Posts » Skunkworks

Information Overload

Sep 282009

“ From your 202 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 3,055 items, starred 28 items, shared 30 items, and emailed 0 items “ . This is what Google Reader trends say about me. What this means to me is that from what I read I consider valuable and worthy to be shared less than 1% of all the posts.

From the 202 subscriptions most of the noise comes from Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Scobleizer’s Twitter Favorites, my own alltop page feed and my own readtwit feed.

Subscription	Posts per day	Percentage read
Digg	134.5	3%
Reddit	72.6	4%
Delicious	46.8	5%
Scobleizer’s	68.7	8%
My alltop	149.7	3%
My readtwit	22.4	5%

What annoys me most are the low percentages that I get from Readtwit and Alltop. I would have thought that if I choose my domains of interest (websites on alltop) and people I follow ( on twitter ) carefully I woud get a noise to signal ratio a lot bigger. It doesn’t seem to be the case.

From all the websites (services) that are trying to improve the situation (noise to signal ratio) it seems to me that only Postrank and Feedly are having a little bit of success (I do use these 2 services on a daily basis). The others such as Lazyfeed, Daily Perfect are still far behind.

I see a possible solution to this mess and I will try to describe it below.

I am pretty sure that Postrank filtration algorithm can be tweaked on a per person basis, but I am almost sure Postrank doesn’t have the resources right now to support this.

I am sure that the aggregation (clustering) technology that Google is using on the News site can be used on the Google Reader but I am also sure that Google has no interest in doing that since their scope is to have their ads displayed on as many pages as possible.

I imagine that Feedly which takes into account at the moment what I shared on Reader and what I twit in the last 30 days to decide what it’s more important to me could base their recommendations also on what my friends on Google Reader network and on Twitter promote.

Now if somehow someone could integrate all these 3 technologies together I know I would pay that company a small amount each week in exchange for a much better signal to noise ratio.

Google Chrome OS ? Thanks, but no thanks.

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Jul 092009

I’ve got the news about the new Google endeavor from their official blog yesterday morning. After reading all sort of comments on the net I’ve realized that I don’t see any need for Google Chrome OS and most probably is just a preemptive strike against Microsoft at one level and probably Facebook at a different level.

Let me explain. Most probable Google Chrome OS will consist in a Linux kernel, a new window manager and Google Chrome browser on top of all these. Keep in mind that Ubuntu as of 9.04 has an official release for ARM processors. If you need a similar experience today you can get Ubuntu Mini iso (which is a 12 MB download) for x86 architectures. Most probably starting with 9.10 release it will be available for ARM architectures also.

Then, check the instructions from this ubuntu forum . Idea is that you need to install a few packages from the command line:

sudo apt-get -y install gnome-core gdm network-manager-gnome fast-user-switch-applet human-theme x11-xserver-utils tangerine-icon-theme gnome-themes-ubuntu ubuntu-artwork jockey-gtk gnome-screensaver gnome-utils

apt-get install laptop-mode-tools ubuntu-laptop-mode wpasupplicant # this one is for supporting a laptop

apt-get install maximus # this one is for achieving the maximizing effect from the Ubuntu Netbook Release .

Then using Ubuntu Tweak and Add / Remove Programs from Ubuntu desktop environment you can install Firefox 3.5, Google Desktop (with gadgets support), Google Gears, AWN and Firefox Prism . I’ve also installed Pidgin and VLC. The bottom line you get an web oriented OS which takes around 80 MB of RAM (at idle) and is very responsive.

On the other hand take a look at all these links:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10282037-56.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10280270-56.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10006582-56.html

http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer/3a1eac42/why-did-google-announce-chrome-os-this-week-well

And all these announcements from Google related to Google Apps out of beta this week and Google Chrome OS makes more sense.

So the way I see things Google won’t be able to change the status quo in the OS world.

But if Google some how succeeds we will run a Google OS on a Google approved device using only (is going to be only a matter of time ) Google services (no Facebook or Twitter for you). And btw you will probably have Google Analytics at desktop level .

For all these reasons I will stick with the Web OS option that I described at the beginning. If I am wrong in my assumptions let me know in a comment.

Asking questions to Wolfram Alpha

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May 162009

The moment I found out Wolfram Alpha is online, I knew I had to ask the computational knowledge engine 2 questions. First one comes from Arthur Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise:

“What was the rainfall in the capital of the world’s smallest national state on the day when the second largest number of home runs was scored in college basketball?”

The questions is related to the main character of the story and the answer sadly for the time being is:

“Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”

The second query comes from Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and is the standard:

“the meaning of life, the universe, and everything”

at which the engine gives the correct answer : 42 .

Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 9.04 Impressions

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Apr 292009

Because I had the time, this week I played with all the latest ubuntu distros in a VMware computer. The guest computer had one core, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB HDD. The host computer is an Intel Dual Core E2180 with 3GB of RAM and an ATI 3450 video card. I am interested in how productive I am while running the distros. Also I am interested in how efficient the hardware resources are used (but this is more for the geek in me).

Ubuntu installer is flawless and very fast. Overall in less than 10 minutes I had a functional computer. The installer gave me the option to auto logon and also told me that my password is too weak. Nice touches for someone coming from the windows world. The initial boot took around 45 seconds and the following ones took around 30 seconds. I am sure that my virtual ubuntu boots faster than my one year old real installation of Windows XP. The first impression is a very good one. A slick desktop with very few idiosyncrasies. I really liked the fact that I can add / remove software very easy. I didn’t like that I wasn’t able to remove Evolution and Gimp ( I understand that are deeply integrated into Gnome) but when my primary email is Gmail and for calendar I use Lightning I don’t need Evolution. Also Gimp for me is overkill because I am not doing any big photo editing on my computer.

Something that doesn’t make sense for an average user is the fact that I have to go in multiple places if I want to change the look and feel of the desktop. For the window content I am going to a place, and for window decorations I have to go to another place. Again I understand why for a developer makes perfect sense to do that, but for average Joe this is something that can be done in a better way. The fonts are looking as good as in windows with the exception of Firefox (even if I installed the windows fonts and made the changes). Other than that after I installed ubuntu-tweak life was even more beautiful.

Overall I was very happy with the way I can do most of the things that I regularly do on a computer (browsing, using web apps, writing, downloading, chatting, listening to music and watching videos) but I was less happy with the fact that even if Ubuntu is very fast it seems a little bloated. I had anywhere from less than 200 MB up to 750-800 MB memory usage.

On a side note, while searching the forums for a way to remove Evolution and Gimp without destroying the Desktop I had the feeling that there are people in the community that are “hardcore” . Their take on the questions asked on forums was something on the lines of “If you don’t like it don’t use it”. Somehow this doesn’t relate well to the Ubuntu credo.

Right now I think Ubuntu 9.04 is a very good operating system and the changes that still needs to be done are minor and mostly usability related.

Next on the list was Xubuntu. Without copying the entire first part of the post I just have to say a few things.

It’s very difficult for someone to say if you are running Gnome or Xubuntu by just looking at the desktop.
Something that didn’t make sense to me was the fact that I still have gnome services running.
The settings part of the OS is even more weird than Ubuntu.
On a plus side, the apps are lighter and the system is even faster that Ubuntu. Something to be expected after all.
Ubuntu-tweak is working on Xubuntu also, so I strongly recommend to install it.
The compositing engine works even with the non accelerated default VMWare video drivers.

Overall I was happy with the OS but I still think there is a lot of room for improvement from usability standpoint. The memory usage was anywhere from around 100 MB to less than 500 MB no matter what I did.

Last on the list Kubuntu. KDE 4.2 looks amazing. I think is better looking than Vista but is so buggy. Kubuntu was the first distro where I didn’t felt the need to install a different theme or make big changes. I had to change the start menu to the standard version (years of using Windows XP) and I had to manually set the fonts to 96 dpi because the fonts were so big on my 1680×1050 desktop that I thought initially that my computer knows I had eyes problems (it was just another KDE bug). Again the settings seems to be all over the place but here the added bonus is that the add remove software is not slick at all. It seems more like synaptic from gnome.

Another surprise was the fact that Openoffice was still here. KOffice 2.0 beta is not installed and also KOffice 1.1.6 is not here. For a KDE based distro this is a little weird but somehow understandable ( 2.0 is very buggy and 1.1.6 lacks functionality ).

Not sure when, but someday KDE won’t have bugs anymore and at that time Kubuntu will rock. For the time being I wouldn’t recommend it for more than just testing, playing with it, learning and helping the community.

In the 30 months since I tested Ubuntu 6.10 a lot of things happened in the Linux world, but for an average user like me the most important aspect is the fact that I don’t have to use command line anymore if I want to do minor changes to the OS looks and functions

I don’t get it

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Mar 112009

I consider myself a very knowledgeable person in relation to computers, software, Internet and basically everything that has a remote connection with those concepts. I am using a lot of web based services. I am using instant messengers, email, RSS readers, I am sharing photos using Picasa and Live Photos, I am using online storage and Google Docs but I am not able to get any value whatsoever from the social networks that I am part of. I am on LinkedIn, Facebook and a few others. I don’t have too many connections on any of the networks, but this is because I choose to be very selective.

I don’t see any value in being up-to-date with what everybody in my network is doing. I don’t see myself updating my status every few hours with what I am doing. It’s not in my nature to be that open. At the same time I am reading a lot about how cool is to be on LinkedIn, about how trendy is to use Twitter or how productive you can become by using an app that is available only on Facebook and I don’t see myself doing what all the “cool” people are doing it.

Because of all of the above, I am getting very annoyed some time and this is one of those moments. I do have a reasonable explanation for the fact that I don’t get it, but for the moment I refuse to accept it .

Google Notebook Offline Replacement

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Mar 112009

It took me a while, but now I have a very good and I hope future proof solution for keeping all my information that I gathered in the last few years. Below you’ll get a succinct account of what I had to do.

Google Notebook Is No More

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Jan 152009

This morning I got the news that Google will close many services. The one that affected me was Google Notebook. I had a lot of information in it and even if Google says that I can still use it and add information to the notebooks, I do not feel at ease with that. So, I decided to export all the information out of Google Notebook and import it in Scrapbook . I don’t think is the best option, but I know the information is on my hard drive. The export was relatively easy to do, and once the export was finished I realized that the amount of information that I have on Google servers was minuscule (less than 70 MB archived).

For the moment this service closing is just a minor annoyance, but should be an alarm signal. Trust is something that is very difficult to build and very easy to loose. Probably in the higher levels of Google hierarchy they decided that the amount of information that the users are storing in the notebooks does not improve the relevance of the adverts served to those users in Gmail or in the Google search pages. So they decided that Notebook is not needed for their plans. Once Google chooses to close some services, it’s obvious that if the situation is going to be even worst they could choose to close other services. I know the service was free, but I would have like to have a better export option at least.

On the other hand something else to take in the account. Because Microsoft is making a lot of money with their offline software (Server, Windows, Office and so on) they can afford to loose some money with the online division, so they are able to still offer a lot of things for free. The most interesting to me is the 25GB Skydrive storage space. I start uploading some non vital files for testing purposes and it seems to work pretty well. Once Microsoft announced this some months ago, I expected that Google will match this, but nothing happened. This was my first alarm signal that maybe not everything is nice and dandy in the Googleplex.

Now I am looking for an offline RSS reader that would match Google Reader capabilities and if I will find one, then Gmail is the last thing that still has me linked to Google Services.

I know I can replace Analytics and Feedburner anytime with other options for skunkworks.ro

It appears that all good things are coming to an end. And I am sure now that in the next months a lot of free services from other Web 2.0 companies will dissapear. Probably is best to start thinking offline software again and somehow find the means to maintain the collaboration level and community feeling that the Web 2.0 services are offering

Google Reader – How I use it now.

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Jan 072009

Some time late last year I’ve realized I do not have enough time to browse through all the information available to me in my Google Reader setup. I was getting anything from 500 to 1000 posts each day. I had a hierarchy of folders based on my interests, folders like gadgets, blogs, Romania, politics, news and so on. I was planning to use the AideRSS Firefox extension but until December 2008 they had performance problems. The long story short, I was getting overwhelmed with the amount of information available and I wasn’t able to actually process the information and derive knowledge out of it.
So I’ve took a step back and over a few days of browsing I’ve changed the folders to Daily, Weekly, Monthly, SomeTime, Podcasts . I put in each folders the feeds based on my reading habits and the importance of getting the information in a time. For the Weekly, Monthly, Sometime the AideRSS is displaying only the great posts. Now I am going to Google Reader only once per day in the evening during the working days for at most 30 minutes and read only the Daily folder. At weekend I spend maybe 1 hour reading the Weekly and Daily folder, and once a month I will spend another extra 2 hours for reading the Monthly and SomeTime folders.
For the moment the only issue I have is the fact that for the the Digg and Reddit feed, the AideRSS extension is not working properly. And these 2 feeds are having the worst signal to noise ratio from all the feeds I read.

Google Chrome vs Firefox

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Dec 112008

Today I installed the out of beta Google Chrome to see if they improved since I’ve looked at the software. It seems to me that Google Chrome is in a worse state than before. Continue reading »

Google Advertising and Me

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Dec 092008

Last week, I used GMail from a computer that allowed all the adverts from Google. So I’ve read around 50 emails which exposed me to maybe 250 adverts. To my surprise I ended up clicking on probably 15 links that were interesting to me. The interesting bit is that the links were not related to the content of the email, but somehow the datamining that Google does, payed off because the links were interesting to me. After around 3 years of using Gmail, Google Reader and all the other services it seems that I am a very open book to them. I was trying to anonymize my broswer habits using different Firefox extensions but I am not sure it’s worth the effort anymore. As long as I am using Google Reader and Notebook, I have a cookie from Google for as long as the session is open. For the time being the cookie is sweet and I will enable the adverts in Gmail. I am not sure if in the long run I am at ease with this “lack of privacy”. I know it was my choice and in my case an educated one.

Page 1 of 6 1 2 3 ... 5 6 Older Entries

Information Overload

Google Chrome OS ? Thanks, but no thanks.

Asking questions to Wolfram Alpha

Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 9.04 Impressions

I don’t get it

Google Notebook Offline Replacement

Google Notebook Is No More

Google Reader – How I use it now.

Google Chrome vs Firefox

Google Advertising and Me

Follow Me

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