Feross.org

This is how my iPhone looked after I shattered the screen. Such a sad sight...

And then I fixed my iPhone.

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Because I’m grownup now, and it’s my turn to decide what that means.

(Thanks to XKCD for giving me something to do with my extra 123 balloons.)

I’ve long believed that modern hip-hop and R&B suffers from too much post-production. Average singers can wail away in front of the microphone yet sound amazing on the radio, after the post-production techs have fixed all the mistakes. This is why all the music on the radio sounds so similar — it’s all pitch-perfect.

Today, I discovered just how little talent it requires to make a modern pop song.

MacBook Pro + Built-in Mic + GarageBand + AutoTune + 1 hour =

Feross Aboukhadijeh - Amazing

VS.

Kanye West (ft. Young Jeezy) - Amazing

Go ahead and click PLAY above to give my cover song a listen.

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Why is Google called Google? Apparently Google thinks I know the answer.

Google loves me. Don’t believe me?

Google loves me so much that they want me to explain why they call themselves Google. Out of over 32 million pages, Feross.org is the #1 result for the query “Why is this website called Google?” (click here to see for yourself!).

See!… they love ME! I told you! And Google chose my April Fools day prank to be #1, because they love my sense of humor, too! (or because the phrase “website called google” appears prominently in the title, but I bet its mostly the first reason).

Ahh… the mysteries of The Google.

Prediction

I want to make a prediction here. That this post that you are reading right now will become #1 for the same query “Why is this website called Google?” within ONE WEEK. If Google liked my off-topic April fools post so much, then they will surely love this post, perfectly titled and targeted for this query.

I will check back in one week and report on this prediction!

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Try it out! It works on Feross.org! Really…. you should try it out right now!

Remember to add ENTER at the very end!

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, please get edumacated, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The Konami Code, known in Japan as the Konami Command (コナミコマンド, Konami Komando), is a cheat code that appears in many Konami video games, although the code also appears in some non-Konami games. The code was first used in the 1986 release of Gradius for the Nintendo Entertainment System but was made famous in North America in the NES version of Contra, for which it was also dubbed the “30 Lives Code”.

Update: The code also works on the iPhone, using gestures. Just replace the final B, A, and Enter keys with taps and it’ll work! AWESOME!

As I cave in to using yet another Google service, Google gets one step closer to becoming a hive mind.

I recently decided to ditch NetNewsWire and use Google Reader as my main RSS reader. Google Reader helps me keep up on the latest tech news and important internet trends.  I’ve been really happy with it so far, except for one thing.

Google allows you to post articles that you’re reading to various social networking sites, like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg. But, Google’s built in “Post to Twitter” feature opens up a new window (or tab in Firefox’s case) at Twitter.com just to post a new tweet. Lame!

I already use an amazing Twitter client for Mac, called Tweetie. I’ve gotten used to it’s slick interface that opens a tiny little tweet window when you want to write a new tweet. It’s so much better than opening a whole new tab!

I wanted this functionality to be available to me in Google Reader. What was I to do?

Well, the company behind Tweetie, AteBits, offers up a handy bookmarklet to help users easily tweet stuff while surfing the web. You just create a new bookmark and set the URL to be:

javascript:window.location='tweetie:'+window.location

But, we can improve this by adding the title of the website to the Javscript code, which looks like this:

javascript:window.location='tweetie:'+document.title+'%20'+window.location

Then when you click on this bookmark, a new tweet pops up that looks likes this:

Awesome, right? Now, I just need to add this custom Javscript URL to Google Reader’s “Send To…” section, right?

This is the Google Reader interface for adding custom "Send To..." buttons

But, it’s not that easy! Google blocks Javascript URLs (probably for security reasons or else it’s just an oversight on their part) and you get presented with this sad error mesage:

No Javascript URLs!

But, I want Tweetie in Google Reader, darn it! So, I whipped up a little PHP/Javascript workaround. I’ll post it here, because I imagine that others have had this same problem.

<html>
    <head>
    </head>
    <body>
        <script type="text/javascript">
        <!--
        window.location='tweetie:'+'<?php echo $_GET["title"]; ?>'+'%20'+'<?php echo $_GET["url"]; ?>';
        window.close();
        //-->
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

This is the final result!

This trivial script just looks for a title and URL passed in via GET parameters, redirects the browser there, and then closes itself to get out of the way. All that remains is your new tweet window in Tweetie and Google Reader in the background.

This is what it looks like in action!

Then, I just uploaded this file to my server (It’s located here: http://feross.org/tweetie.php in case you want to use it).

Then, I just filled out the Google Reader settings window like this:

Set up your settings like this! Remember, in Google Reader, ${title} and ${short-url} stand for the article title and URL.

Feel free to copy these settings if you’d like to set up the same functionality for yourself!

Now, I can tweet any/all the interesting stories I read from Google Reader super easily. If you follow me on Twitter, then get ready for a firestorm of tweets!

Hopefully someone finds this useful!