So I’ve downloaded the first developer preview edition of Flock, a web browser that (it turns out) is based on Firefox.  It aims to integrate web services such as del.icio.us, Flickr, and blogging services such as WordPress into the browsing experience. For instance, I’m composing this post (primarily, to see if it works) in the integrated blog post composer.

It definitely needs work still. There is quite a bit I cannot do in it (i.e., categorize this post). But it hasn’t crashed yet, and I give it credit for that. It’s also based on the 1.0.x branch of Firefox, which I stopped using several weeks ago in favor of 1.5 Beta 1 and nightly builds thereafter; the new Firefox builds at least feel much faster due to the “fast back and forward” (bfcache) feature. And I don’t have gestures anymore, since extension compatibility with Flock is mostly nonexistent right now. First impressions are fairly good, though. I’m not a huge fan of the custom skin, but I’ll let it slide for the moment.

UPDATE: Faux pas #1: I want WordPress to format my posts, not Flock. The WordPress autoformatting is fine and lets me manually type in HTML if I want to. It’s also much smarter about avoiding <br /> tags and spruious non-breaking spaces. Post reformatted & categorized.

(Explicit Technorati tag: Flock)

Am I the only one who doesn’t think that the fact that the DARPA Grand Challenge being completed this year by several teams, compared to last year’s complete failure by all teams, is that big a deal? Professor Reynolds thinks it’s evidence of “sudden and dramatic progress,” and The Speculist weighs in with similar thoughts. I have to disagree with those analyses. The original Grand Challenge teams from 2004 had, I believe, less than a year to gather funding, assemble a team, and prepare a vehicle and GNC system, which is a lot of systems integration work. That would be an impressive effort by anyone, and the fact that no team was able to complete the 2004 Grand Challenge comes as little surprise to me.

As far as showing that there is rapid advancement, the International Aerial Robotics Competition has shown that the appropriate technologies for autonomous navigation exist and have existed for several years, with the Georgia Tech team showing Level II behavior in 2003, meaning the aircraft was able to fly into a simulated village (at an Army MOUT training center), find a particular building, and find an opening in that building. Further, the Mars Exploration Rovers have image processing technology that can perform off-road driving, and the IARC guys have been able to do basic navigation for several years, with the current course being 3 km one way—a 6 km round trip. So again, the technology exists, this is just one more (albeit highly robust) application.

Other things worth noting: the Volkswaken Touareg, such as the Stanford entry used, has 71 ft³ of cargo space with the rear seats folded down. In tandem with an upgraded electrical system, this is more than enough for some really bitchin’ computer power. Real-time image processing is not a problem for them. But it wasn’t a problem last year, either, and with that much space could have been done in 2001 or 2002, again, given about the same preparation time.

While the DARPA contest is a good thing, and while I’m sure it is difficult, it doesn’t seem to me like anything terribly revolutionary. I expect that there will be a change in the Grand Challenge that makes it more difficult, much like the IARC did when their previous challenges have been completed, and that it will prove to break systems that worked fine in this years challenge. It had better, or it’s clear DARPA has set the bar too low.

What the Grand Challenge 2005 does is provide a baseline. Now the top-tier participants know the rules, and they have a working, reasonably reliable system, that I hold could easily have been built several years ago, given they were provided about the same amount of time to build it. How these systems are leveraged and improved in Grand Challenge 2006 and beyond will be the true test of how fast our capabilities are progressing.

One week ago, I had never heard of The Killers.

A few days ago, I found The Trader’s Den, a bootleg music trading site, and among the usual bootlegs—Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant—I found a The Killers concert from November of last year. I decided to give them a listen and so I jumped on the torrent. Music’s pretty good. But that’s not my story.

Today, I log into GMail and after seeing that I got no real mail, I scanned the spam trap to make sure nothing got missorted. I noticed two emails, both of which had subject lines mentioning The Killers. One announced a new single, and the other one said:

We just wanted to send out a big thanks to all you guys who bought Hot Fuss, we hope you’re all enjoying it! If you havent got it yet, now is the time – Hot Fuss has a chance to be number one in the charts this week, every copy bought now will make a difference!
Look forward to seeing you all out on the NME tour.

So this isn’t your typical spam. This is a semi-legitimate email, targeted to me. The only way I’ve associated my GMail account to The Killers is through my Trader’s Den forum registration. So it appears that a few different things are working here:

1. The Killers fail to discourage bootlegs of their live concerts, and by failing to discourage it, they implicitly support it.
2. Someone in the marketing department monitors the Trader’s Den forum, and somehow this person has access to the email database, since my email address is not set to public.
3. While the email I received was unsolicited, it was well-targeted, since I clearly expressed an interest in The Killers by downloading the concert.
4. GMail’s spam trap is really good, recognizing the two mails as spam without any hints or help from me.

I’m still not sure what to make of all this, but importantly, I think that this sort of marketing does not bother me as long as it doesn’t become repetitive. I think an email saying, “hey, we see you downloaded this, if you like us here’s our website and you can buy things,” is not out of line. Getting automatically added to their mailing list is. We’ll see just what happens over the next few weeks.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 has been released. See that link? It’s screaming, “click me and download what you see there, for it is good!” Do it. DO IT NOW!

I’m currently waiting on a few more extensions to get updated, but the important ones upgraded fine from the Preview Release, notably, All-in-One Gestures, Web Developer Toolbar, and the really cool Google Preview. The only not-yet-updated favorite is Compact Menu, and it will be nice to have the BugMeNot extension up-to-date.

After accidentally setting my computer into standby twice today with my new Logitech Cordless Access keyboard, due to the location of the key, I decided to hack it. Normally, standby wouldn’t be a problem, except my computer is unable to get itself back out of standby, so I have to reboot, losing everything I was working on. Bad stuff.

The hack was simple. Pulling all the screws off the back, I noticed that the key to the keyboard’s thin and light construction (which I like very much) was a set of key contacts which were simply two membranes. Pressing the keys presses the contacts on the two membranes together, completing the circuit and resulting in a triggered keypress. I simply cut a small square out of the sticky part of a Post-it Note and stuck it on one of the contacts, then reassembled the keyboard. Now, pressing the key results in no action whatsoever.

Note that this hack almost certainly voids your warranty…which is why it’s good that it’s easily reversed (just open the keyboard, pull the paper, and reassemble). And I won’t have to keep restarting my computer due to an accidental keypress.

Blogger has given me an invite to GMail. So I now have one of those nifty accounts (patrick.oleary@…) but I probably won’t really use it for much. It might be replacing my burntmail account, and I may finally just stop accessing my spamtrap account (pao@mailandnews.com; I’m honestly not sure why I still bother to check it). I haven’t decided yet. My primary account will still be my school account, and my work account for work stuff. We’ll see.

Oh yeah. ObEvangelism:

Funny name. Serious browser. Download and enjoy.

OK, almost all mail sent (still have to send the package to parents, couldn’t find an open post office). TBPi essay written. NaNoWriMo word count is 1679, which is enough to keep me afloat.

Bought a notebook computer to facilitate easier NaNoWriMo and so I have portable computing power for group work, etc. However, there’s a broken scroll button and the battery refuses to charge, so I have to return it. It looks like there is no Office Depot in Atlanta with more of these in stock though, which is unfortunate because I think I otherwise like the computer. I’ll try to get it worked out tomorrow, but we’ll just have to see.

About the post office: I thought the post office ships on Saturdays. I visited two different post offices today, and one of them closes the retail window for the weekend, and the other is open only until 1300 on Saturdays. Of course, I arrive at five until two. So I have to ship the package on Monday now, taking time during my lunch hour to drive over to the Smyrna post office (which is thankfully close to where I work) and wait in line—there’s always a line—for ten minutes until I am helped. Then my package is sent. At least I got the thank-you notes out. For gifts received for my birthday. Which was two months ago. My stamps are from early my freshman year, which was when first class postage was still $0.34. I bought some $0.03 “kicker” stamps, but it looks like (upon counting today) I have one too few to use all the stamps. By the time I use the rest of them they’ll probably raise postage again anyways.

Tried to play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory with my friends, and it wasn’t working well. After a call to eVGA.com tech support, RMA’d my video card. I seem to be having awful luck with the things. One DOA, and one died 7 months after acquisition. On the other hand, eVGA.com has awesome tech support. After a quick description of the problem, and a question or two, they just said, “your card is probably bad. Send it back.” I like honesty much better than a CYA. No supervisor to talk to, just a tech who knows the card is bad. Excellent.

GF4 Update: The dualheading is cool. But our second monitor sucks miserably, so back to a single for now.