Reputation management and centralized forum repositories

Having been on several peripheral jeep forums I think to myself that it shouldnt be neccessary to have to visit so many sites to get all your forum action together. Also, it comes to mind that many of the popular forums, including Pirate 4x4 have had scalability issues in the past, especially when it comes to their search features.

From a redundancy standpoint it makes sense to have your forums spaced out, so you dont have a catastrophic loss of data take out all total forum content, but companies like Google, and Wal-Mart have shown us that proper management of data is possible, even on a rediculously massive scale. Why then couldnt we have a centralized forum data storage system and make sites like Pirate 4x4 and NAXJA filtered portals onto that data.

Most forums now follow the folder mentality that we've struggled with through the majority of our computing history. With the emergance of Web 2.0 style features in Flickr, Gmail, and others we have the opportunity to apply tags to data that allow it to belong to multiple categories.

For example, if you wanted to create a forum site that dealt with 1988-2003 jeep cherokee's you could create a filter on a centralized forum system that displays tagged data with this tag list (1988:2003, jeep, cherokee, suv), and then you are good to go. Data items could have universally unique identifiers, so that you could track relations between data, including responses and threading. Obviously you would have issues with spam if you just used it straight up like this, since any yokel could tag data as jeep and cherokee, but if you combined this with a reputation management system that linked in data about how much you trust individuals, the cream of the crop would rise to the top.

Google is in such a perfect position to do something like this. There are a lot of high dollar transactions going back and forth in these forums, as offroading in general can be a very expensive hobbby. Why not capitalize on this and offer google adwords like advertising to portal sites that customizes views on the global forum namespace.

Break dance video, becoming way too into Google Video

I spend waay too much time on google video. I think the background track for this would make a nice song to set some Halo time trials to.

Cirque: Delirium

I just minutes ago caught the live show Delirium by Cirque Du Soleil. It was utterly amazing. I am speachless.

This show relies on a beautiful mix of prerecorded visuals and live stage performance to send you on a two hour journey through different musical styles. My favorite part was the stuff set to an electronic dance beat, but everything was good.

I cant explain how awesome it was, go to the link I posted and check out some sample tracks. Then go see it live.

Orlandoweekly.com 's description was a bit more detailed.

Happy Easter Weekend

Red Rubi over at Orlando Jeep Chat set me up with this hilarious video.

Forward swept wings

IMGP0787.JPG
Originally uploaded by JonnyRo.

I had read about airplanes like this, but on my trip to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum I got to see one for the very first time.

It's amazing, like something out of a science fiction novel. Jets like this require computer control for stability, because they are inherantly unstable. They can however change directions faster than traditional wing designs.

It looks like a weapon should, it might as well be a flying sword.

National Cathedral

IMGP0741.JPG
Originally uploaded by JonnyRo.

I got the chance to visit the National Cathedral recently in Washington D.C.

It was beautiful on so many levels. The scale of the building was unlike any church i've been in before. The stained glass windows were intricate and varied with many different themes represented.

I'm not sure if Kelli took this picture or not. She probably did since it came out so cool. I think the tree looks awesome there on the left, even if it slightly obscures the building.

Trying to fix my TCD 2400 4A

My TiVo hard drive died. This was my non upgraded one. unfortunately since one of my TiVo's is a Humax model and the other a Tivo branded model, i cant just use the image from the Humax model on the branded one. Different systems.

I am stuck trying to find one on the web or buy one from ptvupgrades.net

Nice car, next daily driver? 2006 Honda Civic

Anyone who has jeeping as a hobby knows that you have to have a daily driver available if you want to retain your sanity. Many people use their tow rig as a daily driver, but the truly wise keep a completely basic import or domestic compact car lying around. I would definately like to have something like the above as my daily driver backup, should both of my jeeps fail for one reason or another :)

The 2006 Honda Civic in the Fifth Gear video above looks awesome. I would love to have the manual transmission model they present.

Sidenote: I am really impressed with the way embedded Google Video flash clips show up in this blog. On my system it doesnt autostart, which was a big worry of mine. Let me know what you think about it.

Blogger no trackback?

Why doesnt Blogger have support for Trackbacks?

This article describes how to use trackbacks using the Haloscan service, but I wonder if there is some sort of reasoning behind blogger not supporting them.

Perhaps there are spam issues that have caused free blog providers to forgo trackback support?

Being overwhelmed with mailing lists in GMail

I am currently somewhat overwhelmed by mailing lists, even in the mighty GMail. I'm currently looking around for ways to manage the flow of incoming messages. I definately have not taken the time to learn much about labels or staring of messages, aside from the relatively basic tagging of messages with an attachment with a star.

This Gmail Tips Complete guide may be of use, but I will have to do more research before I pronounce it good. Does have some nice screenshots.

photo © Kimmo Palosaari for openphoto.net CC:PublicDomain

The top 10 lists attack

It's like VH1, but more streamlined, and with comments. Nathan's covering his top 10 video game list. Included in his article are some links to other top 10's in the same category.

I'm still divided personally between Descent and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Nintendo Power's list of the Top 200 Nintendo Games Ever is also a great read, and ranks my favorite Zelda title very close to the top of the list.

Favorite Quote of the Day

"... America's well-known hypocrisy towards nudity (half the population sucks on nipples frequently for the first few months of their life but then you aren't allowed to see them for 18 years"

- quote from Xboxic article on Tomb Raider "nipplegate"

photo © bruno magalhaes for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike

Comment tracking

I had pondered in the past about a way to track my comments on other people's blogs. I read an article about comment tracking site co.mments.com on Solo Technology blog this morning, and tried out the site, but I was having issues getting it to work.

It looks really interesting, and I will report back on whether or not it works out for me. I'm still unsure if this requires every blog you read to make modifications to their site to support it.

Blown away by Garmin in car Navigation.

I'm in Alexandria, Virginia right now attending the DTIC conference for work. I am an incredibly bad navigator, so I decided to add the GPS navigation option to my Enterprise car rental while i'm up here. It was $7.95 extra a day, so even if work ends up not wanting to pay for it, the system probably saved me in gas and hastle by taking me directly to my destination without issue. The turn by turn instructions were amazing.

I especially liked the reminders to bear left or keep right whenever we came up to splits in the interstate that were moderately ambiguous. And the top feature was how well it reacted when you got off course. It recalculated, very quickly, a new route from your now off course location.

The unit also tracks recent destinations, making it easy for you to go back to somewhere it has previously led you. Also useful was a safety feature that prevents you from operating the menus while driving. It does this by using GPS to determine your speed.

The voice prompts were very speak and spell'ish, but I was digging it.

  

I will definately use enterprise again. The experience thus far has been wonderful.

Looking around for jeep blogs.

jon2
Originally uploaded by JonnyRo.

Generally my blog has a wide variety of stuff. I would like to delve more deeply into tagging methods to allow users to seperate content out into what they are interested in, so they can get a more focused view of content they want. Once I start working on the Jeeping hobby some more, I'll likely branch off a seperate blog from my main one to discuss that topic.

Looking around on technorati, I did find one blog using the blog finder service that looks interesting. It's called Jeep Off Road. The poster appears to be a naxja so it could end up being a great source for lots of great Jeep Cherokee info.

One article that did interest me was a post entitled Jeep Off Road - Four Wheel Outdoor Adventures and 4WD Recreation: Jeep Cherokee - In-Car Navigation Article. It's a repost of another writeup about building your own in car navigation system using Linux.

The Ro Beast

imgp0078
Originally uploaded by JonnyRo.

Nathan had asked about pictures of my "monster truck." This is my 1988 Jeep Cherokee (XJ).

I have surprisingly few action shots of this vehicle, as the only time I have taken it out offroad since it's been running with the lift, I didnt have anyone taking pictures.

I need to get a sticker made that reads to the effect of "IT Manager Operated"

Hummer Balancing

Hummer Balancing
Originally uploaded by Capt Kim.

This is some crazy stuff. Flickr has a lot of great off roading pictures.

Hummer drivers get a lot of crap, but it's cool to see someone do something like this with one.

Nathan's take on VH1's I love toys

I've been a fan of those VH1 shows where slightly out of date stars cover top 100 lists for a while. They are usually fairly entertaining. I'm also a fan of the Web Junk show. Nathan of Nathan's Blog covers his take on the top 100 toy list that the show came up with.

Nathan's take on I Love Toys list

I was likewise shocked when the Hula hoop made the top of the list.

Walt Disney World Inline Marathon

The Walt Disney World 2006 Inline Marathon is over. I participated on Sunday, April 2nd in the half marathon open division group. Initially I had thought that I did pretty good, but I pulled a time that I am somewhat less than happy with. It turns out that I did it in about 1 hour and 6 minutes. This is for exactly half of the normal marathon distance, about 13 miles.

The event itself was a lot of fun. This was the first time I kept pace with a partner. It was a huge help and kept me motivated during the marathon. When I got tired, he took the lead and I would draft, and the when he got tired we'd do the reverse. We have been training for several weeks, skating at least six miles each weekend.

The weekend before the marathon we did 12.3 miles in 1 hour and 26 minutes, so the actual marathon had us running a much faster time over a much less homogenous terrain. The course as always was amazing, moving through Disney's Epcot and MGM Studio's, as well as Disney's Wide World of Sports and Disney Vacation Club resort the Boardwalk. Disney employees flanked the course in many places as we raced through the parks hours before opening, and Disney Vacation club members at the Boardwalk watched us from beach chairs on their resort.

I dont know if i'd be interested in a traditional inline marathon, but the Disney Inline Marathon is right up my alley. The rush of being able to skate through an area where such activity is normally prohobited is amazing, especially such a beautiful area.

For more info on Disney Endurance sports go straight to Disney Endurance Sports web page