Swing Bling

Simon Morris has a really cool little demo of Java WebStart Swing GUIs with some nice AJAXish alpha bling effects: http://weblogs.java.net/blog/javakiddy/archive/2007/02/swing_bling.html

Maybe Java can still compete with Flash... I know I'd much rather work in Java.

Google Maps for OS X Address Book
I just installed Brian Toth's Google maps plugin on my new mac-mini and it's pretty cool. Now I can quickly view a map or directions for any address in my book. Thanks, Brian! :D

George Washington High School class of 1988

I just started a Google Group for my high school graduating class, GWHS 88 in Danville, Va. If you're in my class, please join the group at :

http://groups.google.com/group/gwhs88

There will be a reunion in Danville, Virginia in the summer of 2008 and more after that, so join the group and keep in touch!

Block Flash Ads with CSS

You can block flash ads with a custom Hosts file, and this is a pretty good option because it blocks ads from everywhere. I just found a cool way to block flash ads in Firefox with a little CSS tweak which blocks the ad until you click on it, that way you can choose to see a Flash ad or other Flash object if you want. Pretty cool! Thanks Jesse Ruderman :-)

http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/xbl.html

How much is your home worth?

Check out Zillow, this is a cool app that lets you see home valuations pretty much anywhere. Find out taxable values on homes and do comparisions to see recent sale values. It's a really nice way to get a feel for how much your home might bring on the market.

http://zillow.com

Ever need to view an area by zip code?

I was recently doing a real-estate search, and sometimes it's more convenient to search an area by zip code if you have large city boundaries. For example, Raleigh is huge but I know I don't want to search for a house on the south-east side of Raleigh. I can search by zip code, but how do I know the zip code boundaries? Well here's a great Google maps mashup that'll do the trick:

http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm

LaLa.com Rocks!

http://lala.com

Do you have a bunch of old CDs? I do...

I have all of these CDs hanging around that I don't want. I keep all of my music digital these days, and I just update my iPod. I don't take CDs anywhere, I take my iPod.

But I don't really like iTunes. I think it's a great service, but I despise DRM (see my DRM post). Also, the encoding is lossy, so the music you download is sub-CD quality. I want to get my music on CD, I want the high quality and I don't want to fiddle with DRM.

The problem with used CD stores is that they're a rip-off. They buy CDs for a buck or two and resell them for $12. Even the used price of CDs is too high to feel good about buying, and the selling price is too low to feel good about selling. Have you ever shopped used CDs? You can spend hours rummaging through piles of CDs, in the cheap side of the record shop, feeling a bit like a dumpster-diving hobo, and still never find what you want.

Enter LaLa.com : trade your old CDs to someone else directly and skip the middle man. List what you have and what you want and start trading. The site has lot's of social networking goodness : users write album reviews and tag music, you can't link it to blogger and there are plugins to show what you're listening to.

Be sure to check out my LaLa! :-)

DRM is DUM

The following links point to a great talk that succinctly explains why DRM just can't work. The basics is that digital content must be enciphered in order to be 'protected'. The way cryptography works is that you have a cryptographic algorithm, a cryptographic key and the enciphered data. This is fine in most cases because you have two parties who each have a secret key, sending enciphered data to one another, using a cryptographic algorithm that is commonly known to the attacker. The attacker can intercept the data, and knows the algorithm, but can't decrypt it because they don't have the key. With DRM, the attacker is also the recipient and ends up with the data, the cipher and the key. On a DVD, the data is stored encrypted, and the DVD player has the algorithm to decode the data... but where's the key? It's where it has to be... it's either on the disc or on the player. All DRM systems work this way, there is no way around it, and cryptography is useless if the attacker has the data, the algorithm and the key.

Video: Cory Doctorow's "DRM and MSFT: a product customer wants"
http://content.digitalwell.washington.edu/msr/external_release_talks_12_05_2005/11476/lecture.htm

Text Version : http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt