VNC vs. WebEx: VNC wins!

I’m running a little activity at work tomorrow where I need to allow several remote people to show demos (mostly web-based and likely on Firefox) on a laptop hooked into a projector in a conference room full of people watching the demos. This sounds like a job made for WebEx, right? I hadn’t used it in a while and thought maybe it was a good idea.

Wrong. Bad idea.

After messing around with WebEx for two hours and getting absolutely nowhere (on a 1.8 ghz machine with 1GB RAM), I gave up. I tried starting WebEx in Firefox (it worked, but my colleague couldn’t join the meeting, Firefox stopped responding, and I had to kill the Firefox process), then tried starting WebEx in IE (where it insisted that install an ActiveX control — yuck — and froze my machine). It broke in lots of different ways, and I had to reboot my normally quite stable XP machine.

I decided to give the RealVNC Free Edition a try. Within about five minutes, a colleague across the Internet was remote controlling my laptop (through a couple of layers of NAT). Easy, easy, easy. The only downside is that the sharing is one-to-one, but that’s all I really needed in this case (since the projector will handle the one-to-many sharing).

It looks like WebEx just isn’t particularly Firefox-friendly ( James Governor suggests MS Live Meeting instead of WebEx if you’re using Firefox). If you search for Firefox in the WebEx Knowledge Base, though, you’ll find a page (Article ID WBX21942 — can’t figure out their URL scheme to link to it properly!) that says you just need to download the “Meeting Manager Installer for Netscape Navigator” and install the Firefox User Agent Switcher and tell Firefox to announce itself as Netscape 4.8. Maybe I’ll give that a try the next time I use WebEx — if I ever use it again.

Some old systems (almost) never die

It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about Solaris running on Oracle (having long since moved over to Linux/MySQL for most things), but I was recently contacted by the VP of Technology at one of my old employers with a question about an Oracle database I had set up there about six and a half years ago. They were migrating to a new server from the server I had set up and had a minor problem in the process. I was offline for most of the day yesterday, so by the time I got back to them, they had solved the problem. As far as I know, the old server had been running fairly problem-free for six and a half years since I set it up (and I was an amateur Oracle DBA at best — absolutely no credit is due to me).

Say what you want about Solaris or Oracle, but from a pure technology standpoint, it’s a pretty problem-free combo in my experience. I’m not saying I’m recommending that combo now, but it definitely works (at least that old version).

Now, back to your regularly scheduled Linux / MySQL program. . . .

Syndicate Conference next week

The Syndicate conference is next week in San Francisco, and I think it’s well worth checking out. Last year, the conference was an interesting mix of traditional media types who wanted to know what all the RSS/blogs/syndication fuss was about along with the folks who were creating the new world. This year, Doc Searls is the conference chairperson, so you know it will be both thoughtful and entertaining. Here’s the schedule and how to register.

I’ll be there both days, so if you want to meet up, drop me an e-mail (chadd -at- yahoo-inc -dot- com).

(Disclosure: I am on the Syndicate advisory board, though not nearly as active as last year when I moderated two panels and wrote a bunch of the session descriptions.)

John Battelle, the Yahoo! TechDev Speaker Series, and the "Flickrization" of Yahoo!

John Battelle visited Yahoo! yesterday and wrote about it on his blog (see perspectives on the talk from Jeremy, Matt, and Nate. I took the blurry photo you see on your right). I invited John to speak for somewhat obvious reasons (he just wrote a book about search) but it was more than that. As the old saying goes,”journalism is the first draft of history.” If you look at John’s track record with Wired, the Industry Standard, the Web 2.0 conference, his Searchblog and now his book, John is the rare journalist who often seems to be writing the first draft of the future. That’s impressive.




John Battelle @ Yahoo!

Originally uploaded by jchaddickerson.

As Nate notes in his blog, these talks are a regular weekly feature at Yahoo! known as the “TechDev Speaker Series” — “TechDev” because it’s run by the Technology Development Group within the Search division at Yahoo! (that’s my group). Bradley Horowitz (our leader extraordinaire) started it last summer and handed it over to me a couple of weeks after I started at Yahoo! in August. His only instructions were: “Find interesting people for the series. Surprise me.” Bradley had already set the bar high by bringing in people like Chris Anderson, Mark Pauline, and Philip Rosedale (among others).

Since I took over the series, other than John Battelle we’ve had (in no particular order):

An impressive list without a doubt (and thanks to the folks within Yahoo! who’ve helped me bring some of them in). The subject matter of the series is intentionally broad and multi-disciplinary in nature. Chris Anderson spoke about the Long Tail, while Mark Pauline told us about hacking together fire-breathing robots for his performance art pieces with Survival Research Labs. Lawrence Lessig talked about how broken U.S. copyright law is in the digital domain and was followed the next week by Mark Hosler of the experimental and sound collage “band” Negativland, who gave us the artist’s perspective on the issue.

I think the multi-disciplinary content and focus of the speaker series as it continues to develop hints at something I’ve been noticing about Yahoo! in my first four months there. While Yahoo! continues to attract top talent with stellar computer science backgrounds, there’s another type of person Yahoo! seems to be attracting as well in what some have called the “Flickrization” of Yahoo!: folks who skipped the CompSci degree but built amazingly cool things on the web (I think the two complementary sides of Yahoo! are evident in the backgrounds of two Yahoo! employees recently named as top technology innovators under age 35 by the MIT Technology Review, for example). To me, working at Yahoo! these days is a heady mix of art and science (just like the web itself), and I’m glad to be a part of it. It rocks.

Browser breakdown and other stats for my blog

I’ve never paid much attention to browser usage on my blog, but I just looked and it breaks down like this according to Measure Map (from November 5 to the present):

  • Firefox: 48%
  • MSIE: 35%
  • Safari: 13%
  • Other: 4%

According to Measure Map, my readership is 71% U.S., 5% Australia, 5% Canada, 4% UK, 2% Germany, and 2% India. Overall, I had visitors from 59 countries.

I would like to thank the 2 visitors each from South Africa and Brazil. Also, thanks to the 1 visitor from Tunisia — please stop by and visit again sometime.

Pimp my 24" Dell widescreen monitor

If it seems like I’m writing a lot about products these days. . . well, I am. It’s the holiday season, so it’s a good time to be thinking about such things. I have been doing a lot of experimenting with my home computer setup in the past few weeks. I’ve seen a number of people write about the 24″ widescreen Dell monitors (aka Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW 24-inch Wide Aspect Flat Panel LCD monitor) and how great they are purely as monitors, but that’s only half the story. In relative terms, this is a pretty cheap monitor (do a search for “dell coupons” and you’re likely to find a big discount somewhere — I got mine for less than $900 including tax and shipping), but the price belies that fact that you can solve more problems with it than just having a big screen for your computer. I bought one recently and I have pimped it out well beyond my original intentions of just having a big monitor.

Here’s what I have hooked into the five monitor inputs:

  • my work laptop using the VGA connector
  • a G5 using the DVI connection
  • a DirecTivo satellite TV tuner hooked into the S-Video connection
  • an XBOX (the old model, not the 360) using the composite connection
  • nothing in the composite input yet

The switch on the front of the monitor allows me to switch easily across all these devices, so I can use the monitor for the computer, a satellite TV stream via my DirecTivo, the XBOX, or my work laptop without messing around with cables or other switches. It’s really convenient.

The coolest thing, though (and something that doesn’t seem to be heavily mentioned in what I’ve read about the Dell widescreen) is the picture-in-picture capability. What this means in practical terms is that I can keep a little TV window on my computer desktop while I’m working. I’m a big college basketball fan and during college basketball season, I keep up with the games and spend a lot of time at the computer looking at stats and scores. Now that can be combined on the same screen. Yay.

(I know what some people are thinking — “I don’t watch TV.” Well, this isn’t for you then! An aside on this matter: I hear a lot of people say, “I don’t watch TV — I only watch DVDs of movies and TV shows.” To me, that’s kind of like saying, “I’m a vegetarian, but I eat chicken” — something I’ve heard more than once. Ahem. In this vein, I recommend checking out “Five things (besides a television) that you could constantly remind people you won’t use” on the excellent 5ives.com site by Merlin Mann of 43 Folders fame.)

Here’s a shot of the picture-in-picture capability with my OS X desktop and CNN running in the bottom corner:

Another really nice thing about the Dell monitor is the built-in card reader that sits unobtrusively on the side of the monitor — if you weren’t looking for the card slots, you would hardly even notice them. I use a camera with an SD card, so this feature allowed me to unhook the ugly USB SD card reader device I had hanging off my computer. It doesn’t just do SD cards, though — it can read 8 other types of cards. The monitor also has a USB hub with 4 ports hanging off of it. I threw my old USB hub in a drawer when I got the Dell and the connections on my desk are much cleaner now.

Some people give Dell grief for ripping off the form factor of the new Apple Cinema Displays, but I think this monitor innovates beyond what Apple has done (and I’m no fan of Dell). None of the innovations are rocket science (the SD card reader, the multiple independent inputs including VGA), but they are small touches that make the whole monitor much greater than the sum of its parts. (see the Dell specs vs. the Apple Cinema Display specs for a comparison). Granted, this isn’t necessarily more simple than the Apple product, but it offers more features, and features that I actually needed. (Full disclosure: I don’t have access to a current Cinema Display, so let me know if I’m missing something feature-wise.)

The only (understandable) downside to the Dell monitor is that with all those video sources pumping into the screen, you need a way to handle the audio. The computer audio is easy — just use the speakers you already have hooked up to your computer. To get audio for your TV tuner and/or XBOX, you need to put a stereo receiver in the stack and run the audio output for them through it. This is kind of a drag since your computer audio will be separate.

I tried to figure out a good way to run the audio from my DirecTivo through the Mac, but just couldn’t figure it out. I’m not a total amateur at such things, so I’m surprised it didn’t work. When I ran audio out from the DirecTivo’s optical out into the G5’s optical in, the Sound control panel showed that I was getting audio levels, but the speakers wouldn’t output the audio. If anyone has any tips on how to make this happen, let me know. For now, I have my computer speakers and some regular JBL speakers hooked into a stereo receiver for the DirecTivo and the XBOX.

Despite the minor annoyance of having two sets of speakers, my new setup totally rocks. I highly recommend the Dell if you want a nice monitor — but don’t forget to check out all the other nice benefits beyond the huge display.

ecto for Windows (alternate title: Windows install dependencies suck)

About a year and a half ago (in what seems like another life now), I wrote about my first (good) impressions using ecto for OS X. It was a different job, a different blog platform (Movable Type), and a different OS. Now that I’m doing Windows again at work (still OS X at home), I decided to try ecto for Windows against a WordPress blog.

I downloaded ecto for Windows (zip file, ~3.9MB) and was slightly annoyed when the readme told me I needed to download something else, Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SP1, which is about 10.5MB. I downloaded it anyway, but got this error message when I tried to install it on my stock Yahoo-issued laptop (which has been rock-solid since I got it just over three months ago):

The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the Windows Installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade patch may update a different version of the program. Verify that the program to be upgraded exists on your computer and that you have the correct upgrade patch.

Oh well. I noticed on the .NET Framework 1.1 SP1 page that there was a link to .NET Framework 2.0, so I downloaded that (almost 23MB!) My first thought was, “if this thing installs, there is absolutely no way I’m going to get away without a reboot.” My second thought was “there should be backwards compatibility — maybe it will work.” It installed — with no reboot required. Wow.

Then I tried to install ecto again and got this message:

Microsoft .NET Framework v1.1 SP1 is not installed. Please visit Microsoft website to download and install the framework before installing ecto.

For the heck of it, I tried installing v1.1 again, and got this message again:

The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the Windows Installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade patch may update a different version of the program. Verify that the program to be upgraded exists on your computer and that you have the correct upgrade patch.

Deciding that the .NET Framework 2.0 was of no use to me, I went to Add/Remove Programs to remove it and got this message: “Uninstalling Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 might cause other programs to stop working correctly. Are you sure you want to uninstall Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0?” Ugh. What “other programs” are we talking about? I didn’t really feel like blowing up my laptop, so I stopped right there. The ecto for Windows FAQ addresses this requirement: “Q2: Is the .Net Framework really necessary? ecto for Windows is developed entirely in Visual Studio .Net 2003 using C#. This allow rapid development of new features and debugging.”

My verdict on ecto for Windows is simple: making it easy to get past the install process relatively painlessly would be a nice start. I never got past the first dependency. I shouldn’t have veered off the script and upgraded to .NET Framework 2.0 for the heck of it, but should it really be this painful and require a secondary download that is 3x larger than the software itself to get going? I loved ecto for OS X. I guess I’ll have to wait to see how it works for Windows until ecto works with .NET Framework 2.0.

Update: for those of you who don’t read the comments, Alex writes in with the following excellent news (and barely ten minutes after I posted!):

Support for .Net 2.0 in the installer will be added soon. ecto is .Net 2.0 compatible, it is just that the installer needs to be updated to check for that. A maintainance update will be released this weekend to include .Net 2.0 compatibility.

As a matter of fact, the next major update will require .Net 2.0 framework.

I’ll write more about ecto itself when I get it installed. . . but I certainly admire the rapid response.

Update 11/28/05: Alex Hung e-mailed me on Thursday to let me know that ecto had been updated to include .Net 2.0 compatibility. I just installed the new version of ecto with no problems and am using to update this blog post. Thanks, Alex!

Quick review: Plantronics MX150 Headset for Treo 650

Plantronics MX 150 Headset A while back, I asked for recommendations for a Bluetooth headset for the Treo 650 and the consensus from that post and other conversations was to get a wired headset. I happened to be near a Best Buy last night, so I decided to drop in and grab one that looked like it would fit my requirements without doing any research in advance. I grabbed the Plantronics MX150 for $27.99 (not the $44.95 listed on the Plantronics site), hoping that it would fit these criteria:

  • it should fit snugly in my ear, but at the same time, not feel like I’m getting an ear exam from a doctor
  • it should feature something to hold the earpiece onto my ear, but the less something, the better
  • it shouldn’t look too Star Trek-y
  • the volume of the person I’m talking to should be clearly sufficient through the earpiece
  • the person I’m talking shouldn’t notice I’m using a headset

After my first commute making a few phone calls, the verdict is clear — it’s just what I wanted. The earpiece fit nicely, but it didn’t feel like an ear exam. As you can see from the photo, there is a small clip that holds the earpiece to your ear, and it does its job effectively, though it slips slightly if I look over my shoulder (YEMV. . your ear may vary). It’s not too Star Trek-y for my taste. Finally, in a conversation with my mom, I could hear her clearly and she never asked me what was wrong with my phone. If you need a simple and relatively inexpensive wired headset that works with Treo 650, I highly recommend it.

We're hiring: join one of the most innovative teams at Yahoo!

If you thought the Event Browser was kick-ass like I did, here’s your chance to actually work with the team that built it. Ravi Dronamraju is adding to Team Edison (a team he put together) and just sent this job description over:

Do you have what it takes to build, prototype, innovate? Are you the über-geek who can think in multiple programming languages? Do you write more lines of code than email? Well, come join Team Edison at Yahoo! As part of the Search and Marketplace organization you will get a chance to put your brain through daily exercise of creativity and innovation, laying the foundation for Web 2.0 and beyond.

Ideally you thrive in a team-first environment, enjoy problem-solving and learning new technologies. You should have MSCS or equivalent with 5+ years of experience in building Web applications. At the core, you can express yourself competently in any of the following: Perl, PHP, C/C++, JavaScript and CSS. Solid understanding of technologies like HTTP, Apache, RDBMS/MySQL, Unix is a plus.

I work very closely with this team, so if you’re interested in this role, send me an e-mail with your resume (and tell me what you like to do and why you want to join the team). Please put “Team Edison position” in the subject line. My Yahoo! e-mail is chadd -AT- yahoo-inc -DOT- com. (No recruiters or agencies, please.)

Job descriptions rarely do justice to a position, so here’s my informal scoop. . . this team is heavily-focused on API development, both internal and external, so the work itself really couldn’t be more fun. The team is also small and nimble (very much on purpose) — a great group to join if you want to have an immediate impact (just ask Ed, who started working on the Event Browser on his second day, I think). And Yahoo! really is a great place to work — I’ve been here barely over three months now and it’s a blast. Come join the fun.

Bono, Mark Hosler, and lost opportunities

Mark salutes Yahoo! So, Bono from U2 was here at Yahoo! yesterday (here’s the Flickr photo). As I’ve mentioned here before, we had Mark Hosler of Negativland pay us a visit barely a month ago. For the uninitiated, Mark and Negativland were sued by U2 for copyright infringement (see the Negativland entry in Wikipedia for details) in one of the landmark copyright suits in the history of pop music (I’d put it up right there with George Harrison being sued for copyright infringement for appropriating the melody of the Chiffon’s “He’s So Fine” for his song “My Sweet Lord”). They lost the suit.

If you were to super-impose the Bono photo on the Mark Hosler photo in this blog post (they were both in the exact same lobby — building D on the Yahoo! Sunnyvale campus), Mark would be mock-saluting Bono from behind. I wonder if it would have been a slightly different “salute.” Now that would have made a good photo.