There’s a big gap in the online market for a killer DV cam site I think (Camcorder Info just doesn’t do it). A nice database of what’s out there with a search that can let you choose what features you want and what you want to spend.
And reviews. No one has reviews of the latest cameras. Search results pages are littered with shopping comparison BS from the likes of Epinions/Shopping and C|NET. Typically they let you write your own review but have none from existing users. Since you can buy the stupid thing already there should be reviews all over the net.
I have a feeling a site with good (but not over the top like Camcorder Info’s) reviews of consumer camcorders would do very well. It’s a big purchase that most people will research quite a bit.
Case in point, try to find an actual review of the Canon Optura 60.
Now that tagging is all the rage for online apps, why don’t we have it for email yet? Instead you have to use arcane search that usually brings up no messages or about 1000. These days, the same company can have several different domains (PR reps, ad sales, corp, etc) so there is no reliable and fast way to search for all recent communication with X company. Full text searches for the company name sometimes work, but usually bring way to many results and take forever.
For example, I could take a message from a PR rep from Verizon Wireless with "verizonwireless pr" and find it easily again. With a simple UI I could make rules for find all messages with this tag and that tag, or this tag and not that tag. Would be heaven.
(Gmail is close with Labels, but that’s just "tag like" categories. I want real Flickr/del.icio.us like tags).
I put up a spiffy looking weighted category list of our posts over at MobileTracker. I love this view. Yes, we copied Flickr. I modified the code here to better deal with ‘ and " which throw PHP up sometimes. Building lists like these is actually pretty simple.
I can’t find it, but here’s what it would do for me:
- Allow me to enter in my home airport and others that I would be willing to drive to so that I don’t have to enter TPA each and every time I search a flight. This shouldn’t be a feature for only registered users.
- The deals section (every travel site seemingly has one) would actually be useful because it would know my airport. I don’t care about Boston to Orlando… I’m in Tampa! I’ve never yet found a deals section that had fares from Tampa, but there are plenty of (cheap) flights leaving daily.
- More on this deals section, I want to input a list of cities that I would like to go to some time in the future (heck, maybe even countries) and have the system email me when there’s a deal. I can set what I consider a deal as price (per city) or just a percentage below last year at this time.
Yahoo! Alerts does most of that last part for me, but it’s a bear to use. And it’s not smart on the deals part, I know it can figure out what’s a good price, but how do I know what Tampa to Beijing is going for on average in May.
Yahoo! Travel is the only travel site I can find that has a, "My Dates are Flexible" button, which is an amazingly useful feature. For people like me that want to go certain places, but can go at anytime, this is a must have. With variable airline prices, it knows how to pick travel dates better than me. I would even like it to pick destinations for me (as an option). It knows where I want to leave from, so it could just find me the best domestic or international fares to wherever.
I don’t know what’s stopping one of these sites from launching a killer deals section. They make enough money for a large R&D budget, much larger than what would be needed for some breakthrough features.
I’m jetting to New Orleans tomorrow to cover CTIA. It’s a big (800+ companies) wireless trade show that should be lots of fun.
I’ve heard that New Orleans is both one of the worst and best places on Earth. I figure it’s somewhere in the middle.
I’ll let you know on the flip side!
I finally picked up a copy of Spam Kings and I am loving it. There are some really colorful characters out there in spamland. If you want a bigger penis, or would like to WORK FROM HOME NOW, go buy Spam Kings.
Seriously though, I’m loving it.
I made it a mission recently to be more secure with my data. For analog stuff, I bought a paper shredder (who’s going to want to steal maimed personal info? It’s easier to just move to the next schlub who doesn’t have a shredder!). This is phase two of my shaping up program, phase one was having all of my data always backed up.
I haven’t had a problem with security yet, but like having fresh backups, I don’t want to take chances. Being more secure doesn’t have to take a lot of time, it’s just knowing what you can do. And if you use a wireless network connection, the need to be secure is just that much greater.
For digital stuff, I:
- Installed a SSL certificate on MobileTracker’s server so that when I log into MovableType, all the data is encrypted. This also lets me work in CPanel with peace of mind. Setting up a cert is a little tricky, but there are plenty of tutorials.
- Switched over to secure email, using an SSL connection again. This is an easy one click way to make your email secure, as long as your server supports it.
- Changed Transmit to use SFTP–I couldn’t believe I let that one slip by. Again, this was a simple one click change that can mean so much.
- Changed all of the passwords on the server (they were solid before, but this is post encryption just in case). Remember to have your passwords include capital and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. I would say anything at or above 10 characters is good enough for government work.
The next step is to change passwords for things like online banking and AIM. I’ll leave that for next week.
Does anyone have a favorite Mac OS X based file encryption program?
This is insane. Maybe Ted Stevens should just go back to Alaska (where you probably can’t even get TV outside of a few cities).
"Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area,"
the Alaska Republican told the National Association of
Broadcasters, which represents most local television and radio
affiliates. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable
as over-the-air" broadcasters.
A while ago (yikes, over a year!), I posted a hack to get MovableType to be able to use multiple URLs for search forms. Why would you want to do such a sick thing? Well if you host multiple sites, it’s tacky to use the same domain for all the searching. It has been proven that only .0168% of people notice URLs these days, but I’m a total URL-ist and need ’em pretty.
The problem with my previous hack was that you need to mess with the CGI files. This is just not fun, and every time you upgrade your installation you have to worry.
My new hack uses PHP, but seems to work fast. There’s technically a little more work (the server fetches the CGI results), but unless you’re powering Google it probably won’t be much to notice. It also works a bit smarter and changes the default search form that appears on the results page to reflect your new URL and change it to a GET query.
Get the code here.
