abwaters 2.0 » Editorial

Overstock Receives Failing Grade For Customer Service

Bryan Waters — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:50:10 +0000

ИконописПравославни иконииконипочистванехолови гарнитуриDue to an apparently apathetic Overstock customer service department, UPS had to mail us a letter by US mail to arrange for the delivery of our treadmill. When we originally placed the order we updated our contact information to fix an incorrect phone number but evidently the customer service reps that we spoke with didn’t update it or it didn’t get entered in the right places.

The Netflix Prize and the Kentucky Derby

Bryan Waters — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:40:07 +0000

In a previous article, I speculated that Netflix might be trying to get out of paying the winning team due to a technicality. While my speculation turned out to be completely unfounded, the final 30 days of the contest were as exciting as the Kentucky Derby.

Netflix Prize Winners May Be Disqualified

Bryan Waters — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:20:34 +0000

I’ve been following the Netflix Prize for years. This is the contest that gives all comers a chance to try and beat the formidable Cinematch algorithm that Netflix uses to give customers highly targeted recommendations. According to a recent email, Netflix may be preparing to announce the disqualification of the leading team “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” who submitted results that beats Cinematch by the contest’s goal of 10%.

Due to my past entries in the contest itself, i’m on the mailing list to receive notices and announcements for participants. As of about 30 minutes ago, I received a general compliance email announcing that some participants have failed to comply with the Netflix Prize rules by creating multiple teams with an identical set of members. According to the Netflix rules, any participants and all teams to which they belong may be suspended from participation in the contest and may be ineligible for the coveted one million dollar prize.

Sounds fair right? So here is the rub. On June 26, 2009 Team “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” reached the 10% improvement over the Cinematch algorithm required to claim the million dollar prize. According to the rules, once this goal is reached, all teams have 30 days to submit their final results to be considered for the prize. The clock is ticking and the last day of the contest is July 26, 2009. But…

BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos is an amalgam of multiple teams that have collaborated to win the prize. The current leaderboard for the list looks like someone was playing musical chairs with the team names including things like “Pragmatic Theory”, “BellKor in BigChaos”, “BigChaos”, “BellKor” and so on.

The leading team openly admits that they have collaborated to create a winning algorithm and it may well be that the prestige of beating Cinematch will be sufficient to satisfy their competitive spirits but it sure seems like Netflix is already prepping the world for the announcement that the winning team may be disqualified.

I realize the rules were published years ago and have been very clearly stated but I have to admit, this sure feels like bad sportsmanship to me in a game that Netflix created and could benefit from since, also according to the rules, they own the submissions and the algorithms used to generate them.

TCP3 Tiny URL Google AppEngine Experiment

Bryan Waters — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:53:12 +0000

Any application that needs to scale needs to designed to do so from the beginning. Or at least that’s what I used to think. Even when Amazon introduced EC2 and S3 there were still design requirements that you needed to consider. In fact, I actually started this project with S3 as the back-end. The idea was to store the URLs on S3 which had very quick response times and use quick scalable hosting (I hadn’t decided which hosting service at that time) with round-robin DNS to scale the front-end. It was a simple architecture but it would have worked. But…before I was able to go very far with the project, Google launched AppEngine. AppEngine took an entirely different approach to scalability. Use their SDK and platform and don’t even bother with scalability. So, I decided to switch over and give it a try.

http://tcp3.com

This project is the ongoing development effort based on that decision. I will describe and write about design decisions, feature plans and problems and roadblocks caused by the AppEngine platform.

Oh, and feel free to comment. I will approve any and all constructive comments both postitive and negative.

Top 10 Most Useful Free Apps for iPod Touch

Bryan Waters — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:54:37 +0000

With the new 2.0 firmware and the new App Store on iTunes you can get most of the functionality that you need without jailbreaking.

The following list are the apps that I use daily and can’t live without. As an added benefit, all of these are also free apps available from the iTunes Music Store.

Enough talking…here is my list of the iTouch Apps you simply can’t live without! You must download these apps!

1 – Remote
This application is an absolute must have. It turns your iTouch into an absolutely amazing remote control for your iTunes PC. Since it runs on Wifi, no line of sight needed to change the current playlist.

2 – Twitterrific
If you use Twitter, then you MUST have this application. I’ve tried the other Twitter apps and in my opinion, this one tops them all in terms of ease of use, and polish.

3 – MySpace Mobile
I actually like using MySpace with MySpace Mobile more than I do with the MySpace website. The app is cleaner and less cluttered. What do you think?

4 – Facebook Mobile
This is the only Facebook app out there (free) but it doesn’t fall short in any way. This is one of those cases where you get more than you pay for.

5 – Movies
You have to know what movies are out and the showtimes. There are several apps for this but this one is the best. Don’t even bother with the others.

6 – Paypal
I use paypal even more often than I use ebay. The convenience factor is too high for sending payments over the Internet. This app gives me even more access to paypal by allowing me to check my balance and send payments directly from my iTouch.

7 – Mobile News
I started out downloading all of the mobile news apps but I find myself using this one the most. Even the NYTimes news app doesn’t hold a candle to this one. Let me know if you agree.

8 – Last.fm
There is a free Pandora app but I was never able to get into it. Last.fm is my favorite Social Music site and this app brings the site features to my iTouch. Too cool!

9 – Ebay Mobile
With this app you can track everything that you can see on your “My Ebay” page including open bids, watched auctions and items that you are selling.

10 – Weatherbug
I never liked WeatherBug on a PC but this app is perfect! I check it every morning.

Comment below to let me know which iTouch apps you can’t live without.

Twitter Killer or just another Social Networking Toy?

Bryan Waters — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:17:04 +0000

I was checking out my twitters and noticed a post by Leo Laporte (Twit.tv) about a new social service called Plurk. My first reaction is that this is extremely cool! My second reaction is that i’m not sure it knows what it wants to be when it grows up.

It feels like a twitter clone but is missing some of the key elements such as the SMS linkage. It has video, and image sharing which feels more like a full grown social network.

They have a feedback system built-in (you get karma for inviting friends and other actions) but all your karma seems to driven by helping plurk grow…hmm?! Isn’t karma supposed to be good deeds in general? Also, you get a goofy plurk character that represents your karmic self at different levels of plurkiness. The one-eyed plurker pictured above is my first karmic representation…i’m going out to do some good deeds right now!

It doesn’t actually seem to compete with any of the current services (at least not on feature set)…but, it’s so cool i’m going to keep plurking to see where the rabbit hole goes!

Click here for my personal invite to join plurk!

Jailbreaking 1.1.4 iTouch on Windows in 1 Simple Step!

Bryan Waters — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:57:19 +0000

Ok. It simply doesn’t get any easier than this. I’ve gone through all the backflips (you can read about them on my blog) and have downgraded, upgraded, sidegraded and jailbroken iTouches in just about every way possible on Windows. I’ve read about the ZiPhone jailbreak and have periodically checked the status of that but on previous visits, it looked like it was a work in progress for Windows anyway. So, I tried it tonight…and it worked so quickly I wasn’t even sure it was jailbroken, but sure enough, the Installer icon is on my home page ready for me to add any apps that I might want. So here’s what you need to do…

The one simple step is running the ZiPhone software. Make sure your iTouch is restored to a non-jailbroken state with the latest version of the firmware (1.1.4). Also, make sure your iTunes software is up to date. Connect your iTouch and make sure iTunes recognizes it. If it does not, then reinstall iTunes and do whatever else you have to do to make sure your iTouch is visible to your computer. Close iTunes but leave your iTouch connected to your computer. Now, go to http://www.ziphone.org/ and click on the “Click here to download Ziphone” link. Then download the Windows version of the ZiPhone software. This is a phone named ZiPhoneWin-3.0.exe. Run this file and you will get a directory full of files similar to the following.

Now double-click on the file named “JAILBREAK IPHONE IPOD.bat”. You will see a console window on your computer and your iTouch.

After a moment, your iTouch will reboot and you will see the ZiPhone application appear on your computer screen. Click on the appropriate button to finish the jailbreak.

The whole process takes about a minute. This is the cleanest jailbreak so far. So…my advice to you is to forget everything i’ve said in the past and use the ZiPhone method. Now…i’ve got to go get my daughter’s iTouch to jailbreak that again…1.1.4 here we come!!!

Theme Gallery for Jailbroken iTouch

Bryan Waters — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 20:28:43 +0000

The following images are some of the cooler themes that are available for a 1.1.3 jailbroken iTouch running Summerboard.

Enjoy!

Apple iPhone SDK Event – March 6

digg — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:01:33 +0000

Apple has just sent out invitations to press and developers to an event hosting the introduction of the iPhone SDK. It’s about time!

New Forums

Bryan Waters — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:58:32 +0000

To promote the two way discussion of various topics, i’ve installed the phpBB forum software on the site. You can see the new forums here.