Two Slashes

Caution:  This post includes gratuitous amounts of speculation about web services and the Internet in general.  If you prefer to deal in the world of concretes, I suggest you read yesterday’s newspaper instead.  Or send me a cement mixer.

Almost a year ago, we had Cuil.  Claiming to be an instant success over Google, and even grabbing up some of the behemoth’s staff, Cuil ultimately did exactly what most people expected to happen:  it flopped.  Earlier this year, Wolfram released Alpha and came to the realization that, while people are looking for the facts, their approach isn’t one that applies universally.  And at the beginning of June, Microsoft decided that they wanted to “Bing it on” and found that renaming your search engine might earn them a place above Yahoo!, but it doesn’t really get anywhere near the top, especially when marketed as a “decision engine.”  And now, I think someone’s going to try again.

To be honest, none of the major tech outlets have anything to say about them (yet), and the only reason I know of their plan is through their increasingly-common spidering of this blog.  Bear with me a moment, because I’m sure you’re just as confused as I was.

A quick glance at Apnoti’s home page doesn’t tell you much about their intentions.  In fact, all you really find out is that they seem to have been playing a variation of the product search game for more than a year, and they’ve differentiated themselves by offering the ability to watch prices on Amazon for the things you want.  To the best of my knowledge and examination, there’s no explanation for or mention of any other projects they’re working on available for consumption.

Beneath the shopping lies hopes and dreams of being something more, though.  The page hosted on the subdomain that keeps showing up in my statistics (smart.apnoti.com) is simple enough, bearing only a countdown to August and the suggestion that real-time search is coming.  But what’s left to search in real time?  My guess:  blogs and other sites refreshed with new content at semi-regular rates.  Think about it.  Google Blog Search might exist, but it’s far from showing you what’s happening in real time (unless you enjoy hitting refresh repeatedly, that is), and scraping Twitter only gets you so far, especially when there are already so many variants.

If what I envision is true, imagine being able to type in a recent event, like Michael Jackson’s death, and watch as the blogosphere fills up with reports and commentaries about the event.  Not trivial-length blurbs and “I can’t believe this happened!”-type posts, but posts of a reasonable length and with some backing to them.  It’s a niche that I have yet to see filled, and I think it has the potential to be a great service, provided the sites they index maintain some level of credibility.  (If you need a description, imagine something along the lines of Twitter Search, Facebook’s timeline, or Profilactic as your search results page, sorted with the newest posts first, and the ability to click a link and have any new results that have shown up populate into your present view.

Whether there’s a market for this sort of thing is another question altogether.  There’s no doubt that everyone and everything is moving toward real-time information sharing, so it makes sense to me that this is a logical step along that route.  On the other hand, such a move is a costly risk; one false move, one mistake, and all that hard work becomes a black hole for money.  There’s also the massive resource requirement to consider, as it’s no easy task to index the countless blogs available online and come away with even a decent index of all the content they offer.  Add to that the load required to keep their results fresh and relevant, and the requirement shoots up even further.

Of course, I’ve proven that I have a mediocre track record when it comes to predictions, so I might just be further cementing myself as a crackpot when Apnoti decides to open up the site as some sort of gadget guide.  However, even if I’m far off, I would still like to see this idea.  One day.

This post is partially because feel this weekend deserves an excellent recap, partially because I want to acknowledge some of my newfound friends, and partially because I don’t want to make the same mistake I made by not posting about the tweetup I attended a few months ago hosted by Tricon.

A brief explanation of the occasion is probably in order first, I suppose. For those of you who were not in the loop, the 20 Something Bloggers decided that this weekend would be a great time for (the first) summer meetup, a way to meet the people behind some of the blogs and forum postings keeping the community alive, and, as a central location for a good number of the group (as well as being an event-filled and tourist-friendly location for those who would be traveling), it would be held in Chicago.

Thursday
Of course, no trip to a blogger meetup in Chicago would be complete without Rachelskirts or her friend Sean, so we jumped on an inbound train and found ourselves in the Windy City one long (though fun-filled) train ride later, just in time for the “official” pizza dinner.

After some wackiness with the Giordano’s we originally had planned to eat at, we ended up spending quite a bit of time waiting outside Pizzeria Due (an extension of Uno’s ), chatting, deciding that street sweepers were worthy of grand theft auto, and generally enjoying each other’s company before heading in to discover that Dell Mini 9s (like mine) make excellent cell phone chargers in a pinch, realize that some people easily confuse Dr. Dre with Dr. Who (*ahem*), and determine that I’ve helped enough people out to earn the rank of “The #$&#ing Man.”

Friday
Long train rides aren’t necessarily entertaining or comfortable when riding solo, so I skipped the events on Friday (in the physical sense), instead opting to poke and prod at everyone on Twitter.  (In retrospect, being underage and spending the evening at a bar probably wouldn’t have been the most pleasurable of times, anyway.)

"You're doing it wrong!"

Saturday
Saturday was supposed to be the official 20SB wine tasting, but Rachelskirts, LovelyAnomaly, and I decided that we didn’t want to participate. (Well, that wasn’t much of a choice for me, but I wouldn’t have gone anyway.) Instead, the three of us took a hike (a painfully-crowded bus, actually) north to visit a nature museum, decide that the age limitations on children’s play areas don’t apply to us, (in Rachel’s words) “hack” the exhibit kiosks (because visiting about:blank is akin to hacking, apparently), and (with many thanks to the Subway that thoughtfully had its operating license suspended the day before) discover what Lovely and Rachel described as the best darn crêpes ever.

A little more wandering, an El ride, and a confusing map of the Merchandise Mart later, we found our way to Bucca di Beppo, where we caught up with the rest of the group and met Tim, perhaps the best server I’ve ever met (and little did we know his name was actually Tim until we got the receipt – we were simply calling him that to give him a name until that point). Too much food, good atmosphere, and plenty of people to talk with.

Sunday
I might not have had a chance to physically meet up with everyone (again), but I did get a chance to claim that I have seen the present-day version of the time machine from Back to the Future, find a $150 keyboard marked down to $10, assist with softmodding a Wii, and work on other things related to the next episode of TechCentric, so I can’t complain that the day was wasted.

Monday
Why might I be including Monday, the day after the meetup officially ended? Well, if taking the hijinks back online wasn’t enough, Monday has been a crazy day of people trying to find those last few stragglers on Twitter, Facebook, the 20SB site, their blogs, or wherever else they may be, swapping stories, and helping each other write up their experiences (when you have a group of bloggers hanging out, it’s expected that they all write up something about it, right?). Oh, and deciding that MomInRealLife owns everyone’s phones, of course.

It’s been fun meeting and trading jokes with some of the people behind the curtain, so to speak.  I’m glad I went, and I’m more than willing to do it again (sooner than next year, even).  Here’s to the success of the 20SB Ultimate Meetup!

Lady Ada

It’s not well-known, but today is a day that most geek calendars include.  Today is Lady Ada Day, named after Ada Lovelace, recorded in history books as the first person to write a computer program.

There’s a giant roster of people who are supposed to be posting about a female figure in the tech industry today whom they admire as a “Modern Ada.”  Considering the long time it’s been since I managed to put in some posting time on here, I figured I would take this challenge up.

Me?  Well, I never was one for following memes (which I consider this to be), and I can’t think of a woman in the tech world I really admire.  Well, that, and I’m not one to play favorites.

Sure, I could talk about some of my fellow university students and the impressive work they’ve completed, but that would get boring to everyone who has no idea what school I attend.  (And I appreciate my privacy in that matter, thanks. )  And, to be honest, that would probably be creepy for anyone to read, most of all them.

I could always cheat and pull some random tech employee’s name out of a hat, but that wouldn’t work either.  Not only could I not name-drop any reasonably-well-known females in the tech industry, but there will probably be countless other blog posts drooling about how attractive/intelligent/rich/attractive said woman is, which makes picking anybody of note instantly a poor choice.

However, I think I have a solution.  Rather than write one more post about whatever useless tech journalist/CEO/evangelista the rest of the blogosphere is, what about taking a second to thank all of the female bloggers I know for doing their thing?  After all, in a loose definition, they’re pretty in-tune with technology themselves (even if their blogs let on otherwise).  Right?

So, with that said, I’m going to suggest you spend the rest of your Lady Ada day appreciating not just female software developers and company CEOs, but female bloggers too.  And you can start with those I have in my sidebar.  That’s right, tonight looks like a great night for you to check out Keri’s Curious Cloud, daigakudeki, Geekin’ Out, Rachelskirts, Snubs’ personal blog, Splendid Mishap, and maybe even mosey over to Brooke’s or Gretchen’s blogs if there’s time left.

(There are more, of course, but seeing as even I have not talked with everyone in the universe yet, it’ll have to do.  Also, I should probably do some housecleaning, because there are a few stale links in my sidebar.)

Imagine that.  The month is almost up.  Stay tuned for the wrap-up of the previous month in pseudo-randomness, which will be arriving at some point in the near future.

Many people see their twenties as a turning point for their lives.  They’re just starting to figure out adulthood, but sometimes they’re not quite ready, like the single bunch of green bananas you always end up with at the supermarket.  Others are so ready that they end up looking like this orange by the time they leave their teens.  Either way, there’s plenty to blame for why that piece of fruit looks the way it does, and everyone comes out the tail end the better for themselves.

Posted to 20SB earlier today was a request for topic suggestions for a graduate-level writing assignment, the goal of which is to write twenty pages on life experiences.  I like the prompt, having had a similar (though much shorter requirement) for a rhetoric class I took last year:

If you had to write 20 nonfiction pages as a 20-something, what would you write about? College? Debt? Growing up?  (slightly modified for readability )

To be honest, I don’t know if I have a real answer to that question.  You’ll notice how infrequently the “Personal” category has been used since I first opened it up in December to rant about my issues with the previous holiday season.

It’s not for lack of trying to come up with anything, though, especially since I started this whole “Comment Block” project.  Granted, there are a few differences between writing a (comparatively long) essay to be read by at most a handful of people (let’s add in the point that usually you know these people in real life) and a digestible yet public blog post (potentially read by hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people you’ve never met, and indexed, categorized, and cached a half-dozen times before you even have a second chance to think about what you’ve published).  There’s a happy medium that needs to be found.  Compared to old writings from a previous blog (of which I have only scraps, sorry), I’m a lot less revealing in what I post (and at the same time a bit more boring, I assume).

I know my personal tangent there is a bit unrelated, but considering the discussion on 20SB is limited to members, I figured I’d bring the question out into a more general audience.  What would you write about if you were given this prompt?

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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I’ve been blogging in some form or another for longer than I can remember.  (I don’t mean to use a cliché here, but I really can’t pin a more specific timeframe down.)  I’ve had a few previous projects I’ve scrapped before they were even made public, and then there was the previous (public) blog hosted by a friend of mine for about a year.

Out of boredom and a sudden burst of curiosity, I’ve started probing for any remaining backups from that previous blog over the past few weeks.  I don’t think there are any left in existence, though I’ve managed to find and piece together a few small tidbits of posts from here and there.

What’s amusing is noticing, even from the mere snippets I’ve been able to collect, just how a few years can have a huge impact both in voice and topics.  A lot of the older posts (the ones I have managed to recover, at least) are nothing more than tiny little blurbs about the holidays or a few words attached to a post made.  Compared to my lengthy spiel about the holiday season from hell, I wonder where and how I ended up transforming from a quiet type into a “professional ranter”™.

One of the things I noticed is that I was a lot more consistent with my posting, though my posts usually tended to be no more than a sentence or two, and some were posted straight from Digg.  Now, it’s hard to think of me posting anything that short (I aim for upwards of 400 words per post – especially during the Comment Block – and usually end up doubling that number by the time they’re published), but at the same time I’m more irregular in when I complete them.

In an effort to encourage me to both become a little more active and personal in my posting (and as something I should have plugged much more prominently and sooner), I joined 20SB, a group of twenty-something blogging enthusiasts with a lot to say and a great community (including several authors from blogs I already follow).  While I’m not intending to go from statue to sponge, hopefully it will loosen my tongue a little bit once the Comment Block is over.  We’ll see what happens with that, and I encourage you to join as well if you fit the age bracket.

If you think this post sounds a bit funny, you’re right.  It’s been sitting in a draft folder for  at least two weeks, and I put together only minor edits before I clicked Publish.  I have too much stuff going on tonight to put much more effort into this post, though I intend on revising (and/or rewriting ) it when I get the chance.