syndican too

Google Reader’s new look and forced Google+ sharing are now live

2011-10-31T22:11:00.000-05:00

Can you believe Send To blogger is the best way to share items in Google Reader now? It's probably too much work though.

Google Reader’s new look and forced Google+ sharing are now live:
If you’ve fired up Google Reader today and noticed a change, you’re not alone. Google has just put out a blog post that explains the happenings, and details a bit more about how you’ll now share with Google Reader (in short, it’s Google+)

The new look falls in line with the rest of the changes that we’ve seen from Google over the past few months, specifically after the launch of Google+. You’ll see a new preview pane that shows you all of your stories, with subscriptions along the left in a list like before.

Sharing in Google Reader is now considerably different than before. Instead of having a network in and of itself, anything that you share is now going to happen via a +1 to Google+, as detailed in a blog post last week. Google says that it has done this in order to “streamline Reader overall”, but the changes aren’t as welcome by everyone.

Sentiment across Twitter after the sharing changes were announced last week was that there would be many people who aren’t connected on Google+ for various reasons who would miss seeing the internal shares that happened on Google Reader. In response to that, Google states the following:

“We hope you’ll like the new Reader (and Google+) as much as we do, but we understand that some of you may not. Retiring Reader’s sharing features wasn’t a decision that we made lightly, but in the end, it helps us focus on fewer areas, and build an even better experience across all of Google.”

In short it’s a way for Google to continue to push content and users toward Google+, while keeping an air of reason behind why you’d want to be there.

There are still options for sending to other networks. To access this, however, you’ll need to enable it. Within reader, head up to the Gear on the top right of your page, then go to Reader Settings. In there, click on the Send To tab and you’ll see this:

Once you’ve selected your networks, you’ll then have a Send To option at the bottom of each entry, where you can send to any of the networks that you’ve chosen:

As you can see, you’ll be able to share across any number of networks, but follows on Google Reader itself are still disabled, in favor of Google+ Circles.

Ultimately it doesn’t take away from the usefulness of Google Reader as a product, and it’s not the first time that Google has pushed its way into your social life, either (remember the launch of Buzz?). At the end of the day it will be up to users to figure out if they want to share content via a +1, but chances are that Reader fans aren’t going to be adversely affected overall.

The Bear Had No Use For Sideline Reporters - Deadspin

2007-02-10T22:13:00.000-06:00

The Bear Had No Use For Sideline Reporters - Deadspin

H3DA » More Alpha Pics!

2007-02-10T15:55:00.000-06:00

H3DA » More Alpha Pics!

The inevitable leakage of Halo 3 alpha build pics continues. These are actually very high quality compared to what we have been getting. We’ll analyze these for you later, but till then, you can thank Blaze97 for finding them.

Awesome. Can't wait.

Windy City Gridiron :: Garcia Would Like To Be A Bear?

2007-02-08T12:24:00.000-06:00

Windy City Gridiron :: Garcia Would Like To Be A Bear?

This article while not all that in depth does at least hit on most of the names as far as available QBs go.
Garcia looks to be the biggest winner in free agency and might be sizing up the Bears.

''That's a team that is really well put together defensively and offensively,'' Garcia told the newspaper. ''That is a situation where you have to be honest with yourself and take a look at it. I'm not going to lie. That would be a situation that would make me think about certain things. Whether that happens or not, we'll have to see.''
All that is great, but we all know Garcia wants the money and the starting gig, if he can't find that with Chicago, then he will go else where.
As far as the other QBs out there, should we decide to bring one in, here is my take.
I am not interested in Plummer, Garcia, Leftwich or Schaub. The first three are scrubs and the last thing we need is another QB that we are not sure what we are getting.
As mentioned in a prior post if by some miracle it did happen, I would be interested in Mcnabb.
The name that intrigues me the most is David Carr. I still think he can be a great QB. Get him behind a line that will you know block, give him a consistent running back and there could be something there. Berrian was also a teammate of Carr's back in college, nice connection to have if you are looking to get him.

Garcia is riding high on a wave of solid second half play. That's clearly not enough for me to be buying him. Especially, when you consider how bad he's been for years before this.

I still think Carr can be a solid QB, but it's a little bit of a myth that he hasn't had anyone to play with.

He has one of the absolute best WR's in the league in Andre Johnson. He's also played, in previous years, with a very versatile and productive RB in Dominick Davis.

Not that Carr isn't going to be better than Rex, but he's still to much of an unknown to bring him in to our situation.

People who play with my dice

2007-02-08T11:12:00.000-06:00

Why does everyone feel the need to come to my desk and play with my plastic dice? Some people make a basketball game out of my slinky... that's not annoying.

ussoccer.com - Men's National Team

2007-02-07T23:11:00.000-06:00

ussoccer.com - Men's National Team: "The U.S. MNT Defeats Mexico, 2-0, at the University of Phoenix Stadium "

Two second half goals from Jimmy Conrad and Landon Donovan handed the United States another 2-0 victory against CONCACAF rival Mexico, this time at the University of Phoenix Stadium.

There's nothing better than beating those pieces of shiat from Mexico. The Mexican's continued to exude class. After yielding the second goal of the match, Oswaldo Sanchez attempted a cheap shot, slide-tackle on a celebrating Eddie Johnson.

Mexico really can't get over the fact that the US has dominated them for so long, can they?

Check out the action:

The Poop : Shower Madness

2007-02-07T15:39:00.000-06:00

The Poop : Shower Madness

I had three baby showers before Sicily arrived and would have felt guilty getting pregnant again if subsequent showers were customary. When a friend said she'd throw me one for Asher, I asked her not to because second baby showers are TOTALLY tacky!
Any thoughts on second baby showers?

After having our first baby shower, I'd say, that if your first was for a daughter, knock yourself out with a second.

We were told that we were only going to get clothes, because everyone loves buying cute clothes for a girl, and that was nothing but the truth.

So, we were stuck having to buy the crap we really needed ourselves. Sure the second baby shower is still tacky, because you already have most of the stuff you need, but it's payback for not getting what you needed in the first place.

Angry Royals owner promises changes coming soon - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

2006-05-05T18:55:00.000-05:00

Maybe the big change the Glass is promising will be getting rid of the owner and his idiot son.

Anderson's Villiage

2005-02-11T23:07:00.001-06:00

Anderson's Daughter

Village Grandfather

Anderson is one of the translators at the Kafulafuta Mission in northern Zambia. I've included a few of familly members he introduced me to after we found his villiage biking down several bush trails.

More Data environments?

2005-01-29T15:42:00.000-06:00

What are data environments for?

Today, considering how cheap storage prices are, it's possible to setup more and more data environments than ever before. For instance, at my company, we have an instance for development, quality assurance, user acceptance testing, emergency, pre-release, production, and one being used for special projects.

What more could developers and business analysts ask for? Well, more environments that is.

And I wonder, does proper planning vary disproportionately to the number of data environments? It's hard for me to tell, because in the past, here, it wasn't just multiple instances we lacked, but planning at all. Changes would be made in production, and anything that broke was fixed that morning. Sure there were probably other things that were broke that we didn't know about, but if we didn't hear about them, they probably aren't important, right?

Well, supposedly things are changing. We added more data environments, that will make planning easier right. Well, maybe for bug fixes (which, granted, are like 85% of our development here). But how about when we have real projects? Something that takes more than 2 weeks to develop and affects more than a handful of procs?

Well, apparently our planning still isn't up to par. We have development taking place in the quality assurance environments and quality assurance taking place in user acceptance, because, as the project planners would tell us, we need more environments.

No, sir, you need to plan better.

You know, it's a fact that there were large and small companies all working on large projects well before there were opportunities for multiple data environments. How did they succeed? Well with careful attention to the design cycle and not providing unreasonable expectations to the business.

Greg Mancuso and Al Moreno call this concept DRIP (Data Rich and Information Poor). And do I hear that! They detail processes and questions that should be asked when developing an information solution. Unfortunately, they don't exactly provide a way to get the project managers at a real company to follow these, or like, guidelines. Most of the times, we can't even lead these horses to water.

I guess it's only a matter of time before we get to having separate development environments

Out of Zambia

2005-01-27T15:56:00.000-06:00

North of Lusaka, Zambia

Victoria Falls, Zambia

Tricked into EMC

2005-01-27T03:09:00.000-06:00

So the first time I heard of EMC was when my dad was thinking about starting a small, local company that would backup PC's for the average Joe that didn't even know he needed it (maybe that inherent contradiction in market that never let this plan get far off the ground). He'd burn the backups to CD for the users and their important bank invoices....I don't know, love emails? Would all be safe and sound. Hey, it's important. And, if you don't backup your home PC, like me, you're an absolute idiot.

Anyways, I was researching backups and storage and ran into this company called EMC. I had no idea how big the company was. Even more, I had no idea how that company would actually play an impact to me.

Well, a few short 5 years later, I'm trapped in the office at 3:15am working on EMC Luns. Hey, it's actually pretty cool. I just learned the stuff today. Oh, and I didn't mention the company (well, 12 guys in our department) poker game I just came from a few hours ago. I won $35, drank 6 beers, and had this night to look forward to.

So I'm expanding a Lun for Visual Source Safe, and I've been working on it for 4 hours. And I'm a little nervous. Because it. appears. to have. worked. ?? Yah, it looks that way. What's the chance of a late night project working on the first try? I don't know, maybe it's a good sign of things to come in my infantile DBA career.