Who’s Amung Us Update

Since the launch of Graphs.Amung.Us, the Whos.Amung.Us site has seen a dramatic increase in the time it takes to load the page. I’ve also noticed that the little icon used to display how many concurrent users are on your site at one time has occasionally disappeared. The icon, when clicked on, is also producing Internal-500 errors which is shining proof that the infrastructure behind the service is maxed out. Christopher Shannon has recently posted a blog entry that clarifies the issues currently ongoing:

We’ve been experiencing a huge surge in traffic lately, and our current infrastructure is stretched to the max right now, but we are working as fast as we can to get things back up to the blazing fasts speeds we used to enjoy, so just bare with us for a couple more days.

Good thing they recently added Google ads to a few of their pages or else WhosAmungUs would probably go belly up.

Let Your Greenvoice Be Heard

As reported by Mashable Greenvoice has launched a new activism community for those who love to live green. The first thing you’ll notice is the page layout and design, which I personally feel is excellent. Greenvoice is yet another platform for people to share, collaborate, communicate and voice opinions on issues related to living green.

Those who participate in the community are known as Greenvoicers, who can take as active or inactive role in the site as they wish.

Greenvoice allows users to create Campaigns. Users of Greenvoice are able to donate towards these campaigns as they wish. One thing worth noting is that the campaigns are in POUNDS and not dollars. Some of the campaigns that have already started include, Excess Packaging For Software, Free Papers, Bottled Water, Intensive Pig Farming and more.

There are also sections to write appeals or actions to oppose or support a particular campaign, a section to display videos, and each campaign has a slew of bookmarking options. These act as wikis of sorts, and Greenvoice users can contribute some information to a certain degree, whether you’re a member of the campaign or not.

Check out Greenvoice if you feel your up to the challenge of making a positive impact on the world.

Thoof: Another Digg Clone?

Appscout has put together a detailed preview of a new user-generated content service which promises to provide relevant, useful information but without the users. Thoof uses an algorithm that will discover a reader’s interests while tailoring the stories to an individual’s tastes. Commenting on Thoof will be non existent as well as the ability to rank stories. The only means of interacting amongst each other is the “SEND TO A FRIEND BUTTON” which will email a selected news story to a friends inbox of your choice.

The thing that makes Thoof stand out from the crowd is that it allows its members to submit news and headlines, and rather than rank those stories, the stories are immediately posted to users’ homepages. There’s no ranking, no commenting, and no burying of stories. Stories are automatically rated by the system to only be displayed on the homepages of Thoof users who have previously clicked on or indicated interest in other stories of the same type or topic. In fact, the only items that a user can click on when viewing a story are the “send to a friend” button to email the story to someone else, or the “improve” button that allows users to correct story blurbs for accuracy, or immediately report and flag duplicates. When I tried the “improve” button, it returned a 503 error, reinforcing the fact that Thoof is still very much a beta. Some features aren’t completely implemented, and others may yet come. – Source Appscout

Thoof is still invite-only, and there is no time table as to when Thoof will become publicly available. Click here to check out Appscout’s preview of Thoof

YouTube Remixer Launched/Reviewed

As reported by TechCrunch, YouTube has officially launched YouTube Remixer today, which is a new service that allows users to edit their videos from within YouTube itself. Join me as I take a look at this new service to see what it has to offer.

Powered by Adobe Premiere Express, the new service supports the insertion of graphics, text and audio as well as overlays and in-video transitions. While testing the new service my FireFox browser crashed which proves that this is not the ideal solution to use if you want to create a quality video which may take up quite a bit of your time, only to potentially have it wasted. Remixer should be popular to those who can not afford the Adobe Premiere Express desktop software, however, because you can only use your own media, users will be unable to create entertaining mashups which would have been a big hit.

The Beginning:

Remixer can be used by anyone who has registered a YouTube account. To begin using Remixer, click the following link http://www.youtube.com/ytremixer The first thing you should notice is that the familiar white background color of YouTube is gone. The bright color scheme that YouTube users have come to expect has been exchanged for a depressing grey color scheme. I can’t help but feel depressed while looking at the interface. At any rate, all of the videos that you have uploaded to your YouTube account will appear on the right by default. This area also houses the Graphics And Captions, Borders, Transition and Music features that can be added to the videos.

How To Use Remixer:

To begin using Remixer, drag one of your videos from the list on the right into the first box that appears in the time line. This will be the starting point of your video. It may take some time before the video loads into the time line but once it does, move the triangle located above the top of the red bar to the right to a point in the video where you would like a transition effect to occur. Once you drag the triangle to the appropriate spot, click on the SCISSORS icon to the left of the red bar. The Scissors icon will slice the video into two separate clips allowing you to place a transition in between them.

The transition effect, applied to the video

After the video is sliced into two separate sections, click on Transitions And Effects link. There are five different transitions to choose from, they are, Fade to Black, Fade to White, Fade Out, Circle Wipe, and Blur. Each one of these effects are self explanatory. To use one of the effects, drag the name of the effect into the smaller gray square that sits in between the two video clips. Preview the video with the included effects by clicking on the preview link in the bottom left corner of the Remixer Window. If you don’t like the result, you can either click on the UNDO button, or you can drag the effect from the time line back into the window on the right side of the page.

You can also add borders to your video, although I have yet to figure out how to place a border on one video clip rather than have it appear on every clip. The border feature allows you to add that extra spice to your piece. There are seventeen different borders to choose from including a television border, vintage photo border, and a plasma border which tries to provide the effect that your watching the video on a plasma television. If you manage to figure out how to place different borders on different video clips, let me know in the comments section.

Remixer also provides a way for you to provide different graphics and captions over your videos. The graphics are Vector based which means you can scale them to the size that you need and they will retain their quality. Some of the graphics include a baby bottle, sunglasses and the ever so cute ginger bread man. There are also three different types of captions that you can add to your video clips, stylish, plain and thought bubbles.

As for the ability to add music and photos to your videos, I have yet to figure that out. As far as I know, YouTube is used for videos, not for photos or for music. I tried dragging images from a separate browser window into the Remixer time line and that did not work. If you know how to add music and photos to your movies, please let me know so I can update this post.

Once you are finished remixing your video, click on the publish button. You will be asked to give the video a Title, Description and provide a list of tags for the video. Because of the launch of Remixer, YouTube has now added a new link in your My Videos area called My Remixed Videos. This is where all of the videos you Remix will be located once you publish them.

Conclusion:

The first remix video I published failed to save the transition effects that I applied. The second video did the same thing, so I am unable to provide a demo video showing the different transition effects that are available. I am not sure if this is a bug or not but I would think that the videos you publish from Remixer are suppose to contain the transitions you applied. The video looked exactly the way it was suppose to as I previewed it in the Remixer service, however, what I viewed is not how the actual video was published.

Remixer is no Adobe Desktop Solution, but it does provide a way for average YouTube users to compile their existing videos into something a bit more interesting. A major drawback for Remixer is the non ability to save a piece of work. This means that if your browser crashes during your Remixing session, you will have to start over from scratch and I doubt that very many users will actually start from scratch. As I noted earlier, this would have been truly Remixing if YouTube users had the ability to Remix any videos that are stored in the Remixer repository but I suppose this is asking too much. The service is actually pretty easy to use and I encourage you to look over your videos and see if you can’t improve their presentation using Remixer.

Solve Your Web2pt0 Identity Crisis With Onxiam

Creating accounts on new Web 2.0 sites is the easy part as most sites only require an email address and a username however, managing all of those accounts can be tough.

Onxiam pronounced (ON-X-I-AM), a Web 2.0 service aimed at consolidating all of your online identities into one simple page makes managing all of those accounts a breeze by allowing you to promote a single identity which provides links to all of your other online identities. Simply put, this service places your online presence onto one page so that instead of telling friends and family where you are and what your username is on a particular website, you simply send them one link which provides all of the information they need such as your username on a particular service.

Onxiam was created by Kevin Poulsen based out of Chicago, Illinois.

As I joined more and more online communities, I found myself constantly saying to people “On [website] I am [name].” This was getting tiresome, and I thought that there just had to be a better way of promoting myself to my friends, my family and to the online world as a whole.

I looked around but didn’t find anything, so I decided to build it myself. “Kevin Poulsen”

The Account Process:

Setting up a new account is fairly straight forward. As with most Web 2.0 sites you need to provide an email address, username and a password. Once the supplied information is provided you will automatically be logged into the site and will be presented with a page that provides a complimentary greeting. From this page, you can add what Onxiam calls IDENTITIES to your account.

The Social Aspect:

Although Onxiam fails to provide a way for registered users to communicate with each other through the service itself, knowing your friends identities on various services such as AIM or SKYPE allows you to get in contact with those individuals, indirectly because of Onxiam. If you perform a search and discover that one of your friends is not listed as being a registered member, be sure to send them an email invitation through the Onxiam invite service. The invitation will contain some generic text stating that you would like that person to join the service. Registered users can also add websites that are not already listed in the site directory. Once a site is added, it is instantly available for other users to use however, items such as icons and the ability to link directly to user profile pages does take some time to be added to the site.

Identity Crisis:

One thing to keep in mind while creating your identities is that you do have the option of making them PRIVATE which is great considering you may not want people following you around the net EVERYWHERE you go. From your Onxiam home page, click on the ADD link which is underneath the text MY INDENTITIES. The drop-down list contains what seems like a never ending list of all of the different sites and services currently in the Onxiam database. Once you select the site your apart of, type in your username for that site into the box on the right hand side. If you want this entry to be private, be sure to uncheck the box labeled PUBLIC. If you fail to uncheck this box, the account information will be listed in your public profile. Once you have that information typed in, press the ADD button. Your identity for that specific website will now be listed on your Onxiam home page.

My Opinion

This service is incredibly easy to use and although some new competition in this consolidating space has recently arrived (findmeon.com) Onxiam provides a simple, clear way of putting your entire online presence onto one page. So far, I have yet to come across a service that makes this process any easier.

One of the disconcerting things about this service is that the development blog has gone silent. The last post published on the dev blog dates back to October 31, 2006. Although Keven has built a service that in many ways can run on it’s own, it would be nice to see a fairly updated development blog to prevent users from creating a mentality that the service is dead. Another surprising fact is that the service is still free to use and is void of advertising. I’m not sure how much of being ad free will play into Onxiam’s future but it is refreshing to see a simple service that is not plastered with ads.

Conclusion

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Adam Jackson from http://www.adamjacksonlive.com for pointing me to this site. In a recent DailyTechTalk Talkcast I asked Adam if there were any Web 2.0 site/service consolidation services out there and this is the one he pointed me to. Good choice Adam.

On my quest to join all of the Web 2.0 sites and services on the net, Onxiam is like a godsend to me. I think of it as being everywhere on the net from one place. Be sure to bookmark http://www.onxiam.com/people/Jeffro2pt0/ if you have the chance to keep tabs on me. If you have an even better solution be sure to post it in the comments.

Crank Up The TweetVolume

I recently discovered this site by accident and although it’s use is fairly simple, it gives the user a chance to look deep inside in the Twitterverse.

TweetVolume is a service which uses a combination of Twitter and Google to visually show how many times a word or phrase has been used on the Twitter Network. Although the Twitter userbase makes up a small portion of the Internet, it is quite entertaining to figure out what the GENERAL interests are within the Twitter community.

For instance, Coffee appears over 15,000 times while Tea appears only 5,010 times and Water only appears 3,920 times. Therefor, it is safe to assume that the majority of Twitter users are coffee drinkers. It’s also interesting to note that the word Lunch appears over 17,000 times which is the highest amount when compared with other times of the day. So now we know what workers are really doing on their lunch breaks.

If I had one suggestion, it would be to somehow someway include the actual Twitter message or messages that included the searched term. This set of results could also be complimented by the username who created the message and then the username could link to their Twitter page. Think of these as Twitter Referral links which would show the actual post that the word was used in. I think that would be pretty cool.

I’ve already spent an hour dabbling with the service and I’m sure I will probably waste even more time trying to figure out what the buzz is all about within the Twitterverse. Give it a shot and report back with your findings!

New Fan Of Tumblr

After listening to the Net@Nite podcast with Leo Laporte where Leo interviews the founders of Jaiku and Tumblr, I have decided to take the plunge and give the Tumblr service a try. I must say that I am very impressed with how easy it is to publish content. Using the bookmarklet feature that you can use directly from FireFox, you can add content that you discover on the net straight to your Tumblr site to share with the rest of the world. The bookmarklet does an excellent job in creating the link to the source of the content allowing you to just copy the content, and add it to your Tumblr blog. The bookmarklet seamlessly does the rest.

Using Tumblr is also fun. They have a really cool feature which I feel Efx2.com could benefit from called Reblogging. ReBlogging let’s you quickly share content you discover on other tumblelogs, and even add or change the commentary. Imagine coming across a cool post on someones Efx2 blog such as one of those meme types of posts. You could simply click a Reblog link for that post and it would automatically put the same post into your blog, allowing you to change the content of the post and publish it on your own blog.

One of the downsides to Tumblr right now is the ability to discover other Tumblelogs. There is no central repository of Tumblrs nor are their any ways to browse amongst the active Tumblr blogs. However, it does appear as though they will be addressing this issue sometime in the near future.

“More ways to find friends – It seems like a no-brainer to show friends of your friends, but we have some interesting tools for this that aren’t quite ready uncover. More ways to discover tumblelogs are right around the corner. “

The reason I love Tumblr is because I can quickly add content that would otherwise take me quite a bit of time to publish on my very own blog. I also listened very closely to Leo Laporte when he described the three different types of blogging going on across the web. Those are:

Micro Blogging: This is where Twitter and Jaiku come in handy. With just 140 characters to create a post, this is used to quickly share thoughts random ideas. Something short.

MidRange Blogging: This is where Tumblr excels as it allows you to easily share content you deem interesting on the web. There is no need to write an extensive post about the particular piece of content. Simply post and move on. Continue reading →

Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff

The Musings Of Jeff Chandler

web2.0