Martin Gordon's Blog

I'm just about done watching every episode of Robert Scoble's ScobleShow put out so far. As someone who hasn't touched his DSLR in a very long time, my favorite (and most inspiring) episodes are the Photowalking with Thomas Hawk series of videos.

The best part of his show is that it works. I've subscribed to Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection and checked out Zoomr (though I'm still partial to Flickr). And while I haven't checked out all of the companies he's featured, I have checked out a few of them (Become.com [video] and Cuts [video]). And while I probably would have checked those sites out if Robert would have linked to them on his blog instead, they are a lot more memorable if I can put a face to the site I might just look at a handful of times. In other words, the stickiness factor of video is much higher than that of text.

My concerns about video podcasts apply to the medium in general, not just Robert's show, but I think it's worthwhile to mention them here:

One of my big concerns with video podcasts, and particularly ones so full of content, is the inability to comment effectively. While I can easily quote a section of one of Robert's blog posts, it's currently impossible to similarly comment on a particular snippet of video without making people download the entire show and manually search for the part I'm commenting on. Perhaps Cuts (a video-editing app featured on the ScobleShow) could help with this.

Another factor affecting the amount I comment is that the iTunes -> web browser link isn't quite there. I know that Ze Frank and Rocketboom have active communities, for example, but they're non-existent to me because of the effort it takes (yes, I'm lazy) to go from a given video in iTunes to that video's comments. Contrast this to the simplicity of the NetNewsWire -> web browser link, where I can just push the right arrow and have the post load up for me in the background.

Finally, I feel that Robert's videos are a bit too long. The product demo episodes have been short enough and require video so I'll watch those straight through. The interview episodes tend to be a lot longer and keep my attention for less time. My main concern with those is that they often don't convey any visual information - I can keep them playing behind a bunch of windows and not miss anything by just listening to the audio.

All that said, Robert's show does give us some great behind-the-scenes content as well as also providing footage for those of us not in the Bay Area with which to refine our mental images. Unless I fall too far behind (which doesn't look likely given my ever-decreasing count of unlistened podcasts), I don't see myself unsubscribing any time soon.

Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble, ScobleShow, video podcast, vidcast, Thomas Hawk, Zoomr, Become.com, Cuts, Ze Frank, Rocketboom, iTunes, video

i use this is a brand new social Mac OS X application tracker. It features a Digg-like interface where instead of Digging news stories, you click "i use this" on an application that you use. In addition, you can add other users as friends and you're given a list of "neighbours" who I assume are chosen based on how similar your app usage is.

Even without the social aspect of it, this is a much better app tracker than the bloated VersionTracker and MacUpdate, which take forever to load and are loaded with intrusive ads. In contrast, I went through the first 20 pages of applications in a matter of minutes and picked a handful of apps that I currently use. There is only one AdSense text banner ad at the top of every page.

And of course, what would a Web 2.0 app be without tags? i use this supports tagging of applications and features a Top Tags sidebar. It also has a size-weighted tag cloud common to many other web apps as well. Also par for the course, here's the developer's blog.

I think my biggest concern about this site, apart from its somewhat limited appeal is the fact that "i use this" can't be verbed. It's easy to say "I dugg that story" but it's a bit awkward to say "I 'i used this' that app." It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. In addition, I didn't notice any RSS feeds. *tsk, tsk*

EDIT: Looks like either Firefox didn't autodetect the feeds or I was on a page that currently didn't have feeds. Here are the feeds available and the ones currently planned (at least as of March).

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, Apple, Mac OS X, applications, software, Digg, social news, app tracker, social networking, i use this

Originally posted on The Blog That Jane Likes.

Tweeter Center at the Waterfront
Camden, NJ

One Sweet World *
What Would You Say
Can't Stop
Crush *
If I Had It All *
Raven *
Say Goodbye
Dancing Nancies * >
Warehouse * >
Typical Situation *
Tripping Billies *
JTR *
Smooth Rider * >
What You Are *
Everyday *
Stay *
Encore:
Two Step *

Guests:
All songs with Butch Taylor
* Rashawn Ross on Trumpet

Take everything I said about the energy during night 1 and flip it upside. The band was definitely on fire tonight and didn't really want to stop between songs, as showcased by the unusual segues present. If I Had It All made its return tonight with an extended jam reminiscent of the Dreamgirl jam (yes, that's a good thing). Just as the band finished an explosive Dancing Nancies > Warehouse duo, the band segues into Typical Situation AND then tops that off with Tripping Billies in what can only be described as a 40 minute giant ball of energy. I also noticed there was no pause between Everyday and Stay, something the official setlist doesn't reflect but that just added to the electric atmosphere on stage.

The band switched up American Baby Intro and Rapunzel in the encore for Two Step in response to crowd chants for it. I was a bit upset during the show because I thought the band had foregone Shotgun and Kill The King in favor of Two Step. After seeing what was on the original setlist, I would have been fine either way.

I am sad that I didn't get to hear Shotgun or Kill The King, but the band's solid performance more than made up for it. It should also be noted that this was the first two-night stand since 2003 that no songs have been repeated, something that was bound to happen sometime this tour since last year was an album year and the year before that had the four new songs being played every night.

The band now takes a strange break from the east coast for a two-night stand at Alpine in Wisconsin before coming back to Virginia Beach on Independence Day.

Technorati Tags: Dave Matthews Band, DMB, live, concert, summer tour, music, Tweeter Center at the Waterfront, Camden, New Jersey

Originally posted on The Blog That Jane Likes.

Tweeter Center at the Waterfront
Camden, NJ

Don’t Drink the Water *
When The World Ends *
Pig *
Proudest Monkey *
Satellite *
Crash Into Me
Lie In Our Graves *
Hunger For The Great Light *
So Right *
Jimi Thing *
Grey Street *
Break Free *
So Much To Say * >
Anyone Seen The Bridge * >
Too Much *
The Idea Of You *
Louisiana Bayou *
Encore:
Sister
The Dreaming Tree *
Ants Marching *

Guests:
All Songs with Butch Taylor
* Rashawn Ross

Notes:
~ Dave Solo

This was my first show of the summer and 11th all-time DMB show. I saw seven songs I'd never seen live before (Pig, Proudest Monkey, So Right, Break Free, The Idea Of You, Sister and Dreaming Tree). All in all this was a pretty standard show for this tour. Nothing spectacular came out of the setlist and the song performances, while energetic were nothing I haven't heard this tour. The show met my expectations but nothing wowed me like Hello Again on 7/29/04 did, for example. This is not to say I didn't enjoy the show, on the contrary, I had a lot of fun and I'm glad the weather held up for the most part (a few sprinkles here and there). It was also pretty cool to hear some people singing along to Break Free and The Idea Of You. I hope that we may have done a little something to make that happen :)

I'm really looking forward to tonight, where the band will most likely pull out Shotgun, Can't Stop and Kill The King and old favorite JTR.

Technorati Tags: Dave Matthews Band, DMB, live, concert, summer tour, music, Tweeter Center at the Waterfront, Camden, New Jersey

One of the few perks of having to be at work at 8 every morning is that fact that I get to read my RSS feeds at 7:15. As such, I was able to catch Chris Anderson's post from two nights ago in time to be one of the 100 bloggers to receive a free copy of his new book, "The Long Tail". I was pretty sure I had made it in on time, but I wanted to wait until the confirmation email came in to be sure. The book should be here sometime next week. Hopefully I can read it in a few days, so expect the review to be up the week of the 9th.

Technorati Tags: long tail, Chris Anderson, book, review, free, bloggers

I know it's been out for a while now, so I'm breaking one of the cardinal rules of blogging, but I was asked to do this for work so I thought I'd post it here as well.

Google Spreadsheet is Google’s entry into the online spreadsheet market. The user interface is what one would expect coming from Excel, although Google has taken the Office 2007 (albeit with much less options) approach and categorizes toolbar buttons into one of three tabs – Format, Sort, and Formulas. Typing data into cells is fast, but sometimes the display doesn’t keep up with what is being typed. For example, there is often a small delay in right-justifying a number. It may take some time before users used to Excel’s instantaneous updating become confident in the user interface’s ability to keep up.

GS contains roughly 240 functions, all of which adopt Excel’s naming and argument scheme. Unfortunately, none of the functions actually name arguments, instead they simply display “(args)”. This requires users to remember formula arguments, keep an Excel reference handy, or keep Excel open, options which are all equally undesirable. Also missing from Google Spreadsheets (but available on competitor iRows) is the ability to create charts.

Despite all the drawbacks, the application does have some redeeming qualities. After you initially save a file, it is constantly saved. Without any sort of version control, though, this could do more harm than good. Making changes to a spreadsheet automatically saves it and navigating away from the spreadsheet causes undo history to be lost. An unalert user may find himself causing irreparable damage to a file all too often.

Furthermore, GS has the ability to import XLS and CSV. It can also export to HTML as well as those two formats. Importing files may be a bit tricky because of GS’s limited formatting options (e.g., borders aren’t supported) and functions.

It is worth noting that GS has collaborative editing built-in, meaning that multiple users can edit a spreadsheet at the same time. According to the GS help site, there is currently no limit to the number of users that you can share a spreadsheet with, although no distinction is made between people invited to edit and people invited to only view.

Google’s target market is hard to pinpoint. Casual computer users have very little, if any, need for a spreadsheet application and heavy-hitting users are more likely to need more power than GS has to offer. Road warriors have no need for GS as well. If they have a need for Excel at all times, then they probably have it installed on their notebooks. If they don’t have a notebook handy, navigating the application on a mobile device would be painful even if it were possible (GS currently only supports Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox) and there are applications available for all four major PDA/smartphone operating systems that are specifically tuned for small screens that would do a quicker and better job than GS would (in addition to saving on costly mobile data rates).

In addition, there doesn’t seem to be a way for Google to integrate contextual advertising into an application that mostly deals with numbers (as opposed to GMail and GCal, which rely on textual user data to generate ads).

It is pretty evident that Google is just testing the waters with Google Spreadsheets and that it is not a serious entry into the online spreadsheet market. The application does not host the typical Beta designation present in Google’s mass-market products such as GMail and Google Calendar. Instead, the Google Spreadsheets logo features a bubbling flask indicative of a Google Labs project. No online spreadsheet application is able to compete with Excel, but users looking for an online spreadsheet application to complement Excel should look to a more polished solution.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, iRows, Excel, Web 2.0, AJAX, review