CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-03-24 21:16:17 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Has anyone recently tried to export their data from Facebook? It has consistently failed for me, saying "Sorry, but your download generation failed. Visit your account settings if you wish to request a new download." for at least the past few weeks. I found the following fairly active thread on Facebook's community forum which was posted over a month ago.

https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10200716991392781

I know there's quite a bit of angst Google's getting with regard to data portability given the vocal response to the death of Reader, but Google Takeout is light years ahead of Facebook's now essentially neglected data export service.

2012-12-12 02:25:03 (6 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

My friend just got a new 3G Samsung Chromebook (the ARM-based one) but apparently it's not charging. It loads fine when it's plugged in, but the battery icon is missing from the notifications/time tray. It doesn't turn on when disconnected from the power adapter. Apparently the charging indicator flashes orange and green before stabilizing with green.

I'm sure he'd really appreciate any help because he's really anxious to start using his new Chromebook.

2012-12-12 02:22:40 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

So my friend just got a new 3G Samsung Chromebook (the ARM-based one) but apparently it's not charging. It loads fine when it's plugged in, but the battery icon is missing from the notifications/time tray. It doesn't turn on when disconnected from the power adapter. Apparently the charging indicator flashes orange and green before stabilizing with green.

I'm sure he'd really appreciate any help because he's really anxious to start using his new Chromebook.

2012-08-20 05:49:07 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Cool, it looks like one of my blog posts got on hacker news. Please upvote :)

2012-07-24 00:30:59 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

It appears my CR-48 is dead. I checked the voltage coming from the charger (and even ordered a new one), and they both give the right voltage, but the Cr48 still doesn't turn on. It's not turning on at all so the battery's not at fault. Any ideas?

2012-07-16 16:17:48 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

Does anyone know how the http://www.sublimetext.com/ screencast was generated (i.e. with what algorithms/programs)? I opened up web inspector because it seemed interesting (it didn't look like a a video tag or a flash video), and it turns out that it's using canvas. Each video is actually a single png image which looks like a massive CSS sprite (e.g. http://www.sublimetext.com/anim/command_palette_packed.png). An inline JSON object contains a list of all the coordinates to blit together and at what time to make what appears to be a video (e.g. command_palette_timeline=[{"delay":1811,"blit":[[0,0,800,450,0,0]]},{"delay":48,"blit":[[0,450,400,344,200,36]...).

The cool thing about this is that I'd imagine it would be pretty fast and cross-platform (anything that supports canvas, which is practically everything except the ancient internete... more »

2012-06-27 22:49:16 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 17 +1s)

#io12  is insanely awesome. So excited to be here!

2012-05-04 06:51:27 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

So it appears that <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"> is actually sensible on Chrome for Android and actually means the width changes depending on the orientation. That's a problem because on iOS and the native Android browser, it doesn't change when you switch orientations. Any ideas how to fix this?

2012-04-09 23:11:25 (10 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

Just finished another chrome extension, this one is quite specifically for Chromebooks (or at least I've only tried it on my chromebook). It adds the ability to use multitouch gestures to go forwards and backwards like in Mac OS X.

2012-04-04 17:47:22 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

On Linux it's actually really easy to do Chrome Multitask mode if you have two (or more) mice (and appendages) laying around and a fairly recent version of Xorg. Just plug in more mice, open up the terminal and type `xinput list`, `xinput create-master Auxiliary`, and `xinput reattach [id] "Auxiliary pointer"` with the bracketed modified accordingly.

2012-03-31 23:54:11 (4 comments, 7 reshares, 13 +1s)

MusicAlpha 2.2 was released a few days ago. It's a simple chrome extension which allows file uploads to Google Music without needing to install the Google Music Manager program. It was built by reverse engineering the protobufs scheme used by Google Music and has been made into a third party unofficial API.

2012-03-27 14:35:02 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

It was as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced trying to get a Google I/O ticket.

2012-03-27 14:23:20 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Aww. looks like no Google IO ticket for me :(

2012-03-27 00:49:40 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I think http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/111361 means that whatever is left of Surplus won't work anymore in future versions of chrome.

2012-03-13 18:47:57 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 12 +1s)

It would be pretty cool to go to Google I/O.

2012-02-26 23:53:22 (21 comments, 1 reshares, 21 +1s)

Google Chrome was named because the designers wanted to minimize the "chrome", that is, user interface elements (tab bar, url bar, etc). If other companies/products started naming products after what they want to reduce, you could have a hospital named "Death", a car named "Crash", a contraceptive named "Pregnancy", an investment firm named "Losing Money", a construction company named "Collapse". What other amusing chrome-style product names can you envision?

2012-02-19 01:10:42 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 9 +1s)

2012-02-17 12:51:01 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

a mere 24 hours after proposing the idea, mothereffinganimatedgif.com launches.

Tech: HTML5 drag n drop, FileReader, a[download], GIF encoding on the client, BlobBuilder, postMessage, <input type=range> (with Firefox polyfill), appcache, the alpha caniuse API, transforms, etc.

Thanks to +Carson McDonald, +Brian Grinstead, +Darcy Clarke for leading the effort. And the rest of the folks at github.com/paulirish/lazyweb-requests/issues/53 for making things a reality.

2012-01-18 01:36:52 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

+Lifehacker and +The Next Web have articles featuring Offline Wiki as a means of circumventing tomorrow's blackout, but mislabel it as a chrome extension. Though it works best in Chrome (Yay for the FileSystem API), it also has a more-or-less functional IndexedDB backend for Firefox (which I need to fix), and a barely working WebSQL one for Mobile Safari.

Also, it's useful to take note that the English Kiwix dump only has 45,000 articles (With all the data/infoboxes/images in 3.7GB) and the Offline Wiki dump only has the most popular 314,159 articles (With only text, stripped of references and infoboxes). The English Wikipedia in its entirety has about 4 million articles.

http://lifehacker.com/5876833/how-to-take-wikipedia-offline-so-you-can-keep-using-it-during-tomorrows-anti+sopa-blackout... more »

2012-01-05 20:57:57 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

It feels weird seeing Twitter Bootstrap everywhere.

2011-12-31 19:17:21 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

This page should have a circle for hacker news people updated automatically every five minutes.

2012-01-11 21:00:37 (6 comments, 3 reshares, 18 +1s)

This post is DEPRECATED Future updates will come from https://plus.google.com/b/106419647632534512037/

Google+ Shared Circles are fixed snapshots of certain circles, so you must re-add them manually in order to get the updated list.

2011-12-30 23:11:33 (19 comments, 37 reshares, 22 +1s)

Just finished a cross browser html5 app which allows you to download a copy of Wikipedia for offline use. Please upvote it on hacker news! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3409512

2011-12-23 15:22:29 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Surplus 4.0.6 includes a patch by +Philip Horger which fixes display issues in the new layout.

2011-12-21 00:04:31 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Is it possible to simulate a click event on a flash object in chrome from an extension?

2011-12-20 20:45:59 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Tinkercad got updated yesterday. You can finally move/scale/rotate after the fact. That's what killed the novelty for me the 1st time.
I might model something for my action figures.

2011-12-08 19:59:47 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

I think my blog was just hacked. Actually, I'm pretty certain it was hacked, because Wordpress doesn't generally change into "VIAGRA VIAGRA VIAGRA VIAGRA" on it's own.

I'm not exactly sure how to fix this or how it's done, and it would be nice to have a better idea of what attack vector was used. Renaming the .htaccess seems to have fixed it, and so I'm tentatively blaming WP-Supercache, but I can't find any tampered files.

2011-12-03 16:15:16 (18 comments, 0 reshares, 13 +1s)

Just uploaded Surplus 4.0.5 which should fix the notification count issues.

2011-12-03 00:11:24 (13 comments, 4 reshares, 7 +1s)

Just uploaded Surplus 4.0.4, should fix the regression that came along with the new Google redesign. This should hopefully be the last update in a while since Surplus now uses the same mechanisms (essentially) as the official Google+ Chrome Extension.

2011-11-26 00:24:33 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 15 +1s)

Great story on HN:

Five monkeys are caged together and there are some bananas hanging from the top of the cage. Some scientists attach an automated device for sensing if the bananas are moved; once a monkey tries to get any, an electric shock travels through the cage so that all monkeys get shocked. In the beginning, a single monkey climbs up to the bananas, touches them and every monkey gets shocked. So he doesn’t try anymore, but the other four monkeys try the same thing and the result comes to be the same. Therefore, the monkeys learn something in common: that is, do not get the bananas! You’ll get a painful electric shock! The scientists then replace one of the original monkeys with a new one. This new monkey sees the bananas and wants to get them right away, but the other four monkeys beat it when they see its actions. Since these original four monkeys think the new monkey will make themget... more »

2011-11-25 02:50:50 (24 comments, 3 reshares, 18 +1s)

Just finished an app that adds the "Casually pepper spraying cop" to any image (it does automatic face detection too).

2011-11-16 22:10:03 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Do any Google folks know why Cloud Save has been down for such a long time?

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/omiekjeapoonbhiemenfoccbdpeagdah

2011-10-30 17:00:49 (1 comments, 10 reshares, 15 +1s)

Late-night reading on typography, courtesy of +Cameron Chapman on Noupe.

1) A Crash Course in Typography: The Basics of Type
http://www.noupe.com/design/a-crash-course-in-typography-the-basics-of-type.html

2) A Crash Course in Typography: Paragraphs and Special Characters
http://www.noupe.com/design/a-crash-course-in-typography-paragraphs-and-special-characters.html

3) A Crash Course in Typography: Principles for Combining Typefaces
http://www.noupe.com/design/a-crash-course-in-typography-principles-for-combining-typefaces.html

4) A Crash Course in Typography: Pulling It All Together
http://www.noupe.com/design/a-crash-course-in-typography-pulling-it-all-together.html

All are highly informative and meticulously well put together. ⌘D for later.

2011-10-29 20:19:01 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 16 +1s)

I built a simple webapp that works offline that calculates file checksums using the File API, Typed Arrays and Web Workers. It's pretty fast and I've tested it with files over 1GB.

Please upvote on hacker news :)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3172695

2011-10-21 21:07:08 (28 comments, 3 reshares, 10 +1s)

It looks like there's a new Chrome Extension review process, so 4.0.2 is being held up "pending review". Surplus 4.0.2 fixes the bug where desktop notifications are shown regardless of the user setting.

2011-10-20 02:51:52 (24 comments, 10 reshares, 32 +1s)

Surplus 4.0 has been released. The new Surplus 4 is almost completely rewritten from its core and fixes problems from Google's recent site updates. It's simpler (half the code size), faster, and more reliable. It adds a new option to pop out the share or notifications window.

2011-10-20 02:32:32 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Testing out Surplus4.

2011-10-18 18:15:14 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

If Surplus isn't currently working, it's probably because most of the Google properties now have an X-Frame-Options header. Working on a fix, but it'll take a bit of experimentation.

2011-10-16 15:40:42 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Yesterday I decided to try something new: turning off my computer (actually I updated to Ubuntu 11.10 just a day before, which entailed a few reboots). Incidentally it has decided not to turn on again.

Now when I plug in the power supply it makes this high pitched noise and if I press the power button it momentarily shows some spark of life: the fans whir into motion and the friendly blue fan lights blink into existence. The motherboard LEDs shine yellow and an instant later, it falls back into that state of lifelessness. That annoying high pitched noise still exists though, and out of fear of some catastrophic cataclysmic explosion and time rift, I flip the power supply switch to off. The tone gets deeper and fades into oblivion, like those movie scenes when the AI menace gets disconnected.

Halp.

2011-10-14 04:23:59 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

Just installed cyanogenmod for HP touchpad. It's awesome. Can't wait for ICS.

2011-09-28 21:38:51 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Can you watch the recorded video of the amazon announcement anywhere? I can't seem to find it.

2011-09-27 23:05:49 (36 comments, 5 reshares, 18 +1s)

Surplus 3.5.5 out. Fixed Google Video bug and changed the integrated +1 button.

2011-09-26 03:44:02 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

I think Google's started sending out an X-Frame-Options header with Google Video (in other words, you can't stick it in an iframe). So for a certain number of users with that option checked, Surplus won't work.

2011-09-21 03:37:32 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

That arrow ad on http://google.com/ feels like a weird shade of blue.

2011-09-18 19:12:59 (14 comments, 0 reshares, 15 +1s)

The average person blinks 10 times per minute. The average blink is 300-400ms. The average American kid spends an average 8 hours using media a day (amounting to 28 minutes blinking). My Dell 2001FP monitor operates at 90W. The average american power rate is $0.132/kWh.

If our displays turned off the few milliseconds every time we blinked, we would each save 55 cents a day.

* but eyelid monitoring circuits would probably use more power than that

2011-09-17 18:20:00 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

For a while Google was testing their new Login user interface (it seems deployed at this time). I couldn't help but think that has to be one of the stupidest ideas ever (I like the new design though). Nobody wants to click another button to type their credentials again with a different color scheme.

And the only reason for beta testing is if you think you screwed up on the new version. How could anyone screw up on a login page?

2011-09-10 20:19:01 (12 comments, 4 reshares, 6 +1s)

Must hate this. Must hate this. Must hate this. http://beta.theexpressiveweb.com/
Ok, looks like an awesome job Adobe! Welcome back.

2011-09-04 02:28:31 (13 comments, 3 reshares, 9 +1s)

I wrote an app for the 13-18 year old facebook-using high school student demographic that compares class schedules. That means that it's a terrible idea to post this on Google+, since it forbids people under the age of 18 and comprises primarily of the anti-facebook vanguard.

But the fact I'm posting this means that it's failed almost totally, and so I'm at these unlikely channels desperately looking for users. So if you lied about your age and are somehow on here, or if you know someone who belongs in the target demographic. http://schedule-compare.appspot.com

I have a blog post about it here: http://antimatter15.com/wp/2011/09/schedule-compare/

2011-08-24 03:54:22 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Thinking of making an unrar implementation and naming it K-T. Because RAR is the sound a dinosaur makes. Unrar would be very un-dinosaur, and the K-T event killed all the dinosaurs.

2011-08-22 00:15:46 (9 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

Most modern tablets and smartphones now use capacitive touch sensors, and should probably get some degree of capacitive sensing even before the finger touches the screen. It would be useful if tablet/smartphone web browsers used these fractional capacitive responses to fire onmouseover events so the dropdown menus of the world work.