Shawn Medero

An Online Notebook


Update on the Future of My Pinboard Safari 5 Extension

The morning after I released my own Pinboard extension for Safari 5, I found that Jake Ross had been working on one. While we had some minor feature differences, Jake went the extra step of putting his code on GitHub. I’m a big fan of open sourcing code like this in the early days so that others can learn and quickly roll-out their own modifications to Safari 5.

I forked Jake’s code on GitHub and rolled in the one feature I worked out the he hadn’t, using the current text selection as the bookmark description. Jake has now merged those changes into his own repo and I’ll by moving my own efforts into his project going forward. Jake’s got some good ideas for going beyond the bookmarklet functionality, so I’d like to see what our two heads can come up with.

I’ve got some other extension ideas, so I’ll continue to release them here, but expect some changes to my Add URL to Pinboard project page in the near future as I switch the focus to the combined GitHub effort.

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New Safari 5 Extension: Add URL to Pinboard

I’m a big fan of the Pinboard bookmarking service. It features the right blend of UI simplicity and features while also not going overboard on the social networking aspects. It also has this bitchin’ feature to tie a URL to a physical location that I’ve wanted to build myself for roughly two years… except Maciej actually did the work instead of dreaming about it.

For a while I merely mirrored my internet curation efforts on Delicious over to my account on the Pinboard service. Recently though, I’ve moved over to Pinboard entirely and when coupled with the recent announcement of extension support in Safari 5, this seemed like a great time to use a that focused energy to create an extension.

If you’re interested, please read more about the Add URL to Pinboard extension, install, and let me know if you have any problems or feature requests.

If you’re the folks at Pinboard and prefer I not do this (or prefer I do it in a different way), just yell at me and let me know what you’d like me to do.

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Climate Change

Cliff Mass, a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, has a great “weather” blog. I put weather in quotes because his blog touches on so many cool subjects. The way he approaches his blog posts is impressive: great sourcing combined with energetic story telling about science.

Today he’s got a post on the potential long-term climate impacts of the Iceland volcano eruption (there’s none). Last Thursday he took a look at the same subject by comparing the current event to past volcano eruptions.

Earlier this month he also examined how TV Weathermen have been covering climate change. His follow-up to reader comments is worth reading as well. In these two posts he’s dinging weathermen for failing to present the uncertainty of the effects of climate change and the long-term picture. Cliff believes most TV weathermen don’t have the background to present what facts there are in an objective manner to a broad audience.

I’d go even further than Cliff: most syndicated print or TV journalists seemingly don’t have the education or tools to present any subject objectively nor do they take the initiative to gather all the facts. Most of the reporting I see on TV seems to be, to steal a weather term, “nowcasting”. There’s little insight presented into current, past, or future trends based on data. What data is presented is poorly sourced or hastily compiled into a chart without any context for what is being compared. A lot of AP-style print reporting feels the same way.

It is possible that Columbia University’s School of Journalism has identified the problem and their solution is to blend the study of computer science with journalism to create data “ninjas”.

What I see is a relatively minor “microlocal” blog, typically about quirky the Northwest weather patterns, covering climate change better than any major news outlet. Not only that, the style used in Cliff’s blog is a recipe for success in effectively reporting on just about any topic you can imagine. We often hear of the failure of old media vs. new media, but we rarely are given gift-wrapped examples where the gaps in what is wrong are so completely obvious.

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Let’s Change Things Up a Bit

While I really like the Daily Brief “format” I find myself longing for a more conversational tone here. I believe the key to making a longer format entry work, for me at least, will be constantly revising one post for the day. We’ll give it a shot here and I even enabled comments. gasp!


At lunch time I wondered how well Google’s iPad-customized UI for Gmail would run in a Fluid instance. The answer? Pretty well. I noticed the type was mostly set in Arial (gag) and there were a myriad of scrolling/sizing bugs that you’d never run into on an actual touchscreen device.

David Hemphill’s also ran into these problems and was nice enough to provide a userstyle and userscript to make Gmail’s iPad UI run well enough in Fluid. So far so good, though I seem to have lost Fluid’s ability to set an OS X Dock badge representing the number of unread emails (I believe it gathers this by parsing the element’s node text.</p> <hr /> <p>Would it suck to be replying to a blog entry where the content changed on you throughout the day? I’ll do my best to keep the editing to corrections and adding thoughts to the bottom of the entry. How’s that?</p> <hr /> <p><a href="http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/">Tweetie 2 (for the iPhone)</a> should have a method for entering a custom geotag instead of always defaulting to your current location. This tripped me up this afternoon when I wanted to geotag something after the fact because when I first though to tweet about it I was at a busy street intersection.</p> </div><!-- .entry-content --> <footer class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"><span>Comments Off</span></span> </footer><!-- #entry-meta --> </article><!-- #post-331 --> <article id="post-311" class="post-311 post type-post hentry category-daily-brief tag-humor tag-infographics tag-ipad tag-notetaking tag-pants tag-parenting"> <header class="entry-header"> <h1 class="entry-title"><a href="http://shawn.medero.net/2010/04/02/daily-brief-april-2nd-2010-weekend-edition/" title="Permalink to Daily Brief, April 2nd 2010, Weekend Edition" rel="bookmark">Daily Brief, April 2nd 2010, Weekend Edition</a></h1> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Posted on </span><time class="entry-date" datetime="2010-04-02T16:57:54+00:00" pubdate>2nd April 2010</time> <span class="meta-sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://shawn.medero.net/about/" title="View all posts by Shawn Medero">Shawn Medero</a></span> </div><!-- .entry-meta --> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="entry-content"> <ul> <li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tyne/8600616.stm">Gary Craig is now a world record holder for wearing 211 pairs underwear at one time.</a> (hat tip: <a href="http://waffle.wootest.net/">Jesper</a> )</li> <li><a href="http://berglondon.com/blog/2010/04/02/popularscienceplus/">Popular Science+, a magazine built for the iPad, appears to be the new cocaine for infographic lovers like myself</a></li> <li><a href="http://madebymany.co.uk/visual-note-taking-is-the-new-religion-003529">How to be a visual note taker</a></li> <li><a href="http://nealpollack.com/2010/04/go-with-what-wo.html">Sage parenting wisdom from Neal Pollack</a></li> </ul> </div><!-- .entry-content --> <footer class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"><span>Comments Off</span></span> </footer><!-- #entry-meta --> </article><!-- #post-311 --> <article id="post-309" class="post-309 post type-post hentry category-daily-brief tag-cameras tag-electronics tag-obama tag-president tag-white-house tag-work"> <header class="entry-header"> <h1 class="entry-title"><a href="http://shawn.medero.net/2010/03/31/daily-brief-march-31st-2010-whenever-edition/" title="Permalink to Daily Brief, March 31st 2010, Morning Edition" rel="bookmark">Daily Brief, March 31st 2010, Morning Edition</a></h1> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Posted on </span><time class="entry-date" datetime="2010-03-31T12:28:47+00:00" pubdate>31st March 2010</time> <span class="meta-sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://shawn.medero.net/about/" title="View all posts by Shawn Medero">Shawn Medero</a></span> </div><!-- .entry-meta --> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="entry-content"> <ul> <li><a href="http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/white-house-forum-on-workplace-flexibility/">Michelle Obama is hosting a forum on workplace flexibility at the White House today</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/30/AR2010033004260_pf.html">How the White House currently handles letters to the President</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/survey-cheap-cameras-break-more-than-expensive-ones-and-panasonic-breaks-least/">Wired takes a look at digital camera reliability</a></li> </ul> </div><!-- .entry-content --> <footer class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"><span>Comments Off</span></span> </footer><!-- #entry-meta --> </article><!-- #post-309 --> <article id="post-307" class="post-307 post type-post hentry category-daily-brief tag-art tag-coffee tag-food tag-internet tag-video"> <header class="entry-header"> <h1 class="entry-title"><a href="http://shawn.medero.net/2010/03/29/daily-brief-march-29th-2010-afternoon-edition/" title="Permalink to Daily Brief, March 29th 2010, Afternoon Edition" rel="bookmark">Daily Brief, March 29th 2010, Afternoon Edition</a></h1> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Posted on </span><time class="entry-date" datetime="2010-03-29T17:07:32+00:00" pubdate>29th March 2010</time> <span class="meta-sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://shawn.medero.net/about/" title="View all posts by Shawn Medero">Shawn Medero</a></span> </div><!-- .entry-meta --> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="entry-content"> <ul> <li>Coffee (sorta) Watch: <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/2010/03/24/1835057/kcs-folgers-plant-to-close-in.html">Folgers “Coffee” Co. will shutdown down their Kansas City “Roasting” plant in 2012.</a> The plant opened in 1908 and operations will be consolidated at Folgers’ New Orleans plant where there is a more favorable tax environment.</li> <li><a href="http://www.archimuse.com/mw2010/papers/cope/cope.html">Curating the Internet</a></li> <li>(Video) <a href="http://www.imheremovie.com/">A Spike Jonze movie about two robots living in a Los Angeles.</a> The plot is based on the Shel Silverstein book <em>The Giving Tree</em>.</li> <li><a href="http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/no-food-choice-goes-without-judgment">Whatever you are eating you shouldn’t be, okay?</a></li> </ul> </div><!-- .entry-content --> <footer class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"><span>Comments Off</span></span> </footer><!-- #entry-meta --> </article><!-- #post-307 --> <article id="post-305" class="post-305 post type-post hentry category-daily-brief tag-helicopters"> <header class="entry-header"> <h1 class="entry-title"><a href="http://shawn.medero.net/2010/03/26/daily-brief-march-26th-2010-weekend-edition/" title="Permalink to Daily Brief, March 26th 2010, Weekend Edition" rel="bookmark">Daily Brief, March 26th 2010, Weekend Edition</a></h1> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Posted on </span><time class="entry-date" datetime="2010-03-26T15:52:07+00:00" pubdate>26th March 2010</time> <span class="meta-sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://shawn.medero.net/about/" title="View all posts by Shawn Medero">Shawn Medero</a></span> </div><!-- .entry-meta --> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="entry-content"> <ul> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_helicopter_prison_escapes">A list of failed and successful prison escapes by helicopter</a></li> </ul> </div><!-- .entry-content --> <footer class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"><span>Comments Off</span></span> </footer><!-- #entry-meta --> </article><!-- #post-305 --> <article id="post-303" class="post-303 post type-post hentry category-daily-brief tag-google tag-mobile tag-sexting tag-social"> <header class="entry-header"> <h1 class="entry-title"><a href="http://shawn.medero.net/2010/03/24/daily-brief-march-24th-2010-morning-edition/" title="Permalink to Daily Brief, March 24th 2010, Morning Edition" rel="bookmark">Daily Brief, March 24th 2010, Morning Edition</a></h1> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Posted on </span><time class="entry-date" datetime="2010-03-24T10:26:03+00:00" pubdate>24th March 2010</time> <span class="meta-sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://shawn.medero.net/about/" title="View all posts by Shawn Medero">Shawn Medero</a></span> </div><!-- .entry-meta --> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="entry-content"> <ul> <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/lawmakers-backing-off-harsh-punishments-for-sexting-teens.ars">No one cares about “Sexting” anymore</a></li> <li><a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/03/the_social_media_bubble.html">Are we really making “internet friends”?</a></li> <li>I’m not sure what to make of this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQGrIsYUm4c">Google Japan video explaining how they anonymize portions of images used in Google Street View</a> but I believe it is implying that Google can just doctor up any part of the images used as they wish.</li> </ul> </div><!-- .entry-content --> <footer class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"><span>Comments Off</span></span> </footer><!-- #entry-meta --> </article><!-- #post-303 --> <article id="post-301" class="post-301 post type-post hentry category-daily-brief tag-android tag-droid tag-energy tag-france tag-green tag-mass-transit tag-media tag-seattle tag-technology tag-tgv tag-verizon"> <header class="entry-header"> <h1 class="entry-title"><a href="http://shawn.medero.net/2010/03/18/daily-brief-march-18th-2010-afternoon-edition/" title="Permalink to Daily Brief, March 18th 2010, Afternoon Edition" rel="bookmark">Daily Brief, March 18th 2010, Afternoon Edition</a></h1> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Posted on </span><time class="entry-date" datetime="2010-03-18T13:43:06+00:00" pubdate>18th March 2010</time> <span class="meta-sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://shawn.medero.net/about/" title="View all posts by Shawn Medero">Shawn Medero</a></span> </div><!-- .entry-meta --> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="entry-content"> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.greasebus.com/seattle/">Only in Seattle could you hope to find a biofueled mountain shuttle for skiers and snowboarders</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.publictransit.us/ptlibrary/TGV_Carbon_Evaluation.htm">France does a “Carbon Footprint Assessment” for their new TGV line</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2244198/pagenum/all/">Slate examines the history of media outlets sowing fear into our perceptions of technology</a></li> <li><a href="http://phandroid.com/2010/03/18/droid-doesnt-android-2-1-delayed-a-g-a-i-n/">Verizon continues to piss off Droid owners.</a> Ironically iPhone owners in the US will continue to whine about not being given an option to enjoy the same horrible customer service</li> </ul> </div><!-- .entry-content --> <footer class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"><span>Comments Off</span></span> </footer><!-- #entry-meta --> </article><!-- #post-301 --> <nav id="nav-below" class="clearfix"> <h1 class="screen-reader-text">Post navigation</h1> <div class="nav-previous grid_6 alpha"><a href="http://shawn.medero.net/page/2/" ><span class="meta-nav">←</span> Older posts</a></div> <div class="nav-next grid_6 omega"></div> </nav><!-- #nav-below --> </div><!-- #content --> </div><!-- #primary --> <div id="secondary" class="widget-area"> <ul class="xoxo"> </ul> </div><!-- #secondary .widget-area --> </div><!-- #main --> <hr class="clear"> <footer id="colophon" class="prefix_2 grid_6 suffix_3"> 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