Chris Wetherell, the talented coder and Web developer best known for his work on Google Reader, most recently part of the successful Obama campaign in Florida, has taken on the upcoming Christmas holiday in an attempt to keep his programming skills sharp, and to give us a fun Web tool that will aid in setting up Secret Santa lists, especially between those separated by geography. The simple Web app, found at http://massless.org/santa, is also a good test case for what he calls "shibboleth" services, requiring a password, but not a centralized user name and profile.


Santas! awaits your list of names...

The list grows, as does the anticipation...
The application, titled as "Santas!" starts with your entering each individual in the Secret Santa pool, and clicking "Add this person to your list". Your list will grow increasingly long until you've exhausted all your names, at which point, you can click "Santa-fy!", and Chris' code goes to work, shuffling the results in the background and ensuring nobody gets themselves. (Always a good thing)


The pairs are made, with links and passwords.
Assuming the person entering the names is part of the gift exchange, the Secret Santa assignments are made hidden, but each participant is given their own unique link and password pair, which you would theoretically e-mail out, giving everybody a page that reveals the person for whom they get to buy gifts.


You can reveal the matches if you wish.
Should you want to be an administrator, and know how folks are linked, Chris even provides a helpful "Show recipients" button. Amusingly, in the test I did, with six people, all three pairs were given each other as Secret Santa partners. In a separate test, the pairings were not identical, but were better shuffled, so I would assume this is the exception rather than the rule.


Logging into Santas! to find my match.

Michael Fruchter looks to be the lucky one.
A recipient who goes to their dedicated URL simply needs to enter their Santa password and click "Show your gift recipient", which reveals the name, and reminds people not to show the link to anyone. Then the hard part begins... actually finding a gift. Later this week, here on louisgray.com, we'll talk about how to find gifts, but, until then, Chris leaves that to you.

Check Santas! out at http://massless.org/santa.

Forgive me Steve, for I once had sinned, and I come to you in confession to admit I had wronged you. For more than a year after iPhone was available to the public, I held off on buying one. I made all these excuses - that my BlackBerry was "good enough", that work was paying my monthly bills, that I was concerned about lackluster Exchange support, or switching to AT&T. I now know that I was naive, for my time as an iPhone owner has convinced me that there is no need for any other phones to be on this market. Be they Blackberry, of the Android persuasion, Nokia or any other, they simply aren't the iPhone, and they never will be.

The world can't pull the wool over your eyes the way they once did, can they, Steve? You once trusted others to work with you to expand your market share, and deliver a top-notch customer experience, but they stole from you and later, tried to kill you. And when you made the rare mistakes, to not find friends, your market share was eaten alive.

You won't make that mistake again, now, will you, Steve. You have learned that you can never stop making sure your product is the best. You have learned that it takes creating an ecosystem of applications and developers that cannot be matched. You have learned that you have to not neglect the enterprise, but instead, offer a better, differentiated alternative.

As an iPhone owner, your little device follows me both day and night. It reads my e-mail. It puts me in touch with friends and family. It stores pictures of my kids. It entertains me during downtime, and stores my music, and my browser bookmarks. It is no ordinary cell phone I want to put down on a desk, or leave behind on a table, content to let its batteries run out. It's something I have near me, at home, at work, on the go. I look at the iPhone while driving, while pumping gas, while shopping, and while rocking kids to sleep.

I've tried the others, Steve. I've held the T-Mobile G1, Steve. I've seen the clunky Nokia N95. I've tried the Palm, the Windows Mobile, the BlackBerry. But they aren't iPhones, and no matter how big their screens get, or how much they try to look like they run a ton of apps, it won't be the same, Steve.

I was stupid, Steve. Foolish. I thought I knew better. I thought I was strong, and yet, I was weak. I will never make that mistake again. I will tell everyone. It's iPhone or No Phone.

All day today, I was looking forward to two closely-related things: sitting down at home to watch an inexpensive movie with my wife, and then rolling out a post saying Apple had missed out on revenue from the Gray household, as a new expanded relationship with TiVo and Amazon Unbox had us renting two films from that service instead of iTunes. But after two hours of watching substandard video with jagged starts and stops and visual artifacts throughout the film, it just reinforced our decision to go with the brand that represents quality. Despite the fact we only paid $.99 each for two movies, I feel I didn't get my money's wroth.

Sometime over the Thanksgiving holiday, TiVo updated its service, moving a new feature front and center on members' sets - that of "Video on Demand and YouTube."

The offering, which had been less organized previously, highlights "Amazon Video On Demand", saying "Rent or buy over 30,000 TV and movie titles from Amazon Video On Demand, and have them delivered directly to your Now Playing List."

Top movie rentals, including "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", "Get Smart", and others were marked down to 99 cents on the weekend, down from their usual price of $3.99. We hastily grabbed both titles yesterday, and figured we'd gotten a great deal. But it's a good thing for Amazon we hadn't paid full price, because the result was a mess. In stark contrast to Apple's HD-quality videos from iTunes, which regularly cost $3.99 or $4.99, we were subjected to video that stumbled and jerked, and had square or rectangle flashes at all parts of the screen throughout the film.

At no point during the two hour Indiana Jones movie did things clear up, and considering the movie had already been panned by critics, and my peers, the bad experience did nothing to make me go against their opinion.

As a loyal TiVo user and a loyal Apple TV customer, I was hoping to have the best of both worlds. I was excited to see that Amazon could link up with TiVo and give us a price we couldn't refuse, but if Get Smart is anything like the experience we had with The Crystal Skull, we're not ever going to be trying the service again. Very disappointing.

By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)

It's that time again. The beginning of a new month, and also the time to highlight some unique, new and veteran members to follow on FriendFeed. In being true to one of my core values and practices of "promoting others more then I promote myself ", I like to give back any way possible, and I couldn't think of a more satisfying way of doing it. This time around, thanks to Louis Gray, who is one of FriendFeed's most influential evangelists, I have been given a bigger platform to shine the spotlight onto others.

Previous lists of top FriendFeeders to follow can be found for July, September and November.

1) Adam Singer

Short Bio: Adam is currently the Director of Digital Strategy for a PR company located in South Florida. Adam blogs about social media, web marketing and PR strategies. Adam is very active on Digg as well, and is always sharing unique and interesting content he finds and diggs.

What they find interesting: Micro-blogging, Social Media, Web Marketing, PR

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: thefuturebuzz.com

2) Dan Morrill

Short Bio: Dan is currently the CS/IS Program Director at City University, located in Seattle. Dan is also a blogger who contributes to a few different blogs. He blogs about his passions for technology, social media, IT security and anything web 2.0 related. Dan shares and StumblesUpon great content too. I'm always finding something of interest on his feed.

What they find interesting: Security Engineering, Technology, Social Media, Web 2.0

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: techwag.com

3) Eric Berlin

Short Bio: Eric's background is in content editing and web production. He is also a blogger who passionately writes about a variety of social media and technology related topics. Eric was one of the first few people I started to follow when I joinedFriendFeed, and I'm glad I did.

What they find interesting: Micro-blogging, Social Media, Technology, Web 2.0

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: onlinemediacultist.com

4) Laura Norvig

Short Bio: Laura is the Resource Center Coordinator at ETR Associates.
Her background is in Library Science. She is also a mom, and in her own words "a dabbler in social media and organizer of information." She is a great FriendFeeder with a good heart, and adds tremendous value to the FriendFeed community.

What they find interesting: Education, Information Architecture, Technology, Social Media

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: socmedswim.blogspot.com

5) Leslie Poston

Short Bio: Leslie is Founder and President of Uptown Uncorked. Her company provides consulting and social media training for businesses looking to get involved in social media. Leslie is also a deeply involved and passionate blogger who writes on numerous sites including Mashable.com

What they find interesting: Social Media, Technology, Micro-blogging, Web 2.0

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: uptownuncorked.com

6) Lorraine Ball

Short Bio: Lorraine currently owns a small marketing firm based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Lorraine has over 25 years of experience in marketing under her belt. Her passion is helping small businesses, become big businesses. Trust me, even if you are not a small business owner, you could still learn quite a few things from her.

What they find interesting: Marketing PR, Branding, Social Media, Social Networking

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: roundpeg.biz

7) Michael Fidler

Short Bio: Mike is a Digital Entertainment & New Media Analyst from Santa Monica, CA. Mike is one of the more highly active members. He shares an impressive and eclectic mixture of content. Mike has a good eye for all things visual, and shares some of the best imagery on FriendFeed.

What they find interesting: Technology, Computer Gaming, Photography, Social Media

FriendFeed: Subscribe

8) Mike Reynolds

Short Bio: Mike is currently a Strategic Planner at Walt Disney World, located in Orlando, FL. Mike is a very analytical thinker. Mike also develops safe search tools for kids and teens that are installed at hundreds of schools around the world.

What they find interesting: Computer Science, Web Development, Technology, Web 2.0

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: schlerplotti.typepad.com/squirrelnet

9) Morton Fox

Short Bio: Morton is currently a Senior Software Engineer at Syncsort Inc, located in New Jersey. Morton is currently the heavyweight "liker" on FriendFeed. He currently has an astonishing 24,355 likes on FriendFeed. Morton also contributes a lot of interesting content, and adds value to the conversations he participates in.

What they find interesting: Technology, Social Media, Applications, Web 2.0

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: mortonfox.livejournal.com

10) Zee Kane

Short Bio: Zee is the Co-founder of a London based marketing agency. He also blogs about web 2.0 and social media on multiple blogs such as Read Write Web & The Next Web. Zee is a highly active member on FriendFeed. Zee loves anything social media and technology related, and his feed reflects that. He also creates and oversees some of the more popular tech rooms on FriendFeed.

What they find interesting: Technology, Social Media, Applications, Web 2.0

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: zee.me/blog

Later this month, stay tuned for the latest edition of five new and relatively obscure blogs to follow, from Louis.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.