Google today released Google App Engine SDK 1.1.6 (announcement, download) which, among other things, brings with it datastore keys that you can sort and filter on.

What this means is that you can now do batch operations on data.

So it's time for me to go back to my Google App Engine backup solution, which broke after Google introduced artificial limits on query offsets, and update it to use sortable keys.

With 1.1.6, the SDK also makes inroads into emulating deployment environment quotas by implementing URLFetch call timeouts after 5 seconds.

Good work, guys! Here's hoping that the next thing you're working on is map/reduce and long-running processes.

I love the immediacy of Qik for recording short videos and yet I don't want my Qik videos to reside separately from my blog.

In my initial attempt, I decided to integrate the two by putting a video player in the sidebar of my WordPress blog, consuming the Qik RSS feed for my videos, and merging that with the feed of my blog posts to create a single feed for the blog.

Here's a quick run-down of how I did this, in case you want to play around with similar stuff yourself.

Embedding Qik videos on your blog using the JW Player

If you do anything with online video, you will no doubt have heard of Jeroen Wijering and his excellent JW Player. To play your Qik stream on your blog, you can simply use the JW FLV Player for Flash and make it consume your Qik RSS feed.

To do this:

1. Download the JW FLV Player for Flash
2. Place the swfobject.js and player.swf files somewhere under your blog's root folder (I placed them in the theme that I'm using.)
3. Add a little code to the header.php file in your Wordpress theme (or...), similar to the snippet below, to create the player and have it consume your Qik feed.

<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/js/swfobject.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function createPlayer(theFile) { var flashvars = { file:theFile, autostart:"false", } var params = { allowfullscreen:"true", allowscriptaccess:"always" } var attributes = { id:"videoPlayer", name:"videoPlayer" } // Customize the URL below. swfobject.embedSWF("<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/swf/player.swf", "video", "290", "238", "9.0.115", false, flashvars, params, attributes);
}
  // Add your own URL below. createPlayer('http://qik.com/head/latest-videos');
  // I'll explain this bit in a second. window.addEvent('domready', function() { $('videoPicker').addEvent('change', function(){ $('videoPlayer').sendEvent('LOAD', $('videoPicker').getValue() ); $('videoPlayer').sendEvent('PLAY'); }); });
</script>
 

* The other, possibly cleaner, option is to make this into a plugin with a widget and inject the code to create the player into the header. I can't go into how to create a Wordpress plugin in this post but if you already know how to (or if you're willing to Google around a bit and learn), you can achieve this by adding code similar to the following to your plugin:

function createVideoPlayer()
{ ?> <!-- The script code from Step 3 goes here --> <?
}
 
// Create the video player.
add_action('wp_head', 'createVideoPlayer');

Consuming the Qik RSS feed with SimplePie

One thing I didnt' want to do was use the built-in playlist view in the JW Player as it was taking up too much space on the blog. Instead, I wanted to use a simple drop-down select menu to give users a means to select previous videos. To do this, I used the excellent SimplePie plugin.

Here's how:

1. Download and install the SimplePie WordPress plugin (it's actually two plugins, SimplePie core and SimplePie Plugin for WordPress).
2. Create a custom SimplePie template to display your playlist. In my case, I create a selection list.

Here's the SimplePie template I made:

 
<div class="simplepie"> {IF_ERROR_BEGIN}
<p class="error">{ERROR_MESSAGE}
 
{IF_ERROR_END}
<select id="videoPicker"> {ITEM_LOOP_BEGIN}
  <option value="{ITEM_ENCLOSURE_LINK}">{ITEM_TITLE}</a></div>
  {ITEM_LOOP_END} </select>
</div>
 

Now, remember the bit of JavaScript I added to the head of the document that I said I'd explain later? Well, that simply ties the selection list to the JW Player so that selecting a video triggers it to load and play. Here's that bit of code again:

 
window.addEvent('domready', function() { $('videoPicker').addEvent('change', function(){ $('videoPlayer').sendEvent('LOAD', $('videoPicker').getValue() ); $('videoPlayer').sendEvent('PLAY'); });
});
 

One of the plugins I'm using on the blog was already using MooTools so that's what I used here. It would really rock if there was a WordPress standard library — I nominate JQuery — that we could all use for plugins to minimize conflicts.

The astute among you will have noticed that there is room to remove a little redundancy here since the Qik feed is being consumed twice, once by the JW Player and once by SimplePie. Instead, we could simply have SimplePie load the first video into the JW Player once it has loaded. This will be left as an exercise for the reader.

Finally, let's create a single feed for the blog so that people don't have to subscribe to the blog posts and videos separately. You could write some server-side code to do this yourself or, you can be lazy like and me use that wonderful tool in the cloud called Yahoo! Pipes.

To merge my WordPress feed with my Qik feed, I created a Yahoo! Pipe that consumes both feeds and combines them.

Now, all that's left is to make FeedBurner serve the merged feed from Yahoo! Pipes. The issue here is that I'm currently using the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin and that forwards all requests for my blog's feed to the FeedBurner feed, which gets the original feed from Wordpress.

What you need to do is to:

1. Alter the source of the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin for Wordpress so that it doesn't forward to the FeedBurner feed for calls from Yahoo! Pipes (so that Yahoo! Pipes can access the raw feed from WordPress), and
2. Change the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin settings so that it gets the merged feed from Yahoo! Pipes.

The second is easy to achieve. Just change the settings of the FeedSmith plugin in the WordPress admin panel to point to the RSS URL of your Yahoo! Pipe.

The first, however, requires a simple change to the source code (this hack comes courtesy of Michael Gracie):

@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ } }
 
-if (!preg_match("/feedburner|feedvalidator|pipes/i", $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) {
+if (!preg_match("/feedburner|feedvalidator/i", $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) { add_action('template_redirect', 'ol_feed_redirect'); add_action('init','ol_check_url'); }

That's it! So now you have a simple bit of integration between Qik and Wordpress. Specifically, you can:

• Showcase your Qik videos on your blog
• Provide a single feed for users that includes the videos along with the posts.

But we can do better than that!

Here are a couple of things I want to do that this current setup doesn't permit:

• Allow people to comment on my Qik videos without leaving the blog
• Display Qik videos just like other posts on my blog

So, clearly, the next step is to start from scratch with a completely different approach! Instead of using the Qik RSS feed, we can use a bit of API trickery and Twitter magic to tie everything together.

But that, as they say, is the topic of a different blog post!

Have your say!

As in all things, my approach to blog posts is that they should evolve over time and your feedback is invaluable in achieving this by helping me fix factual errors, fill in details, and expand the original post.

Are you on Qik? Have you integrated it into your blog? Are you using something else to video blog? Leave a comment and enlighten us!

At the urging of Patrick Welfringer and Paul Booth, I've updated the playerversion.com site.

playerversion.com is a deliberately unstyled, one-page site that simply tells you which version of the Flash Player you are running, what the latest Flash Player version is, and gives you links to Flash Player-related information useful to developers.

With the latest update,

• The site now displays the current latest player versions for Linux, OS X, and Windows via Adobe.com (previously, I was manually updating this).
• Added link to Flash Player 10 release notes (link courtesy of Patrick).

I hope you continue to find the site useful!

Have your say!

As in all things, my approach to blog posts is that they should evolve over time and your feedback is invaluable in achieving this by helping me fix factual errors, fill in details, and expand the original post.

Do you use playerversion.com? Is it helpful or a waste of bandwidth? Is there anything you'd find useful that isn't listed on the site? Leave a comment and let me know!

Oh noes, there's something wrong with my new Macbook Pro.

The above screenshot is how my blog looks when I scroll with the trackpad in Safari (scrolling works correctly when using the arrow keys and the glitches clear if you resize the window).

I'm getting the same tearing in TextMate and I also just saw it happen in Firefox 3.0.4, although it appears to be less frequent on that browser.

And things are flickering in certain applications — buttons, etc. The line of text I'm writing right now in TextMate is flickering.

I'm going to try restarting and hope the problem goes away. However, based on reports by other people with the same issue, it may not. (And the weird thing is, I've had this computer for about two weeks now and this is the first time I'm seeing this issue.)

I'm not too happy with the buttonless new glass trackpad, either. It freezes up briefly every now and then and sometimes will not register clicks. Reportedly, there's a software update on its way to fix the trackpad issues.

Here's hoping that Apple fixes these glitches before I start kicking myself for having spent so much money on a new laptop when I had a perfectly functional two-year-old Macbook Pro that still works like a charm and that I still love.

Have your say!

As in all things, my approach to blog posts is that they should evolve over time and your feedback is invaluable in achieving this by helping me fix factual errors, fill in details, and expand the original post.

Have you encountered this issue? Or, even better, do you know of a workaround or what exactly it is that triggers it? Leave a comment and share your insights!

No, this isn't a write-up on Twitterank, the latest example of 15 seconds of hype-fueled hysteria that the Internets whipped into a minor frenzy before moving on to the next sensationalistic headline.

(Yes, Twitterank asks you for your Twitter username and password but — wake up people! — so does every other Twitter app that needs access to authenticated features because the Twitter API only supports HTTP Basic Authentication. This is a limitation of Twitter, not Twitterank or other legitimate applications. The problem, of course, is that you cannot tell whether or not an application is legitimate or not, so Twitter, in this instance, is responsible for teaching people to get phished.)

No, this isn't a write up on Twitterank (believe me yet?)

It's not even about tech companies or web applications.

No, it's about old-school, real-world companies and how some of them are using an old-school, real work technology to teach people how to get socially engineered, or phished. The technology in question is none other than the trusty the telephone.

Yesterday, I got a call, supposedly from my health insurance provider. The call went something like this:

Voice on phone: Hello, I'm calling from Company X, before I continue, I need to verify some security information with you...

Me:OK, the problem with that is that I have no way of knowing that you are really who you say you are. Can you give me a number and a reference code so that I can call you back?

The sad thing is that it really was my insurance company calling, not a scam artist trying to phish my security questions from me so she could steal my identity.

What's worrying is that this appears to be a widespread practice. Clive Flint on Twitter reports that he has experienced the same thing with AMEX and James McCarthy experienced the same thing with AMEX and his bank:

'We need to talk to you but need to confirm it's you' And how I'm supposed to know it's them? No security there. (Clive's tweet)

I've recently had the same from Amex and Halifax too Banks really should know better. (James's tweet)

There really needs to be a law against this practice. Does anyone know where we would start trying to get more visibility on this issue in the UK with a view towards getting legislation passed?

Quite plainly, these companies are teaching people to get phished and that needs to stop.

Instead of calling you up to ask you your security questions, they should be asking you to call them. Something along the lines of:

"Hello, I'm calling on behalf of Company X. I know that you cannot verify that what I'm telling you is true, so, for security reasons, can you please call us back on the phone number on the back of your health insurance card and quote reference XYZ. We need to speak to you about your account."

And, beyond this, how cool would it be if we had the telephone equivalent of SSL so that your Caller ID not only told you the number that was calling but whether or not it was a verifiable entity with a valid security certificate.

Have your say!

As in all things, my approach to blog posts is that they should evolve over time and your feedback is invaluable in achieving this by helping me fix factual errors, fill in details, and expand the original post.

Have you received similar calls? Did you give your security information over? Have you been phished in this way by a malicious caller? Do you know of efforts to educate companies about the dangers of this practice or to pass legislation to stop it? Leave me a comment and let us know!

Photo credit: Kenneth Lu.

You're in Germany... no I'm not!

Google's country autodetection is borked. Whenever I access the Internet through a T-Mobile WiFi Hotspot in the UK, it thinks that I'm in Germany. I get a lovely German interface for Google services that I don't understand a word of and, here's the worst bit, there's no option for me to tell Google that I'm not in Germany. In other words, there's no Manual Override.

Manual overrides and dilithium crystals

Any Star Trek fan will tell you how important a manual override is, even in the 24th century (realigning the dilithium crystals also helps).

Software is never infallible (you write software with zero bugs? you lie!) and not providing a manual override for your latest Spiffy Automagic Feature doesn't make you a confident programmer, it just makes your interface arrogant. Especially when it fails.

Evolving software through feedback

There's nothing wrong with having something as difficult as automatic country detection failing. It's how software is built. You build it. People hit it in ways you never thought of. You evolve it. That's all cool. But it does mean that you need to build feedback mechanisms into your software so that your systems can learn.

The most important first step to evolving software, is to be notified that you have a problem. Since there is no feedback mechanism on Google's web page, I cannot tell them that their country detection is malfunctioning for me. A simple feedback link would satisfy this requirement.

The second step, regardless of how Fugginawesometastic your powers of automatic detection are, is to provide a manual override of some sort. For example, Google could ask you which language (not country) you want to experience their site in.

Finally, with regards to localization in general, it's quite an assumption to base someone's interface language on the country that they currently happen to be located in. Here's a lovely bit of advice from an unlikely source: in a Benny Hill sketch, Hill's character explains why you should never "assume" (because you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me"). I could, for example, be traveling through Germany or be an expat living in Germany who still prefers English to German. In other words, even if the country autodetection was working correctly, I could have legitimate reasons for not wanting my interface in German.

The solution to this problem is so simple (implement a manual override) that I hope Google gets round to fixing it sooner rather than later.

In the meanwhile, if you're not really located in the Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan like Google thinks you are, and you want to access the site in English, you can use this direct link: http://www.google.com/intl/en/.

Have your say!

As in all things, my approach to blog posts is that they should evolve over time and your feedback is invaluable in achieving this by helping me fix factual errors, fill in details, and expand the original post.

Has Google's country autodetection failed for you? Do you think it's spiffy as-is? Have I missed something? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Bug or feature?

There's something about Firefox that's been bugging me for a long time now and, more than being a mere inconvenience, I feel that it is a design decision that Mozilla took that runs counter to the spirit of the web as an open platform.

At first sight, the feature I'm talking about seems harmless enough; useful even. If you have Google Reader set as your feed reader in Firefox, clicking on an RSS feed takes you to the Google Reader "Add to Google" page, giving you the option of adding the feed either to your Google homepage or to Google Reader.

You can alter the feed reader or service you use to subscribe to feeds under Preferences → Applications → Web Feed, but, unfortunately, the choices you are given do not include seeing the raw XML source of the RSS feed.

An option to see the raw XML source of an RSS feed is also not presented in the context-sensitive menu that you can access by clicking on the feed icon (see below).

The closest option to raw XML in the preferences is the "Preview in Firefox option", which is what Firefox comes with by default. When this option is selected you can view source on the formatted output that Firefox displays by viewing the source of the page. This is good (thanks Terence et. al.), however many people will choose their own feed reader (in my case Google Reader) as their default reader in Firefox and be out of luck when it comes to viewing the source of the feeds.

In some ways, my gripe has more to do with the "Add to Google" page in Google Reader than with Firefox: that page should have a simple link that allows you to see the raw source of the feed you want to view.

As things stand, I feel that Firefox and Google are doing the web a disservice by preventing easy access to the raw XML source for feeds.

The DAMN Fallacy

As a developer, I know that I sometimes have different needs and expectations from the software that I use when compared to non-developers. When I forget this, I usually find myself falling prey to the Developer As everyMaN fallacy (or DAMN). Sometimes, as developers, it is hard for us to remember that the users of our software have different needs to ours. In fact, I blame this DAMN fallacy (and our damn stubbornness) as the root of most usability issues in software. And there's nothing like a little usability testing — even if it is guerilla-style (wink, wink) — to cure this DAMN disease.

However, I don't feel that this is an example of the DAMN fallacy. Instead, I feel that it hints to something a bit more dangerous as tools begin to dumb down the inherently open nature of the Internet in an effort to appeal to mass audiences. The underlying assumption appears to be that to reach a larger base of users, we should treat them as a mass audience of consumers, instead of consumer-producers that are active participants and contributors to the web. Taking that line of thought to its logical conclusion would lead to the AOLization on the World Wide Web — not something I'd ever like to see happen.

Before you think that I am making a mountain out of an anthill, let me try to explain my concerns further.

The importance of View Source

When I first started hacking HTML, I learned a great deal simply by viewing source on web pages. It's no coincidence that I was immensely excited when Flex Builder brought with it the ability to expose the source code for Flex applications. In fact, one of the first things I did was to release a version that did the same thing for ActionScript 3-only projects. And, of course, I made the feature a prominent part of the Flex Quickstart Guides while creating the Quickstarts format on Adobe Developer Connection.

The ability to view the source of any HTML document on the web lies at the heart of its nature as an inherently open system. The same holds true for JavaScript and CSS files, and, until recently, for RSS feeds.

I am worried that this feature in FireFox, coupled with the Google Reader subscription page, effectively hides the source of feeds and is going to hinder an understanding of how RSS and syndication work in a new generation of inquisitive minds. I'm not opposed to making the process of subscribing to feeds easier — quite the contrary, I applaud the effort — however, I do feel that it is of utmost importance that access to the source is provided for people who are interested in peeking under the hood.

To remove the ability to easily access the source of web documents is to lose a fundamental feature of the web and sets a dangerous precedent.

I hope Firefox will implement a simple view source option for RSS feeds and that Google Reader will also expose the the raw XML source of feeds from its feed subscription page.

Have your say!

I'd love to hear your feedback on this. Have you encountered this issue? Do you feel that it's important? Am I making a mountain out of an anthill or do I have valid concerns? Leave a comment and let me know your feelings.

Further reading and resources:

• Feed Proxy: a Firefox plugin that exposes the raw XML output of feeds
• XML in Firefox is a major problem (mozilla.dev.apps.firefox forum)
• XML View in Mozilla

Lest you jump to conclusions from the title, no, I haven't had botox. My beloved blog, however, did just get a facelift (she's a little sore but recovering nicely!)

It's time to say hello to a new iteration of my little corner of cyberspace in preparation for 2009. Video is definitely a more central element, as it is in our online lives these days. I will make an effort to Qik as much as I can in the coming year. I will also be showcasing recordings from the <head> web conference.

I love simplicity but I'm as prone to the complexity that arises from the passage of time as the next guy. This blog has been going for quite a few years now and had built up a lot of crud. I started blogging in 2001 on onrelease.org, using the precursor to Wordpress, called b2. The blog then became FlashAnt, and finally, it moved to this domain and onto Wordpress, all the while carrying along with it a bunch of baggage, some of it dating back to the days of b2.

Truth is, for the longest time, this blog has been a typical example of a cobbler's child — hacked when and where I found the time, not even (*egads*) in Subversion — in other words, barefoot all the way. I hope to give it a bit more love and attention going forward, starting with this redesign.

I want to thank Nurudin Jauhari for his excellent Hamasaki 1.5 theme, which I customized for the design.

(There are a few things I'm not happy with currently, such as how the text scales, so expect incremental updates in the coming days and please do let me know in the comments if you notice any issues.)

Looking back...

Looking back at how this domain and the blog has evolved through the years — thanks to the excellent Way Back Machine — is a bitter-sweet melancholic experience as so much of my life is actually intertwined within the virtual pages of this blog.

The first entry for the site, dating from January 16, 2001, unfortunately doesn't have the Flash sidebar or the header image but it's amusing to see where it all began (oh, please tell me I didn't make the navigation in Flash — how young I was, how naive!)

The November 27, 2001 version is basically a huge table of images (*gasp*), sliced in ImageReady, with a message stating "i'm going to have a respectable... well *a* site up here soon" [sic]. Apparently, I thought it would be kool do ignore proper capitalization and break words up using long series of periods. That must be the web design equivalent of wearing bell bottom pants in the 70s.

The site also originally linked to the ACK! extensions I wrote back then. What's ACK!? It was probably the first Flash framework ever, written by Branden Hall. Ah, those were the days!

At least the May 2002 version of the site shows that I was becoming aware of standards back then. The site states "This site validates as XHTML 1.0 strict and CSS 2.0." Woot!

The July 2002 version goes even further to state:

I am a firm believer in Internet standards and the virtues of CSS and I'm glad to see that, for the first time, the major version 6 browsers appear to be standards-compliant and that the major browser manufacturers have started to make efforts towards this end. This is a far cry from the early days when each one was trying to gain market share by differentiating itself as much as possible from the other. The only thing this resulted in was frustrated developers, confused users and all-round inefficiency.

Aww, I'm beginning to like you now, Early Me

(Of course back in those days, as a Flash developer, people gave me even weirder looks than they do today when I mention standards and stuff.)

It's worth noting that, although the Way Back Machine couldn't capture it, the site at the time was built entirely in Flash. It was the first large-scale web application I built on my own, following my experience working with Branden and Charlie on the k12 virtual school. I remember it had an intelligent preloader (which I later made into a component for the Flash MX Most Wanted Components book) and all content was kept in HTML and SWF containers that were loaded in by the shell. I'm going to rummage through my backups one of these days so I can find it and maybe even dust it off as a historic relic

On October 7, 2002, at 17:03:51, this blog started life as onRelease() with the first post:

What is onRelease()? onRelease() is a place for me to release the random stuff that happens to fall into my head to make space for more stuff. If that random stuff happens to benefit others, all the better!

What started as a personal blog quickly became more a political blog as I found myself unable to write about technology when faced initially with the specter and then the reality of the war in Iraq. It's hard to write about movie clips when you know that people are dying everyday in a senseless war.

My posts sparked heated debate within the Flash community and, if nothing else, got us discussing these important issues, which is not something that we were doing up to that point (at least not in the community). It was also a coming of age for me, albeit a very public one, where I discovered that your choices do matter and that yes, we can change things!

However, after a while I felt that the blog was no longer making a difference and, quite frankly, I got bored of having the same discussions and seeing the same abusive comments from the same people who watch Fox News and who voted George Bush back into office for a second term. So I decided to close down onRelease() and start FlashAnt, sans the politics.

In September of 2004, I apparently had a lot going on (based on the simple message greeting visitors on this site). I had also just moved by blog from onRelease to FlashAnt. (My company at the time was called Bits And Pixels, it then became Ariaware, and, more recently Yeah, Let's Do It! One more name change and I should finally have something I like!)

On May 8th, 2006, I used the migration script I wrote to move from b2 to Wordpress and, at the same time, from FlashAnt to aralbalkan.com. I also started using the K2 theme, which I've been using ever since in various guises up until this latest update (thanks, K2!)

On May 9th, 2006, I made my first blog post on aralbalkan.com. It begins:

You no longer have to log in to comment on my blog.

How fitting!

I've always found comments — your feedback, opinions, knowledge — to be one of the most valuable and rewarding things about blogging. Through the years, I've learned so much from your feedback that I can honestly say that I would be a different person were it not for your comments. I know Jeremy disagrees (and he's not the only one). Interestingly enough, I saw that Jeremy was apparently running a commenting experiment on his journal at about the same time I was enabling comments for everyone on my blog.

I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking with the header image from the May 2006 version of the site. I can only imagine that it was a combination of (a) too much time on my hands, and (b) a digital camera.

Aral and his Mac, a romance

On August 8, 2006, I made post announcing that I'd just ordered my first (and up until the end of last month, my only) MacBook Pro! Oh my goodness, that was over two years ago! I've never been as happy with a computer as I am with my trusty MacBook Pro. In fact, I just got a new one and I still miss my old baby. I was thinking of putting her up on eBay but I just can't bring myself to.

You have to understand, when I was on PCs, I used to upgrade every six months or so in the misguided belief that maybe if I got a faster computer things would work better. Truth is, the operating system is fundamentally flawed; it's not the hardware!

I can't say it enough: having a Mac with me these past two years has made me a happier person, and a better developer. Thank you, Apple!

Recent past

Apart from a different header image (and new content and a bunny widget, of course), not too much changed with the blog until the last facelift which brought with it the wider format, the huge header images, and the Nabaztag bunny widget.

And, in closing, thank you!

What started out as a simple announcement of a design iteration has turned into a brief retrospective of this blog and, thus, I cannot end without thanking you, my dear readers, the 80,000 or so of you who visit every month. (I just can't visualize those numbers — a Wembley stadium-full of visitors every month — that's just nuts!) I hope that the many years of posts here has helped you in some way.

Beyond the cosmetic changes, you will find that there are some functional differences that hint to a fundamental change in how I am planning on using this blog going forward. I will be making an effort to blog more frequently, both via video and text, on the issues that I am passionate about, on the technologies that I'm working with, and from the events that I attend and speak at. You'll also find longer articles in the Featured Articles section so that they don't get lost in the daily flow. Finally, and as always, I will be sharing with you tips, tricks, and workarounds I find for things — while hacking code and hacking life — and I look forward to receiving your feedback and your invaluable contributions in the comments.

Here's a sneak peek into how our techadmin team saw the <head> web conference. Our nifty 4-up view helped us keep an eye on things and step in to help at the first sign of trouble.

I have to say that there's something supremely cool about watching four presentations at the same time. And, with practice, it's almost possible to zone in and follow just one.

Multiply the above by seven timeslots and you'll get an idea of what just the second day looked like (the other two days were three-track!)

(And yes, that's four Adobe Connect instances running in a single browser window. woot!)

We kicked off <head> 2008 at the London hub with a short video I threw together using Animoto. Those of you who weren't at the hub missed out on that bit so here it is!