Photography Contest Update

Web 2.0 Photography ContestIt’s nearing the middle of August and I’m sad to say that although there are 4 members who have joined the Flickr group, no one as of yet, has submitted any entries. Up for grabs is a free, 1 year Flickr Pro membership which will be awarded to the person who submits a photograph that best represents Web2.0 in the real world.

To enter this contest, click on the image shown above, or the one on my sidebar. The contest ends on August 31st but if there are no entries by that time, I will extend the contest for another month. Web 2.0 surely has to exist in some or fashion outside of the interweb right?

Some Ideas I Had – Feedback Needed

Some Ideas I Had I just wanted to pass along some ideas I had concerning this site. Your feedback to these ideas or perhaps some of your own would be highly appreciated. The first idea is, creating a live chat area where visitors of this site can get together to chat about the various topics this site covers.

The chat room could be available 24/7 or I could schedule chats which would occur at a specific date and time. I was going to give this a try tonight using Meebo, but I experienced an enormous amount of problems.

The second idea is attaching a forum to the site. The forum would contain sections that would cover the various topics covered on this site. It would open up yet another, community avenue for this site where like minded individuals can get together and talk about what’s going on. I’m not sure if this site has enough traffic, or if the readers of this site would have any interest in becoming a participating member of the forum, so do me a favor and let me know if you like the idea.

If I decided to attach forum software to this site, I would us Vbulletin. Vbulletin is still the best forum software in my opinion and I have a few years of experience using it. I know of an Ajax powered shoutbox which could be used by the forum members as a chatroom, which would solve idea #1. The only problem with using Vbulletin is the price. It currently costs $85.00 for a lease of one year. I’d be willing to chip in $20.00 towards the price, would anyone else be willing to donate towards the forum? If so, let me know.

Those are the ideas I had floating around in my head and I figured I’d toss them out here to see if there were any takers.

Email Subscription Now Available

Email Subscription Options PageI’ve been meaning to do this for awhile but time hasn’t been on my side. As of now, you can now subscribe to this blog/site by way of email. I realize that not everyone uses a web based feed reader or a stand alone feed reader, so I have given those readers the chance to subscribe via email. Using FeedBurner, I was able to make the HTML based emails look pretty similar to how the articles look on this site.

Emails will be sent out everyday between the hours of 11PM and 1AM. If you would like to subscribe to this site via email, click on this button Subscribe Via Email Button or alternatively, you can Click This Link To Subcribe. Those of you who do subscribe, please provide me with some feedback to let me know, how it works out for you.

Break.com Unviels Customizable Video Player

Break.com LogoAs reported by Mashable.com , Break.com has unveiled a new feature which allows users to customize the embedded video player to their liking similar to YouTube.

 

You must have a registered account on Break.com before you can create your own embedded player. Users can choose between a preset design, or you can customize the player through a series of background colors and text.

Break.com is my favorite video site that I have been watching for over two years now. I’m happy to see them keeping pace with the other video sites out their on the net. This is a crowded space to be in right now but, I feel that Break.com will hang around for quite a long time as the videos they have on their site are first class comedy. Here is a video, which highlights the new customizable video player.

http://view.break.com/345588 – Watch more free videos

10Links Consumes SPAM Sandwich

10Links.net Logo

10Links.net the site I reviewed a few days ago has temporarily gone under because of the vast amount of spam that was getting into their site queue. This is easily understandable considering their submission form, at the very least, didn’t provide a CAPTCHA image to ensure that human beings were the ones submitting websites.

10Links.net has vowed to keep the archive of links public while informing us that they are currently in the secondary stages of their next project. Don’t ask me what their next project is because they didn’t tell me! Whatever they are working on, I’m sure they will be using some sort of Anti-Spam measure this time around.

Project Creative Sends Out First Newsletter

Project Creative Logo

I received the first news letter from Project Creative today. The newsletter contained information about a LIVE, interactive podcast which was produced last week. To listen to the show click this link. Project Creative hopes to continue producing these sorts of podcasts via Talkshoe on a monthly basis. This gives users the opportunity to ask questions regarding the site. The podcast producers are actually the owners of the site and although I have yet to listen to their first show, I have to wonder what kind of questions were asked and which ones were answered considering project creative is not even in its invite-only stage.

Their full newsletter which is in PDF format does offer some more details about their service. Project Creative will have something to do with iLife Portal. PC has also chosen the open-source CMS Pligg to act as their content manager. I speculate that there will be some sort of main page where users will be able to vote things up or down, considering Pligg is the open source version of Digg.

If you want to read the newsletter for yourself, click the following link. Make sure you have a PDF reader installed such as Acrobat or my personal favorite FoxIT.

Web 2.0 – Real World Photography Contest

Jeffro2pt0 Web 2.0 Photo Contest Logo

I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about a contest that will be starting on August 1st and ending on September 30th. I’d love to see if anything dealing with Web 2.0 exists in the real world which is why this is a Web 2.0 photography contest. The idea is simple. Take a photo of anything that resembles Web 2.0. This could be objects with rounded corners, pastel colors, unique billboard advertisements, architecture, perhaps a product name with the word BETA next to it. Anything that you think you would see in the world of Web 2.0. At the end of the month, I will go through all of the entries to judge which one best represents Web 2.0 and the winner will receive a free Flickr Pro Account which will be good for one year.

In order to submit your entries, please visit Jeffro2pt0 the official Flickr Group for this contest and join the group. Entries submitted in any other way will be discarded.

Here is the low down concerning the contest, also known as rules:

  1. 2 Entries Per Group Member
  2. No Photoshopped Images
  3. Do not use multiple Flickr accounts
  4. Nothing Pornographic or Violent In Nature

I reserve the right to determine whether an image is a rule breaker or not and these rules could be updated or changed at any time prior to the contest completion date. Have fun, and lets see how creative you people are!

FireFox 2.0.0.6 Released

FireFox LogoFireFox’s built in update checker happily notified me of the update as I browsing around today. 2.0.0.6 contains 1 critical security fix and 1 moderate security fix.

 

 

Fixed in Firefox 2.0.0.6

  • MFSA 2007-27 Unescaped URIs passed to external programs
  • MFSA 2007-26 Privilege escalation through chrome-loaded about:blank windows

That about sums up what was contained in the update. Considering one of the flaws that was fixed is rated as critical, I advise you to upgrade as soon as possible. You can download the latest version of FireFox by clicking here

Poll Results Regarding Pownce

Earlier in the month of July, I asked visitors the question if, Pownce will ever triumph over the competition? After allowing the poll to be published for 30 days, here are the results.

  • 17 of you voted NO,
  • 9 of you voted MAYBE
  • while only 6 of you voted YES.

Granted this poll was created in the beginning of the month before the announcement of Pownce releasing a public API in September.

I personally think because of the type of financial backing in combination with the people who are directly involved with the service, it will be quite awhile before Pownce disappears off of the radar. I honestly don’t use Pownce as much as I use Twitter simply because I can’t tie my Twitter updates into Pownce.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the woodwork in terms of Pownce related plugins/mashups due to the API being released. Perhaps someone will develop a way for me to Pownce through Twitter.

On a side note, please vote on my new poll question which is: Should I Produce A Podcast For This Site? I am seriously thinking of starting up a show on Talkshoe but I’d like to know if there is an audience who would be willing to participate in the show. I have a vague idea as to what I would like to accomplish with the show, so please cast your vote and let me know.