A YouTube music video giving users a brief introduction into web 2.0. The video starts off showing bits and pieces of internet history which have led us to our current usage of the net. I thought the song that went along with the video was so-so but it sounds like one of those songs that would grow on you if you listened to it a few times.
Author: Jeffro
Video Demo Of Picnik
Picnik is an online photo editor that is somewhere in between Photoshop and a bare bones application in terms of features and functionality. Picnik works seamlessly with Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa web album’s giving you the oppurtunity to edit your online photos straight from the Picnik website. Picnik is hastily becoming one of the best online photo editors. Check out the following video demonstration for more information on this web application.
I Don’t Know – Google It
Nowadays, thats typically the response I hear when I ask someone a question. Why is that? Neuroscientist Ian Robertson recently polled 3,000 people and discovered younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal information. 87% of his respondents over age 50 couldn’t recite a relatives birth date, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. When Ian asked those under 30 their own phone number, at least one third of them had to take out their handset to remember.
The moral of the story here is that, humans are reaching a point where they no longer need to remember information but rather, machines are the ones who are storing the information that can be retrieved within a few keystrokes. I know I have asked a number of people some interesting questions and instead of providing what they thought was the answer, they merely tell me to Google it. Does this happen to you as well? Leo Laporte likes to coin this term as (GAM) or Google Assisted Memory. As long as he can remember how to type into Google, he will seemingly never forget anything.
Although typing into Google and receiving those results is a very fast way of obtaining information, sometimes I just want to hear the answer from a human rather than a search engine.
I’d be very interested to hear your feedback regarding this subject as I think it is fascinating. In retrospect, it sounds like the beginning of the cyborg era, wouldn’t you say?
Work In Progress
After struggling to move my hosted WordPress installation onto my local pc, I have completed the theme edits that I have been wanting to make for some time now. I have moved the Chatter box from the footer of the site and to the top to see if more people will use it. Having it at the top of the site should make it easier for everyone to see if their are any new messages. This is still an experiment and if I discover it’s of little to no use to this site, I”ll remove it. However, I would really like to have some real-time conversations with you, the readers.
I’ve removed the ARTICLE SUBMISSION link from the top navigation area. Last but not least, I have added the FeedBurner Subscriber chiclet to the footer. Since I now have a somewhat respectable number of subscribers, thanks to you of course, I can now display those numbers prominently on the blog. The reason I waited so long before adding the chiclet revolves around human perception. If I were to display this chiclet while it showed a low number, say below 50, this site would automatically be perceived as a piece of trash. But now that the chiclet shows around 100 subscribers or so, people who notice the chiclet may realize that this site is somewhat interesting or worthy of their time considering 100 of their peers already think so.
Feedback on the changes is always appreciated. I’m open to all suggestions and ideas to improve the readability and functionality of this site.
By the way, would anyone be interested in a tutorial on how to install your web hosted WordPress installation to your local PC in order to change themes or text plugins?
Bloggerplay Releases iGoogle Gadget
Blogger has developed and released an iGoogle gadget for those that enjoy Blogger Play. Blogger Play is a real-time slideshow of photos Blogger users have recently uploaded to their blogs. Blogger has also added some additional functionality to Blogger Play. The keyboard can now be used to control the flow of images. The space bar plays and pauses while the left and right arrow keys move backwards and forwards.
Just sitting at the Blogger Play page watching all sorts of images go by is yet, another productivity killer to add to my list.
OpenWeb – Free User Created Graphics
According to my log files, quite a few of you are doing Google searches for graphics, buttons and badges. So, it’s only natural of me to include some content for those of you who are looking for it. Here is something I’ve come across recently called Open Web Graphics. A resource of freely available user-submitted graphics that cover web banners, web icons and web backgrounds.
The web icons are generally in PNG format but you can sometimes find them in .gif. Some of the icons also come in various colors and are searchable by TAGS or CATEGORY. Here are a few of the more popular icons that I see blogs using all the time.
The Web Banners and Web Backgrounds section only contains 1 page of graphics which means theirs not a whole lot of selection. OpenWebGraphics has announced that they have reached BETA status back on October 1st but as far as I can tell, the site is open for registration. Once of the coolest things about this site is the ability to upload PSD files. This might be one heck of a resource area for photoshop newbies, who want to learn how the graphics were put together. Do the right thing and don’t redistribute these open PSD files.
X-Wing Model Bursts Into Flames
A couple of days ago, I came across an excellent article on Gizmodo which highlighted a group of people that built a 21 foot long model of an X-Wing. The model was built out of Baltic Wood, and contained solid aluminum for some parts of the aircraft. The model was also outfitted with four class M rockets which would provide the red flare type of glow that is seen on the X-Wing’s engines during the movie Star Wars.
Alas, here is the video of this model trying to fly and as you can see, the force was not with them.
X-Wing Model Launch Fails – Watch more free videos
Pimp Your Google Identity
Introducing the un-official G Ring. This is a prototype of a vanity ring designed by Markus Kison. The ring displays how many hits you get when you search for the name of the wearer.
Here is some information related to the project:
While in earlier times richness and importance were equal to the amount of money or jewels someone possessed, in a post information society it’s the attention you get from the worlds people, that counts. Being in people’s mind means being important, whether they think about you in a positive way our not doesn’t matter. And what people have in their mind is what they read in the media. In the future this will mean, what they read/see on the net. Every content creator that copies and pastes your name will rise the value of your virtual mirrored importance. And there is a hard mechanical algorithm on the net, that extremely objectively measures your appearance, it’s called Google and has already passed the “line of no return” (Bruce Sterling). In most job interviews the personnel manager will already use this machine to check your importance and have a look at the first answers this mirror tells about you. Your mirror identity strikes back on your chances in the real world.
Using specialized software, the name of the wearer is typed into the ring and the number of hits or in this case ‘attention carots‘ is displayed. The ring comes with it’s own docking station where it communicates with Google and updates the hit count overnight.
Vanity Ring Demo Video
I certainly can’t see my girlfriend wearing one of these however, I can see a number of A-List bloggers wearing one of these rings around their pinky, taking a page out of Dr. Evils book, ONE BILLLLLLION HITS.
Web 2.0 Badge Generator
It’s still hip to use web 2.0 styled badges. If you have ever wanted your own badge but didn’t think you had the photoshop skills, your in luck. Web20Badges is a web 2.0 styled badge generator with an assortment of templates to choose from. Users can type in the text they want to appear on the badge, select a font from a drop-down list and configure the font size as well as the color. You can even determine the angle in which the text is displayed although, the text never seems to look right with an angle applied. Once you are finished, you can right-click and save the badge to your desktop and then claim it as your own. If you want the ultimate ability to create your own badge without the generator, WEB20Badges does provide the PSD files for most if not all of the badge templates.
Check out some of these examples.
YouTube Now Apart Of Google Earth
Google has finally integrated YouTube videos into Google Earth. YouTube videos that are geo-tagged will now show up in their proper locations within GoogleEarth to show where that video was filmed.
Our new browseable layer of geotagged videos works a lot like our Google Book Search layer, only it shows you the locations referenced in specific videos instead of books. Let’s say you’re jetting off to Paris. Before you go, you can watch the sunset filmed from the top floor of the Eiffel Tower, among other clips of popular spots in the City of Lights.
You can access this new data layer in the ‘Featured Content‘ folder which normally appears on the left-side panel of Google Earth. After clicking on the YouTube button, all sorts of icons will appear, highlighting videos filmed at that specific location. You can either view the video from within Google Earth or on the YouTube site.
Going to add this to my list of productivity killers.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 