Sigh, Flickr (My Photo community of choice) has officially announced video support. All I can envision is the beautiful creative and artistic outlet that Flickr has become slowly dwindling to the state of YouTube (My favorite video community for quick cheap entertainment) With that said you can see my perceptions of the two communities and I’d prefer they stay that way. Though, upon reading the announcement on their site I am relieved with a slight sense of hope. Flickr is currently limiting video to a 90 second length and only allowing users with Pro (paying) accounts to post video. Their idea, treating video as “Long Photos”
While this might seem like an arbitrary limit, we thought long and hard about how video would complement the flickrverse. If you’ve memorized the Community Guidelines, you know that Flickr is all about sharing photos that you yourself have taken. Video will be no different and so what quickly bubbled up was the idea of “long photos,” of capturing slices of life to share.
It’s going to be a matter of time before we realize the fate of Flickr in its current state. As a consistent money loser for Yahoo and the ongoing buyout news with Microsoft, there are more things Flickr users should be concerned about with their beloved site other than 90 second videos. Well, here’s to hoping for the best.
Hilarious article from 1995. If written today it would have been straight from the Onion.
The Internet? Bah!
After years of knowledge absorption and months of development, our team at RawVoice launched PodcastFAQ.com today. Finally one site that has everything you need to know about podcasting. At least that’s the plan. We know that we couldn’t think of everything, that’s why we left the site open for community/user contribution. Simply click the “submit content” button and let us know what’s missing or inaccurate. Two weeks ago we opened the site up to our community at Blubrry, Podcasternews and TechPodcasts and they have helped us a ton getting it ready for today. So… if your looking to learn a bit about podcasting, get refreshed or just want to see what its all about. Check out PodcastFAQ.com. [http://www.podcastfaq.com/]
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The ELI Annual 2008 was an amazing 4 days of collaboration and learning. I managed to pull all the bits of info from my head as well as transcribe my scribblings onto a legible publication. Feel free to enjoy them here. I still need to Yelp Taco Taco and Beto’s.
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I have had phones from, Cingular, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon and I must say Verizon has been the worst of the bunch. It is obvious that their business model is focused on selling their own half-assed services and preventing you from using any other alternatives. I’ll admit, I love my LGVX9800 but only with the installation of BitPim. With Bitpim I am able to have a lot more access to the phone than Verizon wants you to. In other words I can finally do stuff you should be able to do with out having to pay extra for. Such as: synching with outlook, adding custom ringtones, adding custom video etc. I also pay for the extra web package which allows me unlimited access to the web but not unlimited access to their content. Those crappy videos and wallpapers are extra. The welcome web screen when I am accessing the web seems to be redesigned every few months with the addition of more advertising and less content. There is not much screen real estate to begin with. Oh and Verizon locked the phone so I can’t download cool apps such as Google maps, Google Mail and Yahoo mobile. But if I want to pay and extra 4 bucks a day I can use their map/gps system.
I’ve also noticed that Verizon likes to make the user experience deceptively difficult. All I’m asking for is a a quick summery on their website when I log in that tells me how many text/pix/flix messages total I have sent and how many I have before I go over my limit. What I get is how many pix/flix messages, how many text messages, how many IN messages and how many IN Pix/Flix I have sent. All tallied separate and nothing indicating the amount remaining. (”IN” does not mean incoming messages either, it means people in your network.) It’s all very confusing, a no brainer fix and something that would keep me happy preventing me from leaving their crappy service. Why don’t they fix it? Because they only make money on those .15 message you send after you go over your limit.
The best was a few weeks ago when I received what looked to be a piece of junk mail from Verizon in my mail box. It was so convincing it went right into my trash pile. Fortunately for me I had heard a podcast that mentioned what exactly was hidden behind this mask. In the envelope was a letter from Verizon letting me know that they plan to sell my call information to third parties unless I call and opt out. And if I don’t call within 30 days of receiving the letter they would assume I was opting in. What a deceptive piece of crap.
Early this week Google announced their Android open Handset Alliance. Essentially they are developing a a free operating system for mobile phones that will integrate with the web and other Google type web applications. I am a big fan of simple yet customizable and this has been something I have been keeping my eye on for the last few months. Sure enough… Sprint and T-Mobile Not Verizon will be on board. Come January when my painful 2 year death sentence with Verizon is up. I shall not be returning.
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Just woke up. Spent much of yesterday Traveling and setting up the Booth and Podshack. The Gig officially starts today. We had a few stop over at the podshack last night… I can feel the excitement. This should be a good expo.
Today being a Wednesday is my Friday at the day job. Tomorrow morning I leave for Ontario, California (which may be one of the armpits of the state) for the Podcast and New Media Expo. I am heading there to support my RawVoice teammates for we plan to have a busy weekend. We have launched several New Tools for Blubrry, Podcasternews and Techpodcasts that we will be promoting and demoing at our Booth on the show floor. In addition to our booth, we have several meetings scheduled as well as 3 nights hosting a Hospitality suite (the PodShack.) For anyone heading down to the expo please stop by and say “hi” at Booth 315.
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After considerable discussion the last few weeks, AK-47 and I made some changes at the house yesterday. We decided that wasting our money and time watching the crap that’s on the cable networks had to stop. We downgraded our cable service to the analog basic package which gives us roughly 5 -10 watchable channels. Most of these are the local over-the-air channels (NBC, Fox, ABC etc) We held on to that only so that we could still benefit from the High Speed internet at a cheaper rate. Ultimately we are saving a about 60 bucks a month with this downgrade. In turn we finally made the move to one of those Online DVD rental services. I spent some time yesterday researching the differences between NetFlix and Blockbuster Total Access. With out going into too many details we decided on the 9.95 Netflix plan. If you have a Netflix account add us as a friend with this link so we can be all Web 2.0 and stuff and start trading queues and reccomendations. I muist admit I’m pretty excited because now when we decide to sit in front of the television we will have a fresh new movie waiting for us to watch instead of Celebrity Fit Club.
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While killing time at home and trying to keep my mind off this nasty cold, I decided to create a little resource page to list all the cool websites and applications for the Nintendo Wii. You can find it by clicking the tab at the top of this site or simply by going to: [http://www.131j.com/wp/wii-resources/] I’m sure it’s far from the most comprehensive list out there but as I find more I will post them. If anyone out there feels that something should be listed to this page please let me know. Enjoy.
I’ve given up on the trendy (well trendy 4 months ago) Twitter. I had it set up to post to the left sidebar on this very page. It was the two or three lines of text under the label “Right Now” Unfortunately it worked only half the time and when it did, the whole side column took and extra 30 - 60 sec to load. Twitter has a cool feature that lets you post easily via aol Instant messenger. Since I already have that running in Trillian I figured it an easy unobtrusive way to post instantly what I was doing to my blog. Well, the aol im part seems to be up and mostly down for over a month now and with the slow column loading I felt it was time to send it away for now. I understand that there is this huge community of twitters on the actual site and various additional apps that could be downloaded to post to twitter but I didn’t want any of that. Maybe I’ll revisit Twitter in the future but for now Good Night.
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Finally had the chance to post The Video from the Spring Symposium. It’s a pretty high quality wmv so load and buffering may take a little time. I’ve also heard there are some audio issues on the Mac end but I hope to get this up on YouTube soon. Otherwise enjoy!
[Going to 11 - This is Mick Beckam]
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Wrapped another Spring Symposium yesterday. We had a great crowd, intuitive sessions, an Awesome video (Should be posted soon) and a very keen keynote. I pretty much passed out when I got home but found myself back in the office bright and early today setting up for a couple web and video conferences. Will there be time to relax this weekend…?
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I mean, it’s cool and all but….
[obsessed with twitter]
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I can’t believe it took this long but someone may have finally gotten it right. SanDisk is partnering up with yahoo music and producing an mp3 player with Wifi that does what it’s suppose to do. If you have a Y! Unlimited account (which I do) and open wifi network you will be able to connect to Y! Music download songs and listen to the Launchcast streaming radio stations. This is an extremely exciting announcement. Unfortunatly 250.00 (4gb model) is a bit high for me so I will have to wait a bit until I get one of these things but, I think I have found my next MP3 Player. I have two questions. based on the EMI decision to offer drm free music if and when Yahoo offers drm free EMI stuff will this device download it? Also will you be able to download podcasts on this thing? If so this device will be paving the road for what Apple, Microsoft and others should do. Hmm I bet the iphone will be able to do all this too. I hope so the more the better. [link to story] [link to Sandisk Sansa Connect]
Guitar Hero + Karaoke Revolution + Drums = Rock Band
Adobe announced their line of CS3 products yesterday and I must admit I’m a bit shocked. As usual all the names changed etc etc but most importantly Fireworks is still alive! Not only is it alive, they added improvements and made it part of a CS3 bundle. Does that mean it will be staying? It looks that way at least for the time being. As much as I hate Adobe their pricing structures and their software, I had no choice but to concede when they bought Macromedia. I have been counting down the days till Adobe finally kills Fireworks, but it looks like there might be some life left. Maybe Adobe has realized that Fireworks has a few on Photoshop and Illustrator 
Now that Death Flu ‘07 is over I can finally get back on track. Something nasty had been going around and it got the worst of me last week. I did manage to get some 8+ hours in on the orginal Legend of Zelda which I had downloaded onto my Wii. Anyway, almost a full week later and I am finally on the road to recovery. Not quite 100% yet but I’m feeling a lot better than I was last Thursday. Saturday was the first day I felt somewhat mobile and was able to do some shopping with Aileen and find ourselves an outdoor table for the Backyard. We got an umbrella for it as well but still haven’t gotten chairs yet. I gave in after 3 years and picked up a pair of Crocs. 30 bucks always seemed steep for a pair of rubber shoes but with my REI dividend they were only 14 bucks, I figured they were worth that. Now I know why people wear these stupid things.
The planets must have been aligned Sat night because after talking to My friend on the phone and deciding we wanted Steak, Aileen agreed to go with us to a steakhouse. Crossing another “places to go to while in Denver” off our list we hit the Traildust Steakhouse. Certainly a Casa Bonita for Cowboys. Much better food too
Sunday I hit up the Vintage Voltage Expo with some friends and somehow managed not to spend a dime there. We had brunch at some Crazy suburban Italian Marketplace type buffet. The rest of the afternoon was spent doing yardwork… yay.
Possible Second Life Killer? Who knows. The proof will be in the pudding when it is launched in the near future. They are claiming better performance and more content control. Like most applications Second Life has its issues. That tends to be the perfect time for a competitor to capitalize. They will just need to do things right. We’ll see…
New virtual world coming from Australia « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger
Blogged with Flock
Flock seems to be the perfect Web Browser for Web 2.0 Junkies. Based on mozilla, flock gives you instant access to your Flickr, Blog and Delicious accounts. I can upload photos right to flickr and then blog about a web page all from the browser. No need to download a bunch of firefox plugins its all right here. In fact I am posting this via Flock. let’s hope it get’s through.
Flock — the social web browser
Blogged with Flock
Watch how the Book was introduced.
-thanks Vidya