For a while now, I've been running a service that generated RSS feeds for Pinterest boards on Google's App Engine. For most of its life, this service didn't work particularly well - the script was a quick hack that was never designed with the kind of attention it received in mind.

Today I can announce that I've reimplemented the service, and am redirecting all requests to the new scripts. The source code is available on github.

I can't make any promises, but I'm hopeful that this new service will be able to handle the load and consistently produce Pinterest RSS feeds for its users. This service generates feeds from its internal cache of your pins, which is refreshed periodically, so pins won't show up immediately, but new pins will make their way to your IFTTT recipes after a short while.

My IFTTT recipes are firing just like they should — let me know if you're having any trouble!

You've heard about it. You've probably read about it. Maybe you've even tested one of the betas or release previews. Everybody knows: Microsoft are about to release a new version of their behemoth of an operating system: Windows 8. We've seen Microsoft release new versions of Windows before, of course, and there was never much to it, but this time around, it's different. This time around, the largest user base in the history of software is facing a revolution. Microsoft is fundamentally altering the character of their product, and nobody knows what to make of it.

I considered writing a review. I could have, I tried the preview — but I'll just cut straight to the chase: I like it. I think it works. It's a good, well-designed interface, that's perfectly suited to keyboard-and-mouse use if you just give it a chance. Before tackling the more interesting questions, though, I'd like to quote some reviews just to clarify what we're talking about here. Mr Jeff Atwood, of Coding Horror and Stack Overflow fame, has this to say on the subject:

Windows 8 is, in my humble opinion, the most innovative version of Windows Microsoft has released since Windows 95. Maybe ever. And it's good. Really good! I can't remember the last time I was this excited about a Windows release, except when I was kind of obsessively running betas of Windows 95 and waiting for Windows 95 to be released. Don't judge me man!

Okay, so Jeff's just a little excited. But what's it all about? Yesterday's This Is My Next feature on The Verge is a little more explicit.

Using Windows 8 is like living in a house made out of internet. There's a browser, sure (and it's a good one despite being named Internet Explorer), but the whole OS is constantly changing and updating because its every fiber is connected to the internet. As Paul Miller noted last week, the computer itself has morphed from hub to spoke, giving you access to things rather than managing those things itself. Windows 8 fills that role beautifully, and luckily for me I’m not taking a year away from the internet so I get to enjoy the benefits. (…) The Start Screen makes it possible to check a dozen things in five seconds — from any app, just tap the Windows key, and you can check to see if you have a new email, an upcoming appointment, inclement weather, or any breaking news. Tap the Windows key again, and you're back to your original app. Imagine how long checking all of those things would take using Mountain Lion.

With this year's release, Windows is jumping head-first into the post-PC era, and, from what I can see, it's spot on. Microsoft is trying to redefine the personal computer, and their vision makes perfect sense: what the vast majority of Windows users use their computers for is exactly what Windows 8 does well: browsing the web, connecting with friends, looking at photos, watching films, and maybe writing the odd letter or blog post. The new user interface, formerly known as Metro, revolves around content; it says so in Microsoft's design guidelines:

Content is the heart of Metro style apps, and putting content before chrome is fundamental to the design of Metro style apps. Everything else is accessory—or chrome—that helps present and enable interaction with the content.

The Windows 8 based tablet/ultrabook chimæra is a kind of iPad without the limitations, and this is exactly what most computer users today actually need.

But what about the others?

I've been speaking a lot about the majority of users—but what about the others? What about the remaining minority? Who is this minority that is not well-served by Windows 8, and do they matter?

The fact of the matter is: the Windows 8 user interface is so focussed on content consumption that it forgets about content creation. It's so bent on being touch-friendly that it locks out tasks that cannot be accomplished on a tablet. As David Pierce points out in the Verge article I've been quoting, Photoshop’s not going away any time soon., and Photoshop is never, ever going to be a first-class citizen of the shiny new Windows 8 world. It is not possible to build a graphics program of the calibre of Photoshop with the restriction that it has to work well on tablets.

Yes, the Windows “desktop” is still around, and it's quite possible to run software like Photoshop in it, but it's clearly conceived as a legacy feature. It's so badly integrated into the rest of the system that it's quite clear that you're not supposed to use it if you can help it, and nobody but a philistine yearning for the days of Windows 95 would actually want to use it.

There is a whole range of people who are treated as second-class citizens by Windows 8. Graphic designers. Photographers. Film makers. Architects. Engineers. Scientists. Programmers. Mouse-and-keyboard gamers. What about these people? What's the plan? What are they going to do?

Maybe they'll stick to Windows. After all, it won't actually work any worse than it did, will it? Perhaps, perhaps not. I think there's a real chance that many of the customers that Microsoft don't care about a whole lot will, in fact, turn their backs on Windows, even while millions embrace the new age. The PC gaming industry, reportedly, isn't too keen on Windows 8, and it looks very much like those that don't want to focus on the tablet and phone market are planning an exit strategy. The number of games for Mac OS X has been continuously rising for ages, and chances are that Valve porting Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux isn't an isolated development. The gaming industry is planning for the possibility that much of their clientèle is going to leave Windows in disgust.

What about the creators? From graphic designers to microchip engineers, they make Windows 8 and its content focus possible, but they need the kind of power that Windows 8 doesn't want to intimidate you with. But then, isn't this exactly the market that Apple has been targeting? Haven't the creators been deserting Windows in large numbers for years? Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft have given up on the creative market.

Windows 8 is going to be a smash hit. There will be great devices, great apps, a great experience to be had. It will be a great fit for all those people that need a computer because everybody needs a computer, for all those people that really just want to have a great time on the internet. And yes, some Apple hipsters like David Pierce will switch, because, let's face it, it makes sense. But those that want their computers to be powerful machines with which they can do great things, from the inspired soul that wants to create a masterpiece, to the hedonist gamer thrilled by the idea of making millions of pixels of Max Payne dance across the screen through agile keyboard commands, those, I expect, will prefer to think different. Then again, many of them already do.

And what is going to happen to desktop Linux? I don't know. It may triumph, or it may fall. That may be a topic for a future post.

About six weeks ago, I created a small web service that provides RSS feeds for Pinterest users and boards, fixing some issues with the official RSS feeds. Apparently, it's a smash hit, to the point that several users have pointed out when it hasn't been working for them. This has uncovered bugs (thanks, Mary), and sometimes, it just looked like Pinterest itself was having some kind of mid-life crisis. This morning, however, I had a very different problem: (and thanks for the two people who pointed out the error to me, I wouldn't have seen it otherwise!)

The app in running into Google AppEngine quotas! Wow. That, my dear friends, is how popular this shit is.

I've updated the app to cache feeds a bit more effectively, which will hopefully help push database usage back below the limit for the time being. (it could also make things worse) What this update will definitely do is make my app serve feeds even if it's temporarily unable to get good data from Pinterest.

The 48% of the daily quota you see above is what the old version amassed in about seven or eight hours. That alone could be enough to push us over the limit again tonight (we'll see), but if there's still a problem on Tuesday morning, I'll look into how much it'd cost to raise the AppEngine quota and consider moving the app to a different server. I'll do what I can to keep it up and running, of course.

Check out the app!

Experimenting with the fabulous web automation service If This Then That this morning, I thought it would be nice to do something with my Pinterest posts, such as saving them to Dropbox or posting them to Tumblr. The problem with this was that the RSS feeds provided by Pinterest only include thumbnail images that are of little use here.

However, it's not that difficult to get the full-sized image if you know how to program, so I didn't let that stop me and wrote a simple solution. May I present to you: The Better Pinterest RSS Feed Generator, powered by Google App Engine. It gives you your Pinterest feed in a format you can use.

As I write this, I'm in the process of deleting tonnes of old posts and comments from my Facebook profile. This is not an easy task: Facebook loves data, and wants to keep as much of it as possible. So, of course, they've made it rather difficult to clean up; you essentially have to do it manually, on the Facebook website. This can be partially automated — I use iMacros, as suggested by ZDNET — but it's not perfect, and you still have to do bits manually or modify the macro to skip things. It's tedious.

Going through the mess that is my Facebook past, I was, naturally, intrigued by some of the things I spotted. Occasionally, I would have a look at the context of a strange comment I left somewhere. Then, I spotted one very worrying thing:

Facebook keeps around comments to posts that have been deleted.

That's right. Facebook loves data so much that they'll clutter up their databanks with information that nobody will ever see, ever.

A lot of people got rather upset about the introduction of Facebook's Timeline profiles. I, personally, find it liberating. Now, there is absolutely no doubt about how Facebook is “meant to work” (according to Facebook). Now, everybody knows: your Facebook profile is supposed to be a record of your entire life, and you're supposed to make sure it's complete.

Is that how I want to use Facebook? Certainly not! I don't even want there to be a record of my entire life, let alone let some American corporation with a questionable commitment to privacy manage it. No, I use Facebook to share impressions from my life and links from the internet with my friends and acquaintances. Maybe they'll see the things I post, maybe they'll enjoy them, maybe we'll have a spirited discussion in the comments. And maybe somebody will save a photo or link to their computer because they think it's worth keeping. But will they go digging in the archives? Probably not, these interactions are very much rooted in the now. Will they link to my insightful posts elsewhere? No they won't: they're (mostly) not public.

So, is it worth using Facebook? I would have to say yes, it is. I like seeing what other people share, and other people enjoy my posts (somebody I see very infrequently told me so in person just a few days ago). But is there any reason for old posts to hang around? No, there isn't.

Here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to make backups of photos I want to keep, but I'm going to delete all but the past few months of Facebook activity. I'm going to continue using Facebook just as profusely as I have been, regularly deleting old activity, but I'm going to keep copies of photos of and by me automatically using If This Then That. Ideally, I'd want to fully automate the deletion bit, but I know that, even if I do find a solution, it will mysteriously stop working quite soon, because Facebook loves my data, and wants to keep it.