Blog
Gravatar: The Global Online Icon/Photo
Not too long ago, a client at work was wondering what kind of options they could have for showing buddy icons in their blog comments. I looked around, but didn't really like any of the default plug-ins. Well, one struck my interest a bit, but the client wasn't looking for a third-party solution. What I found was Gravatar, a website that wants to host a visual identifier for you to be used anywhere online. It's a simple concept, but I was of course worried with setting up and managing another service, another plugin for my software, etc. Of course, the second question is whether it will ever be used widely enough to become a standard? At the time, I had never heard of it, but that didn't necessarily mean it was unsuccessful.
Gravatar recently showed up on my radar a couple days ago when looking at my WordPres blog. The feeds from WordPress were mentioning it a number of times, and after a quick look it looks like the folks behind WordPress (a company called Automattic) have acquired Gravatar. They were also outlining how they were planning on integrating it with the WordPress.com services and its built-in user avatar system.
Even more interesting was how WordPress and Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg demoed the simplicity and brilliance of the Gravatar service on his blog. He put the Gravatar icons in his blog's comments with just four simple lines of PHP! WordPress already stores the e-mail address of the commenter in the system, and your Gravatar account is tied to your e-mail. WordPress just sends a non-reversible MD5 string to Gravatar requesting the avatar associated with that e-mail address. There's no e-mail addresses transferred over the Internet, but you still have an icon/photo based on your e-mail address that can be easily used by any blog. Pretty neat!
Another interesting thing about Automattic is that it is one of a handful of recent, open-source friendly companies that has no real headquarters. Companies like Mozilla, Lullabot, and others like Automattic are just a group of developers that have no offices but instead do development from their homes and only meet a couple times per year, if ever. In today's world of instant Internet communication, this is an interesting and potentially cheap way to run a company, I suppose.
Cool Rides At The MOA? Maybe
A couple years ago, a favorite band of mine announced that the rides at the Mall Of America were lame. All of us were like, "Of course!" What was once called Knott's Camp Snoopy has always had a dozen or more rather tame rides. The best was a nice flume ride with two drops, the first one in the dark. Also, the "Mystery Mine Ride" was an IMAX screen with chairs that moved in synch with the movie. I'd been on a couple fun rides in that machine. A year or so ago, it was renamed the Park at MOA and has remained pretty lame. But, it seems that may change.
This spring, the Park at MOA will be transformed into Nickelodeon Universe, and there's a bunch of interesting work going on it currently. Here's what I've found as far as information.
The above photo is the former location of the Mystery Mine Ride. This whole section of the Park has all been gutted, it seems. The IMAX theater of the Mine Ride may still be back behind those doorways on the right, but I'm not sure of that. Here's what's directly to the right below the Pepsi Ripsaw coaster hill:
Most of the area has been newly cemented with a line area, so the loading for the ride may be here. Over in the center of the first photo is the preview of the new coaster, which now bears the name of Nickelodeon's biggest star, Spongebob:
The Rock Bottom Plunge, I believe, is a roller coaster that is supposed to even go upside down. It looks like there may also be a bit of water involved as well, but we'll see.
The other ride I noticed being worked on seems to be located directly in the center of the park. The fountain and little streams going to it are at least gone for now, as you can see:
This attraction will go straight up like the Power Tower at Valleyfair, I guess. With these additions, it will make the recreational area of the Mall of America a somewhat exciting place to be.
In other Mall of America Phase II news, there is finally some changes happening in the location of the expansion. Here's a couple snapshots I got:
In the second photo, there's a number of dumpsters, although I don't know what they're full of. Towards the far right of the second photo is the dirt and machines where they may be digging in order to start building. However, by all plans I've seen, that area seems to be the area assigned to a Great Wolf Lodge hotel/waterpark connected to the Mall of America. (I expect the Waterpark of America is already beginning to shut down.)
I've been unable to find any concrete information on when or if the Mall of America Phase II expansion will happen, but since I work nearby, I guess you can expect some updates when I find somehting.
Local Whiners Disappointed With New 35W Bridge Proposal
This past week, Mn/DOT announced the plans for a new bridge to span the Mississippi River in the place where the 35W bridge collapsed. Below is probably the most pleasing design due to the rounded support pillars at each end of the river. There are other slight variations to the lighting and supports of the bridge that are still being decided.
A quick Google News search to find the plans of the bridge found a lot of complaining about the design, which, of course, is what crowds do best, especially after a tragedy like this. Here's my thoughts (mostly taken from reading the Mn/DOT Press Release and this Pioneer Press article):
- The bridge looks nice. The subtle curves make it just a bit nicer than the usual freeway bridge. Plus, of course, that's also a structural benefit.
- The bridge complements the surrounding area well, including the neighboring 10th St./Cedar Ave. Bridge.
- Of course, all the plans stress safety, including sensors built into the bridge to warn of problems as well as a design that will keep the bridge standing if one part fails.
According to a New York Times article, news/talk pundit Don Shelby says, "It almost looks like a causeway to me. It’s just a way to get from one side to the other." Excuse me? Of course it is! Did you ever look at the old bridge and go, "That's one fine work of art." It looks twice as good as the old bridge, so why all that complaining? According to a number of other articles, the vocal populace seems to have many concerns whether Mn/DOT and the design firm are doing their jobs well enough. If you ask me, the handling of the collapse proves the agencies responsible can handle it well.
Sure, it's not an inspiring and standout memorial of the events of the bridge collapse, but is that really such a bad thing? I guess if we want the evening of August 1st, 2007 to be the defining moment of this generation, then we should get someone like Norman Foster to design an inspiring masterpiece. If we did that, I think the Minneapolis downtown river area would be very overcrowded This tragedy, in my opinion, is not the definition of the Twin Cities and who we are. This bridge will serve as a gentle reminder to all of us and will, more importantly, transport thousands of people safely to and from Minneapolis every day.
On a side note, why are people fine with spending to $243 million (or more like $393 million including collapse clean-up and related construction) on this project when they believe that $800+ million is definitely not worth it to connect Minneapolis and Saint Paul with a light rail line. Sure, it's a more expensive project, but it's a much bigger project and helps the Twin Cities much more than this bridge ever will. Plus, if we don't build a light rail line in the next decade, we will be turning 94 into 10 lanes in about a decade.
MetroTransit's GoTo Card Finally Out of Beta!
And people thought that Windows Vista took forever. About four years ago, I saw a green GoTo Card reader on a MetroTransit bus and asked a bus driver what that was. He said they were introducing a new kind of SuperSaver in time for the launch of the Hiawatha Light Rail line. Just this month, the GoTo Card has finally come out for public use, even though I've been using one for most of a year.
The system works much better than the flimsy paper SuperSaver passes they've been using for a long time. Although they say the GoTo Cards will cost $5, right now they'll give 'em to you for free if you put $20 on them. Like the SuperSavers, every $10 you buy comes with $1 of free value on it to encourage use over change and bills. The card just needs a quick swipe over the pad to transfer data, so it's nice and quick. You can reload the card with value via any Light Rail fare machine or via the GoTo Card Website. Plus, it can also handle monthly passes as well. For the last 9 months or so, I've been using the card, and maybe for the past 6 months, I've been using the monthly pass without a hitch even though nobody officially said I could as a part of the early test group. ;-)
I thought that they spent some money doing some kinda fun ideas of ads to put on the light rail stations. These ads are stuck underfoot on the light rail platform and liken the GoTo Card to other common items. Too bad the website is so boring (and only viewable over an SSL connection for no reason).
Don't Tune That Gibson!
Check this out! According to this post from Engadget, Gibson Guitars has developed a version of their electrics that require no manual tuning at all. For an extra $899, it has a set of pickups that are solely for tuning the guitar. The guitar can be tuned in a few seconds by pulling out the Master Control knob. It looks like the pickups take the tone to a computer and it tightens the strings within a built-in motor system. More information is also available, and here's my friend Mel's thoughts:
Gibson will start selling a self-tuning guitar. At first I thought this was cool. No more lame guys who desperately try (and fail) to be witty while they wrangle their axe into harmonic shape! Hooray! Maybe we'll be able to forever nix "so how y'all doin?" from stage repetoire.
On the other hand, what a bummer to take out this relational step between a musician and an instrument! I've tried to draw a proper comparison (robotic dog? online boyfriend?) and none of them quite fit. I know not everyone has a bond with their instrument. But I do. Willie does. BB King does. Clapton does. Tuning is the most common opportunity you have to feed the relationship. To care for it, pay it due attention, get it to it's best form, and then work together to play the most frickin' beautiful song you know. Work for it a little! Just a little!
Yes, It's True
As Joe Bowar says about a household member, "You act as if Dan just joined your religion." That's not true. But it's pretty exciting.
Just in case you haven't heard, I today purchased a MacBook Pro. It's a first-time Mac purchase for me, but it's been a long time coming. We'll see how much I like it, but so far, it's been great.
The New Bath & Body Works
I've once or twice been near to these stores because my sisters were in there. Well, I recently noticed their stores have a slick new look:
The best part, though, is that they now have proper government-mandated warning on the front of these stores:
Know Your Google Readers
With the Internet and the aggressive caching of data by almost everyone, it's hard to measure your visitors accurately. For example, Google may only check your feed once, but any number of people may be reading your site via Google Reader or iGoogle or other services. At first, they announced that you could see the amount of individual subscribers in your server access logs, but who wants to go fishing for that information? Recently, another great system of the mother company, Google Webmaster Tools, has started displaying the data as well. Check this out:
If you run a website, you should give Google Webmaster Tools a look. It'll give you information about how often Google is indexing your site, what keywords are performing for you, who Google sees as linking to you, and many other tools and information.
Google Presentations Now Live
Login to your Google Docs area (formerly known as Google Docs and Spreadsheets), and you can create a presentation! Now there's a free PowerPoint-ish program right on the web. I haven't tested it out yet, but it sounds interesting.
Also, to promote Docs, they came up with this kinda cheesy but also fun little video to promote Google Docs:
Keeping Spammers Away with Third-Party Tools
As anyone who runs a website these days knows, spam on the internet is becoming more and more of a problem. It's hard to keep up with it on your own. That's why you don't do it on your own. Here are a couple free services to install on your website to keep the spam away.
Akismet is my favorite tool and I use it on almost all my sites that use WordPress or Drupal. Content submitted to your server gets passed to Akismet's servers and their service says it's good or not. On WordPress, the spam doesn't even show up in the comment moderation queue. On Drupal, I have it set so you have to approve them, but it makes it easier to tell which ones are spam or not. Also, they have built in the opportunity to teach the Akismet servers as well, for you can after the fact mark a spam as "ham" or notify them that a good comment was actually spam. In the future, Akismet's filtering systems will take it into account.
reCAPTCHA is a newer service that I have not used as much, but it seems to be promising as well. (A CAPTCHA is one of those images where you have to type the letters in to get past them. It's supposed to tell if you're a computer or not.) Instead of giving a CAPTCHA that is easy for a modern computer to read via OCR or providing one that's so hard to read that not even humans can do it half the time (like Ticketmaster, Google, and vBulletin do), this system uses words that OCR can't read. The reCAPTCHA team out at Carnegie Mellon University has been digitizing books via OCR document scanning, and reCAPTCHA is words that the character recognition system could not recognize. They slightly skew them and draw a line through them, but they are much more readable than most CAPTCHAs. When you visit a reCAPTCHA-enabled page, you get two words from their database, one which the system knows and the other which it is unsure about. If you get the first one right, it'll assume you're a human and got the second one. After double-checking the second word with a number of other reCAPTCHA users, it knows it is correct, thus verifying humanness and helping to digitize books. I haven't used it on any of my sites, but a couple phpBB installs here at work were having trouble with spammers registering, and added the reCAPTCHA system to the login form via their plug-ins page totally took away the user registration problem immediately. (They have plug-ins for WordPress, Drupal, MediaWiki and many more as well.)
The best thing about these tools is that you don't have to manage them. Just a couple minutes of adding some code and registering for access gets you all these features for free. But by far the best benefit is what you only get when hundreds and thousands of websites are using these systems: a look at the global spam systems and a better chance to block them. For example, I could run a blacklist of sites just for my WordPress comments, but that would be a huge undertaking. Akismet already caught over 7 million spam today, so they have a good idea of what computers are most likely sending spam. They maintain the blacklists and other filtering for me, and out of the goodness of their heart, it's free for personal users. In the same way, reCAPTCHA also blocks sites that are already sending too much spam their way so I don't have to worry about it. Joining these big guys in fighting spam is the way to make sure our blogs stay safe from spam and also helps others who sign up for the program too.