I'm glad to see that an increasing number of blogs I subscribe to are starting to turn OFF the Snap.com previews. These began showing up a couple/few months ago and drive me up a wall.

When I'm reading someone's post and come across a link, I'll often hover my mouse pointer over it so I can see the target URL... is it on the same domain, do I want to follow it, etc? What I DON'T need is a small thumbnail of the page I'm going to.

What's the point of the thumbnail?

It's not as if I can actually read the target site via thumbnail and do I really care about their color scheme and columnar layout in advance? For me, it falls into the same category as those sliding DHTML panels that ask me to fill out a survey (ahem, HP.com) or "support" the site's sponsor.

I haven't looked into it much, so it's not clear to me what the benefit is to the site/blog operator... I can only assume that they get some metrics on which links are being followed or "hovered". Whatever... get that another way. One less irritating alternative is the MyBlogLog service that Brad Feld uses on links in his posts (right)... a small popup tells me how popular an outgoing link is and, more importantly, doesn't replace a decent portion of screen space with visual noise.

And yes, I know that you can click the "Options" link in the Snap preview popup and turn them off for all sites. I've done that... a few times... it doesn't "stick" for me for very long (and no, I don't regularly clear cache, cookies, or that sort of thing). Also, while this Lifehacker article suggests that site visitors should go to Snap's web site and "download a cookie", what site operator wants to force visitors to do that? The comments on that Lifehacker article suggest an even better approach for Firefox users -- Adblock to stop them once and for all.

Anyway, here's hoping the recent backlash continues and more sites remove the preview popups.

Technorati tags: rants, blogging, web design, snap

The "Tempest in a Teapot" issue got me thinking about the "are all blogs really 'blogs'?" debate... it's a question that comes up from time to time as various people try to define what "blog" means. Some think it's only those that allow comments or provide syndicated feeds. And, of course, some feel it has to do with linking to others in the "blogosphere" (can't stand that term). Then there's the whole "A-List" topic, which I think is the adult geek's equivalent of high school's "in" crowd. How to be an A-List blogger... it's always funny to come across those posts and find yourself asking "Who is this person again? And who's on that list, exactly?"

Ultimately, who cares?

Does it matter whether something is a "blog" or a "news feed"? Is a site like Engadget, written by a team of contributors, a blog? They also include some tips/tricks and contests... so is it a news site? What difference does it make... if it provides value to readers/subscribers? And if you're providing value, doesn't that make you "A-List"? And doesn't the definition of an "A-List" change for pretty much every person with a news aggregator?

For me, blogs fall into various categories... and this tends to be how I classify them:

• First, there are those who generate new and interesting content of their own -- and are not typically technical (a category unto itself for me). They have done interesting things. They have interesting things to say. Their observations are insightful or provide perspectives that I might not otherwise get. My list of examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Brad Feld, Mark Cuban, Levitt and Dubner (the Steves), Chris Anderson, and Rands. When non-technical colleagues and contacts want to know who to check out, these are the writers I point them toward.
  
• Next up is the geek elite... the bloggers who provide interesting content that is technical. Given my area of expertise and interest, these are of special interest to me. Again, this is content that I wouldn't otherwise get hold of. It's a code snippet that does something elegant. It's the review of a ThinkGeek gadget that I didn't know about. It's a utility or some buried software feature that can improve my day. These include Scott Hanselman, Jeff Atwood, Martin Fowler, Phil Haack, Omar Shahine, and Nick Bradbury (note the bias toward the .NET/Microsoft ecosystem?). I would also include the "hacks and tips" sites here, most of which tend to be geek-oriented: Lifehacker, Web Worker Daily, or Parent Hacks.
  
• Third is the sites that are niche-oriented news and link sites, though most these have tips and tricks in there alongside their focused news updates. Engadget, Kotaku, Colorado Startups, Valleywag, and Information Aesthetics. These are the sites that provide me news and links to the far corners of the web that I wouldn't otherwise see coming though in FeedDemon.
  
• There are also those (and I put myself in this category) who I think blog mostly to get things we find interesting out into a Google index somewhere. I'm probably the person who traffics my blog the most and that's usually after thinking "what the heck was that link...??" and searching Google with my domain name as a filter. We throw things out there that may or may not be of value to anyone else... but what the heck, it's out there and it could be interesting to someone. There are thousands of people out there like this... blogging about their programming language, their Lego creations, their rec hockey team, or their New Year's resolutions. Lots of gold nuggets to found out there, with no shortage of interesting content (and Technorati tags have recently become my favorite way of exploring new topics).
  
• Finally, there are those who most identify themselves as "bloggers" -- I don't need to provide links here, do I? If your posts are typically about blogging, blog traffic, and blogging etiquette, you may be on this list. And while there's no question that blogging is a phenomenon worth discussing and exploring, these sites often have an echo-chamber feel. Blogging conferences... blogger dinners... blogs about blogging... it all makes me wonder: when the postal service first started, were there "letter-writer meet-ups"? Will mainstream, non-techy types eventually have a blog, just as sure as they have a mailing address?

I guess my point here is that "A-List" is such an exclusionary concept -- it leaves people wondering "who's on it?", "Am I?", "How I can get on it?". Every blog/feed/site mentioned above is my A-List. Those are the sites I recommend to others. Those are the sites I'll stop to read first when I see a new post come through. They're important to me because they provide value... and if the value I receive exceeds the opportunity cost of the time I spend reading, then it belongs on my personal A-List.

YMMV.

Technorati tags: blogging, rants, netiquette, community

So this is what it looks like when the blogging "A-List" melts down. Pretty sweet view from down here on the "Z-List."

Really? A weekend spent like this because you didn't get linked to?

Technorati tags: blogging, blogging etiquette

A few Microsoft folks have blogged about their first ever Amazon.com orders and that got me curious about my first order. I had no idea that the "My Account" page had an archive of orders going back that far, so I went to check it out. On the "My Account" page, simply change the "View by Order" dropdown list to "Complete order history sorted by year" and click the Go button. The resulting page has the most recent orders on it, but another dropdown list will contain an item for each year going back to your first.

Turns out that I've been an Amazon.com customer for nearly 10 years! On February 24, 1997, I ordered the first volume of "Pattern Languages of Program Design", by Coplien and Schmidt (act now, only 2 in stock!). I later purchased other volumes, though not all five that are listed for sale on the site.

Looks like my largest order was in early 2001, when I often used Amazon.com to purchase software tools and books for the team I was managing at the time. An order containing multiple JBuilder 5.0 upgrades was $4,225 (!). For a time in 2000 and 2001, I was purchasing a lot of things for the office through Amazon.com. They had great prices, quick shipping, and it was more convenient than the PO-based system we had previously used for many things.

It also surprised me how many books (mostly Java and process related) were purchased for the team around that time. It looks like we got just about every Java book published for a while there... I still think well-written development books are a cost-effective learning tool -- provided that you're able to learn from a book format. Many people aren't... and need a lecture or "show me" approach to learning.

It's been a while since I purchased a tech book, though, as I think O'Reilly's Safari service is a great value for us book-learner types. Their new "Library" offering gives you nearly unrestricted, electronic access to a ton of books. They also include a lot of books from non O'Reilly publishers, including Addison-Wesley which publishes some great .NET books. If you absolutely need paper from time to time, the service includes "download tokens" that let you get chapters in PDF format for printing and offline viewing.

That hasn't completely curtailed our use of Amazon.com, though. We became members of their "Prime" program late last year, which gives you free 2-day shipping and cheap overnight shipping for about $80/year. If you have lots of family/friends that live in other parts of the country and use Amazon.com a lot, it's a great value. It paid for itself pretty quickly over the holidays. And with free 2-day shipping, it means that Amazon is the first place we go now for many household things we need. No shipping fees, no tax, decent prices.

The only downside I've found with Amazon Prime is that not every item is "eligible" for Prime. Many of the items on the site are actually sold and shipped by 3rd-party vendors... but only items where Amazon.com is the seller are eligible. And while each product page tells you whether or not the item is eligible, it'd be great if they provided an option to search only eligible products. Maybe it's there and I just haven't found it... but overall, we're still happy with the service.

Technorati tags: amazon.com, books, oreilly, safari

I was surprised this morning to see that the new "Watch Now" service from Netflix was enabled for my account. The "Watch Now" page had previously shown just a "coming soon" graphic... but this morning it had a "Get Started" link and the main UI tabs at the top of the screen included a "Watch Now" tab. While I know the service has been met with skepticism, I've been looking forward to it for a few reasons:

• Our movie tastes are widely varied at home. From action movies to chick flicks to kid flicks... with Watch Now, I'm thinking we can worry a little less about the variety of our three at-home discs.
• I often watch discs late at night once I've gone to bed... depending on how tired I am, it sometimes takes a few nights to get through a movie. With this service, I can send a movie back if I know there's only 10-15 minutes left and just catch the end of it over the wire.
• We've had a few cracked/scratched discs that had to be sent. In over four years with Netflix, we went for three years without a problem... but have had several in the last few months. It's bound to happen, but this service means that we might be able to save the day if that kids movie is scratched and there's (yet another) snow storm going on outside. These last few months have also been the only time I've been tempted by Blockbuster's rent-by-mail service. Being able to take a bad disc to a local store and swap it for a good one is pretty appealing.
• I like the idea of previewing some movies in advance to see if they're worth adding to the queue.
• It's a free addition to what we're already getting. Free's good.

Netflix provides one hour of "Watch Now" viewing for every dollar spent on monthly fees. Since we're on the standard "3 movies at a time" plan, that's about 18 hours of viewing over the wire -- more than enough for us. Watching movies on the computer isn't likely to replace the television experience anytime soon, but as a free addition to our service, it's certainly a welcome feature.

So far, it looks like the list of movies is fairly basic... there aren't many of the newest movies available on the list, but there are enough to give it a shot. The "Watch Now" section has a "Top 25" list and the top five movies on that list (as of this morning) are:

1. Sherrybaby
2. Born into Brothels -- A good documentary, but depressing.
3. Super Size Me -- If your kids can't pass the golden arches without convulsing for a Happy Meal, have them watch this with you. It'll cure them.
4. The World's Fastest Indian -- A cute movie that was better than we expected. Also decent a decent one to watch with kids.
5. The Motorcycle Diaries

Going to the movie page for a title that's "Watch Now" enabled will display two buttons -- both the "Add" button you're used to seeing for adding it to your queue and a "Play" button to start playback in the downloadable player. Looks like it works only with Windows XP and Internet Explorer.

While I've not yet gone through the full playback experience, I did notice that the main "Watch Now" page provides feedback on your current expected video quality... I was several rooms away from our 802.11g router, but had a decent signal and was showing "Good".

More to come once we've downloaded the player and watched a few titles.

Note: Looks like Netflix has also lowered their most basic "1-out" plan to just $4.99 a month.

Technorati tags: netflix, watch now, streaming, movies

I've got an open position on my team for an experienced ASP.NET/C# developer in Boulder, Colorado... if you've got experience building production-quality, commercial web applications, get in touch with us. Even better if you share our interest in data visualization and analysis. So on the off chance someone sees this in an aggregated feed or via Technorati, here's the ad:
--------------------------

Title: Software Engineer
Business Unit: Global Energy Intelligence
Reports To: Vice President, Engineering
Location: Boulder, CO

Global Energy Intelligence, a leading provider of energy information solutions, is seeking an experienced Software Engineer to join our commercial development team and be a part of our aggressive growth.

The ideal candidate:

• is a C#/.NET developer with proven experience building production, commercial-quality applications.
• is comfortable with advanced SQL syntax and SQL Server.
• has a thorough understanding of OOA/OOD concepts.
• is flexible and open to new ideas or change.
• has some passion and drive to excel in their career.
• has strong development experience building dynamic, data-driven ASP.NET web applications (though Winforms experience is a plus).
• is self-directed, organized, and extremely attentive to details.
• recognizes the value in agile, iterative development processes.
• communicates well with technical and non-technical peers alike.

Global Energy Intelligence is made up of experienced professionals whose sole focus is making a positive impact in the energy intelligence and information solutions industry. We pride ourselves on getting the job done for our customers and using the latest technology to do it. We strive to build software in a way that's delivered quickly, highly-reusable, and low-maintenance. We have a generous benefits package, including company-subsidized medical/dental coverage, flexible spending accounts, and a 401k plan. We also offer a casual work environment and a flexible paid-time-off structure.

If you're an experienced developer looking for new challenges and the above qualifications align with your skills, we want to hear from you. If you know the difference between a 'programmer' and a 'software developer', we want to hear from you. If you're in the top 20% of your current team and you're tired of carrying the other 80%, we want to hear from you. If you learn new things, build new software, write quality code, and constantly refactor for improvement, all because you HAVE to -- because you can't NOT spend time on those things -- then we want to hear from you.

We're building an all-star team. Lazy, uninspired, dead-weight developers need not apply.

This is a full-time employment position. Local candidates are preferred. No relocation is provided. No contractors. No agencies. No recruiters. No phone calls. No lightweights. No exceptions.

To apply for this position, please send your resume via email to jobs@globalenergy.com with "Boulder SW Engineer" in the subject.

Technorati tags: jobs, helpwanted, boulder, colorado

... the US Department of Justice decides to reach beyond its own borders to crack down on internet gaming. After sneaking anti-gaming law into "port security" legislation last year, they're now getting serious about enforcing it. Companies (most of them offshore) are losing a ton of their value in the market and many big names have pulled out of the US. 

So poker (where a player can control the outcome to some degree) is out, while horse racing and lotteries are still in. Makes perfect sense.

Technorati tags: poker, gambling, legislation, rants

Four successful Colorado entrepreneurs launched the TechStars program this week in Boulder. This initiative will take ten new startup teams (of up to 3 people) and provide a "summer camp" environment to help get their ideas and businesses off the ground -- that is, if summer camp includes some initial funding, access to a variety of experienced mentors, hosting and legal services, and a summer full of educational sessions.

While TechStars doesn't require that the teams be from the Denver/Boulder area, they do expect the teams to spend the bulk of the summer here (based on the FAQ). With its "college town" status and mountain scenery making it hard to leave, Boulder has long been a thriving place for entrepreneurs and small businesses... and this program looks like a great way to jump-start some new additions to the startup community. I also like that the application process is informal and accessible. No need for a formal business plan or pitch session -- just a strong idea and willingness to make a run at it this summer.

Anyway, it sounds a great opportunity for some enterprising folks with creative product ideas. I look forward to watching the TechStars blog for updates as the program gets started.

Technorati tags: boulder, colorado, techstars, entrepreneurs