My Thoughts « The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

Category : My Thoughts

Figuring Out Social Media

Filed Under : My Thoughts,Technology by Douglas Bell

Jul.8,2010

Cross-posted from the Tech tAUk Blog

Long-time viewers/readers know that there’s one person in the tech industry whom I idolize. No, it’s not Steve Jobs. Not Bill Gates. Not even the genius creators behind The Joy of Tech. It is New York Times Technology Columnist and CNBC Contributor David Pogue.

I idolize him because when it comes to covering the latest trends and gadgets in tech, Pogue does it right. He cuts through all the complex specifications and marketing hype that the tech industry spits out and goes straight to the point. And on his videos that he produces for CNBC and the NYT website, he throws in a healthy dose of humor to help him say his piece.

Pogue’s column in today’s paper, “For Those Facebook Left Behind,” is a very well-written article for those who are still unfamiliar with all of this social networking stuff. Sure, social networking has become second nature for those of us who use it all of the time. Heck, my first instinct when I read this article was to tweet about it, but I stopped myself when I realized the irony of using Twitter to link to an article that was written for people who have no idea what Twitter is.

But even so, I would highly recommend reading the article, as you may still learn a few things about social networks that you aren’t using. I for one have never touched LinkedIn or Foursquare and really had no idea what those services were for, partly because I’ve never bothered to check them out myself, before reading this article. Or maybe you’ve got some friends or relatives who are still in the dark about social media. Or if nothing else, watch the embedded video. It’s quite entertaining to see David Pogue in a dress.

If that didn’t grab your attention, well…

Review: Transmit 4

Filed Under : My Thoughts,Technology,Web Development by Douglas Bell

Jul.2,2010

If you’re like me, and you make a living as a web developer, you rely on FTP clients. Ah, yes, these programs whose sole purpose it is to connect to a server and allow you to copy files between it and your desktop. Seems easy, right? Turns out it’s anything but.

Problem #1 is that the Mac OS X Finder does not support FTP, hence demonstrating the need for a client. But even if the Finder did, it would not be adequate. People who really use FTP clients aren’t merely managing files that they’ve created on their computer; they’re uploading files to the server from their computer and downloading files from the server to their computer. En masse. (There’s a reason it’s called “File Transfer Protocol,” after all.) The Mac Finder simply does not give you what you need to make that work efficiently, even if it did support FTP.

The long-time king of Mac FTP clients has been Panic’s Transmit, which I’m pretty sure was the first FTP client to implement the two-column browser, implementing a blatantly obvious label of “your stuff” versus “their stuff” to differentiate them. No longer was it necessary to have multiple windows to find your files or have to drag them on- and off-screen.

The problem was that the Panic folks let a lot of time lapse between versions. Transmit 3.0, a major improvement to their software, was released in February 2005 amidst much fanfare and many awards… and then sat there for over five years. Other Mac FTP clients with snazzier interfaces and newer features emerged over time. Even I switched earlier this year to Flow when I got it as part of the last MacHeist bundle. (The MacHeist Bundle page for Flow took direct jabs at the staleness of Transmit 3, declaring “1998 called, it wants its file transfer app back.”)

About two months ago, Panic finally roared back onto the scene with the release of Transmit 4. Boy, did they make up for lost time! This new release of Transmit is packed with features and refinements that launch it at least five years ahead of any other FTP client out there today.
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Building Bridges

Filed Under : My Thoughts,Student Government by Douglas Bell

Jun.26,2010

I would just like to ask every member of AU’s Undergraduate Senate, every member of AU’s campus media, and every student at American who has ever been critical of or pessimistic about the AU Student Government to watch this video.

This is what Student Government is really about.

My Six Favorite New Features in WordPress 3.0

Filed Under : My Thoughts,Web Development by Douglas Bell

Jun.25,2010

WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” was released eight days ago to much fanfare. Certainly for me, I don’t think I’ve been quite as excited for any other major WordPress release as I was for 3.0. Now granted, at first glance, 3.0 doesn’t actually look that different from 2.9, at least in terms of what meets the eye. Quite frankly, WordPress 2.7, which introduced the modern interface for the WordPress admin screens, had much more impact in terms of new features that were apparent to the eye. By contrast, most of the new features in WordPress 3.0 address more under-the-hood tweaks and improvements, but collectively, they pack a punch.

(As a side-note, the funniest new feature that strikes me is the addition of a filter called capital_P_dangit() that forces any instance of “WordPress” being written without the P being capitalized gets automatically fixed to what it should be. I’d try to demonstrate, but you know, the filter would eliminate that effort!)

After working with WordPress 3.0 very closely for the past week, and also playing with the Release Candidates for a few weeks before that, here is my list of my six favorite new features in WordPress 3.0.
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Riding Out the Snowpocalypse

Filed Under : My Thoughts,Washington DC by Douglas Bell

Feb.7,2010

Warning: I don’t really know where I’m going with this blog post, so bear with me. But I do know that I wanted to get one out, so here goes.

I lived through my first ever snowfall last December. Washington, DC had its first snow of the season on Saturday, December 5, and I actually got to be out in it–while the snow was falling–for the first time in my life. It was certainly an interesting experience, as I watched from my dorm room and trekked out in it briefly.

I flew home for Winter Break on Tuesday, December 15, rather late considering that my final final was the Friday before. But just three days later the huge nor’easter became the big news, hitting DC with a blizzard that dumped a foot to a foot and a half of snow on DC, crippling the Metro, canceling flights, etc. And thus my primary line of winter break smalltalk became about how lucky I was to make it out of DC unscathed before the storm hit.

Turns out that storm was just a warm-up act. In what has been dubbed as either the “snowpocalypse” or “snowmageddon” (I prefer the format, President Obama apparently prefers the latter), American University received 27.5 inches of the white stuff, compared with just 16 inches during the mid-December storm. This in addition to the 6 inches we had already received last Saturday (1/30) and about two inches we received overnight on Tuesday (2/2).

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow last Tuesday and I’m going to begrudgingly give him some credit this time around.
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