Stephen’s Statements A little bit of everything from Stephen Duncan Jr, a Software Developer in Portland, Oregon

Monday, December 26, 2005

Best and Wost “Dating Cities”

Just thought this was interesting: America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for Dating, with Norfolk on the best list, and Kansas City and Wichita being on the worst. On Norfolk:

Norfolk, VA: Came in near the top due to the exceptional amount of flowers that were brought as gifts for a special someone. Online dating was also high, in the 83rd percentile.

Friday, December 23, 2005

RSS and Xbox.com

Scoble frequently posts about Microsoft sites not using RSS. I know it's mentioned in a comment there, but I think Xbox.com is a major candidate for adding feeds. I want:

  • A feed for new Xbox 360 game releases
  • A feed for additions to the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list
  • A feed for new content added to the Xbox Live Marketplace
  • A feed for general announcements regarding the Xbox

Right now the closest thing I have is Major Nelson's blog. Come on Microsoft! This isn't technically hard (and even if it were, you're a major technology company!), and there's tons of money in it for you to make your biggest video game target audience (geeks) aware of every opportunity they have to give you their money for things they might want.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Head in the Clouds

I've been watching a bunch of movies during my time off for Christmas, but none have really stuck out. Tonight, however, I finished watching Head in the Clouds, and was very impressed. Critics have been very harsh to it, apparently, but I thought it was a great personal-level story of politics, war, and hedonism in 1930's and '40's Europe, the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Not a classic movie, but definitely good and worth seeing.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Xbox 360 as Web 2.0

Scoble asks if the Xbox 360 is a Web 2.0 product.

I love my Xbox 360, but no, it's not Web 2.0. For as far as this Web 2.0 concept means anything, it's about open methods of sharing: RSS, API's for web applications, etc.

It's cool that I can download things from the Xbox marketplace, but that's the only place I can download from. Nobody else can put up a marketplace that conforms to some API, that I can now add to my places to download content from.

Same thing goes for the media-center type capabilities. I'm sure its great if you have an Windows Media Center PC. But for me, the only good thing I get is if I plug in my iPod. I can't get anything of value off of my network. Yes, I know about Windows Media Connect, but, as far as I can tell, it's worthless when your content resides on a third file-sharing device not running Windows. I'm a technical person, but I haven't figured out how to get it work with either mapped network drives, nor UNC paths to an authenticated network share.

Xbox 360 has a very impressive walled-in community. Web 2.0 is about communities without those walls.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Silly Political Test

Your Political Profile

Overall: 65% Conservative, 35% Liberal
Social Issues: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Ethics: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
How Liberal / Conservative Are You?