Disqus - Latest Comments for eng1ne

Re: 5 Reasons Why I Ditched My iPad for a Google Nexus 7

Phil Glockner — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:00:23 -0000

Wow, who gets this worked up about IOS vs Android? I don't think John was trying to offend you specifically. Also, if it were possible to ask Steve Jobs, he would totally agree that the iPad is specifically engineered, from the home button up, to be accessible to the widest possible audience. No prior touchpad experience necessary. And that's fine, but it does mean Steve Jobs made all the decisions for you. ALL decisions, from what type of app you can download to how the app icon is presented to how apps run when the tablet is asleep to how apps talk to each other and the internet. And you end up paying a premium for that.

While these decisions are overall carefully though out and work, again, for the widest possible audience, many people hate the lack of control that gives them, over something they bought and should be theirs to use as they see fit. Enter John.

The bottom line is for $200 you can't get a better tablet experience currently than the Nexus 7, plus you get an unprecedented amount of control over how YOU use it, from what kinds of apps you can download, to how to launch those apps, to power consumption, app interoperability, new advances in virtual keyboards.. the list goes on. You get the idea. Different product, different mindset.

You want a gorgeous and highly polished pre-packaged solution, get an iPad. You want an amazingly functional and inexpensive tool, get the Nexus 7.

Re: Google Catalogs iPad app digitizes catalogs, no more coasters

Phil Glockner — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:28:10 -0000

Google used to provide catalogs on their old portal pages back in 2005:

http://web.archive.org/web/...

Re: louisgray.com: Google+ 1 More: I'm Joining Google Monday

Phil Glockner — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:46:46 -0000

Congrats Louis! They are lucky to have you!

Re: Miracle Film Turns Any Surface into a Touchscreen

Phil Glockner — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 01:25:19 -0000

Actually, I was amused to see that NCIS Miami used a Perceptive Pixel display, which is real tech. Check out http://www.perceptivepixel.... (I just think the video on their main page is brillant.)

Re: Miracle Film Turns Any Surface into a Touchscreen

Phil Glockner — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 01:21:38 -0000

I'd argue that a system that watches your gestures would be more like what was portrayed in Minority Report. Sure, he wore special gloves but he wasn't touching a surface, so it was more like a mo-cap suit for his hands.

And if that is the case, the system you want is Microsoft Kinect, which essentially does the exact same thing.

Re: Loic Le Meur Blog: How to find old Tweets

Phil Glockner — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:26:18 -0000

It appears that Bing has a Twitter search engine (http://www.bing.com/twitter) and a service I found very handy for finding the buzz generated by a topic (since it decodes shortened URLs as well) is BackTweets (http://backtweets.com/), run by the folks at BackType.

I wrote about BackTweets last year at ReadWriteWeb: http://www.readwriteweb.com...

Re: Why I'm Returning My Apple iPad ($AAPL) - SocialTimes

Phil Glockner — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 11:04:40 -0000

I have some problems with this post. Sorry for just randomly wandering in being critical, but I'm afraid you haven't convinced me of much either pro or con about the iPad in this post.

First, it feels like you are thrashing a bit in your feelings about the thing. You don't like the concept, but you impulse buy one despite your better judgment and then you realize you were right all along and you want to return it. Fine. But then you decide to drop all your Apple stock and go back to paperbacks? Wow, talk about whiplash.

Second, when you are listing the pros and cons, you start out a paragraph saying that the iPad has more cons than pros, but then list the pros. You ask if you need a larger screen than your iPhone, the answer is obviously yes you do, and you have bought a laptop for that purpose. Fine. But the iPad is still much more space-efficient (and maybe even cheaper) than most movie-capable laptops. It has an offline mode that lets you read and answer emails, games, and built-in music and podcast support. For people that don't already have or use an iPhone, that's a pretty useful package with a nice 10.1" screen.

I'm not pro-iPad. I didn't even think about buying one last week. That said, I don't think I'm really the target audience for the thing either.. I have an iPhone, I have plenty of computers and laptops, I'm not fond of a walled garden, so it didn't make much sense to me. But, I'm also not ready to bet the farm that the iPad is bad for everyone just because it's bad for me. Plenty of people impulse buy much crappier stuff that is less elegantly designed than the iPad hardware and OS all the time, and, whether to remain in denial or to reassure themselves they did the sane thing, keep repeating they totally love their purchase. Heck, I think I paid $500 for my Nokia 770 internet tablet 5 year ago.

At least the average buyer is getting a very strong browser, email and calendaring that is business-VPN compatible, a kick-ass iPod and ebook reader, and access to tens of thousands of applications they can install wirelessly. I can think of much worse walled gardens to be stuck in.

Re: Just Released: Windows Phone 7 Video Demo’s. This looks gorgeous…

Phil Glockner — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:11:45 -0000

It&#39s a nice demo. I noticed they left out a lot of things in the demo that would make this competitive with other smartphones, such as the on-screen keyboard, browser functionality, phone functionality, multi-touch, 3rd party application support, etc. In essence it was a demo of "What would a Zune be if it also had Facebook and SMS integration?"

Re: Just Released: Windows Phone 7 Video Demo’s. This looks gorgeous…

Phil Glockner — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:11:45 -0000

It's a nice demo. I noticed they left out a lot of things in the demo that would make this competitive with other smartphones, such as the on-screen keyboard, browser functionality, phone functionality, multi-touch, 3rd party application support, etc. In essence it was a demo of "What would a Zune be if it also had Facebook and SMS integration?"

Re: Just Released: Windows Phone 7 Video Demo’s. This looks gorgeous…

Phil Glockner — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:11:45 -0000

Oh, and let's not forget landscape mode support...

Re: Outside iPhone Weather App Gives Weather Alerts A Makeover

Phil Glockner — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:04:05 -0000

It is a fun app, and the graphics were created by icon designer extrodinare Michael Flarup (@flarup) of PixelResort along with the team at Robocat (@mechanicalmouse).

Re: Scribkin’s WordPress Plugins – Let Me Show You Them

Phil Glockner — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:45:42 -0000

I actually wrote this post over a year ago (5-17-08 to be precise) so the site has undergone many changes since then. Onle of the last changes I made was to go with a very light theme with no CSS so that people could choose their own font via their browser preference.

However, that doesn't mean I'm not using *any* plugins now.. In fact, I currently have 33 active plugins, including: Add to Any, Akismet, All In One SEO, Disqus and more.

Hm, I could probably stand to get rid of some of the older ones, though.

Re: louisgray.com: Apple's Dashboard Widgets Comatose As iTunes App Store Skyrockets

Phil Glockner — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:21:34 -0000

On my creaky old mac mini, it's much happier if I hack OSX to prevent the dashboard from even loading. Too big of a memory hog.

Re: louisgray.com: Google Engineer Tests WebFinger Client for E-mail Identity Lookup

Phil Glockner — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:22:55 -0000

I like this! Simply, easy, and fairly accurate!

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/07/will-mainstream-adoption-of-gps-reduce.html

Phil Glockner — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:19:00 -0000

In its current form, I don't think the iPhone could replace a dedicated nav unit in a car, for the reasons mentioned: lack of multitasking, limited support for full GPS functionality, etc. Other phones may be better candidates for this sort of use.

Aside from that though, I think there is some fundamental work that Google or Yahoo! could do to cement themselves as the *first* place people turn for directions, by enabling a handoff from computer or mobile phone to nav unit via bluetooth. Why not have a public reference standard for transferring start and end coordinates, addresses, preferences, etc. between devices?

That sort of implementation might even bring about the sort of technological synergy that futurists love to dream about. Just think how nice it would be to plan a trip on your PC, click 'send to mobile', and then have your mobile sync with your nav unit when you get in the car. No muss, no fuss.

Re: New Theme, New Thoughts, Less Fluff

Phil Glockner — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:36:15 -0000

Thanks Scott! I do indeed. I am an experienced Linux and Windows system administrator, as well as a trainer and amateur DBA. Yay!

Re: Changing The Disqus CSS

Phil Glockner — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:15:33 -0000

Looks good! Very nice styling!

Re: That’s not what I ordered…

Phil Glockner — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 02:10:47 -0000

Drew, I only met you very briefly this year and chatted with you a few times, but I think your approach is courageous and great. Hopefully soon, you'll have to go back to blaming your keys for losing themselves. :)

Re: Bringing Sexy Back To Sharing

Phil Glockner — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:15:03 -0000

That's a cute little plugin!

Re: Upgrading Your Twitter Experience With Greasemonkey

Phil Glockner — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:02:21 -0000

Aw man, I found this post doing a backtype search, I would have credited it in my RWW post today on Troy's Twitter script. I should have known you found it 3 days ago!

Updated my post with credit.

Re: this is not hell - mc chris - Nrrrd Grrrl You understand now.

Phil Glockner — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:34:24 -0000

I saw this on Tumblr Explore. Congrats!

On a completely unrelated note, you should make your background wallpaper into a Firefox persona theme. Seriously. I'd use it. http://www.getpersonas.com

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/04/please-stretch-me-thinner-im-saying-yes.html

Phil Glockner — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:53 -0000

I think the technical term for this is "a glutton for punishment." But I am sure that you of all people will be able to handle the additional workload with few, if any, dropped balls.

Re: Disqus “Social Media Reactions” Now Available To The Public?

Phil Glockner — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:23:19 -0000

I hope so, Daniel, but UberVu is already aggregating everything that looks even vaguely like a comment on their servers. They've done that since before the Mashable integration, since their primary tool is a direct competitor to backtype connect.

But perhaps there is some ongoing work on the connection between Disqus and the UberVu engine that we aren't privy to. I don't see a mention of this new feature on the Disqus blog, after all.

Re: Disqus “Social Media Reactions” Now Available To The Public?

Phil Glockner — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:39:59 -0000

I just wanted to double-check over here.. yep, it looks like the new aggregation stuff isn't actually populating yet. Same news on my site.. so for now, Mashable (and even folks like Louis Gray who use FFtoDisqus) have the advantage.

Re: obscurely famous

Phil Glockner — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:29:32 -0000

You're right; I do.