Here’s a sample of the code:

require 'speech'
audio = Speech::AudioToText.new("i-like-pickles.wav")
puts audio.to_text.inspect
# {"captured_json"=>[["I like pickles", 0.92731786]], "confidence"=>0.92731786}

Let us know if you have some interesting ideas for how to use this.

<link href="/stylesheets/application/reset.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/jquery-ui-1.8.9.custom.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/mbTooltip.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/colorbox.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/typography.css?1298313118" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/navigation.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/borders.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/tables.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/forms.css?1298313118" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/sprites.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/graphs.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/buttons.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/new.css?1298406234" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery-1.4.2.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery-ui-1.8.2.custom.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.maskedinput-1.2.2.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.tag.editor-min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.validate.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.timers.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.dropshadow.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.colorbox-min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/raphael-1.5.2.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/sprintf-0.7-beta1.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/buttons.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/rails.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/application.js?1298311734" type="text/javascript"></script>

into this:

<link href="/stylesheets/bundle_application.css?1298411714" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script src="/javascripts/bundle_application.js?1298411715" type="text/javascript"></script>

Why not use the built in Ruby on Rails :cache option with

javascript_include_tag

?

It doesn’t work very well. It’s flawed in that it waits until the first request to pull all the resources together into a single cached file. This sounds great until you start dealing with multiple processes across multiple servers. Not to mention that first user will have a noticeable delay while the server compiles the javascript and stylesheets – since <script tags block the browser from rendering this will increase the perceived response time quiet a bit. Yeah, so it’s 2011 so this should be old news by now right?

How does assemblage solve this problem different from how we’ve been solving for the past 7 years? Well it does four things I like better than most solutions.

1. It depends on the directory structure in your Rails.root + ‘public/stylesheets’ and Rails.root + ‘public/javascripts’. This is nice as it allows you to logically group bundled assets just like you would organize Rails.root + ‘app/views/layouts/’

2. It packages up the bundled assets on your local machine instead of on the remote server.

3. It can be configured to use a specific order for files in Rails.root + ‘public/javascripts’ – making it super easy to migrate an existing application to assemblage.

4. It uses Google’s Closure Compiler to compress Javascript files and Yahoo’s YUI Compressor to shrink down CSS files.

All that plus it plays really nice with Rails 3 and includes a nice little internal test suite giving me great confidence in it’s operation.

Here’s a quick low down on how to setup your Rails application using assemblage.

Let’s say we have 2 layouts. application.html.erb and login.html.erb (yep, I still use erb!) In this case, I would create 4 sub folders 2 in stylesheets and 2 in javascripts

cd public/stylesheets/ && mkdir application/ login/ && cd -
cd public/javascripts/ && mkdir application/ login/ && cd -

Now open up your application.html.erb

Let’s say it has the following:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <%= stylesheet_link_tag 'reset',  'typography', 'navigation', 'borders','tables', 'forms','sprites','graphs','buttons' %>
    <%= javascript_include_tag 'jquery-1.4.2.min.js', 'jquery.colorbox-min',  'raphael-1.5.2.min.js', 'application' %>
     ...

To convert to assemblage start out by copying/moving each asset into their layout specific folder within public/stylesheets and public/javascripts

e.g.

cd public/stylesheets && mv *.css application/ && cd -
cd public/javascripts && mv *.js application/ && cd -

Next change your include tags to use assemblage view helpers:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <%= stylesheet_bundle 'application' %>
    <%= javascript_bundle 'application' %>
     ...

Now that’s actually all you need to do however, if you want to be explicit about the order each Javascript and Stylesheet is ordered when bundled you’ll want to create one more configuration file config/assemblage.rb. This allows you to have 1 bundle per layout and provide a specific ordering for the included files. The default will order the bundled files in alphabetical order.

bundle :application, :js, 'jquery-1.4.2.min.js',  'jquery.colorbox-min',  'raphael-1.5.2.min.js', 'application'
bundle :application, :css, 'reset',  'typography', 'navigation', 'borders','tables', 'forms','sprites','graphs','buttons'

Now when it’s time to deploy you can add the following your Capfile with rails3/bundler

require "bundler"
Bundler.setup

and in your config/deploy.rb

require 'assemblage_recipes'
...
after "deploy:update_code", "assemblage:assemble"

The first line includes the recipe to generate the bundles and the second one tells Capistrano to execute it after updating code.

Also make sure to include assemblage in your Gemfile e.g.

gem 'assemblage', :git => 'git://github.com/taf2/assemblage.git'

See the following example:

scope :constraints => { :protocol => 'https' } do
    resources :invoices do
      resources :line_items
    end
end

Viewing the corresponding routes this generates the following:

invoice_line_items GET /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items(.:format)  {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"index", :controller=>"line_items"}
                   POST /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"create", :controller=>"line_items"}
new_invoice_line_item GET /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/new(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"new", :controller=>"line_items"}
edit_invoice_line_item GET /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/:id/edit(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"edit", :controller=>"line_items"}
invoice_line_item GET /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"show", :controller=>"line_items"}
                  PUT    /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"update", :controller=>"line_items"}
                  DELETE /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"destroy", :controller=>"line_items"}
invoices GET /invoices(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"index", :controller=>"invoices"}
         POST /invoices(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"create", :controller=>"invoices"}
new_invoice GET /invoices/new(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"new", :controller=>"invoices"}
edit_invoice GET /invoices/:id/edit(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"edit", :controller=>"invoices"}
invoice GET /invoices/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"show", :controller=>"invoices"}
        PUT /invoices/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"update", :controller=>"invoices"}
        DELETE /invoices/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"destroy", :controller=>"invoices"}

The important part here is:

 :protocol => "https"

This tells rails to only honor the route when the protocol matches HTTPS, but not when it is HTTP.  Perfect, exactly what we need – no plugins required!

Well, almost perfect. The first problem encountered, is likely RAILS_ENV=development no longer works as those routes are only accesible through HTTPS. A simple solution – turn the :protocol value into a variable and change it to HTTP for development, otherwise HTTPS. Add the variable in config/environments/development.rb like so:

SSL_PROTO__ = 'http'

and add the following at the top of config/routes.rb

SSL_PROTO__ = 'https' unless defined?(SSL_PROTO__)

Great, now we can still test SSL in development by simply changing the constant in config/environments/development.rb and our tests can verify SSL is enabled for specific sections of the application.

This is almost everything necessary – the next gotcha will be making sure our application routes HTTP requests to the new HTTPS routes. To do this we can use a special catch all route:

match "invoices(/*path)",
      :to => redirect { |params, request|
                        "https://" + request.host_with_port +
                                     request.fullpath
                      }

Adding this after the invoices resource allows us to catch requests sent to HTTP and redirect them to HTTPS.

The catch all route is nice, but really our application should always link to these resources using SSL. Add the following to your links:

<%= link_to t('menus.new_invoice'),
new_invoice_url(:protocol => 'https') %>

Adding SSL constraints is pretty easy and effective.   What I like about this solution is that it doesn’t require any extra plugins and it is fairly simple to understand.

cap deploy
cap smtp:start

The cap file would need to be modified before as we keep our host keys private and they’re targeted to our named hosts.  e.g.  o1 and tools

Planning to release more software in the coming months hopefully this is useful for others as well.

Download the plugin for free here. And let us know what you think!

Features of Rotating Header PlugIn for WordPress

• Easily configure home page graphics
• Change dynamic graphic order via drag and drop
• Change link text and add custom HTML
• Upload and crop graphics using a fixed aspect ratio

It works similar to the WordPress 3.x header image but instead allows you to place in your theme a set of header images that rotate using either a sliding effect or a crossfade effect.

Here is a quick trick on how to make Gifs! Since Christmas is around the corner I am doing a Christmas card gif as an example. My esteemed colleague Renee Alarid created a Christmas card and we wanted to add some sparkles to it so here is what I did:

First, bring the image into Photoshop.



You’ll also want to download some star brushes.

Deviantart.com has some good resources, but there are many free brush downloads out there.

Create some layers.

1. Create a layer called “stars 1”.
2. Add stars all over the image.
3. Create a second layer named “stars 2”.
4. Place another layer of stars all over the same image but in different areas.
5. Do the same again and add a 3^rd layer called “stars 3.”

On the bottom left hand corner of your screen you will see an area called animation frames, to create a new frame click on the layer looking icon.

Before you select the first frame, use the eye ball to select how you want the animation to look.

For example, in frame one, if you only want to see the stars from layer “stars 1” turn off the layers two and three and for frame 2 turn on only layer “stars 2” and create a new frame for that image.

Make sure to set the seconds at 0.2 on each frame (or the length you prefer) and “forever” so it is on a continuous loop.

Do a “save for Web and Devices” and save it as a Gif.

Finally, to test your Gif, drag the file into your Internet browser.

Check your animation. There you can copy and paste the image code if you plan to use the image in motion.

Enjoy & Happy Holidays Everyone!

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

• Color theory for a visual design: the meaning of color
• Creating Custom Icon Stencils in OmniGraffle – Tutorial
• Modules, widgets, boxes oh my! What do you call a box?
• CSS Sprites – Nettuts Tutorial
• Animation with RaphaëlJS

The questions/statements above are typical questions/statements that a designer can be faced with day and day out from project managers, clients and the dev team. Creating a color palette isn’t as simple as opening a crayon box and picking out your favorite colors.  There is actually more thought to what color means and how it should represent the client, the brand and the product of the site.

What is color? According to the dictionary, color is defined as: The characteristics of light by which the individual is made aware of objects or light sources through the receptors of the eye, described in terms of dominant wavelength, luminance, and purity. Thus a color can be represented from white to black with all the colors in the rainbow in-between. Now that we defined the word color what does each color represent? Let’s separate the colors into color families: warm colors, cool colors, and neutral colors.

Warm colors: Red, Orange and Yellow

Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.

Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.

Yellow is the color of sunshine. It’s associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy.

Cool Colors: Green, Blue and Purple

Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety. Dark green is also commonly associated with money.

Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.

Purple combines the stability of blue and the energy of red. Purple is associated with royalty. It symbolizes power, nobility, luxury, and ambition. It conveys wealth and extravagance. Purple is associated with wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic.

Neutral Colors: Black, White, Gray, Brown, Beige and Tan, Cream and Ivory

Black is associated with power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery.

White is associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity. It is considered to be the color of perfection.

Gray is a neutral, balanced color. It is a cool, conservative color that seldom evokes strong emotion although it can be seen as a cloudy or moody color.

Brown represents wholesomeness and earthiness. While it might be considered a little on the dull side, it also represents steadfastness, simplicity, friendliness, dependability, and health.

Beige and Tan are neutral colors with a bit of the warmth of brown and the crisp, coolness of white. They are sometimes seen as dull and boring unless coupled with other colors. Both colors can be a relaxing color for a room.

As a neutral, ivory and cream are calming colors. They carry some of the same pureness, softness, and cleanliness of white but is slightly richer, a touch warmer.

In conclusion, there is more to the meaning of color then anyone gives it credit. So the next time you are asked about color, take a step back and appreciate the meaning of color and how your website should be represented. For more information about color please go to: color theory.

Omnigraffle was specifically designed to handle a variety of tasks.  It is a user-friendly program that provides shape, lines, arrow, and text tools to click and drag right onto the screen. It provides you with a library of stencil downloads available at Graffletopia which gives you commonly used web elements and icons.

I recently was using Omnigraffle and realized that I wanted to use my own custom icons for a client that was specifically related to fishing. I had already created the custom icons for the client in Illustrator. So I had to figure out how to create my own stencil in OmniGraffle so I would have access to my icons. It was surprisingly easy. If you find yourself in a similar situation here is how to do it and hopefully this is of some help to you!

When you are in OmniGraffle and you have the stencils open click on the little gear icon and a dropdown appears and click new stencil.

A new Template page will appear. I had my Illustrator page open w/ my vector icons I selected one of the icons command c and then command v into the blank template and you just created your first stencil!

Once you have completed this with all of your separate icons or images then go to file, save as and a box will appear where you can name your stencil.

Now to test out your icons, open a new blank diagram, and drag and drop any of the icons onto the page. Have fun resizing and using them in a diagram, work flow info graphic or wire frame. Now you will have that template saved in OmniGraffle so you can use them whenever necessary. Hopefully this simple exercise will be of some use to you I found it helpful even though it is really easy to do.

Related Visual Design Articles:

• CSS Sprites – Nettuts Tutorial
• Modules, widgets, boxes oh my! What do you call a box?
• Color theory for a visual design: the meaning of color
• How To Create an Animated GIF with Sparkle for the Holidays
• Are our websites getting too crowded with social media apps?
• Error Pages and 404 Redirects Can Be Fun!

How can one simple box have so many different names for it? Why can’t the world wide web use one name instead of a range of names? You don’t see the same problem with buttons. A button is a button or should we change the rule of physics and start calling it a knob?

There was a recent poll on Polldaddy.com that asked the question: What do you call these draggable, expandable boxes in WP? For example, “The Publish ___________.” The choices were postbox, metabox, module, widget, area, container, box or other. The results were interesting and didn’t answer as much as the comments below the poll. The top three choices were: box (25% of the votes), widget (18% of the votes) and metabox (17% of the votes). One user posted “ Module because it’s the most international word (at least in French, you can say module).” Interesting – I now know French!

A “widget” is described as the basic building block/interface for a desktop operating system.

A “box” describes the rectangular boxes that are generated for elements on a web page.

A “module” is a term that personalized web pages like iGoogle refer to the multiple components of their pages.

Basically all three definitions are saying the same thing. “(Blank)” is an element on a web page.

In conclusion… well there really isn’t one! Designers will still insist on their modules and developers will rally around widgets. I suppose the best we can hope for is a gentleman’s truce and a unified front when presenting to any befuddled clients!

What do you like to call these containers of content?

I found a very cool tutorial on Nettuts that helped me understand and create better sprites. Basically you recreate the navigation for Dragon Interactive, which has a perfect example for the use of sprites.

This is the final product as you can see it is all one large image. There is also a demo so you can see how it interacts when you are finished.

The above image is how your result from the tutorial should look.

Recommended Reading:

What Are CSS Sprites?

CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them

The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials

In the simplest form, you can render basic shapes like a circle or rectangle.   More complex shapes are also supported via SVG paths.   The benefit of the path parser in RaphaëlJS is that you can create complex shapes using well established tools like Adobe Illustrator, but there are also many free SVG tools as well – even web based ones.   This makes it easy to generate paths and export them to the browser as SVG files.   Adding a little code to RaphaëlJS you can easily have it parse your SVG files allowing you to render basic SVG files to probably every browser in use today, including most mobile phone browsers, (Android, and iPhone).    For example, this library has a good start on SVG parsing with RaphaëlJS as the renderer.

Kind of a long video, but shows you how to use Illustrator and RaphaëlJS to create neat animations with Vector Graphics.

Using Adobe Illustrator to create an SVG file is easy, just “save as” SVG.   There are a few things to keep in mind however, you want to make sure to limit the type of shapes you use as it is easiest to work with SVG paths directly.   For example, the code below demonstrates animating a sequence of paths.

    $(function() {
      var paths = ["M117.567,97.5c36.999,21,18.354,75-21.645,72s23.578-126-63.422-14",
                   "M191.5,108c-24.165,35.015-55.578,64.5-95.578,61.5s23.578-126-63.422-14",
                   "M191.5,108c-24.165,35.015-48.472-2.921-79.5,22.5c-41.5,34,7.5-87-79.5,25",
                   "M191.5,108c-37-83.5-34.972,43.079-66,68.5c-41.5,34-15-220-102-108",
                   "M200.5,108c23-108-48.972-68.921-80-43.5 c-24.942,20.435-45.803-144.374-104,26",
                   "M216,80.5c-58.5-87-64.472-41.421-95.5-16c-24.942,20.435,9-52.027-104,26",
                   "M216,80.5c-58.5-87-127.5-50.849-95.5-16 c21.809,23.75,69.149,171.346-65,142",
                   "M27.5,136.5c-58.5-87,76-129.849,108-95 C180.87,90.908,92.5,252.5,27.5,136.5",
                   "M25.25,102.5c36-48,70-65,85-27s80,49,14,73s-99,36-99-5",
                   "M20.25,95.5c36-48,70-65,85-27s80,49,14,73S20.25,136.5,20.25,95.5"];
      var paper = Raphael("icon",500,500);
      var cur=0;
      var path = paper.path(paths[cur++]).attr({stroke:"#F3AA1D",'stroke-width': 6});
      var animate = function() {
        if (cur < paths.length) {
          path.animate({path:paths[cur++]},500,"<>",animate);
        }
      }
      setTimeout(animate,500);
    });

The possibilities RaphaëlJS brings to web development is huge. With now much faster browsers we can expect to see much more interactive user interfaces using entirely native browser technology. If you’re on an iphone check this page out. The animation above works.

The Small Print: Writing User Interface Instructions
http://understandinggraphics.com/design/writing-user-interface-instructions/

• People assume certain things about the functionality of a website.  Generally, these can be noted as common interface elements (button rollovers, selected states, etc…)
• Mental models are “general ideas about how things work.”  Think of them like muscle memory in sports only with interactions on a webpage.
• Following common mental models prevents user frustration.
• Know your audience and tailor the user experience accordingly.
• Be precise without loosing anything important.
• Descriptive words on call-to-actions improve user experience.
• Avoid passive wet noodle writing.  State what should be done don’t ask.
• Margins and padding help define content grouping
• Be a font nerd.  Don’t deviate from your site guidelines.  Make fonts readable.
• A picture is worth a thousand words to the less savvy (illustrate how to’s in less obvious situations).
• Whenever possible make calls to action “personal” targeting your user directly.  When possible I would also use personal information that you have available.  Example: “Hey [username], welcome back”.
• Instructions should be freely accessible to anyone (508 compliance?).
• Always test your instructions with those who haven’t used your product.  Do they make sense?

How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1

• Google is the web’s leading search engine, but they’re still making improvements to stay ahead of competition.
• Bing capitalized on Google’s shortcomings by getting access to things not directly crawlable by spiders (example: Flights by Faircast).
• Google is remains at the top for “public search.”
• Google has ability of contextual search and recognizes patterns (example: mike siwek lawyer mi).
• Google is more than just pagerank and includes: new algorithm, local connectivity analysis, constantly updating indexes, personalized results, updated web crawling, image/news/book/universal search, and real time searching.
• Pagerank is the process of establishing authority based on inbound and outbound linking.
• Holy grail is matching meaning and understanding the question being asked not just keyword combinations.
• Google is massive and hard to compete with due to scale and technical hurtles involved with search engines.

Here are JJ’s reflections on her e-commerce experience with Captico.

In this seminar, Captico presents strategies for leveraging Twitter and blogging for your business. We will cover the basics to get you started communicating your brand to a large and growing audience.

Some of the topics include:

• The benefits of blogging and Twitter
• What is social media?
• Blogging 101, Twitter 101
• What to blog/Tweet about and how to engage your audience

Feel Free To Download the Presentation Materials.

People are motivated by what they can do rather than what they can do better.  While this statement isn’t a universal truth for all workforces, it is a common impediment to innovation. When software becomes so deeply engraved in the workflow of an individual, old software and outdated systems become necessary evils.  Thus, the process of updating not only includes technical hurdles, but also political log jams.

In the long run, politics and contracts become more a factor of the implementation of a new content management system than any technical problems.  Keep in mind that this situation only exists when an aging system, regardless of how painful and inefficient, becomes part of the work flow.

I’ve personally witnessed this in several organizations all resulting in different attempts in providing potential solutions including hiring outside constants and ninjaing.

Preparing to get rid of the fossil often begins with a planning phase. This pre-solution measure often occurs in the form of a technological audit.  A consulting company comes in and makes recommendations that have no chance of actually implementing because they fail to recognize the inner politics of an organization.  Consultants often don’t or can’t spend the time learning about the employees their changes affect the most.  After all, in many cases, consultants are working on providing their own recommendations rather than implementing their own recommendations.  The result is inevitable failure. I’ve also spoke with consultants who try to learn the internal processes of organizations only to be slowed down by politics.  In many situations, people do not want to be interviewed about their workflow and what they do during the day.  I can only surmise that many people do not want to be outed or tracked in what they actually accomplish.  So…. it becomes extremely hard to pre-plan for problems you can not account for without actually know what the workforce is doing.

The other phenomenon of dealing with Fossils I call Ninjaing.  It generally manifests as an internal uprising within a company or organization to eliminate the fossil secretively.  The end goal is to prevent politics from entering any part of their solution.  Small groups get together and attempt to implement their own systems while hiding their progress.  This development is often secretive because it relies on other parties not knowing about any potential changes.   If all goes well, a ninja team will have a fully working product before someone finds out what the group is actually working on.  This product then turns into an ultimatum.  Take this product or lose all the work we’ve done to fix the issues with the Fossil.

Fossils are difficult to deal with and sometimes eliminating fossils from the record can be downright impossible.  Getting consensus on change is never an easy thing to do. I would love to hear about potential solutions to digital paleontology. My initial gut feeling is that solving problems of entrenchment requires strong leadership from a single individual who can cut through all the BS.  I’ll end this note by stating Fossils are a combination of technical and political problems within an organization.  One of the biggest problems is accounting for all the technical issues without consideration for the politics of the environment.

Step 1: Download the source files here: flip_this_bird.zip

Step 2: Create your own version of the bird by altering the source file.

Step 3: Submit your work to Flip This Bird Flickr photo group for the world to see.

Here’s an example of a flipped bird by Jonathan Phillips:

I started to think about this after scouring the web on behalf of a Client. I recently discovered that English to Latin Translation APIs do not exist. I checked Google, Systran, and Wardlingo and searched numerous blog posts related to the subject. Naturally me being curious like a cat, “I have a couple friends that call me whiskers” Will Ferrell-Harey Carey, I asked WHY! Why would anyone spend countless hours developing a translation API when Google either offers it for free or will in future!

This may open a can of worms, but with Google offering services for free (i.e. docs, apis, etc.) they appear to be blocking external innovation across multiple spectrums, especially vs. competitors. I say external because Google is by nature an innovative company, pushing web applications forward. I’ve heard software developers fear getting into a product war with Google, not because of technical merit and launching a great product, but because competing against a company that doesn’t have to charge anything is downright stupid.

So how can Google give away it’s products? It all comes down to online advertising. In most cases, individual Google apps rely on funding from the adsense division of Google. In their struggle to “Not be Evil” Google uses advertising revenue to push the cost of other products and services way down… to nothing.

I call this practice a Googleopoly , as they can price fix and go directly after competitors by offering a similar or superior product for Free (ex. Microsoft Office Suite vs. Google Docs). This is slightly different than traditional monopolies. Monopolies generally have the corner on a market, being the soul producer of a good or service. This monopolistic power, allows monopolies to set costs, below market value to drive away competition. Monopolies are also characterized by two factores: single seller, and market power. Google is not a single seller in the web application sphere, but it’s market power is undeniable.

Have a great idea/product? Is Google working on it in parallel? What value do you have in seeing it through, when you will have to compete against a free product. Yes, I agree that consumers are the beneficiaries of this, but in essence I feel that the business principals in play need to be discussed more. Long ago, I was taught, “the market sets the price ” but in Google’s case they are setting the price at nil and are unintentionally (or intentionally) destroying their competitors. All big companies can do this. They pick a competitor, highlight weaknesses then attack.

What do you think?

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You may also be interested in: A Tip for Better Google Local Business Optimization