Performancing Metrics

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Lan Parties Monthly

So, Digital Fruit has started hosting monthly LAN parties, hopefully giving the geeks of Aberdeen something to do.  We are planning them on the go, though, so you'll have to check in periodically to find out the dates.  We'll be posting them on our Facebook page.

We hope to see anyone local there, so call in an make your reservation.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Jim Henson Google Doodle

I find it funny that when someone as big as Google does something trying to be artistic, no one gets it.  With today's Google doodle, Google users get to be puppeteers, using five digital puppets to play around.  But the doodle has no sound, and apparently people are freaking out about it.[1] 

But when I sat there playing with the doodle, I just laughed.  Google really had made them puppets, and by doing so, forced people to do something they haven't done in a long time: use their imaginations.  Just like the master puppeteer himself, Google was expecting you to voice the puppets yourself.  So, I challenge anyone who reads this blog and specifically this post, to create a video of you playing the voices of these puppets, and post them on Youtube.  Maybe we can start a viral trend.  Who knows.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Spammers

Just recently, we've gotten our first attempts at spam here on the blog.  People have left one line comments saying things like "Great job!" then just posting the name on the blogpost and then their website address.  Honestly, this is both funny and annoying.

Its funny because they think that it will get their website traffic on Google and Bing, when in all actuality, it gets them traffic for phrases like 'Great job', which are so general as to do nothing for your webpage.  (The phrase actually generates hits for a sketch comedy show by Tim and Eric.)  So I laugh because they are putting in all of this work for nothing.  No one will find their site.

Its annoying because as a moderator for a blog, I have to go through the comments posted on this blog, and check to make sure they aren't from legitimate viewers who really just want to thank us.  (I know that sounds lame, but you don't want to offend someone actually reading your blog by deleting their comments, no matter what those comments are.)  I don't like having to spend any extra time reading through worthless comments meant to help someone else's website rise to the top.  I'm seriously considering creating a black list of blog spammers so that my fellow bloggers can quickly search the list and find out if the comment is from a known spammer.

With such a list, spammers would have to personally apply for removal, and would only be given so many chances for re-admittance to the blogging community before they would be permanently blacklisted.  It sounds like a great idea to me.

So, if you, as a blogger are annoyed by all of the comment spammers out there, leave your rants, stories, and suggestions for a solution as legitimate comments to this post.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Sinage

Just to start, when I went to start writing this article, I found my spell check didn't have signage down as a legitimate word, and, frustrated by this, I went and looked it up.  Signage apparently isn't recognized as a word in anything but American English.  Isn't that weird?

But that is not the topic of discussion for this post.  The post today is about how the world is starting to have problems separating things from the virtual world we have on line, and the physical world our bodies reside in.  Case in point, this picture I took at the Puyallup fair yesterday:
Come on, push my button
What I would really like to see in this situation is not a giant plastic sign, but a giant plastic Facebook like button with a wireless transmitter and a fingerprint identification system tied into a database on Facebook, because then there would at least be a reason to attach giant like buttons to fences.  As it is, this is just lame.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Our Vision for the Personal Cloud

I've been hearing for a couple of years now all about cloud technology, and how great its going to be for the consumer.  Yes, its great to get at all of your data anywhere you want, but other than that, I don't really find the appeal of a corporate cloud system.  Personal clouds, though, I see some real potential for.

Imagine this for a second;  you are sitting in your living room, reading something on you tablet, a comic perhaps, and you laugh out loud.  Everyone else wants to see what was so funny, so the come to crowd around you and your tiny little tablet.  At this point, you realize you have two options, you can either bump it to each persons tablet, or slide it to your television.  You go for the second, and slide the comic towards you much larger flat screen and magically it appears, without having to be turned on, and without you having to press anything special.

These kinds of things will be possible with a combination of personal cloud technologies, home server systems, and location aware home devices with wireless and gps capabilities.  The ground work is already laid down with several other technologies already on the market, and soon you could play a video game on one screen, need to move to another room, and just flick your game onto another screen, be it a portable or a console or PC.

And one of the best parts is, running the home server to operate these functions could be something the size of the Mac Mini, and with improvements with things like the Atom and ARM processors, they could get even smaller.

So, as the post is titled, the cloud has potential, yes, but I'm not that interested personally.  I think what will be more revolutionary is the way devices inside our own homes will interact.  A personal cloud seems to be something more natural and powerful.