Screw the “A-List”, give me authentic people

Count me in on the “Fuck the A-List” club: I’d rather read about someone getting engaged than yet another boring gmail hack, yet another video blog, or yet another feature-as-business-model.

Dare is interesting because he mingles thoughts on social software with, well, “cat pictures”. Jeremy Zawodny is interesting because he talks about technology, then shows pictures of airplanes. And so on, and so on. Scoble is not interesting, he’s a meme abattoir. Go back through Google, get all the entries for this search, and then s/Second Life/Facebook/g.

If we’re all supposed to care about the “long tail” and the whole world having a voice, why are we even debating the existence of an “A-list”? Aren’t they the douchebags, ready to fall at a moment’s notice as soon as Google changes an algorithm?

Stop calling it a “revolt”

The most recent self-aggrandizing Digg HD Key story on the front page continues to push the storyline that it’s somehow a “revolt” by Digg users, against The Man or something.

Seriously, explain to me how they’re revolting. (”The peasants are revolting.” “Oh, I know.” bah-dum bum psh)

I’d like to know, as part of your answer, a few actual facts. For example, what percentage of Digg users have HD-aware devices (tvs, etc)? How many without HD gear are planning on a purchase in the next 3-6 months? And finally, what percentage have been egregiously hindered by the lack of access to the key, for purposes of ad-hoc decryption of content?

I’m guessing here, but if you frame the “revolt” in terms of real numbers, you’re going to see the entire thing as a lot of me-too, bandwagon wankery.

I’m no stranger to odd geek habits: I have a convoluted “workflow” around dealing with getting content (that, you know, fell off the back of a truck) onto my Apple TV. I’m sure there’s some percentage of Digg users who really needed access to the key, to support their convoluted workflow.

But c’mon. You’re not a fucking hero for risking a DMCA takedown. You’re not innovative, or part of a movement, or anything else. You’re just some guy. It takes a lot more to rise above.

Omniweb crashes in WordPress.com and others

Some time Monday, something changed on WordPress.com, causing OmniWeb - and for that matter, any WebKit browser based on the version of WebKit OmniWeb is using - to die horribly.

(It has also been noted that blogspot blogs cause the same problem)

I believe that it is something to do with the Snap preview. You can disable it by adding

http://shots\.snap\.com

to your adblock list.

See this thread for more info. In another thread, they claim to have fixed it for 5.6, but as I said in the thread, I hate the Snap shit anyway.

In which I succumb to the peer pressure

I have a twitter account thing. So now, you can learn just what I happened to be doing that last time I bothered to update my stupid twitter account thing. So “friend” me or whatever the hell it’s called.

Beware screen height

I cannot wait to see what hell on earth Apollo/Flex unleashes

So, yay, Apollo launches (alpha? how cute).

I am of course terrified at this: it’s another technology that our customers will yammer on about, be easily impressed by, and of course buy 100% into the hype (”Why do you want to charge me $5k for a simple thing? The web site said it was only, like, 5 lines of code to make a relational database engine with transparency, or something”).

I’m genuinely excited about the possibility of using this as a back-office integration tool. I like the idea of “dashboards”, tracking apps, all that stuff. I think it would be fantastic to build out site management stuff in Apollo/Flex.

But storefronts? Come on. Make ‘em quick, clean, and dumb. If  you notice a page load at all you’re taking too long. I spend hours with customers, trying to talk them out of loading their pages down with 200 off-site 3rd-party Javascript ROI trackers, badges, crazy linky things, etc. Keep it simple, bubbie: 2 or 3 columns, light on the graphics, clear text, tasteful whitespace, good markup. Leave the throbbing sales indicator to the back office.

(Or better yet, no throbbing at all, eh?)

Steampunk Star Wars

Holy Crap.

Safari + Privoxy = awesome

A few weeks ago, I decided to give Privoxy a spin, and switch back to Safari. While you’re at it, get the actions file from neilvandyke.org: it contains a TON of rules to get you started. (I use the shipped rules file and the add-on)

There are, as you would expect, upsides and downsides.

Upsides: Safari has been freakishly stable, not crashing once. Performance is anywhere from slightly to greatly improved, as it no longer loads all the shitty Flash, ads from 20 different ad networks, etc etc. Installation is simple. Can be managed, mostly, from within the browser.

Downsides: You can’t just click to add a site/ad to be blocked. I’ve had more “false positives” than I’m completely happy with (Google Reader had some compressed JS that triggered the ad filter). I can’t use Safari (or Omniweb or even Camino) to access sites that have funny port numbers (we run several for work). Resolving a “false positive” takes time.

On the whole, I’m pleased. Given that Google is fixing WebKit bugs now, Safari could “be a contender” instead of “just” the default.