XM Satellite Radio

Faced with a daily commute to San Mateo — 23 miles each way — I weighed my options for driving entertainment. I could buy a 40 GB iPod to listen to music, audio books, and podcast tracks every day. I could also buy a satellite radio. I knew a lot about the iPod, but very little about satellite radio. XM Satellite Radio is the dominant player with over 2.5 million subscribers compared to SIRIUS Satellite Radio‘s 600,000 subscribers. XM is $3 cheaper at $10 compared to $13 a month for Sirius. I have also been reading a lot about the XM’s programming lately, so they were the clear winner. I went to my local Best Buy and checked out the Delphi XM Roady2. Tiny box, backlighting to match my car’s interior, tiny satellite antenna, and a built-in FM transmitter. I played around with the unit in the store, was happy enough with it, and picked up a box from the display. I paid $120 for the unit and $10 to activate the service online. I of course hooked up the satellite radio in the parking lot but the only channel available to me was full of channel promotions. XM should instead cycle through some channels to let me have a true satellite radio experience! After activating the service and waiting the recommended hour I got back in my car to test reception and channel offerings. The right thing to do is mount the antenna on your roof with a clear view of the southern sky. Too much effort. I placed my antenna on the dashboard and drove around downtown and across San Francisco. My signal did not drop through all of downtown San Francisco. I had some reception troubles driving around the steep hills Pacific Heights and some areas of the Presidio. Yesterday I was able to drive through the “Rainbow Tunnel” north of the Golden Gate Bridge with no loss of signal. The main argument I hear about Sirius right now is access to the Howard Stern show. Most people do not realize that the station featuring Howard Stern on Sirius will be a premium channel for an additional monthly fee. XM charges an extra $2 a month per radio for its High Voltage channel featuring Opie & Anthony. Howard Stern’s show will most likely be on a premium channel and cost above $2 a month per radio to help cover the $100 million a year Sirius is paying the radio personalities. So far I have been happy with my choice but I am still getting used to the channel listings. I’ve been listening to Unsigned, Fred, and BBC World Service. I am able to browse channels by the currently playing song and artist: an easy way to find new favorites.

New job at NexTag

On November 1 I will start my new job at NexTag, a shopping comparison search engine in San Mateo. I will be a product manager in charge of creating a developer and affiliate network to create a better community around the site and its offerings. I worked for one of NexTag’s competitors — PriceGrabber.com — in the early stages of product search so I know the industry well. My weblog did not help me win the job, but my experience in the online community and developer space will no doubt be utilized in my new position.

I am excited to be back in the search space with the opportunity to connect users to a large database of product offerings through the use of web services.

RSS aggregator roundtable

DrunkenBlog posted an interview with developers of the leading feed aggregators for Mac OS X. Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire, David Watanabe of NewsFire, Rory Prior of NewsMac, Erik J. Barzeski of PulpFiction, and Graham Parks of Shrook answered questions about the basics of RSS, the threat of Safari RSS, auto-discovery of feeds, competing feed formats, and the business model for producing RSS feeds. Graham Parks on feed formats:

Atom looks to be so much more reliable and usable than any version of RSS. Once v1.0 is published next year, I imagine there will be few new implementations of RSS.

Of course, it will still be around and readers will still have to understand it, but it won’t be able to compete with the IETF-backed Atom spec.

Brent mentioned Jabber/XMPP as a possible solution to the scaling issue, a solution I had not heard before.

NewsGator Online Edition now free

NewsGator Online Edition is now a free feature for basic features: NewsGator Web Edition and subscription synchronization. New features include:
  • Per-post rating system. Rate each post from one to five stars.
  • Feed recommendation for paid subscription levels.
  • E-mail feeds.
I signed up for a free NewsGator Web Edition account. The service competes with Bloglines and offers cosmos data similar to Technorati. The press release mentions the ability for users to “add the rating feature seamlessly to their own blog site” but I cannot find the code anywhere.

Printer forensics

Purdue researchers have developed a method of recognizing unique patterns specific to each printer regardless of print cartridge used. Edward J. Delp, Jan Allebach, and George Chiu developed software to recognize intrinsic signatures revealing the subtle differences from one printer to another. A second step involved extrinsic signatures from specially designed printers for purposes of identification. (via Engadget) Counterfeiters could be traced back to their printers but you would need to have the equipment on hand to compare. I doubt we will ever have to register our printers upon purchase but unless you are paying cash your new printer is already tracked.

Google Desktop Search

Google Desktop Search Google Labs released Google Desktop Search beta this morning. Google Desktop Search allows users Windows 2000 and Windows XP to search their e-mail, AOL instant message sessions, Internet Explorer browser history, as well as text and Microsoft Office documents. Google Desktop Search uses your Web browser as its management interface. Connect to 127.0.0.1:4664 and you are greeted by a familiar Google search layout with a Desktop addition. I am able to access the Web interface using Intenet Explorer and Firefox but I am greeted with an incompatible browser message when using Opera. You have the option of including secure Web pages in your search by allowing Google to download a copy of each page. Google Web searches will now show desktop matches alongside Web results (you can turn off this feature in Preferences). Outlook e-mail is only indexed while Outlook is open. Google Desktop Search spawned three processes on my computer: GoogleDesktop.e, GoogleDesktopCr, and GoogleDesktopIn. The three processes are currently utilizing about 27 MB of RAM on my computer.

Six Apart featured in Wall Street Journal

Six Apart was featured on the front page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal business section. The title of the article is “Folksy No More, Blogger Firm Taps Big Clients.” Ben TrottMena Trott Pretty cool to have your own personal WSJ sketch. Yes, the Wall Street Journal’s site is available to subscribers only, so I will summarize some of the new information from the article. According to Technorati Six Apart is the third most widely used weblogging software behind Blogger and LiveJournal. Six Apart counters by noting that it has a large deployment behind corporate firewalls. Corporate customers account for about 35% of Six Apart’s revenue. Disney and Amazon are two big clients. The article focused on Six Apart’s transition from Ben and Mena’s apartment into something more corporate. TypePad was mentioned briefly but the main focus was on Movable Type.

Seeking new employment

I am currently looking for a new full-time position in the tech industry. My current employer, Callan Associates, has threatened to fire me for having a weblog and making any reference to my work life. While I have yet to be fired my yearly review is now ten months overdue and I have been told not to expect any pay increase or job advancement. There are so many interesting services in the tech sector right now I would love to work on. I realize that I am not aware of all of the companies currently seeking new talent and I would like to tap the resources of my readers and the weblog community to discover new and exciting opportunities.

What Motivates Me

I am motivated by the promise of leveraging technology to solve the world’s problems and connect people to the information they desire. My ideal company would have compelling technology to interconnect users and their data through a service as dependable and easy to use as making a phone call; You seek out the service, engage it, and it works without your knowledge of the technical prowess necessary to connect point A to point B. I am motivated by financial incentives as well as the opportunity for recognition within a company or the broader technology industry.

Ideal position and company

My ideal position is a product manager with a small to medium-sized company in the technology sector located in the San Francisco Bay Area. I would gather design requirements, make a business case for a change, and implement. Business smarts while carrying a coder’s toolbox.

My ideal company values employees and their creative spirits. I would be encouraged to publish, attend industry events, and become an authority in my field even if it is on my own dime. I need to have good feedback from a team of peers or management to help drive my performance. I am fully capable of working independently but I also look for feedback to ensure my work is meeting the objectives of the comapny and its clients.

What I Can Do

I have worked with large databases gathering, extracting, and normalizing data. I enjoy making ideas come to life through the use of computer programming. My three strongest languages are Java, PHP, and Python but I am not afraid to try a new modern language. I have developed pattern recognition systems, notification services, business portals, reporting tools, and attribution searches. I am good at picking one of the many ideas running through my head and implementing what I think has the most promise. I am an effective manager of people and time and prove myself weekly in the office as well as on the soccer field.

I am a citizen of the United States and Ireland.

Sectors of Interest

  • The search sector is very interesting to me. Lots of puzzles to solve and opportunities to connect people with the content they care about.
  • Personal publishing is taking off and I would love to introduce more users to the technology. The industry needs to do a better job of communicating what it offers and why different classes of users would like to participate.

More information

I currently have two versions of my relevant work history online: a standard résumé as well as a story-based job history. Please contact me if you have a position of interest, would like to suggest a company I should look into, or if you would like more information regarding my history. This post is my first attempt at a job hunt through the weblog community and should at the very least be an interesting experiment.

UCLA and Universal Studios crack down on P2P traffic

UCLA has a software program named Quarantine that revokes Internet access from users the system flags as a copyright violator. Quarantine uses the Automated Copyright Notice System developed by Universal Studios to identify and notify offenders. Given the close proximity of life in a dormitory asset swapping is not uncommon. The computer network is just an an easier method than sneaker net for the exchange of goods. UCLA was an investor in Napster.