CogBlogged from ‘May, 2008’

I really do not mind Starbucks as an establishment. They are comfy places and serve my favorite drinks, yes at inflated prices, but I succumb. My own, silly pet peeve is that stupid language thing when you order a drink. I want a “big” drink, so I describe it as “large”, and they say, “Venti”. That is just plain stupid. WTF is “venti”? “Tall” is “small”? C’mon, speak English will ya? So my new silly travel game is to try and make Starbucks Speak English. It goes like this. Order your drink, using real descriptive terms, “Small”, “medium”, “Large”. When they respond, “Venti?”, respond with, “no ‘Large’. If you can get them to say the real size, then you win! And we subvert StarbuckSpeak one franchise at a time. So if you are successful, or heck, just of you try, then add a coffee cup pin to this Google Map [...]

Hmmmm, this blog post title sounds like either a bad idea for a recipe with a food processor or a headline of a New Zealand rural road accident report. But noooo, neither, it is this awesome video done by Clint Lalonde where he mashes up Brian Lamb for an intro to a keynote Brian did for the Distributed Education Conference at Camosun College. Dr Mashup gets mashed up himself! I think Stephen Downes’ voice has never sounded more natural ;-) And check the credits, “made with 100% free stuff” See the wiki bits of Brian’s presentation Confessions of an unrepentant doomfreak… It’s all coming apart, but that may not be a bad thing but I am sure it pales to the in person experience.

I just took a quick spin through MSNBC’s Spectra which is sort of like, no not really, like a visual news/feed reader. You pick news “channels” (chosen by MSNBC not you) they are color coded (by MSNBC not you), and the headlines spin by you in a cyclical spiral. I guess it might be hypnotizing. The description is a little bit full of grandeur and fluff: Spectra merges the news spectrum and the color spectrum into an expansive news viewing experience. With comprehensive live news coverage, striking design, complete customization, dynamic browsing, human body interaction and many other unique features, Spectra brings A Fuller Spectrum of News to life in our most immersive extension yet. So the headlines swirl by in a colorful display. I keep clicking the little cards in the spiral, but that does nothing, I have to either wait til they spill out on the bottom, or [...]

For the 10 gazillionth time the network (as in the people I am connected to) saves the day again. For some upcoming presentations and conferences, I was hoping to set up TwitterCamp, a desktop app (Mac and PC) that runs in Adobe Air and displays in near real time the incoming tweets for a specific account. It is elegant, and very suitable for setting up as self-running apps on big shiny plasma screens at conferences. The problem was that the version I had and last linked from the original site, was done in a much earlier version of Air, and did not run in the latest version, even after installing the older run time. Some comments on the TwitterCamp site hinted at newer code, but no links worked. What else to do, except toss out a tweet and say, “help!”. And Andy Rush came through (actually twice as I missed [...]

In the “I am not sure why people should care (but there are 80 people on Facebook who say they do) department– the latests news on my fight to escape the clutches of my mobile internet provider’s contract is that Alltel still has me in their brig. I’d like to say that I have a hunch/wish/belief that the internet campaign including the Facebook group started by Devon and the emails submitted by friends/colleagues is having some effect. While in Austin last week, I got a call from Rick at Alltel… I actually enjoyed the part (after my 4 hours spent on hold and getting disconnected from “customer service”) that I had the office put him o hold and then tell him I would get back to him. Little petty victories, take ‘em where you can. So when I called back, Rick, who is with some higher than phone tree support [...]