How to Host Your Twitter Archive on Google Drive — and Keep It Automatically Refreshed

I recently made an online public archive of every tweet I’ve ever posted, that automatically keeps itself up to date:

My online Twitter archive—click to view

Setting up this up was surprisingly easy—even for a non-technical person. I’m sharing the steps below, so you can try it out yourself.

Admittedly, this is not really a useful thing to do, other than to satisfy your introspective curiosity.

But sometimes trivial pursuits are amusing (how many times have I posted about Waffle House, anyway?).

Step 1: Download your Personal Twitter Archive

Twitter lets you download a complete snapshot of all your past tweets, with an index that you can browse, search, and analyze offline.

It’s simple—follow Twitter’s instructions on downloading your archive.

Twitter will then e-mail you a link to a zip file. Download and unzip the resulting file. This creates a local folder called tweets which contains your exported archive, in two formats: CSV (comma separated value), and a JSON export with all the corresponding metadata—a full representation of all your tweets as returned by the Twitter API.

A look inside the 'tweets' folder. Open the index.html file to browse the archive 

To access the archive, open the index.html file using any browser—double click it, or use File-Open from inside your browser (Alternately, use the CSV file to import the archive into the spreadsheet or database of your choice).

Step 2: Upload the Archive to Google Drive and Share It 

Did you know that you can host webpages and images using Google Drive? You can. [see update note below]

This functionality is super handy for a mini-project like this one (I’m also using Google Drive to host the images for my map sites). There’s potential for all kinds of possibilities here which I have yet to explore fully. And it’s free. I learned about the idea for doing this via Kevin Marks.

You’ll need a Google account to do this, obviously.

1. Log in to Google via Gmail (or whatever your preferred entry point for Google is). Click the 'Drive' option in the top menubar.

2. Upload the entire tweets folder (from Part 1 above) to your Google Drive (it doesn’t have to be at the root level, incidentally).

3. Share the uploaded tweets folder as 'Public on the web' using the Share button. (Checkmark it in the document list, then press the Share button)

4. Copy the 'Link to share' text. Paste this text into an editor (Notepad, Textedit, or whatever is handy).

5. The text will contain a long string of characters that looks like what’s shown above (first line). Take this string of characters, and append it after this URL:

googledrive.com/host/

You'll wind up with something that looks like:

googledrive.com/host/0BwadvTiFXSLcU1Y4YVVybjJGekU

This ungainly address is the web link for your online twitter archive, which you can now share with anyone you like. Keep in mind that the archive is now public on the internet, and theoretically discoverable.

You can use an URL shortener like bit.ly to mask the ugly web address if you’re so inclined.

Update: Unfortunately, Google announced that it will be deprecating web hosting via Drive after Aug. 31, 2016. So the above URL won’t work after that date. Instead you can use this URL instead:

https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbwrXr8ejYjHwGEO6kj8f4WHIh096ARDRHdNOgAXPqGltoa80FU/exec?folder_id=

and then append the same ID string as above. So, for example, mine will be:

https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbwrXr8ejYjHwGEO6kj8f4WHIh096ARDRHdNOgAXPqGltoa80FU/exec?folder_id=0BwadvTiFXSLcU1Y4YVVybjJGekU

Note that this script is by Martin Hawksey (see below). I trust him; you’ll need to make your own judgment on that.

Step 3 (Optional): Set up a Script to Automatically Synchronize the Archive

Without some mechanism for periodically updating it with new tweets, your archive will only reflect posts up to the moment when you download it. Which obviously is not an entirely satisfactory state of affairs.

To rectify this, set up a Google Drive script to monitor your tweets and update the archive automatically. That might sound tricky, but luckily for you, someone else has already done that work.

Martin Hawksey has created an excellent Google Docs spreadsheet implementing such a script, along with instructions on how to get it running.

Follow Hawksey’s instructions to set things up.

You can inspect the code if you want, to verify what the script does. Along the way, you’ll be creating a Twitter app! [Note: the instructions are clear enough so that non-developers can successfully complete them; you merely have to follow the steps.]

The end result: a self-updating, online archive of your entire Twitter history. You can configure the script to update at an interval of your choice; I set mine to run once every morning in the wee hours, but you may prefer a faster or slower synchronization schedule.

Is this worth doing? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Despite the general banality of most tweets, a person’s personality and interests do get expressed to a certain degree by what they tweet. By examining your posting history, you might gain insight into your own mindset and weltanschauung.

Good luck, and enjoy your archive. Share it with me in the comments if you like!

See also
Twitter Omphaloskepsis
If This, Then That—Connecting the Semantic Web

Google Reader is getting canned?!

Google just announced that they are shelving Google Reader this summer. As a nerd, I am shocked. WTF Google?!

This dialog box needs a Cancel option.

I accept that RSS has never been sexy. ‘What's this little orange icon mean?' Explaining it to a non-technical person almost always wound up confusing them more.

But it doesn’t mean they had to kill the service. Functionally speaking, it was fine as it was. They didn’t have to keep developing it. Stick a co-op student on it or something -- it’s not like they don’t have the resources.

I’m appalled. What a gross display of corporate indifference in the name of 'focus'. Instead of showing good stewardship for the technology and letting it sunset naturally, Google is screwing us over -- & doesn’t care. So much for trust.

Google Reader has been an essential, major interface to the web for me since 2005, and was a key factor in my readily adopting other Google services. It’s about the ecosystem, guys.

[LINK: Hitler finds out Google Reader is shutting down]

This is a teaching moment about the cloud -- don’t rely too much on any given service because it can just vanish if the provider feels like it. This act shakes my confidence in the long-term viability of every other Google service I use. Why should I use any of these tools if they’re subject to evaporating based on Google’s whims? What’s next on the arbitrary chopping block -- Gmail?

Google may profess not be evil, but on this day it has surely crossed the line into suckitude.

Other posts I’ve written on Google

• Why I Switched My Search Engine to DuckDuckGo... 
• Google Drive Launch Video -- Reimagined
• How to Get Rid of “What’s Hot” Items From Your Google+ Stream

Further (external) reading

• Google’s Lost Social Network
• Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
• Why Is Google Shutting Down Google Reader -- a former product manager answers
• Dave Winer (creator of RSS): Goodbye Google Reader
• Embrace, extend, extinguish: How Google crushed and abandoned the RSS industry
• The Evolution Of Google Reader Started With A Crash (a history of Google Reader by the founding product manager)

If This, Then That -- Connecting the Semantic Web

IFTTT -- pronounced like ‘gift’ without the ‘g’ -- is a clever online service that lets you connect different parts of the web together, in a simple and easy to understand manner.

What does IFTTT do exactly?

IFTTT stands for ‘If This, Then That’, which concisely expresses what it does: Based on a trigger (‘this’), perform an action (‘that’). You can think of it as a significantly more user-friendly, streamlined successor to Yahoo! Pipes (which still exists, incidentally).

For example, here’s a recipe -- the term for an IFTTT statement -- that I currently have enabled:

My search for a folding bicycle...

This recipe performs an ongoing Craigslist search for the words ‘folding’ and ‘bike’. Whenever any post appears containing those words, IFTTT automatically sends me an e-mail about it. I hope to find a sweet ride this way!

IFTTT supports many different Channels that you can hook up and thus automate, such as Facebook, Evernote, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Tumblr.

Even better, you usually don’t have to build the recipes yourself -- IFTTT allows users to publicly share, browse and customize recipes.

A Simple Interface

I’m impressed by IFTTT’s clean, wizard-style interface. The service’s simple step-by-step approach, featuring huge, friendly buttons, enables non-programmers to enjoy functionality that would otherwise require a little coding.

Over-size buttons are the staple of IFTTT’s design aesthetic

[Manipulating the ingredients or parameters for a recipe can occasionally require a bit of furrowed parsing, but as mentioned above, often someone else has already figured out how to do what you want.]

IFTTT was created by Linden Tibbets, formerly of design firm IDEO. Tibbet’s aesthetic manifests itself through quite pervasively on the site, which was launched in 2010 and is run by a small team in SF.

The IFTTT team and their socks.
Photo: Patrick Kawahara via Wired

Connecting the Internet to the Real World

Belkin We-Mo devices are supported by IFTTT. This means you can hook up actual physical things to the internet! If you’ve ever wanted to, say, turn on your desk-light whenever the space station passes overhead, you can do this using IFTTT paired with a Belkin We-Mo device...    

C’mon, you have to admit that’s pretty cool!

Security Concerns -- What’s the Risk?

IFTTT is one of those cases where you have to carefully weigh the utility of the service, versus the risk exposure of a central point of failure.

If IFTTT were ever compromised, all manner of devilry would be possible. Every activated channel would also be compromised -- because you typically have to allow non-granular read and write access.

The major services support OAuth authentication, which means that IFTTT never gets your password. But still -- you effectively permit IFTTT to post (or perform other actions) on your behalf, for each activated channel.

Some channels don’t support OAuth, in which case usernames and passwords are required. The passwords, according to Tibbets, are stored “encrypted in our database. During channel activation any form that requires a password is served and submitted over a secure SSL connection.”

If I were a malicious hacker, or a state intelligence agency, I would certainly consider targeting IFTTT. Based on a quick skim of the press coverage IFTTT has generated to date, I’d comfortably wager that tons of Influential People in the software world have accounts on IFTTT... Its very nature has built-in appeal to any nerd.

As a relatively small, new start-up, IFTTT might not be able to marshal the defensive resources that a more established service like Twitter or Google can bring to bear. What a juicy temptation for mayhem!

So -- exercise judgment, and proceed accordingly. At the very least, make sure you have a very secure and strong password for your IFTTT account.

Similar Services

Channel functionality tends to be limited by the APIs of the respective channels.

If you’d prefer a more technical (and less restricted) approach to mashing-together the semantic web, Yahoo! Pipes, though obscure and arcane, is quite powerful. There’s also Zapier, which is a business-oriented offering that supports more services, but charges a fee for more than 5 integrations. You can also noodle around with tarpipe, Wappwolf, and CloudWork.

A Philosophical Question

In keeping with the title of this blog -- what happens if you make a recursive or circular set of IFTTT recipes? I don’t know -- and I’m not sure I want to find out. I wouldn’t recommend it. Please don’t break the Internet...

The Twitter debacle -- A Tangential Note

A little while back, IFTTT had to turn off recipes that used Twitter as a trigger, as this apparently violated the terms of Twitter’s API (Facebook and LinkedIn similarly had to withdraw their integrations with Twitter, for more or less the same reason).

Along with many others, I was sorely disappointed, as I had been using a popular recipe to archive all of my tweets. Twitter: you suck!

Final thoughts

tldr: Check out IFTTT!

Why I Switched My Search Engine to DuckDuckGo...

DuckDuckGo: Clean, simple search

Eight months ago, I decided to switch my default search engine away from Google, and to instead try an alternate service.

After some deliberation, I chose DuckDuckGo. What has it been like? Is it worth switching?

Why I Switched

For some time, the purity of Google’s search has been violated and diluted, due to the Filter Bubble effect. This commercial explains what I mean:


[LINK]

I guess I’m not really comfortable with the idea of Google amassing a silent log of my search history, either. I’m a regular Google services user (Gmail, Reader, Photos/Picasa, Blogger, and even Google+, rarely), so granted it’s ridiculous for me to assume this stance -- I’ve already handed over a boatload of personal information to Google. They own my online profile.

Nevertheless, I made the switch (including changing the default search in my browser preferences) and would like to report on the experience.

What it’s like using DuckDuckGo

I’d say overall it’s... tolerable.

The results are clean, and simple, and... usually what I’m looking for. Let’s say 75% of the time. The other 25% I will perform the query again, using the !g command to see what Google has to say. (DuckDuckGo supports a powerful and nerdy ‘bang’ command that can be used to query specific sources, like Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, and, yes, Google.). [the !g initiates an encrypted Google search, by the way, which prevents snooping by third parties, so it’s still better than a ‘naked’ Google search]

That sounds annoying but actually, I find that comparing the two result sets can be instructive -- and Google doesn’t necessarily always find the right stuff. There are times when DuckDuckGo fails to provide good answers for recent items (news-related for example), but I get the feeling it’s been improving gradually...

So am I going to switch back to Google? Nope.

Here is some additional DuckDuckGo propaganda that explains why it’s a great candidate for your default search engine:

[LINK]

Less clutter, user privacy, and non-filtered results. That’s why I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo.

Try it out, you might like it too!

Sortable -- a great tool for deciding what (camera/phone/laptop/tv) to buy

Sortable is a cool little company that I’ve been following for awhile.

They produce an efficient, beautifully laid out ‘decision-engine’ that helps users rank and compare consumer gadgets.

I’ve found their site extremely useful for doing research on phones and cameras.

You can easily look up everything you want to know about a product, compare it to the competition, as well as view a high-level summary of why you might be interested. It’s all about ferreting out what will suit your needs and make you happy, from a sea of competing gadgets.

I highly recommend checking out Sortable.

Continuing growth and product evolution

Comprised of a small team based in my home town of Waterloo, the company was originally incarnated as Snapsort. Snapsort and its sister sites were relaunched at the beginning of this year under the umbrella Sortable brand. Then in July, they were acquired by Rebellion Media. Positive word of mouth -- like this post, for example -- has fuelled usage to over 17 million visitors and 41 million recommendations.

Their site has been evolving features and getting better all the time -- and I love that it happens to be in directions that I agree with.

For example, I had previously written (about Snapsort), that they should incorporate:

a curated set of links to external in-depth reviews from major third parties, e.g. CNET, dcresource.com, Engadget, and so forth. [...] Perhaps a separate 'Reviews' tab? 

What happened? Sortable has a Reviews tab for products, that excerpts quotes from major reviews as well as comments from the discussion community -- and links to the source material.

I also wrote,

The [one product] price comparison feature is presently weak...

They addressed that criticism by essentially eliminating the feature and quoting a single representative product price from Amazon. It’s a lot simpler and less confusing this way.

Lastly, I wrote,

I’m curious to see whether in the future they'll expand their offering to cover other product types, like cars or televisions or mobile phones and tablets. 

Guess what, Sortable features sections for phones, tablets, laptops and televisions (in addition to the seminal camera engine. They tested a car comparison site too, but it looks like it didn’t pan out). I presume that they are going to continue to carefully select and expand to additional domains for their decision engine.

So I commend the Sortable team for continually refining their tool. I’m sure it was just a coincidence, but it’s super fun when a company seems to read your mind about where to take a product.

Online discussions: building a community

Gadget geeks love to discuss products.

Sortable invites people to post questions and answers

A relatively new feature of Sortable is their discussion area, which provides a vaguely StackExchange (or Quora)-like forum for posting questions and answering other people’s questions.


Answers can be voted on by other users, so the best answers tend to bubble up to the top.

At the moment the discussion areas are fairly sparse, but if it takes off (and it ought to, given the volume of users each month) I can see this becoming a very complementary aspect to the site.

Recency Weakness

Sortable’s ranking and sorting algorithm sometimes generates erratic results, particularly for newly released products -- for example, the new iPhone 5 is currently way down on their list of top phones -- but that tends to be something that self-rectifies itself over time, as their database gets populated with information and reviews.

This is a design tradeoff I reluctantly accept -- higher quality detailed results over less optimized holistic output. In a similar fashion, I choose to use an alternate default search engine, Duckduckgo, which is superior to Google in many ways, but is also weak on recency.

In any case while the score rankings are occasionally debatable, the detailed product views and the comparison tool are quality resources.

Contest -- win an iPad 3!

Sortable is holding a contest in which you can win an iPad3! I love contests, don’t you? Enter here. Full disclosure: I’ve entered this contest too, and the above is (presumably) my referral link. If you don’t want me to get extra entries, use this link.

tldr: Summary

Of the product research and comparison tools that are out there, for the particular domains it services, I think Sortable is the best in class at what it does. Their site aesthetic is lovely and makes me want to click on stuff.

If you’re shopping for a gadget, check out Sortable!

Apple Maps is to mobile cartography as...

This is an amusing game to play.

Apple Maps is to mobile cartography as...

Google+ is to social networks

Bing is to search

kijiji is to online classifieds

GIMP is to image editors

AMD is to chipsets

ubuntu is to linux distros (kidding! I swear!)

The above are my opinion only, and meant in jest. Have you got any tech industry-based comparisons?

The Best Industrial Mushroom Processing Video You'll Ever See

I hate mushrooms.

But this video of a state-of-the-art industrial mushroom processing facility makes compelling viewing for anyone interested in how food can be handled on a large scale, using machines.

UPDATE: Sadly, the original video no longer seems to be available. Here’s a different version—did Marcelissen take over mushroom processing from Havatec?—that unfortunately lacks the original trance soundtrack. (Try playing the video in conjunction with the flower processing video linked at bottom).

 

If you’ve ever wondered how mushrooms are harvested, sorted, cut, oriented, weighed, and packaged -- you really need to watch this video [On a different note, the trance soundtrack demonstrates how important audio can be in manipulating our perception. Without that pulsing beat in the background... I’m not sure whether these rolling shots of machinery would be as fascinating].

Havatec BV is your partner for fully automated processing of mechanically harvested mushrooms on your mushroom farm. Whether you need a processing capacity of 2 t or 20 t per hour, Havatec BV always has the right solution. The best solution for you depends partly on the number of sorting sizes you want.

The mechanical contrivances for doing the sorting, orienting and cutting are quite clever -- someone had to think about designing a system of interconnected machines that would do all of this! The engineering is admirable.

Havatec, based in the Netherlands, also makes advanced industrial equipment for handling flowers. New projects currently under design include an x-ray machine for cheese (!) as well as high-resolution counting devices.

via kottke.

International Day Against DRM

CC poster by Brendan Mruk
 and Matt Lee

Never mind Star Wars Day -- did you know today is the International Day Against DRM?

Digital Rights Management (aka ‘DRM’) is a pernicious means of hobbling users’ access to content such as movies, games and music. Its application is odious in the realm of ebooks. It adds no value for the consumer, and makes the reading experience palpably worse.

If I purchase a title electronically, I want to be able to easily and flexibly access it on whatever device I choose.

DRM has affected lending and my local library system as well (look at the Toronto Public Library blog about ebooks -- 80% of the posts are about how publisher-inflicted DRM imposes restrictions on either title offerings or usage!). Penguin, like many of the major publishers, doesn’t make ebooks available for library loans -- because they have a misguided need to apply 'security' to their titles.

Cast off the DRM shackles!
CC poster by Brendan Mruk
and Matt Lee

Tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Sony help to perpetuate the mess with ebook formats that lock in users to particular software and hardware platforms. It’s annoying, and regrettable.

These restrictions in general are a despicable affront, and thankfully some enlightened ebook publishers (e.g. Springer Verlag, TOR, O’Reilly and Baen Books) are beginning to offer DRM-free titles.

We seem to have mostly gotten over the DRM obsession in digital music. Hopefully e-books will take the same path, eventually. If JK Rowling can come to the right conclusion about killing DRM, then I have faith that most publishers will come around too, and finally recognize that DRM is bad for business.

I know that my stance on this may be rife with inconsistencies -- and the above is not well articulated (Cory Doctorow’s article in The Guardian -- linked below -- explains the issues nicely).

But the heart of the matter is, our culture needs to be open in order for it to be culture. Restricting people from accessing content that they have legally purchased is not the way to go.

I choose wherever practical to consume media that is not tainted by DRM -- and so should you!

See Also

• Why the death of DRM would be good news for readers, writers and publishers [Guardian]
• What book publishers should learn from Harry Potter [gigaom]
• What Amazon's ebook strategy means and More on DRM and ebooks [Charles Stross]

And

• Past Star Wars related posts I’ve written

Google Drive Launch Video -- Reimagined

After years of speculation and rumour, Google Drive finally shipped, complete with its own launch video. Which I’ve taken the liberty to re-imagine slightly...

Google Drive | Matrix Version narrated by Morpheus


Google Drive - Alternate Universe 1: Matrix

Google Drive | SkyNet Version narrated by Kyle Reese


Google Drive - Alternate Universe 2: SkyNet

“Google Drive is everywhere you are—on the web, in your home, at the office and on the go. So wherever you are, your stuff is just...there. Ready to go, ready to share.”

Original version:

[link]

Please share if you find this amusing!

Incidentally...

Electric Car: Then and Now

While poking through the City of Toronto Archives, I came across a photograph taken at the Auto Show from a century ago. It takes a while to execute on an idea sometimes...

Top: via City of Toronto Archives Fonds 1244, Item 56

What will power our vehicles 100 years from today?

DuckDuckGo is now my default search engine. Seriously!

DuckDuckGo - a better search engine?

It sounds funny to admit this, but I’m excited about a new search engine.

It’s called DuckDuckGo, and it recently had its first day handling over a million searches.

I think that’s pretty awesome. Most people would say that there isn’t any room left for innovation in search, with Google long ago having achieved dominance in the marketplace (The last nascent search engine that garnered media attention, Cuil, was an abject failure).

But DuckDuckGo has two key advantages -- from a user perspective -- over Google. The whole premise of the upstart is that it won’t track or bubble you.

In other words, DuckDuckGo takes privacy seriously, and they don’t attempt to personalize your search based on history or other identifiers -- the whole concept of Eli Pariser’s Filter Bubble Problem.

It’s a clean, simple, impartial search (kind of a hybrid based on search APIs from major sites like Yahoo, Wolfram|Alpha, and Bing) that has been filtered for SEO spam and is private -- it won’t send your searches or computer profile to third parties as Google does. Not to mention it’s improving all the time feature-wise.

Gabriel Weinberg,
DuckDuckGo’s motive force

And yes, it’s legit -- with coverage in WIRED, Time, and other major publications.

Put together by Gabriel Weinberg, the site also features many cool and powerful techie shortcuts that let you rapidly search specific sites, or using other engines -- for example, you can type !w to search Wikipedia -- along with many other goodies.

There are some drawbacks, as numerous observers have noted. DuckDuckGo can be a bit weak on the following:

• Searches where there’s a recency element
• foreign language searches
• speed
• it has a silly name

I like the fact that results are fairly uncluttered. You may not realize it -- until you try something else -- but Google searches have become a wasteland of distraction and advertising. Google’s inescapable new privacy policy allowing them to link together and share what you do across all their sites is another factor for consideration.

Hopefully, DuckDuckGo will prod Google to improve their own approach. Fred Wilson (the noted venture capitalist and an investor in DDG) puts it like this: “Best case, DDG is to Google what Firefox was to IE.”

Bottom line, I’ve decided to live with DuckDuckGo for a while, as my default search engine. We’ll see how that goes!

Check it out -- DuckDuckGo (You can also use ddg.gg for less typing)!

See Also...
Eli Pariser's Filter Bubble Problem
Gabriel Weinberg discusses the premises behind DuckDuckGo
Stop Facebook from tracking you, with Disconnect
How to Opt-Out from LinkedIn Social Ads


Spread the word about DuckDuckGo -- please share this post.

Imperial March: Dogs versus Floppies

Volkswagen’s ‘The Force’ was a viral hit

Under pressure to follow up last year’s viral Super Bowl ‘Force’ commercial, Volkswagen released a ‘Bark Side’ commercial teaser which has been making the media rounds lately.

The teaser consists of a gallery of dogs barking the Imperial March theme song from Star Wars:

[LINK]

(Notice that the pug never utters a sound?)

Personally however, I prefer this out-of-date-technology-inspired version:

[LINK]

We’ll find out on Sunday whether Volkswagen can top its previous outing...

Update: Here’s The Dog Strikes Back, Volkswagen’s followup commercial. What do you think?


See Also...
• Star Wars Uncut - Director’s Cut
• Top Ten Star Wars Spoof Videos
• Top Star Wars Spoof Videos Continued 

Thanks Steve!

Thank you Steve Jobs for everything you gave to our world. We have lost a visionary genius.

Eli Pariser's Filter Bubble Problem

Eli Pariser's superb TEDtalk lecture on 'The Filter Bubble' has already been circulating widely, but it's well worth passing along again.

In his talk (see video below), Pariser discusses how increasingly the major services that provide information to us on the internet are invisibly, algorithmically filtering and shaping the content we see. Google, for example, allegedly uses 57 signals to personally tailor your search results -- even if you aren't logged in. Have you ever noticed how Facebook, by default, only shows activity in your News Feed from friends you interact with most?

Personalization wraps us in an isolating bubble of information specifically aligned to our tastes. It sounds logical, even appealing, but we risk losing serendipitous exposure to new perspectives and ideas that challenge us. We never get to see what gets filtered out. We wind up viewing only what (the algorithms conclude) we want to see, not necessarily what we need to see.

Algorithmic curation needs to be transparent enough, Pariser argues, so that we can consciously exert a measure of control over the filtering process. Mere relevance is insufficient. A good, rich flow of information introduces us to uncomfortable ideas, and new people -- and is critical for democracy.

I recommend viewing the talk; it's not long and Pariser is an engaging speaker. I'm definitely going to check out his supporting book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, which presumably examines the issue in greater detail.

What do you think about the Filter Bubble? Are you content with what you see on the internet? As we grapple to deal with the unfathomably large sets of data and information streams generated by our modern age, some degree of filtering is essential for us to make sense of it all. This ongoing tension will prove critical in terms of shaping how we see, understand, and interact with the world at large.

Watch Pariser's TEDtalk:

Why I'm proud to work for NexJ Systems

The fantastic company I work for, NexJ Systems, has gone public and is now trading on the TSX under the symbol 'NXJ'.

Congratulations NexJ team!

It has been a long and winding journey to get to this point, but here we are. Amazing. This is a significant milestone for the company, and in a very real sense it signals our arrival on the software scene. I can no longer say that I 'work for a small startup' -- because that's not true anymore.

I want to congratulate the entire NexJ team for their accomplishment. I am bursting with pride. I usually try to keep a certain modesty in regards to NexJ -- but on this particular day, at this particular moment, to heck with it, I'm going to enjoy it. You guys rock!

It hasn't been easy. It will never be easy -- and that's why we're awesome. We are stubborn as hell, we get stuff done, we are raucous and earthy, and without reserve in our passion. There is no other place I would want to work, no other place I can imagine.

It has always been about the people. I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with such a passionate, brilliant, talented, persistent, dedicated, caring, committed, wonderful group. We wouldn't be here without each other.

Bill, Errol, Dave, Rick, Ed, Norair, Vassiliy, Ranji, Len, Peter (and you too Paul!) and everyone else: I thank you profusely for the absurd privilege of working with you; I can't believe how lucky I have been to enjoy your trust. The shared ups and downs, the challenges and victories, the pain, sweat, laughter and sometimes tears -- all of it has rolled up over the years into an elite software company. Respect must be paid for your unstinting hard work and relentless commitment to the vision.

Exciting times lie ahead. This is really just the start of our adventure -- soon enough it will be back into the hurly burly. Back to the rough and tumble, the blistering heat of execution. Destiny awaits. We're gonna build great software, we're gonna deliver what we promise to our customers, and we're gonna kick ass along the way.

Congratulations to everyone at NexJ!

Time to upgrade my iMac?

It's been three and a half years since I bought my last desktop computer, a 24 inch aluminum iMac. At the time of purchase it had decent specs, and it's held up tolerably in terms of performance and what I generally use it for. It was a good value buy.

However, I was reading some rumours that the next refresh of this series shall be announced soon. [Update: The refresh happened. Quad-cores!]  Looking back this would make it five iMac revisions (including this prospective one) that I've passed through. None of the subsequent upgrades have been revolutionary in terms of design, but cumulatively they make my current machine look rather plodding. Moore's law continues apace, even for pricy Apple products.

Upgrading would allow me to roll my machine down to my parents, who are still underutilizing an even older white iMac from the year prior...

And if I just wait till later this year, the new iMacs will ship with OSX Lion. Four years is a pretty good stint for a computer, don't you think? The alternative would be to wait another year or so, and stick it out until the five year anniversary. I don't need a new machine, it would just be exceedingly nice. I'm not convinced that's a compelling enough reason to upgrade.

More speed! More cores! More RAM! More hard drive space! Shiny! I can feel the itch already. I suppose the operative question should be, "Is this machine going to last me four years? Am I going to be happy on this thing four years from now?"

There's also the opportunity cost of the roughly three or four grand I'd probably budget for this. Hmm... I'll have to think about this some more.

Dear Mr. Gates, here's another couple hundred bucks

Once again, despite my best efforts, I find myself meting out hard earned dollars to the great and terrible Beast of Redmond. I'm not as fanatically anti-Microsoft as many of my ideological colleagues and associates are, but nevertheless I try to avoid using software from that particular organization wherever possible -- at least with respect to personal use.

The software license that I bought? Office:mac 2008, Home and Student edition. Yes, that specific eye-rolling suite. Aren't there other fantastic alternatives available, you're asking. What about Open Office? Or iWork?

[In case you're wondering, ethically I feel bound not to pirate software. I make my living with a software company, and even though piracy is endemic in today's youth culture, I can't be a hypocrite and pirate someone else's work. Just a personal choice I've made.]

Success in software deployments often hinges upon the use case scenario. And the use case here involves my parents. My parents have a Mac, which I purchased for them because -- generally speaking -- Macs just work, are easier to use, and are simpler to configure for non-computer adept users like my parents.

Inter-format compatibility is the driver of my purchase. The marketroids for iWork (and to a lesser degree for Open Office) claim repeatedly and assuredly that the long and dark age of incompatible formats is over, and that what's editable in one suite is importable in another.

If someone sends you a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file, you can open it in iWork.

And you know what? That's true. Probably ninety nine percent of all Word, Powerpoint, and Excel documents are openable in their respective iWork and OpenOffice equivalents. Asterisk.

Guess whether or not the documents my parents use are affected by the asterisk.

Yes. It turns out there's an edge case where the files are not truly, truly 100% compatible. In my parent's case, it's specifically Powerpoint presentations with embedded music. The music doesn't play in Keynote. I know this because I have a license for iWork and -- ahem -- it doesn't work. Sure, the file opens. The slides play. But no music.

I know what you're thinking. Big deal. The presentation opens, what's the problem?

I have made an amusing anthropological discovery: within the particular extended social community of retirees that my parents belong to, everyone uses Powerpoint as a multi-purpose multi-media communication tool. Got a photo album? Nobody uses Picasa or photobucket or flickr or facebook -- instead they slap together Powerpoint presentations. Got a music track you want to share? Forget imeem or Last.fm -- they stick it in a Powerpoint presentation! And that's what they e-mail around. Unbelievable.

The hilarious part of it is, that's their mode of behaviour and it's not going to be modified. The community is barely computer literate to begin with and highly, highly resistant to change. Education is not an option. And nevermind the Office Open XML glossolalia!

So 90% of the documents my parents receive from their social community consist of Powerpoint presentations. With embedded music. Out of all the Office suite functionality that exists, this particular incompatible segment turns out to be the one that gets used.

I could either cut my parents off from their social community, or swallow my discomfort and purchase an Office license. After all, I kept telling them 'Macs just work', right?

Filial piety is a heavy obligation. Chalk up another victory for MSFT.

At least the license permits me to install it on more than one computer! Guess it's going on my home machine... And now I have a ready excuse for the inevitable question, 'Why the heck is this installed on your computer?!'

Why is Dolly Parton against use of white space spectrum?

Are wireless microphones so important to Dollywood? Thank goodness the FCC made the right decision and allowed unlicensed usage of the spectrum. Let a thousand flowers bloom!

awesome vintage cellphone commercial

The Also sprach Zarathustra in the background is classic. oooh i want one!!