http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com Personal thoughts in a public space Sun, 17 May 2009 04:22:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This is a little out of the ordinary for me, but I just had to say something. I recently saw the 2009 Star Trek movie directed by J.J. Abrams. First, I am a Lost fan, and just seeing the "Bad Robot" banner gives me butterflies in my stomach. That guy ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/a-word-on-star-treks-2009-poor-prop-choices/ I've had a few situations with photos that just don't look right when iPhoto corrects the red eye. The algorithm in iPhoto is sometimes just too sloppy, ruining nearby parts of the photo, especially if there is too much red tone to the skin around the eye. I needed a ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/correcting-red-eye-using-previewapp-on-os-x-leopard/ I worked on a project in 2002 to build a "rich media server" for HP. At that time, I realized that content delivery is essentially an asymmetric activity, where the "command and control" channel needs to be much smaller than the content delivery channel. This was the original philosophy of ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/internet-will-eventually-be-remote-controlled/ In the recent Stephen Colbert interview of Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter), Biz contrasts building "value" and building "profit". It's something that's been on my mind lately, too. Here are my simple definitions: Value: Customers would miss you when you're gone Profit: Customers are willing to pay you to make sure you ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/value-and-profit/ I'm a parent, and like many parents, I think my son is pretty smart. He and I play World of Warcraft occasionally, and recently the world added a new playable class for players who have reached at least level 55. Upon launch, it is clear that the Death Knight is ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/cost-reward-and-adoption/ When people talk about their "culture", they often mean their ethnicity, their religion, or the region where they grew up. As a child of the Internet, Internet culture is my culture. One frustrating aspect of Internet culture is the propensity for people to game systems, exploiting the properties of one ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/gaming-twitter-based-services/ I'm a fan of OpenID, OAuth, and the other protocols that make up what Chris Messina calls DiSo (Distributed Social). There is a lot of exciting stuff that can be done using these open protocols, but I haven't had a compelling reason to integrate them into anything I was working ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/implementing-openid-in-about-a-half-an-hour/ I must be getting old. Somehow, I just can't operate a basic e-commerce form. All night, off and on, I have been doing battle with the Digital River implementation on VMWare.com, trying to avail myself of the much-publicized Cyber Monday deal on VMWare Fusion. I have reset my password at ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/sometimes-things-should-just-work/ Editing code in PHP can be challenging. Plenty of people I know use a simple, programmer-friendly text editor, like TextMate. However, editing code is only the beginning; there are plenty of other things that a programmer has to do beside typing. But even when typing, features like code completion and ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/selecting-a-php-ide/ Like many people interested in computers and technology, I am a video game player. I have played many games, from Asteroids to World of Warcraft, across many genres. Over the years, I began to feel that something was missing from the work-a-day Enterprise software world that was present in these ... http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/applied-gaming-theory/