Morisy dot com

The personal homepage of Michael Morisy, technology journalist.

Home › instant history › instant history

Topic “instant history”

Plants vs. Zombie: Android invasion imminent?

Submitted by michael morisy on Wed, 2010-08-18 13:57


I think I bought Plants vs. Zombies the day it came out for PC, maybe having burned through it three times, but I'm still excited about this little snippet from TechCrunch, only because it more than hints that PvZ is coming to Chrome, and if it's coming to Chrome there's a darn good chance it's coming to Android soon:

That image, plus the fact that there's plants and zombies roaming around on the bottom of the under-construction PopCap Android storefront.

On the passing a trusted companion

Submitted by michael morisy on Tue, 2010-08-17 06:12

And so it goes. My loyal Xbox has finally bitten the dust, after five faithful years of serving up media content on televisions big and small, of powering impromptu PowerPoint presentations, of even streaming music for the odd apartment party. Now, we offer one last samba for its Samba share and pour one out for the little black box that could. I picked up my Xbox after the 360 had been out for a while, back when Microsoft slashed prices so that they were losing money on each one they sold, and promptly stuck in a $10 mod chip so that I could delight in the wonder that was and is Xbox Media Center. It was the best bargain around, particularly if you're into homebrew because getting a real MythBox working is damn near impossible in practice unless you go out and buy all new parts for the process, in which case you'll spend thousands and not the under-$150 price of the used Xbox, and then likely get screwed over when the HD tuner you got is rendered obsolete by some crappy new DRM scheme thrust upon us.

But I digress. The cause of death was electric shock when I started fiddling with the circuit tonight while it was plugged in. I think I saw some smoke, too. It is survived by a brand spanking new Toshiba flatscreen and a Nintendo DS. It was five years old.

Somerville: Where only the strong survive.

Submitted by michael morisy on Fri, 2010-07-23 16:50

On October 2nd, 2009, at approximately 12:15 p.m., a Green and Yellow Cab Company taxi hit me while I was jogging.

In broad daylight.

Right here:
Notice the crosswalkNotice the crosswalk

And then the bastard drove off.

This was actually the second time I'd been hit by a car while on foot, and I was getting sick and tired of it. While using some choice expletives to describe my opinion of the taxi driver's moral character, driving ability and relationship with his own mother, I read his license place number and repeated it to myself 5 or 6 times, along with his description and cab company (Green and Yellow Cab Company is easy to remember since they have a big honking four-leaf clover logo). A few minutes later, I was on the phone with the police and gave them everything I knew, which was a lot: License, fat old white guy, cab company and cab number.

And then silence. Months of silence. In fact, the Somerville Police Department never got back to me.

Why I Still Love Drupal

Submitted by michael morisy on Thu, 2010-06-10 06:23

Last Thursday, at 4:37 PM, I got an e-mail from a team at MIT I've been developing for: We need brand new feature X, and we need it up and working by tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately, I had an out of town guest, a day job that needed attending, a dog that needed running, and 23 other things that stood in my way. Fortunately, I was using Drupal and was able to pull together the feature, relatively bug-free, between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. the next morning, fully integrated into the existing site. I didn't even have to install a single new plugin to get exactly what I wanted.

What did this include?

  • Create a UGC site that asked visitors a questions and collated their responses
  • Tied those responses to a vendor
  • Checked for spam and Captcha'd suspicious-looking responses
  • Promote this feature throughout the site

Check it out

Can you find the news on CBSNews.com?

Submitted by michael morisy on Fri, 2010-05-21 19:12

CBS Evening News is what many consider a serious news show, but I wouldn't have guessed it looking at an article landing page recently:

Or more clearly ...

That's a whole 80 words of text show up above the digital fold. Count 'em.

Compare this to the gorgeous, content rich NYTimes.com article page:
NYTimes

And that was a really good story CBS did, but it's buried under some dreck about Dancing with the Stars, flashing ads, celebrity gossip, say-nothing teaser headlines and Katie Couric's smiling mug, not to mention free ads for Twitter, Digg and Facebook.

Just a shame, that's all.

The Zombie Apocalypse, Signed

Submitted by michael morisy on Thu, 2010-05-06 03:32

So rarely are two of my interests so perfectly merged: American Sign Language and Zombies. I don't like embedding YouTube videos generally, but this deserves mention:

A nice Django tutorial/development environment for Windows users

Submitted by michael morisy on Sun, 2010-04-25 20:19


Python was the second programming language I learned, and I recently wanted to brush up again on my Django (a development framework for Python that makes it easier to build up full-fledge web apps). Getting Django to work on a Windows machine turned out to be almost as big a task as getting something to run in it, however ... until I came across Instant Django, which packages everything you need to build Django applications in a nice, portable, tidy bundle. You can take your development environment around on a Flash drive!

The site also has a great tutorial up on using the packages and making a (very very very basic) EveryBlock clone. If you're looking to jump into Django, no programming experience necessary, give Instant Django a try.

Irony from ASBPE: Fighting its own trends

Submitted by michael morisy on Fri, 2010-04-09 21:25

Since joining TechTarget, I've gotten occasional e-mails from the ASBPE. None have really been notable, until I was invited to hear ASBPE's "Ten Trends that Could Make (or Break) Our Editorial Careers" (emphasis mine):

Among the 10 trends to be covered:

1. We and our publications will be measured.
2. Our content will become "co-creative" with our audiences.
3. Editorial content will focus predominantly on analysis and exclusives.
4. We are in the entertainment (and information) business.
5. We (not publishers) will be the primary marketers of our content.
6. No one will pay us or our publishers directly for our content.
7. The fading "bright line" between editorial and sales may grow dimmer.
8. Content will be read on mobile devices as often as on computer screens.
9. Print content will go the premium route.
10. The Millennials will want our content, but in different packages.

Event details:
Date: Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Time: 12:30 to 1:30 pm EST
Location: Your desktop computer.

Cost: $20 for members, $45 for non-members

I'm not saying it's a bad value, and the topics certainly seem worthwhile, but there is something delicious about charging people $45 to tell them to give their content away for free.

What's in a news nugget?

Submitted by michael morisy on Tue, 2010-03-30 14:57

News Nuggets? Nope

What, exactly, is a news nugget, and what's in it?

Dave Winer suggests a nugget-of-news is 185 characters, on average. I was skeptical: He came to this number by taking the average New York Times Headline + Summary Description. That's not a news nugget: That's a news pointer.

In programming, a pointer is a reference that tells you where to look for the data, and what kind of data to expect. Kind of like the shortcuts you have on your desktop: They're not the actual documents, web pages or applications you use, but they tell you what you're going to get and take you to it.

Headlines and descriptions aren't the news: They tell you what the news will be, but the news itself is the facts, quotations and new information that make up the article. And while you'll see a lot of headline pointers being passed around on Twitter, any "social media expert" who salivates over Bit.ly statistics will tell you that including these facts, rather than just the headline, will boost interest.

Syndicate content
comments © the poster. all else © Michael Morisy or as attributed.

Please request permission for more than fair usage.

What Michael's been up to elsewhere ...