I recently made a sale on ebay, and needed to figure out shipping charges when I ran across a cool new app from the good ole United States Postal Service. It’s called Virtual Box Simulator, and will help you determine which priority mail box is the best size for your items. All you have to do is print out a small indicator on piece of paper, which tells the app where to superimpose a priority mail box. You can then set your item on top of the paper to see if it fits into the virtual box. It is actually a pretty handy tool, and a nice use of technology. Way to go USPS

How well does the Internet know you? I’m sure we’ve all googled ourselves at one time or another. The results from search engines can be a bit messy. If you want a more elegant depiction of how you’re represented on the Interwebs, give Personas a try.

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display until Sept 09 at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab (Please contact us if you want to show it next!). It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

Here are my Persona results.

It doesn’t tell you where the results come from, so it’s kind of a fun game to guess what your persona is based on.

• Books – probably from a recording I did of Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture book, as well as work I did for The University of Iowa Libraries
• Sports – I’m no sports hero, but maybe this is from SCUBA sites?
• Committees – I’ve served on my fair share
• Education – I’ve been working for higher eduction off an on for quite a few years
• Movies – I like movies (?)
• News – I read news (?)
• Legal – not sure
• Social – I guess I’m social.
• Art – I have an art minor, and have done work on art web projects in the past.

That is my best guess on interpreting how the results. How does the Internet see you?

The new school year is just about upon us -classes start here on Monday. With the influx of new students (and the departure of good parking places), your mind starts to drift back to the time when you were a scared freshman, out in the world for the first time. Beloit College has been putting together a mindset list since the class of 2002 arrived on campus. It’s interesting to see what experiences these new students have had up to this point, and how they know (and don’t know) the world.

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college. It is the creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Emeritus Public Affairs Director Ron Nief.  It is used around the world as the school year begins, as a reminder of the rapidly changing frame of reference for this new generation.

Mindset list for the class of 2013

Here are some of my favorites:

• 4. They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
• 9. They have been preparing for the arrival of HDTV all their lives.
• 14. Text has always been hyper.
• 31. There has always been a Cartoon Network.
• 52. They have never been Saved by the Bell
• 72. Migration of once independent media like radio, TV, videos and compact discs to the computer has never amazed them.
• 73. Nobody has ever responded to “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

Last week, word hit the Internets that Radio Shack was rumored to be re-branding themselves simply as “The Shack.” Since that rumor first hit, they have confirmed that it’s not just a rumor, and they will, in fact be changing their name to”The Shack” in the coming months. That doesn’t really make much sense to me given Radio Shack is a known brand that’s been around since 1921. I understand that the “Radio” portion of their name might be a bit dated, but it’s been dated for the past 30 years. Why make the change now to a brand that is so well known?

This re-brand follows on the heels of several other questionable re-branding efforts of late. Pizza Hut threw around the idea of becoming simply, “The Hut” back in June before changing their tune, and leaving the word “Pizza” intact. There is also SciFi Channel’s re-branding that switched back in July. SciFi Channel is now officially called “SyFy” (pronounced Siffee?). I understand the need to update your brand, and update your image, but this one just makes you scratch your head. Apparently it is pronounced the exact same way, just spelled differently. This one in particular only seems like it will confuse and turn off the channel’s core audience (SciFi lovers), and makes you wonder if it’s really worth the time and money (lots!) that it takes to carry out a re-brand like this.

What are we going to see next? Will Best Buy become The Buy? How about Mart for Wal-Mart? Or just The King for Burger King? Didn’t Circuit City try doing this a few years back, changing their name to “The City?” It didn’t seem to work out that great for them.

Weird Al just released a new single where he takes on the random stuff you can find on Craiglsit ala the Doors. This one is almost as as good as White and Nerdy.

You may have noticed that things have changed a bit around here. I’ve been working on a new design off and on for a couple months now, and have finally gotten to a point where it is “done enough” to implement. As these things go, it will probably never be “done.” In this new design, there are a few new areas and features that I didn’t have previously that I want to point out.

Photos
Photos aren’t really a new feature. I’ve always had a photo gallery on the site. I’ve decided to use a different gallery application, ZenPhoto, instead of Coppermine which I used previously. This new gallery is a little nicer to use, and allows me to finally turn comments back on for photos. This is something I used to have, but was so overwhelmed by spam that I had to remove it. So feel free to leave photo comments (especially on the mobile photos) whenever you see fit.

Blog Sidebar
This area is pretty much the same as I’ve as I’ve always had in the sidebar. Its information specific to the blog: search, blogroll/links, post archives, etc.

Social Sidebar
The Social Sidebar is mainly a collection of my interactions with social sites outside of techory. Some are fleshed out, and pull content directly in, and some are just links to my profiles on those sites.

• The “Latest Mobile Photo” isn’t a new feature, but comments are turned back on for those photos (see above)
• Twitter now lives in the sidebar. I’ve got a twitter account, so I figured why not bring it into my blog as well. You can see my last two tweets on the site, as well as follow the link to my twitter account and follow me if you’d like.
• Shared links is something totally new. I run across a lot of intersting links on a pretty regular basis, and unless you follow me on the various social bookmarking sites I use, you can’t see what weird and wonderful sites I find interesting. I’ve brought all my submissions to those social bookmarking sites together into that sidebar (and the payoff page for shared links archives) as a place to see what I run across out on the Internets.
• Flickr is the next in line, and is a link I’ve always had in my sidebar, but just called out a bit more. It now includes the latest two photos that I’ve posted to flickr.
• At the bottom of the Social Sidebar, I have included links to my social networking profiles. Again, these area areas I interact with on other social sites, so I decided to hook those into techory as well.

So there you have it, what’s new and cool with the new design. I’m sure there are still some rough edges on this, and I’ll be going over things with a fine-toothed comb the next few weeks. Let me know if you noticed anything flakey happening, or anything I missed.

A couple years ago I was on the hunt for a site to keep track a small bit of information on all the books I read in a given year. What I eventually settled on was a service called LibraryThing, that I’ve been using for quite a while now. When I started looking for this tool, my needs were very simple (and still are). All I wanted was a service or tool that would let me track very generic information about books, along with when I started, and completed reading them. The main thing I wanted to track was how many books I completed in a year, and whether or not I liked a book. LibraryThing did all of that and more. The “and more” part of that is what I’ve become increasing interested in lately. A few times a year, I make a larger order of used books (usually from wherever I have the most gift cards). Between my purchases, I try to keep a list of “want to read” books built up before I buy. Normally, I build this list out off of lists I run across online, or book award winners, or even recommendations from Amazon off of books I liked. LibraryThing also offers a recommendation service where your books are compared to other people on the service who have similar tastes as you à la Last.fm, and the iTunes genius features for music.  This feature has been ok (not great), and has given me a few useful recommendations. I still mainly build my book purchase lists from other places. Enter Book Army.

Book Army is a new site that focuses more on the recommendation feature, and less on the cataloging/tracking features that I use in LibraryThing. It is much closer to a Last.fm type service in that it looks at your likes, and suggests other books based on other people who like the same books. I spent a little while entering ratings on the books that I had been tracking in LibraryThing the past few years to see what I’d get back. There were a few good books that came back in my results – more than what I was getting from LibraryThing. I’m sure the service will get better over time, as the number of users goes up, and as I rate more books on the service. The things I like about Book Army recommendations is that it provides reasoning for a suggest book (you may like book X because you enjoyed books X, Y, and Z). The other nice feature is you can correct suggestions. If a book is suggested that looks incorrect for whatever reason, you can tell Book Army, that it was a bad suggestion to help it get even better data about your reading tastes. Since this service is new, the “Book Army” is still being recruited. We’ll see if recommendations improve as the size of the army increases. Who knows, maybe my tastes are just so eclectic (it certainly isn’t working for me in Netflix) that it’s hard to determine what I enjoy.

Have you ever wondered what happens when you send back a Netflix DVD for a new one? The Boston Globe has put together a great photo walkthrough of a Netflix receiving warehouse. It is a lot less automated than I had assumed. A small army of people turn around an average of 60,000 DVD’s every day!

http://www.youshouldhaveseenthis.com/

Last week I was talking to a coworker of mine and somehow the conversation moved towards the possibility of the internet disappearing. She came out and asked  me what I would do if the internet was gone. It’s an interesting question to think about since the Internet has become such an important part of our lives. I know some people do without it, but personally, I think it would be difficult. Just think of all the things you encounter that require visiting a website for more information, or need an email address to register for something. At least in my life, I think I’d run into issues rather quickly. Firstly, I probably wouldn’t have a job, since basically I make stuff to put on the Internet. Secondly, I’d probably have much more free time, given that a large portion of my day is spent in front of a computer (working and playing). It would definitely be interesting, and I can probably say that I’d be spending my time in many different ways.

During the conversation where this came up, I kind of turned the question around, and asked what would happen if any technology were to suddenly disappear. What if we didn’t have cars to drive around? There would obviously be some difficulty getting from place to place, but we probably wouldn’t be stranded since we have some history to look back on without cars. I think the same thing would go for the Internet. We haven’t always had it, so we could obviously do without it. We’d just need to remember how things got done without bits and bytes flying through space. Things would be difficult at first, but we’d figure out how to get by. Some people would probably have an easier time than others if they’ve lived without a certain technology, or had been trained on doing their job before a certain technology existed. I think maybe the point I was making is that we’ll learn to adapt with what we have. I think this coworker was trying to get at how much people rely on the Internet for everything these days, but I think the argument could be made reliance on just about any advancement in technology. What happens if something disappears? We deal with it, and figure out another way to get by. At the very least it’s an interesting thing to think about as you move through your day. How many places do you rely on the internet to get things done?

One of the original, first person shooters turns 15 years old today. The video game Doom was released by ID Software in December of 1993 (a follow-up to Wolfenstein 3D). I don’t think I started playing Doom until the summer of 1994, when a friend (who had spent the time downloading it on a painfully slow 14.4 modem) gave me the pile of floppy disks to install the game. At the time, it was one of the best games out there, and had incredible graphics. We’ve definitely come a long way. Since ’93, Doom has been ported to just about every platform you can think of, including a recent flash version that you can play in your browser. What better way to wish Doom a happy birthday than by blowing up some aliens!

A happy Cyber Monday to you all! I started putting together lists of (geek) gift guides mainly for myself a few years back to help with my holiday shopping. So with the shopping season now officially upon us, here’s this years list. I’ve chosen these lists because they appeal to me, and the people on my shopping list. If you happen to know of any other guides that might be appropriate there, be sure to leave me a comment, and I’ll get them added to the list.

• CNET Holiday Gift Guide
• 2008 Ars Shoopping Guide
• 2009 Uncle Mark Gift Guide and Almanac
• ThinkGeek Holiday Gift Center 2008
• ExtremeTech’s Geek Gift Guide 2008
• iLounge iPod + iPhone Buyer’s Guide 2009
• Gifts.com
• TreeHugger Holiday Gift Guide 2008
  
• Cool Stuff: Your 2008 Holiday Gift Guide
• Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide, 2008
• NOTCOT Holiday Gift Guide
• 2008 Kotaku Holiday Gift Guide
• MightyGoods Stocking Stuffers: for him for her
• MAKE Magazine Open Source Gift Guide
  • Electronic Kits $20 and Under
  • Alternative Energy Gift Guide
  • Chemistry Gift Guide
  • Music Makers Gift Guide
• CrunchGear’s 2008 Holiday Gift Guide
• GizMine
• Coolest Gadget Gift 2008 Guides
  • Electronics
  • Kitchen Gadgets
  • Eco-Friendly
• Lifehack 2008 Gift Guide
• PC Magazine Holiday Gift Guide 2008
• ZDNet’s 2008 Holiday Gift Guide
• Photo.net Holiday Gift Guide (photography gifts)
• 77 Design Gifts Under $77 from Core77
• Holiday Gift Guide: The 8 Best Green Gadget Gifts (12/11/08)
• The Ultimate Web Developer’s Christmas Wish List (12/17/08)

A little late on this, but here’s a few shots of our geeky pumpkin.

Apple has been dinging Microsoft with its “I’m a Mac” ads since 2006. Microsoft recently decided to strike back with a 300-million-dollar campaign and some very odd ads starting Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. Then they released some “I’m a PC” ads with content hitting back at Apple, which I have to admit (after the crazy Seinfeld ads) actually was decent response. Well, now the ad war is on bigtime. Apple hit back with some ads about the ads criticizing their ads. This is going to get confusing (but funny!) before it’s all said and done.

UPDATE: There’s another one…

I catch a new article every few weeks along the lines of “The Best Firefox Extensions for Doing ______.” Sometimes I see something cool that I end up downloading and using regularly, but most of the time I just stick with what I’ve got. I decided to share the list of extensions I have installed, and what I use them for.

Aardvark
This extension fits into the web developer category, and is really handy for quickly visualizing block elements in a website layout simply by hovering over the page.

BugMeNot
If you’ve never visited the site Bugmenot.com, you’re missing out. That site provides generic logins to those silly sites that make you create a login just to view things. This extension gives you an easy right-click option to pull a generic login from Bugmenot to the site you’re currently viewing.

Chatzilla
This one is simply an IRC client for Firefox. The main reason I installed it was for viewing Apple Keynotes chatted via IRC, so it isn’t an extension that I use regularly.

ColorZilla
This is another web developer extension. It gives you an eye-dropper tool that can be used to pull colors from any website, and copy them to your clipboard. I use this pretty regularly to quickly get hex colors from sites I like, or to remind me what color I used in a site I created.

Delicious Bookmarks
I’ve got a Del.icio.us account full of bookmarks, and this extension helps me to add/tag/sync those bookmarks with Firefox.

Firebug
Firebug is probably the most used extension in my collection. It fits into the web developer category, and allows you to rip up the code to just abou any website you can pull up in Firefox. I use it mainly for tweaking and viewing CSS issues in my sites, but it does a whole lot more.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
This extension keeps my bookmarks in sync between my work and home computers. It also provides a hosting service allowing me access to my bookmarks via their website on any computer.

Greasemonkey
This extension allows you to customize the way webpages look and function by using scripts to do different tasks based on the sites you visit. One of my favorite scripts removes hose annoying text link ads from sites that use them.

IE Tab
This one does pretty much what the name implies. It shows you what your site would look like in Internet Explorer. It’s handy for testing sites, but also if someone has a poorly developed site, it will allow you to quickly view it using IE without leaving Firefox.

Link Alert
I use the Link Alerty extension to warn me before I click on a link to an outside document. Where this extension is most handy is for PDF’s, so I don’t mindlessly click, and then have to wait for Acrobat to open. It’s also handy for e-mail links warning me when it is going to pull up my email client.

MeasureIt
Yes, another web developer extension (I’ve got a lot of them). This one lets you draw boxes around elements on a site to see how larget they are. It’s handy when looking at page/element widths.

S3 Firefox Organizer
This is my newest extension, and was downloaded when I started using Amazon’s S3 for backups. This extension gives me access (FTP-like) to my S3 storage account from inside Firefox.

Sage
A simple in-browser RSS reader – I like this better than the live-bookmarks reader built into Firefox.

Translator
This extension does quick and easy translations of websites with one click, Every now and then, I’ll run across a site I need to see that isn’t in English – this extension saves me in those circumstances.

User Agent Switcher
Along the same lines of IE Tab, this extension lets you spoof your user agent for those poorly developed websites that only work well in a certain browser.

Web Developer
The Web Developer extension is a very handy extension for web developers (duh), that provides different break-downs of page elements on the site you have it. It also allows live manipulation of those page elements.

WebMail Notifier
The WebMail Notifier extension notifies you when you get new webmail (catchy name eh?) so you don’t have to keep visiting the webmail sites one by one to check mail status. I use this for my hotmail, yahoo and gmail accounts.

Work-Only Extensions:
There are a few additional extensions that I use only on my work computer for various reasons.

Quartz PDF Plugin
Since Preview is my PDF-viewer of choice on my Mac, Quartz lets me open PDF’s using Preview right inside the browser vs. firing up an external instance for each doc.

Simple Mail
This extensions is similar to WebMail Notifier, but is used to check my pop mail accounts at work. I like to keep my work and home email separate, so my home mail doesn’t go to my mail app at work. This extension check my multiple accounts and lets me view/edit/send mail from right inside the browser.

Well, there’s the list of all the extensions I use. What does your list look like? Is there anything I should be using that I don’t have right now? What is your favorite best-extension-since-sliced-bread?