shatteredcode

Wow, what a week for twitter it has been. Some would argue that this has been the biggest week for twitter thus far.

For those of you who don’t know, twitter has been the home of two major stories in the last few days. First, the Iran protests, which are still going on. This is the first time twitter has been used as an actual method of delivering real-time, live news which could not be found anywhere else. While the news stations were reeling to get reporters to the scene, twitter followers could read live updates from people in the middle of the action.

This ‘live-news’ approach raises some interesting questions on the use of twitter. None of these tweets could be verified, but their immediacy and intimacy were so compelling that they were given credence anyway. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it does make one ponder how twitter can become a verified tool for news when twitter is, in its very nature, unverified.

What we can see twitter as a tool for is an instrument for collecting data. The raw information collected from these tweets, when analyzed and collected, make a compelling and informational story. An interesting idea would be to crowd –source that creation as well, making an almost meta-Wikipedia, dynamically instead of statically updated.

Contrasting this positive and interesting twitter angle is the Michael Jackson story, which is in every way a contrast to the under-covered Iranian protests. In fact, the over-coverage itself swallows the original story,  as the internet itself was brought to its knees by the mass of people seeking knowledge. My own twitter feed was awash in “RIPs” and well wishes, which, while not bad in a moral or humanitarian way, also makes one wonder about the usefulness of a tool which can so easily be swayed to one topic.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on twitter. It can be both immensely useful and a powerful conversation tool. Perhaps, though, it could be better organized for large events such as these. So here’s my shout out to the twitter folks: Find a way to organize this mass of data! If you can, you’ll have a tool so powerful I believe it could overshadow the entire news system altogether. Local and national news would be organized and written by real-time, crowd-edited material that is sent in the tiniest of forms. Even long form is retained with the use of linking services. almost.at is a great example of how something like this could be structured.

This is how major changes happen, as a reaction to major events. Maybe some good will come from all this negativity.

As usual, I was looking for some new design software, and came across an interesting add-on for Firefox called Pencil.

Pencil lets you design and mockup websites, applications, and desktop software rapidly. It’s the friendliest software I’ve used in this space, with most other design software either unwieldy or expensive.

The interface is friendly and responsive, if a bit sparse, and you can get pretty detailed with the pages you create. The project page for the add-on was actually designed with the app itself.

One problem is the lack of widgets you can add to the page, but you can insert your own images as well, which helps to alleviate that problem. Another great feature is the ability to convert pieces of the document to png images, making simple web design a snap.

I’ll be using this from now on, but if you find something better, let me know in the comments.

Download and install Pencil here

Two days ago, Leo Laporte lost his temper in the worst way with Mike Arrington of techcrunch. During a taping of the Gilmore Gang, Mike questioned Leo’s ethics because of the fact that Leo had received a review unit of the palm pre. The pre, which is one of the hottest new gadgets, was only given to a select few people. Mike insinuated that the reason Palm had given Leo the phone was to get a guaranteed positive review.

Leo, to say the least, was not pleased. In all the years I’ve listened to Leo, I have never heard him become so ill-tempered.

WARNING: The video below contains extreme adult language.

On

The reason I post this is not to give the news, because this video has been rebroadcast throughout the net for the last two days.  I think this incident provides a backdrop for an interesting conversation.

At what point does a blogger’s integrity become un-questionable? Leo, obviously, has reached that point, and I am not in any way defending Mike, but what about Joe the Blogger? How long does he have to blog before I trust him?

We have no credential system for bloggers in this day and age. Leo has gained his reputation  from being part of old media, through his television and radio show.  How are we going to find the same credential system for new media?

This summer, I’ve got a LOT to do. My new meta-idea is to have you participate in my quests of sunshine.

The List (edited each day, I swear)

• Learn Guitar
• Become a better saxophone player
• Learn AJAX
• Improve Java Skills
• Work on programming projects
• Learn Piano
• Design custom theme for 
  • shatteredcode.com
  • rickandmeg.com 
  • ctrlaltjazz.com
• Improve PHP skills
• Write a song
• Record some music (3-5 songs)
• Start a podcast (here we go again) Start my screencasts (you’ll like these)
• Twitter more often

As I do anything to complete this list, I’ll add the data. That means this list is going to be seriously long, but I think it’s important to se the progression of my work from beginning to end. As it grows in length, I’ll organize it into sections, but for now it is a simple list. You can access the list this summer by clicking on the link to the right (Summer of Ideas), or the Summer of Ideas link in the Projects section.

Surfing the web this morning, I found that Hulu has released Hulu Desktop, a client for both Windows and Mac allowing the viewer to watch Hulu right from the desktop.

This interaction with internet and desktop is very interesting, and this move looks like it’s going to be a competition with Boxee.

I haven’t tried the application yet, but I’ll have a review available later this week. Until then, happy hulu-ing!

The latest net@night episode covered one of the funniest startups I’ve seen in ages. It’s runpee.com, and it is solely dedicated to the times in movies during which it’s best to get up and… use the facilities. It’s a small site, and they’re still building out features, but they are working on both a mobile iPhone app and texting.

The most interesting part of the site is it’s technology. Based on adobe flex, the site is interactive and fun to use, if a bit ugly. Runpee is one of the first sites I’ve seen to use the technology, and it looks fairly promising.

All in all, it’s a fun, useful service that I will probably take advantage of. If you get the urge during long flicks too, it’s right up your alley.

You can follow Runpee on twitter here.

You can listen to net@night episode 101 here.

While looking across the web the other day, I stumbled across a nifty little site for a new programmer to develop their skills. It’s called Project Euler, and it’s pretty awesome.

From it’s interface, you can view a selection of over 200 mathematical problems you can solve, using any programming language you want. As an example, take the first problem:

Add all the natural numbers between 1 and 1000 that are multiples of 3 or 5.

Using some basic java, you can brute-force the solution with the following code:

public class Naturals
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        int sum = 0;
        int i = 0;
        while( i<1000)
        {
            if(i%3 == 0|| i%5 ==0)
            {
                sum += i;
                System.out.println(i);
            }
            i++;
        }

        System.out.println(sum);
    }
}

This solution is one of the simpler ones, to be sure, but none of them take an extremely large amount of mathematical knowledge. What they do require is some knowledge of programming skill, which beginners can take advantage of to give themselves projects to solve. Since the problems are in order of difficulty, you can learn and use progressively more complex language constructs to solve them. The fourth problem, for example, introduces arrays as one method for solving the problem.

The best feature of the site is its addictiveness. After solving one or two problems, you’ll want to complete the first page (25 problems), and even more. While it couldn’t be used to completely learn a new language(object-oriented programming, for example, is not something required to solve any of the problems I’ve worked with so far), it is powerful tool to keep young programmers interested, and to give them new challenges.

Looking to do a slideshow? ProShow Gold is an OUTSTANDING slideshow program. Even music syncing is easy as pie!

Playing some classic doom. Why aren’t games just simply fun anymore?

Well, the new site’s up, and the readers should start flowing in now…

Any day now….