Alcides Fonseca

Earlier today¹ I was thinking about having a tv channel that worked only by podcast. Instead of a around the clock emission, it would only produce like 6 hours per day (which I find enough, even for those boring days). One could see anything whenever they like.

This upset me a lot when I was a kid and couldn’t watch the shows I wanted because I had school or other appointments². But since broadband, I almost never watch TV. Just download the shows I want from my favorite bay and make my own schedule.

The problem is that I only find popular movies and shows. I wanted a short version of national news, something different to watch. And I want it in podcasts, so I can set a simple system for my parents, without the need for searching the torrent (although it could use bit torrent by RSS underneath).

I believe this is a really great idea, and someone could invest until it has a large audience, and then just add small ads to monetize it. I don’t mind having small ads for watching TV whenever I want, and I bet a lot of people wouldn’t too.

Today I found out about ValleyPeaks via Brea Grant. It’s a homebrew show that resembles The O.C.. and Desperate Housewives with a bit of satire. It is hosted in Vimeo for high definition and features really hot girls. I’m sold :)

¹ Yeah, I woke up very earlier today. I heard we were moving places this weekend. But without internet in the new house, I doubt I will be motivated to pack stuff and move heavy furniture around.

² Turns out that I was pretty busy when I was a kid. Seriously! That why kids like me woke up at 6.pm in the weekends, even before TV emission started.

The context

Early this month, the Twply sale made the news in tech-related blogs. Jeremy warns users about the password anti-pattern. Fred writes about it and Messina replies to Al3x.

Of course I rather have OAuth so users could revoke access to my app, without affecting all their 101 twitter apps and mashups that also need their user and password.

This matter was forgotten until I received an email from someone interested in buying TwitterNotes.

TwitterNotes was Sérgio’s idea which he implemented in Rails, and I helped with the design and marketing. It was a fun project that was mentioned in some big blogs like LifeHacker and we got over 3000 accounts. It’s not such a large number, but 3000 people thrust us with their password¹.

Although we decided I am entitled to some part (to cover for hosting expenses) as well as our sponsor, it was Sérgio’s call, and he made a price without the database.

Well, what if I was the one to make the decisition?

I’m not sure if I would have made that decision so easily. And this is not about money at all. Right now we don’t have any idea about who our buyer is, nor we know their intentions. This could be about the domain and traffic, about the app itself, or just about the database for evil marketing purposes. Let’s suppose they just want to keep the service running and monetize with ads, since it’s legit.

By selling the system without the database, all accounts along with the data stored (TwitterNotes allow users to store and manage notes from our website) would be deleted. Although it’s possible to recover some part, it is not possible to recover all of it. Since we were tied to this anti-pattern, we didn’t had any register step, but if we need, all the users would have to re-register.

And in general terms, applications populated with data worths much more those yet to launch. And I’m not counting on passwords here. The transition would make the website lose some users, and this would reflect in the buyer’s revenue from ads.

I believe selling a service without the database may be prejudicial to both users, buyer and seller. As a user, my wish is that any service that is sold keeps the same for me (or eventually be improved, like Flickr, Feedburner, etc…). This was the case, since TN development stopped a few weeks after launching.

And if Microsoft bought Yahoo? (or any of the examples above) Will the buyer get the service without the database? Will you have to register to flickr again, and lose all your photos there? It makes no sense!

But we store their passwords to third-party services, you’d say. Well, it’s not our fault! Twitter doesn’t provide any other option for accessing their APIs! We even encrypted the passwords, but since we need them in the clear, the code includes the decryption code. And if you think twice, when Yahoo bought Flickr, it also bought all of your private photos. You trusted flickr, but they sold your photos to yahoo. Isn’t the same thing? Selling private data?

Final thoughts

I’m not saying Sérgio made the wrong move. It was in fact the safest solution for our users, since we don’t have any idea who the buyer is or how the passwords would be used. I’m just not sure it’s always the best solution.

Extra: If by any chance you are also interested in buying TwitterNotes, just mail me

¹ I bet 99% of them didn’t even thought of that.

Sim, devem pensar três vezes antes de casar com um católico. Os gajos são esquisitos e tal, só aceitam a verdade deles. E quem já leu a Bíblia toda?

Então se for como este aqui tenham cuidado a valer!

Ah, e estou a pensar em ler isto, é capaz de ser engraçado :)

Já tinha explorado esta área há algum tempo, mas hoje encontrei um post do pelf sobre Dinâmicas de Jogos aplicadas a Redes Sociais na sequência do mestrado.

Recomendo a leitura, sobretudo para todos os que estiverem interessados em redes sociais e gerir comunidades online.

Criar um algoritmo de escalonamento para os meus pensamentos, preemptivo de preferência, com prioridades de modo a que aquela coisa a que chamam Licenciatura em Engenharia Informática não faça todo o resto da minha vida acabar em starvation.

O ideias3 orgulha-se (ou não) de alojar o Batido de Banana.

General stuff

• Spend less time in front of the computer
• Exercise more
• Learn to cook, to work with the washing machine and other house-keeping tasks¹

Computer geek stuff

• Learn emacs (or vim, but I want to learn Lisp) so I can go use Textmate without any regrets.
• Try OpenBSD with xmonad, awesome or other tiling window manager.
• Start my own programming language (just for the sake of it)
• Forget IE6

Geek stuff

• Get into photography OR
• Learn how to draw (yeah, I failed at drawing, painting and all those arts while I was a kid).

¹ I am planning on studying abroad for one year. If all goes well, Poland it is.

Police set to step up hacking of home PCs

THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

1. Wow, it was not only Sherlock Holmes, they now have big bad h4×0rs that can hack into any computer :O

2. Without a warrant? Are these guys nuts? What about the concept of privacy? Isn’t that a human right? At least tell the people when you are looking at their computer, just like with a regular warrant approved by court.

The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room. Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

3. Okay Google, you are forgiven.

A remote search can be granted if a senior officer says he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime — defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years.

However, opposition MPs and civil liberties groups say that the broadening of such intrusive surveillance powers should be regulated by a new act of parliament and court warrants.

4. Maybe that senior office has a daughter, and want’s to check out her boyfriend for “uncommon” data in his computer (since, you know, today’s teens record all their lives in their computer).

He said the authorities could break into a suspect’s home or office and insert a “key-logging” device into an individual’s computer. This would collect and, if necessary, transmit details of all the suspect’s keystrokes. “It’s just like putting a secret camera in someone’s living room,” he said.

5. Okay, forget 1. The PoliceHackers are no more than script kiddies. Well, and if that person has their computer password-protected? [1] And what it their using some OS that’s not Windows? And what if they are not that stupid and detect the intrusion? What if the Antivirus stops you key-logger from being installed?

Police might also send an e-mail to a suspect’s computer. The message would include an attachment that contained a virus or “malware”. If the attachment was opened, the remote search facility would be covertly activated. Alternatively, police could park outside a suspect’s home and hack into his or her hard drive using the wireless network.

6. Good luck by-passing the Gmail antivirus and spam filter. But if your “suspect/victim” is using Hotmail, you may have a shot.

7. Now we are screwed, instead of teaching people how to fight spam and keep their computer secure from hackers, we also have to protect them from the police… Geez.

8. If you are living in the UK and use Windows and do not agree with this policy, try switching to Ubuntu

¹ Unless it’s windows XP in which they can Boot in Secure Mode (F8) and login as Administrator.

Today’s xkcd really made me smile. This is something I usually do, but in a different version. When I’m walking – my thinking time, even if it’s walking in circles in my basement – I usually think louder “i know you are listening” and one-way conversations to myself, since it is possible that in the future our memories will be stored in The Archives and anyone could browse them, and see whatever is inside your head.

Yeah, I lack faith in those privacy laws…

Espresso is the new Code Editor from MacRabbit, the guys behind CSSEdit.

The public beta was announced as a “textmate’s competition”. I have tried the beta since 0.2 and I don’t really agree with that statement.

Espresso is a really beautiful editor. But that doesn’t matter to programmers, that nowadays seem to be migrating to old school editors. It matters for those designer/programmer hybrid stereotype. Guys that do Web-Development, but don’t have a CS background.

But even for those, I don’t believe Espresso would be the best choice. This kind of editor is as good as the languages/frameworks/etc supported. Textmate has a lot of Bundles, and that’s where I see the power of TM, not in the editor itself.

Today I spent a while installing Sugars, the Espresso-branded bundles. There are a few right now, but still very poor compared to tmbundles. And I believe even with time, they are not getting any near textmate’s when it comes down to productivity.

If you take a look at the SDK wiki, you’ll see that all the components of a script are very editor oriented. Although I like the tab-triggers, code folding and so, it really doesn’t compare with the integration I get in Textmate with tools. When writing Ruby or Python scripts, I’m always using the cmd+R shorcut and so on. This kind of actions is lacking right now from the SDK.

Also, if you want to make something fancy like text or file actions, you need to write something in Objective-C. This is a huge limitation. Textmate really doesn’t care in what language your commands are written on, as long as they’re runnable. You can use Ruby (I believe it’s the default), Python, Perl, AppleScript or even just plain Bash Scripting.

This is something that will kill Espresso for the majority of coders.

What I believe it’s going to be a great movie!

Make yourself a favour and watch the trailer.

Manga brought to the TV screens.

The very best:

• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Death Note
• Rurouni Kenshin (specially the OVAs)

Top Anime:

• MONSTER (If you like Death Note, You’ll like this one)
• Giant Robo
• FLCL aka Furi Kuri (Great OST!)
• Samurai 7 [1]
• Lost Universe
• Kiddy Grade (Panty shots!)
• AppleSeed
• Eureka Seven
• Serial Experiments Lain (a must for every guy into computers)
• Elfen Lied

Only if you have a lot of free time:

• Naruto
• Bleach
• One Piece
• Air Gear
• Saint Seiya
• Shaman King

To see

• Fullmetal Alchemist
• Ergo Proxy

¹ I tried to watch the original movie, but I gave up half way.

Resources:

• Anidb
• Anime-p2pt (Portuguese)

I’ve always been fan of online advertising and in both points of view. As a online publisher, advertising is indeed important as a income for online business. Or wouldn’t Goggle CEO being flying jets right now. As a customer I also find it useful, specially when it’s site-targeted, since I usually find interesting products. It’s as important to me, as receiving FNAC’s catalogue.

Although Google Adsense doesn’t have any problem and I even use it in some of my websites, I find small niche publishers a more interesting business. Take the example of The Deck: they have their market, they select where they want to place ad, and they get advertising clients that know where they money is being invested, and are willing to pay more than the usual Adsense. I somehow wish more of these indie advertising agencies existed. But they will, in time.

This is why I’m sad about having installed Adblock (the Safari Version) but I had no other choice. For some weeks now, I’ve been getting a lot of “MSN sounds” and “Horrifying Death Laughing” ads, with mouseover sounds. Today when using Slideshare I accidently activated one and it got me nuts.

Mr. Webmaster, if you own a website, and there is a sonorous ad, please remove it. I’m willing to see your advertising, but please respect me.

For some months now, I spent all afternoons (weekends and holidays included) in school with the guys working in school assignments. And when I’m not there, I’m home working in my basement like every decent geek

Well, haven’t been off home/school for a couple of weeks, I decided to get out a bit and went with my parents to the local shopping. Halfway my dad asked me to come back and lock the door with his key (since I forgot mine). I did it and even got there before they did.

Suprisingly, it was almost empty, weird for this time of the year. Any explanation, or people just flocked to the “most-recent” shopping? I did what I had to do there² and went home.

I decided to stop by the bookshop on my way home. I’m somewhat demanding towards bookshops. I usually buy books in any of two Bertrand shops near me, where I find instantly everything I want, and sometimes in FNAC where shelves are not exactly how I like, but I manage to find what I want after a bit. But in this one, Almedina, I couldn’t find the book I was looking for. (Yeah, I know where to look, and how to search for the book, but I didn’t had luck.) And I wanted to take a look at Visão mag³ but they had any. I’m really exquisite in this matter, and I have to stick to my current preference, or try the new online shop. Any review after the first week?

Well, all of this was the first 15-20 minutes of the 45. Where did I spent the rest? Ouside my house, since I didn’t have my keys with me, and forgot to ask my dad’s which I used minutes ago to lock it. Dumbass! Luckily I had a fantastic PDA with wireless, but it only lasted for 5 minutes since I forgot to charge it last night. At least I played solitaire till my sister arrived.

Outcomes of this journey to the outside world:

• Don’t forget your keys, ever!
• Don’t forget to charge the handy gadgets like phones, music players
• Get out more! Really!

¹ Well, for those without a basement, an attic is also ok. Since that’s what I’m getting in my new house.

² Actually I went there to activate the internet/tv/phone service to the new home. After a one week delay from Clix, I went for MEO

³ I heard there’s a twitter article coming up ;)

I’ve been using redmine for a while now. And it rocks! I use it for bug and feature tracker together with time tracking, and also for viewing my repositories. It supports svn, bzr, hg and git. But only works with git local repositories. So if you have your repository somewhere on the web (say GitHub), you have to clone it to your webserver and keep it updated.

Of course one could run hourly crons, but that would be a waste of CPU when github provides something called webhooks. Now something we need is a simple webapp that provides the endpoint for the webhook to connect to. I decided sinatra would be perfect for this and wrote git-pull-hook.

It has some simple instructions if you aren’t sure what to do. And I’d really appreciate feedback on this, specially in security issues. And you’ve got two ways of doing this. the first (and nicer) is to fork the project and send a pull-request; the second is to email me (or comment right here) and hope someday I’ll look at this ever again.

Back in this year’s Codebits we presented an idea of having your music online, in the cloud. Well, I found out this cool web application that is somewhat similar, and has a great UI based on iTunes. it’s the SoudCloud Player and it’s opensource.

How am I sure that Twitter is, in fact, the IRC 2.0?

When I was 12 years old, kids like me spent their free time doing some mIRC scripts¹. Today, we just write twitter clients or just some mashups.

¹ Well, I eventually gave up on mIRC and started writing Klient skripts.

Well, I believe all applications should be scriptable so anyone can improve its behaviour to adapt to each one’s usage.

Crack.NET is a kind of inspector for .NET-based apps (Winforms and WPF) that also allows you to write IronPython code, scripting any application. Both IronPython and IronRuby are perfect for this kind of job, and if you are doing .NET development, please consider providing a scripting interface in any of these languages. I’m sure your advanced users will improve their workflow, and even give you ideas for some new features!

By the way, IronRuby official repo is now on GitHub!

When github was down this week, a lot of people complained. Specially those who are paying clients. I understand this, since I experience downtimes in my SVN server (that has some git repos now too) some times.

There is however a big diference between the two: git is decentralized, that means that you (a) can commit offline, and then push changes into github when it’s up again and (b) you can just use the git daemon like Github’s Chris suggest or just push the repo into some other server you have available in your local network (or even the web).

Last week, I found out we had a corrupted svn repo that I couldn’t commit to. After some issues migrating to a new svn repo I decided to move it to git, and just work offline (the three of us were working in the same room) so converted the SVN into a git repo and pushed to the USB pen I brought from codebits (thank you!) and that worked pretty fine :)

Always remember that this kind of workflows are also possible, and you can even have some repos in external disks as a backup (which I do!). Really rocks comparing to svn.

In this last week temperature dropped a lot around here. Although I like Winter more than Summer, this cold is really freezing my fingers and keeping me from doing any real programming work.

@meisenshi suggested a cool glove that not only keeps my hand warm, but also allows me to type. So if you have some bucks to spend, I can give you my address :)

And no, Luís, I don’t think a PowerGlove would make me more productive ;)