kev asleep at the wheel, 40 miles left to go

on using Firefox at work

We’ve had some good press in the last month or two, notably IBM’s announcement of Firefox as its default browser, and a Forrester Research report stating that Firefox has a 20% share in the companies they surveyed. I think it’s important that we have a good story for getting Firefox into the hands of people in the work environment, but the story needs to be put together. This is where you come in.

At the Mozilla Summit a week and a half ago, I gave a 30-minute talk on some of the challenges the IT groups that support us face with deploying Firefox. It’s not a new discussion by any means, but it’s something I’d like to raise awareness on within the community and actively contribute to addressing. I wanted to get people thinking about all the bits outside the product at a high level, and called out what I think are the important parts along with what we’ll need to do. It’s not exhaustive, but I think it got the point across, and there were some great follow-on conversations that are on-going.

Our mission is to promote openness, innovation, and opportunity on the web. Making it easier for organizations to use our products in their workplace is a great opportunity to take that message to them. There’s a lot of people who use us at home, but who’d also love to use us at work. I want to help make that happen and, thankfully, I’m not alone.

The end game is to improve support for groups that are looking to get Firefox into the hands of their organization’s users, and to get the working group that addresses these problems spun back up to share how they do it with everyone else. There’s interest from organizations that want to use Firefox in their workplace, and a need for information on how to do it repeatably. The latter part is the tricksy bit, and I’m hoping to work on this with some like-minded individuals in the short and long term.

A few people have asked for the slides, so I figured I’d post them here. My presentation slides can be viewed using Google Docs, and if you want them in an editable format all you have to do is ask. I’d love to hear what you think, and would also love for you to get involved. If you’re interested in participating, add your name to the Working Group’s Participants section; I hope to reboot the group at the end of the summer, and will be in touch.

ok, I’ll play too.

I don’t generally participate in memes but, I confess, I did like 3lime’s a waste of time a bit of fun (her blog is worth the read). also, I am procrastinating finishing a presentation I have to give on wednesday for summit.

here goes:

What experience has most shaped you and why?

my mother’s putting everyone else’s needs in front of hers. she was an amazing woman, and did everything for us. in the end, it killed her, and she’s missed so many things we would have liked to have had her around for. it’s taught me that it’s ok to be selfish, and that you have to look out for yourself, but that it doesn’t have to come at the expense of others. there’s a balance there, and you need to figure it out.

If you had a whole day with no commitments what would you do?

I’d make coffee, read the paper, watch or read the news, and then spend the day with that girl (and hopefully some friends) eating, drinking, laughing, and playing. I get to do this every so often, and it’s wonderful. alternatively I’d play with my pinball machines; but only if there was no one around.

What food or drink could you never give up?

I don’t think there’s anything I could never give up. I also think that’s a good thing, because it’s not exactly something I can control in a lot of cases. I’d have a very hard time giving up coffee – in any of its forms – completely, and it’d also be tough to dispense with eggs and bacon. those are my favourite foods; I’m a morning kind of person.

If you could travel anywhere, where would that be and why?

Southeast Asia. There’s something incredibly compelling about Asian culture. I live in a place that has very little history and/or sense of self, and I love visiting places where you can feel the years in the surroundings. I’d love to grab a backpack and go for six months or so, and just travel through the rural/non-touristy areas of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and other locales in the area. There’s tremendous upheaval in all of those places as a millennium or two of history and tradition clashes with today, and I’d like to experience it first-hand.

Who do you have a crush on?

I have no crushes, really, these days. I’m honestly quite happy where I am, and I want for nothing. No, really.

Past crushes have included:

- Linda Fiorentino. Her voice kills me, still. It all started with Vision Quest (god, what a horrible movie)
- An HR rep at the company in NY I worked for. That crush was crushed when I realized she was a smoker. Oh well.
- Audrey Hepburn. As in the young Audrey Hepburn. Her eyes were amazing.
- Sharon, one of the receptionists at the office from the early nineties.
- Matt Damon. Yes, I’m kidding.

If you were the leader of your country, what would you do?

Hold the privatized entities that were once public accountable to serving the people that depend on them. The public invested an unbelievable amount into infrastructure that was sold for a song to organizations like Bell, Canadian National, and energy companies. It was incredibly short-sighted, and their privatization should have had some incentives in place to ensure those investments weren’t held against us after the fact.

Focus on program delivery versus program administration. Our government and health care systems are ridiculously large, and continue to grow in size and spending every year. I’m a proponent of small government doing big things, and believe that the amount of administrative overhead in place is unsane, especially considering that most of the shenanigans that occur are at the exec level and higher. Government continues to claw more and more money away from the people it serves, and always threatens those it represents with program – not administration – cuts. Healthcare continues to take away its coverage while continuing to increase the workload of the people delivering through over-administration. Fuck that. I don’t pay taxes just to employ a bunch of people. I pay taxes to employ people who will deliver for me.

Re-focus on self-sufficiency. I like the benefits globalization can bring, but I worry we’ve gone too far to the offshoring side. We have precious little manufacturing capability, and we’re so co-dependant on other states to function we’d be kind of screwed if there was ever any kind of meltdown. I’m not saying go nationalistic and protective, but I do think we should make a concerted effort to re-ignite manufacturing in this country, and to work on ways that are non-exploitative and cost-effective.

What am I reading right now?

The Drunkard’s Walk – Leonard Mlodinow
What the Dog Saw – Malcolm Gladwell
The Passage – Justin Cronin
Why We Run: A Natural History – B. Heinrich

What recent event has made you sad?

Letting that girl down, and realizing how a little thing can have a big impact. I’m still learning. :)

What recent event has made you angry?

Anything Dalton McGuinty. The tax grab in the HST and spin-doctory that it’s not and is good for us; the sekrit legislation to broaden police powers, and subsequent denial of responsibility; the failed promises; the weaseling; the continuation of doing nothing substantive to prevent the province’s continued slide. It’s not just Dalton, but he’s a pretty good representation of what’s wrong with our “leaders” who no longer lead.

Ok, I’m done. Must get back to my preso.

build your own browser maintenance jun 27 and 29, 2010

just a quick note that the build your own browser application will be down for maintenance on Sunday, June 27th between 0700 and 0900 Eastern (1100-1300 UTC), and Tuesday, June 29th between 0700 and 0900 Eastern (1100-1300 UTC). we’ll be increasing storage for customized distributions and pushing code updates (respectively), and the application will be unavailable for the duration of both windows.

if you think there’s any reason why this maintenance shouldn’t proceed, please let me know in the comments, or drop me a line via the BYOB contact form. I don’t foresee the maintenance taking longer than the allotted time, but sometimes stuff happens that can extend the window, and I’ll update this post if any additional time is required.

best quarterly bonus ever

a friend’s company got bought out last week, and he got a new coffee mug from his new overlords. he was quite excited.

it reminded me of the time where, after spending three weeks out of four on the road at a bill-out rate seven times my salary, my company (Silicon Graphics) rewarded me handsomely for my efforts:

<bobo> did I mention that we got bought out last week?
<bobo> we are now owned by <redacted>
<kev> yup, you did
<kev> read abt it yesterday
<bobo> couldn't remember
<bobo> I got a new mug out of the deal. weeeeeee!
<kev> q1 bonus!
<kev> (one quarter at SGI I got a $25 gift certificate for a quarterly bonus. I spent it on a green mug and a purple mug, then it was all gone)
<kev> I still have the mugs, tho

I should mention the gift certificate was for the company store. so it was probably worth something like $10. this was one of the main driving factors of my moving on to Globix in NYC (before the RIFs began in earnest). the final straw was a two-part act: I) I got a new manager, and no one told me for over a month. II) my first meeting with my new manager was for my annual performance review, where he got me confused with another employee. good times, good times… pardon my rambles.

it still saddens me greatly that SGI couldn’t market itself out of a wet paper bag outside its walls. the swag was nice, tho.

build your own browser update

tonight we pushed the fruits of the byob team’s (les orchard, neil lee, and carsten book) labour from the last couple of months to the BYOB app. there’s a whole lot of changes and fixes under the covers, as well as some changes to the user-facing features.

those additional features allow distribution creators to hide their builds from public searches, add non-default search plugins, and define bookmark folders in the bookmarks menu and toolbar that can hold up to 10 items. we’ve also reorganized things a little in the config wizard so that all addons are in one section. david rolnitzky is also helping us out with getting messaging together, and as we roll closer to 1.0 we’ll be talking a little more about BYOB and why we’re doing it.

moving forward we’ll be focusing on streamlining the registration system, re-developing the site’s look and feel (and copy), adding support for some additional add-ons, and integrating the app and build components into a little more scalable infra. I’ll be bringing the project page up to date over the next week or so, and in the interim invite you to have a peek at the changes we’ve made.

if you have questions or comments, feel free to join us in IRC in the #byob channel at irc.mozilla.org, or via the contact form on the BYOB site.

huge thanks again to les, neil, tomcat, and david for their work over the past several months. byob is an idea we’ve been kicking around for almost three years, and it’s nice to see it fast becoming a reality.

revisiting search

Mozilla Firefox has had a search bar since its initial release, and has helped to change the way our users look up information by giving them a single interface to a variety of search services. It’s also had search services in the location bar, but they’re not as accessible or (arguably) useful as what’s offered by the search bar. There have been minor tweaks along the way to how these work, but nothing fundamental has changed with respect to search features in Firefox since its original release. We need to change that. Starting now.

Search behaviours have changed, and there are a number of new – and sometimes even different – search service providers out there. Unfortunately, our users don’t always realize how many options are available to them through Firefox, the websites they visit, and search-related add-ons. Our users today are using search to find other people, stuff that’s close to them, what everyone’s talking about right now, and a host of other things, and we should be making that as easy as possible for them.

Aside from the great UI work being considered, like moving the search bar into the location bar, I think there’s considerably more we need to do across a number of domains. I’d like for us to start exploring how we improve the use and utility of search in Mozilla’s products and services, particularly:

1. What kind of information are our users searching for, and who is best-positioned to provide the most relevant information for those searches?

The web has matured in the last five years, and people are using different search services for specific tasks. We should categorize the search services that are available in Firefox, and ensure they’re relevant to the task at hand for the people who use them. The Fennec team has developed its search interface with this in mind, providing search services for different tasks that our user base performs on a regular basis, and I think this is something we should build on.

2. Are we doing a good job meeting the needs of the users in each locale we support?

Every locale we support starts with the default list of providers we offer in the US English version of Firefox. Our amazing localization teams have created these lists to add search services that are more relevant to their locales and the users in them, and they do a great job. I’d like to ensure we all have a better understanding of who those providers are, and what, if any, alternatives there are per locale. From there we can build on the categorization process, and provide a truly global list of search services for our users.

3. How can we help our users discover and use the options available to them?

There are several search features in the browser, along with search options other than what we provide by default in our search bar. We need to make it easy for users to add to the list of search engines to the list of defaults we provide, to discover that there are add-ons that enhance search utility, and that they can change things like the default search provider(s). The mechanics behind these features could be improved considerably, and we should make changes to both to make them more usable by our publishers and users alike.

4. What does our search wish list look like?

We should think hard about what we’d like to change in Firefox to make search better, as well as where we should incorporate search services and which services should be offered. We don’t need to constrain ourselves to how we’ve done things thus far, and should consider including anything and everything that will help. If we could get things just by asking, would they include things like:

• add-on searches and discovery
• suggestions on error pages
• better user control of search preferences
• context-sensitive searches by website
• searches from within new tabs
• insert your idea here (and in the comments!)

The net result of this process should be a list of new services and features we can incorporate into the Mozilla project and its individual products, and would encompass all of the information assembled. The idea is to get people thinking, and come up with a public plan for improving search across the board to keep our products relevant and useful.

None of these ideas are new, and have been considered at different times by individual groups or people. They touch the user, the product, our content providers, localization and add-on communities, and almost every functional organization at Mozilla, and requires the input of same. As such, they’ll always be considered individually unless we shift from a tactical mode of thinking to something a little more strategic. I’d like to kick things off so we can start driving towards that.

The sky should be the limit, and we shouldn’t constrain ourselves to any particular mindset.

So, how do you think search should work?

kick the tires and light the fires

It’s been a really, really long time since I’ve posted anything that was a result of thinking vs. problem solving, and I’m hoping that stops starting now. The past year has been one of the most challenging and gratifying of my life, but it has been 100% reactive, with precious little advance planning and a hell of a lot of treading water. I have a new family (I didn’t even have to add water), a new-to-me home in a town I never, ever expected to be living in (it’s great), and a job I enjoy (although it’s been a tough few months adjusting to a number of things).

I think things have settled to the point where I can sit, breathe, plan, and use something more than 140 characters to express thoughts and share info. To that end, I’ll be blogging a little more often, focusing on work, but with the odd life update thrown in. There’s a lot I want to talk about, and a lot of things I’m working on, but it’s been hard to find sixty minutes on a regular basis to get thoughts to paper. I think I’m past that now, and I’m looking forward to talking a little more about things I’m working on and thinking about, and ideally getting feedback on it.

We’ll see how it goes, but I’m going to try treating posting a little more as a required thing, and plan on using the time I normally use getting annoyed by blam and jesus diaz over at Gizmodo for something useful, instead. Wish me luck.

xbox 360 video stuttering on the panasonic pt-ae3000

I have a new PT-AE3000 projector from Panasonic, and to date I have loved everything about it except for a few games (most notably rock band 2) using the Xbox 360 with a progressive signal. The video (but not the audio) would stutter/jump at times, which could throw my timing off. It wasn’t a huge deal, but it was annoying.

I had disabled the usual culprits, namely noise reduction and Panasonic’s “Frame Creation” (used to make moving images less after-imagy), but was still getting stutter. Searching various forums didn’t really help, so I went back to the manual, and eventually found the culprit.

The projector has a setting in the “Options” menu for “Frame Response”, which is described in the manual as “You can minimise the time delay of image displayed for the progressive signals.” This feature has two settings:

• NORMAL Prioritise the image quality
• FAST Prioritise the frame response

Setting it to “FAST” cleared up the problem, and I didn’t notice any discernible difference to image quality in-game.

PowerLinc 2412U PLM and Indigo/OSX

Just a really quick hit, because it took me a little while to find this post, which pointed me in the right direction.

If you’re trying to use the PowerLinc 2412U on OSX 10.5 with the latest beta (4.1) of the Indigo home-automation and control server, you’ll need to install USB serial drivers first. It would have been nice if this was a little more apparent with either the Indigo software or the PLM’s documentation, but it’s not (or, if it is, it’s buried).

Get the USB serial drivers from here, install them, and now you should be able to see the interface and the proper port in the preferences panel. Hopefully this will save you a bit of the aggravation I went through trying to figure out why the hell I couldn’t initialize the interface between Indigo and the PLM.

a stroll down memory lane

so… wow. it’s been an interesting last year.

- I met a nice girl
- who has nice kids
- and a dog
- who now pretty much lives with me (the dog. actually, the girl too)
- and likes to chase frisbees (just the dog)
- so I go to the park again
- I’ve been to the left coast ten times
- I’ve been to Toronto six times
- I missed going to NYC at Xmas for the first time in a decade
- I completed my 365
- I filed my first patch (very, very minor)
- I turned 41
- and I feel significantly younger
- so I’ve started running again
- and have dropped 15 lbs
- and it’ll keep on dropping
- I celebrated Canada Day with Walt and Lee and company
- who also brought a dog
- I also bought a house
- I move in less than two weeks
- to a place that is not Ottawa
- but is as close (time-wise) to YOW as I am now
- and is closer to a lot of other things, like my brother (now that he’s returned from Kirkland Lake)
- it’s been crazy
- I get overwhelmed every so often
- but it’s great,

That’s life in a nutshell. There’s a bunch more, but those are the more important bits.

See? I’m not dead, after all.