NewsCloud launches Hot Dish: a climate change news application on Facebook

Yesterday, NewsCloud launched a new Facebook application called Hot Dish in partnership with Grist.org, the leading online environmental news source. Hot Dish allows Facebook users to read, discuss, post and share news about climate change, the most serious issue facing our planet.

16- to 25-year old U.S. residents who participate in the Hot Dish Action Team can earn points through online and offline actions and compete for rewards. Top eligible participants can win a grand prize trip for two to the Arctic from Quark Expeditions, an Amazon Kindle 2, a "green" Apple MacBook and much more. Prizes will be awardedeach week through May 3, 2009. Please read the official rules for full eligibility details.

The Hot Dish application is part of a study being conducted by University of Minnesota researchers to find new ways of engaging young people in current events inside social networks such as Facebook. The research is funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The research results will be published later this year. The software behind Hot Dish will be released to the open source community at the end of the project.

Visit the Hot Dish application on Facebook

I hope you'll check it out and share it with your friends. I'd love to hear your feedback!

Horrible ten years for Microsoft shareholders

"Over the past ten years, Microsoft has posted revenue over $360 billion and profits over $107 billion. But, if you purchased Microsoft stock ten years ago on February 26, 1999 at the price of $31.18 per share, at its current price of $16.96 (and adjusting for $5.09 in dividends), your investment would have lost 29.3% or 2.9% annually vs. Microsoft's $10.7 billion in average annualized profit."

Read more

Launching a new personal blog

It's become clear to me this past year that technical blogging - like much of what I've posted at Idealog, doesn't really mix with topics I care about more personally. I also have realized that Idealog is not as suitable a forum for writing longer form material.

So, after much delay, I have set up a new personal blog at http://blog.reifman.org. It may take me a while to get rolling, but I hope you enjoy it and please post your comments!

It's become clear to me this past year that technical blogging - like much of what I've posted at Idealog, doesn't really mix with topics I care about more personally. I also have realized that Idealog is not as suitable a forum for writing longer form material.

So, after much delay, I have set up a new personal blog at http://blog.reifman.org. It may take me a while to get rolling, but I hope you enjoy it and please post your comments!

Kindle 2 User Guide Posted at Amazon

Mine won't arrive til March, but I can read the user guide now.

Project management: when a project transitions to a ticket list

It's always hard when a creative start up project makes that transition near launch to becoming purely ticket management e.g. bugs and last minute to dos and change requests... It seems you end every day with a list of stuff and a closer deadline, no matter how many items you complete and check off.

I prefer the initial phase. :)

Can't wait until this project is done...

I'll finally have time to do fun stuff, like my taxes.

Facebook can be ruthless and pragmatic sometimes

This is what appeared in the feed of an unfortunate friend this week:

PHP Unserialize bug - returns false with single quote or newline

Maybe this can save you some trouble, from the PHP docs. Sometimes Unserialize returns false if there are certain characters in the data.

Try this...

    function mb_unserialize($serial_str) {
        $serial_str= preg_replace('!s:(\d+):"(.*?)";!se', "'s:'.strlen('$2').':\"$2\";'", $serial_str );
        $serial_str= str_replace("\r", "", $serial_str);
        //$serial_str= str_replace("\n", "", $serial_str);       
        return unserialize($serial_str);
    }                

    function process(&$serial_tx) {
        $tx=unserialize($serial_tx);
        if ($tx===false) {
            $this->db->log('attempting alternate unserialize');
            $tx=$this->mb_unserialize($serial_tx);
            if ($tx===false) {
                $this->db->log('returned false again');
                $rx='Unserialization error';
            }
            else
                $this->db->log('alternate unserialize successful!');
        }       

GitHub for Source Code Sharing

GitHub has been working really well for our team's source code maintenance. I learned about GitHub at the Aspiration Tech conference this past fall in Oakland.

Seems like installing Git to work on our server wasn't that easy (I didn't do it, one of my colleagues did) - I've quickly taken to the speed of working with its command line. I don't highly recommend the git eclipse plugin.

However, I suspect that trying to do the agile s/w development with three virtual team members on CVS would have been a huge headache. Git handles merges quite gracefully.

I'm looking forward to making our stuff open (once we're done) and interacting more with the git community.

The new economy

I earned $22 yesterday when someone purchased $370 worth of anchovies via my Amazon affiliate links. As a vegetarian, I guess I hope they are sustainable. This is just a hair more than I earned in '07 when someone bought a snowblower through my blog.