Aww, hell yeah. Pandora has managed to cut a deal with SlimDevices, who will now begin offering the Pandora music recommendation service on my Squeezebox 3. And I get a 90-day free trial. I've been tempted to sign up for this service for a while and this may put me over the edge.
Last.fm, which I also use, integrates data collection and streaming with the Squeezebox as well, made possible by the plugin architecture and some generous open source coders. Very handy. As is currently en vogue, I'm working on a side-by-side comparison of the services (in which I will spend at least as many words railing against the limitations of both imposed by brain-dead industry licensing terms).
I saw the news in Silicon Beat, which declares SlimDevices a come-out-of-nowhere hit. It's kind of bittersweet for someone who has been following the company for more than four years. But it's good that they're getting some recognition in the press, including several articles and reviews just this week.
After RCC Camp, Mike and I went to a couple of killer bars on Saturday night.
First, Jive (makers of the forums software that we use at Atlassian) were having their fifth anniversary party and were kind enough to invite us along.
They'd rented out a excellent venue called holocene (review; see it on flickr). It was a converted warehouse: concrete walls and floor, huge ceiling, big windows. But they'd done a terrific job remodeling with a what looked like a relatively small investment. There was a decent bar, some tables, a dance floor and a small stage for concerts. The lighting was great and the atmosphere was very cool. It was very low key when we arrived, but the time we left the DJ had started and things were hopping.
But still, with only a few days in Portland, I wanted to see more of what the city had to offer. After a couple of hours at holocene, we met up with Patrick and moved on to the Doug Fir. (see it on flickr). I've been wanting to go there ever since I saw pictures of it in a magazine a year or so ago. Beautifully designed, the looks like was like a cross between a log cabin and a space station. Click on the picture above for more shots. The place is gorgeous.
I wish I had brought my camera along to take some pictures, but you'll have to make do with other peoples'.
I also learned from Patrick that Portland is the microbrew capital of the world. I tried a different microbrew every time I drank a beer and still left hundreds untouched. I wish I had taken notes, but everything I tried was good, if not excellent. Given that I tend to drink the same beers over and over, it was a welcome vacation.
I think I could really like Portland, were it not for the weather. It was cold and wet the whole weekend. Maybe I can go back in the summer and change my opinion.
I'm a little late with the posting, but I wanted drop a quick report on the Recent Changes Camp that Mike and I attended this weekend. To get you started, here's an article from the Oregonian about the conference (including funny quotes from Mike).
This conference was unlike any other I've ever attended because it followed the Open Spaces paradigm. Open Spaces is apparently pretty well known in some circles but just beginning to infiltrate the tech community. The basic gist is that a bunch of people show up in a big room with no agenda or plan. Anyone who wants to talk about a particular topic, goes to the front and writes their topic on a big piece of paper. Then they pick a time for the talk and stick the piece of paper on the wall. Do this enough times and you've got an agenda.
Then someone else comes along a puts the papers into chronological order. The rest of the attendees write their names on the topics they plan to attend. At the session, someone takes notes which are later posted on a wiki and then improved and expanded by the other attendees. You can now see the reason that this was an appropriate format for a wiki conference.
WikiWednesday last night was really pretty cool. I met some great people and saw some cool tech. But more about that later, when I've got more time to write.
It looks like Mike and I will be attending Recent Changes Camp in Portland this weekend. If you're around, be sure to say hi!
A quick heads up: I (and several of my Atlassian compatriots) will be at WikiWednesday tomorrow night. It's being hosted by SocialText, and the focus for the night is the launch of TWiki v4. If you're interested in wikis and want to meet some of the industry players, drop by and say hello.
I'm not Catholic, but something about this new Vatican policy makes me uncomfortable.
For the first time all papal documents, including encyclicals, will be governed by copyright invested in the official Vatican publishing house, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
I wanted to quickly point out a great post from Charles (Confluence lead dev) about Wiki, a Subversive Technology. The scenarios he writes about here exactly mirror my experience with Confluence when I brought it into my last job, both the enormous benefits a wiki can bring and the inevitable corporate momentum toward locking everything down, thus killing the reason it was useful in the first place.
That's right. As of this weekend, I'm officially a resident of San Francisco. And as of today, I have internet access from my apartment.
I feels good to be (in my new) home.
The move went pretty smoothly. They loaded my belongings on Tuesday in about four hours. I stayed in Santa Barbara and worked on my trusty laptop for a few days. And on Friday I drove up to San Francisco. My stuff didn't arrived until Saturday morning, and they were able to get it into my apartment (despite the inconvenient entrance and the flight of stairs) in about 3 hours. The movers were very professional and there was only one casualty in the process: my computer desk. It wasn't very expensive, but it's kind of a bummer to have to replace. I had nice spot all picked out for it in my new apartment.
I spent the remainder of the weekend unpacking and hauling box after box of packing paper down to the recycling bins. My furniture is mostly in place now. I have just a dozen or so boxes left that I have to get into some kind of storage.
I got a chance to explore the neighborhood a bit over the weekend. I had drinks on Friday night with the Atlassian gang at a place on Mission called Medjool, and then we went for dinner at Esperpento, which was surprisingly excellent. I had lunch on Saturday at a thai restaurant called Osha on Valencia. And I went to a nice little breakfast place called Boogaloos on Sunday. And today, I'm going to the store, so I can stop eating out every single meal. Still, I really dig having this much to choose from, all within walking distance.
So, anyway, I'm officially here now. if I've been promising to get together/drop by your event/meet for lunch/have drinks/come to work, good news! I am now in a position to finally fulfill those promises. See you soon!
What's easier: correcting a malicious Wikipedia entry about you or correcting a malicious news-story about you? In the past year, I've had the opportunity to do both, and for me, it's clear that if you're going to have your name dragged through the mud, it's a better deal if it comes at the hand of an anonymous Wikipedia troll than from a paid journalist in a mainstream news-source.
With Wikipedia, anyone can roll back the clock and see what was published, when, and by whom: Wikipedia's History and Discuss pages are palimpsests recording the process by which the truth was eventually negotiated.
There's no absolute truth, but some things are more truthful than others. In the Internet Age, we can no longer rely on publishers or other gatekeepers to put their imprimatur on The Truth. Instead, each of us must navigate our own way to truthfulness.
Jonathan Nolen 