South-by-Southwest is well and truly over now. I had a really good time. I don't have quite as much fun at general-Web conferences as at wiki-specific conferences, but I think it's also healthy for me to look outside my own narrow niche every once in a while and see what other people are doing.
I think overall the conference was pretty great, although I don't feel like the passion of 2006 was here in 2007.
I will say that I find it disconcerting that there are so few wiki people at SxSW. I think there should be considerably more, and I'm going to urge some intelligent and thoughtful people to come to Austin next year and get on panels. Practically every aspect of blogging gets covered at SxSW, but mine was the only wiki-specific panel this year.
We're taking a week on the coast near Galveston to recharge batteries and get our work lives back on track. Then it's off to Las Vegas for the IA Summit. Maj will be in the conference area -- I'll be baby-sitting at New York New York or something.
tags: sxsw07 austin wiki galveston las vegas
Dear LazyWeb
Two questions:
- N800 movies. What ffmpeg or mencoder or transcode parameters should I use to convert video to run on the media player on my Nokia N800?
- Zip code of Canada. In the US, when you try to charge a tank of gas using pay-at-the-pump, frequently you're asked for the ZIP code of the billing address of your credit card. But if your residential address is in Canada (or anywhere outside the US), you don't have a ZIP code attached to the card. I usually go inside to the cashier and pay there, but I wonder: is there a special code you could use (like "00000") that means "I don't have a US ZIP code"? If not, why not?
Thanks for any answers (see Contact for how to get them to me).
tags: lazyweb n800 zip code credit card canada
Twittering again
It seems like Twitter is waking up from its own SXSW07 hangover and sending out the thousands of backlogged twits that weren't delivered at the right time.
I don't think in the age of EC2 any public Web site should go AWOL due to too much traffic. Twitter suffered just the kind of surge that EC2 (and S3) are there to solve.