Calm Down, Hippies: What San Francisco needs to Learn from the Valley

Something culturally strange is happening in San Francisco. I'm not talking about the "let your freak flag fly," live-and-let-live vibe for which the city is famous. I'm talking the growing cultural rift between the city and Silicon Valley, despite the obvious geographic overlap. If you drew a Venn Diagram between San Francisco hipsters and people who work in and around the Web industry it'd look like a more shoved-together version of the MasterCard logo. While many of the largest technology companies of the last few decades'--like Apple, Cisco, Oracle, eBay, Yahoo, Google--were based on the peninsula, Web 2.0 has unabashedly been centered in San Francisco. Go to any hipster, grungy bar in San Francisco. Ask the first five hoodie-wearing people you see what they do, and you can be sure at least two say they work for a startup. And if your next question was "How big are you guys?" no one would flinch... and each of them would try to pad the answer. Big is good in startup land. Getting big, fast is what separates startups from small businesses. Doing that over-and-over again, decade-after-decade is what separates the Valley from nearly anywhere else. And yet, when it comes to the non-Web, brick-and-mortar retail business in San Francisco an ugly, self-righteous, vitriolic hate is emerging against anything successful enough to have more than one or two locations.

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Daily Crunch: Stand Guard Edition

Windows Phone 7: Solid Platform, Sorry Future A Camera For Every Budget Shogun 2: Total War: The Closest You?ll Get To Actually Being A Samurai Colorware Is Now Doing Its Thing With The iPod Touch 4G The Stemie ? You?d Be Nuts To Ride Without One It?s Photography Week At CrunchGear

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Ebook Readers Will Love To Hide Inside These Sturdy Imitation Books [Cases]

Based on my experience, the Pad and Quill cases are the toughest of all the gadget cases which imitate Moleskine notebooks. And now there are finally Kindle 3 and Nook versions. More »

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Scriptish add-on brings legacy-free Greasemonkey to Firefox 4

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

I depend upon certain Greasemonkey scripts. They're not just for prettying up the Web or making it less distracting; I even have some home-brewed scripts that I use right here in Download Squad as part of my writing process. Not having access to these scripts is one of the key things that's kept me from making the switch to Firefox 4.

Enter Scriptish. According to its author, Erik Vold, Scriptish removes a lot of the legacy code that's been holding Greasemonkey back, and it utilizes everything that Firefox 4 has to offer.

Scriptish is not compatible with anything older than Firefox 4. Vold says he created the add-on due to the slow pace in which Greasemonkey development has been moving and some of the decisions taken by its developers:

"The trouble I found while trying to contribute to GM is that the maintainers don't really want to alter the code base, they're actually seem [sic] to be fine with doing the minimum necessary and bug fixing for the rest of the future, at least that is how it seemed to me after writing quite a few patches which were rejected, either outright, or by degradation (meaning I would have to basically redo everything, on crappy architecture, because they've sat on their hands for so long)."

So, there are definitely some politics at work here. When I tried using my home-brewed script with Scriptish, I couldn't get it to work. Maintaining a Greasemonkey fork is a big responsibility, so here's hoping that Vold is up to the job. Better yet, here's hoping that he gets some help from the community (and that my script starts working!).

Scriptish add-on brings legacy-free Greasemonkey to Firefox 4 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clue helps you find out what's memorable about your page

Filed under: Developer, Utilities, web 2.0

One of the first things you learn about writing for the Web is that you have an incredibly short amount of time to make a first impression; it's usually said to be around three seconds. So, if you've grabbed your visitor's interest or managed to get your message across within those three seconds, you did a good job.

But how do you know if you did? Clue is a new Web app from the fine folks at Zurb that can help you find out. It works like a memory game: feed it with a URL, and Clue generates a "memory page."

When you send someone a link to that "memory page," they're shown a screenshot of your site for a few seconds (I didn't actually count, it may be more than three), and then they're asked to name five things that are memorable about the Web page. These are just five keywords.

After answering, the user is taken to a results page where they can see what everyone else answered. That's right - the page is wide-open. Of course, you can see the results, but everyone else can, too. Another catch is that the test only works for 24 hours.

Still, this is a fantastic tool, and it's one that I plan to keep in mind the next time I need some feedback on a Web design.

Clue helps you find out what's memorable about your page originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spy Night Vision Digital Camcorder for Kids

Julie tells me I’m crazy because I start Christmas shopping so early, and I’m a little panicked because I’m actually getting a late start this year.� I found this great gift idea for kids while I was looking for toys.� This little Spy Night Vision Digital Camcorder from Young Explorers�has a 1.8″ preview screen, cables [...]

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Kid Gadgets, News

Tagged: digital camcorder, Kid's gear, night vision camcorder

Spy Night Vision Digital Camcorder for Kids originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 18, 2010 at 2:00 pm.

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Shocker! CVS Lookbook e-reader reviewed, sucks

Well, we didn't exactly have high hopes when we got first glimpse at the CVS LookBook from a leaked flier, and our lowered expectations have now been satisfied. The Digital Reader has taken the thing for a spin and, as it turns out, it's an ever so slightly modified version of the Literati that scored its own terrible review just a few weeks ago. The $150 CVS version suffers the same issues, including a complete inability to read e-books downloaded to SD card or copied onto internal memory. Also, battery life is poor, performance is slow, the margins are off, and there's no web browser. Positives? Well, it has physical buttons for page turning and... yeah. With the Kindle just a click away at $139, it's hard to see anyone wanting the LookBook, you may be tempted while picking up your 'scripts.

Shocker! CVS Lookbook e-reader reviewed, sucks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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