By the ball girl?
Month: June 2008
Blogosphere Can And Will Influence
I invite all of you to partake in a discussion I started on Performancing.com in relation to the influence of the blogosphere. In this post (5 Events The Blogosphere Influenced) I highlight five seperate events in which the blogosphere played a major role in the outcome. While performing research for this article, I discovered that politics and blogging appear to be the most widely used method of measuring influence. Another thing I learned is that, in this realm of blogging, the Army Of One attitude need not apply. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, if the blogosphere decides one way or the other, thats just the way it’s going to be, no questions asked.
Imagine being on the receiving end of a blogosphere ass whooping!
Ustream And Quickcam Pro For Notebooks 9000
I’ve just recently purchased the 99$ Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 for Notebooks and have discovered that on Ustream, only the audio from the built in microphone can be streamed. The video camera itself doesn’t appear in the flash popup and for the life of me, I can not get Ustream to recognize this camera to stream video from it.
I’ve gone through my Firewall and that didn’t help. I’ve performed a skype video conference call successfully with this camera so I know the darn thing works. I’ve also plugged in a very old Logitech Quick Cam Express with terrible video quality but the video from that camera was detected by Ustream. Last but not least, I’ve updated my browser to the latest version of the Adobe Flash player and that hasn’t helped either.
So, is there an incompatibility between the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 for Notebooks and Ustream? I’m very curious to know from other Ustreamers out their with the same camera if you are experiencing these types of issues as well.
ScrnShots Gone Social Or A SnagIt Alternative
Overview:
ScrnShots.com is a brand new service that is centered around uploading, tagging and then sharing screenshots. It’s also a clear indication that domains are getting harder to come by.
The Sign Up Process:
The sign up process for new members consist of your typical desired username, email address, password with the obligatory checkbox which gurantees ScrnShots that you have read their TOS as well as their Community Guidelines. No support for Open ID that I could fine.
After The Sign Up Process:
Finally, a service that doesn’t force me to confirm my email address to make sure I am who I say I am. Once logged in, you’ll see what looks like a user control panel. This control panel highlights your recent activity, popular tags, recent screenshots and stats along with RSS feeds to which you can subscribe to or share with others. These RSS feeds are for your Screenshots, Favorites and Contacts. Check it out.
Time To Take ScrnShots:
There two ways in which you can add scrnshots. The first is by uploading your image from your hard drive. The uploader supports the JPG, GIF and PNG file formats with a maximum file size of 5mb allowed. The second way is to use the ScrnShots Desktop tools which is in Beta for both Mac OSX 10.5 and Windows XP. For the purpose of this review, I’ll be using the Windows Edition of the ScrnShot Tool. The Windows version contains the following feature set:
- Program lives in the taskbar which means its out of the way, but always there when you need to snap a quick screeenshot.
- Select the area of the screen that you want to take a screenshot of.
- Upload screenshots from existing files on your computer.
- Describe, tag and add a url to images before uploading them.
The installation process was a breeze while the file size of the application was minimal. Great news for those of you who are already capped by your ISP. Upon starting the ScrnShots application for the first time, you are prompted to provide it with your username and password which is the same credentials you would use for the ScrnShots website.
Once installed, there will be an icon that will sit in your taskbar with the letters SS on it. Upon right clicking this icon, you’ll be greeted with a context menu which contains a number of options.
One thing I noticed right off the bat is that you can’t configure a hot key for this application. Instead, you have to right click on the icon in the task bar and select Take A Screenshot. However, after clicking on Take A Screenshot, the entire viewing area on your monitor (with the exception of your task bar) turns an opaque grey letting you know that the tool is active. Using your mouse, you can select any area on your screen in which to capture. Upon doing so, a dialog box will popup giving you the chance to configure a description, tag the image and then give attribution if necessary.
After The Upload:
After clicking the UPLOAD SCREENSHOT button, (notice how they used the correct word) the image is uploaded to your account on ScrnShots. From here, users can comment on your screenshot, embed your screesnhot or link to your screenshot. They can even add the screenshot to their favorites if they like it that much.
Here is what the screenshot looks like on the ScrnShot website.
Here is an example of an Embedded ScrnShot:
Overall, this seems like a novice approach towards creating a social network through screenshots. Although I doubt this will put a dent in the userbase Skitch has, perhaps ScrnShots will tickle the fancy of someone looking for a different experience.
As for me? I’ll stick with my tried and true method of the SnagIt FireFox Extension.
Apple Jumping The Gun On .me Domain?
GoDaddy is rolling out a new top level domain (.me) which has been open to LandRush orders since 5/6/08. The LandRush orders will expire on 6/26/08 where any domain which has been requested by multiple parties will have to go through an auction period. The winning bid will retrieve the domain while the losing bidder will be eligible to receive a refund. Open .me registrations will take place on 7/17/08 on a first come first serve basis.
However, at WWDC Apple rolled out a new service called MobileMe which is a new service for iPhones, iPod touch, Macs and PCs. Think of it as a way to keep everything synced.
How fitting would it be for Apple to get a hold of the mobile.me domain? Apparently, pretty fitting as this screenshot will tell. Click the image for a larger view.
Let’s see what happens after the auction dust settles.
Eye Doctors Idea Of A Joke
This is what a joke might look like coming from an eye doctor.
Weekend Storms
Over this past weekend, we have experienced a few bouts of severe weather. Friday, June 13 we had a line of severe thunderstorms move through northern Ohio. Here are a few images showcasing the convection which took place ahead of the line. I’ve also included a video in which you can hear a rumble of thunder. Continue reading
Ivanhoe Reservoir Covered In Balls
I thought this was rather interesting. There is an open reservoir in Los Angeles which has recently been discovered to contain elevated levels of Bromate. Bromate has been discovered to cause cancer but according to scientists, the risk is only attached to humans if bromate is consumed over the course of one’s lifetime.
According to the LA Times piece:
The water needs to be shaded because when sunlight mixes with the bromide and chlorine in Ivanhoe’s water, the carcinogen bromate forms, said Pankaj Parekh, DWP’s director for water quality compliance. Bromide is naturally present in groundwater and chlorine is used to kill bacteria, he said, but sunlight is the final ingredient in the potentially harmful mix.
So instead of placing a tent over the entire body of water, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power dropped 400,000 pebble weighted black balls into the reservoir to act as a blanket from the sun. This is the same technique used to deter birds from congregating in water covered openings near airports.
Here is a link to the video showcasing the massive ball drop – 400,000 balls dropped into the water
I would of embedded their video into the blog, but they have some of the worst embed code I have ever seen. It doesn’t even work when posting it into the WordPress post editor, even in HTML mode.
Will Plurk Kill Twitter
In last months poll, I asked if you would listen to a daily WordPress podcast. And here is how the poll turned out.
Well, I don’t think I’ll be doing anything in regards to a daily podcast. I have more on my plate at this time then I did when I started the poll. However, I still have to talk to a few people about the idea but I may try and do a live podcast that deals specifically with blogging and all aspects of it.
The poll for this month is, Will Plurk Kill Twitter? Since there are so many people going hogwash over the service, I thought I’d put my foot in the hype water and see what you think.
Is Jaiku Still Around?
Remember Jaiku? That service which was launched in 2007 which aimed to be a Twitter like service except that it was more of a content aggregator than anything else. Using Jaiku, users can type in 140 character messages as updates while also having conetent aggregated from other services they are apart of through parsing RSS feeds.
As it turns out, Jaiku is still around. In a blog post published on the official Jaiku blog on May 30th, Jyri reminded folks that Jaiku is still alive and well and that moving the service into the Google App Engine has taken much longer than anticipated. Jyri also mentioned that they do in fact have plans for future development. What that future development might be is anyone’s guess.
What I find interesting is that, this service called FriendFeed has ate Jaiku for lunch and then spit them out. FriendFeed works in a very similar fashion to Jaiku except there are no 140 character limits and the content aggregation looks much prettier on FriendFeed. Also, there appears to be much more conversation surrounding the aggerated content items on FriendFeed than there is on Jaiku.
So although Jaiku was one of the first services out of the gate to allow aggregation of your content into a central location allowing others to comment on those items, either their timing was wrong for the service or they had a few things wrong with their implementation. If that was the case, I don’t know what those wrong items might of been. The bottom line is, Jaiku was the first major player in this arena and once Google acquired them, they have fallen flat on their faces. Also, I find it funny that the people behind the FriendFeed service are ex Google employees. Isn’t that quite the coincidence?
The bottom line is, FriendFeed is the place to be in terms of content aggregation in a central location. The early adopters along with many of the big names within the blogosphere are climbing all over each other on the service which is usually a good sign that the service is worthy of your time. Jaiku on the other hand is still invite only which doesn’t appear to be doing them any good.
I don’t see Jaiku ever becoming a threat to FriendFeed. FriendFeed has picked up where Jaiku has left off, improved upon their offerings and apparently, they have done everything right. There is no looking back for FriendFeed and if I were the creators of Jaiku, I’d be thanking my lucky stars that I was acquired before the launch of FriendFeed.
One last thing before I go. I wanted to highlight the fact that it would seem as though being the first one out of the gate does not guarantee anything. I strongly believe that the Google acquisition has done nothing but set Jaiku back but hey, at least Jryi and company received a nice paycheck.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 