View all entries in the 'Toys, Tips, & Tricks' Category

Structured blogging: Silicon Valley/SF Tech Events blog

by eleanor on 22 Mar 2005 @ 4:18 pm in Geek | Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

Last night I implemented my experiment in structured blogging. I now have a current as of right-now events blog. The feed works. Comments work (maybe for a posse style shout out?). We’ll see how it gets used. Being able to suck those entries down as iCal would rock.

The plugin I’m using comes from the pubsub guys, out of a project called Structured Blogging. In addition to events, the plugin easily accomodates reviews.

I’ve known about this for a couple weeks, after Mike came home with the plugin one night (where does he get this stuff?). I’ve been working with structured data, wanting to leverage the WordPress engine (feeds, search engine, and cms - in that order), but we were approaching bolting on more fields. This comes as an elegant solution to all my needs for getting an event blog up and running. I’ve (we’ve) been screwing around with calendars and social networking ideas for a couple months now, and it was good to find something feed-ready. This approach also offers promise for my booknotes/repository project. I’ve favored lodging the details in fields (author, date, etc), but there’s really no reason to not just jam the metadata in the main body of the post.

I was happy to see that (even though it took a while) this is still fairly fresh. I see others like Rajesh at Emerjic have picked up the thread. Usually I lag (and it’s taken me forever to get to playing with it).

Thanks a lot guys - I may have a programmer in the house, but that doesn’t mean I get custom tools made. This has given a great foundation from which to hack and play.

What exactly is this calendar? This is my take on what’s interesting around here. I live in Menlo Park and hate to drive, so things are definitely skewed local. I’ve added in old events going back to August. I’ve linked into to a/v files from places like ITConversations or the event’s own site. I haven’t done much cross linking between this blog and those events, but that’ll come.

Here’s some feedback and things that tripped me up. Nothing is horrendous, the install went smooth.

• Time wasters: I initally thought the sb time fields drove the “display date” in WordPress, but that is still controlled by the WordPress Date field. Essentially what this package gets you is an nice interface for inputting text and validated xml out. I’ve pulled the feed through Bloglines already and it looks good.
• Customization nits: I will probably modify my sb time fields to display 30 minute increments, rather than the hour now (I’ve erred in favor of making you early rather than late). Another area that didn’t quite fit my application was the sb role field. For some of these events, I’m clearly planning on attending. Others I help run. But there are many more that, while interesting, aren’t ones I plan on making. For those I’ve generally left the field blank. Still, as I look through the feed - the phrase “role: attendee” seems pretty lame. I’m not sure where this is headed - can these be customized to suit the user (à la Evite’s infinite variations on ‘yea’ ‘nay’ and ‘maybe’), or are these planned for indexing as universal (haha) values?
• Random weirdness: this plugin conflicts apparently with the ThreeStrikes comment spam plugin from Mark Ghosh (LaughingLizard). Before I disabled it, commenting sent me to fbi.gov. (I’ve even getting more rigourous about QA!)

I have more entries in the future to post, and more work to do in finding the proper organization. But tonight is Tony Perkins (I definitely have some work to do to bond with all the chick journalists, since I keep missing the boat) and the Wordpres party. I wonder if I get a hacker tiara?

So what’s next? I’m concerned about UI and if this info will make sense to people. I think I will pursue a “view by week”, calendar based approach similar to that used by WorkIT. That’ll evolve as I have the time and attention span to deal with such detailed work. :-)

Thanks guys for a well thought out solution to a irritating problem. Anyone who has a conduit, script or pointers for how to get my data between a calendar and blog more easily I’d love to hear from you. I’m on win, but using iCal’s ics in Mozilla (and Outlook too somewhat). There’s got to be a cheat for all this manual work. I’ll post if I find it.

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Of WordPress templates and the Plaza barman’s cure

by eleanor on 20 Feb 2005 @ 9:55 am in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

So I’m still playing with templates - it’s not really been hours and hours, but it is on the “not fun” side of things. I’m trying to decide if I liked calendar display enough to bring it back. It served some function to help me recall the date and the world at large, but was very hard to alter design-wise. Devoted readers might recall the calendar remained a pale blue on the old install - I never took the time to hack it apart. We’ll have to see how badly I munge things together. I’m still hacking away off a site design done for me by my good friend Erich Schmidt of Pixelbrew (not Google) - where he did a mostly table-free CSS design with a three column layout. The defaults only have 2 columns, and that just seems like wasted space (elegance schmelegance).

Back in the fort, Mike looks worse and worse. I’ve no idea how he feels because he’s sleeping most of the time. But he’s got the death under his eyes and big black splotches. So far I’ve had no symptoms.

I’ve been plying him with a modified never-fail Plaza Hotel Barman’s Cure, which I had at the Plaza in NY while at some bubble era Internet conference. I was getting a travel-cold and went there for soup (we were staying at the Palace for gods sake, poor .com fools, so the Plaza would surely be top of mind for these guys). I had a nice bisque and a glass of wine, but it wasn’t really doing the trick. So chatting with the bartender I mentioned I was fighting a cold and he said “I know what you need!”, and started bustling. He made this tea concoction which, I swear, went straight to my toes. It hasn’t done that since, but that could be because I’m not a Plaza barman. Or maybe it was because actor Jeremy Irons was in the bar (looking average-Joe, but still with a cool voice).

Anyhow here’s the recipe:

Plaza Barman Cure
Earl Grey teabags + Honey + Lemon + Jack Daniels + Cinnamon
Brew the tea, add the lemon and honey to taste (lots of it). In this case, the modifications have been no whiskey and adding cinnamon sticks and dried orange peel to the teapot.

Enjoy!

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Test post for reader-ratings

by eleanor on 21 Dec 2004 @ 8:39 am in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

I’m testing setup of Scott Heavner’s Rating plugin - which is adaptable to let me rate things, like movies or books, but here - we’ll use it to let you, gentle reader, rate posts. Since there’s so much here, I thought this might be away to get your feedback and have more community interaction. What you see on this page is what I think is important out of the daily chaos of IT news, but I need to know more about what is relevant for your work.

To do this test, I need to upload the plugin, and play with a new feature I haven’t tried before - custom fields. OK - the first step is done. Now to test…

And test.

Eventually, when the real geeks troubleshoot this for me, there should be some sort of box after each post to rate them. If we use ratings, it’ll help provide another slice of the data up here, in additon to category grouping, conversation tracking via comments and plain old chronological view. I’ll update this when it’s fixed.
Updated: Haha - well, the plugin has been working for some time I think, but it doesn’t display on this main page, as I expected (and wanted). To rate posts, you’ll have to follow the link to comment page, where you can then rate it.

Once we get a few posts rated, I’ll add a new view of ‘highest rated posts’ to the sidebar.

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Blog wrangling and managing feeds

by eleanor on 10 Oct 2004 @ 11:31 am in Emergent | Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

To help with my research, I’ve been using Bloglines, an RSS feed aggregator. Check it out yourself if you haven’t. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is growing in adoption, with even publications like The Wall Street Journal making feeds available for subscribers.

Bloglines is also set up to house blogs with your own page, but I use this space for sharing my feeds as a blogroll. Check out what I’m reading regularly.

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SRI Consulting - Business Intelligence SCAN services

by eleanor on 4 Oct 2004 @ 10:09 pm in Strategy-Marketing | Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

Today I met with people from SRI Consulting Business Intelligence to learn more about their research services. Carrie Hollenberg, Kermit Patton and Ed Teveris came to present on their SCAN services.

This is a valuable service that can bring NEC a synthesized view of the future - they’re like bloggers focused on spotting very narrow cracks that show the future.

As a part of their service, tThey deliver monthly research reports that focus on tracking important changes across technological, social, cultural, economic and regulatory issues. They also work directly with clients on futurist projects. Their value seems to be around synthesis and filtering, to screen apparent trends to discern what they really mean.

The cost we were quoted for this service is $50K, covering access to their news database, monthly reports, two dedicated analyst sessions, and access to most of their monthly SCAN meetings. They have offices and representatives in Japan.

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Resource: Association for Strategic Planning

by eleanor on 22 Sep 2004 @ 8:00 pm in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

Tomorrow I will attend a breakfast hosted by the Association of Strategic Planners. ASP is an interesting association. They started a chapter in the Bay Area last year, and I attended most of their meetings last year. This is the first meeting I’ve attended since I’ve been with NECSAM.

Their meetings are generally good, but the resource I value the most is that membership gives full text access to the articles of the McKinsey Quarterly and Booz Allen Hamilton’s journal Strategy+Business. This is current thinking from two of the most influential strategy consulting houses in the business. If you’re interested in viewing articles from these publications, let me know.

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CSS tidbits

by eleanor on 22 Feb 2004 @ 8:55 am in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

From collected sticky notes:

[#] -> id
[.] -> class
[ ] -> contextual selectors

padding, margin sequence is clockwise from top. T - R - B - L

Eric Meyer’s “cookbook” is recommended. Amazon gives us two likely candidates CSS 2.0 Programmer’s Reference and Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design. Will have to find out more info on their specifics.

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Harvard Business Review Back Issues Now Available Electronically

by eleanor on 26 Jan 2004 @ 11:38 am in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

For subscribers of the esteemed Harvard Business Review, there’s good news. Maybe things move slower on the East coast, but it seems they’re finally getting with it. Last year, they finally started making their current issues available online for subscribers - but only for the current month.

I take notes from these articles, and it was a pain to have to scan, or, worse, re-key choice text into my knowledge management system. I was pretty happy that they were available at all, but it was sometimes hard to remember to download and save all the worthy articles during a given month.

Now, they’ve made their subscription more valuable by making the last year’s worth of issues available for reading online. This finally puts their service on par with the venerable McKinsey Quarterly and Booze-Allen Hamilton’s Strategy+Business.
See Harvard Business Online | HBR for more information.

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WordPress ‘BlogThis’ Magick

by eleanor on 14 Jan 2004 @ 12:46 pm in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

This is a shameless admission of not reading documentation, but I discovered today that if you have text on a page selected when you hit ‘blog this’, that text gets copied into the window. Just like magic.
Ah, the clueless enthusiasm of the newbie!

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Searching for productivity

by eleanor on 12 Jan 2004 @ 5:54 pm in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

Like so many this time of year, I’ve found myself searching for a better way to keep track of my activities. The closest thing to an actual resolution I’ve made for the year is to keep up my blog (and finally for anyone sipping RSS, post all my back entries and unpublished drafts).
So to aid this daily chore, I feel the need to schedule some discipline, to delimit my news reading and force me to generate some lasting archive of what I find out in the world.
A daily schedule, or a habit, is something many people find comforting. Not me though, perhaps it’s a desire to spice things up, but I rarely cycle through tasks repeatedly. It’s time to cut down on that deviation from the mean.
I’ve used PalmOS and PIM software successfully for about 5 years. However, I find the configuration of the default tools are best for one-off’s, whether they be appointments or tasks. What I feel the need for now is a gentle guide to structure a day, reminding me to move along to the next task. My logic here is that I should be able to apply myself with true focus if I can provide my massively-multi-tasking side assurances that I will have variety.
I’ve evolving the requirements for this system while mulling over calendar and PIM offerings I’ve used, seen, and heard about.
Outlook: I’ve used MSOutlook in the past, but abandoned that because of the virus overhead. As you can see in my OS credo, using Windows is something I can do, but I have no love for Microsoft’s implementation of application software (MSExcel excepted).
Mozilla: I’ve used Mozilla’s mail client for over a year now, and found it satisfactory. There is a calendar application for Mozilla, but it is not fully featured. One reason to watch this project is that they implement under the ical standard.
iCal: iCal is the IETF standard, most well-integrated with Apple’s Macintosh platform that allows you to layer on calendars. This hyper-logical approach is sure to win, and this is one area that actually tempts me to buy Apple’s products. Being able to group events into discrete clusters, toggle into view, and delete with one click are powerful attributes.
Act: Back in the summer, I ran across a great deal for Act, the contact management software. I’ve always wanted to test the power of one of the big commercial contact management and sales force automation tools. It’s mostly gone unused, until today. I’ve set up Act to serve as my daily taskmaster, reminding me when to shift tasks, cajoling me to keep plugging at the current task for 22 more minutes. Act is not synchronized to my Clié, indeed I’d have to shell out another $70 for the privilege.
So after a bit of thought, experimentation, and research to see that what I need has not been created yet (at least for the platform and sw set I currently use), I’ve adopted the following: Act to manage daily tasks, PalmDesktop to manage appointments, and PalmCalendar synchronized with the PalmDesktop.
Here are other blips on the radar screen, none of which seem useful to me at this time:
PHPicalendar, a view-only app running on PHPnuke, Kronolith, running on Horde (they also say they have timetracking apps, but development doesn’t seem to be there).
This coverage gap has been oft commented upon - reading Infoworld columnist, Jon Udell’s comments on it saves me the typing.
This is an area ripe for a strong application, and the prices are fair too - Brown Bear Software supplies two of the more promising commercial entrants, an iCal server for Windows and Calcium, perl-based calendaring system. Both are priced at $95 for one calendar, and $395 for 10 calendars (and it seems this application is most useful with multiple calendars). This same company, Brown Bear Software, also has a synchronization module you can add on for an additional $100 for one copy. These license fees are not insignificant.
Will Chandler save us?
Oh, and iCalshare is cool and these scripts might be useful.

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Tax Prep SW

by eleanor on 5 Jan 2004 @ 11:19 pm in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

See Slashdot for a discussion of product alternatives to TurboTax. I didn’t like the tricks they pulled last year with the registration codes.

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The Weird Science of Getting A Better Deal on Car-Rentals

by eleanor on 30 Dec 2003 @ 10:09 pm in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

The Wall Street Journal advises how to navigate the complex pricing schemes behind car rentals:

• Book Early and Often - Booking early and often is the key to saving money … Unlike airlines and hotels, rental-car firms don’t charge penalties for cancellations. As a result a good way to lock in the best deal is make a reservation early, whenever you spot a good price. Then, keep shopping around and if you see a better one, book it and cancel the first one.
• Play the Date Game - During most of the year, renting vans, pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles during the week can save money, since demand for large vehicles is higher during the weekend. Conversely, renting luxury cars such as Lincolns during weekends is cheaper because demand for those cars is higher when road warriors travel on weekdays. And like airline tickets, renting a car with a Saturday night included can save money. ..Sometimes, getting the best deal on a rental can seem counterintuitive. For instance, even if you only need a car for five days, it’s worth seeing if you can end up paying less if you take the weeklong rate.
• Use upgrades - Because many rental locations in business markets don’t have lots of small cars in their fleets, often they run out of smaller vehicles. Savvy travelers can take advantage of that by reserving a subcompact or compact car and then getting a free upgrade at the counter. Warning: This tactic is less likely to work in leisure markets, where smaller cars are more abundant.
• Get Out of the Airport - Whenever possible, try to rent from a shop that’s not on airport grounds. Renting at the airport is convenient for fliers but add-on fees can jack up a bill 12% or more.
• Think Small - Renting from smaller regional and local rental firms such as Advantage Rent-A-Car and Payless Car Rental can be cheaper than even the no-frills major companies such as Enterprise, Dollar and Alamo. The downside: Smaller players often don’t offer the premium services such as express lines and frequent-renter clubs. And local firms often don’t show up on major travel Web sites, except Orbitz.
• Start Online - Start the search online. Travel sites usually offer the broadest sampling of rates, as well as estimates of taxes and fees. With that knowledge in hand, call the rental companies to see if they will sweeten the pot. It’s always worth pushing for a deal if you spot a better price at a rival: Most companies will match it, in keeping with an industrywide push to turn telephone inquiries into sales.
• Grab the Extras - Frequent-renter programs are generally worth the time to sign up. They offer discounts and other incentives, including express lines, free upgrades and airline frequent-flyer miles. Sometimes you can get a membership for nothing: National Car Rental offers complimentary memberships to solve customer-service problems, or to people who simply ask for it. Hertz waives its $50 fee on its Gold Club for anyone renting four times a year.

Source: Edited down from Kortney Stringer’s article “The Weird Science of Getting A Better Deal on Car-Rentals” 12/30/03 The Wall St. Journal
WSJ.com - The Weird Science of Getting A Better Deal on Car-Rentals

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Free Wi-Fi in SF?

by eleanor on 13 Dec 2003 @ 1:58 pm in Toys, Tips, & Tricks   ++

TechTV aired a story about free wi-fi in SF.
Bay Area Research Network sounds aptly named. They’ve got a white paper detailing their deployment strategies — an interesting view into ISP-land.

SFLan is another service, one that seems to actually be up and running. Here’s a how to link from their site:

With a laptop: Go in the vicinity of a SFLan node. Associate with it: The SSID is sflanNN, where NN is the number of node, e.g. sflan13. No WEP. You’ll get an IP number assigned via DHCP.

I’ll have to check these out the next time I’m up there with my navi.

Source: Slashdot.org San Francisco’s Got Free Wi-Fi

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