Live Video Feed From New Media Expo

For those that are interested, TalkShoe has begun their live coverage of the Podcast and New Media Expo being held in Ontario California. The stream will be ongoing all day long. iJustine is sort of co-hosting the event and is streaming live video from the expo. The video and audio stream is intermittently going out but they appear to be doing the best they can with their setup.

To tune in to the show, click here. After the page loads, look for the LISTEN symbol and click on it. This will open a new window with the live stream.

Watch ijustine live video and chat on Justin.tv

Microsoft Updates Live Search Engine

Microsoft has updated is LIVE search engine today. The updates were focused around the core search technology as well as the vertical search areas of entertainment, shopping, local and health. Collectively, these improvements mark a quality milestone based on the company’s focus on delivering a better search experience for consumers and advertisers.

Here are some of the updates which were covered.

Over fourfold increase in index size.

Substantial improvements in understanding queryintent.

Significant enhancements to core algorithms.

Increased focus on query refinement.

New Web data extraction model.

Expansion of Rich Answers.

Additional improvements to the service include a new, cleaner user interface that makes the results pages easier to read and use; a more robust Answers platform that provides instant access to information from trusted sources while increasing relevancy; and organization of results pages based on the high-interest search verticals of entertainment, shopping, local and health on one page.

Is Ticketapp The Twitter Yappd Killer

TicketApp compares themselves to Twitter but I’d say they are a lot more than Twitter. TicketApps is a Tumblelog, todo list, note taker, image publisher, bug tracker and so much more. While Twitter may lay claim to the word “Tweets“, Ticketapp messages or postings are simply called “Tickets” Because this new service is like so many others, there are a lot of similarities.

Like Twitter, Ticketapp offers a public timeline where users can see recent tickets. These recent tickets can contain any number of different forms of content such as images, text and links but one thing missing from the equation is the ability to publish videos.

Users can customize their profile by adding their own avatar and adding a background image to their ticket page but that’s about it in terms of customization. When are sites going to enable users to come up with their own color schemes? It can’t be that hard. One last note about customization. Ticketapp provides an option to make your tickets public or private.

How Does This Thing Work?

Unlike Yappd or Twitter but similar to Tumblr, The TicketApp text editor gives users the ability to post quotes, images, links, and snippets of code by allowing these specific html tags to be used. I must admit, typing in HTML code is annoying and these tags should be substituted with buttons that perform these functions automatically for highlighted text. These tags are generally allowed on numerous blogs within their respected commenting areas so it’s interesting to see a service pick up on the notion of Twitter and provide this additional functionality. One other thing that is worth mentioning is that there is no character limit. You can go way beyond 140 characters if you choose to do so.

Will this service take off?

It’s hard to say. It’s nice to see a time line which isn’t merely all text but, Twitter is well established and so are the likes of Tumblr and Jaiku. The notion of having a service which is a clone of another is quickly wearing off and it’s really starting to drive many people up the wall. Perhaps with a few more UI changes, a publicly released API for third party support, and more options for user customization, this service may stand a chance to gain an acceptable userbase.

If you end up creating an account and giving it a try, please report back to us with your feedback and give us your opinion.

The Disposable Webpage

Have you ever wanted a temporary webpage? If so, now it’s possible thanks to DisposableWebpage which gives users the opportunity to create a temporary web page that will automatically expire in no more than 90 days. Once the countdown reaches 0, the page is automatically set for disposal. The page stays on the site for 2 more weeks and then is incinerated.

Before you are given the ability to create a page, you first need to obtain a master key. This master key enables you to edit the disposable webpage, create an editor key for friends or colleagues, and set the disposable date of the page.

Each disposable webpage contains the following feature set:

disposed within 90 days or less after creation
count down clock to show the time to disposal
history of revisions from the first edit to the current edition
bookmarking facility for readers follow the page
rich text editor for editing purposes

The first thing I was required to do when creating my own page was to give the page a title. That was followed up with entering a CAPTCHA security code. Unlike most of the other CAPTCHA security images I’ve seen, this one was pretty tough for me to figure out.

Step One Of Creating My page

After figuring out the security code, Disposable Webpage presented me with my own Login Master Key which is made up of 5 characters. I’m also given a link with a unique identifier which points to my disposable page. If you don’t like the master key that is generated for you, DW provides an option to set your own master key. Near the bottom of the page is a link where I can begin to edit my own disposable page.

Disposable Page Editor

The page editor is your standard text editor with all sorts of bells and whistles such as the ability to add video files, flash file, color coding, undo ect. One annoying thing I found was the lack of tooltip popups, which usually give a short description of what a button in the text editor does. This is very unfriendly in terms of interface design. It’s also worth noting that you are only alloted 15 minutes of editing time per editing session. However, each time you press the save button, the time is reset back to 15 minutes.

Final Thoughts:

The Disposable Webpage has quite a number of good uses. Some of those include short term collaboration, sharing of ideas in one place, can be used as a platform for any number of brainstorming sessions you may have ect. I think the best use of this site would be for those who are holding a conference or expo and need a temporary page to provide information related to the event. You can set a page up with all of the necessary information within 90 days of the event and once you have forgotten about the page, it will automatically be deleted.

Click here to visit my DisposableWebpage.

If you have used DisposableWebpage, why not let us know what your experience was like by leaving a comment below.

Live Coverage Of New Media Expo

TalkShoe will be exhibiting and attending the Podcast & New Media Expo, Sept 28-30 in Ontario, CA (near Los Angeles). They will be holding a continuous live podcast (Click here for information) from the show floor with special guest iJustine Live. If you happen to attend the event, make sure to visit Booth #415 as that is where TalkShoe will be located.

The 3rd Annual New Media Expo is an annual convention that educates individuals and companies about how to produce high-quality audio and video digital content, grow a loyal audience, and market or monetize that content in creative ways.

The Expo is a “prosumer” and corporate event that brings together influential digital media creators, podcasters and content developers to cover the complete range of creation techniques, business objectives and future trends.

The Expo is also a major networking event where content creators can share ideas and build partnerships.

If you are attending the event or if you will somehow be covering the expo via Twitter or some other means, please let us know by leaving us a comment.

LocateTV Opens To The Public

LocateTV.com Logo

LocateTV, the TV Guide like service that I reviewed here, LocateTV – TV Guide On Steroids has announced that they will be opening to the public on Monday, October 1st. The closed beta will be disabled and users from all over the world will now be able to give this service a try. Considering LocateTV Redesigned Their Embeddable Widgets, it will be interesting to see how many of them appear on various blogs within the blogosphere once LocateTV goes public.

The Truth Behind The Digg Effect

Chris Brogan, a social media maven, has published an article on his blog that goes into detail about his experience with the so called “Digg Effect“. Chris provides a visualization which shows the surge in traffic he received when he reached the Digg front page. What happened as a result? According to Chris, NOTHING. His RSS subscriber base didn’t increase, nor did the initial traffic to his site which is the basis for this post. Bloggers and site owners alike believe that getting on the front page of Digg is like striking gold, unfortunately this is not the case.

I’m not saying that being on the front page of Digg is a bad thing, but there is something you have to realize. The type of traffic that Digg sends is the “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” type of traffic. And while were talking about this sort of traffic, the same thing can be said for Stumbleupon, Sphinn, and Propeller. I’ve read so many blog entries that covered their own surge of traffic and the similarities between all of them are the same. No one sticks around, no one subscribes to the RSS feed, and the site that was once popular ends up returning to the shadows of the web.

A blogger or site owner should be looking to grow their reader base and that won’t happen by getting on the front page of Digg or any other major social bookmarking site. There is the argument where if you appear on these sites multiple times, there is a more likely chance of gaining quality traffic. I wouldn’t consider the digg effect to be called quality traffic, but I do think that by receiving this fly by night traffic, your building brand awareness. Your brand being your site and it’s a golden rule that REPITITIVENESS works.

The gist of what I am trying to say is to not rely on Digg, Stumbleupon or any other website to provide you with traffic. Instead, write good quality content. Good quality content does the job of so many other facets of blogging. Good quality content creates links, conversations, interactivity, spawns relationships, builds your brand and does so many other positive things for you, that if I were to write a book on SEO, it would contain one page. That one page would simply say, WRITE QUALITY CONTENT.

Tell me what you think in regards to this issue. I’d be very interested in your opinion.

BTW. Hello to all of you STUMBLING across this post. Are you here to prove me wrong?

Kontactr Adds Pop Up Feature

Kontactr, the service that gives users an very easy way to provide a contact form on your site for readers to contact you and in which I covered here, Easy To Use Contact Forms Via Kontactr has added a new feature called Kontactr Pop Up or KPU. KPU trys to make it easier for your readers to contact you by opening up a contact form without having to load another page.

KPU comes in three flavors, text link, small button or a larger contact button. Whenever a user clicks on one of these new links, the background of the webpage turns dark and a contact form appears on your screen. This means that, users won’t be required to load a separate web page to view your contact form. This should decrease the load on your server as that is one less page that has to be processed.

The popup contains everything that the original form has with the exception of the an additional command to close the popup window which can be initiated by pressing ESC on your keyboard.

What’s nice about this new option is that, bloggers that use Kontactr now have an option to provide a contact link directly within a post. This means that readers will be able to click on a link within an article to contact you without having to perform any extra steps, such as browsing to the static location of your form which in my case, is found at the top of this site.

As with the majority of things on the web these days, this popup will not work if you have Javascript disabled in your browser. So keep that in mind if it does not work.

NetScape Nav Contest Winner Announced

Netscape has officialy announced the winner of their NetScape Navigator 9 Splash Screen Logo Constest. The winner is Mario Herbert who designed the following graphic.

Mario Herbet Designs Winning Entry

This winning entry will end up being the default splash screen for Netscape Navigator 9. I can’t believe people still use Navigator as their browser. Someone explain that one to me.

If you ask me, the text on this splash green design is just a bit too blurry. I would of preferred to see a sharper looking design although the ships wheel and the logo do have a nice touch to them.

MyBlogLog Buzz Tracker Explained

MyBlogLog Logo The What’s Hot In My Communities section of your MyBlogLog Profile is an easy way to track buzz worthy info but, how does MBL decide what’s hot and what’s not?

Simply put, the links you see within this area of your user profile represent the most popular links within YOUR MYBLOGLOG COMMUNITIES. If you are seeing links to porn sites or sites you deem unacceptable, the only way to remove them, is to find out which community your apart of that is posting that link, or information related to that link and leave that community.

If your thinking that tracking down the culprits within your large number of communities would be nothing more than a hassle, your in for some great news. MyBlogLog has added an interesting feature to their buzz tracker in the form of a question mark. This question mark will finally give MyBlogLog users the ability to figure out where those buzzworthy links are coming from.

Figure Out Where Those Links Are Coming From

For instance, let’s say you don’t want links such as Fox.com to show up in your list. You would simply click on the (?) and figure out which sites are posting this link and leave their community.

Search And Destroy

According to the question mark, the site Casual Keystrokes, is the culprit behind this link. As an MBL user, you would look for that community within your list of favorites and click on the LEAVE COMMUNITY button.

It’s really neat to see how this all works and it’s nice that Robyn Tippins has finally published an article that easily explains the process. I have to agree that, clicking on these questions marks is half the fun in trying to figure out why they are creating so much buzz. Give it a shot and let me know what you’ve discovered.

Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff

The Musings Of Jeff Chandler

Author: Jeffro