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Broadcasting From Home

With your host and best friend, Scrappy McGowan

Broadcasting From Home Wins Major Podcasting Award

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sus4 LogoANN ARBOR, Michigan (Reuters) – Noted music podcast “Broadcasting From Home” was today awarded the prestigious “Sus4 Award For Podcast Excellence”. Awarded each year by noted technologist and writer Lawrence Lazare, the award is given to those podcasts that “manage to be brilliantly witty, musically profound as well as being entertaining – all at the same time.” Lazare made the announcement from the basement of his Ann Arbor publishing headquarters.

“I am both humbled and excited by this and I’m pretty sure I can find a way to monetize it”, said podcast producer and host Scrappy McGowan. “I knew this Lazare guy had money and power, but I didn’t know he knew (Italian avant-garde musician) Vinicio Capossela from a hole in the wall. That’s pretty cool that he actually listens to and appreciates the podcast. I thought that the only ones listening were old hippy friends of mine.”

The “Sus4 Award” does not include a financial prize, but it does mention the podcast in a press release as well as allowing the the producers to refer to their podcast as being “award-winning”. A graphical “Sus4 Award Winner” web-based button is being considered for 2011.

More information on the winning podcast can be found at the Broadcasting From Home website.

Free Long Distance With Skype

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I’ve heard and read about Skype for a while, but never really had reason to give them a try, bu after reading that you can call any number in the U.S. and Canada for free, I figured I’d give it a try.

For those of you who don’t know Skype, it’s an Internet-based phone service, sort of like an audio version of IM. You have other Skype users on your contact list, and if they are online you can call them and talk for free. I’d never needed to try Skype before because, 1. I don’t make many long distance phone calls, and 2. I get 120 min. a month of long distance through my local phone service and finally 3. because I don’t know any friends who use it regularly.

While Skype usually charges a minimal amount to call actual phone numbers (skype to skype calls are always free), thye recently announced that all calls to U.S. and Canadian numbers are free through the rest of the year. Okay, now it’s time to dig that labtec headphone out of the basement and give this Skype thing a try…

The results? Yup it works, I can all any number and sure enough they can hear me and I can hear them. does that mean I’ll start using Skype? Probably not. Yeah I like trying new services out, but I don’t really need to be making phone calls while connected to the computer by a six foot headphone cord. Maybe the next time Sarah’s in Europe again I’ll have her bring along a headset so we can talk instead of IM, but other than that, I think I’ll stick to the phone.

Why Do People Hate Record Companies?

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On the heels of the rootkit DRM disaster launched by Sony last year, we have this post from Boing Boing about EMI reocrds CDs that install malware that according to the contract, stays on your computer even after the digital content is removed. Read it and weep:

“Brazilian mega-star Marisa Monte’s new CDs from EMI (”Infinito Particular” and “Universo ao Meu Redor”) come with DRM that can’t be uninstalled, and requires you to “agree” to a contract that isn’t published in Portuguese. Even if you disagree, the malware is installed. The DRM blocks you from playing the CD on Linux and MacOS, and from loading it onto an iPod…”
Read the full story…

Why I switched to Firefox

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Latest industry stats show that Internet Explorer still holds 76% of the browser market. Yeah Safari and Firefox are making inroads, but not fast enough. Unless you are required to use it, I have no idea why anyone still uses IE.
If you need more info to help you make the decision, the following post should help…

Scott Berkun is a UI designer who worked on IE 1 through 5. Over at his blog he discusses why he switched to Firefox.

Amazon’s Best Feature

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There are lots of wonderful features about Amazon.com, but the one I use and rely on the most is their product reviews. Over the years Amazon has built up a huge database of user product reviews and these reviews are an indispensable tool when looking at products. Take this weekend for instance…

I am tired of always borrowing my 11 year-old son Jeremy’s ipod mini when I go running, so I’m always on the look for a low priced mp3 player with a decent amount of storage. This weekend while looking through the Circuit City ad, I saw the Go Video Rave-MP 2.5 GB player for $99! A 2.5 gig MP3 player with an FM tuner for under $100 certainly caught my eye and so the first place I turned was Amazon to see what others are saying about the product.

According to users over at Amazon, the reason the Go Video Rave-MP 2.5 is so cheap is that it’s a total piece of crap. I knew the $99 price tag was too good to be true and it’s much nicer to find out the skinny via the woes of others rather than buying one myself.

Defensive Design for the Web

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For all my fellow web designers /developers /IA’s out there, I’m currently reading a great book from the folks at 37signals titled “Defensive Design for the Web : How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points”.

This straight ahead book shares a series of rules and guidelines that will help you design sites that guide users through crisis points and mistakes that happen when searching or browsing throught your site. The book shares simple but well thoughtout rules along with screenshots and documentation for each one. At $16.95, it’s a great tool for any designer/developer/IA.

New Screen Fonts From Microsoft

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From Poynter.org, the web home of The Poynter Institute ( a school for journalists), comes this article regarding new screen fonts from Microsoft.

If you don’t think screen fonts are important, consider how much time you spend reading things online, and the fact that screen fonts are essential to the usability of any web site.

Hard To Find Internet Retailer Phone Numbers

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Last week I was trying to find a way to call customer service at Blockbuster.com and after an extensive search, I found that surprisingly, there was no listing at all of their phone number anywhere on their site.

Sadly, this is not an uncommon issue. Many top e-tailers make it damn near impossible to contact them by phone. So in the spirit of sharing info, below are contact phone numbers for some of the top e-tailers. If you have more post a comment or send me an email.

Customer Service Phone Numbers for top Online Retailers:

Amazon.com
Hours of Operation (PST): 24/7
1-800-201-7575 or 1-206-266-2992
or
Rebates status line: 866-348-2492

Amazon.CA
Hours of Operation (PST): 24/7
1-877-586-3230

Continue Reading …

Traffic Spike

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There’s been a big spike in traffic here at daddyo during the past few days. Normally I get around 60 unique users per day, but it’s gone up tremendously during the past few days.

Here are the numbers:

Date Unique Visitors
Sunday 6th February 2005 240
Monday 7th February 2005 354
Tuesday 7th February 2005 277

Who are all these people and what are they (you) doing here at daddyo.com? Surely you can’t be looking for me, Rev. Scrappy McGowan.

Leave a comment and tell me how you got here and what you were looking for. It will be interesting to know.

SpellBound – Another reason to switch to Firefox

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There are a multitude of reasons to use Firefox; the fact that it doesn’t trash your computer because of spyware, the fact that it’s not from Microsoft and best of all, there’s the growing library of cool plug-ins and enhancements.

Thanks to a tip from Caleb, I downloaded Spellbound, a spelling plug-in for form fields. This means that I will be able to keep daddyo typo free without the help of Sarah, the official daddyo editor.

Picasa 2

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Although I am not a huge fan of Macs, I will readily admit there are many ways in which the Mac is far superior to a PC. I have long been jealous of iPhoto and the lack of a similarly elegant program for the PC.

Last year Google purchased Picasa, the closest thing a PC version of iPhoto and made it available for free. Although I liked a great many features in Picasa, it lacked enough essential tools that I ended up not using it regularly.

Well Google has just released Picasa 2 and the new version is chock full of the features that were missing before. New in version 2 are 12 photographic filter effects, color and lighting adjustments, red-eye removal, photo cropping and straightening; backup capabilities like archiving photos from a computer to a CD or DVD, saving photos on an external drive, and creating gift CDs with personalized slideshows.

I’ll report back after I’ve gotten a chance to put it through it’s paces.

Google SMS

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From Sarah we have a link to this very new and cool service from Google:

Google SMS (Short Message Service) enables you to easily get precise answers to specialized queries from your mobile phone or device. Send your query as a text message and get phone book listings, dictionary definitions, product prices and more. Just text. No links. No web pages. Simply the answers you’re looking to find.

Check out Google SMS for yourself.

Captchas – sigh

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So the blog spambots have finally hit daddyo and to keep these crappy bots from posting comments, I need to impliment Captchas to the comments posting form. You’ve seen them before, those words you need to type in before submitting a form. I’m assuming that it shouldn’t cause folks much of a problem seeing as my site tends to get very few comments (not that it bothers me in the least).

gmail anyone?

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For anyone who doesn’t know about Gmail, it’s the new mail service from Google. Featuring 1 Gig of space and google’s search built in, Gmail’s folderless architecture is revolutionary and totally different than other mail services. The service is in beta now and you can only get an account via invitation.

Well, I’ve got an extra invitation, so if you’re looking to get a free Gmail account. just drop me a line, and if you email me first, I’ll send you an account.

More reasons to switch from IE

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This week, The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team reccomended that people not use IE as their browser. No surprise there, IE has become a target for those who prey on innocent users. So, maybe it’s time you switched browsers???

I am really not such a geek that I like to get into all the technology debates of which OS and which product is better. And for years I stuck with IE as my browser because Netscape/Mozilla didn’t produce a fast browser with the features I wanted.

If you’re a regular reader of Daddyo, you know that I’ve really gotten into Mozilla’s Firefox. In addition to the warning from the government, recent headlines have touted new trojans for IE that try to steal banking information. Oh, and don’t forget all the spyware problems that come from IE. Online life is much safer and faster now that I use Firefox.

Google Toolbar

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My favorite internet tool, the Google Toolbar has released their 2.0 beta.

For those unfamilar with it, the Google Toolbar embeds (for users of IE 5+)a Google search box into your browser. Version 2.0 adds a wonderful pop-up blocker. Here’s the full listing of features:

  • Google Search: Access Google’s search technology from any web page.

  • Search Site: Search only the pages of the site you’re visiting.

  • PageRank: See Google’s ranking of the current page.

  • Page Info: Access more information about a page including similar pages, pages that link back to that page, as well as a cached snapshot.

  • Highlight: Highlight your search terms as they appear on the page; each word in its own color.

  • Word Find: Find your search terms wherever they appear on the page.

  • Popup Blocker: Make surfing the web easier by stopping annoying popups.

  • AutoFill: Automatically fill in a form with the click of a button.

  • BlogThis: Create a weblog post pointing to the page you are visiting.