benjitao

[benjitao]

Smart Ass Comments on Techcrunch

The comments section on Techcrunch is often more amusing than the articles themselves. Here's a gem.

A company, Backpackbang (they started in Bangladesh... hence the "bang"), offers to connect travelers and shoppers together to offer shoppers to get goods all around the world without having to pay high shipping costs.

Apparently Backpackbang wasn't the only one to think of this idea!

Nice comment Jon Emerson. Nice.

#techcrunch #travelling

[benjitao]

The Tisha Goodrich Method to Driving Traffic to Your Site

So this girl, Tisha Goodrich, just started following me. I found it odd since I don't have that many followers (I'm a nobody!) and of the people that follow me I know somehow either through startups or tech related stuff. I also found it odd for someone so young looking to have so many followers and also odd that she was following so many people. Why would this young girl want to follow that many people? I had to investigate.

Checking out her profile I thought it was strange that of the 2,974 tweets that she only had 8 photos/videos. That's one photo for ever 250 tweets. For someone who likes taking selfies you'd think they would upload more than photos than that.

Next thing I started looking at were her tweets. A lot of them were just generic jokes. Tweet gems like...

Men are like parking spots, the good ones are taken and the free ones are handicapped.

— tisha goodrich (@TishaGoodrich) August 16, 2014

OK, so not the most insightful stuff, but normal enough tweets. Then I noticed some of her tweets had links in them. Like this:

Yoga Pants Fail http://t.co/jaAYFEuN78

— tisha goodrich (@TishaGoodrich) August 16, 2014

Yoga Pants Fail? What more got a horny guy ask for. Let me click away!

Crap! I got click-scammed again! Turns out all her tweets drive you to funny-humor.viralgalleries.me. So either she's just a really big fan of the site, or more than likely Tisha is not Tisha, but some dude who is running multiple accounts like this to drive traffic to their "content" site in order for you to click through ads and make them money.

It's actually a pretty smart method. Cause most guys when they see this young attractive girl follow her will follow her back. Once they are following her her tweets will show up in their stream. If you promote content like yoga pants fail to these same people who followed you in the 1st place there's a good chance they will click through. 

So, while I think it's kind of scammy what they are doing, in other way it's actually win-win. The scammers make money and guys get to believe they are following a cute girl who likes to tweet sexy content they want to see.

I wanted to see if I could find the real person behind the photos they stole. Doing a google reverse image search revealed there are quite a few Tisha's out there:

However, even searching the rest of her photos I came up empty handed. So to the real "Tisha" out there. If you ever happen to stumble upon this post you'll now know why they used your photos... mainly to make a quick buck.

It's quite a racket! I wonder how much these sites make. With tactics like this there's no doubt they are driving good traffic.

#scams #clickbait #grey hat

[benjitao]

The Chemical Difference Between Hot Brewed Coffee vs Cold Brewed Coffee

When people talk coffee it's common that the word "acidic" is thrown about when describing the taste. When cold brewed coffee (coffee made by steeping grounds at room temperature) is tasted it's often said to be "less acidic" than coffee steeped with hot water. When I hear anecdotal taste descriptions like this I wonder if it's just someone's subjective opinion or if there's actually something physically going on changing with the coffee itself. When it comes to hot vs cold coffee it looks like there might be some actual physical changes happening to the coffee depending on the brew process.

All Dissolving is Not Equal

The process of making coffee is all the same. You basically dissolve coffee grounds in water to allow the water to soak up the coffee flavor goodness. This is same process is used when people make tea, fruit infused water, kool-aid and other flavored drinks. In chemistry when you use hot liquids it speeds up the rate at which things dissolve. However, when it comes to coffee there are additional chemical changes which occur when using hot water to dissolve coffee grounds.

The key difference between hot and cold brewing methods is that when hot water is used it releases coffee oils that ordinarily wouldn't be released when brewed at a lower temperature. These oils contain additional acidic compounds which give coffee its famous acidic bitter bite. According to this Daily Beast article that acidic bite is what dulls the tongue's taste buds which prevents the taster from enjoying all the inherent coffee flavors. And being able to taste all the natural coffee flavors is one of the reason why people are increasing turning to cold brewed coffee is as there go to brewing method.

Conclusion

I like both! In a rush it's faster to just to brew a hot cup of coffee and put it on ice. But taste wise cold brewed I think I prefer more.

#hot coffee #cold coffee #cold brew #brewing methods

[benjitao]

Alfred Peet the Father of Specialty Coffee

Nowadays when you think of coffee shops the first thing you think of are Starbucks. Starbucks is everywhere. While Starbucks is immensely popular what I didn't know was Starbucks was not the pioneer of higher quality specialty coffee. We have Alfred Peet, the founder of Peet's Coffee & Tea to thank for that.

Alfred Peet immigrated to San Francisco in 1955. Originially from the Netherlands Alfred's father ran a small coffee roastery which is where he learned the coffee craft. When he arrived to the United States he worked as a coffee importer. He was dismayed to find that the quality of coffee available in America, often at kept and drunk from cans, was subpar. At the time people described it as tasting like dishwater. Part of the reason was this was post World War II where Americans had gotten used to drinking water downed rationed coffee. Coffee was rationed in order to send more supply to soliders fighting abroad.

Due to the lack of quaility coffee in the US Peet launched his first Peet's store in Berkely, California. Sourcing only the best beans and using his own custom roasting process he introduced a much better tasting coffee than Americans had ever tasted. While running Peet's Coffee & Tea he taught Jrry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker his roasting technique which they then used to open the first Starbucks in Seattle in 1971. And the rest was history.

#peets coffee #alfred peet #specialty coffe

[benjitao]

Top Exporters of Coffee Beans

The more I learn about coffee the more it seems like it's becoming like wine in terms of specialization. With wine you have different grape varietals (like muscat) as well as different geographical regions where they are grown (like Napa Valley) which are known to affect the taste and quality of the wine. While not as well known to the general public coffee seems to be heading more in the same direction as wine. Below are some of the top regions of where coffee is grown.

Elements Needed to Make Coffee Plant Grow

According to the National Coffee Association the best places to grow coffee are in high altitude and tropical climates which have rich soil. Once that requirement is meant there are a number of factors which can vary the taste of the coffee including:

plant variety

rainfall / sunshine amount

soil chemistry

Top Exporting Coffee Area / Countries:

Hawaii

Trees planted in volcanic soil

Known for Kona coffee (named after the Hawaiian island)

Mexico

Has over 100,000 coffee farmers

Largest coffee producing country in the world

Farms located in southern part of Mexico

Puerto Rico

Used to be 6th leading exporter in the world

Hurricans and outside competition hurt its standing

Typically arabica varieties grown here

Guatemala

Known for growing Strictly Hard Bean (coffee grown at elevations of 4500 feet and higher)

Distinctive taste with rich flavor

Costa Rica

Reputation for fine coffee

Produces only wet processed arabicas

After coffee harvested taken to beneficios, state of the art processing facilities

Colombia

Ranks 2nd in yearly production

Great place to grow coffee, but rugged terrain makes transporation difficult (done by mule and jeep)

Colombian Supremeo is the highest coffee grade

Brazil

Biggest coffee producing country

Known for lower acidity coffee

Grown on huge plantations

Ethiopia

Supposedly where coffee originated

Wild coffee tree forest still gorw naturally there

Normally coffee wet processed

Main growing regions and names of cofee - Sidamo, Harer, Kaffa

Kenya

Grown on the foothills of Mount Kenya

Has its own grading system, Kenya AA largest bean size and AA+ means estate grown

Ivory Coast

Largest producer of robusta coffee

Normally used for darker roasts which end up in espresso

Yemen

Coffee beans are smaller in size due to arid conditions

Dry proccessed after harvest

Mocha is a Yemeni port where coffee was shipped from in Ancient Times

Indonesia

Famous islands and coffee names include Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi

Coffee introduced by Dutch colonists

Known for fine aged coffees - aged in warehouses in Indonesia's climate produce unique flavors

Vietnam

Introduced to coffee by French missionaries

Coffee industry growing so fast becoming one of world's largest producers

Produce mostly robusta coffee

#coffee exporters #coffee

[benjitao]

Iced Coffee vs Cold Brew Coffee Methods

I didn't learn until recently that there are differences amongst how iced coffee is made. I thought iced coffee was just hot coffee cooled down and poured over ice. While that is one method of making iced coffee it turns out that's not the only way. Below are some of the other popular methods of brewing iced / chilled coffee.

Immersion Method

The immersion method is simply taking coffee grounds and immersing them in water and letting it steep for hours. It's like making tea. The only difference, however, is that you don't use hot / boiled water and instead use room temperature water. Normally the steeping time is over 8 hours.

A popular tool for brewing it is the Toddy. However, really you just need some kind of container to hold water and a bag of some sort to hold the coffee grounds while it steeps (cheesecloth for example)

Kyoto Style / Dutch Coffee Method

Initially introduced by Dutch traders in Japan this style coffee utilizes a slow drip brewing method. Normally this requires taller larger glassware where room temperature water is slowly dripped onto coffee grounds which then is filter into another container to produce the coffee. The drip speed can be varied to produce difference taste profiles. You normally see larger tall glassware to produce this type of coffee. The effect is a more aromatic coffee which some liken to tasting like chocolate.

Because the method for making this coffee is more complicated than the immersion method it requires more specialized equipment which means it's more expensive. The Kyoto style coffee makers you see in cafes are normally these tall glass structures which cost several hundreds of dollars. However, more recently someone created, Cold Bruer, which is a smaller home version for under $100.

Conclusion

From my personal tastings I do notice a difference from regular iced coffee that's been hot water brewed versus the room temperature brewed coffee. The biggest difference I notice is that the room temperature brewed coffee is not as acidic.

#iced coffee #cold brew #kyoto style

[benjitao]

Coffee Before It Gets to the Coffee Grinder

As a coffee noob I wanted to know how coffee ends up as the roasted bean I can purchase from the store. Here's how it happens.

It all starts with the coffee plant and their coffee "berries" and seeds (which is what coffee is). The most popular coffee plants are Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora.

Coffee arabica berries look like this:

After the berries ripen they are harvested, normally hand picked.

After they've been harvested they process the berries by stripping away the flesh of the berry and then fermenting the seeds.

Once finished this coffee is now referred to as "green coffee"

The next step in the process is roasting the green coffee. Most if not all coffee has to be roasted before being brewed. The roasting process begins when the seed temperature reaches 392 degrees Fareheight. At this point chemical changes occur which give coffee the flavor and its aroma it's known for.

After it's been roasted the seeds are separated and categorized into light, medium light, medium, medium dark, dark, or very dark. It's important to note that the degree of roasting affects the flavor of the coffee, but doesn't affect the amount of caffeine.

Once that's done the coffee beans are then packed and shipped off to be ground up and served up to coffee fiends around the world.

#coffee #coffeebean #coffee process #coffee plants

[benjitao]

Hootsuite vs SocialOomph for Sharing Images on Twitter

Tools like Hootsuite are great for connecting and managing all your social media accounts. However, recently I've found some limitations with Hootsuite when it comes to sharing photos on Twitter. The main problem being when you use Hootsuite to share photos on Twitter the images do not show up in your stream (and other's streams) by default and the images don't show up in your Twitter profile's photos and video section gallery.

To illustrate I'll compare Hootsuite to SocialOomph.

Hootsuite

This is the interface to write and upload a photo to hootsuite. Notice when you attach an photo that it automatically creates a shortlink to ow.ly (which is Hootsuite's photo / media sharing website)

Once you publish the tweet this is what you'll find on your Twitter profile. Notice that the image doesn't load on its own

There is a link to "view photo", but in order to view readers will have to click on it rather than seeing the preview image that normally shows up if you had shared this via twitter's image upload.

If you do click the shortened link you'll see it takes you to Hootsuite's photo / media site (the ow.ly domain)

SocialOomph

Below is the interface for sharing a photo on SocialOomph. Notice that there's no shortlink generated when an image is attached.

Once the image has been published to twitter it shows up in the main feed. Also note that there's not outside website link when the image is posted.

You can also see the photo shows up in the gallery section on my Twitter profile.

Conclusion

Hoosuite has a very user-friendly interface and is very powerful, but for posting images I like how SocialOomph uplaods the image directly to twitter rather than uploading it to a third party site like Hootsuite does. I understand it's great for Hootsuite since they can have another property to gather content and market products to users, but I'm not a fan of how the content cannot be easily viewed in the Twitter stream.

#hootsuite #socialoomph #social media tools

[benjitao]

Getting Your IP Banned By Yelp and What to Do

Did you know that Yelp will ban your ip address? This was news to me. I was testing out a service I read about, Import.io, which lets you create a simple webscraper without programming through an online graphical user interface. I was curious to test this out so I used Yelp as my test case. However, what I didn't know is that Import.io uses your own IP address for some of the scraping and because of this Yelp banned my IP address.

When you get banned you get the error message "Sorry, you're not allowed to access this page" and then it shows your IP address. They do give you the option to contact them, but rather than having to go back and forth with their customer support to get my IP address unblocked I decided it'd be simpler just to get assigned a new IP address.

Most internet broadband providers assign customers like us a dynamic IP address. The IP address is what allows us to get online. Because it's costly to assign everyone a permanent / static IP address internet companies use dynamic IP address which periodically change. Most of the time you are at the whim of the internet company as to when you get assigned a new IP address, but there are ways to get assigned a new IP address without waiting for them to assign you a new one (and so in my case I could get back on yelp).

After a little googling I came across this article.

The gist of the article is the best way to force your ISP to assign you a new IP address is to change your router MAC Address. By changing your router's MAC address the ISP thinks this is a new piece of hardware on the network so it assigns you a new IP Address. Once I followed the steps there I was able to get back online to Yelp to enjoy all the useful reviews.

#yelp #ip address #import.io

[benjitao]

Tools to Schedule Photos and Posts on Instagram

We're looking to ramp up social media efforts in preparation for our upcoming Stirrific app. In addition the normal Social Media prerequisites like Twitter and Facebook one of the platforms we want to focus on is Instagram. What makes Instagram unique is unlike Twitter or Facebook it's mobile only. This means you can only add content if you have the Instagram app installed on your smart phone. Instagram doesn't allow you to schedule posts or easily manage multiple user accounts. If you have multiple accounts like a personal Instagram account and a company account you have to sign out and sign back in. Because of this I did some research on tools that allow you to manage and schedule Instagram photos through your computer.

ScheduGram

ScheduGram lets you schedule and upload Instagram photos from the computer. They get around Instagram's API restriction by hooking up a physical smart phone that connects with custom software they wrote. This way in the eyes of instagram all the posts are coming from a mobile phone authenticated with your credentials. This method is probably what most of these services are using.

Other notable things:

Price starts at $13 a month for 1 Instagram account

Can't comment or interact with users using their system (just posting)

Can manage multiple Instagram accounts

Allows you to edit photos through their web interface

Multiple user capabilities for teams

(Also have a great landing page with clear info!)

A lot of features all focused around Instagram. This is probably the service we'll try.

Latergramme

Not a fan of their landing page. Not much info other than you can "schedule and manage your Instagram posts." It looks like a free service, but can't tell since there isn't much info so maybe they are targeting more consumers rather than businesses.

Postso

Their service allows scheduling and posting for Pinterest, Twitter, and VK.com. Other than mentioning that fact there's not much in terms of feature explanation or screenshots which doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. I'm all for minimalism, but it might be too minimal. Pricing is straightforward at $14.95. It's unclear whether you can do multiple accounts and multiple users like you can with Schedugram.

BONUS: Hootsuite

Hootsuite doesn't allow you to schedule or post to Instagram, but they allow you to comment and interact with other's posts through their interface. They also allow you to monitor different hashtags which makes it great for discovering and finding relevant content quickly. The plan is to use this in conjunction with one of the scheduling tools mentioned above (most likely Schedugram)

#latergramme #postso #schedugram #instagram #hootsuite #apps #social media tools

[benjitao]

Social Apps for Coffee Lovers and Drinkers

In the course of working on our "coffee" app we've researched what other coffee websites and apps are doing and have done in the past. It's interesting to see all the different ways people approach creating a consumer app for the same industry. Rather than keep these notes squirreled away I'm sharing them with the internet world in the hopes that to you, dear googler, I can save you some precious search minutes.

Some of the ones I mention below don't exist anymore or haven't been updated in a while. This is normally a pretty good indication that the founders have gone on to work on bigger and better things. If you know of any other interesting social coffee apps let me know in the comments.

Coffeenatic

Launched around 2008 Coffeenatic allowed users to review different coffees by pricing, quality, etc... It also let users make lists of coffee they drink to share with others. Not sure when it shut down, but the site no longer function. Domain is for sale if you are interested. According to this blogger he thought Coffeenatic was "lame" though he doesn't explain why:  Looking at the few social networks and Web sites dedicated to coffee consumers, they’re mostly pretty lame. (See: Coffeenatic.)"

CoffeeClutch

Launched in 2013 CoffeeClutch lets you find out what coffee your friends and family like so it's easier for you to order coffee for them. It seems more tailored to a specific use case, namely for people who go on coffee runs and want to pick something up for their brother, sister, or friend. According to iTunes last updated August 28th, 2013 so doesn't look like it's being actively developed anymore.

Coffee Buzz

Coffee Buzz was a social coffee app to check in to coffee shops and talk about the coffee drinks you are drinking. They integrated with twitter so conversations could be automatically were pulled from twitter and replies also happened through twitter. From a presentation i found online this was this company earliest apps they made in order to learn the platform.

The making of Coffee Buzz iPhone app (2009) from Katie Lips

They charged $0.99 for it. Coffee Buzz Site is no longer working anymore and I can't find the link to the app in the app store so I'm assuming it's no longer around. Here's a video review i found.

Coffeetopia

Coffeetopia is all about finding, rating, and sharing great coffee. At least, that's what their slogan says.  This one seems to be the most recently released app and maintained (launched March 10, 2014) Interestingly this app was crowdfunding on a site called SellAnApp where users pitch an idea and can earn money via revenue sharing for their idea if it's successful. Here's the crowdfunding page.

#coffee #coffee iphone #apps #social apps

[benjitao]

Instacart Review - Lazy Man's Grocery Shopping

Instacart is a venture funded startup that delivers groceries the same day. Like a lot of sit-at-home-and-let-the-stuff-come-to-you startups this one started out in the San Francisco Bay Area. Maybe it's all the programmers up there who don't like the inefficiencies of having to go out into the world to buy stuff who are starting these companies, but either way I'm not complaining. Instacart recently came to Los Angeles and they are offering $10 off your first order and free delivery (that's my promo code which can get you the same deal... it's a referral model where you get $10 off and if you purchase I get $5 off my future order) so I decided to fire up the app and order me up some groceries.

Once you register for an account and enter in your zip code you are presented with a list of available grocery stores. I should mention that it's not limited to traditional grocery stores as Costco was an available option.

When you tap on any of the stores you'll be presented with a list of items. It's like Amazon shopping but with groceries (btw Amazon does have a similar service called Amazon Fresh). From what I've read Instacart makes money on their delivery fee and their is markup on certain products.

You just add the the products to your cart and when you're ready you checkout.

Checkout on the iPhone app was relatively straightforward. There are a few differences between "normal" e-commerce shipping. First is for shipping they give you different available windows. Sometimes it's less than an hour, but most of the time you can get within 2 hours. It probably varies by store and Instacart shopper availability. 

Another difference is there's a step when checking out which lets you choose replacements for items you ordered. The reason they do this is in case the item you ordered is not available when the shopper gets there.

Once you're all ready you just tap place order and you're set.

What's cool is when I did it that the shopper called to ask me about replacements. I ordered Flaming Hot Munchies, but the shopper called and said they didn't have Flaming Hot Munchies, but he said they had the Cheese Fix Snack Mix. I said that was fine. He also got me a brand of bacon that wasn't the one I initially ordered.

2 hours later I had my groceries. They even include this nice re-usable bag.

One thing I didn't know about replacements is that they will charge you the difference in price for items. So if the replacement item is more expensive you'll be billed extra. It looks like they only charge your credit card once the order has been delivered. Once the order is completed you get the final receipt. 

I was all excited I was going to get more expensive bacon for the cheaper price, but no, that was just a silly fantasy.

Overall a good experience and for those days you really don't want to go to the store worth checking out. I'm just wondering when they'll institute Uber-like surge pricing for those bad weather days.

#instacart #groceries #shopping #venture funded

[benjitao]

Hands on With Varidesk Pro Plus Stand Desk

I wrote about different standing desk options a few days ago and mentioned how I ended up ordering the Varidesk Pro Plus. Well, it arrived yesterday, earlier than expected, and I've got it all setup. I want to jot down some of my initial thoughts on the desk.

How it Arrives

It comes in a large box. The desk itself is 50 pounds so that combined with the packaging materials makes for a heavy item. The Fedex guy when he delivered it needed a hand to bring it into our apartment.

When you take out the desk you'll be be pleasantly surprised how there's truly "no assembly required." If anything you need to disassemble all the packaging they use to protect the desk in shipment.

Setting it up

\

The first thing you notice when touching / moving the desk is how substantial everything feels. The desk feels solid. If you've ever owned Ikea furniture it's the complete opposite in quality. The desk is made out of wood, but the desktop has some kind of plastic / resin lining which feels nice. And also, because the desk is heavy when you set it down everything is stable. It's not flimsy at all.

Transforming sitting to standing

Once it's on your desk moving it up and down is easy with the 2 handles on the side of the desk. When you adjust the desk the handles click in place giving you an audio cue that things have locked in place. I have my Macbook pro and another 20 inch monitor and going up and down gave me no problems.

Keep in mind when adjusting from sitting to standing that the desk does swing outward by a good foot or so. This means when you physically have to move yourself backwards about 12 inches from the sitting position to use the standing position. This wasn't an issue for me, but for some it might be troublesome.

Conclusion

Overall pretty happy with the desk so far. It doesn't look that bad and seems well-built. I love being able to quickly go from sitting to standing and back again. The best part is that it's quick to switch. I've seen a lot of the electric motor type standing desks and my one gripe with those it some of them seem to take a while to "transform" from sitting to standing and back again. However, with the Varidesk it's a snap.

#varidesk #standing desk #review #hands on

[benjitao]

Coffee Equipment for Newbie Coffee Drinkers

As I venture deeper into the coffee drinking world we figured it'd be good if I started learning to brew and make our own coffee. Before we got started working on this coffee app, though, my knowledge of coffee making consisted of placing ground up coffee in a filter and flipping on the switch to the Mr. Coffee automatic drip coffee maker. However, after some research I've discovered that this is the worst way to make coffee since these machines do a poor job of maintaining even water temperature and do a poor job distributing water to all parts of the coffee when it's in the filter. Because of this method is frowned upon I did some research on brewing methods and what equipment we'd need to be respectable coffee drinkers.

If you look at coffee brewing methods it's all fundamentally the same. You soak ground-up coffee beans in hot water and then filter the liquid out. They say one of the most important steps to good coffee is how you grind the coffee beans. The key is you want uniform "grindings" that haven't been chemically altered so when you brew the coffee you are getting even water distribution and it brews how nature intended it. I'm oversimplifying it, but you can learn more here about coffee grinders.

Breville® The Smart Grinder™ Model BCG800XL

This grinder was on many coffee websites and reviewers top grinder lists. At $199 it may seem pricey, but apparently when you step up to this level of grinder the difference in coffee taste is supposed to be significantly better than your run-of-the-mill $20 battery operated grinder. Wired Magazine did a grinder round up and rated this one 9 out of 10.

Aeropress Coffee Maker

For the coffee maker I decided to go with the Aeropress. It's quicker than doing a traditional pour-over coffee where you have to sit and slowly pour water over a coffee filter and it supposedly makes pretty tasty coffee. It does this by allowing water to be pressured through the filter by using it's syringe-like plunger. This is similar to how expresso is made, but the difference is here the Aeropress is doing it at a lower pressure.

Glass Pitcher and Nut Milk Bag for Cold Brew

Found this recipe for making cold brew coffee so also got equipment for making this. It's pretty simple. You just need a pitcher (I opted for a glass pitcher), a nut milk bag to be used as the filter and where you put the coffee grounds, and then you soak it all in water for 11 hours.

So right now all this equipment is on order. Once we get a chance to make some coffee I'll post up some reviews.

#coffee #coffeeequipment #areopress #grinder

[benjitao]

Apple Headphones Volume Changing Illusion.

If you use the Apple iPhone headphones along with your Mac you can control the volume using the volume rocker on attached mic. That alone is not amazing, but there's one small design feature that I think is amazing. It's the combination of physical button pushing along with the Mac volume changing sound effect which make for a great experience. Let me explain.

If you own a mac and change the volume through the keyboard, normally the F11 and F12 function, you get an audio clicking noise so you can hear what sound level you're at. Once the iPhone headphones are plugged in you can also control the volume and you get the "clicking" noise as well. It wasn't until my Mac-generated clicking noise stopped working in my headphones that I realized how little noise the actual physical button makes when you change the volume. When the noise stopped I thought my headphone volume button was broken.

That's when I realized that even though there's only a small amount of travel in the headphone volume button that combined with the clicking noise made the button feel and seem a lot more substantial than what was actually there. It's an interesting audio / physical illusion. Kudos Apple.

#apple #headphones #illusions.

[benjitao]

Personal Audio Patent Troll Bullshit

It's relatively old news, but there's a company, I mean patent troll, named Personal Audio who is going after podcasters and other digital audio broadcasters over a patent they own for for "playlists" and "episodic content." They are so proud of their accomplishments that they've even trademarked their slogan "Pioneers in Playlists and Episodic Content." How you can pioneer a playlist or episodic content is beyond me so I was curious to see what some of their patents actually covered.

The first patent I took a look at was for U.S. Patent 6,199,076 a patent for playlists which is highlighted on their website as one of the patents that Apple infringed upon and had to pay $8M in damages to Personal Audio. Interestingly, Apple was the only company among others named in the lawsuit who chose not to settle and took it to court where they ultimately lost and didn't appeal .

Anyway, let's take a look at some parts of the patent (it's 32 pages long).

From the "Summary of Invention":

The present invention takes the form of an audio program player which automatically plays a predetermined schedule of audio program segments and which further includes simple controls that allow the listener to perform one or more of the following functions...

They then go on to describe functions like skipping forward or backward to listen to portions you want to listen to, clicking hyperlinks, highlighting parts you like, etc...

The rest of the patent just goes on to explain in painstaking details how their "invention" works. What's amazing is that they were able to draw out the length of this patent to 32 pages for things that most laymen could describe in a few sentences.

Here's a drawing of how their invention allows you to play songs on your playlist. Notice how it's needlessly complicated.

When one of the listed inventors, James Logan, was asked why he believes he deserves to make money off his patents he responded with this story.

I started my first company in the 80’s, when I was working with a young MIT engineer, Blair Evans, to develop the first analog capacitive touch screen. Were we struggling to make it work when we got a letter in the mail from an inventor in Maryland, Bill Pepper, who was literally working out of his garage. He had been working with Bob Moog, inventor of the world’s first electronic synthesizer, on a touch sensitive piano and from that research had gotten several patents on a touch tablets.

Bill had tried unsuccessfully to license these patents to several large companies (“Call me back when there’s a market”, they said) when he heard about our attempts to make a capacitive touch screen. We realized Bill had the solution we were looking for and we promptly signed an exclusive license for his patents. MicroTouch went on to become the world’s largest touch screen company, selling the precursor to today’s projected capacitive touch screen found on all smart phones. When I left MicroTouch to start Personal Audio in 1996, we employed 500 people making touch screens in Massachusetts. Without those patents, we would never have gotten the company off the ground.

In this situation he clearly explains that without the work done by Bill Pepper, inventing a way to create touch sensitive tablets, that his company would have never gotten off the ground. He admits that they struggled to create their first capacitive touch screen product. However, thanks to the work done by Bill they were able to overcome their technical challenges by licensing his patents. In other words they had a problem they couldn't solve, but Bill had solved, so they paid him to use the solution he came up with. That makes sense and I think benefits all involved.

However, looking at the lawsuits Personal Audio has filed no one needs their obvious patents to solve a problem; meaning, if you didn't read their patent it wouldn't stop you from figuring it out yourself which is exactly what happened (ie Apple created playlist technology to play mp3's). If it's this easy to patent things then I think science fiction writers should stop writing and instead just keep filing patent after patent. Hell, it doesn't even have to be science fiction writers, any writer should just start patenting things. Michael Creighton could patent gene therapy (Jurassic Park), William Gibson could patent the Internet (Neruomancer), JK Rowling animated gif's (Harry Potter), and the list could go on.

#patent #trolls #personal audio

[benjitao]

Demitasse Kyoto Style Brewed Iced Coffee

The past 2 weeks I've been drinking a lot of iced / cold brew coffee. I've drunk more coffee in these 2 weeks than I probably have in my entire life. I was never a a big coffee drinker. The taste never appealed to me (more of a tea drinker). However, because of a coffee app we are working on I decided to give coffee another shot. I like cold drinks so for my coffee drinking I decided to focus on ice and cold brewed coffee. This weekend I had my first ever Kyoto Style cold coffee.

I don't know much about coffee so when I saw it on the menu at Demitasse Café I had to ask what's so different about Kyoto style coffee. He said the brewing method is different and the result is the taste is more chocolatly. I ordered it and tried it. When it comes to coffee tasting my palette and vocabulary is crap. I guess it kind of tasted like chocolate... I think? It wasn't bad. It did taste different from the other iced coffee I had.

When I was leaving the store is when I learned how Kyoto style coffee is made. They make it in this large glass contraption which looks like something out of chemistry class.

Cold water is poured in from the top and it is slowly dropped onto the coffee grounds where it slowly steeps in the coffee grounds and then finally drops into the coffee collector at the bottom. According to their sign the drip rate is set at 42 drops a minute.

What does drip time affect? This site shed some light:

"Longer extraction times (15-20 drips per minute) result in syrupy, rich coffee concentrate in six to eight hours. Shorter extraction times (35-45 drips per minute) deliver double-strength coffee that’s ideal for serving as is over ice in about three hours."

It's cool little contraption. I'd be curious to see if there's a difference in taste with brewing coffee Kyoto style (using the glass contraption) vs just brewing the same coffee the normal way and pouring ice on it. I'd like to see if I can tell a difference.

#coffee #kyoto style #cold brew #demitasse