Author: Jeffro

Jeffrohttp://jeffc.meEnjoy writing about, talking about, and helping others with WordPress
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Create Your Own Twitter Shirt

Reactee.com Logo

Reactee.com gives users of Twitter.com the chance to design a shirt where the text can be customized to suit your purpose. The shirts are $20.00 each and come in the following colors: white, light blue, organic, pink, silver, asphalt, olive and black. T shirt sizes range from small to extra large and are made out of 100% cotton, so you may want to purchase one size bigger than you need to compensate for shrinkage.

Creating a shirt is a 6 step process. Users begin by choosing a topic for their shirt. In my case, I chose Technology. The next step is to choose a slogan. Although Reactee provides quite a few slogan templates pertaining to the category, I decided to take the custom route and created my own. “Blogging The Webolution”

Adding My Twitter Name

The next step requires me to provide a Reactee Keyword which is used for contacting my shirt. Not sure what that means yet but I’ll look into it as I’m sure, shirts can’t talk. Next to the Reactee Keyword tab is a Twitter tab. If you have a Twitter account, this is where you put in your Twitter username. Next, we have the option of choosing an image as we all know a picture is worth a thousand words. I chose an image of the United States. The last step in the process is to provide additional text which is also optional. I selected the text template “To Subscribe” for my additional text template.

Activating The Shirt

Now it’s time to activate the shirt. Apparently, this shirt is alive. If users send a text message from their phone to my Reactee TShirt, they will receive a response with my Twitter Status. After completely activating the TShirt, Reactee then gives me the option to order the shirt.

Interesting service which gives users the ability to customize their own Twitter shirts. The idea of text messaging a shirt is rather strange but whatever floats your boat I suppose. I’m thinking about purchasing the shirt I created because I sort of like the design. Tell me what you think.

Jeffro2pt0 Twitter Shirt

Web 3.0 Dead Already?

Rest In Peace Versions Of The Web

I just finished reading a very thoughtful post written by Bill Snyder, A Preemtpive Strike: Death to Web 3.0 (and 2.0 while we’re at it). In his post, he makes quite a few valid points. One of those points is the fact that companies abroad are jumping aboard the web 2.0 bandwagon. It doesn’t matter what the company does, or what the company sells, that company needs a social network, and a Twitter user account even if they have no clear understanding as to why. As I have stated in numerous other conversations, social-networking is out of control but the good news is, the users themselves will determine which ones stay and which ones fall by the wayside.

Bill also makes another excellent point about the definition of web 2.0. Is web 2.0 one thing, or is it a series of concepts? I tend to agree with Bill in that the term describes a series of concepts. Since the web 2.0 O’Reilly definition was published, users have been coining the term Web 2.0 as a variety of different things. Whether it be the use of AJAX, website design or social-networking. Has anyone ever tried to explain what Web 2.0 is to a noob? It’s practically one of the hardest things on earth to describe because everyone has a different sense as to what it actually is.

Bill also states that Web 2.0 did not replace Web 1.0 and the web is not based on version numbers. Tim, I think your related to Bill! In any case, if you dissect a number of websites, web based applications, and quite honestly, anything that is related to web 2.0, it’s quite obvious that the web is still the web and the underlying code is still the same. So why are we still using the term web 2.0?

The whole point of defining Web 2.0 was to figure out where we are. Unfortunately for those who like buzzwords, we are everywhere. The whole point of discussing Web 3.0 is to figure out where we are going. Well, here’s the news: We’re not all going to the same place, and that is the beauty of this medium (or perhaps these mediums). The possibilities are endless and will continue to defy labels. We are just at the beginning of this “internet thing,” and what comes next is going to be many things — some will die anonymous deaths and others will change the very nature of the way we communicate.

I couldn’t agree with you more and I am definitely looking forward to what lies beyond the horizon of the web, however it will be described or defined.

20 Awesome Free Icon Sets

SmashingMagazine.com LogoSmashing Magazine has put together a list of 20 plus icon sets that are not only eye candy, but they are also free. Some of the sets featured include: iPhoneSketch OpenPhone Pack Social Bookmark Iconset and Feedicons

I know there are still quite a few people who are looking for Web 2.0 based icons, especially those that were featured in this post Web 2.0 Icons but unfortunately, the link for those icons has been taken down. I have emailed who I believe are the creators of that specific icon set, but I have yet to receive a reply back. Some of the sets featured by Smashing Magazine do have Web 2.0 characteristics. Look at a few of those before you continue your search.

Revver Pays Out 1 Million Dollars

Revver LogoRevver, one of the first video sharing sites to share revenue with it’s userbase have announced they have paid 1 million dollars to video creaters and sharers.

To coincide with this announcement is Revver’s one year anniversary. Doug Bresler, the creator of “Doogtoons” ended up being the one to receive an honorary check for the one millionth dollar earned.

Steven Starr, the founder of Revver shared his thoughts on user generated video,

“The time and place to be an independent creator is right now, online.” said Steven Starr,
founder and chairman of Revver. “Smart advertisers are financing an online economy
that supports these creators, and the top talent will build fortunes. This is historic: It is the
birth of a sustainable art form, and it’s happening before our eyes.”

I would have to whole heartedly agree. Bloggers, podcasters and video creators are developing brands. Those brands just happen to be “themselves” Those who become successful in the user generated space will probably net some pretty lucrative advertising deals. Here is a small bit of history concerning Revver.

Revver launched the 1.0 version of its site in September 2006 to foster the independent creator community emerging on the Internet. From the beginning, the Revver business model sought to reward these creators for sharing their work. By screening submissions and not accepting copyright-infringing content, Revver is able to monetize each and every video. The company’s performance-based advertising system also rewards video owners based on the popularity of their content without instituting barriers to entry. The result is the first open and effective marketplace for online video.

Congratulations to the users of Revver. Apparently, their ‘ad revenue sharing model’ is working. Here is a video showcasing the celebration.

First Big Move For Silverlight

Microsoft Silverlight LogoAccording to AppScout, Microsoft has signed it’s first major deal involving Silverlight, Microsoft’s competitor to the Adobe Flash Player. The deal took place with Internap Network Services Corporation. The company will equip websites of several large radio groups with the Silverlight media player. Radio stations that will be participating in this deal include, Citadel Communications, Univision and Radio one.

This is great news for Microsoft as it could be the beginning of the end of the adobe flash player dominance. From everything I’ve read thus far, Silverlight is said to be the flash player of choice as it virtually eliminates the need to buffer before presenting the content. Between Silverlight and Adobe Flash,  which one do you think is going to win?

Netscape To Propel New Social News Outlet

Propeller Logo

After recently announcing the death of it’s social news outlet, Netscape has announced today that they will be migrating it’s http://netscape.aol.com/ site into it’s new home http://www.propeller.com/. As Tom puts it,

It is important to us that you feel empowered to choose how you want to consume your news and participate in the community. As we mentioned in a recent post, the Netscape.com site will soon be redirected to the new Netscape portal, a more traditional and editorially-driven news experience. It’s already live, so you can check it out now if you haven’t already. You’ll notice some elements of our social news site there in short order, so that it will be easy for you to go back and forth and engage in each if you like.

So Netscape will still maintain a social news experience, except this time, it will be on it’s own domain away from Netscape.com It will be interesting to see if Propeller ends up being any more successful then it’s predecessor.

Amazon Sponsoring Startup Contest

AmazonWebServices LogoAmazon Web Services announced that they will be holding a STARTUP Challenge, or a contest of the best startup using their own API. The winner will receive $50,000 cash as well as $50,000 worth of AWS credits.

The grand prize winner will also receive mentoring sessions from an AWS technical expert, and an investment offer from Amazon. Four second place winners will receive $5,000 in AWS credits, and anyone that qualifies in the contest will receive $25 of AWS credits.

Amazon is wanting developers to come up with original ideas while also leveraging the pay-as-you-go technology offered by AWS. I think all of us are looking for originality and this contest may be what is needed to spur at least a little innovation.

Interested developers (only US residents and privately-held companies based in the US may apply) can join at aws.amazon.com/startupchallenge no later than 11:59 P.M. (PT) on October 28, 2007.

WikiPedia Hits 2 Million Pages

WikiePedia.org LogoThe most popular, sometimes controversial online encyclopedia, Wikipedia has achieved another milestone today with 2 million user generated pages. The article which lays claim to the title had something to do with El Hormiguero, which detailed a Spanish Television show which went by the same name.

To lay credence to the information in Wikipedia, most of the searches I perform in Google contain at least one or two results from Wikipedia on the front page of search results. That has to stand for something. Congratulations to WikiPedia for the milestone, here’s to 2 million more pages!

Google Reader Has Impressive Numbers

GoogleReader LogoThe hot news item of the day seems to center around a leaked GoogleVideo which was supposed to be a training video for ‘Noogles’ or new Google employees. The video contained quite a few interesting tidbits of information.

* Google Reader has two kinds of feeds:
– feeds that have one subscriber (two thirds from the number of feeds, they’re updated every 3 hours)
– feeds that have more than one subscriber (these feeds are updated every hour)

* Google Reader uses 10 TB for storing all the raw data

* Google Reader crawls 8 million feeds

* Google Reader is the only major feed reader that keeps the entire history for all the feeds.

* many Google applications use Google Reader’s infrastructure for feeds: iGoogle, orkut, Gmail’s web clips, Blogger widgets, Google Spreadsheets, Ajax API. Google Reader is the place for any kind of user-driven activities that involve feeds and it’s independent from Google Blog Search.

* the rate of user growth = the rate of growth for the number of feeds

* the index size grows 4% every week

* 70% of the Google Reader traffic comes from Firefox (a lot of geeky users)

* Gmail and orkut are the only Google applications that have a bigger number of pageviews/user than Google Reader

* search requires a lot of computational resources. Google Reader uses two indexes for search:
– a big tree updated twice a day (150machines, 600 million documents)
– 40 small trees for recent posts, updated every 5 minutes (40 machines, 40million documents)

* future features:
– very soon: internationalization, feed recommendations, accepting pings sent to Google Blog Search
– in the near future: simple clustering based on links (posts that link to the same page), adding comments to the shared items
– idea for monetization: adding AdSense ads and sharing the revenue with publishers, assuming they use AdSense

Most of the information from this post comes from a leaked, confidential video in which Google’s Ben Darnell explained to some Nooglers how Google Reader works. The video was hosted by Google Video, but it’s no longer available. More about the video here.

You can hear the audio portion of the video by using the player shown below.