Going Dark Against SOPA/PIPA
Politics are a big part of my life and I enjoy being socially active in causes I believe in and against causes I think would be damaging. Recently the House (SOPA) and Senate (PIPA) have been discussing two bills for to strengthen anti-piracy laws by wrecking the way the internet works and providing almost unregulated power to intellectual property owners. While I agree that piracy is a huge concern, as the industry I work in can be hit hard by piracy, but the way that SOPA/PIPA go about solving the problem is all wrong.
These bills have the ability to cause catastrophic damage to the way we currently use the internet today and could potentially stop progress and innovation. If either SOPA or PIPA were law these sites would have been closed or gone bankrupt before becoming part of our lives today.
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- MySpace
- eBay
- Craigslist
- Twitpic
- WordPress.com
- and countless others.
Amazon S3 and WordPress
As I stated in a previous post, I moved all my images, theme files, and js files over to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service or S3. The process was fairly simple with the right mixture of WordPress plugins. I’ll give you a basic guide on how I moved everything over to S3.
First things first, S3 is just storage. When creating your ‘bucket’ (we will talk about that in a bit), you select the location in which it will be stored. S3 isn’t a content delivery network (CDN), but Amazon does offer that with Cloudfront. Even though this isn’t a CDN, it will probably speed up your website as well as reduce burden on your web host, only costing you a couple cents a month (depending on your audience).
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Windows Phone 7 Suggestions
I got my Samsung Focus right after they came out. I was impressed with the Windows Phone 7 experience and thought Metro provided a lot of neat options and a great experience. After a bit of growing pains and adjustment I have become very impressed with the platform, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft doesn’t have some things they can improve. The most recently NoDo update increasing the speed of starting applications and the current demos of Mango coming out later this year with HTML5 browser support and a host of other new features, but there are still things MS can change or fix. Here are some areas that I’d like Microsoft to improve with future updates.
Microsoft Arc = Returned
So a couple weeks ago I picked up the Microsoft Arc Keyboard. I liked the overall design, but I had a difficult time typing with it. Something about the pressure of the keys and the space bar was causing everything I type to be in a big block of text. I took it back to Best Buy today and picked up the Microsoft Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000, which is a standard keyboard with a slight curve and a Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000. I had the Wireless Mouse 5000, but I broke the receiver while cleaning my computer, so it was a nice bonus to get that mouse again. I am pretty happy having a new fancy keyboard that I can type on again. Also the performance of the Arc with games wasn’t that great. Just too small for a crazy FPS.
Microsoft Arc Wireless Keyboard
I picked up a Microsoft Arc Wireless Keyboard today at Best Buy while picking up MLB: The Show 10 today. Total impulse buy and so far so good. It is very tiny! Reminds me of my netbook keyboard, but with a slight curve. It feels pretty nice to type on, but I am making a fair amount of mistakes since changing from my good ol’ Microsoft Curve 2000, which has been my favorite keyboard for a couple years now. Check out the photos which will give you an idea of how small this keyboard is!!
Testing from WP 2.0 on the iPhone
I installed WordPress 2.0 for the iPhone and so far no major issues. It is pretty standard but does the job!
iPhone Post Test
I got an iPhone 3GS a couple of days ago and I found an application to post to my blog. So here is the test!
Upgraded to WordPress 2.7-RC1
WordPress 2.7 RC1 has been released. The Dashboard is REALLY different. I need time to adjust.
First Post with Asus 1000h
So I broke down and bought an Asus EEEPC 1000h. It is the 10.1 inch version with 160 GB hard drive. So far it feels really nice, good construction, light weight, keyboard feels nice but will take a bit to get used too. Overall I am happy. It will be great for travel and the photo blog. First trip is in a couple weeks down to Los Angeles to see Hymns.
Apple OSX 10.5 Leopard
!@(/uploads/2007/10/promo_leopard_20071026.jpg:C510 )So Apple released the long awaited update Leopard, and was it worth it. The updates are so far amazing and the speed increase is a great bonus. One of the first thing is Stacks, which are two icons that are on your dock. Clicking them fans out a number of files associated to that stack. It can be your documents, or recent downloads. It just makes it a great deal easier managing files. Stack animate when clicking on them in a curved icons, or you can change it to a grid by a simple click. I never really used Spaces in previous versions of OSX, but I started with Leopard and I don’t know how I can not use it anymore. Various Linux distros have desktop spaces like this, but being able to apply specific programs to specific desktop spaces is just really easy to setup and very intuitive. Some of the other nice features is the new search which will highlight and expand the text you are looking for. I am running on a Mini Mac with a Core Duo, not to be confused with a Core 2 Duo, with 2 GB of RAM, and it screams. Applications open up extremely fast, switching programs is extremely responsive. I have stopped using Camino because Apple made some major improvements with Safari 3.0.So if you have a Mac, I’d suggest going and picking up Leopard as soon as possible!