Disqus - Latest Comments for paulmwatson

Re: No support on Twitter please. (Scripting News)

paulmwatson — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:27:57 -0000

Just wanted to reinforce the "it's a good place to start support" opinion. Also, look at Aardvark (Vark.com) which uses IM, email and Twitter to ask questions and get communites to answer them. It kicks off via Twitter for me but is resolved via IM or email.

Re: The Droid fails AS A PRODUCT when compared to Palm Pre and iPhone

paulmwatson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:24:35 -0000

Haven't used a Droid yet but agree on the industrial design angle. Hard to believe all the "it's beautiful!" ravings I've read.

One small point; there is no Facebook app for the Palm Pre and the Twitter apps are fairly rudimentary at this stage. Still, I really like my Palm Pre (after having had an iPhone 2G and 3G.)

Re: iPhone Wireframe Photoshop Template

neilco — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:06:50 -0000

Thanks, Paul. I'll see what I can do.

Re: iPhone Wireframe Photoshop Template

paulmwatson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:00:39 -0000

Oh very nice and useful. Agreed that when you want a wireframe, as opposed to a mockup, then this is much better than a shiny, black iPhone design.

Any chance of more elements in this style being produced?

Re: FluidDB as a universal metadata engine

terrycojones — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:26:50 -0000

Yes, if I wanted both, I'd make both. In this case I don't think there's much concern with duplicated data - you're basically recording a fact, and it's (likely) not something you'll want to change (although you could). And yes, you're right, I also wouldn't worry about inconsistency or at least it seems to me to be here greatly outweighed by utility.

And a slight clarification: FluidDB doesn't care about inconsistencies - it can't. So at that level there's no help available :-) I don't advocate blanket inconsistency, ambiguity, etc., it just feels natural to build an information storage architecture that allows it, allows the evolution of convention (i.e., in a sense, the removal of inconsistency), etc.

Thanks!

Re: FluidDB as a universal metadata engine

paulmwatson — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:05:22 -0000

Ah good point, it depends on how one sees the data being used. From a URL perspective or a location perspective. Which begs the question; would you create both objects, almost mirror images of each other. Seems like duplicate data though. But that touches on your post about the real world being filled with inconsistencies, often useful.

Re: FluidDB as a universal metadata engine

terrycojones — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:56:02 -0000

Hi Paul. You certainly could set the about tag to hold the URL. That would be a natural place for others to go to to find metadata (if that's the word) about the tweet.

But you could also make an object with about = "52.35464,37.1817282" (a lat/long) and put information onto that object: the fact that you were there, the time, and a tag whose value was the URL of the tweet. A convention would perhaps need to spring up about the exact format of the about contents in this case. It's entirely at the discretion of the programmer/app. I'm not claiming that this approach is necessarily useful but I want to mention it to illustrate that there are various approaches and that you wouldn't have to pick just one.

Such an app might also choose to put some information onto the object in FluidDB that's about you.

I hope that helps. Thanks for commenting & feel free to ask more.

Re: FluidDB as a universal metadata engine

paulmwatson — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:41:08 -0000

Be interesting to use FluidDB for metadata on URLs. e.g. geolocation data for a Tweet at http://twitter.com/paulmwatson/status/4679912501

Would one set the about tag as the URL?

Re: Another brick in the cloud (Scripting News)

paulmwatson — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:51:02 -0000

Is there much wrong with using the email format? paulmwatson@twitter.com, davewiner@twitter.com, bob@myown140.com etc.

Might even be possible that you can type @davewiner and depending on your established social-graph (follows) it resolves to davewiner@twitter.com or davewiner@rsscloud.org.

Re: rssCloud news (Scripting News)

paulmwatson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:24:38 -0000

Semi-related: This DOS attack on Twitter really highlights your "140 characters loosely coupled" mission. I have had to fall back to IM and email to communicate with my Twitter friends, and those are only the ones I know IM/email details of (not a whole lot.)

Re: HowTo: Rebooting the RSS cloud

paulmwatson — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:28:51 -0000

Excellent and I hope this pans out. Is there an RSS feed for this site so we can stay updated?

Re: The myth of perfection (Scripting News)

paulmwatson — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:01:42 -0000

RSS subscriptions. I want to follow any feed, not just an account on Twitter.

Re: Koi fish thieves using Google Earth to pick targets?

paulmwatson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:36:31 -0000

Couldn't crooks use old fashioned methods like paying off Khoi equipment suppliers to provide addresses?

Re: Facebook versus Google

brisbourne — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:08:10 -0000

True enough! And I have yet to hear them talking about importing social graph data implicit in email traffic and mobile phone logs - both important sources of data.

Re: Facebook versus Google

paulmwatson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:03:01 -0000

Indeed, if anyone is going to achieve it then Facebook would be the one. My emotional response is negative to this though, I don't want Facebook being the sole technological social-graph provider of my community, province and country. I feel that we have a better chance of achieving a worthwhile technological social-graph if the attempt involves many partners in an open system than one company in a closed system. Fads will affect Facebook too as will internal problems. If all the effort is contained within one company then when the mood of the connected world changes that effort will be lost. If it is spread amongst a community of providers and technologies then much of the effort can be retained and transferred. It will take a humbler, longer-term thinking techno-oligarchy than Zuckerberg and FB for this to happen though. They will make their attempt, they may succeed for a short-while but ultimately the web and its connected people will outlast any one Facebook or Google.

Re: Facebook versus Google

brisbourne — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:51:11 -0000

Hi Paul - you explain their challenge well, and they may well fail to meet it. A couple of thoughts in response:
- they already have 200m users which is c20% of the broadband world, and grwoing fast - so they could get to the penetration you describe, and Facebook Connect will help. They are mainstream already.
- it will start with local critical mass in communities where penetration is high, and spread from there

Re local competition, they have a scale and sophistication that will make them hard to compete with. Plus they can acquire.

Re: Facebook versus Google

paulmwatson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:35:52 -0000

I don't see how Facebook as a company can scale up to handle a social-graph rich and complex enough to recommend a local doctor to me. To become the provider of doctor recommendations Facebook will have to link up more than my tech-savvy friends. It requires my friends to have a smartphone or a laptop to function. It has no presence in my local town hall meetings or sports clubs or down at the boat club. It would have to saturate these areas of life with Facebook representatives that get people hooked up. It isn't a technological problem, it is a feet-on-ground people problem. One company is not going to hook up the world, from Russia to China to India to Brazil to South Africa to the USA. It will take many companies working on a common social-graph fabric to make this work. Locking it all up in Facebook, invisible to Google and other web-miners, is a short-term idea.

Re: If 140 is too little, what's the right number? (Scripting News)

paulmwatson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:23:39 -0000

Don't we have blogs for when 140 characters is not enough?

Re: Eye-Fi launches wireless memory card for pro photographers

paulmwatson — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:32:03 -0000

Well some of us are still on 8mp DSLRS (20D etc.) with 5mb RAW files. Also this goes out over WiFi. The way I'd use it is when I get home I wouldn't have to use my card reader, just let it archive over my home WiFi and to my laptop for editing. I archive my RAW files online as it is, just want to make that step simpler.

Re: Eye-Fi launches wireless memory card for pro photographers

George Ou — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:25:32 -0000

Good luck uploading 30 MB raw files (per image) to the Internet without a 20 Mbps symmetric Verizon FiOS connection. Just uploading 30 MB (240 megabit) images to your computer using 802.11n @ 60 Mbps is slow enough.

Re: Eye-Fi launches wireless memory card for pro photographers

paulmwatson — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:05:55 -0000

Agree on CF support. Also RAW support (not just beaming whole files to your computer but beaming to online services for archival.)

Re: Twitter clients could help with backup (Scripting News)

paulmwatson — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:29:58 -0000

Dave, I use one of your inventions to archive my Twitterings and the Twitterings of those I follow; RSS.

It's not perfect (doesn't do protected Twitter accounts) but it is very easy to setup and run. Also easy to go through the archives using your aggregator of choice.

Re: SickCity.org - Real-time Disease Detection | Visit sickcity.

paulmwatson — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:45:48 -0000

Thanks for writing about SickCity. You can add any city you want by clicking the Add Your City button at the bottom right of the long list of cities (improving that soon!) or going to http://sickcity.org/cities/add/

Re: Announcing the DEMO 09 Class of Demonstrators

paulmwatson — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:33:31 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Announcing the DEMO 09 Class of Demonstrators

jlazerus — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:22:08 -0000

Here's a pretty thorough list with links: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/022709-de...