Gillico

In the Spring of 2010, I was writing for a small tech blog, and was asked to produce a piece about the forthcoming iPad. I’d never seen or used one, but I did a bunch of research about it and, as usual, formed a fairly negative opinion about Apple’s latest introduction before ever using it. It reminded me of my reaction to the introduction of the iPod, when I said that first no one would want to carry a portable disk drive with music on it, then I said no one would want to carry around their photos, nor watch video on such a small screen. At least I am consistent. In any case, the piece never ran, I stopped writing for the blog, and then went out and got an iPad for myself.

Here in three parts is my take on the iPad- before owning one, now that I have one, and essential Apps on my iPad.

posted on Sunday, August 29th, 2010 in design, technology, tips, web
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I thought I’d take a moment and give a shoutout to all my buddies at the EFF and remind everyone about all the good work they do protecting freedom of speech online! ›› Bloggers’ Rights | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

posted on Saturday, June 5th, 2010 in law & politics, outlinks, social networking, tips, web
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When Google announced and subsequently unleashed Buzz on the world, on February 9, 2010, it was hoping to have a social networking hit on its hands. Instead, it was met with a lot of frustration and anger from users, who found Buzz thrust upon them, turned on and connected to the rest of the internet before users even knew it.

And when I say connected, I mean connected! Everything in your Google profile, including all your contacts and links and your YouTube Profile (like your sharing links to Twitter accounts), Picasa, your Google Reader shared items, and more, became available to anyone familiar with your Gmail address who wanted to follow your Buzz account. And this wasn’t a choice to opt-in, but instead was switched on all at once from Google headquarters and shoved out the door.

posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 in communication, social networking, web
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My 90 year old stepfather was just recently claiming to my mother that kids didn’t pick on each other back in his day. When she told me about it, we nodded knowingly, smiled, and agreed he has a touch of the old-timer’s. Anyone who is a kid, has been a kid, or has a kid of their own knows that bullying is a big problem, at home, at school and on the playground. But with the advent of the internet, it’s moved into an entirely different arena- online, and taken a new name- cyber-bullying.

posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 in communication, social networking, tips, web
1 comment »

Sometimes when you’re bored, you put your name into Google just to see the results, right? I’ve done it, you’ve done it, we’ve all done it… Then that gets boring, so you start looking for other stuff, just to see what you can find.

The staff of Nina Hale Search Marketing compiled some of the funniest and weirdest searches that they charted on Google over the past three months from their clients’ accounts, and found:

1. gloves that people can shoot out web
2. wool gangster shirts
3. what were the boots worn by Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under
4. do tuna cook while they swim
5. who invented friction
6. kitten smells like rotten eggs
7. is turkey poop brown
8. what is tuna made of
9. what does Farrah Faucet look like
10. did duck hunting change the world

…continue reading »

posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 in communication, social networking, tips, web
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I’m sick and tired of having to design a website more than once every time I make one. Anyone who designs websites knows what I am talking about. You design it to W3 standards, which works for every modern browser like Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera, and then you go back and make it work as well as you possibly can in Internet Explorer.

Even though Microsoft has released version 8 and is developing version 9, they are notorious for having their own standards for the web all the way back to the first release of Explorer. They are fairly capricious about which parts of CSS IE respects, and instead insist upon using their own set of “filter” commands to complete a small subset of what CSS can do.

Because it is the default install browser for Windows, it commands a large market share. The statistics on my websites show that IE users account for between 40 and 70% of my traffic. So I can’t dismiss it, as much as I would like to. But anyone who is reading this site, or is even slightly technically inclined, knows that their internet experience will be enhanced by using any other browser. Even my 90-year old stepfather surfs the web with Firefox.

posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 in design, tips, web
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I was going through my RSS feeds yesterday, when, to my surprise, I came upon a glowing review of the tech blog I used to write for. “Techi.com Will Not Bore You” proclaimed the headline! And when I clicked through, I read a shining review of how original the content and magnificent the site was. Surprisingly, for a design site, there was no mention of the site design itself, which, at least from this designer’s standpoint is plain, at best.

The sentence that really caught my attention, however, was “I’m familiar with the guy behind this project and can honestly say he knows what he is doing.” I, too, am familiar with the guy behind this project. His name is Walter Apai, and he is also the guy behind Web Design Depot, a clearinghouse for web design links that has had middling success on the web. He’s also a self-admitted control freak, micro-manager and will freely admit to knowing little to nothing about technology or how to run his business. From what I gathered while working together, he got lucky once and is hoping to replicate his success with Techi.com.

posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 in communication, social networking, tips, web
13 comments »

Bwahahahahahaha!!!!

So when Steve Jobs wrote an excellent, well thought out letter explaining why Flash was antiquated technology and not fit for Apple’s next generation of devices, much less any modern computer, it was not surprising that the folks’ feelings at Adobe HQ in San Jose were hurt. Flash has been their bread and butter for years now, and they still hold on to the illusion that it’s the bee’s knees.

And, of course a public slap in the face from someone who’s been a pal since the launch of PostScript and PDF and other technologies from way back when couldn’t go unanswered. So what does Adobe do? Like a whiny bitch, they started a new campaign today professing their love for Apple!

Seriously. With a letter from the company founders and everything in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

With an utter lack of irony, Adobe’s new campaign is about choice! Here’s what I am guessing choice means to them: The choice to hog your processor completely! The choice to crash endlessly! The choice to suck your battery dry! The choice to invite viruses and hackers into your computer! The choice to not work with a touch interface! The choice to program once and deploy to multiple platforms badly and inconsistently! The choice to only work if you LICENSE ADOBE’S SOFTWARE!

Oh, wait, that has nothing to do with being an open, secure, usable environment like what Apple’s suggesting or working towards, does it?

Adobe’s hypocrisy would be giggle-worthy, if their pointless, reactionary and butt-hurt advertising campaign wasn’t adding more to the price of the next CS bundle I’m going to have to shell out for, but the basic point is that Adobe doesn’t ♥ Apple any more than Adobe ♥’s Microsoft.

What Adobe ♥’s is paying customers, and Apple pointed out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Naked emperors get testy when their testes are showing, don’t they? How about putting all that ad campaign money towards a useful product?

posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 in advertising, technology, web
2 comments »

All right… here we go. I am tired of how people latch on to one piece of misinformation and freak out. YOUR PRIVACY IS NOT BEING INVADED. You know how pissed I was about Google Buzz. This is an ENTIRELY different concept. That is not what the OpenGraph API is about.

I have already implemented several of the new widgets on the dinner blog. Go and look. You’ll see the new Facebook like button in the upper right hand corner. And you’ll see several other people like the page (and I hope you’ll take the time to like it too). But you only see the name and photos of people you’re already friends with on Facebook.

In my case, I see all but one, because so far only one person I am not friends with on Facebook has “liked” the blog. But, I CAN get info on her because I am the admin of teh page, but not directly thru the blog. That’s a feature for web administrators to keep in touch with people who are interested in their site. The info I get about Likers is their name and face, and access to send messages to their Facebook streams, like I already do/can with the dinnerblog Facebook page. It’s no real change, other than an extension of the venue- it’s still Facebook folks who choose to express their Liking.

Nevertheless, your information is NOT being handed out willy nilly. This is just a method of personalizing your experience as you go to other sites so you can share with people you trust, to your friends you have already made on Facebook. To strangers i.e. everyone else on the web, you are listed as just “a person” and no other information is given out about you beyond that.

Let me say this again: Your name and personal info is only revealed to people you are friends with already. That’s why I don’t have a problem with this, I actually, um, like it. I think it’s a good thing, it makes for a better social experience because it’s transparent and allows for easy feedback from people you know.

Facebook may not be the bestest solution out there, but they’re the one that most of us have chosen, democratically. Unlike Google Buzz, you opted-in by becoming a member of Facebook. If you have privacy concerns, you should by all means delete your Facebook account immediately, not just turn off this one button.

But if you’re like me, and most people, you have your Facebook account for public consumption. The things you post to it and the data you include in your profile are for public consumption as well. You may have tenuous “friend” connections, but Facebook is not a place where you are friends with your stalker ex-boyfriend or abusive former boss. You don’t post about the great sex you had the night before, because you’re Facebook Friends with your Mom.

What people seem to be missing is that this personal-data-that-you-gave-up-willingly is not floating out there randomly. When you opt to go to a website AND you are a Facebook member, AND that site has implemented the OpenGraph API tools that are now available, YES, that site will know information about you UNLESS you have gone and clicked the box on your profile and prevented it from happening. They will only know information relevant to you, however- a message like you and your friend So-and-so and 160 other people liked this page. Again, it’s not random data spewing around the internet.

Really, is this really such a bad thing? Are you really opposed to CNN knowing what kind of news you’re interested in reading before you get there? Or Pandora knowing your music tastes? Or finding a new site and realizing that a couple of your friends found it before you and thought it was pretty cool too, so you’ll stick around and read it and give it a chance?

I think that’s an added value to being a Facebook member, instead of having to re-enter the exact same information every time I visit a new site. On the whole, I prefer a social web to staying in a cave and banging rocks together by myself. I think people are a-feared of what they don’t fully understand. Facebook is a social networking site, not an isolate ourselves in a cave and be a hermit site. We live in the information age now, for better or for worse. It may take some getting used to, but try and embrace the good bits. This is actually one of them, really.

posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 in social networking, technology, web
1 comment »

In January 1971, @ was an underused jargon symbol lingering on the keyboard and marred by a very limited register. By October, (Ray) Tomlinson had rediscovered and appropriated it, imbuing it with new meaning and elevating it to defining symbol of the computer age. He chose the @ for his first e-mail because of its strong locative sense—an individual, identified by a username, is @ this institution/computer/server, and also because…it was already there, on the keyboard, and nobody ever used it.

posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 in communication, design, outlinks, web
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