Filed under: Internet/Computer
I’ve used several different music recommendation systems, and each has strengths and weaknesses. For the purpose of this post, I’ll compare Lala, Pandora, HerdIt, and Last.fm. (I use iTunes, and like the program, but to my knowledge it can’t suggest and stream songs I don’t already own, and I’m not willing to listen to 30-second samples.) I use several criteria:
- Breadth of music library
- Ease of buying the song if I like it
- Ability to bookmark/save a song
- Overall ease of use
- Overall listening experience (including whether it played songs I would buy)
- Here’s how the services stack up:
Lala
- Breadth of music library: Very wide
- Ease of buying: Extremely easy (buy mp3, or buy web-only version for $0.10)
- Bookmark/saving a song: Extremely easy
- Ease of use: Extremely easy
- Overall listening experience:Very good
Lala is a real favorite of mine. It’s the second-largest online music retailer (second to iTunes, of course), and has a huge library – unlike eMusic, which I also like quite a bit, I almost never find an album or artist missing on Lala (though it does happen). Lala’s big selling point is that you can listen to any song once, all the way through, for free. After that, you’re stuck with 30-second samples, but you can buy the mp3 (usually for $0.89), or buy a web-only version of the song for a minuscule $0.10. Web-only songs can be listened to as often as you like, as long as you are logged in at Lala, of course. I listen to a lot of music offline and on my iPod, but can see the attraction of the online music for other users.
I already use Lala to listen to lots of music albums, because there are lots of artists in my library with only one or two songs. I can use Lala to listen to an entire artist’s discography, and only buy the songs I really like. Beyond this, though, Lala also has the option to generate playlists based on similar artists, though I haven’t used this feature much.
Pandora
- Breadth of music library: Fairly wide, but I definitely come across more repeats than I’d like
- Ease of buying: Fairly easy (links to Amazon MP3 and iTunes)
- Bookmark/saving a song: Easy, but not as versatile as Lala (which can have multiple playlists)
- Ease of use: Very easy
- Overall listening experience: Pretty good
If you don’t know, Pandora is an internet radio station that generates a string of songs based on a song/artist/genre you enter. It populates a radio station with songs that are similar in “melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics” and many other attributes – see their About page for more on this. As the songs play, you can rate them up or down, which will fine-tune the radio station to match your tastes.
I used to use Pandora frequently (about two years ago), but stopped because I found that the breadth of the library was small – the same songs kept coming up over and over again. This has probably changed, though, so I’ll base my rating only on my experience these last few days of listening.
Pandora plays songs I like, but a lot of them are songs I already own, which limits its effectiveness as a music discovery tool. (In one listening session, for example, I heard many songs I liked and owned, but out of 23 songs in a row, none of the songs that were new to me interested me enough for a purchase. This is no problem if you’re just looking to listen to some music you like, of course.) Pandora’s licenses also limit the number of songs you can skip during a particular period of time, which can be annoying when trying to refine a station by down-rating songs you don’t like. Pandora also plays occasional ads in between songs, but they’re usually short (about 10 seconds), and are not very frequent.
Last.fm
- Breadth of music library: Extremely wide
- Ease of buying: Fairly easy (links to Amazon MP3, 7digital, and iTunes)
- Bookmark/saving a song: Easy (though viewing playlists can be tricky, and playing them may require a paid subscription)
- Ease of use: Fairly easy: Setting up the Scrobbler (which is optional) requires downloading and installing, but allows excellent recommendations based on your listening history from iTunes and other services and programs.
- Overall listening experience: Extremely excellent! I had no idea when I started writing this post that any service would unseat Lala as my main source of new songs, but Last.fm has completely blows Lala out of the water! I hardly even visit Lala these days.
Last.fm is a service I’ve heard a lot about, but have only started using for the purposes of writing this blog post. (It’s possible I’m not aware of some of its features, so let me know if I get something wrong!)
To start using Last.fm, I downloaded the Last.fm’s Scrobbler, which informs Last.fm of your music listening habits and preferences, and allows you to listen to your Last.fm without a browser (as long as you have internet access, of course).
I logged on to Last.fm, and without needing to enter any music preferences (because the Scrobbler already had that covered), I hit the Play Your Recommendations button, and it started playing songs for me. (Actually, I had some difficulty at first with my Adblock Plus firefox add-on, but got it cleared up – let me know if you have the same issues, and I’ll help you get through it.)
Two quibbles: There is no Pause button (due to licensing issues), so you have to let your stream keep playing, or stop it entirely. And the Recently Played feature doesn’t work well for me, and based on people’s comments online, I’m not the only one. I have to go to a separate page to see all my recently played tracks, and lots of songs I play never end up on that list for some reason.
Overall, I’d highly recommend Last.fm for anyone who wants to listen to good music, whether or not your intent is to discover new stuff.
What are some of your favorite places to listen to good music and discover new songs?
What should you and your partner do with your last names when you get married? I should make it very clear that I have absolutely no plans to get married any time soon – a long time ago I thought of my favorite solution to this issue.
I wouldn’t want my wife to have to give up her last name – that seems unfair. Many couples each keep their own last names, but that seems to split the family a bit, and doesn’t really solve the problem if you have kids, who will have to take one name or the other. (Or would you switch off for every other kid?)
Others take on hyphenated names, which seems awkward to me. (My apologies to any of you folks out there!) Besides which, what do you do when two people with hyphenated names get married? How would you like to introduce yourself as Mrs. Stephenson-Montgomery-Anderson-Schwarzchild?
My solution, with which I’m quite satisfied, is to meld the names of the two. If I married my wonderful girlfriend Danielle Lee, we would change our last names to Leary (= Lee + Barry). (Our first thought, “Barley”, was clearly inferior.) How’s that? It allows each of us to keep some of our name, so we needn’t give up our ties to our family. But it also allows us to have the solidarity of a single, family name. I also like the ability for the new name to give the family a new start.
Let me know in the comments what your names might have if you did the same. Let’s make this a tradition!
Filed under: Internet/Computer
This may seem odd considering how annoying trial versions of software are, but I wish Android applications could offer trial versions.
The problem is that I’m concerned not enough app developers are making money to justify much investment in high-quality apps. There are some great free apps out there (witness the Dolphin Browser), but there would probably be lots more if more developers knew they could actually see some money from the apps. Y’see, I’m not willing to spend money on an app without knowing it’s good. I’ve seen too many bad apps to want to throw money at an app that might be garbage. As a result, I haven’t bought a single app yet.
I’ve tried a lot of free apps, some of which have paid versions as well for soliciting donations. But once I have the app, I forget all about paying for them – I already have the app, and don’t think any more about donations.
A trial version of apps would help solve this problem. I would very happily download a trial version of a paid app. If I liked it, I’d be happy to pay a few bucks. If I didn’t like it enough to pay for it, I’d willingly uninstall it.
Your thoughts?
If you find yourself helping other people on the web, you’ve probably helped people transition to Gmail. Or if you’re on the other end of the requests for help, you may have asked for help transitioning to Gmail. Either way, Gmail is an incredible product, but it’s a little different from other email providers, and it can help to have a bit of guidance setting it up.
Before I go into the how to convert someone to Gmail, let’s talk a bit about why to convert to Gmail. Here are some of the things that set Gmail apart, which you can email to anyone who isn’t sure whether to make the shift or not:
- You have all the space you’ll need – at the time of this writing (1/2/10), Google provides 7.4 gigabytes of space. That’s a lot of emails, even with large attachments.
- The generous storage is augmented by excellent search – the best email search I’ve ever seen. It is so far superior to Outlook’s search that I’ve set up a rule to automatically forward all my work emails to my gmail account, and I search from Gmail if I ever need to find anything.
- Gmail automatically groups a series of email replies into a single, unified conversation, making it easy to read through the thread chronologically, without needing to worry about what you did with
- Gmail’s labels are a creative and useful alternative to folders. You can use labels like folders, but unlike folders, emails can have several different labels attached to them – it’s like an email being in several folders at once.
- Gmail makes it easy to send email from different outgoing addresses (e.g. yourname@gmail.com, your.name@yourcompany.com, your.goofy.email.address.from.when.you.were.15@yahoo.com, etc.). This makes it easy to keep your different email accounts compartmentalized.
- Last, it integrates well with other Google services you may use, such as Google Docs, Google Voice, etc.
There are some drawbacks of Gmail; if these are dealbreakers, Gmail might not be for you:
- Unlike desktop email clients, you can’t sort (i.e. reorder) emails by subject, sender, etc. – emails are always displayed in order of date received. This is remedied by the excellent search, however. Gmail has search operators (such as “from”, “to”, “subject”, etc.) that allow you to search quickly for exactly what you want to find. Unfortunately, there is no way to sort by an email’s size (e.g. if you wanted to clear up space by deleting emails with large attachments). I haven’t yet run out of space, but if I ever do, this will be annoying.
- Advertising allows Gmail to be free. I never even notice the text ads, however (much to the chagrin of the companies paying for the ads). There are no banner or flash ads.
Here’s the process I go through to set someone up on Gmail. I’ve created it as a table because for each step, I may need to take notes (to remind myself what I’ve done so far) or ask questions of the person I’m helping out. (If you want to use this table yourself, you probably can’t successfully paste it directly into a word or excel document without losing the formatting. Try pasting it into a notepad document, then copying that into an excel document. Whew!)
Below this table are explanations of how to complete each task.
| Questions | Answer |
| What is David’s Gmail address and password, or what address does David want to have? | |
| What are David’s other email addresses and passwords? | |
| For the purpose of creating labels, what are David’s different “life arenas”? (E.g. work/personal/education, instruments, sports, clubs, school, projects) | |
| For creating filters (rules) for those labels, what are some keywords that should automatically assign certain labels to incoming emails? | |
| Are there any particular emails David would like to be automatically labeled and removed from his inbox? (E.g. a mailing list you want to read at certain times, but don’t want cluttering your inbox) | |
| Are there particularly important senders or topics David wants to be automatically emphasized? (You’ll create a rule to add a star to these emails.) | |
| Do any of David’s existing email addresses have filters/rules he wants brought over to Gmail? | |
| Does David want to send out an email to all his old contacts to let them know he has a new email address? | |
| Where can all David’s existing contacts be found, so they can be added to Gmail? | |
| What does David want his email signature to be? | |
| Choose a nice theme David likes (in the Themes tab of Settings). | |
| Ask if David has any other ideas, questions or things he thinks you should consider or do. | |
| What To Do (see further explanations below) |
Notes |
| 1. Create a Gmail address (if David doesn’t already have one) | |
| 2(a). Import all the emails and contacts from David’s existing email addresses. | |
| 2(b). Redirect/Forward emails from any email addresses that don’t allow POP3 access | |
| 2(c). Add contacts from other sources David might have | |
| 3. Set up special-purpose filters and labels | |
| 4. Create filters to meet the needs described by David. | |
| 5. Send an email to all David’s contacts to let them know he has a new email address (if David wanted you to do this). | |
| 6. Tweak settings, and add Labs | |
| 7. Go on David’s computer to set up Offline email access, and hierarchical labels. | |
| 8. Try to set up anything else David wanted set up. | |
| 9. Email David a list of useful pages to bookmark | |
| 10. Encourage David to change his email passwords once you’re done |
Notes for the above tasks:
- If David doesn’t have a Gmail address already, check if david.lastname@gmail.com is available. If not, sit down with him to choose an alternative. You can add numbers, a middle initial or middle name, or use an alternative spelling (e.g. Dave instead of David).
- Bringing over his existing emails and contact info:
- Set up POP3 access to his existing email addresses through Gmail. Go into Gmail’s Settings, in the Accounts tab. In the “Get mail from other accounts” section, use the “Add a mail account you own” link to get Gmail to automatically pull mail from another address, including older emails.
- Gmail only pulls from the inbox of the email you’re fetching from. Anything filed away in other folders won’t be grabbed, so you should move everything in your old email adress into the inbox. You can even move Sent emails into the inbox, if you want to keep your history of sent emails as well.
- Gmail seems to only grab 200 emails from your old address at a time, so you may not immediately get all your old emails at once. Be patient; you’ll have them all soon! (In the Accounts section of your Gmail Settings, you can see how many emails it still needs to grab.)
- For any email addresses that don’t work using Gmail’s built in mail fetcher tool, this blog post has some useful advice for popular free services. If you’re trying to import from some other email service, you may have to go to that email address’s settings and instruct it to redirect all email to David’s gmail address. Choose to redirect email if possible (rather than forwarding it), which will retain the original sender (making it appear to come from the person who sent it to David, instead of making it appear to come from David’s old email address).
- If you want to get fancy (ignore this whole bullet point if you don’t), redirect/forward it to David’s Gmail address, using a “plus-address”. Gmail has a handy feature that allows David to receive any email sent to david.lastname+whatevertextyouwant@gmail.com . You can add whatever text you want after a plus sign in the email address, and it will still get to David. This allows you to create filters for certain sources of email. For example, if David has an old email address (e.g. supercoolguy@allthecoolguys.com) that he wants to redirect/forward to his Gmail address, you can go into the settings for that email address, and request it to redirect/forward all emails to david.lastname+supercoolguy@gmail.com. Then go into David’s Gmail, and set up a filter that labels all emails sent to david.lastname+supercoolguy@gmail.com a certain way. That way he’ll be able to see which of his emails in his unified Gmail inbox were initially sent to his supercoolguy email address. This is especially helpful if David wants to be able to keep different realms of his life compartmentalized, but still wants to read all his email in the same inbox.
- If David keeps any other contacts elsewhere, you should add them to a CSV (comma separated value) file and import them to Gmail. Make sure to use the proper column headers in the CSV; anything Gmail doesn’t recognize will get dumped into the contact’s Notes section, which won’t be very helpful. Here are some that Gmail will interpret correctly: First Name [you can put the person's whole name in here], Notes, E-mail Address, Primary Phone, Home Address, Job Title, Department, Other Phone
- Set up POP3 access to his existing email addresses through Gmail. Go into Gmail’s Settings, in the Accounts tab. In the “Get mail from other accounts” section, use the “Add a mail account you own” link to get Gmail to automatically pull mail from another address, including older emails.
- Set up special filters and labels to automatically label certain types of messages. Here are the filters you should create (see the link to the video tutorials, below, if you’re not familiar with creating filters):
- Subject:important –> Star the email
- {confirmation confirmations “order status” “your order” “track order” “has been delivered” “Order Number” “Sub-Total” “Billing Address” “Payment Method”} –> Apply Label: Confirmations
- Create any additional filters based on what David said he’d need (e.g. a filter to label emails related to a business or hobby of his, or to star messages from a particular sender, such as his boss or wife).
- If David wanted you to send out an email to his old email contacts, compose something simple from David’s new Gmail account letting them know he’d like them to update their address books. (This isn’t essential if Gmail fetches emails from old email addresses, but protects against the old email provider going under, and ensures his new emails to his contacts won’t end up in their spam folder.)
- Go through the Settings and Labs for David’s new Gmail account. Here are some things I’d recommend:
- General tab:
- Keyboard shortcuts: Enable shortcuts
- Email Signature: Create an email signature David
- Labs tab: Here are some labs I’d recommend enabling.
- YouTube previews in mail
- Picasa previews in mail
- Flickr previews in mail
- Yelp previews in mail
- Google Voice player in mail (if David has Google Voice)
- Google Docs previews in mail
- Message translation
- Signature tweaks
- Canned Responses
- Navbar drag and drop
- Vacation Time!
- Custom Label Colors
- Mark as Read Button
- Default Text Styling
- Inbox preview
- Authentication icon for verified senders
- Undo Send
- Don’t forget Bob
- Got the wrong Bob?
- Inserting images
- General tab:
- Go on David’s computer to enable Offline access, and set up hierarchical labels.
- Offline access: If David uses Firefox, install Google Gears. Then, while logged onto his Gmail, enable Offline access by clicking the Offline tab of Settings.
- Hierarchical labels (sub-labels): Install the Greasemonkey firefox extension, then once you restart firefox, install the Folders4Gmail greasemonkey script.
- Set up any other requests David had.
- Email David the list of resources below he might need if he’s not familiar with Gmail’s features.
- Gmail keyboard shortcuts
- Screencasts (video tutorials):
- Encourage David to change his passwords for his email. Even if you didn’t write them down, the passwords might be stored somewhere on your computer, and David’s email will be more secure with a new password.
Any other questions? Let me know in the comments!
Filed under: Musings
Do you play Hearts? You do? 
Wonderful! I love the strategy involved in Hearts, and I particularly love shooting the moon. There are few games that require such a mastery of the other players, and which are so unforgiving of screw-ups, as Hearts is when you’re shooting the moon.
As much as it hurts when someone else shoots the moon, under certain circumstances it makes sense to let someone shoot.
There’s no space here for a full explanation of the game of Hearts here, but as a quick reminder, each heart you take in a trick counts for one point, and the Queen of hearts (from here on out, simple the “Queen”) counts for 13 points. Points are bad. Normally you avoid taking point cards, but if you take every heart and the Queen, you have shot the moon, which forces all the other players to take 26 points instead of you.
Since having 26 points added to your score is pretty awful, experienced players do pretty much whatever they can to prevent another player from shooting the moon. If I must sacrifice by holding on to a high heart, so I can take a few points, that makes sense because it saves me from getting hit with 26 points when the player successfully shoots the moon. Most players who are sophisticated enough to notice when someone is shooting are willing to take a bullet to stop someone else from shooting.
But there are circumstances under which it makes sense to let someone else shoot the moon. If preventing someone from shooting the moon will force you to take 14 points or more, it is more in your benefit to let that player shoot, even though it may seem to make sense to take 14 points instead of 26. Don’t agree? I’ll explain why.
First ask yourself: which of these options would you prefer? (For the sake of this exercise, assume no on is near 100 points, which would end the game.)
- Option A: Knock 10 points off your score
- Option B: Give 10 points to someone else
The two options may seem the same, but in fact Option A is 3 times better than Option B. Think about it – scores are only important relative to the scores of other players (again, ignoring the 100-point end-of-game limit, which I’ll come back to). Knocking 10 points off your own score puts you 10 points lower compared to every other player, making it just as good as adding 10 points to each of your opponents’ scores.
Think about it another way: If you had to add 10 points to your score (which is bad, of course), other players would also have to add 10 points to each of their scores to make you unconcerned about your own point increase.
In plain English, you should care three times as much about points you take as points any other player takes. (If you’re interested, an equation describes your utility (your interests): U = points you must take + (all points other players take)/3 )
What this means is that while letting someone else shoot the moon is definitely bad for you, it’s offset some by the fact that two other players also have to suffer (which is good). If you have to suffer personally to prevent someone from shooting, no one else shares in the points you take.
If you work through the math, it’s more in your interest to let someone shoot the moon than take 14 or more points to stop them. In other words, if you’ll have to take the Queen plus one or more hearts to stymie them, it isn’t worth it.
Now we come to the exception to this rule: long-term strategic play. Suppose Emma is trying to shoot the moon, and her success will push someone over 100 points. If that will leave you in a bad spot (e.g. you’re in 3rd or 4th place already), you might want to take a bullet to prolong the game, which might give you time to get ahead of other players. Of course, even in the beginning of the game, you might let someone shoot if they’re a less-skilled player you expect you’ll beat, or if they’re way behind, and you don’t anticipate a threat from them.
On the other hand, strategic considerations might make it worth it to let someone shoot the moon to avoid even smaller sacrifices on your behalf than 14 points. The important thing to remember is that points added to your score are 3 times as potent as points added to other players’ scores.
Let me know your thoughts on this!
Filed under: Internet/Computer
I recently got a Droid 
phone (which I’ll probably write more about at some point), and I love the Android platform. Philosophically, I love the openness of it, and with so many phones planned to come out for it, I think the app count and quality will soon shoot way past the iPhone market.
But that will happen a lot faster if Android makes its Market suck a little bit less.
I have several beefs to grind with the Android Market:
- There’s no search! This fact is so hard for me to believe that every time I mention it, I have to go back and check to make sure I didn’t miss it somehow. Hold on a moment…nope, still no search box. For any directory/listing website these days, especially a Google website, this is ridiculous. I have to resort to doing a site search:
“site:www.android.com/market/ my search term”
But this is clumsy, and way more than I should have to do. Androlib, a pretty useful site, only even exists because of all the gaps in the Android market. - No QR codes: It’s becoming common practice to display an application’s QR Code (2-D barcode), or link to it, whenever talking about the app. (See my previous post about QR codes.) The Market, however, fails completely in this regard. I’m required to manually type in the name of any app I like.
- If an app isn’t available for your particular phone, good luck finding out why. I tried for 10 minutes to get the Layar app for my phone, but the Market (on my phone) kept telling me there were no results. I finally had to read a blog post on the Layar website to find out that the app isn’t supported on my Droid phone. Couldn’t the Market search have told me that?
The Market really needs to clean up its act. Until then, I’ll keep on dreading using it.
I have a Droid phone, and I love it. But applications for the phone are way harder to find than they should be. This post is a call for everyone to make it easier to find and share applications.
You might ask, What’s the problem now? Isn’t it easy to type the name of the application into the phone? I say no – it isn’t easy. The keyboard isn’t fun to use. It may seem a small hassle, but small hassles are often the difference between being willing to do something, and being unwilling to do it. For example, if you write about a website, and include a link, you’ll get a much higher clickthrough rate than if you were to leave the website unlinked, forcing people to copy and paste the URL into their browser. It’s easy to do, but that small difference will prevent lots of people from checking out the site you’re mentioning.
QR Code
With mobile phone applications (and, in fact, with any URL), there are these handy things called QR Codes. A QR Code is like a special type of barcode that encodes for a particular URL. Most smartphones can read a QR Code (using their camera), and go automatically to the URL. They’re used a lot in Japan on advertisements, so if you want to know more about the product being hocked, you can quickly go to the website on your phone.
Every Android application also has a dedicated QR Code, but for some reason most people haven’t gotten into the habit of using them much. In these days of camera phones, omitting a QR Code is tantamount to forgetting to link to a website you’re talking about.
Barcode Scanner
To scan a QR Code, you’ll need some sort of scanner app, like Google’s Barcode Scanner. This scanner (or another) really should come standard with every camera phone. Actually, this capability should be built into the Camera and Market applications, instead of being a separate application that you need to download.
Here are all the places QR Codes should be, but usually aren’t:
- On every application listed in the Android Market
- The Market should also have an easy-to-browse database of all the QR Codes for each application, so it’s easier for everyone else to display the QR Code they need. (Androlib makes excellent use of this practice, but the whole Androlib site only exists because the Android Market is so horrendous and difficult to use. If the Market got its act together, Androlib wouldn’t have any reason to exist.)
- In the settings of every application on your smartphone, to make it easy to share apps with someone else (so they can just scan your phone’s screen)
- On any article mentioning an application (as I said, this is analogous to a link)
I think this is so important for the development of the smartphone ecosystem that I’ve taken to leaving comments on every article that mentions apps without a QR Code, demanding to see QR Codes. You can help make this a standard convention by doing the same with this text (or write your own):
It’s becoming common practice to display an application’s QR Code (2-D barcode), or link to it, whenever talking about the app. This page is less useful if apps don’t have QR Codes mentioned.
In the age of in-phone barcode scanners, leaving out the QR code is tantamount to talking about a website without remembering to link to it.
Please join others in displaying an app’s QR Code when talking about it!
Because all these practices haven’t become commonplace, I’ve put together this list of QR codes for my favorite apps – partly to share with all of you, but mostly so I can bookmark this post on my phone, and pull it up when I want to show someone else an app they should really have. This way, they can just scan the phone screen. It’s a clumsy workaround to what should be an easy thing, but until app makers start displaying QR codes in their settings, it’s what I have to do.
Advanced Task Killer Free
Barcode Scanner
Ultimate Stopwatch and Timer
Google Voice
Mototorch LED
Free Wifi Finder
DockRunner
Last FM
Pandora
Slacker Radio
Photoshop Editor
Astro File Manager
Twidroid
Wapedia
Voice Recorder
Bubble Level
Fring
Chess Clock
Cardio Trainer - GPS workout tracker
Dolphin Browser (with pinch-zoom!)
Filed under: Internet/Computer
There are websites and programs out there that will take a bunch of pictures 
and automatically turn them into a photo collage. Sweet! I played around with two, Picasa (the program that’s part of the Google constellation) and Shapecollage.com. They each have strengths and weaknesses, though at the end of the day both are great tools that make it really easy to get a cool effect.
This heart-shaped collage was created by Shape Collage. The website is easy to use, and assembles a collage out of images on websites. You can enter any combination of direct links to images, and also the url of a website with thumbnails (including a Google images search result), which can be more useful. You can choose from a handful of shapes, or make the collage in the shape of some text. Then you’re done!
Actually, you’re not quite done. One of the odd things about Shape Collage is that I couldn’t find an easy way to download the final image of the collage. The collage is broken up into a bunch of links to each photo within the collage, which can be cool, but doesn’t help if you want to save the entire collage to your computer, or import it somewhere else on the web. (If I missed this, let me know how to get the image!) I had to use a screen grab and do some cropping, which was enough of a hassle to make me think twice before using the website again.
Shape Collage’s website only uses web images, though they also have a free program that has more features, and could probably assemble collages from images on your own machine. I haven’t tried the program, but would love to hear from anyone who has. As a result, to make this heart I had to upload all these images to my Picasa account. If I wanted to do it again, I’d consider downloading the program so I could skip the upload process.
Also, I guess I didn’t have enough photos for Shape Collage’s tastes, and you’ll notice that there are a bunch of duplicates in the collage. This is okay with me, but I’d prefer if they made sure any duplicates were in different parts of the collage so it wasn’t so obvious they were duplicated.
Picasa, a program by Google, is also powerful and easy-to-use. Picasa works from pictures on your machine (not on the web), which is preferable for many purposes. Picasa doesn’t have the option to form collages of particular shapes, but it does have more options for the types of collages. Here are the examples (click the image to see the examples larger):
The top-left is, of course, the Shape Collage image from above. The other options here:
- Top-center: Picture pile. this is the same format that Shape Collage uses, although it seems you can only arrange the photos within a rectangular frame. You can, however, hit the Scramble button to rearrange them, or rearrange photos manually.
- Top-right and bottom-left: Mosaic, and Framed Mosaic. This is a really cool layout, especially the framed mosaic.
- Bottom-center: Grid. I actually used the grid layout to create the display above! Very useful.
- Bottom-right: Contact sheet. I’m not quite sure what the use of this is, since you can’t add captions below the photos.
Beyond the layouts, you can choose between borderless photos, white-bordered photos, and photos in what looks like a Polaroid border (which Picasa humorously refers to as “Looks like a familiar brand of instant camera”, without mentioning “Polaroid”). So Picasa is far more customizable than Shape Collage, despite lacking the ability to form collages in special shapes. Picasa also makes it extremely easy to generate a single image from the collage (unlike Shape Collage).
Overall, Picasa is by far my preference, though Shape Collage’s ability to create collages in particular shapes is useful enough that I can see myself using it again, either on the web or through their free program.
Do you use one of these, or any other, collage tools? Let me know in the comments!
Filed under: Constructor
This work (my description and pictures of my contraption 
here) is in the Public Domain. That means you can use it however you like – I’m sharing it!
What do you do with your physical photographs in the Facebook age? It’s a real problem for me, because on the one hand I almost never look through the photo albums of physical photos sitting on my self. Probably no more than once every six months or so, and usually then I spend no more than five minutes at it.
But on the other hand, I can hardly stand to throw them all out. I’ve scanned all them, but still hate to just throw them all away.
So I decided to throw together a “photo holder” for the lid of my laptop, using duct tape and cardstock. This way I can enjoy a photo for a week, swap it out for another at the end of the week, and feel comfortable about throwing it out because I’ve enjoyed it for a week. It also creates a conversation topic, and spruces up my otherwise-plain laptop some.
This is a project you can do in about 5 minutes, for no cost if you have the materials lying around.
Here are the photos of the project:
This is all you need - duct tape, cardstock, scissors, and a photo
Cut triangles from the cardstock
Use the photograph itself to space the cardstock corners correctly, and tape the cardstock to the laptop
The photo slips in pretty easily. I gave my holder a tilt to make it more dynamic.
In case you were wondering, the photo in the laptop photo holder is of my friends and I goofing off after giving out free milk and cookies around Finals time at UC Davis when we were students there.
Let me know if you have other creative ways of using old photographs!
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m a recent convert to Settlers of Catan.
Actually, I guess I’m not quite a “convert” – I’ve been looking forward to playing the game ever since I read an article about it in Wired magazine. I just didn’t get to play until a few weeks ago.
So far, I’ve only played five times, but have come up with some really creative trading strategies. As an admitted novice, I don’t know if this sort of trading is standard among Catan circles or not. It seemed novel to the people I’ve spoken to so far, though. (Let me know in the comments if you use this sort of trading when you play!)
The obvious way to trade is to offer someone one or more of my resources in exchange for one or more of hers. But with a bit of trust, there are so many more possibilities! How many people have made trades other than one-time, present-moment trades? Here are some examples of other ways to trade:
Borrowing: When I really need a particular resource, and just don’t have enough in my hand, I’ll ask my fellow players for a loan of some resource. With open-minded players, I’m usually able to find some agreement that is mutually beneficial.
- How it works: We usually end up agreeing on me paying back two resources of similar value to the one I’m borrowing. For example, Anthony might give me a Wheat now, on my turn, and I promise that the very next two Wood or Brick resources that come into my hand will go directly to him. If I come upon a lot of some other resource sooner than Wood or Brick, he and I might come to an agreement to discharge my debt earlier by paying something else instead.
- Potential drawbacks: If you don’t trust me, this sort of trade obviously won’t work. Also, the I have little incentive to go out of his way to get the resource owed. If I borrow a Wheat in exchange for two Bricks later, it might be a while before I get the Brick. And until then, I have no real incentive to trade for brick, because I know I’ll immediately have to give it up. The lender might take this into account when deciding how much to ask in return.
- One way to address my lack of incentive for paying Anthony back early is to build “interest” into the loan. We might agree that I’ll owe Anthony two Wood or Brick if I can pay him within two rounds, but every extra round of turns after that, my debt will increase by one Wood or Brick. That way Anthony knows I’ll work hard to trade for the resources to pay him back as soon as I’m able. I would prefer to avoid such a clause, of course, because I’m better of without it, but Anthony might be wise to refuse to loan except under such an agreement.
Thief Threats: Without any data, I’d guess that this is the most commonly used non-standard trade agreement. It’s blackmail, of course, and I never use this myself because I think it makes the game unnecessarily personal, but I have many times heard a friend try to get another player to cough up some resources to prevent being hit with the thief.
- This “trade” is interesting because it has the potentially receive payments from multiple people, if people really lived in fear of the thief.
- Drawbacks: It decreases your goodwill – people are less likely to give you the benefit of the doubt, or trust you, if you threaten them.
Banking and Credit Unions: If you have more than seven cards and you’re concerned about having to give up half because of the thief, you need a banker! If I have fewer than seven cards myself, I could offer to “bank” anyone’s cards (hold on to them until they want them back). I could charge for the service, or could form a “credit union” – an agreement between two or more players to all hold on to each other’s cards for free whenever the need arises.
- How it works:
- Technically, banking is a free loan – I’ll give Kirk my excess cards for free (though there may be a payment included), with the understanding that he’ll hold on to them without using them, and will give them back to me when I want them. Obviously, this requires some real trust. If you’re considering banking with another player, I’d advise asking them frankly if they can be trusted.
- Because trades can only go through the player whose turn it is, banking only works on either the banker’s or the client’s turn. (An exception: when it’s the turn of an uninvolved but agreeable player, that player might agree to be a “broker” and allow the transaction to pass through him. So if I want Kirk to hold onto my cards, but it’s Dani’s turn, she could agree to pass my extra cards to Kirk so I won’t get penalized by the thief before I have a chance to spend. this, of course, requires that I trust both Kirk and Dani. Which I do, as it happens.)
- Banking is most easily done when someone willing to accept a “deposit” has a small number of cards. If I have more than seven cards of my own, I won’t make a very good banker, because I am myself vulnerable to the thief. I can think of two exceptions to this, however. First, if I charge for my banking services, I might promise to throw away my own cards before throwing away my client’s cards. Whatever price I charge would have to take this willingness into account (i.e., I would charge more for this promise). Second, if I have an even number of cards (and more than seven), I can safely accept one card without affecting the number of cards I’d have to dump if the thief struck.
Options (on a port, or on resource production): If I sit on a valuable port (e.g., the 2-sheep-for-1-of-anything port), I might sell rights to trade through my port. I could also sell rights to trade for some resource I produce at a certain specified rate.
- How it works: Dani is sitting on a Sheep goldmine – she has two cities on a pasture tile with a 6 on it. She can always trade the Sheep to other players, but with such a glut of sheep, she has more than people want. She can trade it to “the outside world” at a rate of 4 Sheep for 1 of something else, but wants to get a better rate. If I sit on a 2-for-1 Sheep port, I’ll be able to offer her a preferential rate on sheep – I’d be willing to accept 3 sheep at any time for whatever she wants, knowing I can profit by converting two of those into a resource of any type. I could also offer Dani rights to the port, however. She could pay me an up-front price (say, 3 Sheep), and forever after have the right to trade only 2 Sheep to me for whatever resource she wants in return. I profit because I’m paid in advance on trades she might never actually need to make, and she profits by having that option whenever she wants.
- One caveat is that I can only convert Sheep (via the port) on my turn. In my experience, most people think about their trades only on their own turns (perhaps this changes with more intermediate players), so when she’s looking to offload her Sheep, I can only offer her what I have in my hand. If she wants Ore and I don’t have it, I’ll have to offer it to her the next time my turn rolls around.
- I don’t use this strategy much these days, because I have since come to the conclusion that I’ll do better if I trade lots, with lots of people, without inhibiting trade by charging a premium to use my port. If I have a 2-for-1, I’ll usually allow people to trade with me without paying any extra at all. I do this for two reasons. First, it creates goodwill – I build the reputation of someone who will trade with you on good terms even if I don’t seem to profit by it. Second, it does help me if I’m in need of some resource not in my hand. If I have only a Brick and an Ore, and I really want a road (requiring Brick and Wood), there’s no sure way for me to convert that Ore into Wood. I can’t be sure players will be willing, or even able, to trade my Ore for their Wood. But if Dani wants my Ore and has two Sheep, I can use the Sheep to get me my Wood. I’m not only converting resources for Dani; I’m also allowing myself to change the composition of my hand, which is useful.
- I could also sell the right to an option on a resource tile I occupy. If I corner the market on Wheat, someone could pay me for the right to always be able to buy one Wheat for one Brick, for example. If they have designs on some serious city-building, or want to know they can buy development cards whenever they need, this will help ensure they’ll have access (as long as my Wheat fields are producing). They could also, I suppose, buy my unwillingness to trade Wheat with the other player, though I’d never agree to this sort of arrangement because I believe it personalizes the game too much.
Gifts and favorable trades to stymie a mutual enemy: I’ve seen that it’s quite common to embargo a player who is on the verge of winning. But I haven’t ever seen players give gifts or favorable trades to other players who could take the player in the lead down a few notches. Why not? I think it just hasn’t really occurred to other players. Or perhaps the opportunity hasn’t presented itself.
- How it works: Jordan has the longest road, has a development card that might be a victory point, and appears to have the resources to build a city on his next turn, which will probably give him 10 victory points, and the win. There are several turns before his, though. If Kim has a road nearly as long as Jordan’s, and she isn’t herself on the cusp of victory, Adam and I could trade with Kim to give her the resources necessary to take the Longest Road card. If she doesn’t have much to trade with us, we could offer her very favorable trade terms (say, an interest-free loan), or might even make a gift if necessary. (The same strategy could be used to help a player wrest control of the Largest Army card, but would take longer to implement since Soldier cards can’t be played immediately, and because a non-Soldier card might be drawn.)
- We could also trade to enable another player to cut Jordan’s road in two by building a city along it, and might cause the Longest Road card to shift to another player, or return to the deck entirely.
- Drawbacks: This is obviously a dangerous strategy because we might cause Kim to win by advantaging her over Jordan. It may only be a viable strategy when Jordan is significantly ahead, or if Kim is significantly behind.
That’s all I’ve worked out so far! Clue me in to any creative trading schemes you’ve practice or considered.
