Summer Plans!

Well, as usual, I’m long overdue for an update here! I’m afraid I’m not very good at this blogging thing. Thought I’d put out an update on what I’ve been up to lately and what I will be up to in the near future!

In my last post I talked about my possible plans for the summer, I now know what those plans are!

My “day job” is with H&A Scientific. We write some pretty neat software for the pharmaceutical industry and also spend a good bit of time calibrating really expensive scientific instruments. In connection with that second track, my first task here was to create a new version of some older software we had connected to an HP bench-top multimeter. I got to brush up on my C++/Win32 API skills and I’m now pretty well versed in HPIB/GPIB interfaces and SCPI. By Internet standards, this is pretty old-school technology (The program I was replacing was written in Pascal in 1995!), but I’ve had a lot of fun with it! Now I’m doing a lot of work with our larger products, mostly working in C#. I’ve worked recently on a couple of libraries for backwards compatibility with some of our older file formats. Right now I’m working on getting all of our codebase updated to Visual Studio 2008 and pushed back into our Team Foundations server so we can start work on the next version. Not terribly exciting, but it’s helping familiarize me with our code.

In addition to that, I’m moonlighting at East Carolina University’s Office of Academic Outreach. We’re working on leveraging Web2.0 technologies, especially social ones, to reach students. I was brought in to build a Facebook application which we’re looking to do some pretty cool things with. I’ve been working on learning the ins and outs of the Facebook API and I’m brushing up on my PHP/MySQL skills for the backend. I’m really into this project and I look forward to sharing more of my work on it here in the future. As far as we can tell no other .edu has really effectively leveraged Facebook on a wider scale to reach the student body, so we’re pretty excited about bringing this to our students!

Other than the two jobs, I don’t have any grand schemes for the summer. The only solid plan is going to the beach as much as possible!

I’ll try to update here a little more often in the future!

 

Summer Plans?

It seems like summer is an eternity away, but I’m already trying to figure out my plans for this one. I’ve got a handful of job offers and paid internships I’m interested in (But I’m always open to more options for consideration, so let me know if you’re looking to hire some fresh, clever talent. ) as well as some volunteer work I’d like to do both domestically and abroad. I’m trying to work out a balance that will be educational, enjoyable, and not feel too much like working, while still paying decently. (Gotta buy that iPhone. )

I think I should be able to pull it off, and working on it is fun - beats studying!

And you? What are your summer plans?

 

Adding Data Plan for iPhone to Existing AT&T Service

I really, really like the iPhone. I want one, quite a bit! That said, I’m not financially prepared to purchase one quite yet, but I’m working on getting there! In preparation I was doing a bit of research on what exactly it IS going to cost when I make my move.

The price of the iPhone itself is a bit obvious, the price of the service plan can be a bit harder to figure out; especially since I am an existing AT&T customer (My current handset is the Samsung SGH-A727, which is aesthetically wonderful but functionally questionable.) Turns out AT&T has tried to make it pretty easy for existing customers to upgrade their plans for iPhone, sorta…

Quoting Apple.com’s iPhone rate plan page:

If you’re an existing AT&T (formerly Cingular) wireless customer on a qualifying rate plan, just add an Data Plan for iPhone. (This may replace your current data plan. Some voice plans, including TDMA, may not qualify. Call AT&T Customer Service at 1-800-331-0500 or visit an AT&T store to see if your plan qualifies.) Data Plans for iPhone give you Visual Voicemail, SMS Text Messaging bundles, and Unlimited Data, which includes both email and web.

Well! How convenient, that’s nice to know… except nowhere on Apple or AT&T’s site do they list the price-per-month for this upgrade. I guestimated it to be $20.00 a month, but I really wanted to know for sure. Google was no help, though admittedly I only did a cursory search, but really this should be easier to find.

With no answer in sight, I did what many desperate and foolish souls before me have done - I called the customer support number!

I spent 20 minutes on hold to ask a five-second long question.

Seriously - when I finally got the CSR it took longer to verify my name and my social security number (because I was calling customer care about my line) then it did to ask my question.

That aside, I got my answer!

To anyone who cares: Adding the Data Plan for iPhone to an existing AT&T customer plan costs $20.00US per month. (Per iPhone line, and assuming your plan qualifies, which most should.)

I’m hoping the title and content of this post will get it indexed well enough to help out the next person in the same fix as me.

Oh, and AT&T: Instead of revamping the (still broken, but that’s another story) security question system on your wireless site, could you have the web designer (I’m guessing there’s only one?) spend 30 seconds adding this information to one of your pages on iPhone rate plans? Thanks!

 

Teaching my mom to use urlTea

So, my mom just asked me for some help because someone had posted a URL in a comment on a blog post that she simply could not get to work - the URL was too long, had some strange characters in it, etc. so I told her to send the user to urlTea, have them put in the URL and give her the shorter version so there would be less chance the comment system would mangle the URL - I show it to her and she’s like “Oh! this is like that other site, tinyurl“

Yepp, my mom knows how to use tinyurl and urltea, my job is done here.

 

How I would use Skitch

Well, Colin is apparently giving away Skitch invites, no way I could pass up a chance to get in on this party.

Everything I’ve heard about Skitch has been positive, everyone that has used it is kind of “OMG, how did we live without this??” - I hear the Skitch team is some of the nicest guys ever - I like some of their other products too, their screensaver pack has some amazing screensavers in it … anyways, getting a bit offtopic.

I think the number one reason I want to try to Skitch is so that I can easily create lolrobs.

 

Webservices I Love

(This started off as a post on a friend’s wall on Facebook, and quickly got far too long to fit within that 1000 character limit, and since it’s about time I posted here…)

I’ve been getting into a lot of cool web services lately, and I think you should take a look at some of them and look at joining up if you’re not already a member.

First off, I’m in love with this video sharing site, Viddler.com, check out my profile at http://www.viddler.com/explore/josiah

Viddler has some really cool features! Highlights of what it has that other sites don’t would include (but not be limited to!):

Their great built-in record feature (You can record a video directly to the site within your browser, assuming you have a webcam attached to your computer.)

Viddler’s lack of restriction on video size/time (You can upload a video that is as long as you want and any size up to 500MB)

And then there is this amazing concept of timed tags and timed comments, which are tags or comments attached to a specific moment in any one video - really, really nifty.

I’m now a part of what is being called the Viddler Viral Team - we’re working towards creative methods for spreading the Viddler gospel - and having a great time doing it.

Also, I think I’ve mentioned Twitter before, but it’s really a great service (minus some recent downtime, heh.)
http://www.twitter.com/josiah

So far every friend I have sent to Twitter has said “this is stupid” but grudgingly joined and quickly become addicted, so I would recommend you try it out - it’ll be fun AND kill your productivity.

Another service I’ve come to love lately is Tumblr - a wonderful portal for tumblelogging - you can find my page at http://josiah.tumblr.com/

From Wikipedia:

A tumblelog is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary.

Tumblr makes this easy by providing great feed aggregation - essentially automatic, lazy tumblelogging by pulling what you’re already posting to other services (Mine currently pulls from this blog, my Viddler videos, my Twitter tweets, my last.fm tracks played, my flickr photos, and my ma.gnolia bookmarks) - as well as a great interface and bookmarklet for posting directly to Tumblr.

Another service I now adore is ma.gnolia - thanks Colin! I poked around with del.icio.us several months ago but couldn’t really get into it - felt awkward to use, just felt like I was wasting time with it. Enter ma.gnolia - there are so many things done right with ma.gnolia that it makes it impossible NOT to bookmark things, they just make it feel like a natural extension of reading any interesting page. (I’d say more, but Colin’s review - linked above - pretty much covers all the bases.)

You can find my ma.gnolia page at http://ma.gnolia.com/people/josgoodson

So, there ya go, a short run down of the various ways I’m spending my time online these days.

 

Was Photobucket a steal for MySpace?

Michael Arrington writes over on TechCrunch about the disparity in price vs supposed value for YouTube and Photobucket at the time of their acquisitions by Google and MySpace, respectively.

I think the thing he failed to really directly address is the “hype factor” and the name-brand recognition that YouTube has/had versus Photobucket. Due to the copyright infringement cases, the controversial and/or wildly popular videos that have made it onto the site, phenomena such as lonelygirl15, etc, etc. YouTube had that name-brand recognition going for it. For instance, my grandmother (whom I love dearly, Luddite or not ) does not even have an internet connection and hardly ever turns on her computer, however she knows what YouTube is and has a general idea of how it functions, I seriously doubt she has ever heard of Photobucket.

At the time of their acquisition YouTube benefited from being a site that was wildly popular and growing quickly with the added eye-catcher steeped in a nice little dose of controversy. While Photobucket may actually numerically be a more valuable acquisition, in my opinion it just doesn’t currently have that zing behind its name that inspire multi-billion dollar bids.

That being said, Photobucket does have a lot going for it - though I personally use Viddler and flickr for video and photos, respectively. So I think that MySpace did get a good deal with their purchase price of the site - should be interesting to see what they do with the site though - MySpace’s excessive ad placement tends to vex me extremely.

 

Avalanche?

There’s a story on Reddit’s front page right now, The avalanche has begun: Toshiba (Italy) considers preloading notebooks with Linux

I am all for the wider adoption of Linux, and vendors that are willing to preload a Linux distribution on their machines rise considerably in my estimation. However, pardon my skepticism if I don’t think this is necessarily the beginning of some avalanche - since when did a single rock rolling down a hill equal an avalanche? Might be a precursor to such an event, or maybe it’s just an interesting singularity.

Also, just read the title! They haven’t even committed to something! So I guess my earlier statement should have really been “A rock thinking about rolling down a hill does not an avalanche make.”

Sorry if I can’t get so excited about a single branch of a large corporation investigating the possibility of maybe providing their customers with the option of ordering Linux preloaded.

 

On censorship and Digg alternatives

Well, Digg pretty much shot itself in the face yesterday with their handling of several of their member’s decision to post the HD-DVD decryption key that recently became available through a court document.

Allen Stern posted about this over on CenterNetworks, in the article he mentioned Y Combinator News as a Digg alternative - yeah, Y Combinator is pretty cool, but when it comes to Digg alternatives, where’s the Reddit love? From what I’ve seen Reddit is one of the closest sites, community and functionality wise, to Digg - without the big brother complex!

(Disclaimer: if you don’t like xkcd, Reddit may not be for you. )

 

Watch this space

Coming soon: A real, original blog post from yours truly, but until then, DON’T WATCH THIS VIDEO!