Dan Wilson’s Blog

Playing with Google Map‘s feature, My Maps, I pinpointed my years living in Denver.

Saturday, 11:40 am.

My posts have dropped off recently, but for a reason. I am sprinting through a side project, code-named Rat Race, that will be under the Liquid Mongoose umbrella. I hope to have something out there on the internets within the next one to two weeks, so stay tuned…

The Google Gadget I wrote is (finally) in the directoy listing on Google. It can be found here (the link sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t, just refresh until it shows up). This is the picture slideshow you see on the side bar of my blog and at my front page. Enjoy!

TechCrunch Hates on Blu-ray. Sarah Lacy also draws on some parallels in the demise of satellite radio, another technology I have a hard time believing will work. Post also touches on some points I missed in my earlier anti-Blu-ray rant, most notably that fighting a competitor cost the whole market’s potential.

Sunday, 9:18am

Saturday, 1:34pm

– Post From My iPhone

– Updated formatting 02-15-09

VentureBeat is reporting WinMo 7 will be released in 2010. I liked WinMo 5 when I used it on a Palm Treo 700W a few years back. The hardware could have been beefier for a better experience. It had a lot of functionality, integrated seamlessly with Exchange/Outlook, and had what seemed like infinite customizations and configuration options (ahem, Apple iPhone). The media capabilities on WinMo 5 were good enough for airplane travel, but not iPod-easy enough for day-to-day use. It lacked sexiness, but I could get a lot done with it.

I give it praise, because if I were to leave my iPhone for another, WinMo would have been on the short list. Operative words being ‘would have’. Knowing the next version is at least a year away, it is obvious that Microsoft can’t move fast enough anymore in this (and many other) arenas. Internet Explorer is another example I have touched on before, and I will revisit those same arguments and new developments with IE8′s market position in a future post. The Office Suite is still using a naming convention that includes the year number. The only other market I can think of off the top of my head that does that is the auto industry. And its web initiatives? Another rant for another day, but they seem to re-brand their sites and properties more often than release relevant upgrades. Silverlight? Would have been a good idea 6 years ago. You know, before Flash was on more than 95% of browsers and Java 90%.

But getting back to WinMo, Microsoft is trying to use its OS pattern in the mobile phone world. That couldn’t be more off the mark, especially with today’s competition. The iPhone is getting a couple of firmware improvements a year with a yearly major release. Android is in its infancy, but seems to be on top of updates and constant incremental improvements. Both of these platforms are also a breeze to write applications for. Doing so for WinMo is really difficult from what I gathered looking into it a few years back, and there is no distribution model. This is a real tragedy, because WinMo could have made easy app development and distribution a capability years ago, before iPhone and Android were even rumors. Also coming along is the Palm Pre, which is too early to tell, but I can say this: Palm did more to refresh their OS from the previous version to the current than Microsoft had done since Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. I would mention Blackberry, but after the train wreck of the Storm, they have a long way to go playing catchup when they are a distant 4th in the buzz race.

So how far is WinMo being left behind? Think about iPhone, Android, and the Palm Pre as they exist now. Now think it is 12-18 months from now. Even if WinMo could catch up (unlikely), it will already be another generation or two behind by then.

1:48pm

As our government is about to drop roughly $800,000,000,000.00 on an economic stimulus, I thought I would drop my thoughts on how we should spend (and not spend) public money on a green agenda. A green economy will create jobs, and increase productivity. These items are in line with my own interests, but a common theme among them is getting cars off roads, and the U.S. off of oil. A lot of problems can be attributed to our addiction to foreign oil: trade imbalance, world stability, pollution, and congestion just to name a few.

• Wind Power – A few billion on this is a smart investment. Wind turbines don’t require fuel once built, just nominal maintenance. An injection of scale into the industry could also make it competitive with its fossil fuel burning competitors. Also, we need laws prohibiting nimby-ism regarding obstructing views. I could maybe sympathize with compensation for lost land value when views are lost.
• Solar – Same story as wind, but this diversifies our green energy. Solar also has chances of lucky efficiency breakthroughs given enough research and large scale production. Likewise, same anti-nimby laws for mounting on people’s roofs (if possible) against HOAs and covenant controlled neighborhoods.
• Nuclear – For all its energy consumption, the northeast lacks much open space, wind, and sun. Nuclear could fill that gap, especially since we have settled for a single repository for nuclear waste.
• Smart Grid/New Lines – This is needed for the above three to work. High winds and scorching sun aren’t always close to the existing grid and population centers, so new power highways need to be built. Also, I am willing to bet power management software could be made to optimize what we already have.
• No New Roads or Highways – From what I understand, it is a lot easier for politicians to get money for new roads and highways than to improve or widen existing highways. It was this very structure that created suburban sprawl, and creates incentives to buy houses further and further from jobs. This needs to be absolutely reversed. It needs to be impossible or nearly impossible to get federal money to build new highways.
• Roads Improvements Within Close Proximity of City Centers – This is where road improvement money needs to be spent. The top 100 cities of the U.S. should be getting almost all of the road improvement money, and only for improvements within 10-20 miles of their CBDs, distance varying by size of city. This has a huge impact for productivity gains, wasted fuel, and pollution. Cities with a million people or more can cut down on commute times with wider highways and thoroughfares in their cores, giving a much larger populations more time to work and less wasted time sitting in their cars.
• Traffic Optimization – At what speed are cars least efficient? Zero. Every stop light and highway on-ramp should be fitted with cameras and wireless networking. All these would be networked to a computer that manages traffic on a macro and micro level. This could clear congestion on intersections when one direction is stacked up 3 blocks while the other direction has 3 cars waiting. And driving around at 3a.m. while the only car on the road could lead to no red lights.
• No Plugin Car Infrastructure – This is a waste of time and money – for now. It is years away before it is even needed, and by then technological advances may render it useless. For all we know, in 5-10 years there could be a car that charges fully from a wall outlet in 5 minutes. Once there are enough electric cars on the road, the market will take care of this on its own.
• Kill Corn Ethanol – The best way to do this is kill farm subsidies, kill ethanol subsidies, and move the primary caucuses from Iowa to somewhere that doesn’t make corn. Ofcourse, moving the caucuses to Idaho would probably result in millions of dollars for potato and potato ethanol subsidies (sigh).
• Save Tesla – This company could very well die while we continue to shell out billions for the Detroit automakers. This seems like a no-brainer. Give them how ever many hundred millions they want to build a factory and produce sub $40k all electric sedans within 3 years. Also pay for relocation assistance for Detroit autoworkers to move to California and work for Tesla. I think our country can have a viable auto industry, but it does not include the big three.
• Higher MPG – This needs to get really high. Like 50+MPG high within 10 years. If you are an automaker and want access to the largest car market in the world, you will find a way. And no more exemptions for trucks and SUVs on the fleet. If a regular driver’s license allows you to drive the truck or SUV, then it counts against the fleet’s aggregate MPG.
• Pay for Trains – Top 100 cities should be given grants to build or improve upon existing trains or subways. One to five billion a piece, depending on size of city.
• Bus Over Service Pilot Program – This is just an experiment, but try upping a busing system in a medium sized city to ridiculous. Have every line run every 10 minutes for 6-12 months and look at the results. It could teach us the service tipping point where busing could become a feasible alternative for most Americans. Also, install credit card swipers on every bus.
• Telecommute Tax Incentives – In a few years, I don’t see why anyone would need to go to an office. Let’s get there quicker with broadband investments for cities (not rural areas, that is a huge waste of money with minuscule ROI) and tax incentives for companies to keep their employees at home. The government could start by setting up telecommuting for its own employees.

Even as I write this, I know a lot of it is out of the question, because our country is really that broken. The coming two years will probably see vast highways built, connecting exurb communities to other exurb communities, while our cities cores’ highway systems (many of which are older that me) decaying and congesting further and further. Tesla will die, the big three will become welfare in all but name, and we will continue to export all our wealth to the Saudis. Fastracks will still be short of money, and I will not be able to take a train to work in my lifetime. The national debt will eventually cause the dollar to crash, and all we will have to show for it is the Green Valley Ranch Expressway.

Please offer me some hope in the comments, or share your other ideas on what the government should do.

I have ran across some blogs with best satellite and street map view gotchas in the past, but urlesque has a good, filtered collection of the top 10 funny street view moments.

*Extra credit if you can identify what Viking Quest is in the comments (without googling)

[via Neatorama]

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism shares my effort to try to embrace Twitter, but also shares my concern and disdain for it. She even makes 1984 comparisons, and explores its relationship with our short attention span culture. She preludes to a post I want to write about Twitter as a phenomenon, but for all the wrong reasons. Good read, check it out.

A-Rod admits using drugs – The Denver Post.

This is a real disappointment to me. I have ranted and raved and raged against Bonds for this same thing. I did read an article several months back, however, that gave me hope that A-Rod would break Bond’s record since his trajectory made it more than likely. It would have been redeeming to the sport and American athletics as a whole had the record been wiped out by a clean and pure player. Now that this is shattered, I hope the sport pays dearly for it. The sport is a farce. Not a display of athletic achievement, but of artificial chemical engineering of humans.

Saturday afternoon.

– Post From My iPhone

Delayed again. At what point will we admit that there are just some people that are incapable of absorbing this kind of public announcement? You know these people. They can hear something a hundred times telling them that “this does affect you. Yes you!”, and they brush it off. Nothing they hear will be a cause to action, even being called out specifically by name. Don’t believe me? Then you have never gone through the disembarking process on a cruise ship.

No matter what public education campaign the government pushes forward, some people will miss this boat. They will turn on there TV one day, and wonder (ironically) why Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? isn’t on and all they see is static. I would guess as high as 10% of the people affected. The only way to get these people to take action and get converters is to take away the boob tube for a night. With nothing else to do, they will get wise real quick.

Bell Tower up for another review, developer interviewed by Westword. Not feeling the love for the Lower Downtown Design Review Board. The cash money:

WW: Why did the LDDRB reject the proposal?

BG: What happened with me is just a travesty as far as the development process goes. We had our meetings with the city planning department, where we laid out something very unusual as it relates to living space. And all they say for eleven months is it’s too massive, even though it would be the smallest residential tower built in Denver. It has less than half the footprint of One Lincoln Place.

Eleven months went by at a cost of a half-million dollars in design and modeling fees. Then they say to us, what’s causing this building to be so massive is your square footage is over by 18 percent. Within each unit would be a great deal of atrium space, which means one floor stacked on top of the next. So the planning department was going to count the free space in the atrium toward the 7,500-square-foot footprint. They wanted me to get rid of the two-story spaces. But you need to make it as iconic on the inside as it is on the outside.

After the first rejection, the first thing that came to mind was conflict of interests. Apartments face one of four ways, so 25% of these Lodo-ites sitting on the board has to lose their mountain view if the tower is built. I’m just saying.

[via Denver Infill]

Today the Denver Broncos schedule for 2009 was presented to me, and I had to reflect back on my earlier prediction about their season. My gut reaction was to say that the Broncos are in trouble. This list of teams is very tough:

• Kansas City
• Oakland
• San Diego
• Cleveland
• Pittsburgh
• New England
• Dallas
• N.Y. Giants
• Baltimore
• Cincinnati
• Indianapolis
• Philadelphia
• Washington

As I looked at this list longer, however, something familiar jumped out at me. Here is another list of opponents, with common elements in orange.

• NY Jets
• San Diego
• Buffalo
• Cincinnati
• Cleveland
• Dallas
• Miami
• Washington
• Indianapolis
• Philadelphia
• Baltimore
• Pittsburgh
• N.Y. Giants

Those of you who know your divisions well already know what team this is: the New England Patriots. The year: 2007. When those very New England Patriots went 16-0, setting the following records:

• Most TDs in a season (75)
• Most points in a season (589)
• Most total yards and passing yards for the season (6,580 and 4,731 respectively)

All this was accomplished with one Josh McDaniels as the offensive coordinator. He is now the head coach of the Denver Broncos, with potentially even more offensive weapons at his disposal. This revelation helped justify my earlier prediction in light of this difficult schedule. The Broncos could very well go 9-7. If that defense could just get a little better…

Ok, so I was wrong. But I will be the first to admit it. However, I wasn’t as far off as I had thought after watching the first half. Score-wise, I was off by a factor of two. Looking at Roethlisberger’s numbers, and discounting that last drive, it was pretty abysmal, as predicted. Not as bad as his last Super Bowl, but he didn’t win either game, his defense did. I am not surprised by that. Overall, I am bummed, as I was rooting for the Cardinals to pull it off. Yet another championship for fans who can’t shut the hell up and learn to be humble (ahem, Boston). And get those nasty, stinky, wet towels the @$&^ out of my face before someone has to get hurt.

Most every one of us has done it. It’s called the vanity search. You go to Google, and search for your name to see what comes up. It can be exciting, and can give you a perspective on your online presence. Or, at least that is how I imagine it. For some of us, this is not possible. We have really common names. If you are a Smith or Johnson (#1 and #2), forget about it unless you have a one in a million first name (~2.5 million, actually, for Smith). Wilson comes in at about #8. So why are we, the commonly named folk, not allowed to partake in this vein ritual? Someone else inevitably wins Google search algorithm roulette with a profession in sports, entertainment, literature, medicine, law, or any other highly linked or directory-happy profession.

But what about your wink, pipl, zoominfo or even better Facebook or MySpace? That all depends on where you have lived and how long you have lived there. If you have bounced around a lot from city to city, where does one search for you? Big cities also render these services useless, as there are hundreds or thousands of Smiths, Johnsons, and Wilsons in major metro areas. Even small to medium sized towns can have a disproportionately large number of any last name with a common ancestral background. Profession and education could help filter down, but lack thereof on your online profiles can also filter you out.

Maybe people with common last names can take comfort in their option for more online anonymity. If a John Smith, or Kevin Rose, desires not to be found on the internets, they can easily be non-existant. Much like living in New York or Chicago, you can just keep your head down, keep yourself to yourself, and be just another brick in the wall. But some of us are trying to build an online presence. Trying to make a name for ourselves. I am beyond trying to make a brand out of myself, and working towards making a religion around myself . We have no option but to hustle our way online, thinking SEO, and having to be exponentially more loud and nasty just to stick. And it is unfair. Uniques have the option to easily hide, commons must struggle to be seen, and only at the expense of fellow commoners.

I hope to look back at this post in a few years and say: “The Semantic Web sure solved that one”, but I am afraid it will not. Already, suggested searches are leading to narrowing information into niches of a certain topic (read: person), not filter results. For example, if you go to ask.com, and do a search of Kobe Bryant, you get related searches of “Kobe Bryant Girlfriend”, “Kobe Bryant Biography”, and “Lakers”. What if you are looking for information on Kobe Bryant, the electrician in Houston. A search for “Kobe Bryant Houston” will have more to do with the Houston Rockets than electric sockets. Even doing the Google trick of subtraction, “Kobe Bryant -basketball”, which says “give me the words Kobe and Bryant without the word basketball”, will give you nothing but links related to Kobe Bryant, the basketball player. My point is this: search is best at finding what people want, not what you don’t want. Until the web is self describing enough to say what something isn’t, us commoners won’t be able to find ourselves anytime soon.

Super Bowl Sunday

– Post From My iPhone