Our children are dangerously talented

[Happy (belated) birthday to osewalrus!]

A month or two ago, one of the guys brought a handful of Slim Jims to poker night. They went onto The Table of Snackery (along with 95k other snacks that have accumulated there), and I promptly forgot about them.

I just found a wrapper on the floor. Neatly gnawed open at one end, and empty.

Really, I'm impressed -- those sealed plastic doodads aren't trivial to open even if you do have opposable thumbs, and sucking the meat stick out of the wrapper takes real skill. But I think they need to go into a sealed container -- Slim Jims aren't exactly on the approved kitty food list. (Heck, they're not even particularly on the approved human food list...)

Our children are dangerously talented

[Happy (belated) birthday to osewalrus!]

A month or two ago, one of the guys brought a handful of Slim Jims to poker night. They went onto The Table of Snackery (along with 95k other snacks that have accumulated there), and I promptly forgot about them.

I just found a wrapper on the floor. Neatly gnawed open at one end, and empty.

Really, I'm impressed -- those sealed plastic doodads aren't trivial to open even if you do have opposable thumbs, and sucking the meat stick out of the wrapper takes real skill. But I think they need to go into a sealed container -- Slim Jims aren't exactly on the approved kitty food list. (Heck, they're not even particularly on the approved human food list...)

The pains of being ahead of the curve

Thanks to Garett Rogers for pointing out that Google has implemented "chatback" -- a new feature that allows people to click on links to open a chat session with you.

It's a lovely feature. Indeed, it was a lovely feature when we invented it three or four years ago at Convoq -- I did most of the design, and it sounds like Google's system is almost a direct copy. (Indeed, my ASAP Link was live on my LJ profile until we shut the project down.) It'll be gratifying if it proves useful to folks -- I thought it was a good idea then, and I still do -- but man, I'm getting really tired of inventing new things and have them finally proven out years later by other people. This is something like the third or fourth in just the past year.

Of course, it also leads me to wonder what the status of that particular patent is. I'm pretty sure that the ASAP Links patent wasn't fully granted yet by the time we shut down, but it might still be actively in-process. If so, Convoq's patent portfolio just jumped in value again: IIRC, it was one of our most defensible-looking patents, right up there with the Meet ASAP feature. Once again, I find myself with deeply mixed feelings about the whole patent thing.

ETA: Amusing. The Google version is similar to ASAP Links in the broad strokes -- except that it doesn't work nearly as well. For example, we provided a number of different form factors for ASAP Links, precisely because there is no good one-size-fits-all solution. The Google Chat badges require iframes, so they can't be used in, say, your LJ Profile, which is the place one would *most* like to put it. (Because they can be easily disabled, these links are *much* better for publishing publically than simply posting your handle.) ASAP Links could be used with simple image buttons, or even just links, so they could be used almost anywhere. And of course, ASAP Links were vastly more powerful -- not only could you do text chat, you could start a full audio/video conversation with them.

It looks like, in classic Google fashion, this is a very simplistic first cut. It'll be interesting to see whether they wind up implementing all the nuances that we decided were necessary to make the idea fully useful. And it does make me speculate that, if CommYou doesn't work out, there's something to be said for reviving Convoq's technology ideas (with a greatly simplified UI so ordinary mortals can use the damned thing)...

The pains of being ahead of the curve

Thanks to Garett Rogers for pointing out that Google has implemented "chatback" -- a new feature that allows people to click on links to open a chat session with you.

It's a lovely feature. Indeed, it was a lovely feature when we invented it three or four years ago at Convoq -- I did most of the design, and it sounds like Google's system is almost a direct copy. (Indeed, my ASAP Link was live on my LJ profile until we shut the project down.) It'll be gratifying if it proves useful to folks -- I thought it was a good idea then, and I still do -- but man, I'm getting really tired of inventing new things and have them finally proven out years later by other people. This is something like the third or fourth in just the past year.

Of course, it also leads me to wonder what the status of that particular patent is. I'm pretty sure that the ASAP Links patent wasn't fully granted yet by the time we shut down, but it might still be actively in-process. If so, Convoq's patent portfolio just jumped in value again: IIRC, it was one of our most defensible-looking patents, right up there with the Meet ASAP feature. Once again, I find myself with deeply mixed feelings about the whole patent thing.

ETA: Amusing. The Google version is similar to ASAP Links in the broad strokes -- except that it doesn't work nearly as well. For example, we provided a number of different form factors for ASAP Links, precisely because there is no good one-size-fits-all solution. The Google Chat badges require iframes, so they can't be used in, say, your LJ Profile, which is the place one would *most* like to put it. (Because they can be easily disabled, these links are *much* better for publishing publically than simply posting your handle.) ASAP Links could be used with simple image buttons, or even just links, so they could be used almost anywhere. And of course, ASAP Links were vastly more powerful -- not only could you do text chat, you could start a full audio/video conversation with them.

It looks like, in classic Google fashion, this is a very simplistic first cut. It'll be interesting to see whether they wind up implementing all the nuances that we decided were necessary to make the idea fully useful. And it does make me speculate that, if CommYou doesn't work out, there's something to be said for reviving Convoq's technology ideas (with a greatly simplified UI so ordinary mortals can use the damned thing)...

Outrage

Thanks to dglenn for his link to this delicious meta-rant about the principle of outrage from a few months ago. It's not long, and well worth reading; personally, I find it a refreshing tonic.  Just a taste, from the end:

"Smart, informed outrage engages you and fires your heart, your mind. It is fuel. It is the reason you claim you enjoy being an American, to question malevolent government actions and take a stand and demand accountability where there has, for the past seven years, been none. Bottom line: We simply cannot let them convince us, by way of an all-out assault on science, sex, love, et al, that the good fight just ain't worth fighting."

Outrage

Thanks to dglenn for his link to this delicious meta-rant about the principle of outrage from a few months ago. It's not long, and well worth reading; personally, I find it a refreshing tonic.  Just a taste, from the end:

"Smart, informed outrage engages you and fires your heart, your mind. It is fuel. It is the reason you claim you enjoy being an American, to question malevolent government actions and take a stand and demand accountability where there has, for the past seven years, been none. Bottom line: We simply cannot let them convince us, by way of an all-out assault on science, sex, love, et al, that the good fight just ain't worth fighting."