I'm trying out the newest Drupal, it is MUCH more usable and has most of the configurable options you'd want. Really, MUCH more user friendly. Congrats team!
Powazek: Just a Thought: Death to User-Generated Content
Powazek: Just a Thought: Death to User-Generated Content: Derek Powazek: "So let's not give in to the buzzphrase du jour. Let's use the real words. Those people posting to Amazon pages? They're writing reviews. Those folks on Flickr? They're making photographs. And if we must have an umbrella term to describe the whole shebang, I have a suggestion. Try this on for size: Authentic Media."
I like.
Joho the Blog: [f2c] Christopher Sacca, Google
Joho the Blog: [f2c] Christopher Sacca, Google: "Chris Sacca is head of Google's Special Initiatives. There are about 5 million terabytes of info in the world and google has collected about 170T so far."
Gyre.org : New York Times: Iraqi documents are put on Web, and search is on
Gyre.org : New York Times: Iraqi documents are put on Web, and search is on: "The U.S. has put thousands of untranslated documents, captured from the former Iraqi government, online in an experiment to see if volunteer researchers can find evidence of weapons of mass destruction or ties to al-Qaeda that the official intelligence agencies could not."
Videoblogging Week 2006
Videoblogging Week 2006 is a great way to get started with videoblogging. Just do it.
EricRice.com :: Let me break it down for you. Podshow = Old Media.
EricRice.com :: Let me break it down for you. Podshow = Old Media.: "So, yeah, let me be clear:
- Podshow is not a business I trust.
- I am concerned for friends and other very talented folks who are part of the organization. "
USATODAY.com - Google's hidden payroll
USATODAY.com - Google's hidden payroll: "Because Adsense earnings can vary widely depending on a site's traffic or subject matter, many Web publishers in the developed world don't bother participating. Whereas a $25 monthly payout may not be worth the trouble to a blogger in Manhattan, it can mean the world to a blogger in Manila."
Moving On and Trading Places (by Jeremy Zawodny)
Moving On and Trading Places (by Jeremy Zawodny): "I recently left Yahoo to go to work for Google."
I realized something else this morning. Microsoft has a videosite that uses Quicktime. Google starts syndicating video using Yahoo's MediaRSS site. There is some movement in the standards space: the big players are slightly starting to support each others' standards.
Technorati Search: iasummit: I just realized something. Technorati has a strategic problem: with more and more personalized features (your favourites, ...) they're very close to morphing into Bloglines. But they don't want to *be* Bloglines.
Bloug: From consulting to products and services
Bloug: From consulting to products and services: a LOT of information architects have been starting to build products lately. Lou made a list. It's in the air!
I'm back from the IA Summit. I wish I had time to write about it, but I have other fish to fry. It was a really good one. My talk went really well, I kept it down to earth and the jokes really worked, even though I lost my notes and thus was kinda nervous. But I had practices it 4 times before going to the summit, so I had the material pretty much down.
I also reconnected with a whole lot of people. I didn't party much - the conference information and social overload isn't for me - all the noise and buziness makes my head hurt.
So all in all, perhaps the best IA Summit so far. It just keeps getting better. I also really like the efforts the organizers make to make it a social experience for everyone, newbies included, and to tear down the "old boys club" feeling that this and many other conferences suffer from. Fantastic work.
I also realized that I see most of my (few) role models at the IA Summit. Role models, people you can look up to and learn from, are really important in life. I met Lou Rosenfeld the first time at an IA Summit, I saw Steward Brand speak at an IA Summit (an ongoing inspiration!), and this time I was honored to meet David Weinberger (another inspiration). I was also very pleased to have an opportunity to listen to Dana Boyd and Rashmi Sinha talking about social aspects of the web. By the way, Rashmi's upcoming Mindcanvas product rocks very, very much.
And that's enough for now.
apophenia: MySpace, HR 4437 and youth activism: "For good reason, many Americans are outraged by HR 4437, a House bill that will stiffen the penalties around illegal immigration. Over the weekend, protests began with over 500,000 people taking to the streets on Saturday. Online, teens wrote bulletin board posts on MySpace, encouraging their peers to speak out against the bill. On Monday, instigated through MySpace postings, thousands of teens across the country walked out of school and marched in protest. In Los Angeles alone, 36,000 students walked out and took to the streets. Throughout the country, thousands of teens walked out in protest."
A Zulu In Silicon Valley: Mefeedia - Video feeds for iTunes and your Browser
A Zulu In Silicon Valley: Mefeedia - Video feeds for iTunes and your Browser: "I like mefeedia. Why? Because unlike Yahoo! Podcasts (which I like), I can accumulate all my video feeds into a single feed which I can stream into my iTunes player."
Upcoming videoblogging books:
Video Blogging by Jay Dedman, Joshua Kinsburg and Joshua Paul $24.99
0-470-03788-1 Publication date July 2006 [I don't understand, was
the book cancelled and then re-instated?]
Secrets of Video Blogging Diana Weynand, Ryanne Hodson, Michael Verdi,
Shirley Craig $24.99 ISBN 0-321-42917-6 Publication date April 2006
Hands-on Guide to Video Blogging and Podcasting Damien Stolarz and
Lionel Felix $34.95 ISBN 0-240-80831-2
Videoblogging for Dummies by S.C. Bryant $24.99 ISBN 0-471-97177-4
Publication date June of 2006.
loadedpun rocks
loadedpun is quickly becoming THE place to follow what's going on in online video land.
"Ask A Ninja: Question 15 "Deciding Like A Ninja"
Not bad, funny and well edited. But a bit gimmicky. I prefer personal vlogs altogether.
Watch movie (Quicktime, 2.3 min, 14.3 MB)
Original post, from Ask A Ninja - You Got Questions, Ninja Got Answers.:
Ryan asks the Ninja if his friend Paul makes bad decisions. Click below to Download this movie: (Use 'Save As' Control Click for Macs and Right Click For Windows) iPod Quicktime WMV MP3 If you like it, tell a friend! You got questions, Ninja got answers. Previous Episodes of Ask A Ninja Remember to send your questions to askaninja@gmail.com. This is a podcast and can be automagically downloaded to you computer through iTunes. Please upgrade to the newest version of Quicktime.
(Via Mefeedia)
The Mefeedia core team (Devlon, Michael, me) uses a mailing list, mostly to discuss strategy and stuff. We tried using the 37sigs chatroom app but the email just seems to work better.. the problem with the chatroom is that you have to open it, it's kinda hard to follow. Gmail works better.
Anyways, since we fixed the speed of Mefeedia, we're all happy and fuzzy again. The new homepage really helps too.
Yesterday I added a list of *new* feeds to the homepage, so that when someone adds their feed, anyone see that's on their homepage and can easily subscribe to it. It really fits in nicely with te philosophy of sending Mefeedia love not just to popular feed (it's not about popularity!) but to newbies. Newbies need subscribers a lot more than popular feeds, so that's who we want to highlight.
Anyways.
Sun Grid hit by network attack | CNET News.com
Sun Grid hit by network attack | CNET News.com. So the day they launch Sun's grid computing service gets hit by an denial of service attack.
Other peoples memories is a concept I love: found art. They're putting videos online that they found (often in 8mm form).
This video has an unknown family's memories of Barcelona: Watch movie (Quicktime, 0.9 min, 4.5 MB) Original post
(Via Mefeedia)
River of vlog
I always felt Dave Winer was onto something when he was talking about the "River of news" that an RSS reader should be. You gotta give it to the man.
Last Monday, we did an emergency launch to fix some bad SQL that was taking the server down, and as a sideeffect we launched a new homepage for Mefeedia if you are logged in. I call it the river of vlog.
The page is quite simple, it lists new videos that have been aggregated into your queue, including the description of the original blogpost. There wasn't a page like that on Mefeedia yet.
And strangely, suddenly, I am addicted to Mefeedia.
This river of vlog homepage has become useful. Useful is a powerful word. Addictive might be a better one. I check it many times a day, on the lookout for new videos. It is surprisingly simple yet really really powerful.
I always had a dream: the day I would visit Mefeedia as often as I visit Bloglines, I would know I succeeded. After 2 years of working on it, that day still hadn't happened. But now, I think we're there. The difference one page can make! I can spend years doing informationarchitecturitis, but without this 1 page, the site never hit that tipping point of usefulness.
Here's a screenshot:
"Grahame and The Game".
The "game" is about how to get girls, it's kinda stupid. But this is an interesing use of "hidden" cameras.
Watch movie (Quicktime, 1.3 min, 3.2 MB)
Original post, from scratch video:
The camera lens is sewn inside the strap of the backpack I had on. I also had a wireless mic on my left shoulder. It feels very different to have a camera concealed like this. I often chose to tell people that I was wired which surprisingly made the interactions between us quite different than if I were holding the camera. I haven't figured out how to explain it in words yet. Grahame Weinbren tells me about how to pick up women. ...actually, I feel more like the portal into this world.
(Via Mefeedia)
The emergency release
Today we did something I haven't heard before: an emergency release.
We were building a bunch of new features, and weren't gonna release for another month or so. But the server was slow lately, to the point of being unreachable - the old features were taking down the server.
So I uncommented a bunch of new features that weren't ready yet, and for the sake of having a site that's not hyperslow (it's still somewhat slow), we released the site. At least performance should be better.
Emergency release. Live and learn!
From building Mefeedia, I've learnt quite a few things.
I've learnt that half of the features I've come out with in the past year don't matter. The other half are ok, but they are still not there.
Usability testing matters. Even if you're an experienced usability reviewer.
Engineering matters. The site has been very slow lately.
Featuritis? I give you informationarchitecturitis! Too much thought going into IA structures. Not enough in talking to users.
Yep. I am learning. Building something real is great for that.
"G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide": "Designers who work with networks must face these tensions and design to take advantage of the global while not destroying the local."
A must read.
Asia, Far East, news and analysis Times Online, The Times, Sunday Times
Asia, Far East, news and analysis Times Online, The Times, Sunday Times: "The Ministry of Public Security has drawn up new rules and babies’ names must in future be drawn from a database that excludes thousands of rare Chinese characters. Out go indecipherable names. With the introduction of electronic identity cards, the authorities will register only names that they decide to include on their database."
In other words: a new controlled vocabulary of characters (imposed by technology standardization) means you can't call your kid what you want anymore.
Today in Tech (The Show On 10).
A Microsoft corporate site with no M$ branding, using Quicktime by default for video. Can it be true? Yes it can.
"Awesome mashup about darknets".
Watch movie (Quicktime, 3.8 min, 10.6 MB)
Original post, from jonnygoldstein.com:
Fun and educational. Courtesy of JD Lasica. Fresh from the SXSW Festival in Austin Texas.
(Via Mefeedia)
Can you use Amazon S3 to create the new FLickr killer?
Can you use Amazon's S3 service to host the images for your new Flickr killer?
URL's look like this: http://s3.amazonaws.com/mypictures/0001/
Quotes is the bucket, Nelson is the object. You can store JPGs there, no problem.
The question is: can you access this anonmously, ie, can I do <img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/mypictures/0001/" ... in a webpage and expect it to work?
I've been reading the auth docs, haven't figured it out. Anyone have an answer?
Thanks!
Amazon.com Amazon Web Services Store: Amazon S3 / Amazon Web Services
Amazon.com Amazon Web Services Store: Amazon S3 / Amazon Web Services: "Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers."
OK, now some kid in his garage build this storage solutions I was asking for yesterday :) This stuff is the future.
When you need to localize and categorize -- CMS Watch
When you need to localize and categorize -- CMS Watch
Researching pricing?
Pricing is hard. A lot of new businesses are trying to figure it out. One startup wants to let people charge for their content. But their system doesn't let me sell a video for 1.99$. So that's out for me.
It's all about convenience and value. Can I backup my pictures folder? I'll pay 35$/year for that. No need for it to be highly available, I'll only need it when I accidentally delete something or my computer crashes. Can I backup my business files? 4.99/month sounds reasonable. The backup needs to be automated.
It's very hard for the creators of a service to understand what people will pay for. Ringtones sell for 2.99$ a piece! For a ringtone! It's the convenience and the value - not the data. iTunes set the price of a song at 99c. A movie at $1.99. And it's convenient.
I wonder if there are any good ways to research pricing in a new market?
Om points to Box.net, a lot of things to like including a business model. But it's 1GB for free or 5GB for only $4.99/mo.
That is just way to expensive to store my photos, and my photos are my most important files that I'd like to backup. So another no for me. I've tried out many storage services, and I'm desperate for one, but a few gigs? That's not even enough to store my business docs. Please. Give us like 20G for 35$/year. That sounds more like it. Surely that's possible these days? Or are the economics of storage not there yet?
Audioblog.com rebranding and expanding - The Social Software Weblog
Audioblog.com rebranding and expanding - The Social Software Weblog: audioblog.com will soon be re-branded as "hipcast", since they've now moved beyond just audio. I feel bad for them, all that brand equity lost. Must be a bummer. I changed mefeedia from me-tv.com about 1 year into its life, when it was still totally underground. Still it hurt, it took over 6 months for people to forget the original name. People will still refer to audioblog at least a year down the line.
Meetup: World's largest community of local Meetups, clubs and groups!
I really like Meetup's homepage. No feature lists, just lots of examples of meetups (which give you an idea of what it's like), some endorsement quotes, and then a long list of cities and topics. (And a searchbox and featured meetups.)
In other words: let the data speak for itself. Compare with Basecamp's homepage, where it's all about benefits (not features) and endorsements. For their service, a good approach too I guess.
From a Clay Shirky talk writeup, a pattern langauge for social software, just stating out. Great stuff. I'm involved in some social software stuff lately, and not just in Mefeedia, and it's hard. But interesting.
Dave’s Wordpress Blog » Blog Archive » River of Meme-O-Randum?
Dave’s Wordpress Blog » Blog Archive » River of Meme-O-Randum?
Meme-O-Randum hasn’t been rewarding me for my attention for quite some time. So what do I want? Read the title of this post. I want the best of both worlds.
Where is my mind?: Flickr - Birth of an online community: this description of Flickr (only 2 years old) is funny because the site is SO different now. They still have groups and photos and friends, but almost everything else has radically changed.
Raymond made a screencast of eyespot's online media "mixing". It is extremely rudimentary right now, just lets you put clips together and then renders a new clip from that. Let's see where they take it from here.
GMail is positively flaky lately. Strange lockouts. Crashes. Sometimes it just doesn't load.
If Yahoo rolls out their new email now, and it's real sweet, I might just switch away.
Flickr: nathanialfreitas' photos tagged with openvisiontv: some nice screenshots of the new i/on videowatchingpodcatching tool.
"Herro Flom There.com" He's showing us this world (I thought it was Second Life, but it's there.com?). It's amazing, especially because the guys is chatting, meanwhile his characters lips move, he's adjusting the camera, moving around, it really feels like he's in a real world there..
Watch movie (Quicktime, 6.2 min, 14.7 MB)
Original post, from Herro Flom Japan (Videocasts only):
I'm a little concerned that this might turn out to be fun only for me. But when it's all said and done, this whole thing is about what's fun for me, right? My time, my money, my blog. It's only fair. OK, OK, I'll admit it, I feel guilty. I will get back to the regular [...]
(Via Mefeedia)
"Phramaha Nattapong - Buddhist Monk from Thailand".
In this particular video, it would have helped to make sure the monk was feeling comfortable first. He's too much in "talking to the camera" mode (in a bad way). Still, it's interesting.Interviewing people from all over the world and sharing that is one of thereasons I love videoblogging.
Watch movie (Quicktime, 4.5 min, 13.1 MB)
Original post, from blip.tv (beta):
Phramaha Nattapong recently came to visit me here in Worcester. I got him to agree to a video but it does not really show much of his normal lively character. Still a good talk, though. Payment
(Via Mefeedia)
The no-framework PHP MVC framework - Rasmus' Toys Page
Thank you God. Thank you.
The no-framework PHP MVC framework
An intelligent way to build a scalable PHP app. All this stuff I've had to figure out for myself, and some of it I got wrong.
I do prefer 1 thing different though. I use a simple template engine. I have NO PHP in my HTML, ONLY html. I edit my HTML pages in Dreamweaver, and often move stuff around and redesign, so this works for me.
Wow. I just got a spam email with the following subject:
%CUSTOM_FINANCIAL_TERMS
and the following body:
Kelly,
%CUSTOM_LINK
Baily.
I guess they forgot to enter some variables in their SPAM SOFTWARE!
Server Error
Ever since Gmail added the chat feature, I've had nothing but problems with it. I get "server error" messages (from Google!). Gmail is unresponsive. I can't access my email for hours.
It's come to the point where I am thinking of moving away from email. Sure, chat is nice, but if it's gonna destabilize my email experience even slightly, it's not worth it. Email is lifeblood. If it doesn't always work, forget it.
Anyone else having problems with Gmail, or is this just me? I'm surprised I haven't heard any grumbling.
Linkedin is strange: even though I almost never visit or use the site, it strangely persists. I get an invitation now and then, I go to the site. Sometimes I use it to find people. In other words, I hardly ever use it, but I do use it now and then. I can't think of another site like that - either I use an online service regularly, or it languishes and I have an account there but in my mind it's long forgotten.
Zend is developing a framework, that seems to be trying to compete with Rails, while at the same time being "enterprise" friendly. I truly hope they build something useful for fast development, but I worry about the "enterprise" focus. I'm afraid it'll slow things down, and make them focus on the kinds of features I don't give a (sorry) shit about.
I watched the webcast to get to see some code, which is at the end, and you can't fastforward. The code examples start around minute 30, so just let it run.
The code examples I saw are interesting, but not convincing yet. So I can get an OO wrapper to a table. Alright. Mmmm... So they have a better mail() function. OK. Still not particularly exciting.. I hope they get this out before I switch to Rails. So I have a new nice search.
All fair, but none of the code examples make me excited about a framework. They're nice functions. But where's the framework? Where's the easy getting-started with a standard website?
Perhaps it'll be really cool. I sure hope so.
Ralph Buckley: I am a videoblogger (rasta version) - the funniest video ever. Where's the rap version?