Boris' Blog Feed

Spanning Sync for Mac to Google syncing

bmann — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:46:00 -0400

I'm still using Spanning Sync to sync my local calendars to Google. Calendaring is the main sync issue for me: my phone syncs with my local iCal, and then my local iCal syncs to multiple calendars that I have. This is still a bit tricky, since I have a personal Gmail account as well as multiple Google Apps for Domains accounts. My main request is to support multiple accounts and use the "native" login for that account, rather than having to use one account that has access to all calendars. This does work for calendars, but doesn't work for contacts: your contacts will be synced to only one account.

For calendars only, if you have a Series 60 phone, there is also CalSyncS60. This lets you sync directly from your phone to Google calendar. Except, I never got it to work quite right, and I don't have a data plan at the moment, so syncing would be mainly at the home or office where I have wifi.

The reason I made this post now? Brendon pointed out to me that Spanning Sync has a refer a friend program, since he was about to buy a copy. So use this link or click on the logo if you are planning on buying Spanning Sync and want to also push $5 my way (you also save $5).

Knight News Challenge prep in Vancouver: Digital Media Experiments to Innovate Journalism

bmann — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:02:04 -0400

Coming up next Monday, October 6th at the Raincity Studios offices is a Knight News Challenge info and prep session.What is the Knight News Challenge?

Want to win funding for a cool online community project?
The Knight News Challenge is in the third year of a program that gives away $5MM a year to innovative online projects that support online news, community discourse and social media in specific local communities. Come to this meet up to find out how to apply, share ideas, and get a chance to talk to KNC evangelists.

This is an interactive, hands on discussion designed to give you the knowledge to apply with a great innovative idea. All ages welcomed.

The press release from the beginning of September details the program. $5M is available for "digital media experiments to innovate journalism".

Long time blog friend Susan Mernit is running these prep sessions -- Seattle and San Francisco are the next two places on the list. If you're accepted past the first stage, you can enter the News Challenge Garage for further mentoring and feedback.

A lot of code ends up being built in Drupal for this yearly challenge. Knight took notice of this, and also has the Drupal-specific Knight Drupal Initiative (KDI).

This is a really good way to get some funding to try a true R&D-style idea, which might just be the beginning of a whole new startup. If you have ideas about the future of news, come to the Raincity Studios offices to find out more next week. (and yes, please sign up on Upcoming or Facebook).

Sugar On Drupal

bmann — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 03:01:22 -0400

Have you seen the new OnSugar.com hosted blogging platform? It's Drupal powered, built by the fashion / pop culture publishing empire that is Sugar, Inc. (CrunchBase link for background info).

In many ways, it is what I have often been waiting for. Drupal is a very good multi user system. This is not an install profile, spawning sites, nor is it as simple as "one" site. It is a very interesting implementation of a hosted blogging platform.

I would like people to look at it, and test it, and think about it, because this is the kind of stuff you can build with Drupal. You can theme the node forms, you can add AJAX popups / overlays, and you can add innovative features while stripping out the knob twiddling options for the person that just uses the thing.

There are two features that I see as truly innovative. The first is the image insertion.

You've got your images, and upload and image...and then you've got "Search Getty". You know, the largest commercial database of images online. And then ShopStyle and FashionWeek, two other Sugar properties. Wow: a shared platform where any one user has easy access to images across the system. That's fantastic! I had previousy done some mockups of a Flickr Search button for TinyMCE -- one can easily see OnSugar expanding the images to include (or adding the functionality to the other insertion buttons? top links? top videos? quote the top blog posts, and so on...). A mass system built on sharing (or at least shared access), imagine that.

The second innovative feature is the themes. Well, sort of. Themes and control for end users is HARD. There are a list of shared themes that you can either use directly, or that you can copy. The copy part is magic. You can copy a theme, rename it, edit it, and then even share it back out again to have someone else use (or use as a base for their own copy/edit/share). There's that sharing again! The theme layer seems really comprehensive. That is, you can edit CSS, the page outline, post outlines, and even comment outlines. Seems a bit hard for the average end user, but it IS cut and paste simple ... so some people will build cool things, and others will cut and paste it into their own creations. The template reference file shows you the snippets you can use. Is this Smarty, or did they build their own engine?

Anyway, I hope you kick the tires on the system, and think about what it means. My co-founder at Bootup, Danny, met with Brian briefly while down in San Francisco, and I look forward to continuing the conversation. You can find me at http://boris.onsugar.com, and you'll find some other Drupal folks like walkah kicking the tires as well.

NowPublic MostPublic Index for Vancouver

bmann — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:47:52 -0400

NowPublic just released a MostPublic Index for Vancouver that lists 20 people ... and I come in at #3. The background for how the list is calculated is here, with the rough text below:

NowPublic’s formula gauges influence and “publicness” across four categories, including:

Online Visibility

Presence on User-Generated Content and Social Networking Sites

Interactivity and Accessibility

The “R” Factor: Presence on Microblogging Platforms (Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)

What do I think of this? Well, Darren (as the #1 spot) got interviewed for the article in the Vancouver Sun and pointed out longevity: Darren figures he's been blogging since about 2002. I'm in that range, with my permanent presence occuring around that time, although I think I seriously started posting online about a year or so earlier, trying different systems (the very first post on this site is dated 2002-11-09).

But wait, what do I think of this?

Well, it just so happens that I still write this blog for me. Most of the topics here are about tech, or pointing at things I want to highlight or tell people about. People still come up to me in person and say "sometimes I don't know what you're talking about" -- this is my personal scratchpad, and it's for me. I've tried back and forth to be more personal here, but I tend not to be. I'm giving another kick at that can on a LiveJournal site and I write recipes and talk about cooking on my FoodLikeThat.com site.

There are comments on the Vancouver Sun and Techvibes in the vein of "these people have no lives" and so on.

No problem. I do this thing for me, and it sometimes has effects like connecting me to people that I would not otherwise have met. I'd like to do more exploratory writing and thinking here, but I've been finding it hard. I'll keep writing - or not writing - as I please. I hope that some of you find it interesting at times, and I enjoy any comments and interaction that I do get.

Congrats to the other MostPublic'rs. See you online...

Skype turns 5

bmann — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:44:46 -0400

Phil Wolff of Skype Journal contacted me (over Skype, of course!) earlier in the week to ask about posting something for Skype's 5 year anniversary. I didn't get to it earlier in the week, but when I was chatting with him I had some ideas around Skype and the identity space that I've continued to think about. So, here is a belated birthday wish to Skype. Check out Dan York's post for a lot of the same items that I'll be mentioning here.

I was really annoyed with Skype when it launched. Annoyed because I had spent the previous 5 years working in the VoIP standards space at Nortel, having seen MEGACO and MGCP fall by the wayside so that my favourite, SIP, could reign supreme. And here was Skype, with its proprietary protocol. That just worked. And nary a cool SIP service to be seen (other than the Gizmo Project, which is still the only cool SIP project around...).

I wouldn't say that Skype is an integral part of my work flow today (lots of people use it much more heavily than I for all of their voice communications). But it is one of the communications channels that I do need to have open most of the time, primarily for group IM chats. 3 years ago at Gnomedex, we started a Skype backchannel group chat, and it's still running today -- the "Vancouver Swarm". For various groups and companies, multi user chats are just an add to channel and bookmark away. Oh, and of course, the way that chat history "flows" to you if you've been offline for a while: persistent chat!

And I'm still not talking about the audio and video features :P

My dad is a heavy user of Skype, especially Skype Video. Whether it's sitting down and "sharing" a coffee with my sister in Italy, checking in with relatives in Germany, or showing off the snow up at the cabin at Deka Lake, he uses Skype all the time. He continues to "evangelize" Skype to people he comes across.

I started by mentioning the concept of Skype and identity. With sites like Twitter and other social networks and services exploding into general consciousness and discussion, I'm (still) thinking about identity.

Each of these services are an identity space. Systems like Facebook are rooted in your real identity -- you use your actual name and such -- while others like Twitter have you using nicknames or shortened forms. These nicknames become your identity within those spaces. Phil Windley talks a bit about this namespace federation -- in response to Craig Burton ho humming it. Yes, there is a friction with federating so that a single namespace is very valuable.

Are phone numbers, especially international phone numbers, a single or federated namespace?

In the past, our phone number was a large part of our identity. e.g. my parents have had the same home phone number for 29 years. I still remember the last 4 digits of my childhood friend's phone number (the whole island has the same 6 beginning ones, so the "local" identity space only needed the last four...). Now, less so, in part defensively. I give out my Vonage VoIP number which rings all the numbers I need it to. Of course, when I then switch to text messaging, my cell number shows up (and shows up as "unknown" for those that know me by my home number). Traveling between countries and switching SIM cards, you have multiple numbers.

Skype is a portable voice identity. It doesn't care what country you are in or what SIM card you happen to have inserted. It is Internet voice. One could argue that federation and open standards are needed (and I would agree ...), but no one else has reached the same "just works" level of functionality. Here's hoping that we get at least another 5 years of innovation and disruption out of the Skype juggernaut. Happy birthday!

Nokia N78 First take and setup

bmann — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:42:18 -0400

Dave Olson caved and got an iPhone, so the Nokia N78 he was testing for Roland has now made its way to me (my previous phone has been the Nokia N80). Thanks to both for making it available to me.

Here is the Nokia N78 on Nokia's website for full tech specs etc.

First reactions:

much slimmer! almost half the height of the N80
not a slider ... I had gotten used to the convenient / easy lock and unlock that the slider activates. Guess I'll be download AutoLock again.
wow, the keypad on this is incredibly annoying! bye bye high speed texting ... I feel like my fat German peasant fingers have to use the edge of my fingernail to use them
speaker and sound is awesome. Regular headphone jack, yay! FM tuner, very cool, I'm going to make a lot of use of this. Dedicated volume buttons, also great. There is much more music functionality to explore here...
comes with FM antenna headset thingie with remote volume and playback controls, as I said, music quality is very good, although the ear plugs are slightly small for my ears
lightly tapping the back button seems to not close the app you are in, but bring you back to the menu. The menu / app switching seems easier, but at the same time confusing. Why not make the funny asterisk symbol the same as the Nokia "menu" button that is on all their phones?
the camera is much fancier -- only slightly more megapixels, but all sorts of autofocus features that make it feel more like a "real" digital camera; the flash is three times the size of the N80's
video much improved -- now at 640x480, with excellent focus and sound quality
USB data connection -- yay! not using standard USB mini connection -- boo!
can the USB connection also do charging? don't know, it did come with a charger
comes with a 2GB even-smaller-format memory card (I've given up on remembering the names for different formats ... I have three or four different "mobile" memory cards, plus SD for my camera...)
there is Share Online which lets you connect to Flickr, Ovi, and some other stuff out of the box. Not quite set up yet.
GPS! Haven't wandered around outside to test yet, but first impression is that it is very slow to get a GPS lock. After installing Google Maps app, the cell tower only location put me in the middle of Howe Sound (I'm on Bowen at the moment) -- I actually still consider that pretty good. Definitely going to be doing more experimenting with this.

My other "first reaction" is that it's clear that I've been a Symbian S60 user for a long time: there are certain apps that I always download / setup. I'll be cataloging those in another post, in part for my own use so I can go to one page and quickly download all the apps that I want on every phone. Like my experience in setting up a fresh install / new Mac, this would seem to indicate a certain level of maturity in S60. Or perhaps a clear line of what they will include and won't with the base OS, so there are distinct areas where third party apps flourish.

For those on the Mac, the N78 is not supported by default. You'll need to download the N78 iSync plugin from Nokia Europe (thanks to Carniumology404 for being the first hit for that).

Back to installing apps...

Speaking at Net Tuesday - How Drupal can help you save the world

bmann — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:25:49 -0400

Just as Drupalcon Szeged is kicking off, I'll be talking at this coming week's Net Tuesday event, "How Drupal can help you save the world!". Boy, that Joe Solomon really does like catchy titles :P

I'll be kicking things off with an intro to Drupal. I'll talk a bit about open source and how it relates / meshes with the mission of non profits. Or rather, why the heck aren't you using your non profit DNA to work together with other organizations?! I'll also do lots of my "question" tactics -- asking people in the room to think about their strategy, their use of the web, their use of open source software, and their approach to engagement online.

Following me will be the folks from Fearless City and Agentic talking about some case studies.

The event is this Tuesday, August 26th, at 5:30pm at WorkSpace. The Meetup event is now closed, but you can show your attendance on Facebook or upcoming.

P.S. yeah, I said I wasn't really going to post event stuff here much anymore, putting most of it on the Bootup Labs blog. Well, this is an event that I'm doing "solo" as it were. And never fear, I'm going to post over on Bootup about the Expression Engine Roadshow .

Global TV: Blackberry Bold launches on Rogers

bmann — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:18:17 -0400

I'm going to be doing a short interview with Global TV with my thoughts on the Blackberry Bold, which "launches" today on Rogers (apparently, reports say that the product isn't actually available in stores).

Of course, this is currently a GSM phone, so it's one more piece in Roger's arsenal vs. Telus and Bell, which both have the same set of CDMA phones. The newest phones are released on GSM first, and the CDMA versions lag by months, if they are available at all.

I've never been a huge fan of the Blackberry… as a consumer phone. I think that's still the case. This is definitely a great upgrade, but unless your company is paying for it, you're more likely to get an iPhone for home use. In addition, the Bold is more expensive with Rogers - $600 without contract, $400 with 3 year contract, vs. $200 (8GB) or $300 (16GB) for the iPhone.

If you're a current Blackberry users that loves the keyboard and scroll wheel, then you'll like this upgrade. Otherwise, we're waiting for the Blackberry Thunder (the touchscreen version) to potentially be "more like the iPhone".

At VinoCamp 2008 for the day

bmann — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 13:52:46 -0400

I'm at VinoCamp for the day, a fun wine event I helped organize. This is the first one we've done, and it all sort of came together at the last minute (I think). We're drinking our first set of wines, and listening to our second presentation. There are tech folks in the audience, posting to Twitter (VinoCamp 2008 or vinocamp).

I think there's a good vibe in the room, the weather outside is beautiful, and the UBC Botanical Gardens space is beautifiul.

I'll do some more updates later, and look for pictures on Flickr to add.

Later being the end of the next day :P I'm just in the midst of uploading my Flickr pics, which will be tagged with VinoCamp. Here are some bullet point thoughts still percolating a day and a bit later:

10:30am is pretty early in the morning to start drinking wine
a large portion of folks that were "techie" in some way (50%? not sure...)
non-techies not quite sure what to make of laptops, iPhones, and interstitial techie comments
a handful of people Twitter'ing an event gives it a real time feel to the outside world, and a sense of connectedness to the people in the room
scrumpy is a type of strong British cider; apparently, it's made with raw meat in some recipes (don't ask ...)
David Sanders talking (and really, demonstrating) about the shape / type of wine glass and how it affects the flavour made a believer out of me and 95% of the rest of the room...I think an event featuring *just* David and his magical set of Riedel glasses would be worth the price of admission
Bradley Cooper is Bradinator on Twitter, and I was amazed and the amount of back and forth wine chat there is going on around the globe.
14 tastings are rather a lot in one day; some how I didn't quite realize how much wine Lori managed to pull off; no, really, I was thinking maybe 8 wines throughout the whole day
the first time you have an event, you have to "just do it" and hope you can set the tone for follow on events

We'll be gathering together resources from the event (blog posts, pointers on the wiki page, etc. etc.) and putting them in the email. Or at least a link to the wiki to look for all those resources. I'm especially looking forward to feedback from the event. I definitely had fun and would want to do it again, and the tone seemed to be positive ... we'll see what the entire crew had to say.

DaveO does a podcast with me on Bryght, Raincity Studios, and Bootup Labs

bmann — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:52:55 -0400

Dave Olson sat down with me at the beginning of this week and did a long (50 minutes) podcast over at Raincity Radio.

We covered a lot of ground. Here are some short notes with related links on what we talked about:

I first met DaveO down in Seattle at Gnomedex 2005
DaveO asks me about the start of Bryght -- me, Adrian, Roland, and James, supported by funding from Lance Tracey
The early days of my involvement with Drupal and how that moved into Bryght: hostmaster, install profiles (first created in D4.5, took all the way to D5 to get into core!)
we decided at Bryght to support the organic growth of the community and helping to stimulate a business ecosystem. A good post is organic vs. non organic open source
one of the big questions was "Why did you sell Bryght?". The answer is two fold. One, it became a combined product (Drupal hosting) and services (R&D and contract consulting work) company, trending ever more towards services. This was just not something I was personally interested in. Two, I felt an itch to scratch about continuing to support the growth of the local Vancouver tech community, and ultimately it became clear that Bootup Labs was the right vehicle to do that with.
Bryght re-launched. It looks beautiful and I had almost nothing to do with it. Oh, and you can now get Bryght Light in Chinese, or even pay nothing for it as an ad-supported version.
Yes, there are more new services coming from Bryght, including Canadian based servers as an option. Much of it will be due to Narayan Newton.
there is a big chunk in the middle about what my new startup, Bootup Labs
there are Drupal events coming up that you should go to. In a couple of weeks there is Drupalcon Szeged, and in early September there is Drupalcamp Victoria ... combined with the Great Canadian Beerfest!
The design firm for the Drupal.org redesign has been chosen. This is going to be a BIG job, but remember, Drupal.org is *our* home -- this is something that will benefit everyone, and everyone should be looking at how to help with this.
Call to action: help get Drupal.org upgraded to Drupal 6. One of the (minor but important) patches near and dear to my heart is the infamous XML patch to project*
Shout out to VeryMisunderstood aka Kenn, who does a ton of work helping out in the forums

New Ventures BC mentor panel makes my brain full

bmann — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:06:04 -0400

It seems that when I am working with a lot of different ideas and companies, that what I post here really dries up. And that's the case right now.

I went through 8 startup presentations yesterday at New Ventures BC, check out my post at Bootup Labs:
New Ventures BC 2008 Mentor Panel Two

So, between one day mind melting events like the NVBC mentor panel and all the new companies and founders I'm being exposed to at Bootup Labs, I'm processing lots of information and giving direct, "live" feedback. I've still got lots of ideas floating around, they're just not making their way into blog posts :P

And yes, I really am not posting local Vancouver tech event stuff here anymore. Check out the Bootup Labs event listings page.

Quoted in 24 hours - Buzz Bishop's "Head in the Clouds" article

bmann — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:06:08 -0400

Buzz Bishop put a request for cloud computing experts. I'm not exactly an expert, but it is something that I've been looking into more deeply lately (see my cloud links on del.icio.us). And, of course, I'm advising TrevorO's startup, Layerboom, through Bootup Labs.

Anyway, I ended up writing a fairly lengthy set of answers to questions that Buzz sent across, some of which made their way into his article in today's 24 Hours -- Head in the Clouds. Thanks for the opportunity, Buzz!

Site specific browsers for mobile?

bmann — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:49:44 -0400

I'm catching up on some mobile-related blog reading today, and was spurred to write something by Tim Bray's Mobile Blues and Dean Bubley's re-post of an article by David Wood. (And thanks to Roland's Google Reader Shared Items, where I am getting a wealth of mobile and food related links)

Canada (and the world in general) is caught up in a storm of mobile imaginings based on the launch of the 3G iPhone. Recent results of app sales potentially point to a future where carriers *don't* have a chokehold on the mobile handset experience: for the first time, your average non-technical end users can easily buy and install applications for your mobile fun. Except, of course, it's just another kind of walled garden, just one run by a computer company instead of a carrier.

Tim in particular has issues with that, as well as with having to learn yet another development environment to program native apps for the iPhone:

But there’s a little problem and a big problem. The little problem is that I don’t wanna learn Objective-C and I don’t wanna learn a whole new UI framework. I acknowledge that lots of smart people think Objective-C and Cocoa are both wonderful, and quite likely they’re right. I don’t care. I’m lazy; I know enough languages and enough frameworks. You’re free to disapprove, but there are a whole lot of people like me out there.

The big problem is this: I don’t wanna be a sharecropper on Massa Steve’s plantation. I don’t want to write code for a platform where there’s someone else who gets to decide whether I get to play and what I’m allowed to sell, and who can flip my you’re-out-of-business-switch any time it furthers their business goals. …

OK, points taken. You don't *have* to learn another programming environment, but every experience I've had with Java on every single phone I've ever owned has been .... terrible. Use Java if you want to quickly prototype an app for your enterprise ... but the usability and UI for the average end user, never mind the install process, is terrible. Most people go to native platform code for that final bit of polish (IF that polish is needed for your target market).

I don't have much to say on the locked platform aspects: you make your choices. In some ways, writing native apps for *any* platform is a level of lock in. That is, shouldn't we rail against OS X native only apps in the same way?

And here we finally come to the punchline hinted at by the title. For desktop operating systems, there are now a couple of site specific browsers (SSBs [wikipedia link]): you enter in the URL of a website / webapp and it is bundled into a separately clickable "application" that you can run like any other native program on your desktop. I use Fluid, based on a WebKit engine, and there is also Prism, based on a Mozilla engine.

So, somewhere between widgets and full blown native applications, can an SSB engine for mobile operating systems reign supreme? Bubley's summarized thoughts on this are:

…for many applications, Mobile Web will be the way to go, for ease of development, cross-platform support, rapid update and so on.

But for some the most important and demanding applications, there will still be a need for native development, even if it comes with a dose of pain.

The mobile web, with advanced, compliant browsers available on smartphones like the iPhone or various Nokia phones, is the Internet. Various UI niceties and formatting to fit the screen factor aside, this is regular ol' HTML and AJAX, no new platform to learn here.

So, I'm looking forward to "Fluid for iPhone" or "Prism for Series 60": I can think of a web app developer or three that would be VERY interested in exploring a potentially very quick way to have apps on these smartphone platforms, without the full pain of native app writing. Actually, paging Handimobility -- there might be a very nice business in there...

VinoCamp is open for registration: August 16th, 2008 at UBC Botanical Gardens

bmann — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:32:50 -0400

Yes, I'm getting involved in yet-another-event. I was overjoyed when I heard that Lori Pike had made the jump out of tech and into a great marketing position with Mission Hill. I mumbled something about a WineCamp, a similar-but-different* event that started down in San Francisco / Napa Valley.

Lori took the idea, went off and got approval, and then came back and called me on actually helping organize this thing. A bunch more volunteer organizers were called out, meetings were had, and now, we bring you ... VinoCamp! Here's the blurb:

This is definitely not the wine festival. In a more unstructured form than a standard conference, VinoCampVancouver brings wine, people and technology together in one place, making wine accessible, educational and fun. As a different type of conference, VinoCamp is designed for those interested in technology and wine, and people are expected to take photos of what's happening, and to blog or tweet or message about their experiences.

Join us! Whether you're speaker, sponsor, or a wine-drinker, our aim is to make this day memorable, fun, and interesting. You will learn more about wine and viticulture, meet interesting people, and enjoy yourself in one of Vancouver's loveliest gardens.

It's a full day (approx. 10-4) and is being held on August 16th at UBC Botanical Garden. We're expecting about 125 people. Registration is open now, and tickets are $50 for the full day event (t-shirt, lunch, wine, and food pairings included) please head on over to Eventbrite to register now. I fully expect this to sell out as we push out the word this week, so get your tickets soon.

We're also looking for sponsors and speakers.

Thanks to launch sponsors Redwerks for helping put together the website with their Kommonwealth tool, and to Artisan Wine Company for being the wine sponsor.

And, of course, a tip of the corkscrew in the general direction of my co-organizers: Degan, Tanya, Colleen, Megan, Cyprien and Lauren (yes there are some Northern Voice co-conspirators in that list).

* For the record, the WineCamp one liner description is "an ad-hoc gathering that brings together the best of the old world and the new... wine, non-profits and geeks!" -- connecting non-profits with technologists over wine. A great goal, but we really were interested in reaching out to wine and food enthusiasts and skip technology all together -- aside

Updated Mass Virtual Hosting How to for Mac OS X Leopard

bmann — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:42:42 -0400

I spent some time this weekend updating a long ago how to post on configuring mass virtual hosting for Apache on Mac OS X -- the original version was from April 2004!

I do lots of testing on my laptop, and while I'm now quite familiar with VirtualHost entries from the dedicated servers I work with, this is actually even easier: just create a directory with the name of the host and requests for that host will be served from the directory. It all comes down to good old mod_vhost_alias. I probably should do some more direct examples of mixing and matching this with other host directives. As mentioned at the end of the article, aside from symlinking one directory to another, I don't know of another way to point multiple hosts at the same web root. I'll get to it if I end up needing it myself, it works for now.

CTV Newsnet appearance: Bell and Telus incoming SMS charges debacle

bmann — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:46:38 -0400

I'm going to be on CTV Newsnet again, this afternoon at 3:15PM PST, live with Marcia MacMillan. Below are a few notes and links, I'll clean this up and post a link to the clip once it's wrapped. I talked about the iPhone last time, and somehow I think it's going to come up again.

in fact, Rogers is the only firm NOT charging for incoming texts, they now have a decent data plan, they have the high end Nokia phones, AND they have the iPhone.

Only North America charges for incoming text messages -- Europe and Asia have always been free.

via Ian Bell - http://www.physorg.com/news129793047.html - "SMS costs are, in the aggregate, 4x higher than getting data from the Hubble space telescope. Global SMS revenues are larger than the Hollywood movie, music and video game industries combined."

Lots more from Ian, like "I could personally store-and-forward all of Canada’s SMS traffic myself via my Novus broadband in Yaletown, and it would have limited impact on my BitTorrenting". Oh, right, and of course the fact that SMS effectively is NO extra load on carriers - "As such it costs the network exactly nothing and uses no bandwidth that isn’t already in use — traffic load is the same on the network even if no SMS messages are being transferred." - http://www.kenneyjacob.com/2007/06/19/how-sms-works/

via Yule Heibel - Productivity is boosted by mobile - "They say that by 2016 the value of the combined mobile wireless voice and broadband productivity gains to the US economy will equal $427 billion per year" - http://www.psfk.com/2008/07/how-mobile-boosts-productivity.html

Bell and Telus being called before Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry - http://www.smstextnews.com/2008/07/bell_telus_called_before_federal_indu... - of course, I'm going to mention C-61 and cellphone locking that Mr. Prentice has a hand in

Update: I was off at a photowalk this evening and am just getting back. My segment was quite short, but I'm glad I got a C-61 mention in. Thanks to Mr. iPhone John Biehler for digging up the direct link to my clip: http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/text-charges/#clip65669

Rogers to launch iPhone in Canada with $30 6GB data plan

bmann — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:16:37 -0400

I'm glad I waited in posting any sort of "the iPhone with Rogers will suck" commentary, as it seems they have somewhat come to their senses. As usual, John Biehler was my iPhone news source, and here's the link to the Roger's press release.

A new "promotional" data plan is going to be available until August 31st (and I actually believe they'll extend it...), where you can bring your own voice plan, and add a 6GB data plan for only $30 / month. Hmm, maybe over 50K signatures at ruinediphone.com changed their mind? No, it's not unlimited ... but in talking to Roland -- who is the heaviest mobile app user I know -- he's never gone over 500MB. I think I used a couple of GBs when I was at the Olympics in Torino, and large megapixel camera phones and the fast 3G speeds could certainly eat bandwidth, but 6GB seems fair.

So...am I getting an iPhone? Nope. I don't really like contracts, and I don't like locked phones. I imagine we'll be able to get an unlocked iPhone at some point, where I'll be able to swap out SIM cards when traveling as I do now.

Meanwhile, looks like I'll be on CTV Newsnet talking about the other Canadian wireless barons -- Bell and Telus. They are going to start charging for incoming text messages. Well, this should be a fun ride ... Rogers isn't charging for incoming, it has the iPhone and the latest Nokia phones, and now -- decent data plans. Really, what are Bell and Telus thinking?

Update: Looks like this is not just for iPhone -- you can add this plan to *any* phone, as long as you sign a 3 year contract, and it does apply to Fido as well. See the post on howard forums for reference.

Sponsor Rachael for the Camp Moomba Yogathon

bmann — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:40:43 -0400

Rachael is participating in the Camp Moomba Yogathon this Saturday at Thunderbird Stadium. She's look for a few more sponsor donations to reach her goal. As you can see from the picture at left...you won't like her when she's angry, so please donate. I don't want to have to show you my bruises...

What's a yogathon and what is this for? Rachael blogged the 4 day countdown, where she explains:

The yogathon means a 108 minute long session of yoga for the thousands of people who participate. The funds raised through the event go towards sending children whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS to Camp Moomba, to give them a chance at a normal summer of fun. This will be my third time participating, and it’s something I look forward to taking part in every summer if I can. Last year we did the yogathon in heavy rain, which was not something I was expecting to enjoy as much as I did.

So there you go. I've done a short yoga session all about once, so I won't be yogathoning. I'm not sure what the support team does at these events. Eat hemp ice cream at the blissfest, I expect.

And, of course, once again my personal life and Drupal community collide: the Ghost Brothers are playing music at the yogathon, and I got given one of their CDs from Chris Bryant of Gravitek Labs. Ha! And that new email I just got was a Facebook notification from Chris letting me know that the Ghost Brothers are playing with DNA6 on July 24th. Small world...

Hypemachine + Nokia Podcasting client = constant new music

bmann — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:09:52 -0400

After being really happy with the Nokia Multimedia Transfer app for OS X to get music onto my phone, and photos off it onto iPhoto, I started looking to solve the "where to get new music" problem.

Around the same time, I was playing with the Nokia Podcasting app. Put simply, it is a podcast browser / downloader, which you can set to automatically connect to a network connection and download new podcast updates at a specified time. I set my phone to charge overnight, and set it up so that it would auto connect to my home wi-fi network.

Then I found Hypemachine. Yeah, yeah, I'm not really a cool trendy new music guy, and I *had* heard about it before, I just never really used it: it's a giant blog aggregator that tracks mentions of music and links to MP3s. It also exposes all this music blog aggregation as a podcast, with enclosures to the MP3 links. Not a traditional podcast at all -- it's whatever the Hypemachine has auto aggregated during that time period.

So, every morning, my phone is loaded with brand new music. It's eclectic to say the least -- last Friday featured lots of 4th of July-themed songs. The first time I set it up, I got some nice Catholic-rock-band tunes. Last night, I copied that music back to my computer after about 2 weeks of doing this. 63 songs survived my listening over that period, and I cut that down to about 40 that I would keep / give at least 3 stars to.

I'm listening to a lot more music on the go with this setup, and am being exposed to lots of "new stuff". So far, I bought the new Cold Play "Viva la Vida" album (definitely not a "long tail" band), as well as Ra Ra Riot both as iTunes Plus downloads. But the majority of the bands seem to be ones that I need to point you to their MySpace page to listen to their songs -- see Hooded Fang for one example.

It's been a fun experience so far, and I always look forward to what the next night of downloading will bring me. This whole listening to music on the go thing might really take off one of these days :P

Where do you find new music? Where do you listen to it? Where do you buy it?

Omnibus: BBQ, Jungle Disk, WordPress etc.

bmann — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:37:20 -0400

Well, contrary to the lack of posting here, I actually have a ton of stuff tumbling around my head right now. And so, an Omnibus post that covers a couple of different items.

I've been heads down busy and haven't been attending (or organizing!) any social media type events lately. I did get out Wednesday night to attend the Freshbooks / Redwerks BBQ. Look, there's me holding a puppy (photo by Ianiv)! It was a beautiful sunny evening and the Redwerks rooftop patio is awesome. I ended up manning the grill, my secret ploy to meet everyone (at least, everyone that was hungry). It was nice to meet some new people and catch up with a bunch of regulars.

I'm trying Jungle Disk for my personal backup. In short, it's a cross platform app that both serves as a kind of iDisk as well as some simple backup operations, except that your data is actually stored on Amazon's S3 service. You pay a one time license for the application (and you can install it on as many computers as you want), and you pay as you go for storage. And can get your files from any machine.

I'm currently backing up my Documents folder to a Backup area, and then I also have a second "bucket" (that's actually Amazon tech talk, but it makes sense) that is a true archive -- I copy old stuff there and delete if off my local disk. I'm still debating whether it's worth it for me to put my entire iTunes collection online -- it would solve being able to get my music from anywhere, and it would cost about $12 / month (for 60GB). Not sure what the calculation is for streaming that music some of the time? And yes, this is like MP3 Tunes music locker.

So that's my use, but Jungle Disk *also* launched the WorkGroup edition -- which is the same thing, but lets multiple users in a company use it from a single Amazon account, with things like their own storage space as well as granular user permissions. So you can have a Finance folder that only senior management can access. And if you don't have senior management, then just think about how great it would be to have a small business shared file system that you can access from any computer, anywhere. That's $2/month per employee, which I think is a good price.

WordPress! I've been mucking about in WordPress core and theme code. Once was with Rachael's site, which I upgraded using the FTP dance. I really hate not having command line access.... The second was for the Bootup Labs Blog, which I moved off of WordPress.com so we could add some more plugins and do stuff like have a feed for every category / tag. Except, when I went digging around, it seems that the main feed is the only one that is ever injected into the link rel header. So, here's my feature request if you're interested in the gory details: http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7190 -- heck, I might even submit a patch :P

etc. There are so many things that could go in the etc. section. Should I talk about how Roger's iPhone pricing plans in Canada suck? Or about some thoughts on S3 and hosting shared files for the Drupal community? Or how my Raincity -- Bootup Labs transition is going? I've got lots going on, and I'll update here with extended posts on some of these topics. For now, it's summer, next week is Canada Day, and I'm going to spend time hanging out on Bowen with some of my favourite people.

P.S. Thanks to everyone that talked about their usernames -- that's one of the longest comment threads I've had in a while, it was fun!

Drupy aka Drupal in Python

bmann — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:37:35 -0400

BrendonC dropped by to leave a comment mentioning that Drupal in Python -- aka Drupy -- is a real project.

Here's the latest update (as of 6/17/2008):

Currently, Drupy can successfully run Drupal Bootstrap Phase 8. This means there is one more Drupal Bootstrap phase to be completed before alpha completion. For more details, check the Drupy diagnostic page, which is updated regularily.

Find the code on Gitorius, news and bugtracking on Sourceforge, and say 'hi' on freenode at #drupy.

From bmann to boris - an evolution of usernames

bmann — Thu, 29 May 2008 05:05:22 -0400

As I signed up for the umpteenth web service ever (g.ho.st, if you must know), I was thinking about the username I was entering.

Once upon a time, I used 'bmann' exclusively. What's the story? Well, at the University of Victoria, where I went to school, all students had a nice UNIX-y login that was first initial plus first 6 letters of the last name. Mine was nicely recognizable, and really, when you have a first name like Boris, something like "bee-mann" is nice and simple. And sometimes people even call you that. Personally, I liked my friend Mike Kerfoot's username: 'mkerfoo'.

I continued to use 'bmann', but as this whole Internet thing took off, it was often already taken. There must be some Brian Mann's or other such more normal combinations out there scooping my username. So for a while I went with an underscore, and so I have a Yahoo and Hotmail account that are both 'boris_mann'.

Then, as I began to be more heavily involved in online apps, I suddenly realized I might get a chance at just plain old 'boris'. As it turns out, I had a fierce competitor ... whose name only kinda was actually Boris. I'm talking about Montreal-based Bopuc aka Boris Anthony, of course. Since he's a friend of Joi Ito, Bopuc got all the cool 'boris' usernames. I was happy to finally meet him by chance in San Francisco this year.

But then, at some point, I managed to pull ahead! I was getting 'boris'! I think it was my Flickr account where I realized that I could be shooting for the coveted first name only username (it probably helped that they were in my backyard here in Vancouver and that Roland got me in on the first couple of hundred users). I mean, I'm not the number one Matt, but maybe...

These days, here is the order in which I try to get usernames:

boris
bmann
borismann

What's your username? What's its story?

Update: Yowza! Lots of awesome posts in the comments. So far Jeff wins for widest variety -- Jeff / Dingo / henshaj / jeff.henshaw / jeff_henshaw. I didn't mention username / domain name grabs. I think there might be some .ca variations that I could get (and I should really ditch bmannconsulting since it isn't really a consulting website anymore. I aspire to some friendly Icelanders helping me get bor.is ...

Testing Ad Bard, a FOSS friendly ad network

bmann — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:13:50 -0400

I'm testing out a new advertising network built by Jeremy Andrews. Jeremy is a long time contributor to the Drupal project, mainly through switching his site KernelTrap over to it many years ago, and then being involved with many other Drupal businesses -- architecting major portions of CivicSpace among other things. Jeremy's current "day job" aside from KernelTrap is Tag1 Consulting, who are Drupal performance experts. He also happens to have built the Drupal Advertising module.

The new advertising network I'm testing is Ad Bard. I'll excerpt the "what" from the about page:

Ad Bard's mission is to foster a friendly and useful advertising community. As a fellow Ad Bard, you will help to ensure that the advertisements in our network are useful, relevant, and non-obnoxious.

I've currently got the ad block running in the upper right hand corner of the sidebar. Yes, it doesn't look too different from any of a number of usual banner ad rotations. The current schtick is that Ad Bard is "Free and Open Source" (FOSS) friendly. It has categories of advertisers and websites in the network related to a variety of open source topics, so at this point both the advertisements and websites should be relevant to people interested in those topics. The whole site / system is

Just to throw another concept into the mix, Jeremy recently put up a post advocating that Drupal.org should join Ad Bard. The Drupal Association has been testing ads on some of the forum pages on drupal.org for a while now, as a way to generate revenue to support the project. Google ads have been tested and are running now in the right sidebar of the hosting forum (itself now hotly contested because of some of the content from hosting providers). This really brings up the issue of whether ads are appropriate for open source projects at all. If ads do have to be there, I'm much more in favor of daily / weekly / monthly sponsorship ads: they seem to be much less painful to end users, and I think more effective for advertisers, too.

One of the thought experiments / questions that I often pose people is "How relevant does an ad have to be before it is no longer an ad?" One specific example would be someone looking to buy a Canon S5 IS from my review -- is an ad on that page on a place to buy them an ad ... or a useful, in context piece of information? All a matter of relevance, I believe.

If you're an open source advocate (or project), you might want to kick the tires on Ad Bard -- I'll let you know what I think after I've had ads up for a while.

Disclosure: Raincity Studios does work with Tag1, and I'm a big fan of Jeremy. I've also shoved over a boatload of ideas that I have around advertising networks that I've been itching to experiment with. We'll see :P

And yes, I know -- long time no post.

DrupalCamp Vancouver 2008 this week

bmann — Mon, 05 May 2008 05:06:50 -0400

Well, before I knew it, DrupalCamp Vancouver has snuck up on me. I mean it when I say it snuck up on me: I had pretty much zero to do with organizing it -- massive kudos have to go to Dave Olson, Dale McGladdery, and Ariane K (I know there are others, like the guys from Image X Media and jkparker on kick off party duty and and and...).

DrupalCamp Vancouver is this Friday and Saturday, May 9th and 10th, with a kick off party on Thursday night. As with all Drupal events, it's sold out (how are we ever going to fix this? more training!), and it looks like a great group of people are going to be gathering.

I spent this morning with Dale and Ariane reviewing the session submissions. We have a nice mix of newcomer, developer, and soft topics, as well as 2+ double sessions: one on organic groups, and one on design and theming. I say "2+" because we tried to schedule the talks so they "fit" together nicely -- like the back to back views + arguments segueing into panels 2, or the intro to module development that then continues with forms API advanced development. The sessions are up -- but the presenters are still "in progress" of being contacted.

I'll be doing a talk on install profiles with a couple of co-presenters, and leading a close out session on Drupal 6 and beyond. Frankly, I'm more than a little worried about Drupal 6, while at the same time so looking forward to Drupal 7, testing frameworks, and more RDF. It will be interesting to see how the discussion goes.

There are lots of talks to look forward to (I know lots of people have been asking about an intro to SVN). I've got my eye on the infamous heyrocker -- he's coming up to talk about the gnarly issue of staging Drupal between servers. It would be great if we could pool our solutions and get to more *code* in this area. I think drush is likely the proper building block.

Again, thanks so much to the organizing team that pulled this together: we're lucky to have such a great group of motivated people.

If you are missing DrupalCamp here in Vancouver, the next two I know of are DrupalCamp Toronto May 23rd - 24th and DrupalCamp Seattle June 26th - 27th.

More Vancouver events, thoughts on one calendar for TechCouver

bmann — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:56:51 -0400

First up, I'm going to do the call out of upcoming Vancouver events:

Wednesday, April 30th (tonight!) is WordPress Camp, put on by the folks at Tazzu - I've got Dad night every other Wednesday so I won't be making it this time. Maybe someone should set up a Vancouver WordPress Users Group and do this regularly? VanWUG!
May 9th and 10th is DrupalCamp Vancouver - I'll be talking about install profiles and likely a "getting started with Drupal" talk where I go through all the core modules; more on this in a full post
early June date TBD DemoCampVancouver07 - back to the "regular" format of 30 second pitches and voting on stage for full talks; maybe we'll do this right after the F&F event

Check Miss 604 for another recent event round up.

In general, I'll mostly be doing full descriptions of events that I'm hosting / help organize around startups will be over at the Bootup Labs blog. Coming soon there is a Vancouver Founders and Funders in June after the Toronto event.

OK, on to the topic of "one calendar". Or rather, a consolidated calendar. There really are a lot of events going on in Vancouver, and it's hard to schedule new ones, it's hard to get a central overview of them, and it's hard / annoying to cross post Upcoming / Facebook / wikis / etc. Several people coming to DemoCampVancouver have said something along the lines of "I'm new in town, how do I find out about more events". Answers like "read these 10 peoples' blogs isn't really a solution.

I had lunch with Rob Lewis from TechVibes the other week. TechVibes continues to work on re-vamping their site (they'll be going through a major re-tooling over the summer) and we came around to the subject of events.

TechVibes has an events calendar, but it's painful. Yeah, they know it :P We talked about adding value there, specifically getting the community involved and providing something of value that the wider community could get involved with and rally around (e.g. not a TechVibes direct "property" per se).

I came up with two concepts.

One is for TechVibes to enable cross posting from TechVibes to Upcoming and other sites (Facebook? can anything post an event to Facebook using the API?). Post in one spot, get cross posting goodness "for free", which sounds like a good reason to post to TechVibes for those of us organizing and promoting events.

In general, I'm a fan of Upcoming. As Brendon said, it's great to use in San Francisco, since it's got full coverage of everything from tech events to arts. Here in Vancouver, coverage is a little spotty. I try and enter everything there because it is on the public web with a permalink (as opposed to Facebook...).

The second concept is around TechCouver. Buzz Bishop is leading the media charge to make this another Vancouver nickname - and that's great. So let's make TechCouver a local aggregator of tech-related blog posts and events.

The map is great as well, and we could use both. Basically, have tech companies and bloggers enter a listing for themselves including an RSS feed. We aggregate all the feeds, and run our own TechMeme for Vancouver. Well, minus the secret algorithm -- I'd like to do voting so we can see "best of" posts as well as the "river of news" of recent stuff.

So, one central spot for tech related postings and events, one central spot we can direct people to, to find out what's happening in TechCouver.

What do you think? Is this interesting? Useful to you? Would you visit it? Would you subscribe to it and/or use the OPML file it would generate? Let's use this TechCouver wiki page to discuss features and such, or comment here.