Another reason to love Aardvark

If you don’t already use Aardvark, the worlds best question answering system, you should. Someone on the website will take the time to answer whatever fool question pops into your mind in the middle of the night when you just had a rather strange dream and know the question will bother you until you do something about it. Of course, that’s not a quality unique to Aardvark; when I used to use Yahoo! Answers I had success getting answers to questions about Spider Pigs, or how to contact my local superhero, but Aardvark is much quicker most of the time. The example that prompted this particular post is an answer from someone clarifying…the dietary habbits of centaurs for me, of all things. It’s reassuring to know I’m not the only person in the world who spends time thinking about this sort of stuff:

Centaurs do require more calories in their diet, however due to having a mostly-human digestive tract (The lower intestines are more horse than human in nature), the centaur is an omnivore.  Additionally, due to the fact that they are sentient, they are able to cook meals, also contributing to a full diet.  I’m not sure where to find centaur information.  Don’t you have a local learnatorium?

Chat Catcher is going away, Backtype Connect Can Replace It

Those of you who were using Chat Catcher: it’s going to be shut down, shortly. I just got an email in my inbox this morning. Unfortunately, it didn’t have chat catcher, or a domain I would associate with Chat Catcher, in the to: header, so I at first took it for spam. The front page of the website doesn’t seem to say anything about the impending shutdown, either. I discovered, after getting the email, that it was discussed in a blog. Every single service I use has a blog. I already read hundreds of blogs. It’s unreasonable to expect every single user of a service to even know the blog exists, never mind read it. Perhaps, if I had been notified via email, I would have donated in time to save the service; but that never happened. The owner says that the other services she runs will be remaining up. Uh, Shannon? Based on the lack of professionalism shown in your shut-down announcement, I don’t intend to begin using anything you run in the future. Couldn’t you at least send the notice from admin@chatcatcher.com or something? I doubt Chat Catcher users know you from John Q. Public; I’m not even absolutely positive that you’re employed by Chat Catcher! I wonder how many people will block the shut-down note as spam? I whitelist the domains of services I use, and I would expect that announcements about those services would, at minimum, come from the domain the service uses! As well, why didn’t you take the tiny amount of time required to include a one sentence note pointing your former users to an alternative service? Thankfully, I remembered reading about Backtype Connect on Tech Crunch several months ago. If I hadn’t, I’d be completely lost. A Google search for chatcatcher alternative returns nothing useful. If you’re a user as lost as me: backtype connect does everything Chat Catcher did and more, and it has a wordpress plugin, too.

For the record, the email I got follows:

Delivered-To: samuel@interfree.ca
Received: by 10.220.46.149 with SMTP id j21cs407755vcf;
Tue, 5 May 2009 12:15:40 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.216.18.205 with SMTP id l55mr472962wel.194.1241550939079;
Tue, 05 May 2009 12:15:39 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from gv-out-0910.google.com ([172.21.170.4])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id q9si2011798gve.2.2009.05.05.12.15.37;
Tue, 05 May 2009 12:15:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 172.21.170.4 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of
shannon.whitley@gmail.com) client-ip=172.21.170.4;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 172.21.170.4 is neither permitted
nor denied by domain of shannon.whitley@gmail.com) smtp.mail=shannon.whitley@gmail.com; dkim=pass
(test mode) header.i=@gmail.com
Received: by gv-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id s4so270070gve.40
for ; Tue, 05 May 2009 12:15:36 -0700 (PDT)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:sender:received:date
-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type;
bh=oZppK+v9zU0uC+MgEZhL9usUKBbyNNX6EgARLnt572g=;
b=ng85g0Z5hV2o4t/EPLnRR+sh7PobhHhcCZ6Ot2Lk4WJ72VIYhBLMs1SPVEkW8yg5Y+
wUh4CJ85usIRFmeYXNzp/TPn3faZzc+nfLW7HLx1CrZ8MFmsO8t+LabKkbh10HD0Eb87
cmMiKqLtOhKA6OtHkHTVP9bZ6ayOMd10a6+EA=
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;
d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
h=mime-version:sender:date:x-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject
:from:to:content-type;
b=eD4v7bhcyK4GiytnC7nS+clvHB2NfEdD1TR9Seh55OHWOvtR0g4UqPBAJ8CqaZfghh
FQrGAv4kLq7CmFj0nL0/gPALeLAefRRPZa8+2uxoaU+N/YSBwnlKUgW1Ckp0BTe0kYFW
mc384+rXwAJumoiSJ6PRKKfU6lQhulOKoPgVY=
MIME-Version: 1.0
Sender: shannon.whitley@gmail.com
Received: by 10.220.97.1 with SMTP id j1mr689432vcn.90.1241550909882; Tue, 05
May 2009 12:15:09 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 12:15:09 -0700
X-Google-Sender-Auth: 2440a623e9fd595c
Message-ID: <4e4a64f20905051215r6a0837a1v6da09d33aa237bb5@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Chat Catcher Shutting Down
From: Shannon Whitley
To: swhitley@whitleymedia.com
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=0016e6480854f471f104692f18de

–0016e6480854f471f104692f18de
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

As Twitter has grown, so has the volume of data that needs to be processed
by Chat Catcher. I don’t have the resources to keep up with it any longer.

Thank you to everyone who pitched in last week when I requested donations to
keep Chat Catcher running. Unfortunately, it just isn’t enough and the
server costs are quickly mounting. Within the next few days I will turn off
Chat Catcher completely. All donations will be returned.

If you are running the WordPress plugin or the PHP script, you will not need
to take any action. You will still have the comments that were posted to
your blog. If you happen to be displaying the RSS feed on your site, you
will want to remove it.

Chat Catcher represents a huge investment of my time and money. I am not
taking this action lightly. I am also sorry to disappoint the many people
who were happily using the service.

I do not plan to provide an open source version of Chat Catcher. It’s just
not that type of application. I would be open to a purchase of the code or
a sponsorship of the service if someone wants to step in as a white knight.
(Just so you know, I am not holding my breath.)

I will continue to work on my other projects which are not in danger of
folding. My Tweeple, Twit Connect, Real-time Chatterbox (and more) will
continue to operate and will continue to be improved. See
http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/ for details.

Thank you for all your support and help. I wish you the best.

– Shannon

–0016e6480854f471f104692f18de
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

As Twitter has grown, so has the volume of data that ne=
eds to be processed by Chat Catcher. =A0I don't have the resources to k=
eep up with it any longer.

Thank you to everyo=
ne who pitched in last week when I requested donations to keep Chat Catcher=
running. =A0Unfortunately, it just isn't enough and the server costs a=
re quickly mounting. =A0Within the next few days I will turn off Chat Catch=
er completely. =A0All donations will be returned.

If you are running the WordPress plugin or the PHP scri=
pt, you will not need to take any action. =A0You will still have the commen=
ts that were posted to your blog. =A0If you happen to be displaying the RSS=
feed on your site, you will want to remove it.

Chat Catcher represents a huge investment of my time an=
d money. =A0I am not taking this action lightly. =A0I am also sorry to disa=
ppoint the many people who were happily using the service.

div>

I do not plan to provide an open source version of Chat Catcher. =A0It=
's just not that type of application. =A0I would be open to a purchase =
of the code or a sponsorship of the service if someone wants to step in as =
a white knight. =A0(Just so you know, I am not holding my breath.)

I will continue to work on my other projects which are =
not in danger of folding. =A0My Tweeple, Twit Connect, Real-time Chatterbox=
(and more) will continue to operate and will continue to be improved. =A0S=
ee http://www.voiceoftech.=
com/swhitley/ for details.

Thank you for all your support and help. =A0I wish you =
the best.

– Shannon

–0016e6480854f471f104692f18de–

Listen to last.fm on your Nokia N82

A little while ago, I covered how to get Foobar to play nice with XM and last.fm. Unfortunately, XM still isn’t available for the Nokia N82 smartphone. However, last.fm is, thanks to a client called Mobbler. All you need to do is install the program to your phone, and enter your last.fm username and password. It even works perfectly with talks! Cursor up for love track, down for ban track, right for next track. Use the volume keys on the side of your phone to turn the sound up and down. Press key 2 to hide the application, and go on with your other work, while listening to music. Unfortunately, last.fm uses 128 kb/s mp3, and can’t transcode to something lower. That means that it’ll only work on 3g or wireless.

Making Foobar2000 Social

If you’re a user of foobar2000, the player now has all the components you need to enjoy the online music revolution, right from your media player! With just four downloads, you can add last.fm support and XM Radio to foobar.

The easiest is XM Radio support. Just download foo_xm from this website. Unzip the file, and copy the dll file into the components directory of your foobar2000 installation folder. Then open prefferences, and enter your XM email and password. You can now add XM channels to any foobar playlist, just like you would add any other type of streaming radio. No more opening your browser, loading flash, and logging in just to play XM. Also, now-playing notifications can be shown on the system tray, in your msn status, or anywhere else you already have foobar set-up to show now playing info. You can even use your DSPs on XM streams. It’s all the power of foobar, plus XM.

If you have a last.fm account, with a little more work, you can make foobar your last.fm headquarters. The most important download is foo_audioscrobbler. Download it, install, and enter your username and password in the configuration. Everything you play in foobar will now be sent to last.fm, without having to install the crappy last.fm client.

The next step is to get last.fm radio inside Foobar. Download foo_lastfm_radio and add it to foobar. Add your last.fm username and password in it’s configuration area, and you’re ready to go. You can open any last.fm radio stream from the file menu. You can also right click on a song in one of your current playlists, and select menu entries to play the last.fm artist radio or tag radio for that track. You can also download albumart of the currently playing song, skip songs, see upcoming songs, etc. This makes it really easy to switch between playing tracks from your local music library, and streaming similar tracks from last.fm.

The last step is to add the power of last.fm to your foobar media library, to help you create playlists based on your last.fm profile. Download foo_scrobblecharts, install it, and you can right click on any song, and select a menu entry to automaticly create a playlist of similar songs you already own. This is extremely useful for people who, like me, are two lazy to set-up playlists by ourselves.

Thoughts On Jungle Disk

It all started with a discussion between a group of us over how we could share large multimedia files in production between group members, without a lot of expense and hastle. The ideal solution was determined to be cloud storage. That is, you send your files to another company (like amazon, racspace, mosso, or google) and they store the files for you, on multiple computers, in multiple locations. When you need the file, you can call it up without worry over how, or where, it happens to be stored. For our cloud storage provider, we wanted a solution that was: cheap, unlimited (multimedia files can be huge), fast, extremely secure, multiplatform, and point-and-click both for set-up and accessing our files.

Several companies exist to do this. The way they work is, they create a virtual hard drive on your computer, but instead of all the files on that drive getting stored on your computer, anything you put there gets uploaded into the cloud.

The first provider we looked at was ZumoDrive. It looked interesting: easy to use, fast, and well supported. Unfortunately, it had several problems. First of all, it only seemed to be available for Windows and IPhone. When one of us had windows, another OS X, and a third a linux netbook, that just wasn’t going to cut it. Second, some of the features for optimizing the cache, like changing the bit-rate on mp3s so they could be streamed over low bandwidth connections, or determining what to cache locally based on file type, seemed to be rather insecure. If we wanted our storage provider, and everyone in charge of the networks between them and us, to know what we were storing, we could just use FTP or WebDav to my dreamhost account. Third, we knew we were eventually going to want 500 GB. At $80 a month, the pricing for ZumoDrive was a little high. However, according to the reviews, Zumo Drive used a storage provider called Amazon S3. I figured I’d go looking for other companies using S3 to do the same thing.

The first one I found was Jungle Disk. It runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux. It has extremely secure encryption; neither Jungle Disk, nor Amazon S3, can tell what you’re storing in the cloud. With Jungle Disk, you use your own Amazon S3 account; Jungle Disk doesn’t bill you for anything, or provide you with anything other than the software. That means that if Jungle Disk shuts down, your files will still exist, unchanged. You control your data, not Jungle Disk. I’ve been using the software for a week, now, and I’m overall pleased with my experience. Set-up is a little harder than with ZumoDrive, but the price is also a lot cheaper. It’s 10 cents per gig. That means that if I use 500 gigs in a month, I pay for 500 gigs. If I go on vacation for two months, and use 0 gigs, I pay for nothing at all. For the screen reader users reading this, almost everything is accessible. The automated back-ups on OS X aren’t accessible, and they’re really hard to use on Windows as well, but other than that everything worked perfectly. Unfortunately, the Windows version of the software has a few problems:
1. under network settings, I had to turn off the option to use a windows file system driver, and use a virtual WebDav server instead. If I didn’t, Jungle Disk would crash Windows Explorer, and it couldn’t be relaunched until reboot.
2. Copying files to any jungle disk drive using Teracopy has serious issues.
But once I got those things fixed, everything worked well. One other, small, thing to keep in mind is that Jungle Disk uploads items to the cloud in the order you paste them. So, if you paste in 14 gigs of wav files, then paste in a 20 kb text file, the 20 kb text file won’t be available to other machines using your jungle disk until all 14 gigs of wav files have been sent up. It would be nice if Jungle Disk could detect extremely small files, and shuffle them ahead in the transfer list, so they’d be available to other computers right away.

update: Thanks to a poster in the comments, I was lead to try Wuala. It uses both cloud storage, as well as peer to peer storage, in an attempt to limit costs, increase available storage, and allow for more flexability. It looked, at first blush, as though it was ideal for my needs. Unfortunately, it has several major flaws. First off, purchasing more storage is expensive. You pay per year, rather than per gig used or per month. This is a steep up-front payment for a poor student. As well, it requires even more for-thought as to amount of storage required. While you can trade storage, if you have storage available, you can’t get more than 20 gig until at least 10 percent of the 20 gig you’re offering has been used. As well, your computer must be online for at least four hours in a row, every day. This does not work well for laptops. But the most serious flaw of wuala is that, instead of writing native code for each operating system, Wuala uses Java. While it’s not particularly family friendly, the most accurate, and concise, criticism of Java I’ve heard runs as follows: “saying that Java is good because it runs on all platforms is like saying that anal sex is good because it works on all genders.” I hate and despise Java. It’s slow. It’s interface is strange, and while it’s accessible with NVDA, the interface doesn’t follow any windows standards at all. It eats memory faster than an extremely fat person eats chips. I don’t trust Java to run my entertainment software. Under absolutely no conditions am I going to trust Java with my important files. Some of the features of wuala, like the world feature, could be useful for filesharing and warez. But at this point, in my opinion, it’s not a serious file exchange and file storage system. That aligns with most things peer to peer. Peer to peer is a useful toy for avoiding responsibility for breaking the law. But it’s not useful for when real, legal, work needs to be done. Wuala is an interesting social and thought experiment. But, at the moment, it’s nothing more. I haven’t even gotten into the problem of trading storage on my computer when my ISP caps my bandwidth. In theory, depending on what wuala stores on my computer, it could wind up costing me even more to trade storage than to buy storage.

The Problem With Invisible Links

While I’m talking so much about things related to web development, I thought I’d post a little rant about a subject that’s been bothering me for a while now.

Can developers please, please, please JUST STOP IT ALREADY WITH THE INVISIBLE LINKS! I often work with people who are looking at the screen. When I encounter links that they don’t see, this does absolutely nothing but ad confusion for both of us. If a link is not displayed on the screen, it should, at the absolute minimum, be labelled “invisible” by my screen reader. This will stop me from asking sighted counterparts to, say, click the “skip to main content link, then look two or three lines down,” when the skip to main content link only exists for screen readers. This results in exchanges like this:

them: “What skip to main content link?”

me: “the one at the top of the page.”

them: “I don’t see it.”

me: “It’s, like, the first link.”

them: “No, it isn’t.”

me: “Oh, never mind. Just skip down to the main article. Did I spell all those street names right in the second paragraph?”

them: “Nope. You’ve got an extra d in Dundas. Third line. Fourth word.”

me: “Hold on. I think my screen reader splits lines completely different from the browser.”

Congratulations, everyone! We have now reached the point, in accessible technology, where it is almost completely impossible for a blind person and a sighted person to communicate with one another about a web page. If anyone needs me, I’ll be over here in the corner, banging my head against the wall. It’s more productive than trying to work with my sighted classmates, some days.

The ARIA Saga Continues

This post is all prompted by Google’s recent addition of ARIA technology to Google news, that I blogged about Yesterday.

My post generated a lot of (unexpected, to me) discussion in the web accessibility community. I feel that I’m much too hard on ARIA in my original posting, because user-facing information about what ARIA does is thin and scattered. I’ve been asked how information about ARIA can be better communicated. Honestly, I don’t feel that the problem, in this case, lies with the developer community. As I said in a comment on my blog entry, the fault is Google’s. Google created a link on Google News and Google Reader to websites enhanced with ARIA. However, it failed to explain what ARIA can do for the user, what software the user must have to take advantage of ARIA, or give any introduction of what changes ARIA brought to Google News. Most users, who have older and out-dated software, will find that the ARIA link does nothing, and leave baffled. Those of us who try and investigate will find information about ARIA directed at developers, that provides little to no information about what ARIA does for us, and how to make it work. When, in my case, I finally found out what ARIA enhanced Google News did, I assumed that was the limit of the technology, and left unimpressed. I think that, at this point, the best thing the Web Accessibility Initiative can do is stress the importance to developers using ARIA of ensuring that the user has software that can support ARIA, and explaining how exactly the ARIA page is different from the non-ARIA page. Perhaps some of this effort should also fall on the shoulders of screen reader programmers; most screen readers have anounced to developers that they support ARIA, but they haven’t explained this feature to their users. Perhaps the WAI could create some sort of user-facing documentation for ARIA that developers could link to whenever they create an ARIA enhanced page; but I’m not really sure that that’s the job of a standards body. As things stand right now, blind users are starting to see ARIA links popping up on accessible websites, trying to find out what ARIA means for them, and coming up confused or empty handed.

My original comment follows:

@Shawn Henry: This seems clear enough, but it’s a document for web developers. To me, the user, this is all just theory. What should probably exist somewhere (and maybe does? Google doesn’t index
everything.) is a page describing websites using the technology, discussing what differences it makes for users (like interaction with google chat, the pop-up menus in gmail, etc),
and what screen reading and browser combos support this technology (the only one I’ve got working
thus far is firefox 3+NVDA; Freedom Scientific says they support it, but something must be broken
on all three of my windows boxes because I just can’t make it work). The people who should probably
write this kind of user document, in fact, are Google. They’ve suddenly presented all screen-reader
users of Google News and Google Reader with a mystery link about “ARIA,” (a link that our sighted
counterparts apparently can’t even see, so we get strange looks when we ask about it) and failed
completely to explain anything at all. When people search for information about ARIA on google
itself, it seems they wind up at either web developer resources, year old discussions of google
reader, or my blog, depending on what keywords they use. IMHO, the way to do this would be to
present a kind of “ARIA information page” the first time the user clicks the ARIA enhanced link,
explaining what software they need to be using, and what extra functionality ARIA ads to the page. Pressing questionmark for help, while an interesting interface enhancement, is just so far removed from anything I would ever think of doing on any normal page, that I won’t try it unless prompted with a “press questionmark for help” message. Otherwise, I’ll go hunting for a help link. Because that’s what you do with web pages: you click links on them.

What Is Google News ARIA?

I’ve gotten a somewhat surprising number of hits to my blog over the last few days, coming from lost googlers searching for strings like “google news aria” and “what is google news aria.” Unfortunately, it seems that Google itself doesn’t have any information posted about the subject (or if they do, it’s not ranked highly in Google). Thus everyone is winding up at my rather short entry on accessibility improvements to google news, where I don’t really explain what ARIA is for, because I don’t really know. In an effort to satisfy the internets curiosity, I thought I’d take a minute to do some research on the subject.

According to wikipedia, Aria is really called WAI-ARIA, and:

WAI-ARIA is a set of documents that specify how to increase the accessibility of dynamic content
and user interface components developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript and related technologies.

That kind of rings some bells, for me. I vaguely remember reading something about it, somewhere. At the time, I think I just ignored it as yet another of the vague, academic, and impossible to follow pronouncements from The World Wide Web Consortium. The wikipedia article doesn’t help; it’s an awful text block of doomb with hardly any links to other wikipedia articles, and no headings or paragraphs. Before anyone says anything: no, I will not fix it. Wikipedia has a CAPTCHA, and I refuse to give any of my time or money to the organization until the wikipedia CAPTCHA has been completely removed. This particularly poor example of a Wikipedia article also fails to answer the all-important question: what does Aria do for *me*, the user?

An article from 2008 on the Google Reader Blog gives us a hint. Apparently, Google Reader also has ARIA support. The article says that it works with firefox3 and firevox or jaws 8. When using that software, after clicking the ARIA link, pressing questionmark will read out a list of hotkeys. I couldn’t get it to work at all with any version of jaws or firefox. However, it works as advertised in NVDA and firefox 3. It makes working with the extremely ajaxy google reader much easier; hotkeys can mark an article as read, jump from article to article, visit an article, subscribe and unsubscribe from feeds, and more.

But none of that has anything to do with Google News. However, after going to Google News, and selecting the ARIA enhanced link, pressing questionmark will read out a similar, if shorter, list of hotkeys. Unfortunately, when it comes to Google News, I just don’t see the point. I can already jump from story to story by pressing h, as each story now has a heading. I don’t need the special hotkeys that ARIA provides to do this. The other hotkeys in Google News are similarly unimpressive. But don’t take my word for it! Go to the ARIA enhanced google news with Firefox and NVDA, and see for yourself. All the functionality offered by ARIA can be done easier, and faster, with NVDA itself. While ARIA is useful for ajax websites like Google Reader, it’s of no use on Google News. And even in Google Reader, I’m still not sure why we need ARIA. Can’t we already assign hotkeys to things with the accesskey atribute? Many, many websites already do this. Perhaps, though, I’m missing something important. But on first blush, it doesn’t look all that revolutionary. The other advantage of using accesskey is that it doesn’t need a special version of the page, like ARIA seems to. Accesskey atributes can just be added into the original page, rather than building something entirely new.

The best way to conclude my thoughts on the matter is as follows: “meh.”

Data will be handled even with the aid of electronic calculators

This page has what must be the best privacy information ever:

Your data is necessary for the sole purpose of software activation, customer service and communications regarding SiSystem’s software. Data will be handled even with the aid of electronic calculators. Data will be stored in our facilities and communicated solely to competent parties involved with conducting the necessary services described above. In no case shall the information be communicated or diffused to third parties for commercial purposes.

Impressive! I’m glad to know that this technology company, selling what they say is state of the art OCR software, will be able to handle my credit card data “even with the aid of electronic calculators.” Uh, what? Well, at least the guys with the calculators say they’re competent. I’d hate for them to miscalculate something. If they did, my information could be diffused. Hey, what’s that smell? Is something on fire, or is it just someone’s information getting diffused to third parties again?

Make Youtube Audio Sound Better

The following tip comes from Derek Lane, who originally got it from The MIDI Magazine Users Group.

If you’re watching a youtube movie online, you can add &fmt=18 to the end of the URL in order to get high quality audio. Surprisingly, this higher quality audio is available on most things uploaded to the website. For example, visit this un-modified URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcjkkBtXgIc
With the following URL, after &fmt=18 has been added to the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcjkkBtXgIc&fmt=18
That’s not the most dramatic example of youtube improvement, mostly because that song sucks, but it was the first URL I had handy (don’t ask). Okay, a better example: compare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvbK2YpSGrQ
to the better sounding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvbK2YpSGrQ&fmt=18

I have no idea why this works, or why it works. I can’t find anything on the webpage that links to the higher quality URL; maybe I missed something?

Another Source For Described Movies Online

I’m a little late posting this, as I just looked into it today. The National Film Board of Canada has recently posted several described films online for free. They’re mostly nonfiction war films. But if that’s you’re thing, you’ll get a kick out of the collection. You can find the list of described films at this page on the national film board website.

Worst Fanfiction Ever

I don’t care if this is real, or not. It’s funny. And some people’s writing *is* really that bad. I want a space TV, now.

Internet Radio Networks

I tried to post this with LjBot (frank), but it seems LjTalk is screwed up. Yet again. I am getting really, really sick and tired of lj having random unexplained service outages. Perhaps it's time for the LJ folks to spend less time and money on new features that nobody cares about, and more on upgrading servers so everything works?

Once wireless dataplans become affordable, radio services like Serius and XM might have some compitition! The following is a list of networks that do the same thing Serius and XM do, but on the internet: provide multiple channels of non-stop music. This is wonderful for those times you need background music, but don't feel like the bother of making playlists or rating or selecting songs. If you're not a Serius or XM subscriber, and/or don't travel a lot, the best news is that all of these services are free to listen to. Assuming they don't all get killed off by the RIAA, the day will come, in a few years, when we can have streaming internet radio in cars and on the go, as well.

First off, sky.fm. They offer free streams in 92kb mp3, and a monthly subscription gets you higher quality 128 AAC+ streams. They are the best sounding and seemingly most reliable of the networks, although they're not always the best programmed. The channels they offer currently include: DaTempo Lounge, Classic Rock, Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, Smooth Jazz, Uptempo Smooth Jazz, Top Hits Music, Best of the 80s, All Hit 70s, Oldies, Mostly Classical, Classical Guitar, New Age, World Music, Roots Reggae, Urban Jamz, Classic Rap, Country, Salsa, Modern Jaz, Trance, Chillout, House, Eurodance, Ambient, Lounge, clubplanet, VocalTrance, HardDance, Progressive, Goa-PsyTrance, HardCore, DJMixes, Drum 'n'Bass, ClassicElectronica, Breaks, Techno, Gabber, and Replay.

Another choice for those into AAC streaming and an excelent sound, without too much compression, is soma.fm. This free, indipendant radio network is supported by listener donations, not advertising. Unfortunately, it only has 11 channels currently, mostly in the electronic/ambient/background genre: Groove Salad, Secret Agent, Drone Zone, doomed, Space Station Soma, Boot Liquor, indie pop rocks, Illinois Street Lounge, Beat Blender, Tag's Trance Trip, and cliqhop idm. If this is your sort of thing, you'll love this network; personally, all I ever listen to is the indi channel. I don't really understand electronic, ambient, or jazzy music all that well.

Yet another choice is 181.fm (.fm seems to be the domain to have if you're into internet radio, I guess). They're an add supported station (though it seems to be only ads on the website, not in the stream) streaming in 128kb mp3, with no dialup stream that I could find. The playlists offered are in .asx format, but the streaming protocol is standard shoutcast; if you're not using windows media player or winamp you can open the playlist and extract the urls by hand. The available channels they offer are currently: Power 181 (Top 40), Awesome 80s, Star 181 (90s), Great Oldies, The Heart (Love Songs), Hits Galore, The Office, The Mix, The Buzz (Alt. Rock), Rock 181, The Eagle (Classic Rock), Rock 40 (Rock&Roll Hits), 80's Hairband, Front Porch (Bluegrass), Highway 181, Kickin' Country, The Breeze, Classical Guitar, Classical Jazz, Vocal Jazz, BeBop Jazz, Sensual World, Fusion Jazz, Trance Jazz, Mellow Gold, Soul, Funk, Classical Music, The Beat (HipHop/Urban), True R&B, Trinity HipHop, Energy 98, Techno Club, Business Talk Radio, and Lifestyle Talk Radio.

Continuing with the Internet Radio Networks ending in .fm trend, we move on to 1.fm. These guys seem to stream entirely in Windows Media of unknown bitrate, and show a movie advertisement before the stream can start. However, making up for the advertising and general irritation of crappy sound quality is the fact that the channels seem (from extremely brief listens) to be well programmed. The selection offered by 1.fm right now is: 50s & 60s, 80s, 90s, Blues, Bombay Beats, Chillout Lounge, Club 1, Country, Dance, Disco Ball, Flashback Alternatives, Fuego FM, High Voltage, Jamz, Luxuria Music, Otto's Baroque Musick, Otto's Classical Musick, Otto's Opera House, Paranormal, ReggaeTrade, Smooth Jazz, Top 40, Trance, Urban Adult Choice, Urban Gospel, and X.

Finally, we find a network ending in .com: .977 music. They stream at 128kb shoutcast, though they offer only Windows Media Playlists. Based on a look at the shoutcast stats, this is currently the most popular Internet Radio Network in opperation, though mostly for the 80s channel; I'm not sure why, as I don't believe it's the best by a longshot. The stations they've got are: The 80's Channel, The Hitz Channel, The Country Channel, The Rock Channel, The Oldies Channel, The Mix Channel, The Classic Rock Channel, The Comedy Channel, The 90's Channel, and the alternative channel.

The only other radio networks I'm aware of are completely crappy: accuradio, an ad infested website that says it offers over 300 stations (but really doesn't) and requires you to listen with Internet Explorer and Windows Media player, and iceberg radio, a crappy sounding (64kb windows media) and ad infested provider of multiple streams, run by Standard Radio (the Canadian Clear Channel).

Did I miss any you can think of? Let me know in the comments!

Another Good Reason not to read the News

Are you happy?

A 12-year-old disabled girl, allegedly sexually abused by the crack addicts who frequented her mother's drug den, lived in squalor and rarely left the dirty
third-floor apartment in the city's west end, according to a long-time neighbour.

Well, Now you aren't. I'm really starting to wonder what the point of the news is, exactly. In this new technological age, we all know more than ever about everything. And we still can't do anything about the vast majority of it. So: what's the point of knowing? Seriously! We can't even change things in our own city; what's the point of reading about North Korea, Iraq, and Iran? Todays pointless downer moment was proudly brought to you by Freedom Scientific, Coke, and the letter “V”. I originally came in here to link to imified, but my frends page distracted me.

Wakoopa

Thought I'd take a minute to bring to everyone's attention a service that just launched 2 days ago, and yet is already extremely useful, and will become even more useful as it gets new users and planned updates. The service is called wakoopa, and is at:

http://www.wakoopa.com/

The way it works is this: you sign up for an account, and install the wakoopa tracker (it currently runs on Windows and OSX, and a linux version is on the way). This tracker tracks what applications you have running in the background, and what applications currently have focus. This seems like it would be a privacy concern, but it isn't: the tracker only reports back the name and version of the running executible file; it does not use the title bar, or any other part of any of the windows running on your system. Thus, though it reports to wakoopa that I am running “mozilla firefox (firefox.exe”), it can't see what websites I'm visiting or what I'm doing with it. So: what do I get in exchange for this information? First, I can log into wakoopa.com and see what applications I've been using, and how long I've been using them for. This is surprisingly interesting. Second, I get “recommended programs” based on what other users have been running that I'm not; this way I can discover interesting programs that I may not have heard of. Third, I get “newer versions of my applications”; if wakoopa sees that someone is running a newer version of a program than I am, it will alert me; this saves constantly checking the websites of programs without autoupdate features. Fourth, I can see user reviews of my applications, provide reviews of my own, or just explore the database to find interesting programs. Fifth, I can see “similar people” who run the same software I do. If i'm really stuck, these people might be good prospects to ask for help. This seems like a fair enough information exchange to me, especially granted that for those times I don't want to be tracked, wakoopa can easily be shut down by right clicking on the system tray icon and choosing exit. Also, if I want to leave the website, a button is available to delete all of my information. This is more respect for privacy than large companies like google and Microsoft show. If this sounds as useful to you as it does to me, why not sign up? When you've got an account, consider joining the blind users team at:

http://www.wakoopa.com/teams/blindusers

This shows the software everyone in the team tends to run, in order of the amount of time all of us spend with it. It will also list the blindusers team on the pages of software that we've run. If enough of us join the team, this seems like it would be a good way to keep track of accessible software without having to update a giant list of applications on a website somewhere: if team blindusers is running it, odds are it works (or can be made to work) with screen readers. If you'd like to see what information wakoopa tracks and makes available, have a look at my profile, at:

http://www.wakoopa.com/fastfinge

Note that what shows up as Ruby interpreter is really text pal, the application (along with notepad and wordpad) that I use to do my programming in. Also, information listed on the profile is for my laptop only; programs I use on my desktop are not shown.

If you know anyone else who might be interested in this information, pass it on; the more the better.

as if word association wasn't already enough of a waste of time

Now, you can play word association with the computer! Online, at two different websites, no less. website 1, is new in the field, and uses wordnet data to get itself started. It's fairly easy to win against. website 2 has been active much longer, and is absolutely impossible. It can come up with an association for every word I entered. By the way, that first website also has an irritating word maze style game that I can't win at.

a collection of cool

A random collection of cool things. First, scribd, a social document library. upload documents in pdf, txt, lit, doc, etc and have them converted to other formats. tag and organize them, and access them anywhere. View, rate, and comment on other people's documents. View similar documents. It's all quite neat. Second, librarything, a kind of social reading list. Catelogue the books you own, enter your reading list, etc. View reviews of books, rate books, see statistics on book editions, book popularity, author popularity, etc. tag and discuss books, join groups of similar members, see people with similar reading taste to you, get reading recommendations, and much more. It makes keeping track of your reading fun again! Next, ma.gnolia: the cutting edge in social bookmarking. organize, tag, and save your websites. The owners seem committed to accessibility, so it looks good. In related social news, the audio captchas on digg seem to be working again. Continuing, jyte: a kind of social opinion website. make and vote on claims. discuss other people's opinions. Have fun. Lastly, ficlets, a sort of interactive text fragment community novel website thing. Owned by AOL, of all people. blah. Oh, and on the software side, I can't forget mushclient, a newly open sourced mud client that looks like it has accessibility hopes, and the free nvda screen reader, because I don't think I've linked to it. In closing, A random article on asexuality from MTV, of all places. Enough links for you, yet? I think that'll do me for another month or so, right?

Swedish Bananas!

I was searching for something deep in the tubes of the intarnets this afternoon, and I ran across this file, that seems to be a Swedish (or dutch? Or maybe German?) translation of Bert and Ernie learning some important lesson or other about apples and bananas. Investigating further, I discovered that This entire directory seems to be entirely in tribute to…bananas. Yup, bananas. It's got mp3s, movies, images, even a text file! Some days, the web just makes you stop and go: “huh.” Note that I haven't looked at anything, just a few of the mp3s, so some of it could be virus filled, pornographic, or otherwise inappropriate. You have been warned; if you're easily offended, you probably shouldn't be viewing files called m.monkeylove_ani.gif from random websites, anyway.

year in review: second most amusing thing ever

You know, I was going to write something reflective about this last year. But this (explicit language, requires flash) says everything I could say, and much, much more. I've played it three times, and it's still funny.

I'm famous!

A search for “fastfinge” on google returns 48,800 results. Based on wikipedia's article guidelines, I'm notable enough to deserve my very own article in wikipedia! If we want to follow the rules, I can't write my own; does someone want to write one about me? Then it can be marked for deletion, and we can all spend the next four days arguing about if it should be kept or not. Then someone can edit the article to say I am a drag queen living in Charlston who was arrested 79 times for shoplifting. Then all the websites that mirror wikipedia data (like answers.com) will have the database dump and spread this important information about me all over the world! woot woot!

No, seriously. 48,800 results. That's…slightly alarming. I bet you don't have 48,800 results about you, do you? Huh? I thought not, punk. But only 900 on Yahoo! search. That's a much more reasonable number when you consider how important I really am in the grand scheme of things. Why yes, this article *is* in fact just another excuse for me to attack google for something. You *can* have too much data, you know.