Dan Olsen’s Weblog

I know it has been a while since I have written anything on my blog and I always promise myself that I will get better. Well, here is one sorry attempt at getting better.

When I started work for the State of Utah my first project was called the Employee Gateway. It was a web application that was a central point for finding all HR information an employee might need. Well, a few months ago the HR people came back to DTS and said that the governor would like a section added to the Employee Gateway for the new energy initiative they were kicking off. Part of that project was to allow for a virtual suggestion box where employees could enter suggestions about energy conservation ideas and then vote those suggestions up and down.

Well, one of the requirements for the virtual suggestion box was that they wanted to show data from the suggestion box in the actual web site. After looking at options that were already out there they determined that to get a suggestion box with an API it would cost quite a bit a month. After thinking about the idea I realized that I could create an application like that pretty easily. That’s when SuggestIt was born.

SuggestIt has been live for almost a month now and has been evolving. I am still looking for suggestions on how to improve the application so please go and beat on it for a while. Currently the service is free but I have covered myself by including a line that in the future I may be implementing a pricing structure. As most developers know, there are costs to hosting a site. Currently my income for the site is off Google Ads which does not come close to covering costs that I will accrue over time.

SuggestIt is written in Python (one of my favorite languages thanks to Phil Windley). It is hosted on Google Appengine and so far the cost of running the site is free. However as traffic increases (I hope) I will exceed the free quotas. Hence the reason I am planning on working out some sort of pricing for the service. Any suggestions on pricing structures would be greatly appreciated. Any publicity would be greatly appreciated as well.

So for most of my Ajax and javascript programming I have been using YUI. I liked it better then Prototype, Scriptaculous and MooTools. I have known about jQuery for quite some time but I have never actually tried it or even looked at it. Last night I posted a tweet on Twitter about how I like the YUI library. Well, Sam Curren was kind enough to tweet his feelings about YUI. I quote:

On JS Libraries: Code I write with jQuery is beautiful, and code I write with YUI appears to have been beaten with the ugly stick.

So, with those comments in mind, I stayed up later then normal looking at jQuery. As a matter of fact, I just added the jQuery file to a project I am working on and I am going to start using it. Sometimes it takes the truth from others to help you see the better choice.

However, the part I like most about YUI is their grids, resets and font files. It saves me a lot of formatting time and cross browser problems.

I downloaded Google Chrome as soon as I could. I’m always interested in trying out new Google products. They have always done a good job in my opinion. I use GMail, Google Apps, Google Reader, Picasa, etc. I’m a big Google fan.

I have liked Google Chrome so much that it is my default browser. Does it have everything I would like? No, not quite but it is showing promise.

One of the things I was surprised about was the fact that the browser wasn’t hooked into Google Bookmarks. I love the Google Toolbar and the Bookmark feature. I figured that this may be an addition later until I read on a user forum about the idea of integrating Google Bookmarks into the browser. Google is probably trying to avoid integrating their other products into the browser to avoid those anti-trust guys.

I am sure that there will be some sort of Google Toolbar for Google Chrome but it will be a plugin that you have to download. At the moment Chrome doesn’t support plugins but from the press release we know that those will be coming. I would love FireBug to be ported to Google Chrome. To develop my code I still use Firefox so I have FireBug support. The developer tools that are integrated into the browser are good but not as good as FireBug. However, they are much better then IE’s developer tools.

If you haven’t tried Google Chrome yet, I would recommend it. I love it!

I used to be a huge fan of ESPN.com and I guess technically I still am. However, lately I find myself going to the Yahoo! Sports web site for sports news. Although ESPN.com has more content related to sports, Yahoo! has the design appeal. I love the look of the latest iteration of Yahoo! Sports. It is more pleasant to look at if you ask me.

I wonder how many people think like I do. You have an option between two sites that provide a lot of the same information. Do more people pick content or more people pick the design they like looking at better?

So I signed up for Facebook when Phil Windley invited me to join. I figured I’d check it out. It turns out quite a few people I know also have Facebook accounts. This has lead to a major Facebook annoyance for me.

The thing that annoys me is that people are using my Wall on Facebook to send me a message. So, when they post a message on my Wall I get an e-mail from Facebook saying so-and-so wrote on my Wall. Now I have to click on the link, login to Facebook and go to my Wall to read the message. What ever happened to sending me an e-mail instead? Sending me an e-mail provides a way to send me a message without requiring me to jump through hoops to get my messages.

One thing I wish Facebook could do in this situation is send me the message in the e-mail they sent me.

Mainly, people need to realize that there is a coolness factor and a convenience factor. What WOWs some people annoys others. Think about the user on the other end and determine if what you are about to do causes inconveniences for the other. So, if you want to send me a message, send me an e-mail. Don’t write on my Wall in Facebook.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Messaging

For those who haven’t heard yet Google has released an early version of Google Gears. Google Gears allows you to build web apps that allow for offline usage. I’ll leave the rest of the talking up to their web site.

Technorati Tags: Google Gears, Programming, Internet

I just watched the LunchMeet clip of Kaliya Hamlin and Phil Windley at the Internet Identity Workshop and I am impressed. I remember the first IIW Workshop back in 2005 where I accompanied Phil to help out with the workshop. I had the opportunity to attend a second time in 2006 as well which I had a chance to participate more thanks to the volunteers at the Computer History Museum.

From the sounds of things the workshop is growing. I remember the first workshop and was a little surprised at how people were very protective and critical of any idea that was not their own. There were also maybe half the number of people as there were at this weeks workshop. When I attended the second workshop in 2006 I surprised at how things were starting to change. People really started to talk and be receptive to others ideas. Kaliya and Phil both talked in the clip about how people are putting their ideas together and seeing “what kind of soup they can make”. I think the progress the workshop is making is amazing.

Now that I have moved on into full time employment and no longer work as closely with Phil as I once did I wasn’t able to attend the last two workshops but I like to keep an eye on what is going on and hope that at some point I will be able to attend the workshops again (crossing fingers). For anyone who is interested in identity I would highly recommend going to this workshop. It is an interesting experience and the great thing is that everyone has a say. If you have something you want to present then you can present. If you have ideas on other identity topics you are free to discuss. Another reason to go is because it is held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. It is a great venue for the event in my opinion.

Hey Phil, when are you going to hold IIW here in Utah so I can avoid airfare?

Update
For those who are interested Kaliya posted a comment with the dates of the next IIWs.

Since you invited everyone to come to the next workshop…#5 will be December 3-5 2007 and #6 will be will be May 12-15 2008. We hope you can join us.

From Kaliya Hamlin

Technorati Tags: IIW2007, Identity, Internet Identity

Here is a widget that is circulating for people to donate to the Hokie Spirit Fund to help the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings and their families.

I am a fan of fantasy sports games. Because I enjoy them I decided this past year to create my own. My original iteration of the web app has lasted through the BYU football and basketball seasons. I am now in the process of putting together version 1.0 which I am planning on releasing August 1st. In time for some the upcoming NCAA football season. I wanted to get it out a little before the season to take care of any bugs.

For version 1.0 I am using the YUI toolkit to bring some AJAXy stuff into the site. I am also hoping to increase the number of users to more then the 10-15 I’ve had over the first year. One way that I am hoping to draw more people is to provide more then just BYU as a team in the game. As of right now I have plans to add USC and Michigan to the mix. I am hoping to have the multiple team functionality tested well enough to be able add all NCAA Division I teams to the game by the 2008 football season or 2007-2008 basketball season if things go well.

One time consuming part of my current setup is that I have to put all the final scores in by hand. I am looking for a web service that I can use to have the scores entered into the database automatically. If anyone knows of a web service that will provide me NCAA football and basketball scores, please let me know.

You can go check out the old version of the system by going to http://bballpickem.com. The site for the football version is http://football-pickem.com. Go check the sites out (the football site doesn’t have much yet) and get ready to sign up come August 1st and get your friends to do the same. In the near future I am going to put up a poll or two on football-pickem.com to allow people to vote on the importance of features and teams that I am looking at adding.

Technorati Tags: Sports, Games

If you are interested in seeing all the services Google provides go and check out this list on TipMonkeies.com. (Acutally, it is missing some of the newer services.)

Technorati Tags: Google

Ever since my Firefox was updated to version 1.5.0.4 I have had it crashing at least 2-3 times a day. Not only does it crash but it hangs momentarily on a regular basis. I don’t know what fixes they made but what ever it is it seems to have created some new problems.

I am running Firefox on Mac OS X 10.4.6 which was freshly installed about a month ago. Is anyone else experiencing the same problem?

Technorati Tags: Firefox

If you are looking for some good web hosting you should check out Globat. They are a great provider!

For other options go to my page of hosts.

Over the past month or so I have found that my GMail account had been responding very slowly in Firefox. It turns out the the BYU CS department’s proxy throttles GMail connections because of the multiple requests to the server. Yesterday I opened up Safari and found that my email responded quickly. This made me curious so I started looking into the problem a little further. Just a few minutes ago I noticed that my GMail was responding normally in Firefox all of a sudden. That’s when I noticed what the problem was. It turns out that the chat function in GMail was what was slowing down the response time to my email. So, I turned off chat in now I am running smoothly again.

So, because of the checking the proxy was doing on each request and response from GMail, the response of GMail was being creamed. I live the chat function but I now know that having it on at work is not kosher.

It looks like I’ll be going to IIW 2006 Part A with Phil Windley in a week and half. He approached me yesterday about coming and doing the running around for the workshop. I don’t mind the running around, it’s a small price to pay to hear what people have to say.

The great thing is that it is being held at the Computer History Museum. That should be fun. If you haven’t registered to come head over to the registration page and sign up now.

Today Google announced the release of the Google Calendar Data API.

I don’t have as much time as I wish I had to make something fun and useful using Google’s many APIs but I do like the fact that they provide such a service. I currently have a brother-in-law in South Korea. Since the family is all here in the US I created a map that shows where he is and where he has been with some basic information. It was fun to spend some time playing around with the Google Maps API.

Now, if I could come up with a cool page that integrates all these services into one useful service. If anyone has any good ideas or knows of anyone who has mashed together all these services into something cool, I’d like to hear about it.

It’s now official. Google has finally released Google Calendar. I have been looking around this morning and like what I see. They even provide instructions on how to put a button on your site to add an event to you Google Calendar. The button that you see on the right is a button that allows you to add the Internet Identity Workshop event information into you Google Calendar. Give it a try, I recommend it! (So far)

I was reading through my feed subscriptions and found that President Bush mentioned bloggers. He says that bloggers can help show the good going on in Iraq as opposed to the negative stories the media shows us.

A video of the President’s question and answer session in West Virginia where he mentions blogs can be found here.

It has been announced that Google has acquired Writely. For all those people who have been wondering whether or not Google was ever going to come out with a Web Office Suite, the answer is now known. Writely has been the best online web suite that I have looked at. I am excited to see where Google is able to take this.

Today Peter Norvig from Google came and spoke to the Computer Science department here at Brigham Young University. I was glad I was able to attend because he turned out to be a very entertaining speaker. His talk was entitled “AI in the Middle: Mediating Between Author and Reader”. He focused on using artificial intelligence in order to disambiguate written text to provide improved search and question answering.

One of the examples he talked about in terms of knowledge was having Google know that water flows downhill. The reason he gave this example was to show that not all knowledge is important or search worthy. The search term “water flows downhill” contains less than 0.0002% of indexed web pages. This example brought up the point that time should not be wasted trying to acquire all knowledge but to stick to acquiring the knowledge that provides the most results.

Peter Norvig will be the keynote speaker tomorrow at the 6th Annual Family History Technology Workshop at Brigham Young University. He will be talking about “The Future of Search”. Anyone who has an opportunity to hear him speak, I highly recommend doing so.

At work we have started using Basecamp to keep track of projects in the our lab (BYU ECLab). Basecamp is a great way for all of us in the lab to keep track of what everyone is doing. It also allows for all of us to collaborate on the different projects.

One thing I have been doing is posting information in regards to my thesis and having others in the lab take a look and comment on it. By tracking the changes with an RSS feed we know when someone has made some changes and then we can go look and comment about the changes. If you need some sort of collaboration portal I would recommend Basecamp.