Recent articles in tech (page 8 of 9)

1. May 3, 2006 Keeping Up is for Suckers

   Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users blog is always great reading, particularly if you're interested in how people take in information. Though it has a definite tilt towards the world of Java development, most of the articles speak in general terms about learning and design -- you won't see any code here. Kathy's recent article The myth of "keeping up" really hit home with me. Loosely speaking, my day job is to monitor the entire realm of web technology. Realistically, this is one of those areas that is bigger than one person's brain. Even if I spent 24 hours a day reading about the latest web technology (let alone reporting on it), I wouldn't be able to keep up.

   So... it's time to let that go. You're not keeping up. I'm not keeping up. And neither is anyone else. At least not in everything. Sure, you'll find the guy who is absolutely cutting-edge up to date on some technology, software upgrade, language beta, whatever. But when you start feeling inferior about it, just think to yourself, "Yeah, but I bet he thinks Weezer is still a cool new band..."

   I never liked Weezer anyway. Kathy offers plenty of good advice for being selective and efficient about what you choose to stay on top of. She mentions jumping on aggregators, tools that collect information from many sources and distill it down into an efficient view. My aggregator of choice is BlogBridge (I even contribute code to the project, which is open source and cross platform), which has a whole range of subtle but indispensable tools that allow me to filter my information intake according to the amount of time I have available on any given day. Another item of advice that Kathy offers is to track down an expert in any field you want to learn and get a breakdown what things you absolutely must learn, what things you probably should learn, what things would be nice to learn, and what things you can ignore. Kathy goes on to suggest that technical publishers like SitePoint (where I work) should be thinking about these issues too, rather than just pumping out bricks of undigestable knowledge.

   There's an opportunity for all of us to help our users (or start a business around helping people reduce the info overload/pressure-to-keep-up stress most of us feel).

   I personally think SitePoint is doing a pretty decent job of this already, but there is always room for improvement.

2. Mar 30, 2006 System Tray Audio Device Switcher

   I actively use both a Bluetooth headset (a Logitech® Mobile Pro™) and a Rode NT1 microphone on my computer. The headset I use for making and taking Skype calls and listening to podcasts at home, while the microphone I use for narrating video tutorials and recording podcasts. The problem is, switching between these audio sources is a minor pain (which becomes a major pain through repitition), requiring a trip to the Control Panel every time. Thankfully, I've found this free utility called, in various places, System Tray Audio Device Switcher, SysADS, SADS, and System Tray Audio Device Manager. It lives in my Windows system tray and allows me to select my playback and recording device with just a couple of clicks. The program hasn't been updated since its release in 2003, but it works on Windows XP SP2 just fine (I'm not holding my breath that it'll work quite so well in Vista, however).

3. Mar 22, 2006 3D Cutaway Illustration

   This makes me want to go on a cruise. (via Boing Boing)

4. Mar 19, 2006 Flickr is starting to suck

   I'll admit I haven't jumped whole hog into the whole Flickr thing. I do have a Pro account, and yet most of my photos are still in my private gallery. One of the main reasons, I think, is that, while I enjoy the whole idea of Flickr---a world of photographs naturally organized by keywords and shared (or not) between communities of like-minded people---a lot of the actual implementation kinda sucks. Oh sure, I was dazzled along with the rest when their AJAX-powered interface first came on the scene, with slick edit-in-place functionality and plenty of taggy goodness to explore. But whenever I actually want to do something with Flickr, the site quickly begins to get in my way.

5. Mar 13, 2006 Free WiFi in Ottawa?

   Just got off the phone with mom and dad, who have just bought their first post-retirement home in Ottawa. Mom happened to mention she was connected to the Internet via a free wireless Internet service that was apparently available to all Ottawa residents. My envy quickly turned to skepticism, however, when she mentioned the SSID (network name) of the service she was connecting to was "netgear2". NETGEAR is of course a well-known manufacturer of network hardware, including wireless routers. I suspect that neighbours of my parents' simply have their home network (and associated Internet connection) sitting wide open without any security. If that's their informed choice, then great. If not, well I hope it's an old router, because there's no reason current wireless networking hardware should allow inexperienced users to expose their networks like this. Mom, if you wanted to be a good neighbour, you could probably stroll around the block with your laptop and get a good idea of which house was hosting the network you are connecting to based on signal strength. A note in the mailbox advising the occupants to configure their network more securely would certainly qualify as your good turn for the day.