Watching a Kickstarter project can be so entertaining when it is either something you are interested in, and/or one of those that does spectacularly.
The first Kickstarter I backed was one that I jumped in at zero minute and by the time I had finished, it was already hitting 300% funded. It went way beyond what the project creator expected or hoped for ending up at 8572% funded.
A current project at the time of this writing has been most spectacular and watching it has stretched my understanding of the tools to see the differing performances of top projects and I figured they'd be of interest to others. The basic tools are:
- Kickstarter has some basic functions under its Discover button, with a few selection and sort options.
- Kicktraq has some real nice graphs to see the patterns and that they update hourly during running project. Great for digging into individual projects, especially while they are running.
- KickSpy has a wide range of filter and sort options for comparing projects.
A current project, a Playing Card game by a comic artist that I casually follow, is going big.
In its first hour it became the top "Most Funded Playing Cards (Games)". On the second day of the project it got on the default view (top 20 projects) for "Most funded Games" and on the 3rd day got on the default view for "Most Funded" and has been creeping up since. It is fun checking and seeing the project as it moves up, sometimes just one spot, other times a refresh shows it jump a few spots.
Comparing the daily data of the top projects with Kicktraq, I see that it is currently the second highest first day number of backers after "The Veronica Mars Movie Project", but for first 2 and 3 days it has the highest number of backers, and it is just motoring up the number of backers list. I wonder if it will surpass the current #1, Bring Reading Rainbow Back.
Having seen a few projects that went so far past their initial goals but as I dug in, the numbers get warped because there are quite a few projects with ultra low goals that got enough support that you get percentage funded hitting infinity. On day three this project became the top percentage funded for projects with Goals over 500(any currency) and chasing down top for Goals over 150 which it passed as I assembled this post.
It will be interesting to see where this project ends up, and what other projects will catch my attention in the future.
2015-01-22
2013-11-13
Is every problem/challenge a nail to be hammered?
As the old saying goes, if the only tool you know is a hammer, then every challenge looks like a nail. Some people go through the same thing as they grow their proficiency with a new tool, where they try to apply it to EVERYTHING. Just like hammering a window or your thumb is not a good thing, there are many silly applications of a new tool to some task. Just because you Can do something, doesn't mean you Should do that something.
Twitter is a tool going through that very process where people try to push it into all kinds of in appropriate situations. At this point in time(2013, only 7 years after its creation) it has certainly become old hat to the early adopters and has gained mainstream awareness, but is not in regular use or really understood by the majority.
This week I was ran into one of these pushing a tool way too far, a vendor run "Live roundtable discussion" with a video presentation of their higher end corporate IT systems, with questions to be tweeted. Now in a normal Webinar where you can post questions or vendor presentation, you can have a fair amount of anonymity. Usually the vendor knows who you are and where you are from, but how you identify yourself to other participants is up to you. With using Twitter, you can't ask a question without very publicly revealing; A) A piece of your identity. B) Usually some indication of a challenge you are facing. This raises a number of problems that mostly have security related concerns:
- Competition can now target you, can you say spam tweets.
- The bad guys doing any research on you as a target or looking to exploit certain vulnerabilities now know YOUR systems may have specific weaknesses they can attempt to exploit.
- If you happen to expose something covered in any None Disclosure Agreements you have signed, you are much more likely to have to suffer the consequences of that disclosure.
- You might not even be able to tweet from where you are, whether technical and/or policy reasons. i.e. blocked by something like WebSense, or in an organization using twitter is a fireable offense.
A long time definition of twitter is 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' or 'to talk in a quick and informal way about unimportant things' and that definition was what lead the creators of Twitter to use the term. So perhaps that vendor just isn't that serious about their product and their customers.
A related rant against those who insist on one "thing" to rule them ALL that also shows a limit of twitter at the same time. Eviscerati on Writing focus
Some simple answers to the questions of any new technology at XKCD that are worth remembering when ever hearing a vendor pitch.
A great example of such inappropriate use of a technology is THE basis of Scott Stratten's "QR Codes Kill Kittens"
None Disclosure Agreement (NDA). A promise to not spread/blab what was heard at such an event outlined in a signed legal document.
Twitter is a tool going through that very process where people try to push it into all kinds of in appropriate situations. At this point in time(2013, only 7 years after its creation) it has certainly become old hat to the early adopters and has gained mainstream awareness, but is not in regular use or really understood by the majority.
This week I was ran into one of these pushing a tool way too far, a vendor run "Live roundtable discussion" with a video presentation of their higher end corporate IT systems, with questions to be tweeted. Now in a normal Webinar where you can post questions or vendor presentation, you can have a fair amount of anonymity. Usually the vendor knows who you are and where you are from, but how you identify yourself to other participants is up to you. With using Twitter, you can't ask a question without very publicly revealing; A) A piece of your identity. B) Usually some indication of a challenge you are facing. This raises a number of problems that mostly have security related concerns:
- Competition can now target you, can you say spam tweets.
- The bad guys doing any research on you as a target or looking to exploit certain vulnerabilities now know YOUR systems may have specific weaknesses they can attempt to exploit.
- If you happen to expose something covered in any None Disclosure Agreements you have signed, you are much more likely to have to suffer the consequences of that disclosure.
- You might not even be able to tweet from where you are, whether technical and/or policy reasons. i.e. blocked by something like WebSense, or in an organization using twitter is a fireable offense.
A long time definition of twitter is 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' or 'to talk in a quick and informal way about unimportant things' and that definition was what lead the creators of Twitter to use the term. So perhaps that vendor just isn't that serious about their product and their customers.
A related rant against those who insist on one "thing" to rule them ALL that also shows a limit of twitter at the same time. Eviscerati on Writing focus
Some simple answers to the questions of any new technology at XKCD that are worth remembering when ever hearing a vendor pitch.
A great example of such inappropriate use of a technology is THE basis of Scott Stratten's "QR Codes Kill Kittens"
None Disclosure Agreement (NDA). A promise to not spread/blab what was heard at such an event outlined in a signed legal document.
2013-08-13
Bar wisdom can also be Vulcan logic
In Spider Robinson's Callahan series (1977+), we are often referred to "Callahan's Law" of "Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased"
Ever since I came across that wisdom, I have tried to use it to help myself and others travel the challenges of life. It was therefor a great pleasure to see Callahan's Law expressed as Vulcan logic. I wonder how many others have caught this logical evolution of the concept.
Sarek to Spock in Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek(2009)
"It is true that logic is often its own reward -- but it is a reward best shared with others. That which is beautiful is magnified by being shared with others. That which is painful is often moderated by being shared. Both approaches are equally logical"
Ever since I came across that wisdom, I have tried to use it to help myself and others travel the challenges of life. It was therefor a great pleasure to see Callahan's Law expressed as Vulcan logic. I wonder how many others have caught this logical evolution of the concept.
Sarek to Spock in Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek(2009)
"It is true that logic is often its own reward -- but it is a reward best shared with others. That which is beautiful is magnified by being shared with others. That which is painful is often moderated by being shared. Both approaches are equally logical"
2012-08-09
The magic button — Make Everything OK
The magic button — Make Everything OK
The sad thing is that there are way too many people who think that such magic actually exists and therefor they don't have to do the hard work needed to reach their goals. sigh. but still fun to push.
The sad thing is that there are way too many people who think that such magic actually exists and therefor they don't have to do the hard work needed to reach their goals. sigh. but still fun to push.
2012-07-04
Modern Togetherness
A couple, each working on their own things in the same small room, with music on headphones to tune out the distracting environmental sounds, staying in touch with instant messaging, even though they could just turn to touch the other (they do some of that too :).
2012-06-29
Link rot
sigh. I just went through a round up updating one of my websites, and a part of that was just dealing with link rot ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot ). Now I understand whole websites going away when the sponsor ceases to exist, but what is so frustrating are the sites that keep shuffling everything around every few years for no apparent reason, "to improve the user experience" is just too lame an excuse for most of the changes. Worst yet are the retirement of data just because it is 'old' (aka Age discrimination) as if nobody ever keeps products running past their design life, or that newer versions actually migrated the excellent 1st generation documentation in the the current sets. I have made use of 20 year old manuals as they were the most comprehensive for what I was doing even if they missed some of the recently added features. I make a point of trying to keep all my links consistent so that even when the root domain has been switched out from under me, they rest of the links can still be used at the new location.
I try to follow Tim Berners-Lee advice in http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI as much as possible on this front.
I try to follow Tim Berners-Lee advice in http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI as much as possible on this front.
2012-06-19
Assumptions: All computer operators are programmers
As a technical person that came through the DOS/OS2/NetWare/Windows path, it has been an interesting set of challenges learning to install and support Linux systems. One of the biggest has been that many in the open source world that Linux is a part of, is that everyone who isn't a total end-user, must be a full programmer. This is so clear in much of the documentation (man/info pages) as it is in many of the forums/chat groups.
An example is the documentation for the Linux 'free' command which tells you all the switches for the command, but without any indication of what the output of the command really means, because it is supposedly obvious. I think I have it mostly figured out at http://www.konecnyad.ca/andyk/freemem.htm, but that is only through lots of Googling and finding blogs that actually go into it to explain different points.
In too many of the forums, I've seen people trying to learn being told that it was simply obvious and beneath requiring an explanation, or that the answer was a tiny bit of programming and therefor 'simple'. This sounds like the arrogance you see in academia, like a physicist that showed that the physics of a fusion reactor was proven and it 'only' needed some engineering to finish (over 5 years ago and we still don't have that reactor design adding power to the grid that I can tell).
I would say this is one of the biggest obstacles to Linux getting anywhere near mainstream, because so many supporters keep treating mainstream as not worthy of the support they need. I can only think that many of them crying for mainstream acceptance are really just elitists who really don't want to share. But I will keep pushing to break those barriers as I believe that open source is still the most efficient way forward for the bulk of IT.
An example is the documentation for the Linux 'free' command which tells you all the switches for the command, but without any indication of what the output of the command really means, because it is supposedly obvious. I think I have it mostly figured out at http://www.konecnyad.ca/andyk/freemem.htm, but that is only through lots of Googling and finding blogs that actually go into it to explain different points.
In too many of the forums, I've seen people trying to learn being told that it was simply obvious and beneath requiring an explanation, or that the answer was a tiny bit of programming and therefor 'simple'. This sounds like the arrogance you see in academia, like a physicist that showed that the physics of a fusion reactor was proven and it 'only' needed some engineering to finish (over 5 years ago and we still don't have that reactor design adding power to the grid that I can tell).
I would say this is one of the biggest obstacles to Linux getting anywhere near mainstream, because so many supporters keep treating mainstream as not worthy of the support they need. I can only think that many of them crying for mainstream acceptance are really just elitists who really don't want to share. But I will keep pushing to break those barriers as I believe that open source is still the most efficient way forward for the bulk of IT.
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