A response to Boxer’s SF Mass Transit email.
Today I received a letter from Senator Barbara Boxer regarding recent investments into San Francisco's mass transit system, and specifically calling out a project at the City College, which is great news. Perhaps the message was crafted just for me based on zip code, but I was left wondering, 'What about the rest of the Bay Area?' So I sent her an equally specific response via her website...
AntiScorn: The Power Strip Liberator
I thought it was about time to add a new feature to TechScorn. Scorning all the time is fun, but not all that useful I guess. I'm going to call it "AntiScorn". The idea is I'll occasionally post items that I think deserve your undivided attention. You may not even know you need these things yet, but trust me, you do.
It's liberating your power strips!
To kick this topic off, I'm starting with the one and only Power Strip Liberator. We all have power strips that are chock full of plugged in devices, right? How often do you have those ungainly power bricks plugged in, blocking other crucial outlets? All the time, right? This is where the Power Strip Liberator steps in.
There are a few different iterations of this cable, but the basic version is about a foot long with a single three prong male and female plug. The most useful version however is the Power Strip Liberator Plus (pictured). It not only allows you to plug in a power brick without blocking other outlets, it also gives you an extra female outlet piggybacked right on top of the male plug. Brilliant!
Of course you need to be careful to not overextend the amp rating of your power strip or circuit, but the plus version can definitely come in handy when you need to add "just one more" device.
That it for this installment of AntiScorn. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Glass Houses, Yahoo and MS. Glass Houses.
Google announced their new Buzz product yesterday, and both Microsoft and Yahoo were quick with their responses. Microsoft was all, '...that's a dumb idea. Besides Hotmail has had linking with external sites forever.' And Yahoo was like, '...we had the original Buzz.' Here's my feeling on their positions.
First, Microsoft. Hotmail? Really? Have you really looked at Hotmail lately? It's horrible. In fact, last I heard, it could be a detriment to getting a job. Sure lots of people probably still use Hotmail (not that I know personally of course), but your problem is, no one is excited about using Hotmail.
Second, Yahoo. Buzz.yahoo.com? Really? I don't know if you noticed or not, but Buzz.yahoo.com is a straight rip on Digg. Try to innovate next time. Or better yet, take those resources and pour them into Flickr. It's about the only viable business you have left.
A (cosmetic) fix for those Feedburner tracking URLs
I'm a huge Google Reader nerd, and a few months ago, Feedburner (an RSS feed provider) started generating long URLs that are used to track outbound clicks in their feeds. Here's an example:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/solar-eclipse-images-show-dazzling-corona-detail/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Everything after that question mark (in red) isn't necessary to the user, and is only needed for the feed owner to track clicks from their feed. This isn't a big deal by any means, but it is kinda annoying to me. I parse my river of RSS feeds and occasionally pass along interesting links to my twitter feed, and I prefer to send the cleanest URL possible. Sure it's shortened automatically with bit.ly, but it still bugs me, so I've been looking for a solution to clean up the URL.
I'm not a big JS coder, but I figured there had to be a Greasemonkey script that would do the trick, and after doing a bit of searching, I found the solution over at userscripts.org. Enter FeedBurnerTrackingQueryStripper. This little Greasemonkey script does the trick perfectly. It's strips the tracking information from the URL after the page loads. So the feed owner is happy, and the user is left with a simpler URL.
Getting the “Model Identifier” for a Mac via ARD
With the recent release of a new firmware update for the latest version of the Mac Pros, I was wondering if there was an easy way to query a bunch of systems for their Model Identifier. This is a unique name for a particular model of Mac, that can be found in the Apple System Profiler app. Some examples are "MacPro3,1", "PowerMac10,2" & "Xserve3,1". Minor revs in a particular model will typically be denoted by incrementing the number after the comma, while major updates are before. Apple Remote Desktop can give you the "Machine Model" (Report>System Overview...>Machine Model), but this is a dumbed down name of the system that isn't specific enough for this purpose.