I thought the streaming issues might be caused by the wireless connection to the PC.  In a perfect world I would have it plugged in with a network cable, but the layout at home prevents this.  Furthermore, I’m able to stream content through a web browser from Netflix and Hulu with pretty good consistency on the same PC.

The UI at first glance looks nice and slick.  Everything is well designed to display on a TV and be viewed from across the room.  In my case I only have a mouse connected to the PC and find navigation to be difficult.  Mouse clicks don’t always register and clicking back to previous screens often doesn’t work.  I also find the worst scenario is when you start a streaming video, it begins to chop, you try to click back to stop the video, the click doesn’t register and you are essentially stuck and have to completely restart the PC.  In my case this hard reboot sent my PC into a cycle of endless blue screens and reboots.

In short, my second go around with the new beta version wasn’t any better than the first.  Disappointed, I left a little frustration out on Twitter and to my surprise I heard back from Boxee’s support account.  We had a short conversation and I sent the log file to them.  I really like how social media tools are helping customers and businesses connect like this and was impressed that Boxee was out there listening for customer feedback.

Here are some of the partnerships I have seen over the last few weeks.

• Bravo TV
• Zagat
• City of Chicago
• Conde Nast, Marc Jacobs
• And a few more mentioned at TechCrunch and AdAge

As Foursquare continues to grow there is an effort underway to build Foursquare communities by hosting streetup events (basically a meetup with a spin on the name).  Events like this one are popping up all over the place.  Read more about it on the Foursquare streetups page.

The goal with these events is to promote the Foursquare service to both users and businesses by showing how both benefit from using the service.  For businesses, offering Foursquare promotions can help bring in customers and for customers, checking in with Foursquare can redeem promotions, specials, etc.

A small group of us in the Twin Cities plan to continue putting on events like this in the future.  If you run a restaurant or bar and are interested in partnering on hosting an event like this, please contact me.

The XAMPP installation is straightforward, but I wanted to provide some screenshots to guide a new user through to loading a test page in the browser successfully.  If anything is confusing, leave a comment below.

There are installs available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris.  The steps below are written for the Windows install.

To start, download XAMPP for Windows.  I recommend getting the EXE install.  Run the installer and select the installation destination on your PC.  I recommend sticking with the C:\ default for simplicity.

After the install is done you can start up Apache and MySQL from the XAMPP Control Panel.  If the control panel doesn’t show up right away you can launch it from the Start Menu.

If you have the built in Windows firewall running, it will ask you if you want to unblock Apache and MySQL the first time.  Go ahead and click Unblock.

Next open up your favorite browser and navigate to http://localhost/.

If Apache is running correctly you should see a splash screen where you can select your language.  After selecting that it will take you to the XAMPP home page below which gives you status information and details about the installed software packages.  You can also get to phpMyAdmin from here for working with your MySQL installation.

Now that the Apache web server is running, lets test it out with a simple Hello World example in PHP.

Navigate to the htdocs folder in your XAMPP installation (C:\xampp\htdocs by default).  Any web projects you add here will be accessible through the browser.

Create a new folder in C:\xampp\htdocs named hello.

Then create a file in the hello folder called index.php and use your favorite text editor to put this code in it.  I like Notepad ++, but Notepad works fine too.

<?php

echo ‘Hello world!’;

?>

Now go back to your browser and navigate to http://localhost/hello/index.php

If everything worked correctly your page should load with the classic programming greeting.  You now have a basic web development environment to play around in.

Got a question?  Leave a comment below.

What Is Foursquare?

Foursquare describes itself as part friend finder, social city guide and nightlife game.  So what does that mean?

 Friend Finder

• Users “check-in” to venues from a mobile device.  A venue can be any place people go like a restaurant, bar, museum, park, etc.
• You add friends to your Foursquare account and can then see each other’s check-ins.  Makes meeting up with people on the fly easy!
• Foursquare is integrated with Twitter and Facebook, so you can blast your check-ins out to a broader audience if you want.

Social City Guide

• Each venue on Foursquare has its own profile page that shows all kinds of details about it.
• Users can leave behind short tips at venues telling future users good things to order, try, do, etc.  It’s fun to check these when you visit a place for the first time.
• Venues can create promotions for Foursquare users.  Think freebies and discounts!

Nightlife Game

• Users that check-in at a venue the most often become the Mayor.  Creates an instant incentive for repeat visits.
• Check-ins also earn users points and unlock badges for certain actions.  As Foursquare evolves I think the points will become more meaningful beyond bragging rights.

How Do You Play?

Foursquare is meant to be played from your phone while you’re on the go.  There are Foursquare apps for the iPhone, Android devices, Palm devices and one is on the way for Blackberry too.  Users with phones that don’t have an app can use Foursquare’s mobile page instead (http://foursquare.com/mobile/).  Finally, if you are like me, and don’t have a smartphone, you can still check-in with standard text messages.  The apps provide a more robust user experience, but texting still gets the job done.

To use text messaging send a text to 50500 in this form:

@ Ace Bar ! Playing skeeball

The @ designates the venue name and the ! designates your shout, which is a short message you can include with your check-in.  Note that you need to text in the exact name of the venue for the check-in to register correctly.  You can search venues from Foursquare’s main page to get the exact name.  If the check-in is successful you should get a confirmation message back from Foursquare.

For Businesses

If you’re a local restaurant, bar, etc. you should definitely consider running a promotion on Foursquare.  It’s free to run an offer and can really entice users to stop by.  Find out more and sign-up for promotions here:  http://foursquare.com/businesses/.

For Developers

Foursquare recently opened up an API to developers for building applications to interact with Foursquare.  Developers are already creating some neat software like Mob Zombies.  See more information and examples here:  http://foursquare.com/developers/.

Similar to how Twitter grew in popularity last year and everyone was asking if you tweet, I think this year we’ll see the same thing happen with Foursquare.  If you have any questions about how it works leave a comment below, check Foursquare’s help page or leave a question at their Get Satisfaction site.  Go play!

Bing has a great fare predictor feature that suggests whether it is time to buy or if I should wait based on past fare observations.  It indicates the likelihood the fare will go up, down or stay the same and the potential price changes as well.  There is no guarantee it will be right, but it gives you a good sense about the direction the fare will go and in my case for this flight it was correct and I wound up getting a nice deal.  Check it out next time you need to go somewhere.

I mentioned this to some friends this week and one of them pulled out the new Droid phone, where he had some Nintendo games running in an emulator.  It’s interesting how yesterday’s games that pushed the limits of technology and cost a premium are now just nostalgic distractions you can carry around in your pocket.

It’s cool that classic games can be played on all kinds of platforms today, but it just doesn’t beat the real thing.  There is something special about the clicking sound the gun trigger makes on Duck Hunt, blowing on cartridges and not being able to save your game.

Came across an older post on a talk he did at Google this past May.  He talked about how technology is disrupting entrenched industries like media and how it has great potential to cause massive changes in other industries, specifically highlighting consumer finance, education, energy, health care and government.

I found the talk so interesting I actually started taking notes while I watched it.  The video is about an hour long or if you want a quick summary my notes are below.

Lessons From Media

• The media industry is being significantly disrupted by the Internet.
• Power and control is shifting from institutions to individuals.
  • This sounds obvious, but when you step back and think about it, I think it’s really significant.
  • For example, before the Internet, think of how difficult it was for an individual to publish ideas for a large audience.  Today with a blog I can make the same ideas available to a global audience essentially instantly all on my own for free.
• Startups don’t need as much capital to “take a shot” at large institutions because they can leverage a lot of free and relatively inexpensive technologies to get to market faster.
• Conversations on the web are exponential.  A blog post or comment can be instantly propagated to a huge audience through various web services.
• Internet technologies are disrupting businesses that are not sustainable.  Fred frames sustainable business as something that could go on forever.
• Key is to start small and solve a tiny piece of the problem first.

What’s next?  Industries that are end to end digital.

Consumer Finance

• Peer to peer lending
• Virtual currency
• New banks, built from scratch
• Social, collaborative investing services

Education

• Open course content, lesson plans, curriculum, etc.
  • This content will become commoditized.
  • Aggregating existing content will be important for sourcing the best out there.
• Web will become even more important as a digital transcript to tell your story.
  • Importance of a traditional diploma will decrease.
  • The increasing cost of higher education vs. the financial gains of having the diploma will hit a tipping point and the system will bust.
• The web will be the textbook.
  • Why pay publishers for books when the same information is online for free?
• What can be learned from the home schooling model?

Energy

• Smart grids will happen.
• Micro grids will allow people to sell surplus energy back into the grid.
• As more smart energy management devices are introduced into homes, businesses, etc. there will be a lot of data to analyze.

Health Care

• More challenging problems and not completely end to end digital.
  • Doctor is the middleman.
• Digitizing health records and effectively sharing this information across systems and providers.
  • Need to be able to securely share and collaborate with this data similar to ways emerging in social media.
  • Someone is going to get this right and the flood gates will open for development.
• People are using the web and its resources to find answers to health problems outside of traditional health care systems.
  • Meetup example about people forming groups around specific health problems.

Government

• Communication channels in government need to become more open.
  • The White House’s site is taking a more open and social approach.
• SeeClickFix example.
• See it happening at the local level first.
  • NYC Data Mine is opening up data from New York government agencies to view and use for development.
    • Sponsoring the NYC Big Apps contest.
    • Washington DC is doing something similar with Apps for Democracy.

First post.  Let’s see where this goes.  If you’re viewing this post then you made my poor Frankenstein server that hosts this site groan.  It’s cobbled together out of old spare parts, but it gets the job done for now and is proof that there is always some life left in old computer parts.

The point of building the server and this site is twofold.  First, I wanted to gain some tangible, hands-on experience with Linux and web hosting/administration by utilizing the LAMP software stack.  Secondly, I wanted to start blogging about technology and experimenting with all the great social media services popping up all over the place.  This site will serve as the playground for these activities.

On a complete side note, this is a great time of year to check out Young Frankenstein and the entire Mel Brooks catalogue.