Jangl needs some work.

Jangl is a site / service for free web calls without divulging your personal phone number.

Just tried to use a site that partnered with Jangl to facilitate free but anonymous phone calls, was not impressed.

I didn't even get past the setup -- hooking up with Jangl requires you to call their number, which is a super wtf in and of itself -- it's the only phone-based authorization system I've ever seen where you have to initiate the process. It also introduces a number of errors into the process, which is why I never got past the setup.

If you own a mobile phone you'll notice that sometimes your number shows up on caller ID / etc as missing the "1" in front of it, etc, if you're making a call to a number in the same country. This completely breaks Jangl's setup process, which tries to identify the phone you're calling them with using "1-555-555-5555" while your phone shows up as "555-555-5555" if you're both in the same country. That is why most phone verification systems call or text you -- easy work around, same result.

I've only encountered one other system that worked like Jangl does, and that was my credit card company -- it is a very bad one, if you're wondering.

Also, OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT MUSIC ON THEIR HOME PAGE?


Anyway, rant /off.

ActiveRecord + Legacy DB + Ruby script: what you need to know

Some things you should know when you're going to be using ActiveRecord in a generic Ruby script:

1. Make sure to require 'rubygems' <-- I forget that part a lot for some reason.
2. You MUST set ActiveRecord::Base#logger to an instance of the any Logger class. ActiveRecord won't take care of setting ActiveRecord::Base#logger to an empty dummy class -- you'll get a bunch of Nil-based errors if you forget this.
3. ActiveRecord::Base#establish_connection --> takes the same parameters you'll find in a database.yml.
4. If you want to mess with SQL Server, make sure to grab the latest adapter: gem install activerecord-sqlserver-adapter.
   
5. If your legacy table is a_details, the ActiveRecord model will be ADetail.
6. If you want to access the column RelationID, it is ADetail#RelationID <-- easy.
7. If your legacy DB has a wonky naming scheme for primary keys (and it will), you need to use set_primary_key in your ActiveRecord model.

That's it. Who said you can't talk to legacy databases with Rails?

Happy sailing, yo.

UPDATE:
For the LOVE OF GOD don't forget gotapi -- it is a big bucket of win.

Attack of the Social Networks.

I never really was a fan of social networking, but a few weeks ago I just couldn't resist it anymore.

I actually got a Facebook and a Pownce account. Also have a LinkedIn account as well.

What happened? No, freakin', idea. It was just a strange compulsion I got one day. "HEY WHY NOT?" is how it went, or something like that. I think I have enough accounts to quell myself, though...

Skynet vs Starling?

Trying to understand the difference between the two and what scenarios it'd be best to use them in.

Any help?

I'd get a Pownce or Twitter account but I don't have any friends. ;)

EDIT -- looks like I figured it out myself. ;)

Put SkyNet on top of Starling and off to the races you go.

SkyNet can be configured to use different message queue systems. Starling is just such a message queue system, apparently robust enough to run Twitter (or not, when Twitter's down).

linkage:

SkyNet -- implementation of an algorithm Google uses for distributed computing.
Starling -- what Twitter uses.

Good old Internet Explorer to the rescue!

Making canvas-based Identicons work in Firefox: 15 minutes.

Making canvas-based Identicons work in Internet Explorer: 3 hours, 25 minutes.

I was - - > < -- close to just dropping IE support for the feature, too!

The browser giveth, and the Silverlight taketh away

I've been learning about Silverlight recently. One issue has been bugging me, though, and that's what I called my post on the silverlight.net forums:

Enhancing websites with Silverlight without crippling functionality.

As a quick example of this, check out the Silverlight homepage. If you've got Silverlight 1.0 installed, there's a really neat menu -- slick and usable. However, you can't: drag and drop any links on the menu to a new tab, can't right click it to get The Usual Suspects (Open in New Window, Open in Tab), and you definitely can't right click it to open the links in the background.

So, the menu is aesthetically pleasing, but it's lost a lot of functionality I've come to take for granted. The worst part is, this menu could have been implemented using some rich Javascript -- it would have been a lot more harder, but it still could be done, and you'd still have all the browser-based capabilities you're used to.

Flash has the same annoying limitations, too.

The ultimate solution in my opinion would be better integration with existing HTML elements -- you'd tell Silverlight or Flash, "this region should be treated as an anchor-tag," and when the plugin finishes processing, it adds an invisible anchor-tag to the page, layered on top of the specified region. The browser sees it as a generic anchor tag with absolute positioning, so gives you the standard options when interacting with it, the user sees it as whatever the hell you wanted it to look like in the first place.

Win-win for everyone, right?

Defensio: smarter than the average troll.

So, I've been using the Defensio API lately. There's a "Defensio on Rails" plugin that I've had success implementing (with a few hacks specifically for the site using it, thank God for open source).

I've always been meaning to integrate Defensio into the anonymous blogging site I run, since I figured that sooner or later someone was going to target it for spam.

And I was right.

But the spam that eventually came wasn't your every-day automated "buy viagra now" spam. What the site got hit with was curious hybridization of trolling and spam; it was spam, no doubt, but it was clearly posted by actual people attempting to troll the site. Let's call the phenomenon "Troll Spam" for now.

After swatting away the first few posts by hand, I quickly looked into Akismet and Defensio's APIs. I was on a "short schedule" since I hadn't planned on spending my entire day implementing an anti-spam filter or doing the filtering by hand.

I eventually chose Defensio, and had it up and running in less than 2 hours. Why?

* Good API documentation: even though I was using the Defensio on Rails plugin (see above), I still needed to know the mechanics. Going through the Defensio API page was a breeze.

* RSS feed for "innocent" and "spam" pages. This was incredibly convenient for checking the results of the Defensio on the production site. I have my own little admin section that looks like it came out from a cracker-jack box, but Defensio's RSS feeds make it much better to monitor, real-time, what's ham and what's spam on the production site.

* Statistics. Tells me how the system is working. Not useful now, but fun to watch!

But by far the most important feature was that Defensio learns. The Troll Spam all had a similar theme, but different content. If you've ever seen a "raid" by 4chan or Something Awful goons, you'll know what I mean. Certain words, phrases, etc, repeated together. After training Defensio to HULK-SMASH the next few bursts of Troll Spam it's caught on to my intentions and started filtering out the bull-shit while still letting in the good-shit.

Meanwhile, the site continues to operate normally, the regulars not even realizing there's a Secret War happening!

Now, I know I could have spent 20 minutes creating my own filter that would have whacked posts that had these phrases in them, but this is so much better: Defensio has even started marking other posts by these trolls as spam as well. One of them thought they were going to be clever and posted an entire 3-page "ABC REPORTS" article. Never hit the front-page.

At the time of this writing they've basically just given up and started posting a long stream of obscenities (which is easier for them I guess), but none of it is getting through...

Statistically, Defensio has about a 50% accuracy, but it's been implemented less than 24 hours and its learning very, very quickly.

Smells like victory to me.

My only regret is that I didn't get Defensio implemented sooner -- I missed out on a lot of good learning data.

HTML5's Canvas tag: are we using it?

Dear Lazy Web (all 6 of you that read my blog in other words),

Are we still using the Canvas tag? I've been researching it, looking for a "cheap" way to do some simple graphics manipulation for Firefox-based browsers, and as I did I came across Apple pulling the patent card for Canvas. I remember seeing some radically awesome stuff done using Canvas but if there's a chance that it'll be pulled from the browser in the future because of the patent I'll be looking to use something else.

So, we using it or not?

PS: Blogger's fucked up Rich HTML editor doesn't escape HTML tags when you type them into the editor, so guess what happened when I posted this the first time?

The tools! Use the oDesk tools!

Wow, I totally cannot stress this enough: monitor your providers. If the job is really important, hire a project manager.

I was browsing through this thread on the oDesk community forums; posted a few months ago, but it recently surfaced again when someone posted a little ditty on "Providers that lie" further down the thread.

One problem both buyers encountered was the assumption that they didn't need to monitor their providers at all. It is vital to communicate constantly and ask for tangible updates from your provider when starting a new relationship. You don't know him, he doesn't know you. He might think he's doing "OK work" and in your eyes it's garbage. He might be trying to cheat you and sweet-talk his way out of it. You might not have explained your project clearly and now the provider is wandering astray.

oDesk has plenty of tools -- the work diary, the time analyzer, etc -- to keep you and your provider on the same page, but you have to use them to be an effective buyer. This is less of an issue once you and your provider have established a bond of trust, but before then you're just tenuous associates.

Another problem both buyers faced was not knowing the difference between the hourly model and the fixed-price model.

The hourly model is based on labor: they work, you pay them. This is similar to hiring a contractor to come paint your house. You pay him by the hour, he paints. If you're going over-budget, you can stop paying him, but that means he'll stop working -- even if he's only painted half the house.

The fixed-price model is based on the tangible end-result. You're not paying for the labor involved in creating the product

With both the hourly model and the fixed-price model, you have the same goal: completing the product. However, in the hourly model you pay for the labor to complete the product, where-as in the fixed-price model you're paying for the product itself.

By now, I'm sure you're wondering what this has to do with the thread I mentioned earlier. Here's the answer.

You can't refund labor.

You can't turn back the clock and give the provider his hours back. If he's been working on your project for 6 hours straight and suddenly you decide you don't like how it's turning out, you can't just straight gank his cash -- you can ask for a refund, and they may feel obligated to give you one out of a sense of professional courtesy (this happened to me with one provider), but not necessarily.

Ah, but what about fraud, right? What happens to cheaters?

First we have to distinguish the difference between fraud and disputed hours. Fraud means the provider was "cheating" -- they said they were working, but they weren't. No labor, no pay. However, disputed hours can stem from a few issues: maybe the provider was working on your project, but he wasn't working diligently because he was too busy chatting with his girlfriend by IM in the background. Maybe he was working, but doing it abnormally slow, trying to bill extra hours.

oDesk has policies in place for dealing with disputed hours and fraud. I've never dealt with disputed hours myself, but oDesk publishes their dispute policy online.

You're probably asking yourself right about now why you should bother with the hourly model at all. After all, isn't it safer to work with a fixed price project?

Maybe.

For complex projects, an hourly model is the way to go. When you use fixed-price, the more time a provider spends working on your project, the less they make an hour. So it's in the providers best interest to take short-cuts and be messy. For a smaller project, such as a personal website, fixed-price is much more suitable: the provider has plenty of time to finish the assignment. No need to rush or be sloppy.

An hourly model assures the provider that he has time to work on polishing your project and making sure everything is going as smoothly as possible. If a serious issue comes up without warning, he has the option of fixing it the correct way instead of the fast way.

To sum it up, let's say you're going to a restaurant:

The restaurant employs the hourly model to pay the chefs to cook food for the customers.
The restaurant is paying for the labor.

The customers employ the fixed-price model to pay the restaurant for their delicious meal.
The customer is paying for the product.

I hope that analogy made more sense to you than it did to me.

Anyway, use the tools. Keep an eye on your provider. Ask for tangible goods -- screenshots aren't good enough. If the provider says he isn't ready to set it up the project for you yet, ask the provider to use oDesk Share. oDesk Share allows you to view a provider's desktop in real time.

oDesk will connect you with qualified (and sometimes not) providers: it's up to you to manage them. If that sounds like hard, try to hire a project manager who will micromanage everything for you.

Man, I love me some bold text. Bold, yet smooth.

Logins! Logins! Logins!

A few days ago I received the IT equivalent of a battlefield promotion and suddenly found myself tasked with commanding and conquering a team of developers that I had to first assemble. I was given end-to-end hiring responsibilities, and since we decided to use oDesk to search for talented developers, it meant that I now had three accounts: provider, buyer, and now the enigmatic "Company User."

Also, there's this reality-bending feat:

Yeah, that's two of me. As if one weren't bad enough.

Frankly, what I need right now is some kind of keychain. I've got 3 logins for oDesk alone, and God knows how many more for various sites on the Internet. Hotmail, Yahoo!, Google... I know there's software out there to "coalesce" the experience, but that software doesn't integrate with the browser at all, isn't stored in the cloud so I can easily move from one computer to another seamlessly, doesn't have an easy-to-use every day interface...

Hey, I'm a PROGRAMMER! Maybe I'll make a website and Firefox Addin that does just that and become a millionaire. Man can dream, can't he?

Hm, I'll probably post more about the oDesk hiring experience later. Seems like good blog fodder, don't you think?

oDesk Team Software vs Privacy Concerns.

You know, when I first started using oDesk Team (that's the software that monitors your keyboard / mouse activity and periodically took screenshots), I used to be super paranoid about what kind of pictures it was taking.

I was always staring at my Work Diary screenshots, mumbling to myself when I accidentally tabbed to the wrong browser window and oDesk Team happened to take a screen-shot right at that very moment.

Hasn't been like that for months, to be honest. Months? More like a year. Christ, how long have I been on oDesk? Feels like forever.

One thing I learned about the Work Diary's screenshots: Nobody cares. Nobody. Not unless you're cheating the buyer, or the buyer thinks you're cheating him, or the buyer's new to the system and is staring in wonderment at the screenshots page.

The real appeal must be that "safety-net" feeling for both buyers and providers: the buyer can't cheat you because you've got proof (work diary) that you worked those 8 hours, and the provider can't cheat the buyer because the buyer has proof the provider wasn't working at all (again, work diary to the rescue).

Don't get me wrong, providers try every once in awhile: you'll see an angry buyer posting on the community forums because some guy in Urbekestianiza was running a simple mouse macro and stole about $1k from this guy, followed shortly by oDesk personnel announcing they're "handling the issue." I suspect they've got some guy that just monitors the forums all day, waiting for those kinds of posts to crop up so he can alert the rest of the A-Team.

Honestly, I'm surprised at the number of "cheats" that still try to make some quick illegitimate cash. There's, like, a 2 week lag time before the money is actually available for withdrawl in your account, and then there's another 3-5 days for the withdrawl to be posted and end up on your Payoneer MasterCard or ACH-enabled bank account.

There are way easier, way more successful ways to scam someone out of money than trying to fool them on oDesk. The company is just way too alert and quick when handling these kinds of issues.

Back to the issue of privacy: eh? Seriously, what are you doing while you're working that makes you feel as if your privacy is being invaded? Typically when I'm working that's all I'm doing -- working. Not chatting, maybe listening to music, definitely not video-camming nubile young women.

Of course, maybe it is because I have another, dedicated work computer -- the one I'm typing on right now has a billion different windows I wouldn't want anyone to see. My work computer is completely clean: some dev tools, that's it.

This post went on way too long.

From the past, a blast.

Here's a post someone made about 6 years back: "Why Trillian Sucks"

Not all things open source go the way of, say, Ruby on Rails.

Right now when I see Jabber instant messaging mentioned I'm looking at an "ecosystem" of poorly written clients that, aside from the Google Talk system, haven't gained much tracton. I suspect that Google Talk hits the sweet spot because it integrates email contacts with live IM, voice calling (which, apparently, no other Jabber client has), reliable file transfer, and the fact that it was integrated into an existing product, which means at launch it had a few million users.

As I see it, the instant messaging world has stopped moving forward. No major, innovative improvements have happened for a few years. So, why is Jabber so far behind? They apparently still don't have a video / audio chat standard, or if they do there's no thrust to get them implemented into popular clients.

I guess what Jabber needs is an innovator: someone to blast into the Jabber instant messaging space, and drop all those features people are waiting for (audio, video, emoticons -- features regular consumers are waiting for) and leave the rest of the Jabber community in shambles.

Things on the 'net seem to work best that way. Firefox's destructive (marketplace-wise) rampage across the Internet is a testament to that. For the first time in a long time Microsoft started ramping up Internet Explorer development when they realized Firefox was here to stay. Why not the same with Jabber?

For now, though, I'm comfortable using three separate instant messaging clients. I got the resources to spare, and I gave up on Trillian a long time ago.

Having problems updating to Rails 2.0 under Windows XP?

Seeing this error while trying to install Rails 2.0?

ERROR: While executing gem … (Zlib::BufError) buffer error

Run

gem update --system

first.

Then run

gem install rails -y --source http://gems.rubyonrails.org

and you're all set!

Yeah, I didn't know my RubyGems was that far out of date, either.

RSS advertising -- Google Adsense vs... that other guy.

In the TechCrunch RSS feed, there's an ad. Go ahead, have a peak.

That thing that looks like broken HTML is, in actuality, a Shockwave ad. It's some kind of mis-shapen video-player. Sometimes the splash-screen of the player hints at the video's contents, sometimes its just a big, black, empty rectangle. If you're curious enough to click the miniature 'play' button you'll be treated with a completely irrelevant video short that's too small and non-contextual to be interesting.

Now, check out Xbox 360 Fanboy's feed very carefully. Near the bottom. It's a Google Adsense unit, and it's blended so well you'd think it was part of the feed's content rather than an ad if it weren't for "Ads by Google." The ads aren't well targeted, but given the content that's to be expected. However, one thing the ads all share in common is the subject: they are all about Xbox 360s. All of them. They are appropriately in sync with the feed's overall content.

The ads running in the TechCrunch feed (I don't know whose they are -- they're just anonymous out of place blobs with no markings what-so-ever) are not.

It doesn't take a fool to see that the click-through rates on the Google Adsense units are going to be higher -- much higher, if only by the virtue of them being relevant to what the reader is interested in.

That's not what I want to talk about, though. The real question that's burning in my mind is why: why would you do that?

The blanket carpet-bombing style approach of advertising in TechCrunch's feeds is just a way to burn money. It's a swing and maybe-you'll-hit-maybe-you-won't. Since the videos don't even auto-play (god save whoever decides that's a good idea), it doesn't even work as a branding approach.

It's so... ancient. It smacks of old-school media who haven't caught up with the rest of the world. Did someone out there just forget about what made Google Adsense work? The contextual relevance? The small, unobtrusive ad elements that are easy to blend into content?

I mean someone really, seriously, honestly thought this was a great idea.

"Let's put video units in RSS feeds", they said.

"Let's make them tiny and hard to watch," added another.

"We'll make sure that there's no interesting splash screen on the player!" someone jubilantly shouted.

A part of me feels really bad -- I know they're not getting any airtime aside from the curious, "did someone really just do that?" viewer. Is this some kind of experiment? Do they want to see how many people will watch anyway?

I need to know. It's *EATING* me.

Someone tell me -- please!

Hilarious blog that I've been keeping secret...

...but there's no need to keep it a secret now that the farce is over. In fact, since he's supposedly stopped blogging, it's only a matter of time until the hosting goes down and this precious gem is lost forever!

Here it is:

BeerCo Software Blog

If you're wondering what makes it so hilarious, jump back a few pages into their archive and start reading. I've been trying to express some of the funnier part into a few short sentences, but its impossible. You really have to experience it to get the funny.

The guy is basically a complete fruit-cake. It goes way beyond Linux fanaticism into "I'm gonna destroy Google with my mini-search!!!!" to dramatic pleas of, "I can't do all this alone! I need... more... power..."

Direct links of awesomeness:
* Talking about Rory Blyth of Microsoft Fame: "He worked 4 hours per day, then decided it was too grueling and quit."

* Begging Rory to help him complete his Google-crushing "mini-search" right after insulting his talents. Oh, he's not willing to pay Rory, though: "I can not afford to pay cash for a team to do this right now so you would have to do it based on earnings in December and so on from the time billing starts."

* His 'RentACoder Whitepaper' experiment -- I'd link to the actual RAC project, but he changed the description text so it's no longer half-way as xenophobic was it was before. (hint: before the change, he asked bidders to be ready to describe how poor they were and what it felt like having to 'dumpster dive' since they couldn't possibly live on 3k a month). Although, in the comments, he does say this about outsourced workers: "You never give something of high worth to desperately poor people. I’m sorry if that offends you."

* His last blog post is about the Canadian Government trying to destroy him. Alright, maybe I embellished a bit, but that certainly does come across in the way he writes it.

Anyway, have fun -- don't stay too long, it's funny but it'll waste your whole Sunday if you're not careful.

Reminder to myself: Don't use LiteSpeed.

LiteSpeed: Crazy EULA; don't trust people who will model technology licenses around moral issues; might do something stupid and screw you in the future.

Also, dedicated server options: apache, lighttpd, nginx (prefer lighttpd if they ever support apache-style .htaccess). apache, mod_proxy, mod_proxy_balancer + mongrel looks good for Rails.

(why do I keep forgetting this?!)

VS2008 + .NET 3.5 is out!

Wow. I had no idea... I wasn't even tracking VS2008, and its already been released (RTM on the 19th of this month).

It includes .NET. 3.5 (which is apparently a 127MB download), which has LINQ, ASP.NET AJAX built-in, and some other stuff...

Well, that's pretty much everything I have to say about that. I'm still good with .NET 2.0 and Ruby (sometimes on Rails!) for my current projects. I probably won't upgrade / update unless a client specifically requests it.

I might take a better look at 3.5 when ASP.NET's MVC framework is released.

Using oDesk as a buyer: the other side of the coin

So, I recently created an oDesk Buyer's account -- I wanted someone to redesign the front-end of a website. I don't have the time, skills, or aesthetics sense to do it myself as quickly as I want, and so like all great Americans, I'm willing to throw money at the problem until it goes away. =D

I chose oDesk because I'm comfortable with how it works from the provider's point of view. There's a few downsides to having both types of accounts (they're not tied together Single Sign On style): you can't use the same email address you use as a provider, although if you're using gmail you can use an address like mymail+odesk@gmail.com and it'll work.

Signing up was pretty easy -- took me about a minute, 30 seconds of which was trying to figure out whether it was a + or a - in the trick I just described above.

Lots of candidates, but I've noticed some providers just spray and pray -- not reading the cover letter is a good example of this, but inviting a provider to an interview and then having them cancel a day later due to them trying to "maintain their job application quota" is kinda like, "omg wtf?"

I've narrowed it down to about 3 providers -- I know for sure I'll pick one of them, so I wish I could close or hide the job entry so new applicants can't waste their time applying to it.

Also, interestingly, one of the provider's emails went straight to gmail's spam box. The weird thing is, nothing in the email seems like it would have marked it as spam.

Anyway, so far so good. It's kind of a pain working at oDesk + buying from oDesk, since I keep having to sign out of one account and into another, but, besides that, big thumbs up, yo.

Scratch-Scratch.

Just saw ScratchBack featured in this TechCrunch post. I just wanted to check it out, but it only took about 1 minute from account creation to having a fully-fledged widget! Not one to waste'em, I slapped one into my dashboard.

I doubt I'll get any tips, but ScratchBack seems like a nice way for more high profile bloggers to earn a little extra income on the side.

Chumby - they're still doing that?

A couple of years ago I saw a device, somewhere, somehow -- some kind of digital wifi toy called a 'Chumby.' It was essentially a very small appliance that could display a variety of Flash-based widgets via wifi. Don't know what I'm talking about? Take a look at your Vista / Google Desktop Sidebar, and imagine those widgets being displayed on an LCD screen next to your bed.

Better yet, click on the link to visit their homepage - currently they've got a "live demo" up and a picture is worth a 1,000 words.

Pretty cute! But, I was honestly surprised to find the website still up. I first heard of the Chumby about two years ago (rough guess -- can't remember) and they still haven't started selling them to the public. Even now, they've got a live demo up to entice people, but there's no ETA on a release date -- just a big orange "contact me when they're available!" button in the upper right corner.

The Chumby to me seems like an impulse buy -- another gadget to play with. I would have bought one then, if they were available, and I would have bought one just now, if they were available, but they're not, and by the time they are I probably won't, because the idea will have lost its shine. (The urge to buy one just now was much, much less than what it was when I first heard of the Chumby).

Even stranger, though, is that their website looks like they're pitching the device hard. They've got a "store," their sidebar is pitching new and updated widgets... they even have a link to activate the Chumby they're not even selling to the public yet. Kind of surreal. Is this some kind of clique-only thing?

*shrugs*

Either way, I'm bored talking about it now. See you when I see you.