installed this pile of dung, and in the future I’m going to be putting more consideration into that policy.

Before you ask, it’s not the computer’s fault.  I’ve lived on Pentium 4s for the past several years, and finally decided in December to build a new Core 2 Quad desktop for school.  Of course, what would be better than loading up the test build of the operating system that it will most likely be seeing for most of its useful life, right?  That’s what I thought…

I’ve been using dealing with Windows 7 for about a month, and while I’ve taken to some of the “new” features, on the whole, I still feel like the experience is missing something.  A big something.

Performance-wise, everything seems to run at a very pleasing rate.  Even in beta, the operating system is quick to respond, and I’ve gotten used to some of the “enhancements” (read: mind-numbing changes for the worse) Microsoft made.  Things I’d also installed out of humor, like my old TV tuner, installed without any trouble.  Granted, the workflow in things like the Control Panel could be improved, but I’m going to let that one slide because it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen.

My biggest gripe is that Windows somehow seems to have lost control of user processes.  The same build of Thunderbird, for example, works fine on other operating systems (like my Windows XP-based laptop), but hangs in 7 to the point where it cannot be killed using the Windows Task Manager or even the appropriate command-line commands, and ultimately requires me to restart the machine from the front panel.  (As I write this, there is an unresponsive Thunderbird window where my desktop normally goes.)  This is on top of very annoying bugs I’ve already managed to encounter on more than one occasion.  I’ve also tried several applications that hang immediately, such as the NX remote desktop client, and plenty of applications you would expect to work (like Picasa) blow up without administrative permissions.

My next complaint is with data transfers.  For some reason, I have issues transferring files to and from removable media, though network transfers are fine, as is the removable media when used in conjunction with my laptop.  According to other people running the beta, they haven’t had any such problems, so this might be something I need to look into at a personal level, but it gets annoying that I need to transfer everything over in small chunks.

Win7′s inability to sync properly at all with my Treo is another showstopper, as far as I’m concerned.  And I would complain about power management, but I can’t say I’ve noticed any issues – my computer is kept on all the time, except when it’s being rebooted to ward off evil spirits and afflicted processes.

I’ll keep my hopes up (slightly – I wouldn’t want them dashed, as this is a Microsoft product we’re talking about) that the problems I’ve found get fixed before release.  I don’t know if I would be placing monetary bets on all of these issues being resolved before the final release, however.

What are your thoughts about the beta?

One of the challenges posed by the Comment Block was overcoming some of the writer’s block I encounter when I sit down and try to come up with a decent topic to write about.  I must have figured something out, because I’ve managed to make one post for each day so far this month (even if they were a little late in actually being posted ).  I’ve come up with and tried a few ideas to varying personal opinions of success, too, and they might just be enough to keep me posting more regularly.

One of the sites I always check is ReadWriteWeb, a mashup of news and information about goings-on online and reviews of new services to check out.  One such service they mentioned last month was Plinky, a social network centered around giving you writing prompts and letting you read the submissions of other members.  Intending to at least steal some prompt ideas, I signed up for an account.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten, really.  I check back regularly to see if there are any prompts that pique my interest, but so far I haven’t seen anything I care for.

From what I’ve seen, the prompts range from just a little too personal for my liking to causing me to question why I’m even visiting the site.  For example, the prompt for Valentine’s Day asked what magazines you read regularly.  If you’re that interested that you want to know that I subscribe to Popular Science (a subscription I don’t regret, considering I’ve been reading it for over a decade) and PC World (a choice I regret more with each issue), you can go peek into my mailbox.  Other prompts are just as bad, including one asking you what the top three songs you would sing at a karaoke bar would be and why, as well as another asking you where you would fly to if you had access to your friends elevator.  Excuse me, but I thought questions like these were best left on MySpace.

Of course, the content provided by the site is nothing compared to the users driving it.  Some of them take the site, the prompts, and their writing seriously, while others seem to think that a site encouraging you to write means that you should mention your desire to stalk.  I’ve run into a few friends who have accounts at Plinky as well, but, considering I don’t intend to add the site to my social tour, I haven’t been accepting any friend requests.

Let me know if you’ve given the site a spin and what your thoughts about it were.  I’m interested to see if I’m in the majority.

Wouldn’t you look at that.  Plinky was good for something after all.  I don’t think it’s the topic they intended, though.

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Microsoft may be known for Windows and Office and their fun little grip on the computing world, but they certainly aren’t known for a lot of their smaller technologies, and especially not for their voice recognition.  Some people still remember the incident during one of their demos prior to Windows Vista’s launch showing off just how much work went into the product in the first place (hint:  not much, at least at that point) and decided to make a subtle jab with the title of the post.

Someone must have taken the proverbial Q-tip to the Redmond campus, though, or at least picked up a pair of hearing aids.  It seems that Microsoft’s at it again with a new tech demo just in time for the Mobile World Congress, this time designed for Windows Mobile phones (like my Treo Pro).  Called Microsoft Recite, it’s not so much speech-to-text as it is an intelligent voice recorder.

My previous PDA, the Palm Tungsten|T2, also had a voice recording feature, though I rarely put it to use.  If you can keep the recordings straight and organized (something I never bothered to do), then the idea has potential for you.  But, at least in my experience, having to listen to every recording you have on you just to find the one little tidbit of information you need means it’s often more efficient in the long run to just have a handwritten/typed notepad open and draw or key the relevant information in rather than vocalize it.

Recite is designed to change that, though, because it offers a vocalized “search” feature.  After recording whatever notes you have onto your phone, you can tap Search and speak what you’re looking for; if you’re lucky, the relevant audio clip you recorded earlier will begin to play.  At least, that’s the theory.

Even in demo form, the software works reasonably well.  From a functionality standpoint, it works well enough to consider making it a daily-use tool, but I encountered a few accuracy issues that might make me think twice about relying on it as my only method of note-taking.  And while the interface could benefit from being touch-enabled for devices with a touchscreen (like mine; it took me a few seconds to figure out that I couldn’t tap the delete icon to remove notes), the interface is (and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Microsoft product) somewhat intuitive.  It responded quickly (or at least well enough for my tastes), and there’s not a bunch of clutter floating around the screen making it look like the second coming of Microsoft Office.  Not that there’s much to the application in the first place, though.  (Click the screenshot – or here – for an animated GIF of every screen you’ll be staring at.)

I can see this as possibly being useful for reporters, as they can quickly pull up tidbits of interviews without having to cycle through gobs of unrelated and unnecessary recordings, provided they remember at least something their subject was saying.  Students too might find some benefit, but I personally wouldn’t have too much use in an educational capacity.  (My excuse?  It’s the major.  Everything’s already digitized. )

It’s a small app, and if you have a Windows Mobile phone with a little free space, it’s at least worth a shot if you work best with audio and carry around a cassette recorder in your shirt pocket.  Otherwise, stick with my personal favorite, Evernote.

Late last night, I heard about a new product from Google called Latitude, designed in the intent of keeping you updated with the locations of your friends and allowing you to let them know where you are.  Despite a rather busy day today, I ended up spending a few minutes playing with it.

This isn’t the first time somebody’s suggested that your friends are interested in more than just answering what you’re doing, but the fact that this service comes with your Google account means that there’s already a huge potential userbase compared with the limited registration at services like Brightkite.

The idea itself comes in two parts, one for your iGoogle homepage, and one for your mobile phone of choice (though better iPhone support is still in the works).  Sadly, this isn’t integrated directly into Google Maps (yet), so anybody who doesn’t use the customized homepage is going to be left out in the cold…or at least a portion of the service.

Essentially, the mobile phone software is an update to Google Maps which allows you to post your GPS information automatically to Latitude and display pushpins for your friends.  This is where I believe Latitude where be most useful, as you’re likely to be doing something other than stalking out a good time while you’re at home.

The pushpins representing your friends show you not only their location, but allow you to get in touch with them with a phone call, IM, or text message, or find cool venues you both could meet up at.

If you don’t want to automatically update your location, you can manually set a pushpin to represent it using your phone or the web interface.  Of course, this isn’t as fun unless you’re claiming to be swimming across the Atlantic or something.  (Oh wait, I’m getting ideas…this could be bad.)

Google seems to have looked to Brightkite for their privacy settings, allowing you to not only declare which friends you want to see, but how accurately you want your location displayed on a per-friend basis.  However, you don’t have to make a distinction about which contacts are “trusted”, which means that you won’t have to worry about any moral dilemmas over labeling some people as such but excluding others.  (Hey, it’s a legitimate benefit.)

Of course, it’s not difficult to imagine Latitude being used in a less-than-stellar manner.  ABC’s already touting the service as a way to micromanage your kids, and it’s only a matter of time before someone repurposes their old phone as a tracking device for their stalking toolkit.  And I’m wondering how this will do for trying to blame traffic on being late…or whether Google might be looking at a few more subpoenas.

The social concept behind Latitude is cool, and makes for a neat tie-in to other Google features that can’t be matched by some of the competing rivals, but at the same time it makes me wonder if Google really is planning on world domination.  Think about it:  Google probably already handles your e-mail, calendar, contact list, word-processing, number-crunching, trip planning, and Internet searching/browsing needs.  Add where you are in real time to that list, and Google perhaps knows more about you than you know yourself.

I don’t think I’ll be participating (for the moment), except in a humorous capacity, so if you’re thinking of following me around, I apologize.  (I require all stalkers to be physically present and wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses at all times.)  If you don’t have the stringent requirements I do, you might find this worth poking around at, though.  It definitely shows that there’s still plenty of space left in redefining social networking.

Disclaimer:  I am not actually writing this post from Wrigley Field.  However, I wish it were a few months from now and that that pushpin was accurate.  Oh well.