Monthly Archive for September, 2007Page 2 of 4

Addendum to Budget Categories

Published
by
Josh Kim
on September 14, 2007
in Personal
. 2 Comments

I think caffeine should have a separate category in my monthly budget.

Bawls

I’m kind of a non-alcoholic cold drink connoisseur. I specialize in all sorts of soda (pop, coke… whatever), root beer, power drinks, teas… you give me the bottle, I’ll try it. Which reminds me, that’s yet another social network waiting to happen.

Heck, these days… anything that can be liked/hated could be turned into one. Lovely.

Tonight will be spent on doing massive amounts of client work. If I’ve got time, hanmeta will finally get some love it deserves. For some reason, I feel like I haven’t been this focused since the Cowbell weekend.

How to Hack Xanga, Kinda (Part 2)

Published
by
Josh Kim
on September 13, 2007
in Web Applications
. 12 Comments

I got another comment on the most popular post on this blog: How to Hack Xanga, Kinda. Google tells me about 40% of my entire site’s traffic comes through this page.

#1 on Google for "Hack Xanga"

Which means if you’re feeling lucky…

Poke Poke Poke, Hurl Hurl Hurl

I really don’t want to poke around Xanga again. It really isn’t a very well design app at all. I feel like I’m going to a less-devolved version of MySpace, which isn’t saying much because MySpace… wow.

All the advertising doesn’t really help it any. It also feels like a tattered quilt of under-developed applications. Snap.com apps don’t add to the experience, they hinder it. Excessive flash advertising just screams for itself.

But I can see why people still submit to the service… it’s the network. But please, start considering better services like wordpress.com.

Just as a sidenote, I signed up for an account at Xanga to test this “feature”/hack. Talk about one of the most roundabout account creation process ever. It’s like they’re begging me to get my friends to use Xanga. First, it was an AJAX lightbox window that popped up, asking to log into my gmail account to see if there were any friends on Xanga associated with that account. Next, a page to decide what kind of content I was going to put up, what theme I was going to use, followed by a list of yet another set of networks Xanga could use to find my “friends”. (See, I know that they’re definitely copying this idea from another well-known social network Then it was off to a page to post my first post… which I didn’t want to do. And to top it all off, a whole separate page just to select my language.

This is a networking app. Make it easier for people to sign up.

Addendum to the Previous “Hack”

I felt like I needed to clarify a few things as I saw the comments come in.

There was a comment saying that RSS feed were turned off by default, but after creating a brand new account. I found that this wasn’t the case. Here’s the default settings for a brand new account. (Notice the radio button for “RSS Feed:”)

Xanga Privacy Settings Page

The funny thing is, Xanga actually tells you about this “feature”. Taken from What is RSS?

Please note that the Xanga Lock does not automatically block access to RSS feeds.

This really doesn’t make any sense. If a user decided that they didn’t want their content to be viewed by the rest of the Internet, obviously the service would shut off all possible ways the content makes it online. I’m sorry, that last sentence was completely useless, seeing how it was completely redundant.

The Updated “Hack”

Urgh. Regardless, here’s the workaround, for those that want it. Xanga made it even easier. Not a single question mark or a “.aspx”. All you gotta do is:

http://www.xanga.com/USERNAME/rss

You’ll probably get a page that looks like a lot of text, but trust me, the goods are there. If the user has chosen to not publish an RSS feed, you’ll get:

<rss version="2.0">
        <channel>
            <title>USERNAME's Xanga</title>
            <link>http://www.xanga.com/USERNAME</link>
            <description>
                Sorry, USERNAME has chosen not to publish an RSS feed.  Please visit their Xanga site here: <a href="http://www.xanga.com/USERNAME">http://www.xanga.com/USERNAME</a>
            </description>
            <language>en-us</language>
            <ttl>60</ttl>
            <image>
                <title>The Weblog Community</title>
                <url>http://www.xanga.com/images/button.gif</url>
                <link>http://www.xanga.com</link>
            </image>
            <item>
                <link>http://www.xanga.com/USERNAME</link>
                <pubDate>Thu, 13 Sep 2007 21:29:40 GMT</pubDate>
                <description>
                    Sorry, USERNAME has chosen not to publish an RSS feed.  Please visit their Xanga site here: <a href="http://www.xanga.com/USERNAME">http://www.xanga.com/USERNAME</a>
                </description>
            </item>
        </channel>
</rss>

And for those that want to disable this feature, go to your privacy settings and turn it off. There is absolutely no way to get at the feeds if the feeds are turned off. (At least, without actually hacking the system. That, I don’t really care for.)

You’ve been warned.

Features are Not a Company, So Said I

Published
by
Josh Kim
on September 11, 2007
in Web Applications
. 0 Comments

Leaked Google Video Discusses Google Reader, Social Efforts

Yes, I know. I would be planning the same exact thing had I been working on Google Reader.

Lots of these things came up while I was talking with Amir on the features we needed to implement to make this social feed reader work. Of course, they are indeed still missing some of the key features that will make Cowbell shine.

One of the more interesting things was:

Google will work on a standard for feed publishers to tell aggegrators about changes in the feed (’this post has been deleted’ etc.). Such a standard doesn’t exist yet. They will be working with blog tools like Blogger and MovableType.

This is the awesome thing about having the resources as Google does. I was wondering how Cowbell would work around the way RSS and Atom behaved with deletions and updates to an item (by the way, I hate such occurences… they happen quite a bit). Google’s solution: create a new standard. Awesome!

Competition’s heating up before nothing’s been released. But the advantage here is that Cowbell is able to change faster, without any of this legacy code. And yes, for the 80th time, I cannot stand legacy code, even though about 95% of my career will be spent on it. (I hope less, if not less.)

In other news, I’ve decided to buckle down and start back on some client work. I feel like I’m going to put aside freelancing after I’m done with these two projects for a while, seeing as how I really really really want to get back to Rails land.

On a lighter note, remind me to avoid Vietnamese food; at least, from this one place in Minneapolis. Their rolls were amazing when going down, but for some reason, it didn’t want to get digested at all. I had problems going to sleep because my stomach was going insane.

This post has been brought to you by deliriousness.

What’s Up, JK?

Published
by
Josh Kim
on September 9, 2007
in Personal
. 0 Comments

For those who want the facts, quick and to the point:

  • I have given my two weeks notice at MoCo, Inc here in Minneapolis, MN.
  • I have a job as a Research Programmer at NCSA, in Urbana, Illinois.
  • Putting two and two together, you get four. Also, a lovely return trip to Champaign in two weeks.
  • Looking for housing until I find an apartment… anyone? I’ll… do some stuff for you… Cook/clean? Large wads of cash?
  • I hope to squeeze in a visit to Cincinnati before starting work, to visit family and friends, as well as pick up more of my junk. (Books, books, and more books.)
  • There is no strict date as to when I start the Research Programmer position.
  • I have bought the iPhone, after the price cut of the year. It’s definitely the best gadget-y device I’ve ever owned. It’s got it’s problems though.
  • Starting next month, the monthly reviews will return. I’m pretty sure things will finally become more settled down.
  • I’m suffering from pain in my left wrist. I have a feeling it’s carpal tunnel. Will need to find a doctor soon… but insurance doesn’t kick it until… I start the new job. Wee.
  • The reason for the “Crap crap crap crap” post was definitely due to the job situation. Hopefully that clears up a few things.

Quickie on the iPhone

As expected, most of this weekend was spent on tweaking and messing around with the iPhone. Definitely a treat for the UI-inclined nerd I am.

  • I love how the phone vibrates/makes a sound when I get any email or text. It’s another way of being notified. Growl is good, but this is much sleeker; having a physical feedback. Now if someone could hack it to display some other data while it’s plugged in, like a dashboard of sorts for everything, rather than having to click on things: A quick summary of everything you need to know.
  • I love having a third screen now that occupies my desk. The screen usage varies from having my email up to listening to music.
  • I don’t like the UI inconsistencies that are all over the place. Oh, it’s much much more put together than any cellphones out there, but for a phone that’s been dubbed the “JesusPhone”, I expected more. But alas, human engineering can only go so far… I’ll probably write more on this as things annoy the crap out of me more and more.
  • Every time I see this phone, I feel like it’s getting smaller and smaller. I’m not sure why. It’s the darn designers at Apple… they somehow made the thing seem feel smaller with each use. It seems that the iPhone got a bit of the Reality Distortion Field from Jobs.
  • The phone portion of the iPhone is great. Calls are clear, and I get more bars than my Samsung phone from where I live. No more running outside for phone calls.

Google Maps and Camino Issues?

Published
by
Josh Kim
on September 7, 2007
in Web Applications
. 0 Comments

While trying to find directions to a far, far away city (a friend of mine is going to Yale for Law… Nice, Stephen!) (oh… and it’s 14 hours, looks like I’m flying…), I find a very strange bug with Google Maps on Camino.

Looks like the links of the hovering bubble after you searched an address doesn’t work. In fact, if you click on them, they just disappear, as if you clicked on any of the white area within the bubble. It should be enlarging the bubble and adding a field for saved search or a drop down menu for My Maps. or Strange. Works on Firefox, though.

Maybe tonight after work I’ll look into it more.

And yes, there’s a reason for the “Crap” post. It’ll be up on here soon enough.

Update: Nevermind on that bug. I wasn’t able to replicate it at home. It was a strange bug though… I wonder if it was just because I was running an older Mac OS X.