SXSW Interactive is like a college, not a conference

Lots of classes

SXSW Interactive is a 5-day event with 1,041 sessions presented by 1,648 speakers. (lanyrd)

That is absolutely insane! Can you learn anything from a show this big? (Signal vs Noise)

Of course you can. Different vocations require different subject matter. Interactive has become a catch-all conference for anything having to do with the internet. This is like trying to attend a conference about “business” or about “food” — there are niche subjects for everyone. Much like university, you have arts and sciences and drill down into art history, or music, etc. At Interactive, you can learn about startups, and drill down into running a business, finding customers, marketing to customers, etc.

Lots of people

Sure, the conference has grown. Estimates put this year at nearly 20,000 attendees for Interactive alone. Some say that’s too much and I could agree. But, I also attended a state school with nearly 25,000 undergraduate students. Interactive was transformed to mimic a downtown campus: remote facilities for different types of sessions (e.g.: journalism in the Sheraton). I never felt like Interactive was too crowded because we are all spread out, focusing on our own things, seeing our own circle of friends, and going to the parties that interest us the most.

Parties

For many, the college experience is simply classes and studying spattered with parties. Or perhaps the inverse. Depending on your personality and what you’re looking to achieve, Interactive can be about sessions, parties, or both. You get out of the experience what you put into it.

Who you meet

This is largely self evident but Interactive is about like-minded people coming together and having a shared experience: grabbing coffee, a drink, setting up an ad-hoc meeting in the Hilton lobby, etc. Friendships and acquaintances made during college usually last long into adulthood and careers. Personalities may change, career paths may diverge, but keeping in touch with smart folks who you shared late nights or classes with is invaluable. The people I met at university and continue to stay in touch with are amazing and always fun to catch up with. So are those that I’ve had the opportunity to see again or meet for the first time at Interactive.

Theory: why mirrored display is now available for iPad

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On the latest episodes of Hypercritical and The Talk Show, both John Siracusa and John Gruber, respectively, pondered the latest Apple iPad feature: video mirroring.

In short: video mirroring allows you to hook up an iPad to a cable connector and project exactly what you see on your iPad screen onto another display device; a video projector, television, and external display are all good candidates for video mirroring. This is what you can do with almost any laptop today.

So why is this a feature now and not sooner? “The Johns” wondered if this could have been a hardware limitation, simply some new software feature, or perhaps a little of both. Arguably, there has not been a hardware limitation for two reasons. First, Apple has had the ability to demonstrate applications during their press and keynote events using mirroring technology. Sure, they could build a special device to accomplish this but that seems unnecessary. Especially since we know the proprietary 30-pin connector has been designed to carry video signals. Second, and more importantly, there have been Cydia applications (for jailbroken devices) available for nearly a year to perform exactly this feature including DisplayOut and ScreenSplitr.

Beyond the how: why is Apple just now making this functionality available to the masses? My theory: subscription content producers.

The programmers of the world are not interested in you using your personal computer to replace your expensive cable subscription viewing habits. Trading in television advertising dollars for internet advertising dimes does not appeal to the businesses. Therefore, a separate iOS experience is created: Hulu Plus for NBC, Fox and friends. At Bat for Major League Baseball.

Success! Apple has created an environment where content can be enjoyed and money can be spent. Despite this past week’s hiccup (enforcing Apple’s 30% cut for in-app subscriptions), content producers can trust Apple to help make money on all devices at all times (and not be tied to someone like Verizon’s Vcast).

Though, by introducing the mirrored display, Apple has now ever-so-slightly started to break the ecosystem they’ve led everyone to jump onto. By allowing iOS content to appear nearly anywhere, including our living rooms, the assumptions that went into building these apps (people can only watch this show on their tiny screen) are now wrong.

This is similar to what Apple accomplished with the iPod and iTunes a decade ago:

The iPod device allowed people to listen to music on something other than a CD, tape or the radio.
This destroyed the music industry. People stopped buying music.
Apple rebuilt the music industry by coupling the device to the store: iTunes.
People buy music from Apple, people buy iPods from Apple, musicians and labels make money.
Apple controls the industry.

Apple knows that televisions are broken. Jobs has admitted that TiVo, Google TV and Roku aren’t even close. There’s no good experience for the user and no good way for anyone to make money. That’s why the Apple TV is just a “hobby”, says the sheep in wolf’s clothes.

Apple is at Step 1 again: allowing people to watch their television and other subscription content somewhere else.This is largely under the guise of allowing businesses and educators a post-PC experience in the boardroom and the classroom. I think they’ve learned from their previous successes, though. Steps 2, 3 and 4 can happen simultaneously with the App Store.

In short, this will not happen overnight like the Napster days of old. The carpet will be slowly pulled out from everyone’s feet (perhaps including Apple’s own developer relationships). The mirrored display feature is just another subtle step in that direction.

The supposed wisdom of the crowds

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I enjoy watching people think they’re smarter than those around them. I don’t just mean the wise guy in the kick-off meeting or the blowhard in the First Class cabin. I enjoy watching this behavior magnified in large groups.

I see this a lot while skiing. People of all ages, backgrounds, experience levels, and familiarity all come together in a handful of locations:

As people get off the mountain after a long day they just want to get to their car and go home. But, before they reach their car they have to take a short bus ride to the parking lot. Unfortunately they aren’t the only ones and spot two long lines of people waiting for a bus. Instead of thinking “these people all must be waiting patiently for the next bus which has a front and back door” they start to question the crowd and believe they have a better plan. They likely try two “outsmart” stunts: first, they see the next bus, spot it dropping skiers off at the drop-off zone five yards away, then run over to the bus which promptly closes it’s doors and pulls up to the two lines. Then, stunt two is realizing they should have just stood in line, but then spot a much shorter line with a smaller bus just a few feet away. They immediately jump on that bus and pat themselves on the back for beating the wisdom of the crowd. Of course, they arrive at entirely the wrong destination just a few minutes later and come back to start this over again.

I also hear a handful of individuals “outsmart” the 50 or so people that get on the bus with all their gear (skis, poles) in-hand despite the ski-shaped slots appearing on the sides of the bus. Instead of thinking “all of these people must not place their skis in the slots for a good reason” they spend 15 seconds trying to jam their wide powder skis into holes that were designed for narrow downhill skis many years ago. We all know it’s a round hole and that you’re carrying a square peg.

I get it: sometimes you don’t understand the situation presented to you and you want to figure it out, perhaps even improve it. I love disruptive technologies and ideas that question the status quo. But in a crowd that may consider the current experience routine, there are literally hundreds that have been there before you and learned so you don’t have to. Why not realize there is prior knowledge implicitly being shared?

Do individuals really think they are smarter than everyone around them in these situations? This is not a rhetorical question. I simply don’t appreciate the line of thinking previously described. Is there a inhibition of common sense when you think you can defeat a situation?

What surprises me even more, though is the inverse: the mob mentality. I’m shocked by the terrible things said and done when people become anonymous in a crowd. Whether it’s encouraging potential suicide victims by chanting “jump” or yelling hateful, racist, ignorant comments at people different from themselves.

Is there a wisdom of the crowds? At what point do you ignore it and which situations benefit learning from it?

Sync bookmarks across browsers and iOS devices

Xmarks

This thing is stupid simple: install the browser-specific plugins, create an account and you’re done. It runs in the background and I’ve never noticed it. I’ve installed Xmarks on my Macbook Air for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and everything is always up-to-date, no conflicts, no trouble.

This is especially handy since I can transition from one browser to the other and use the address bar the same way: type a few characters of a word, select the website I meant, and hit go. This quick, fluid motion is valuable when visiting thousands of websites each and every day. But, here’s where it gets interesting…

MobileMe

Arguably, the biggest time suck in my life is typing on an iOS device. I’m fine at the typing, but I use my iPad and iPhone almost exclusively at home. So, it annoys me to no end to try and type in a long website address with two thumbs.

Though, when a website is saved as a bookmark, the address bar will surface it to you immediate as you start typing. Much like any other address bar, this means I can type just a few characters and almost immediately tap to go. No more “fiacardservices.com” typos anymore! No more “google.com/webmasters/tools” marathon sessions.

But, how do I get all those bookmarks from my web browsers onto two more Apple devices? Easy: I pay the $99 subscription fee for MobileMe (get 30% off if you ask nicely at an Apple Store). Then, I spent 5 minutes configuring my iOS devices and personal computer settings. That’s it.

Now when I add a new bookmark *anywhere*, I don’t even have to think about it. It shows up everywhere wirelessly and effortlessly. (Sidenote: I think Apple will do very well when it adds more cloud-based offerings to MobileMe, this stuff “just works”).

Has anyone experimented with anything else?

Why I secure passwords with SuperGenPass

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There’s been a lot of talk about security, passwords, and authentication. As we put more about us online, our passwords become ever so important. Everything from banking to commerce, friendships to resumes, and even our day jobs require passwords.

Passwords are broken

Having worked in information technology auditing, I can tell you that people hate passwords. If I had so many to remember and they were all necessary for me to get my job done, I would simply pick one, easy-to-remember password. Unfortunately, businesses believe this is unsafe and force users to follow silly rules (8 characters, 2 must be numeric, and you must change this password every 60 days). Due to these rules, things become less secure. Two examples:

Passwords start showing up on sticky notes next to computers. Or they are all written down in a handy notebook right next to the computer (typically open to the most frequently-used password). Now that “easy to remember” to me password in my head, is now written down and easy to access by anyone.
Similarly, we use a database like 1Password or some other encrypted database to store all these fancy, super-secure passwords. But, then we protect them behind a single, “easy to remember” password. Now it only takes one password to unlock all your passwords, and we’re right back at square one.

Alex and I feel strongly about password security and he’s written about it many times. Here’s my thoughts and what I’ve found works best for me.

SuperGenPass

Very similar to PwdHash, SuperGenPass creates a unique, complex, secure password for every site you use. The steps are simple:

Enter a “master password” (eg: puppies)
Hash that password against the current domain (eg: facebook.com)
Generate a secure string using those two inputs (eg: 4ced9d6f52dc88d02028d34a3625e43d)
Truncate the result to X characters (eg: 10)

Here’s how SuperGenPass describes itself:

Instead of storing your passwords on your hard disk or online—where they are vulnerable to theft and data loss—SuperGenPass uses a hash algorithm to transform a master password into unique, complex passwords for the Web sites you visit.

Arguably, the concept of a “master password” means you have one “easy to remember” password that anyone can get to and then use to generate your secure passwords. But, there are a few counterpoints:

An attacker would need to know I use SuperGenPass (whoops)
They would need to know how long my generated results are (8, 10, 20 characters long?)
I use a secure master password which is unguessable and not something I’d write down or use elsewhere

Now that we’re all convinced (right?), the mechanisms of using a password hashing utility are super simple.

Browse to site
Type in master password
Use Bookmarklet or Mobile site to generate hashed password
Login!

Since I use Safari, I have SuperGenPass added to my Bookmarks Bar and I can use Command + 1 on any page to trigger the bookmarklet to enter my password. It then finds any “password” fields on the page and auto-populates them with the hashed version. This is very fast and hardly any more intrusive than simply typing a password into a form.

Simply entering my password into the form and hitting Command - 1 means a super-secure password is instantly replaced.

This also works well for me because I can use the Bookmarklet in Mobile Safari (iPhone, iPad). I can pull up the mobile site on any machine in the world. If it’s unavailable? No problem, I’ve stored the mobile site in my Dropbox. Since all that’s needed is JavaScript to run, I can even generate my passwords offline.

Still not convinced? Drop a line or leave a comment to share your thoughts…

Quickly add Open Graph to WordPress theme

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I’ve found a lot of benefit adding Open Graph properties to my blogs. Primarily: more visitors. By adding simple code to my WordPress theme headers, social plugins like the ‘Like’ button will make your content display more meaningful within Facebook.

Which of these two articles would you be drawn to? Which would cause you to stop, read, and consider clicking through to?

Yet another easily ignorable line item:

Or this rich image and excerpt:

With WordPress I can easily drop a few lines of code into my theme’s header and make any ‘Liked’ content a little more compelling.

The Source

In the header, I’ve added a quick snippet to grab only the image URL of the featured image for the current post (via wpcanyon.com):


$thumb = get_the_post_thumbnail($post->ID);
$pattern= "/(?<=src=['|\"])[^'|\"]*?(?=['|\"])/i";
preg_match($pattern, $thumb, $thePath);
$theSrc = $thePath[0];

I then add the following to define the required Open Graph properties:


<meta property="fb:admins" content="FACEBOOK ID" />
<? if (is_single()) { ?>
<meta property="og:title" content="<?php echo get_the_title(); ?>"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="article"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="<?php echo $theSrc; ?>" />
<meta property="og:url" content="<?php the_permalink() ?>" />
<meta property="og:description" content="<?php the_excerpt_rss() ?>" />
<meta propert="og:site_name" content="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" />
<? } ?>

And just like that, you’ve added all the necessary properties to your theme to tell anything that respects Open Graph (primarily Facebook) to your blog articles.

Be sure to use the Facebook URL Linter to test this out. Here’s an example of a recent post of mine.

Would you rent a computer for $100/month?

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Since the most recent MacBook Air was announced, like any self-respecting nerd, I’ve been running some numbers.

The Past

Some context: I’ve used a first-generation MacBook Air as my primary and only computer since July 2008 (27 months ago). This means I use the same computer at work, when I travel, and when I’m on the couch.

Just a mere 800 days ago, I purchased mentioned notebook with the following specifications:

13″ display
1.8 GHz processor
2 GB of memory
64 GB solid state hard drive

And it only set me back a measly $2,699. If you can recall the summer of 2008, SSDs were very expensive. I paid heavily for what has been my faster, and favorite computer in the short history of owning laptops.

That said, much has changed in recent months.

The Present

Fast forward to today and Apple is able to offer nearly the exact same computer for a more affordable cost. In fact, 2008 Devin is pissed.

The latest MacBook Air with 13″, 1.8 GHz, 2 GB, and a whopping 128 GB solid state drive (double what I have now) is a modest $1299. Wow. Less than half the price in just two years.

Sure, the cost of computing is always coming down, we all understand that. And frankly, my computing needs have not changed much. So why even entertain a replacement? Isn’t two years a little premature to swap out?

Improvements

The thing that makes the new MacBook Air interesting is the technology enhancements and iterations that have brought it to where it is today. On paper, my old clunker and the new hotness look nearly the same.

But, in reality, much has changed:

Improved screen resolution means more pixels in the same space
Bluetooth advances that allow me to change songs and volume from a wireless headset
Wireless networking advances for accessing faster 802.11n networks
Better battery technology that gives me at least 50% more working time per charge
Smaller components with more space for more ports (an extra USB and all-new SD card reader)
Support for the Apple headphones with remote volume control and mic
Less space for a backlit keyboard

Not to mention the obvious: an improved device design that makes the machine a tad lighter, slightly slimmer, and a bit more aesthetically pleasing (at the cost of the backlit keyboard). And these are just a handful of the little things I’ve noticed, I’m sure there are more. I hear Apple is detail-oriented.

So, the current MacBook Air is an improvement over what I have in-hand now. Then comes the money.

The Cost

I’ve been thinking about the cost of replacing devices and the “acceptable” frequency of upgrades. With some quick math, anyone can figure out how to amortize (spread out) the cost of their gadget over a lifetime. Since my MacBook Air is my primary and only machine, I don’t even need to assign any special value based on usage; it’s used 100% of the time:

$2700 / 27 months = $100 per month

The immediate question: did I receive over $100 in value every month I used the original MacBook Air? Have the past two years been “worth it” to even start considering a replacement? Short answer: of course. I use it at work every weekday to earn my fatty paycheck.

A-ha, but Crowd Favorite would provide me with my own computer. I happened to opt to use my own. This now becomes a different question for me, personally.

Put another way, would I pay $100 to use this notebook every month for the past 27 months? Still, yes.

Taking any possible side income out of the equation, I would pay $100 every month for the ability to do the following:

Upload, store, manage my large photo and music collections
Connect with friends and family that don’t live nearby via Facebook and Flickr
Download podcasts and sync them to various devices
Browse my email, twitter updates, funny cat pictures, etc.
Compose new blog posts, manage my website, and self-educate
Watch videos on Netflix, Hulu, TED and entertain on streaming video sites
Manage household finances and to-do lists
Play games like World of Goo

All things considered, I can do a lot for under $100 a month. Heck, most people pay close to that just to watch HBO shows and high-definition football games.

The Point

Most would look at dropping a couple grand as a fairly important purchase and avoid it as much as possible. But, rethinking the cost in more manageable and relatable numbers will help realize it’s not that scary. We all know our monthly bills and monthly income, so why not re-think a purchase like a new notebook accordingly?

Would you pay $100 per month to rent your personal computer?

(If you hadn’t realized already, this is my round-about way of convincing myself its okay to buy a new, expensive, and potentially unnecessary gadget. Ha!)

Bing vs Ping

3 Replies

I heard a commercial on [Pandora](http://pandora.com) last night that made me do a double take. I’ll paraphrase:

>Use [Bing](http://www.bing.com) to find new music and discover songs on the internet. Bing allows you to connect with and follow the artists you love and learn more about them. Then search Bing for upcoming concerts and events near you and buy tickets instantly.

Every time I heard “Bing” I thought, oops, you can easily mishear (or replace it with): [Ping](http://www.apple.com/itunes/ping/).

Of course, Bing is Microsoft’s search-engine-do-everything answer to Google. And Ping is Apple’s social-networking-sell-music answer to Last.fm. Let’s look at the copy on Ping’s page:

>Follow your favorite artists with a click and become part of their inner circle … Find out what music other fans are listening to lately … See when artists are playing near you and see who else will be in the audience, too. Then click to buy tickets from Live Nation.

Perhaps Microsoft’s Bing is getting itself into the business of brand confusion. Maybe they’re trying to piggy back on the instant popularity of Apple’s Ping. Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence. Either way, I found it curious…

Theory: why YouTube is slow on iPad

The iPad appears to have had an issue from day one: videos from YouTube can sometimes take extremely long to buffer and play. As with any inconsistent behavior, you don’t notice this the 95% of the time when there is no problem. But that 5% will frustrate you to no end. Especially since other devices (laptops, smartphones) can load the same videos blazingly fast on the same network. Plus, other video providers including Vimeo, Hulu, and Netflix have no issue at the same time.

## Current theories

There have been plenty of discussions about this across message boards and blogs since the early days of the iPad. I’ve tried everything and most seemingly sound like a wild-ass guess (WAG). Some of the highlights:

– Your DNS settings are wrong: the DNS lookup is taking too long and by switching to OpenDNS or Google’s (conspiracy theory alert) DNS everything fixes itself. This makes no sense during video buffer (DNS lookup is complete) and does not explain why other devices don’t have this issue.
– Other router configurations will fix it: I’ve seen some obscure router settings thrown around about packet rates or loss or this or that. Again, the problem is not at the network level, it’s at the device (iPad).
– Low brightness setting: somehow the wifi power corresponds to the brightness setting and the lowest level will prevent video loading. Interesting theory but I almost always keep my brightness at the lowest setting other internet applications have no issue: video (Hulu Plus, Netflix), web pages (Safari) and even Instapaper.
– Auto-join networks enabled: I have no idea why this is discussed as I’m already on a wifi network and am never prompted. The network is fine as all other devices load YouTube and the iPad still gets blazing (10 MB/s) speeds.

In short, these theories miss the key points:

– the wireless network is always fully operational and experiences no other issues with any other providers
– other devices on the same network are not experiencing the slowness specific to YouTube
– the iPad is still downloading at very fast speeds, even for large video files
– other applications are not experiencing any issues at the same exact time
– the timing of the slow buffers is inconsistent (may happen once a week with in a one-hour window)

## YouTube’s iPad experience

I’ve had plenty of experience with YouTube and other video hosting sites. Since YouTube was a launch partner with Apple’s iPad, it’s clear to me there is some behind-the-scenes stuff that is loading iPad-specific video types. Here’s a few points:

First, it appears to only be higher-quality videos (so that Apple’s YouTube app is always loading beautiful videos?) can be displayed on the iPad, you don’t even have the option of viewing a lesser quality version. Keeping in mind that at upload time, YouTube creates various formats and sizes from the small mobile-friendly videos to the 1080p high quality versions.

Second, it’s also clear that not all videos will load on the iPad. For instance, Cee Lo Green’s “F*ck You” will not load on the iPad. From the mobile website this NSFW video (mobile link) will not load even if you try to tap the big play button. To confirm this is not just a bad video, I’ve saved this video as a ‘favorite’ and tried loading it from the YouTube app itself. At which point it returns the error: “The author of this video does not allow playback on iPad.” Curious…

## My theory

The iPad is always trying to load a very high quality version of a video, but it’s not the same version as the desktop or other mobile versions. It’s clear that from both the mobile site and the YouTube app that there is a different video format being delivered to the iPad.

The very slow buffer and download speeds may be explained by:

– an iPad-specific video is being compressed, or converted on-the-fly which requires much more time on the YouTube server’s side of things (doubtful as the same video may load quick one day, slow the other)
– a larger file size like 1080p being loaded where this is not the default on the desktop nor a mobile device. This could explain the perception of slower loads as more data is being delivered (this would only explain the slowness simply being magnified)
– a different set of servers or content delivery providers are responsible for an iPad-specific version of the video. This network is not part of the same resources as the remainder of of YouTube.

Why would YouTube keep the server resources for one device separate from the rest of the powerful mega data centers that power the other billions of videos being served? My thinking is that YouTube was required to maintain serious secrecy up to the iPad launch and quarantined any iPad-specific delivery, formats, servers, CDN resources, etc.

This has only seemingly been getting worse with time. I have had plenty of weeks where I’ll load funny cheezburger YouTube videos with no problem. I’ll even watch music videos, CollegeHumor videos, all on YouTube with no problem. But lately, the buffering has been getting worse. A 90 second video will take more than five minutes to load during “peak” hours (weekends, after dinner). My guess is there is many more iPad users coming online but nothing new happening on the YouTube infrastructure side.

I’m sure the plan is ultimately to move everything into the same data warehouses but this takes a few months of careful coordination. Especially since the iPad cannot load Flash, which means it cannot load ads, this is now a cross-departmental issue with far reaching intentions and consequences that was only just surfaced on the day the iPad was announced. Video publishers want to do things right for the iPad and, as we’ve seen, change takes a long time and the technical hurdles will remain on-hold. Note the huge ad beneath Cee Lo Green’s music video to buy his new album. You don’t see that on a stripped-down mobile version of YouTube.

How to quickly make pretzel necklaces

Pretzel necklaces with a pencil

If you haven’t seen pretzel necklaces before, they’re simply a piece of string with hard pretzels, soft pretzels, funyons, and any other hole-based snack hanging from your neck. Think candy necklaces for adults.

You can make a bunch of them quickly if you use an unsharpened pencil or pen to stack up a bunch of the pretzels at once.

Just tape the string to the top of the pencil, slide the pretzels onto the pencil and viola. Now you don’t have to fumble with threading a flimsy string through a hole.

The tool of choice: a non-sharpened pencil with string and tape

Free business idea

I was able to make 3 necklaces this way in less than 5 minutes. I could likely sell one of these for a few bucks at the door while everyone is waiting.

In short, 36 necklaces per hour at $3 per necklace means over $100 for a quick hour of work.

Some experts say these make you look “dumb” and may screw up your palate. We’ll see about that… ↩