disparate.info

Foursquare, the location-based service where users check in and earn badges¹, is becoming a victim of its own success. Recently surpassing one million checkins per week, the service has experienced very short, intermittent interruptions.

Twice in the last two weeks, I’ve encountered Foursquare’s version of Twitter’s now-infamous “Fail Whale.” In Foursquare’s case, the outage notice depicts a a mayor² adorned with a cracked crown accompanied by the message, “Looks like we’ve got some problems on our end. We’re on it though – stay tuned!”

Granted, a short outage once a week is nothing to complain about, but it further confirms the service’s growing popularity.

This past Thursday, Sirius|XM released its Premium Online streaming application for the BlackBerry Curve (8500 & 8900), Bold (9000 & 9700), Storm, Storm2 and Tour. As a longtime subscriber to Sirius (and, in the interest of full disclosure, a shareholder), I must admit I got overly excited about the announcement. My excitement waned, however, when I realized that a separate subscription is needed after the seven-day free trial.

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Since switching this site to the Intense Debate (ID) commenting system, one function I missed was the ability to integrate reCAPTCHA¹ into my comment forms. While I understand some are not fans of the system that adds nearly inscrutable text to a form that then must be typed in to the accompanying box to continue, the mechanism does significantly reduce the volume of comment spam.

reCAPTCHA challenge - the obscured text must be entered into the box below it before a form is submitted

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To better showcase my web development work, I’ve relocated the pages related to my WordPress plugins to http://www.ethitter.com/plugins/. Any future announcements concerning plugin updates and new offerings will be hosted at ethitter.com.

As part of the move, my plugin development feed is now http://feeds.ldmh.us/ETHPluginDev. FeedBurner does not automatically redirect renamed feeds, so please update your reader accordingly. Anyone subscribed by email, however, should continue to receive updates.

The now-infamous Fail Whale isn’t Twitter’s only creative way of responding to problems with its service. As I discovered last week while creating a Twitter list of everyone involved with WordCamp Boston, the folks behind the service have some other, equally creative, graphics to inform users that something has gone wrong.

Twitter's error indicating something has substantially gone awry.

For the past few months, I’ve helped organize the inaugural WordCamp Boston, happening this weekend in Cambridge. For the uninitiated, WordCamps are community-organized events for users of the WordPress platform of all experience levels (WordPress just so happens to power this site).

Having never organized a conference before, the experience has been enlightening, to say the least. Luckily for our attendees, my fellow organizers have much more experience with these types of things, ensuring this weekend’s event will be one of the coolest, most unique WordCamps thus far.

If you can’t make it or couldn’t get a ticket, be sure to keep an eye on wordcampboston.com throughout the day Saturday for a glimpse into what the camp holds. In the weeks following the event, videos of the sessions will be available online, likely at WordPress.tv.

Browsing Twitter today, I noticed that the copyright notice in the footer still displays the year as 2009.

It’s not a big deal, but it may show that the folks running the site are busy with more important things, like preventing updates regarding the earthquake in Haiti from overloading its servers.

On the other hand, why not automatically render the year and present the copyright notice as © Twitter 2006 – XXXX?

In the spirit of having new toys to play with over the weekend, I’m giving away three (3) Google Voice invites.

And because Google Wave nominations are apparently as popular as fruitcake, each winner of a Google Voice invite will receive be nominated for Google Wave. What can I say, I’m feeling generous.

To participate, simply leave a comment on this post describing how you will benefit from Google Voice. I will select three entrants who provide particularly compelling responses.

Comments must be posted by 8:30pm EST (20:30 EST) today. I will announce the winners and send along the invitations shortly thereafter.

When commenting, be aware that all comments are moderated, so your entry will not appear immediately.

BONUS: If you would like to be separately considered for a Google Wave nomination, check out my Google Wave Invite Contest Redux.

Recently I discovered Fluid, and I fell in love immediately. Its simple interface belies the power this tool provides. Because I rely so heavily on web-based applications, particularly the services Google offers, Fluid provides convenient access to the sites I visit hundreds of times a day.

Fluid, a single site browser generator for Mac OS X, takes a specific website and turns it into a standalone desktop application. With support for Userscripts.org, the applications generated by Fluid can be extensively customized and integrated with existing desktop applications. Particularly useful is Fluid’s support for Growl, which provides notification support for many OS X programs.

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Right now, two companies are promoting their Google-Android-powered mobile phones as DROIDs. The first is the Motorola DROID, the second being the HTC DROID ERIS.

It struck me as strange that two competing companies would brand their devices so similarly, notwithstanding the obvious tie-in with the Android platform.

As it turns out, “DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license.” Both the Verizon Wireless online store and the company’s commercials promoting the devices provide this clarification.

So, that answers that question. George Lucas’ Star Wars empire receives a royalty for each DROID-branded device sold and can license the name to whoever it likes.