StudioGlyphic

How to keep your political career

glyphic — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:09:02 +0000

Some free, but useful advice on how to stay in politics.

12 things to avoid:

Don’t take pictures of yourself naked.
Don’t take pictures of your reproductive organs while wearing something tight/revealing.
Don’t engage in sexually explicit conversations over the Internet or by text message.
Don’t do anything remotely sexual with an underage person.
Don’t have an affair in a foreign country and lie about it.
Don’t have a relationship with a call girl.
Don’t pay for a prostitute with a check.
Don’t have an affair with someone who works for you.
Don’t have an affair with someone who is married to someone who works for you.
Don’t solicit strangers for sex in airport bathrooms.
Don’t have illegitimate children and deny responsibility.
Don’t make advances on the children of your donors.

If you do decide to ignore my advice and go ahead with any of these activities, then please pay attention to the following tips.

6 things that will make it worse:

Campaign based on your squeaky clean image.
Championing family values.
Public and loud criticism of other people’s indiscretions.
Anti-homosexual rhetoric, especially if you’re closeted.
Covering up with hush money.
Firing or threatening people who are involved.

And finally, when you are caught (and you will be), come clean as quickly and openly as possible. Learn how to shed a tear in public, but try not bawl. Look and sound sincere. Keep a low profile. Work hard. And then maybe, if your constituents feel like they have a connection with you, they’ll let you keep your job.

Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Google+

glyphic — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:51:37 +0000

There are plenty of things that are different among the services, but the fundamental difference is relationships and how they affect what people see.

Facebook: Friends are bi-directional relationships in which both sides have to agree to the relationship. In general, the things you post are viewable by all your friends, and show up in the News Feed if Facebook chooses to show it.

Twitter: Following is a unidirectional relationship in which only the follower needs to agree to the relationship (mostly). In general, the things you post are viewable by everyone, and show up on the Home page of your followers.

Google+: Circles are a unidirectional relationship in which the circle owner defines the relationship. The things you post publicly are viewable by everyone on the Internet, but show up on the Home page of people who put you in a circle. The things you post to one or more circles are viewable only by people in those circles, but again only show up on the Home page of people who put you in a circle. To further complicate things, you can add people to circles who are not Google+ users and opt to share things via email with them. Unlike Google+ users, they don’t have to opt in to get your posts.

So while Google+ superficially seems like a social network site akin to Facebook (it has profiles, friends, photos, sharing links/photos/whatever into the stream), the relationship model is much closer to Twitter’s. The question is whether real people will adopt Google+ with its targeted broadcasting model and full set of features over Twitter with its simple broadcasting model and lack of “clutter.”

All that said, it’s a little misguided to compare Google+ directly with Facebook or Twitter. A ubiquitous Google bar with notifications on Google, YouTube, Blogger, Gmail, Maps, News, Android, Chrome, etc. should go a long way toward increasing unique visitors and time spent across all Google properties.

Six Quick Tips for Mega Jump

glyphic — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:16:00 +0000

Mega Jump is an awesome free game for iPhone and Android that I’ve been playing a lot lately. You’re basically a little critter that jumps and grabs coins. Each coin you grab boosts you vertically a little farther, and you try to keep jumping from coin to coin to keep going. Along the way you can get power-ups that will help you get coins, go higher, or protect you from harm.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

Don’t “tilt” the game. You’ll figure out what this means.
For every 100 coins you collect, you’ll get 10 MP which you can spend on stuff in the store.
Characters don’t have any special powers, so don’t buy them expecting any.
Power-up upgrades change the power-ups you find in the game, they’re not weapons you can activate from your inventory.
Upgrade the magnet power-ups first. They’ll help you get coins faster, which means you’ll be able to upgrade the other power-ups faster.
Enter my mega code 6vgk7 to get 500 MP right from the start. Full disclosure: I’ll get 500 MP, too.

What are you waiting for? Download it now from the iPhone App Store and Android Market.

The Bigger Bubble

glyphic — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:35:16 +0000

Recently I’ve been mulling over housing prices and I think it’s entirely possible that we’re in for further decreases in home prices. I could be wrong, but let me throw this out there and see what people say.

In the current political climate, with all the emphasis on having less government intervention, lower government spending, and lower deficits, we could see big reductions in, or the elimination of:

The secondary mortgage market as defined by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The mortgage interest tax deduction

If this happens, there will be big drops in housing prices. I don’t see a free market coming up with the 30-year fixed-rate no-prepayment-penalty loan. Instead we’ll see shorter terms, higher rates, or much greater fees, which will in turn reduce the number of potential buyers. Especially when borrowers can no longer pretend that the interest rate deduction somehow makes the monthly payment “not much more than rent.”

So what do you think? Will Congress actually man up and kill Fannie, Freddie, and the interest deduction in the name of free markets and responsible governance, or will they continue to pander to the home-owning public and bolster the status quo?

Google and Apple are growing the pie

glyphic — Sat, 07 May 2011 16:50:31 +0000

From February 2010 to March 2011, the Blackberry went from 42.1% market share to 27.1% market share. But when you look at the chart, it’s clear that this is mostly due to new smart phone users opting to go for Android and iPhone. Those devices grew by 28m users combined while the overall smart phone market grew by 27.1m users. Still, the fact that RIM can’t get any new Blackberry users is a clear sign that they’re in trouble.

comScore press releases

Update 7/5/2011:

Here’s a Google Chart with some updated numbers.

Click through to view the full-size version.

Damn. Dropped my iPhone.

glyphic — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:48:25 +0000

From a design standpoint, I really dig how the iPhone 4 looks, with its front and back glass surfaces, wraparound metal band, etc.

From a practical standpoint, it sucks. I can’t count the number of times I’ve placed the phone on a flat surface only to have it slide off. The thing is like an air hockey puck. Fortunately it’s usually only fallen a few inches, so no harm done.

But it’s also slipped out of my hand a couple times when I’m pulling it out of my pocket. One time I had my earphones plugged into it, which basically slowed it down enough so that when it hit the ground it only chipped one corner of the back glass.

On Sunday I wasn’t so lucky:

Yep. There’s a crack running from one corner of the back glass all the way up to the camera.

I have the Apple iPhone 4 bumper, and I do use it, but normal 2.5mm jacks and the older 30 pin connectors don’t fit, so I’m constantly forced to take it off if I’m not using the supplied earbuds or 30 pin connector. In this case, I took it off on Saturday to play podcasts in the car through the auxiliary input and dropped it Sunday at the Brentwood Country Mart.

Fortunately for me, I was able to schedule a Monday morning appointment at the Genius Bar, where the nice Apple Store Repair guy replaced the back glass for free (normally $29). I also bought a new case from Amazon, which shouldn’t have the same issues as the Apple bumper.

Leaving MySpace

glyphic — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 06:05:13 +0000

The rumors are true. After nearly five years of making and breaking stuff at MySpace, I’ve decided to move on. Tomorrow will be my last day.

The decision to leave had more to do with the new gig than the old; it’s a small start-up where I’ll be leading the product side of things, facing new responsibilities and challenges, and hopefully learning something along the way.

As for MySpace and all my former and soon-to-be-former colleagues, I hope they all succeed fantastically. Partially for their sake, but mostly for my own. It’s tough doing tech in LA; the more any one of us succeeds, the better the chances we all succeed. Or at least get a few million in funding to go chase some crazy idea.

Having fun with iPhone testers

glyphic — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 02:14:09 +0000

I discovered something fun to do by complete accident. My wife sent me a text message from one of the iPhones at the Apple store while we were playing with them. Today I got two more messages from that same device. I promptly replied:

Don’t buy an iPhone 4, get an Android instead! AT&T sucks!

Now I wish I’d gotten all the iPhone numbers.

Revitalize your desktop

glyphic — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 06:31:38 +0000

Now that I’ve got the new machine up and running, I’m trying to figure out what I should do with the old one. Windows was running like a dog on the old box, which is why I wanted to upgrade in the first place. Just for kicks, I decided to install Ubuntu, a free operating system based on Linux. I’m really impressed.

Ubuntu was easy to install, had no problems recognizing any of my hardware, and feels like it runs 3x faster than Windows 7 on that same machine. Even browsing web pages seems faster than on my new Windows 7 machine. Plus it comes with a bunch of software pre-installed for viewing/editing/saving documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photos, videos, and songs. All for free!

The interface is kind of like a cross between Mac OS and Windows, so it might not be something that some will want to use if they’re used to the paradigms of a particular OS. But if you’ve got old hardware and want to wring more performance out of it at no cost and no risk, I’d definitely recommend giving Ubuntu a shot.

If you use the Windows installer, you can install Ubuntu alongside Windows and choose which one to load when you turn on your computer. This way you can try out everything that you’re used to doing and compare (i.e., how does Ubuntu handle re-tweeting stupid things, watching videos, reading email, and occasionally doing work?). With the dual boot, you can then load Windows whenever you need to play on Full Tilt Poker or play a PC game.

As a side benefit, there’s almost zero chance that you’ll get infected by a virus or spyware. The people who make viruses and spyware target operating systems and browsers based on market share, and Linux has only about a fifth of the market that Mac OS does, and Mac OS is completely dwarfed by Windows (20:1). Using Ubuntu does not, however, protect you from accepting a check from a Nigerian ex-President / foreign exchange student who wants to rent your room / overeager Craigslist buyer who wants your car and getting ripped off in the process. That you’ll have to figure out on your own.

Installing Windows 7 from a bootable USB drive

glyphic — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:33:39 +0000

There are a lot of Google search results with guides on how to create bootable USB drives from which you can install Windows. Unfortunately, a lot of them are outdated or missing key pieces of information. Fortunately, I found two pages that were pretty helpful:

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool – Who needs a guide when you can have software do it for you? Microsoft’s online software store has a tool that makes it easy to make a bootable USB drive or DVD from the ISO.

at Kevin’s Blog – Kevin has put together a fairly complete guide to how to make a bootable USB drive. It’s useful even when you use the Microsoft tool because you might end up having to manually run bootsect (e.g., you’re making a x64 installer on a machine running the x86 version, so you can’t actually run bootsect from the x64 ISO).

As I type this, my computer is busily rebooting away during the installation process. I think it’s almost done.