The Rationalist Manifesto » Internet

Australia 7th in Google government removal requests per capita

Tal Rotbart — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:44:24 +0000

Feeding some numbers from Google’s new Government Requests page into a simple spreadsheet reveals that Australia is 7th world-wide in Google government removal requests of search results and other materials. South Korea, Germany and Brazil lead the sad pack.

Note that only countries with over 10 requests have been included and that the population data is circa 2008/2009.

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Google Maps Street View April Fools

Tal Rotbart — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:30:37 +0000

The ‘you are here’ person in Google Maps’ Street View is now a Panda, as this screenshot illustrates. I’m assuming this is an April Fools joke.

Google Maps' Street View indicator is now a Panda bear

I’m wondering if this is happening in the US version of Street View or only here in Australia.

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A Good Ride

Tal Rotbart — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:38:11 +0000

Work mates of mine just released A Good Ride, it is a Rails 2.0-based motorbike riding site with some killer features. Check out the ride video feature.

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Stupid, but fun…

Tal Rotbart — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 03:35:39 +0000

I should have a category for that…

What type of Fae are you?

Time wasted thanks to Fa11ing Away…

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Amie St Music Store – A Very Positive Customer Service Experience

Tal Rotbart — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:16:30 +0000

Some of you may have heard about Amie St, the online DRM-free music store that recently signed major artists (such as Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Paul Van Dyk and others) to sell their music without any of the foolish DRM restrictions that the iTunes Music Store imposes on music bought there.

Following the coverage on Digg, I’ve decided to try out the store. I was pleasantly surprised with the selection and quality of music there, but I was encountering some trouble listening to samples because of the high loads the site experienced following the news coverage. Frustrated, I wrote to their customer service about my hardship–

Not even twenty five minutes later, I got a response from an actual person, Elias Roman, who apologized for the issues, offered credit to my account and indicated what Amie St was doing to resolve the issue:

“What is your user name, I’ll add some credit to it so you can
enjoy it when the samples are working (We are actively adding more
servers to our grid to get rid of that issue).” – (Partial Quote)

One eMail from me later (with my user name), and no longer than fifty minutes from the time of my initial contact with them, the following message landed in my inbox:

“Hey Tal, I added some credit to your account. The site should be
running alright by now, I would definitely check out Au Revoir Simone,
the Shake, Waterlog (definitely check out The Onion by waterlog).”

While I am still having issues at time listening to the samples (which might be related to my own Internet connectivity) they are less prevalent than before and I’ll definitely check out and purchase music from Amie St, if only because of their remarkable customer service.

From my short time at the site, I already found some songs I like– allow me to recommend the song Unravel from the group Drawing Down the Sun.

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Stupidest gadget, ever.

Tal Rotbart — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 06:00:33 +0000

Luckily it is just a product design and not an available product. Because anyone who buys it should not be allowed to reproduce…

via Gizmodo.

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The Story of Sergey Brin

Tal Rotbart — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 02:57:58 +0000

Interesting piece describing Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s life, from a slightly Jewish perspective. via Digg.

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“Consumer Generated Media”

Tal Rotbart — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 23:24:52 +0000

The “No blogging allowed at “consumer generated media” conference” reported over at Boing Boing via Greg Verdino’s Marketing Blog, really struck a nerve with me. The name itself of course shows that the conference organizers just don’t get it: “Generating Media” makes you a producer, not a consumer…

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Firefox 2.0 – More visible tabs

Tal Rotbart — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:12:45 +0000

While I understand the need for adding the left-right arrows on the tab-strip when there are many tabs open, I reckon Firefox 2.0 switches to this solution too quickly which bugged me to bits.

Luckily, there’s a fix for that:

Go to the Firefox’s ‘behind-the-scenes’ configuration screen by typing ‘about:config’ in the URL bar.
Search for the property ‘browser.tabs.tabMinWidth’
Change its value from the default to 80 (you can experiment with this value and see what fits your comfort).
Restart Firefox
You should now have tab-strip that will fit in more tabs before reverting to the left-right arrow trick
If you want to revert to the default value, simply right-click on the property and click on the ‘reset’ option.

On my 1280×1024 screen the visible tab count increased from twelve tabs to fifteen, yet enough of the title of the page is visible. A lower ‘browser.tabs.tabMinWidth’ value means more tabs visible but less of the title for you to see.

If you want to read more about this property, this mozillaZine knowledge-base article will tell you all you need to know.

Technorati tags: mozilla, firefox, usability

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“I’m Skype-ing you from just over Iceland”

Tal Rotbart — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 12:33:07 +0000

My father is now flying to the states and we had just finished speaking over Skype just as he was flying over Iceland.

He had a chance to try out using the “Connexion by Boeing” Wi-Fi service on his Lufthansa flight. The service is unfortunately being terminated at the end of the year, so this is probably going to be his last chance to have a go.

There’s a small bright side which is that use of this service has been made free until it is terminated.

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