The Motodom “Heave H.O.E” DVD claims to offer “clear instructions for those ready to get serious about flying disc play”, and includes recommendations from a university Ultimate coach.

In reality, the DVD spends a grand total of 5 minutes talking about the forehand, and doesn’t include any content specific to Ultimate at all. It advises you to lead with the wrong foot for the forehand, and it spends an equal amount of time talking about the ground skip, an utterly useless novelty throw. There’s nothing on the DVD that you couldn’t find in a few minutes search on YouTube.

1 star, definitely to be avoided!

From the Washington Post:

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism.

Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

“They’re saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler’s laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies “don’t establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched.”

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts “do not infringe on Americans’ privacy.” In a statement submitted to Feingold for a June hearing on the issue, he noted that the executive branch has long had “plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border without probable cause or a warrant” to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering the country.

Lifehacker recently wrote Forget the iPhone- the iPod touch is good enough:

Back in June 2007, I couldn’t convince my wife that checking my email in grocery lines was worth $1,320—the cost of an original iPhone and one year of the cheapest plan. These days, the trend-setting phone costs even more money over its life, and it’s more than a little restrictive and even a bit buggy. So I’m amazed at how little love the iPod touch gets. It’s a slimmer iPhone with almost all its features, it requires no contract, and when you can’t get a Wi-Fi signal, your plain, humble cellphone can step up to take its place. Here’s why anyone considering the iPhone should opt for its oft-ignored sibling—the iPod touch—instead. Photo by sarchi.

While you won’t get every single one of the iPhone’s capabilities when you opt for an iPod touch, you’ll save a ton of money. Buying an iPod touch costs you $300 for unlimited use, not a guaranteed commitment of more than $1,600 over two years that the iPhone involves (more, if you have to pay a penalty to get out of your current cellphone contract).

I agree. A refurbished or lightly used 16GB iPod Touch can be found on eBay these days for around $260, much cheaper than the $1320 the iPhone will cost you you over two years. Besides, I’m not ready to replace my Blackberry as a phone/email device just yet– you’ll have a hard time getting me to accept a touch screen for typing long emails.

That price lets you enjoy all of the software goodness that the iPhone and Apple’s game changing App Store has to offer.

What about the lack of a built-in speaker? For $8.24 shipped, I got a very compact add-on speaker for the iPod that plugs into the dock connector. (The speaker was shipped free from Hong Kong and remarkably made it to Seattle in only five days; I haven’t found anywhere locally as cheap.)

Microphone? Lifehacker has a piece on how to turn you ipod touch into an iPhone that describes a microphone add-on, around $50, and explains how to install VOIP software for free or low cost phone cals. This option is a bit on the bleeding edge for me, but I expect in not too long you’ll see combo speaker/microphone add-ons for affordable prices.

I’m pleased to see that Alan will be joining Identity.net and carrying forward some of the ideas we developed at Mergelab.

From Alan’s announcement:

Just over a year ago, Mark and I attended IIW 2007 down in the bay area, which added fuel to a strong interest in emerging standards around user-centric identity - including OpenID, microformats, oAuth, etc. - a trip that helped inform some of the ideas that we explored at Mergelab.

I am happy to announce that I’ve found a way to continue down this path by joining Identity.net, a Bellevue-based startup with an ambitious plan to build on these emerging technologies.

(Those who know me well will understand that it must be an interesting company and an interesting space if I’m willing to commute to the east side for it! :)

The official announcement that hit the wires this morning is here. I am also going to be hiring for a number of positions in development over the next few weeks and months so if you know someone who might be interested, please send them my way!

Google has introduced an Elections video search gadget that allows you to search political speeches, uses an automatic transcript created by speech-to-text technology. You can see all of the matching snippets and jump directly to the relevant section of video.

The speech recognition is not perfect, of course– searching for “ruby” generates mistaken matches again Rudy, for example– but it’s still useful and a very cool proof of concept for things to come.

This post describes some free and low cost ways to help older people browse the web more easily, based on my recent experience helping my grandmother.

Replacing the mouse

For people like my grandmother with shaky hands, it’s hard to hold the mouse still while they click. It’s also confusing to have to pick up the mouse and reset when they reach the edge of the mouse pad.

We replaced the mouse with a trackball, including a built in scroll wheel. We had good luck with the Logitech Trackman Wheel. With one hand my grandmother could point, click, and scroll, with far fewer problems caused by shaky hands.

Pointing was still a bit of a slow process for her. I think a touch screen solution would be ideal, but unfortunately large touch screen still seem to be too expensive for mainstream use. ($500-$1000 for a 17″ screen.) I’m going to keep an eye on prices, there’s a lot of potential there.

Optimizing web browser settings for older people

I recommend Firefox for older users because of its simple UI and configurability. Here’s how we configured it to make it easier to use.

Configuring firefox for large fonts

It’s easy to configure Firefox to use consistently large font sizes. Go to “Tools : Options : Content : Fonts and Colors : Advanced”. Under the Minimum font size drop down, select a large size like 18 or 20.

Bookmark bar

We also configured a bookmark bar with key links on it like her email inbox and online news. This provided a consistent location where she could click for key tasks. Rather than browsing the entire web, my grandmother tended to focus on a few key sites, so it was possible to put every important link there.

Launch the browser on startup

The browser is literally the only program my grandmother uses, so I configured it to run every time the computer starts up. (On Windows, this is done by dragging a shortcut to the Startup folder under programs.)

Disabling ads

My grandmother was confused by web ads. Seeing as she was unlikely to be a good ecommerce customer, I installed Adblock Plus.

Area for future work: Simplifying page layout with Greasemonkey

Some web pages are overloaded with headers and sidebars that are confusing and that work badly with large font sizes.

It would be relatively simple to write a Greasemonkey extension that would rewrite popular pages to be simpler based on directives from a server.

Ending right click confusion

Steve Jobs was right: the right mouse button is a great source of confusion for beginning computer users. Beginners don’t know which button to click, and how to get rid of the context menu that pops up when you hit the wrong button.

To eliminate this confusion, we mapped the right button to a left click, using a nifty free program called Autohotkey and the following script.

;; map the right button to a left click
RButton::
Click
return

Other suggestions?

I am interested in swapping tips with anyone else who has worked with making web browsers more accessible; please post comments if you have ideas.

Our friends over at Urbanspoon were written up in New York Times preview of upcoming iPhone apps:

From David Pogue’s preview:

Yet another [iPhone app], Urbanspoon, is “a cross between a magic
eight ball and a slot machine:” you shake the phone, and it randomly
displays the name of a good restaurant nearby, using the iPhone’s
G.P.S. and motion sensor.

As an iLike employee, and as a music listener who prefers DRM-free music and free full track preview, I’m excited about today’s announcement with Rhapsody.

Here’s an overview of Rhapsody’s initiative:

Rhapsody®, the leading digital music service from RealNetworks®, Inc. (Nasdaq RNWK) and MTV Networks, today launched its “Music Without Limits” initiative. This strategy is designed to turbocharge the digital music industry in three ways, by:

* Accelerating the move away from proprietary Digital Rights Formats by making music from all major labels available in the DRM-free and interoperable MP3 format;

* Empowering music fans to conveniently stream full-length songs, and buy MP3s, anywhere they want including the most popular music sites and social networks on the Web;

* Integrating digital music directly with mobile phones through a deep partnership between Rhapsody and Verizon Wireless.

Rhapsody is proud to be partnering with some of the most innovative companies of our time, including: iLike, Yahoo!, MTV Networks, and Verizon Wireless, to connect consumers with digital music wherever they are and however they want it.”

Beginning today, consumers can purchase MP3 music from Rhapsody and its partners that is free of the digital rights management (DRM) software that restricts how and where people can play their music…

The Rhapsody MP3 catalogue will include more than 5 million songs from all four major music labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI—and an extensive number of independent labels.

Here are more details on what full song playback and MP3 sales will mean for iLike and music discovery on social networks:

Rhapsody and iLike, the leading social music discovery service, have created a new model that will monetize music consumption on the top social networks for labels and artists. To give iLike’s enormous audience a taste of the popular Rhapsody Unlimited subscription service, Rhapsody will power free, full-song playback across iLike.com and iLike’s leading music applications on the Web’s most popular social platforms, including: Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Orkut, and Bebo. Full-song streaming will be available for free to iLike users until a monthly threshold of 25 plays is reached, at which time iLike users can choose to sign up for a Rhapsody account or enjoy 30 second song samples until the end of the month.

Artists and labels will be paid royalties each time their music is played via Rhapsody’s existing agreements. This will be the first widespread implementation of a scalable model to monetize the enormous potential for music consumption across social networks. iLike’s more than 28 million registered users will enjoy free full-length song playback. Additionally, Rhapsody’s MP3 store will also be added as an option to the iLike “buy” button.

“With this announcement, iLike is expanding from being the leading social music discovery service to becoming a powerful social music consumption solution,” said Ali Partovi CEO of iLike. “In collaboration with Rhapsody, we’re empowering artists and labels to make money every time their music is played on iLike and across the Web’s major social networks.”

Are you building a large scale consumer web service? Below are some helpful talks from companies that have done so successfully, using approaches including memory caching, replication, feature based sharding, and horizontal (user) sharding.

Nat Brown, iLike’s CTO, spoke at the Google I/O conference on scaling and analytics techniques , with a particular focus on OpenSocial.

Saran Chari, CTO and co-founder of Flixster, has an overview of the data scaling techniques used at Flixster

I love the guiding principle of “Spirit of the Game” from the Official Rules of Ultimate.

Politics and indeed life would be better if this principle were more widely applied.