Tao Tough

Poker App.

2006-08-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

Just clicking around the web and came accross a link to this blog. Thought i should write something since it's been so long so that's what i'm doing. As far as the previous post (cell phone choices) I picked up a Nokia 6682 and am very pleased with it i've developed a few personal applications to help my day to day tasks.

Currently i am creating a poker tournamnet timer that keeps track of the blind increase time and raises the blinds and antes appropriately. I thought of this idea an plan to market it when i was at my last poker game (i finished first and won $150) and nobody had a timer on thier watch (ppl don't wear the timex ironman like they used to) but 80% of the people there pulled out a cellphone and put it on the table. We ended up calculating the blind increases by trips around the table but i personally think that that is a flawed way of doing it (maybe that's why i won lol) but it had to be done in that case.
Neways i think a poker timer on a phone is the ideal thing. The development stage is nearly complete and once i'm done testing i'll report back

(if i remember to).

Nokia 6680

2006-02-13T16:03:00.000-08:00

I am really kind of in a wierd position here as I need to get a cell phone but i'm not terribly sure which one to get. I really just need the phone just for a phone # as i will be job hunting soon and would like to have that number on any contact information that I give out.

However i would also like to use any mobile applications that i develop to run on my phone. I am going to get a nokia phone for sure since it is working with Adobe(er .. macromedia?) to integrate the flash player into it's phones.
Dave Yang was a speaker in our class last week and he develops mobile applications in flash. Dave said that the most popular phone right now to develop with is the nokia 6680. But the thing is the nokia 6680 phone does not directly support flash lite 2.0 (i would have to download the flash lite 2.0 player for an additional 10 bucks) .

see there are some pretty cool phones from asia that support flash lite 2.0 but i do not know if the networks here in north america can support them. Check phones that support flash lite 2.0 here and tell me which one i should get :).
Aslo check out myMoblie blog entry.

Ma.gnolia

2006-02-13T14:57:00.000-08:00

Just started beta testing another web 2.0 bookmarking/folsomic tagging software today. I just got the invite today. It's called Ma.gnolia and altho it's in beta testing it seems really good.
It's very similar to del.icius in the same sence that you collect bookmarks and tag them for others to see and catagorize online.
However there are tons of features in Ma.gnolia that aren't in delicious. It's still in beta testing however but it seems like it's taking the right approch with the features it's adding.

A few features include:

You decide how you want to share your bookmarks.
You can create sharing groups and share approprite tags with those groups.
There are public groups that contain only specific tags. that you can join.
You can import/export bookmarks from your computer, del.icio.us or wahtever else.
And there's the link roll feature that i've put in the side bar here. which automatically updates a specifited tag(s) roll onto your blog / webpage (simply copy and paste code like google adds kinds thing)

See i've only been using del.icio.us for a little while now and it may have all these features but they were alot easier to find in ma.gnolia
And since ma.gnolia is in beta testing i havn't got the link roll to work as of this writing i'm not getting any entries in it but i'm sure it'll be fixed soon.

edit: err all this link talk and i didn't even leave a link ... well here ya go Ma.gnolia

More web 2.0

2006-02-12T07:59:00.000-08:00

i found this link burried in my google rss reader and thought that it kinda fit in with all of the web 2.0 stuff. It's a so called COMPLETE listing of all the web 2.0 apps (yes it includes itself)

HERE IS THE LINK.

I've only checked out a few of them but it's a good place to check to see what's out there.

Mobile

2006-01-30T12:47:00.000-08:00

Flash Lite 2.0

I've just downloaded and installed flash lite 2.0 today it was fairly easy to install and after creating a template it's pretty easy to get going.
Check out Macromedia labs to get info on flash lite 2.0.

The main feature upgrade in flash lite 2.0 that interested me the most was the XML support. With flash applications now being able to grab XML data users could run an application cheaper. By this I mean that certain programs that need data to run will not have to keep connecting to the internet every time it could be a 1 connect deal which would cost the user less over all and more time could be spent using the application rather than having to ask themselves "if I hit that back button how much is it going to cost me".

Mobile Applications

When people say mobile application it they always think "application to go" but what I was wondering is if the main front end is on the web is it still a mobile application.
Take this google Map Hack where people can take pictures of garbage all over new your city and they can be viewed as a dumpster icon on a google map interface. Is this considered a mobile application when all the user is really doing is emailing a photo (and probably GPS address) from their phone.
However that is decided it can clearly be seen that for both entertainment and practicality mobile applications can be extremely helpful.

imm people blog links

2006-01-22T18:40:00.000-08:00

Thought this might help some people add the list of people's blogs to thier blogs

<ul>
<li><a href="http://dotdot.wordpress.com">Carlo Alducente</a></li>
<li><a href="http://homepage.mac.com/mbalders ">Michael Balders</a></li>
<li><a href="http://christinaimm.blogspot.com/">Christina Canales</a></li>
<li><a href="http://immtrevor.blogspot.com/">Trevor Hughes</a></li>
<li><a href="http://mkomocsin.blogspot.com/">Michael Komocsin</a></li>
<li><a href="http://taotough.blogspot.com/">Marshall Macgillivray</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.merlihan.blogspot.com">Kathryn Merlihan</a></li>
<li><a href="http://darian.ca/blog">Darian Milloy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://djdsmooth.blogspot.com/ ">Derrick Mitra</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gomystery.blogspot.com/">Oscar Munoz</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bradpottle.blogspot.com/">Bradley Pottle</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blogger-space.blogspot.com/">Mark Shu</a></li>
<li><a href="http://qtemetnoscep.blogspot.com/">Wasim Singh</a></li>
<li><a href="http://livercage.blogspot.com/">Dave Trzebinski</a></li>
<li><a href="http://warnock.wordpress.com/">Cameron Warnock</a></li>
<li><a href="http://danzen.wordpress.com">Dan Zen </a></li>
<li><a href="http://blogzinn.wordpress.com/">Nicholas Zinn</a></li>

</ul>
marshall.

spell folksonomic ....

2006-01-22T18:07:00.000-08:00

I recently had a chance to hear Wayne McPhail from Rabble speak about Podcasting and Web 2.0. The Podcasting section did not really interest me nearly as much as the Web 2.0 section did (Podcasting and Ctrl-F). I realized that there was a lot of new applications showing up on the web and that they were known to fall into the Web 2.0 category but I had never herd of folksonomic tagging (which I’ll probably spell wrong throughout the rest of this blog entry).

The Wikipedia states that folksonomy refers to the collaborative but unsophisticated way in which information is being categorized on the web. Instead of using a centralized form of classification, users are encouraged to assign freely chosen keywords (called tags) to pieces of information or data, a process known as tagging.

Now this is a really neat idea especially when coupled with RSS. Wayne gave us a great example of a Web 2.0 application called del.icio.us where a user can sign up and save bookmarks to sites that they enjoy. They do not only save the bookmarks but they also apply folksonomic tags to them. Tagging their bookmarks allows them to easily find the bookmark they are looking for as well as make it easier for other people to identify which type of link it is. Another thing about del.icio.us is that you can create an RSS feed for a subset of your links based on tags you specify. This could be extremely useful if you wanted others to see what you are looking at and have them see the exact same information you did.

Since Wayne’s presentation I’ve joined del.icio.us and am in the middle of sifting through all my browser saved bookmarks and adding and tagging them on del.icio.us and will have a few nice RSS feeds up as soon as I have some time.

marshall.

Podcast and Ctrl+F

2006-01-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if it's just me or what but nowadays I cannot browse a webpage without hitting ctrl+f at least once. Incase it's just me, pressing ctrl+f allows you to search for a keyword within a webpage and if you're like me and use Firefox the page scrolls to parts matching the word or phrase you want to find as you type it! -- Which is an amazing feature that combined with tabbed browsing makes me really wonder why anyone would choose to use IE. Anyways, the bottom line is that by using ctrl-f I’ve grown accustomed to finding the exact information that I want very quickly, without much mucking around reading a bunch of words that don't relate to what I want to know. I don't want to have to sift through content to get to what I want when I want it, and I don't think I’m the only one. Society is moving at such a fast pace nowadays that people don't want (or even have time) to waste time finding what they want and if they don’t' get it then they'll go somewhere where they can. It is for these reasons that I believe that Podcasts are overrated and are going to need an upgrade very soon.
Podcasts are pretty much just RSS 2.0 feeds that automatically download audio files to listen to on your portable MP3 player or any compatible machine (desktop, home stereo, etc...). There are many types of Podcasts out there including audio books, music shows, news, humor and sports which I'm sure are chalk full of great content. But the shame is that they are still just normal audio files NOTHING NEW! How you get them may be new and there may be a lot more people creating their own content for them (for free) , which is awesome, but I just can't consider them to be that much of an asset until a few features are added.
Right now there is no way of searching through a Podcast for a specific word or phrase and go there right away. There are only predetermined markers set by whoever encoded the file and a part of the time these are omitted. This may not be a problem for you but for people like me whom are very impatient when it comes to getting the information they want right away it is very frustrating. Most people can ingest information a lot faster by reading it than they could if someone was reading it to them. This problem spills over into so many different scenarios such as using a Podcast as a reference during a presentation or meeting when you only want to use a specific part of it you cannot do this very easily. Even if you listen through the whole Podcast you cannot place a direct link at a particular spot to revisit at a later time.
I don't know, I guess I’m being too harsh but Podcasts could be used for so much more if they weren't just simple audio files, but until the iPOD becomes extinct I don't think we'll see the "ctrl-f" in a Podcast anytime soon.

marshall.

Please put a ctrl-f feature or something new in the next generation of Podcasting.

Spammer Gets Pinched

2006-01-09T18:18:00.000-08:00

Check this out

It just goes to show you that something is being done about spammers but 11.2 billion??? isn't that a little extreme?

Another reason not to use spell check.

2006-01-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

I just discoverd yet another reason not to use spell check. As it turns out the letters b l o g when put together are not a word at all. This makes me wonder even more if anyone will or can actually read this or not.

maybe if i had something a little more interesting to write about ......

Tao Tough

2006-01-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

Wierd blog name eh, I guess I should tell you where I got it from.
I recently watched a movie called Duel of the Tao Tough which wasn't the greatest movie I've seen but I thought the "Tao Tough" sounded pretty cool together and since i wasn't feeling all that creative at the time i decided to use that for my blog title however it will probably change pretty soon. below are some definitions of what the hell it means.

defn: TAO-eternal principle of the universe that transcends reality and is the source of being, non-being, and change.
defn:TOUGH- Able to withstand great strain without tearing or breaking; strong and resilient.

read what you want into those words but thing is I just thought they sounded cool together.

First Blog Ever

2006-01-05T07:36:00.000-08:00

I'm new to this blog stuff but it seems pretty much like journal keeping to me. I've never kept a journal and if i did i'm not sure anyone would want to read it. I can however see the benifits of keeping a journal. Since i have such a poor memory of things an i'm getting older (lol) I figured i better set one up now before i forget. Well, since i have a blog now i guess i should start sharing things i've done recently.

Yesturday I went to see the peter jackson movie Kong at ancaster silver city. I went with my sister and her 3 boys. It was a really well made movie with great cgi special effects.

i'm gonna post this just to see how things turn out.

till next time

marshall.