Mike gives the new FireAnt Directory the thumbs up, along with mentions for Blip.tv and MeFeedia.com. As the guy who’s spent the last 3 or 4 months slaving over that directory, I really appreciate the positive feedback. We’ve got so much more in the hopper for the directory that you’ll need to write another article just for all the cool social features we have coming up. Keep your eyes peeled, new stuff is coming every day!
Thanks Mike! A positive review coming from you means a lot.
This guy seems to find a lot of funny shit.
From Rick Segal’s Post Money Value:
Overhead at the Purple Pig (Ribs)
While listening to a TV news blurb about a benefit concert for New Orleans, a little girl (ten, maybe) turns to her parents and sez:
“How come they have to do music to get help, don’t people just want to help?�
Waiter! Ice Cream for the kid and put it on my tab…
Fucking priceless. Leave your feedback on Rick’s original post.
The Onion has a faux interview with Dave Matthews, in which he says: “I used to be a hardcore Dave Matthews fan. I had all my records and posters. I was so blown away by everything I did—especially my live performances. I remember me and my buddies used to drive for hours just to go to one of our shows.” Awesome. I freaking love The Onion. via nancies.org.
I wonder sometimes why I subscribe to Boing Boing. I’ve rarely found anything on there that I’ve found interesting. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever even linked to them. I guess I’m being a lemming and following the inertia they’ve developed figuring that if I don’t subscribe I’ll miss something interesting. It turns out (even though it may not be worth it, since I’m sure someone else I read will link to this as well) that every once in a while they do produce a gem of content. Today they have an exclusive article, written by Charles Platt, a former Senior Writer at Wired, about Sam Cohen, the inventor of the Neutron Bomb. The Neutron Bomb is a term I’ve not really heard since my childhood, of which I have vague memories of people talking about the horror of the idea. Frankly, I always thought it was interesting, a bomb that would kill people but not destroy the infrastructure. It always seemed like a win/win for me, if we were going to be killing people in the first place. Sam Cohen fought his entire working life to convince people it was the most humane weapon possible, and, as is usually the case, his story, and the story of the bomb itself, is much more interesting and far more compelling than the memoirs and stories of any politician I’ve read. This is a must read. The Boing Boing story is here and the PDF containing the actual story is here.
I’m in New York, gearing up for Vloggercue. We did our Vlog Soho event at the Soho Apple Store. Richard, everyone’s favorite Ph.D., has just made a choice comment. Funny and fun stuff going on here out in Hoboken.
Adam: Yeah, so we watch videos and stuff on our projector.
Richard: Projector? (turns around) Oh, so that like projects the image on the wall or whatever? I’ve never seen a setup like that before.
Adam: Yeah, we watch cable and play our Xbox and stuff. They’re all hooked up into the projector.
Richard: So you sit around and watch the wall?
Adam: Basically yeah.
Does even Google have a limit to the amount of bandwidth and resources they can throw at things? They’ve halted new downloads for Google Earth. How disappointing. I really wanted to check it out so I could make a cool vlog intro like Josh Leo.
A post from Jeff Jarvis (if you don’t read him, start now), about how LBJ set the foundation for the Internet with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The LBJ quote of his vision is uncanny, and we’ve pretty much built his vision.
Apple to switch to Intel? This has been quite the speculation over the last couple of weeks, but the investment in PowerPC is so great I just can’t believe it’s true. I’m still calling BS on this. However, I would be excited about the cost and portability benefits Intel chips would bring, and also the potential for people to hack MacOS X to run on Non-Apple Intel hardware. That would be so awesome. I could finally get cheap hardware and a good OS.
A must read by David Wong and Haimoimoi: A Gamers’ Manifesto. He goes into detail about many frustrations almost all gamers have experienced with things gamemakers do. Even with its long length, it will keep you well entertained with lots of witty quips and insightful observations about the gaming world.
I’m not much into podcasting, but this could still be pretty cool.
www.podcatch.com : Podcast subscribing built into iTunes?
OK, so everyone’s writing about it. Google has launched a new homepage/portal project, akin to My Yahoo.
Google isn’t a content company. This is pretty obvious by taking a look at their homepage. Obviously, it’s in the early stages, but let’s all be honest with ourselves. Why does everyone love Google so much? Sure, they do search well, and they’re developing cool web-based applications, but a personalized homepage is a content-based exercise. Yahoo is the leader here, and I think Google has quite a ways to go before they catch up.
I think the more interesting piece in this announcement has to do with the melding of labels for Internet companies. A year ago, Google was a search company, Yahoo was a content company and Microsoft was a software company. Now all three are becoming Internet companies, with the lines between the three genres blurred beyond distinction. This is the beauty of the free market at work, and we as consumers can just sit back and watch as our lives are improved by these three companies throwing all their efforts at beating each other out for our attention. Whichever company you find yourself backing, you’re still a winner.
But for now, there’s not much to see here. If you want a personalized home page, use My Yahoo and wait until Google improves.
OK, so there’s absolutely no theme to this blog. I find that having a theme causes problems, because then when I want to write about something that’s not in the theme I don’t have a place for it. Maybe I need to create a seperate blog for my personal shit and turn this into a technology blog/vlog, I dunno. Decisions to make. Anyways, on to the point of the article.
I’ve been listening to Stand Up over on the VH1 Site for the last 5 days or so. I’m incredibly impressed. If you’re a Dave Matthews Band fan (DMB from here on out), you know they are generally not very inventive with their albums, instead deciding to rely on their live performances to make the real statement for their songs. However, I think this is the first album I’ve felt like they’re a real band. If you listen to other bands, they’ll have a piano balad where there’ll be absolutely no guitar in the song. DMB have yet to this, until this album. This obviously isn’t the only defining characteristic of a band, but it’s just an example of what DMB have been missing from their catalog.
I’m not really into writing album reviews, so I’ll spare you the details of going over every single song. I find that to be boring anyways.
It’ll be interesting to see how this stuff plays out live, but I can’t wait till the Gorge this year. Anyone else going? Leave a comment if you are. I’ll of course write more about the Gorge shows when they get closer, and I’ll vlog about it when I get back.
I’m going to be doing more blog postings, because since I’ve been limiting myself to mainly videos I’ve been feeling very creatively restricted. Video is a lot of work, and I still plan to do a couple per week probably, but I’d like to be able to continue to express myself more. A blog entry takes minutes, not hours, so expect to hear more from me.
Jeff Sandquist posted on his blog two days ago a position for a technology evangelist on the Channel 9 team. How cool would that be!? Basically, they’re looking to hire another Robert Scoble. The job description:
Technical Evangelist
The first job is an online technical evangelist to join the Channel 9 team. In the past year the site has grown in both traffic and content. As a result we are looking for another unique individual who has both the passion, the knowledge, and the skills to help us tell the Microsoft story online using video.
We are looking for a rare bird for a new kind of evangelism role at Microsoft. The ideal candidate will be well versed in the current wave of Microsoft developer technologies, industry trends, and competition. Experience in software development is preferred but not required. Strong digital video filming, editing, and compression skills are required as the team shoots, edits, and produces its own video on site.
You would be a member of a small team responsible for the care and feeding of this unique community. An active passion for connecting with customers and sharing your passion for Microsoft products is required. Strong written, verbal, and visual communication skills are required. Roles and responsibilities change quickly so flexibility and fast decision making abilities are a must. Experience with blogging, wikis, and social software technologies a plus.
What would be exciting about that job would be the ability to not only evangelize what Microsoft does well to the outside world, because they do do a lot of things well, but also evangelize what they’re not doing well back inside the company. I can’t think of a better job than one which gives you the ability to effect change, and the ability to effect change in a company like Microsoft is definitely about the top in my list of cool jobs. I’ve applied.
I’ve been watching the last couple of Eric Rice’s videos from his vlog. He does some really cool shit. I’m just starting out in this video thing, but I’m coming to realize:
# There’s a lot of skill involved here
# There’s a lot of time involved here
Eric, if you’re reading this, you’re doing some cool shit. For instance, you’ve got access to either some equipment or some software I don’t, because I’m pretty sure with a my camcorder I couldn’t get shots that show only my face and a black background without being ridiculously grainy (it would help if I had a 3 CCD camcorder, but alas, need mo’ money). Maybe it’s simple, and you used a black backdrop? Maybe there’s an effect in your software I don’t have? I don’t know, I’m just too new to the video thing. The other stuff I think I could do with effects from iMovie or third-party effects (or maybe I need FinalCutPro?), but I’m just amazed at the quality of stuff being produced by videobloggers. I’m assuming most of you are amateurs, but I think maybe my assumptions are wrong.
Anyways, I feel honored to be entering into a community that, along with just sharing your thoughts and feelings through video, also contains a crew of skilled members that can produce video content on par with what you’d see on Television or out of Hollywood. It’s so exciting!