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Feb 27

Crashing ATXRyan’s Web Design and Developer Meetup

February 27, 2008 • View Comments • Events I've Attended

Ok, so yesterday I ate dinner and was about to go to the gym. Since I figured a.) my food had to digest anyway and b.) Ryan Joy and Paul Menard were heading out to the Web Design and Developer Meetup at Gingerman, I figured I’d join them. Perhaps not the best idea, since I am neither a web designer or developer, and I don’t want to distract Austinites from their conversations of designing or developing new and incredible things. I did get to speak with Jerry Hughes, a photographer here in town, about blogging and what I need to do to make my Flickr pics actually presentable. Very cool.

Paul claimed that if I stray from WordPress and move to TypePad, “I am dead to him.” TypePad just seems a ton easier for me to manage, although I emailed their support team for questions on a WordPress import and have yet to receive a response. So much for $15 a month. Since their support isn’t the greatest, and there is such a great WordPress community here in town, I think I’ll stick with my not so cool looking WordPress blog. It will come in time.

Since my knowledge of writing is decent but my knowledge of WordPress is severely lacking, I am going to check out the WordPress Meetup group on March 3 at GingerMan. If you are wanting to discuss WordPress and all of its awesomeness, I suggest you do the same.

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Feb 26

Tim Westergren at Pandora Explains How He Saved Michelle’s Job

February 26, 2008 • View Comments • South by Southwest Interactive
Tim WestergrenOK, so its not like Tim Westergren and the crew at Pandora covered for me when I was late or came up with a TPS cover sheet when I forgot one. I use Pandora everyday at work. It is the best internet radio station I’ve found. When I was on the brink of quitting my job despite not having something else lined up, the optimistic stylings of Pandora’s Buena Vista Social Club station kept my spirits up. When I struggled to get my work done while dealing with a miserable break up, I turned to my Ray LaMontagne station to help me cope or Parliament to put me in a better mood. The psychologist Oliver Sachs contends that music is not just enjoyable–it is actually therapeutic. Considering the armpit that is conventional radio and the fact that I can’t download music at work, Pandora offers me an invaluable service. Especially when you consider that it is completely free.

I went to the Alamo Drafthouse to Pandora’s Get Together and did not have a video camera to record Tim Westergren’s town hall style speech. Bummer. For those of you who were not there, Tim explained his background as a musician, the struggles Pandora faced as a startup in 1999, how the music that you choose actually got there, and future plans for Pandora. What were the coolest tidbits I heard?

  • Pandora employs 50 musicians to sort through the music you hear. When a musician hears a song, he or she sorts through hundreds of elements to classify that song for the Music Genome Project. Each 3-4 minute song takes about 40 minutes to completely analyze.
  • The Senate proposed a bill that would require webcasters to pay back royalties to musicians last year. Westergren asked users to respond, and respond they did. Pandora flooded Congress with so many faxes, they jammed the entire Capitol Hill fax infastructure for two days.
  • Users have been clamoring for Pandora on the iPhone as well as zip code specific playlists. Imagine, you listen to a band and then a message shows up that tells you about the show that band’s about to play in your area…
  • If you think Pandora sucks because they don’t play “your type of music”, just let them know what you do want to hear. Much of the music you find on Pandora is submitted by users. Word to the wise though, they only use about 30 percent of the music submitted to the site. If you think you can just pick up guitar, create a CD and all of a sudden be listed in Jimi Hendrix’s station, chances are you will have to think again.

If you are interested in some of the new developments behind Pandora and other internet radio stations, check out Pandora’s CTO Tom Conrad at SxSW when he discusses the future of internet radio.

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Feb 25

Something’s Finally Cooking for BarCamp Austin…

February 25, 2008 • View Comments • Events I've Attended

You can find me and my partner in crime, Odelay Jefe (also known as Jeff Greer, my brother) at BarCamp Austin on March 7-8. If you can’t tell by the BarCamp Austin wiki, BarCamp is a user generated technology conference. You can present your ideas and choose the presenters you want to see. This year’s event will take place at Idea City in downtown Austin. Interested? Be sure to RSVP at the wiki or on the Upcoming page.

I am looking to present some ideas of my own at BarCamp. A little intimidating since this is my first one, but hopefully the idea itself will keep me motivated. Stay tuned for details…

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Feb 21

Obama vs. Clinton in Texas: “We” is More Powerful than “Me”

February 21, 2008 • View Comments • Politics and Current Events

OK, I just watched my first presidential debate in length. I usually keep them running in the background while doing some form of work. Since this one was in Texas, I figured I had to sit and watch.

As you can see in my blogroll, I have three four sites, one of which is Obama’s site. One reason I respect Obama is his website. While I’m not fond of either Hillary or Obama’s website now since they ask me to sign up before I can even figure out what they are all about, I was struck by the communal aspects of his site when I first saw it. I just remember Clinton’s site asking me for money almost immediately. Your website is a reflection of you, so I’m not sure how that relects on Hillary.

Aside from Hillary’s goofy smirks when she disagreed with something Obama said, something struck me quite hard. The CNN commentators brought out all sort snippets of how the two differed. If someone were not familiar with the candidates’ policies, he or she would not gain much from this commentary. But people on CNN are paid to look and talk pretty, so I’m not terribly surprised. What struck me was their verbage. Hillary often said, “I plan to” and “If elected , I will…” Obama says, “We can ” and “We must…” Government can be transparent. We have the tools. Will we have a president who believes we have the power to instill change ourselves?

A more transparent government that requires the involvement of the people will not necessarily guarantee success. People become apathetic. They often do not take the responsibility to understand the issues, so some leadership is needed. We do need to get more involved though if we are going to make sure that politicians spend our money in our interests rather than for those of special interests. Besides, given our current situation, can an “I” really solve our problems anyways?

Listen to it. Just ignore the smirk. As much as I’d love a woman in office, it drives me nuts.

[Read more...]

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Feb 20

Send a Little Love to a Blog Queen

February 20, 2008 • View Comments • Blogs

My sister just reported that she has a 102 fever. That’s very discouraging. She has been battling not fun symptoms for quite some time after undergoing a stem cell transplant to battle leukemia. As much as my parents paid to send me to college to make me articulate, I cannot express how hard it is to see your sister undergo such harsh treatments, and how much we need to find a cure for this disease.

Please show a blogger support by dropping a supportive comment her way at www.debutaunt.com. She is a real sweatheart, and I really want to see her well this weekend.

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Feb 13

Super Second Tuesday Proves Success for GeekAustin

February 13, 2008 • View Comments • Events I've Attended

Lynn, Whurley and I would like to thank everyone who came out to the February Dorkbot/GeekAustin Happy Hour. Much thanks to David Nunez and the crew for the crazy cool animation going on in the mix.

Unfortunately, the date of February 12th was just too appealing and Austin on Rails and Refresh Austin people had events on the same day. Although we had a decent turnout, we are planning on moving our events to another day of the month so they can join in on the fun.

A special thanks to whomever picked up my bar tab. Very cool.

Do you have pictures of the event? Please add them to our Flickr pool.

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Feb 07

Should We Trust Open Source to Politicians Who Use “The Google”?

February 7, 2008 • View Comments • Open Source, Politics and Current Events

So apparently people want to know why Whurley would post a poll for what presidential candidate is best for open source. If you are too lazy to click on that link, basically open source software helps the small businesses that drive our economy. From a more personal perspective, we use open source everyday. Whether you are like me and blog using WordPress, or crack open Firefox windows, or use one of the millions (billions?) of websites running on Apache or written in PHP, you benefit from open source projects. How many people and to what extent do we benefit from the companies, non-profits, blogs, databases, government sites, and billions of other applications that use open source projects? A President should consider these issues in an annual budget and will have to appoint judges that understand intellectual property issues. Do we really want to have to work around laws made by people who understand the internets as a series of tubes? Should we look to a leader who uses “the Google”? I don’t think so. Can the President set a tone (and a budget) for how technology and open source can improve the lives of every American and every person? Absolutely.

So here is the poll on which candidate you believe would best serve the open source community. You don’t have to register or wait in line this time. You just have to select a candidate by February 12th and your vote will be tallied on opensville the following day.

opensville

Do you like this post? Get the code to embed this poll in your blog or website here and the stats will feed to the opensville blog.

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Feb 06

Why Do Tech Geeks Want to Punch Zuckerberg in the Face?

February 6, 2008 • View Comments • South by Southwest Interactive
mark zuckerberg gets jackedSxSW is featuring Mark Zuckerberg as a keynote speaker. Whenever the subject of Facebook and Zuckerberg in particular comes up in everyday geek conversation, the words “punk” and “lucky” tend to come up quite a bit.

Perhaps I have a different perspective, because:
a.) I have never coded anything, so there’s not much for me to be jealous of and

b.) Zuckerberg still manages to remind me of a nice geeky guy I would bum physics notes from in high school, so I cut him some slack.

Let’s evaluate why the average hard working geek would want to jump Mark Zuckerberg:

1.) Wired speculated that his net worth was somewhere around 1.5 billion dollars. Granted, this number came out in July before the whole Microsoft/Facebook media blitzkrieg, but this still puts his salary at 22,727 times the median salary for developers in this area. Zuckerberg is all of 23, in case you didn’t catch the “6o Minutes” special.

2.) We’ve all Googled ourselves. We all want backlinks. When Zuckerberg looks at Facebook’s backlinks, he can see that there are approximately 452, 000 to date. Who wouldn’t want all the delicious press associated with 452,000 backlinks?

3.) That whole “Hey, you jacked our idea and are now making stupid money” ordeal that’s still going on.

4.) Who honestly wants to be zombified or turned into a pirate?

Pimpin’ Facebook Ain’t Easy

Although it seems like Facebook can do no wrong with their incredible developer network, there is an unfortunate side effect of starting a site where people just want to unassumingly keep up with their friends. It’s hard to make money with it. With Beacon still in need of a major overhaul and all eyes on him for an IPO date, it looks like Zuckerberg has his hands full with Facebook.

Can SxSW goers learn by watching Zuckerberg speak? I sure hope so. Just leave the eggs and various projectiles at home.

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