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Earth to Om Malik: What Did You Pay For That?

March 21, 2013 13:45:37.858

I love the way some of the tech pundits have gone on and on about Google Reader - take Om Malik:

I spent about seven years of my online life on that service. I sent feedback, used it to annotate information and they killed it like a butcher slaughters a chicken. No conversation — dead. The service that drives more traffic than Google+ was sacrificed because it didn’t meet some vague corporate goals; users — many of them life long — be damned.

So.... remind me again - exactly how much did you pay for that service you devoted 7 years to? Nothing, right? You knew all along that it was going to live so long as it met Google's ad driven revenue model, right?

Companies don't push out products out of the goodness of their hearts. These things cost money to run, and that money comes from one of two places - ad revenue, or license revenue. We know that Google doesn't make money via licensing (at least not for their web facing products) - so that leaves ads. If a service isn't good at ad conversions, then it's not something Google can maintain. For the mountains of ink spilled by people like Malik, this apparently simple fact is... just beyond their grasp.

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posted by James Robertson

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Flash Becoming Irrelevant?

June 29, 2011 9:40:04.354

If Google's Swiffy project picks up steam, you have to wonder why people would bother. Also, since Google is generally ok with Flash on Android, it says a lot about the stability of Flash on mobile devices that Google is doing this:

Swiffy converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing you to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads). Swiffy currently supports a subset of SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, and the output works in all Webkit browsers such as Chrome and Mobile Safari. If possible, exporting your Flash animation as a SWF 5 file might give better results.

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posted by James Robertson

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The Randomness of the Web

February 28, 2011 7:54:24.321

Last night I was filling in a financial aid form - my daughter is going to college next year, and it's part of the whole process - mostly because education costs have risen to absurd levels, far outstripping the received value (but that's another rant).

The funny thing is this - I went to the Fafsa site, which integrates applications for aid across whatever schools you are applying to. So far, so good. I use Chrome as my default browser, and I should have realized there might be an issue when I saw the "use IE 6 or better" sign on the page. Sure enough, it barfed on Chrome. The odd part is that it was happy with Safari, and Safari and Chrome use the same underlying engine. Are they specifically saying "No" to Chrome, or is there something else going on? Weird :)

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posted by James Robertson

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Protests, Shutdowns, and Domains

February 19, 2011 11:56:32.551

Looks like people are asking about the impact - of a Libyan shutdown (like the one that happened in Egypt) on services like bit.ly. It looks like the immediate impact would be slight, as the root servers for that domain are located outside of Libya. However, if such a shutdown lasted long enough:

In the case of .LY, the absolute maximum for that is configured for 28 days (SOA expiry TTL is 2419200 seconds). Without external intervention, the availability of .LY domains would be compromised somewhere between 0 and 28 days if the Libyan registry is cut off the Internet.

Another reminder for those who forget - the virtual world is tied to the real one, and events in the real world can have large scale impacts on it. The net as a whole was architected to route around damage, but some kinds of damage can blow noticeable holes in the net.

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posted by James Robertson

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He Complains Too Much

February 10, 2011 13:46:53.000

I'd have more sympathy for Tim Bray's rant about ajax usage and weird url strings if twitter.com/timbray fell on the floor. But look gang - it actually goes to his twitter stream. Sure, along the way it redirects to the funky hashbang url and picks up the ajaxified stuff he goes on about, but still - the simple url actually works.

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posted by James Robertson

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Google Being Weird

January 12, 2011 12:28:15.000

As John Gruber says, this makes very little sense: Google is dropping h.264 support from Chrome:

Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.

Umm, yeah - and you still support Flash because...... .

Update: A commenter on Facebook notes that this could easily be a scare over patent issues surrounding H.264.  There are many patent trolls out there....

posted by James Robertson

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You Want a Dynamic Language on the Web

January 3, 2011 17:21:42.154

Unless you think recompile, kill, restart is an efficient way to run a website. In which case, go ahead, use Java :)

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posted by James Robertson

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How Not to Run a High Volume Site

November 2, 2010 18:12:35.509

If you're running one of the higher volume websites - and today (election day in the US), many of the political blogs are in that category - you don't want to see this:

Error establishing a database connection

I really wonder how many people don't know that they need a caching solution until they get hammered?

posted by James Robertson

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New Image Format?

October 2, 2010 12:43:09.206

Google is trying to push a new image format - WebP:

Images on the web in this format — which CNET reports will be officially announced later today — will have smaller file sizes, load faster and relieve a lot of overclocked networks. They won’t necessarily look better — WebP images are as “glossy” as JPEGs — but the files might be around 40% smaller than JPEG files.

I see inertia as the sticking point here. All of the tools people use to save images (I use Preview on the Mac for most of that, because it's "good enough" for the stuff I post) - will have to support the new format. Before they do that, the various developers of these tools will have to see a compelling need. Then, the various users of those tools will have to upgrade or update.

Given all that, I see inertia being a real problem.

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posted by James Robertson

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Not as Reasonable as it Sounds

September 27, 2010 15:44:33.000

On the surface, this sounds like a reasonable thing:

What I needed in searching for these flash drives was not the words: “256MB USB flash drive.” Those words failed me. What I needed was a Dewey Decimal code for a 256MB USB flash drive, or even a Dewey Decimal number for the concept: “Flash drive that is small in storage capability and that is very inexpensive.” Vendors selling such flash drives could easily add that numerical code to their product metadata, quickly connecting them with people looking to buy those products.

There are a few problems with this idea. First, imagine the spam possibilities - meta-keywords died trying to solve exactly this problem years ago. Second, how would I, as an end user, find the numeric code I want to punch in? Does the author foresee some huge index site somewhere with codes? If so, then I have to.... search it. Using keywords. Congratulations - you've taken the same problem and added a degree of separation to it :)

Now Listening to: Hey Lady by Thriving Ivory from: Thriving Ivory

posted by James Robertson

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