Category: Geek

Today at Google I/O, Google announced Google Web Elements, which lets you easily (we’re talking copy-and-paste easy) incorporate Google services into your website.

To show you how easy it is, I recorded a live installation of a Custom Search element on my homepage. The video, which is recorded in realtime, doesn’t even reach the two minute mark:

I would remind you of my disclaimer, but it’s prominently displayed in the video. 🙂

I’m usually in love with Apple’s UI decisions, but I dusted off my Apple TV tonight to download a few movies, and it was an incredibly frustrating experience.

First of all, I didn’t have my iPhone with me, so I had to do without the Remote app while searching and type with this:

That part wasn’t too bad, since it only takes a few letters before the right movie pops up. But here’s where I could not justify the 6-button remote:

And after all of my effort, here’s what I got:

When that happened several times, I tried hooking up a USB keyboard to the USB port in the back of the device. A port which does absolutely nothing.

Finally, I reset my password (which worked after the second attempt), and then was able to complete my purchases after resetting my Apple TV.

The experience felt like using a real-life MacBook Wheel:

I spent a few minutes playing with Wolfram|Alpha today, its first full day of public availability. While the launch of this service was very recent, Wolfram|Alpha has a longer history than you might think. It’s built off of Mathematica, which I never used as a student but I certainly heard about from my math-loving friends. Mathematica was released over 20 years ago and named by Steve Jobs.

At first glance, Wolfram|Alpha looks like a traditional search engine, but it’s different than the types of search engines you’re used to associating with a web service.

It strives to provide answers to factual queries based on data visualization and computation. Yeah, I don’t think I explained it well either. Let’s just jump to some sample queries to show what I mean. I’m pretty bad at calculating time, so let’s have computers tell me the answers:

How much longer until my birthday? (my first query!)
[days until dec 31, 2009]

How much time do I have to ride my bike? I don’t have a bike light.
[time until sunset] or just [sunset]

When is this 87-minute movie going to be over if I start watching at 7:15?
[7:15 + 87 minutes]

Here’s the first query I tried which didn’t work. I wanted to see if I could add up times (in MM:SS format) to see how much video I’ve uploaded to YouTube. I put in these sample values:
[4:15 + 2:10 + 18:37]

Bummer. But with a little bit of find/replace I could get an input that Wolfram|Alpha understood:
[4 minutes 15 seconds + 2 minutes 10 seconds + 18 minutes 37 seconds]

I entered all of those queries with limited knowledge about what types of questions Wolfram|Alpha could answer, and had no idea what a correct syntax should look like. Fortunately, it does a pretty good idea of understanding what I’m trying to ask, which is what’s expected of search engines today. After I played around with time-based computation, I tried a couple of other queries:

[population of doylestown, pa and population of sunnyvale, ca]

This one did not work:
[populations of doylestown, pa and sunnyvale, ca in 1983]

Here’s a fun one that I originally learned from Google’s calculator:
[number of horns on a unicorn]

And this one from Monty Python:
[velocity of an unladen swallow]

As you can see, the results are better when you’re more specific:
[velocity of an unladen european swallow]

Those should be enough to get you started, but if you need more inspiration or are looking for more diverse examples, check out this list.

Tomorrow night I’ll finish my Android trial, and I’m honestly not sure which device my SIM card will be sitting in at 7:00. I’ll definitely continue to use both platforms; I just need to decide which one will be my primary device.

In addition to a great notification system and the ability to run background apps, I’ve found another point in Android’s favor, and had a fun time geeking out with it last night. Google Sky Map, which was born in Google’s Pittsburgh office, allows you to do what you’d expect from Google: search the sky. I noticed that none of the daytime/indoor demos really showed the app “in the wild,” so I waited for the moonrise last night and then shot a quick video. I decided to search for the Moon for three reasons: First, I know what the Moon looks like and can confirm the app’s accuracy. Second, it’s the only natural object in the night sky that my video camera is able to capture. And finally, I was hoping that it would lead me to David Moon. He totally freaks out when I find him at night. It’s hilarious.

Here’s my quick demo:

My camera did pretty well on full-auto; I think you get the gist of what’s going on. The bright circle is the Moon. You’ll note that the Moon actually appears a bit to the left of where Sky Map said it would be. It’s possible that my compass needs to be calibrated. The difference could also be caused by the fact that at my location, magnetic north is about 14° east of true north, and the app currently does not account for magnetic declination.

Did you like the music? It’s my first time publishing a video with YouTube’s AudioSwap feature. I chose a short song called “Happy and Happy” because it sounded corny enough to be in one of those science videos you watch in school. I’d also like to note that this is the first time I made use of one of YouTube’s new tags to make sure the video was presented properly. I uploaded a raw HDV file, which is 1440×1080 pixels. But that doesn’t sound like it matches the 16:9 aspect ratio, does it? That’s because DV and HDV use a horrible concept called “non-square pixels” which I’m sure was a good idea at some point for technical reasons, but in today’s world is just an annoyance. So, to make sure YouTube knew to present it as widescreen, I added this tag: yt:stretch=16:9. Worked like a charm, and it meant I didn’t have to do any transcoding on my end.

So, the next time you see one of those articles about “Object X will be visible to the naked eye tonight,” grab your (or your friend’s) Android device and find that object in no time. Or if you want to find something tonight, try searching Google (without the brackets) for [tonight’s sky] or something similar. Before heading outside, however, check to see if the object you’re looking for appears above the yellow horizon line. If it’s below the horizon, you won’t be able to see it without some heavy-duty Earth-moving equipment, so make sure you look up the best viewing time for your area.

Don’t have access to an Android device? Don’t forget you can still explore the sky with your browser or with Google Earth before heading out to find things yourself.

I haven’t done a lot of stargazing in my life, and it’s a bit difficult to do where I live now, but I have a few favorite sky-watching moments:

1. As a birthday present for me one year in elementary school, my parents won a fundraising auction for an evening with Derrick Pitts at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. We got to look through a pretty sweet telescope on the roof.
2. In 4th grade, my science teacher hosted an astronomy night. It was temporarily cancelled due to weather but then was back on at the last minute. The next morning, I told my homeroom teacher that I went to the astronomy night and she looked really concerned because she thought it was cancelled. I remember this because she always seemed worried about everything.
3. When I was 11 years old, I went to an Audubon camp in Maine in August and saw my first meteor shower. I’m guessing it was the Perseids, and it was amazing.
4. In March of 1997 when my family was on vacation in Colorado, a partial lunar eclipse occurred while the Comet Hale-Bopp was especially bright, and I’m pretty sure we spotted it. At the same time, Hanson’s “MMMBop” was a popular song, and Andy Signore wrote a parody song honoring this and published on the back of the creatively-named S’Edition, a parody of The Edition, our school’s paper.
5. I saw the Perseids again last summer.

When I was about 10 years old, every day after school I used to get some cookies and milk and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV. The series had recently ended and they played it five nights a week on UPN 57. I eventually got around to seeing all of the old movies and kept up with the new ones, and then in college watched the entire Original Series within about a couple of weeks on DVD. I’ve bits of Deep Space 9, Voyager, and even Enterprise, but never on a consistent basis so I’m hoping those will pop up (legally) online someday.

The Next Generation is my favorite series, but I really enjoyed The Original Series too, even though they only visit two planets: “The Soundstage Full Of Plaster-based Rocks Where You Can See The Shadows Of The Trees On The Sky During Lightning” and “The One That Looks Just Like Earth.”

Last night, I finally got a long-awaited Trek fix and saw the new Star Trek movie. I don’t want to give away anything to those who haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll just say that I was a bit worried going in and even during the movie, but in the end I enjoyed it. The characters were pretty true to their original personalities, and even the plot uses one of Star Trek’s favorite devices. It wasn’t the most serious Star Trek content, but their movies are generally fun and let the characters let loose a little more, so they honored that tradition. I could totally have done without the Nokia ad, though (it’s like watching one of their cheesy “concept” videos about the future), but it only lasts a few seconds and I didn’t notice any other intrusive placements in the film.

After the movie we ate at Tomatina, which was really good. We had garlic rolls and a Margherita pizza, both recommended.  I don’t often go to good pizza places with friends out here. It reminded me of home, although just seeing Star Trek may have helped with that feeling.

It’s the “small” things— spelling correction, parsing geographic terms — that  make me habitually search for just about anything. (Which, by the way, is why I go absolutely nuts when a webpage tries to take over the default actions of double and/or right-clicking.)

Anyway, I thought this was cool:

Here’s the picture, which now has an updated caption. I can only show you a reverse angle of the sign in the picture, because it looks like the Street View cameras didn’t go down Canterbury Rd, but maybe they’ll visit someday.

1. While talking to people in person it sometimes looks like their lips are out of sync with their audio.
2. When you go to the eye doctor you complain that the color balance is different in each eye.
3. You see a blue sky free of clouds and think, “Yeah, I could key that out.”

Yeah, not a hilarious list, but both things are true for me. Plus I need to test my blog.

Why would you want to add captions to your YouTube videos? I can think of a few reasons:

1. Your videos become accessible to people who cannot hear.
2. Your videos become more accessible to search. (Check out this search for three terms that only appear in the captions for this video. They’re not in the description text.)
3. People watching your videos in an office/library can do so without headphones.
4. Non-native speakers may find it easier to read the text.
5. Captions can be translated (manually or automatically) into other languages, becoming subtitles and expanding your audience without you having to create multiple videos for multiple languages.
6. Fun hacks.

Whoa, wait, what was #2 again? Search? Accessible? Did Wysz just give an SEO tip on his personal blog? Yep.*

So, how easy is it to caption your videos? Well, I screencasted the entire process for a video live. I did it for a pretty short video, but you get the idea of what the process is like:

In this demo, I used an application written for Google App Engine, since it’s free and easy. For more information about how to create captions and subtitles, check out this help article from YouTube.

* I work at Google on search quality. Look for me in the Google Webmaster Help forum. Oh, and anything I write on this blog is my own view and not on behalf of Google, etc, etc.

On Sunday, I created a document to start tracking things that I want in my house when I get one, even though it probably won’t be for a long time. It’s fun to dream. The second item on my list (after “coax and Ethernet to every room”) is “LED lighting.”* Coincidentally, the next day at work, I was pleased to learn that I was closer to this dream than I thought, as for Earth Day I received two free LED bulbs, each with a light output equivalent to a 40 W incandescent bulb. Here’s what they look like:

I love LEDs. I have an awesome super-bright Inova X03 LED flashlight. If a piece of electronic equipment has a blue LED, I want it. And soon, LEDs will be great for general-purpose lighting, too. They’re a bit on the expensive side right now, but that will change. LED bulbs use less energy and last longer than incandescent bulbs and CFLs. That’s right, if you have an LED bulb, you can totally one-up those CFL users. It’s like pulling up next to a smug Prius driver in a Tesla or on a bicycle. Or telling a vegetarian that you can’t eat her cookies because you’re a vegan.

The bulbs I got are supposed to last more than ten years. I tried to test this claim tonight, but it was taking too long, so I’ll take their word for it. But I must give incandescent bulbs some credit when it comes to longevity. There’s one that’s been burning for over 100 years less than an hour away. I don’t even think California was a state 100 years ago. I’ll definitely have to check it out if I’m ever up that way.

I was eager to install my LED bulbs when I got back to my apartment tonight, and here’s what I found. I don’t use 40 W incandescent (or CFL equivalent) bulbs anywhere in my apartment. 40 watts is dim. I use CFLs in my kitchen and living room (they use 23 watts and are very bright), but in my bathroom I have a row of five 60-watt incandescent bulbs above my mirror. What I did was replace two of the bulbs with my LEDs, which use five watts each. Now my bathroom lighting energy usage is 63% of what it used to be, while maintaining 87% of the brightness. That’s pretty good, and I can’t notice the difference. I actually remember when they were building our house in Pennsylvania that they set any dim-able lights at 90% by default, because nobody will notice the difference in brightness, but it makes the bulbs last about twice as long.

Can you spot the LED bulbs in the picture above? Counting from left to right, they’re in positions 2 and 4 (or 1 and 3 if you’re a programmer). A bit softer than the clear incandescent bulbs they’re next to, but you really have to look to notice the difference.

The color of the light is about the same as a standard warm incandescent, and a quirky thing is that it takes about a half second to turn on after receiving power. However, they do come on at full brightness, unlike my CFLs which turn on a bit dim and gradually reach full brightness over about a minute. The glass does not get hot, but like CFLs, the base of the bulb still does. I’m hopeful that by the time I have my own place, LED bulbs will be inexpensive and bright enough to light my entire house.

* There’s actually a somewhat embarrassing parenthetical remark that I’ll paste right here: “(both as regular bulbs and fun modern accents – esp. blue).” I’m kind of a lighting geek. This is why I need to get married before I get rich. If those events occur out of order, my house will look like a cross between a sci-fi spaceship set and a nightclub.