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...
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.
Brick and Mortar shops almost worthless?
Ok...that's an over the top header, but I swear I'm often left with this feeling lately. Heading to BestBuy is a great example. Sure you walk in the store and it seems filled to the brim with stuff, and it definitely is. However more often than not, I feel like I walk out of there without what I was looking for. A battery for this, or a charger for that, lens covers, etc. And it seems to be getting worse, not better.
A quick reply from GGB
Last week, I noticed a change in the lane configuration for the evening commute on the Golden Gate Bridge. For some reason, they had switched from a 3 North/3 South configuration to a 4 North/2 South setup, which had the negative effect of backing Southbound traffic through the Waldo tunnel, while the Northbound side on the bridge seemed to be sparse for the most part. Initially I thought it had to do with the recent closure of the Bay Bridge, or even Daylight Savings Time, but it soon became apparent that it wasn't changing back to the way it used to be.
So, in frustration, I shot off an email this past Saturday to the contact address I found on the Golden Gate Bridge website, and just received the following response. Kudos to them for getting back to me so quickly, even though it wasn't really with the response I was hoping for.