3DTree Notebook

I hadn’t looked at the toolkit formerly known as yui-ext for a while, and finally checked it out recently. It has really taken off and now has some great widgets. The API page has some nifty features like sliding panels and a tree widget. I’m going to add a template using these features to the next version of Screenbook Maker (due out at the end of September 07) so that users will be able to create websites like this using Screenbook Maker.

The API docs also have links to a comprehensive set of demos - be sure to check out the editable grid.

On August 24th, the New York Times finally opened to the public their new “MyTimes” site which lets users personalize a set of pages. Like iGoogle, Netvibes and a number of other sites this is done by letting users drag and drop “widgets” on to a set of pages. Widgets are block of content, such as headlines, RSS feeds, a photo slideshow, a crossword puzzle and so on. (Full disclosure, I designed and wrote most of the code for the front end.)

There is a Blogrunner page about MyTimes with reactions from a number of observers. A common reaction is that this is just another personalized widget site and no big deal. Yes, widget sites are a dime a dozen these days, but I think these commentators may be missing a couple of important points.

First, design. The nytimes.com site is one of the best designed content sites in the world. I won’t go into why that is so, if you have doubts about that statement, do a search on the number of awards nytimes.com has received, or just do a side by side comparison with any other news site. If you don’t think that nytimes.com is vastly superior to, say, cnn.com or wsj.com or any other major media site, you might want to buy a book on design. To my mind the thing that stands out about the Times design is that it isn’t cluttered and seems designed to make it easy to read as a whole. Information is being conveyed, not marketed. Many other sites look as if the designers are just trying to shotgun a bunch of unconnected items into the reader’s face, in the hopes that the something will stick.

The same team that designed the look of the Times site designed the look of the MyTimes site. In terms of layout, fonts, overall readability and looks it is vastly superior to Netvibes or iGoogle, which comparatively don’t really have any design at all. The MyTimes layout is much closer to a three column newspaper than it is to a collection of boxes.

Secondly, content. iGoogle, Netvibes and every other widget site that I’m aware of (except the LATimes) have no content of their own. The LATimes released a personalized widget site earlier this year, but it is comparatively primitive, not in the same league as MyTimes or iGoogle. MyTimes lets you create collections of RSS feeds from the Times or other sites, just like Google. However, MyTimes isn’t limited to that. MyTimes sits on top of the best news content in the world, and it can tap into that. Right now, that vast potential is limited to the Journalist Recommendations feature, but that will change. For example, one widget not yet released to the public is a Times Photo widget which mimics the news photo widget in the nifty Times Reader (a desktop application - see article below). That widget has access to every photo published in the Times, categorized and tagged. This information is not provided in any RSS feed and other sites will never be able to grab it.

People who would underestimate the importance of the launch of MyTimes should also realize that although the Times hasn’t released an API and invited the public to start uploading new widgets, of course this API does exist. MyTimes isn’t just a site, it is an underlaying technology which the Times built and which gives the Times the ability to do everything that Netvibes or iGoogle can do with their frameworks. In fact, the Times framework can do things that other frameworks I’m aware of can’t do, and it can also run Google and Netvibes widgets with a simple translation. (For a couple of hints about this, see my presentation at SXSW earlier this year). The world’s best content site now has technology to serve up that content in many more ways than via a page, and they don’t have to rely on anyone else to do that. It remains to be seen what the Times will do with this, but I think this is a bigger development than it might appear.

Here’s a good page of shortcuts for Vista.

My favorite new shortcut: Windows Key + Tab = Switch Between Windows.

The New York Times has released a terrific online/offline reader. The display is much more readable than in a browser, and you can save and annotate articles. It also has a terrific slideshow page that loops through all of the photographs in the Times with links to back to the article in which the photo appeared. This application seems to me to make the case for internet applications that are not browser based.

Digitial clocks don’t really tell you the time. It’s not 4:58:06, it’s 5 o’clock. By the word “time” we’re generally talking about the human experience of time, since that is the one that is the most real.

Here is a clock that is digital AND analog

In my last entry I explained about recording Skype but I realized that some people need more details in order to get started.

It’s like this. Skype is free software for making Internet phone calls. You need to have a computer to make a call, but the person you’re calling does not need a computer. Until the end of 2006, calls from Skype to regular land lines in the United States are free.

Skype is great for recording interview because there is a slick application which can record your Skype call right to an MP3 file that you can then upload to directly to your site and viewers can click to play. The recording software is called HotRecorder. It’s easy to record a Skype call if you have this software installed because all you need to do is make the phone call from your computer and push a button to record.

There’s another reason why Skype is a great way to record an audio interview. The sound quality of a Skype call is far superior to the sound quality of a regular land-line call. That is because regular telephone calls use a truncated audio spectrum, in order to save transmission space on the copper telephone wires. Skype uses a much wider spectrum so the sound is closer to CD-quality.

Also, you can do free teleconferencing with Skype. Skype lets you add as many people to your call as you like, and any or all of them can be on land lines. (At least one person has to be using a computer and Skype, of course).

So with some inexpensive software and a pair of headphones you can easily create audio interviews.

Here’s how you get started:

Download Skype and install.

Get a headphone set (with a mouthpiece microphone). Any computer headphone set that you get at RadioShack or OfficeMax will work. You can also buy Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software, which is a very useful product and comes with a headphone set for as little as $99. The latest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking has brought voice recognition to the point where it is must-have software even for fast typists.

Download and install hot recorder. This program is only $15 And works very well.

Now you can create an audio interview by calling someone using Skype and recording the call with hot recorder. Obviously if you’re recording a call, you need to inform the person that you are talking to that the call is being recorded.

HotRecorder will convert your phone call directly to an MP3. Now you can upload the MP3 file to your site with a couple of mouse clicks, if you have software like WordPress or Joomla! that makes it easy to add audio content. For an example, see All Podcast Secrets.

David Pogue just reviewed Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, and found it had a 98.9% accuracy rate with no training. It seems that Speech Recognition Software has finally reached the point where it is becoming something that most of us can really benefit from. Even if you can type 60wpm, speaking is going to be a lot faster.

The Preferred edition of NaturallySpeaking (about $200) has a feature that lets you provide dictation from recorded audio. The accuracy rate is not quite as high and this does require some training of the program, but this potentially opens a new area: transcribing podcasts.

Being able to transcribe a podcast is going to depend on the quality of the recording and how clearly people speak. You can get a pretty high quality recording using Skype though. Skype has much higher sound quality than a regular telephone recording.

To record Skype calls, check out HotRecorder.

If you go to Google and search for “Record Skype” you’ll find all sorts of complicated suggestions, mostly on old pages. I tried getting calls to record using the freeware program Audacity and a plantronics USB headset. I couldn’t get it to work, but HotRecorder worked immediately with no configuration.

I just tried recording a conference call with Skype where two people were connected directly via Skype and one was on a landline. It worked perfectly.

Since about the start of 2006 I’ve been trying standing while working. It has been working out pretty well. Sometimes I feel better sitting, but most of the time I’ve gotten used to standing. If I feel physically tired, working while sitting is easier. If I feel sleepy however, working while standing seems easier. Since I’m completely off caffeine at this point, that is a benefit.

It varies, but sometimes I’ll stand 7 or more hours per day. Once you get used to it, you don’t really notice that you’re standing.

I decided to try this out after reading one of Steven Levitt’s “Freakonomics” columns in the New York Times. Mr. Levitt is author of the book of the same name, and never fails to come up with interesting topics. The topic of the article was “Self-Experimentation” and detailed a number of “self-experiments” performed over a period of years by a researcher named Seth Roberts. A page with links to the Freakonomics columns and the original research is here.

Seth Roberts found that after he started standing for 7 or more hours per day, he went from several colds per year to none. In the five years since he has been standing while working, he has not gotten a single cold.

Now, that fact alone does not constitute a scientific finding, but the original report provides some additional evidence. And intuitively it makes sense that a completely sedentary lifestyle would be unhealthy. A common theme of Robert’s experiments is that activities that are closer to the kind of activities that were most common while we were evolving are going to tend to be better for us than activities that were not common. Sitting all day is just not natural.

OK, so having made the decision to try standing while working, which for most of means working with computers, the problem is how to raise the computer to a standing level. At first I just put the monitor and keyboard on cardboard boxes. That actually worked pretty well, because when you feel like sitting you can just move the boxes.

One problem with boxes though, is getting just the right height. And it can be somewhat of a hassle to move boxes and wires several times per day.

Some other solutions:

If you’ve got an extra $2,000, the best solution is probably here.

I decided instead to try out one of these, because it looked like it would be easy to slide the monitor and keyboard up and down. However, although it is a pretty good product, that plan didn’t work out. The keyboard arm isn’t quite stable enough to be comfortable, and if you raise the monitor to eye level, it is too close to your face. For now what I’m doing with my desktop is to use this unit just to hold the monitor. For the keyboard, I got an adjustable (music) keyboard stand from a music store and put a piece of wood on top of it. It is pretty easy to move that up and down, and to move the monitor.

For my laptop, at first I got a small collapsible shelf. When I stand I put the shelf on the desktop, and then the laptop on that. But that turned out to not be rigid enough to be comfortable to work with. So I bought a 12 stackable plastic monitor stands from Overstock.com and put 6 side-by-side. That leaves room for the laptop and an external mouse.

I’m also looking into getting a better standing desk. After a bit of Googling, this page looks like about the best selection of real standing desks.

Haven’t gotten a cold in a few months… we’ll see.

There is a slashdot discussion on standing while working here.

Firefox and Internet Explorer support a few of the Unicode Symbols. These are better than images because they can be resized without distortion, and take up very little bandwidth.

To see how these symbols are displayed, view the page source

What you should see below:

• Unicode Arrows
• Unicode Stars
• Unicode Pointing Fingers
• Unicode Patterns

I recently starting using an indispensable tool - the Firefox Session Manager. If you’re already using Firefox you know how powerful tabs are. This extension brings out all of the power of tabs. You can open several tabs, or even several Firefox windows with tabs, and then give a name to your Firefox session and save it.

For example, if you’re working on a Joomla site, you’ll probably want to have the admin interface open, plus another tab for the actual site. Plus, you may want to open a tab for the Joomla extension directory or some other resource site. You can save these tabs as a session and have them open all at once again by reopening your saved session.