Lost In Cyberspace

Archive for May, 2007

I was just checking my Google RSS feed and noticed that there is now has a new feature available, Google Gears, that you can use offline to read your 2000 most recent articles, which is more than you should need unless you're Robert Scoble. ;-) I haven't had a chance to fully check this feature out yet, but if it up to Google's usual standard it should be pretty nifty. Is this a feature you think you will use? Do you use Google for your feeds or do you prefer to use another application? Let me know in the comments if you think online or offline is the best way to read your feeds.

One of the tools I find myself using more often these days is the Picnik online image editor. It's a pretty nifty editor that can be used for your images on your own computer or those you find as you browse the web. It integrates well with your Flickr and Picasa accounts, allowing you to save your images direct to your profile or save straight on to your computer. You can also email your images to individuals and even certain websites that can be configured to receive images via email such as Photobucket, ImageShack and Typepad. The site is still in Beta but runs very smoothly, though you do have to have Flash 9 installed. Just about any image you find online can be pulled in to Picnik, either through using the images url or using a tool such as the Firefox Picnik extension that adds a menu option and/or a toolbar icon to make importing images into Picnik that much easier. Just what can it do for you? Apart from the usual resize, rotate, and crop it can take care of red-eye in your own pictures, fix your colours and contrast/brightness, sharpen and even add some special effects on their "Creative Tools" page. There are plenty of great effects to play around with at the moment, though a few of these will only be part of their "Premium" package once the site is out of Beta. Picnik, alongside of Faststone Capture, takes care of just about all my web image needs. I recommend you go give it a try, you don't even need to join up to test it out, so go have some fun! Seeing as there are quite a few online image editors out there, are there any you use and would recommend? Let us know in the comments.

David Airey has started a picture meme to help us bloggers get to know one another a little better and scare off give our readers an opportunity to see who is talking to them. I was tagged by Paul Enderson over at Reflections to participate in this, so if anyone wants to sue for mental and or emotional trauma over these images he is the guy to contact. ;-)

StevieB at 5 months of age. Ahh, bless!

Me with my big sister Sally and little brother Edward (deceased).

StevieB at school, age 11.

Laura and myself on our wedding day 27th April 2002

StevieB and our Parrot Cat, Joey (Kitchen being rewired 2003).

StevieB May 2006 in Milton Keynes

Obviously some of these images have been scanned, in fact I am pretty sure that only the last one was taken with a digital camera, so sorry for the lack of quality. Also participating in this meme are: Gayla at Mom Gadget Char at Essential Keystrokes Paul at Reflections Rob at 2Dolphins Zep at The In-Sect Stixster Sorry if I have missed off any of the other participants, and I tag Lisa Sabin-Wilson (Revenge!) and Carolyn Manning .

Carolyn Manning of Productivity Goal.com has announced that she is hosting a virtual conference at her "Thoughts & Philosophies" blog, this will begin later today, 11th May, and carry on tomorrow, 12th May, to coincide with the SOB Con in Chicago. It will give those of us who are unable to attend an alternative venue. It looks like there will be plenty of good tips on how to make our lives more productive so make sure you check it out. For a full list of topics and times click through to her post.

Have you heard of Joost? It has had quite a lot of publicity of late and it looks like it may well be the next step in the evolution of on-line entertainment. If you are not sure what Joost is, here is a description from their website:

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping. You get great internet features too, such as search, chat and instant messaging, built right into the program - so you find shows quickly and talk to your friends while you watch. And with no schedules to worry about, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you like - as often as you want. Joost is completely free, and works with most modern PCs and Intel Mac-based computers with a broadband connection.

It is the brain-child of created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the founders of founders of Skype and Kazaa, so these guys have some experience in the development of web technology. The original financing for the development of Joost was from the sale of Skype to eBay, but more recently they have also raised an additional $45m in funding from five backers (Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Li Ka Shing Foundation, CBS and Viacom) in exchange for a minority share in the company. The application works as a P2P TV client, which if you are a bit of a technology dummy like me doesn't mean much, so here is the explanation from Wikipedia:

As opposed to streaming technology in which all clients get the feed from the server, P2P TV technology differs in the sense that the servers serve only a handful of clients; each of the clients in turn propagate the stream to more downstream clients and so on. This moves the distribution costs from the channel owner to the user.

Which means, as far as I can tell, the more people that use it the better the service is, as there is less strain on the original file. To download the application itself you need to receive an invitation from someone who already has it, similar to the way Gmail used to work. The invites were limited to only 3 per participant but as of the beginning of this month invitations to join Joost have been made unlimited, though it is still in Beta. I have been using it for the last month or so and it seems to work pretty well, and with more and more channels being added it seems to have something for everyone. If you would like to try this out you can receive an invite from me by letting me know in the comments below. With a reasonably fast connection the download only takes a couple of minutes and the set-up takes even less time. Listed below are the channels available and the areas they are available in as of the 10th May 2007.

• 88HipHop: Worldwide
• Aardman Animation: Worldwide
• Adult Swim: United States
• Alliance Atlantis Sci-Fi: Worldwide excluding Canada
• Atlantic Street: United States
• AXN: United States
• Bad Boy Records Presents: United States
• Beauty TV: Worldwide
• Best of National Geographic: United States, Canada
• Beyond the Pit: United States
• Bite TV: Worldwide
• BoomChicago: Worldwide
• Braindead: Worldwide
• Brazilian Music Channel: Worldwide
• Bridezillas: Worldwide excluding United States
• Bugeye Music: Worldwide
• Channel Frederator: Worldwide
• Chat the Planet: Worldwide
• Classica Channel: Worldwide excluding Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland
• Comedy Central: United States
• Critical Shorts: Worldwide
• DR: Worldwide
• Explora Channel: Worldwide
• Fabchannel Concerts: Worldwide
• Fifth Gear: United States
• Fifth Gear Shortcuts: Worldwide
• Fight Network: Worldwide
• Floating Worlds: Worldwide
• Fueled by Ramen: United States
• Funny Bone: United States
• G.I. Joe: United States
• GameStar: Worldwide
• Gametrailers: United States
• GONG: North America, Europe
• Guinness World Records TV: Worldwide
• Havoc Action Sports TV: Worldwide excluding Japan
• Havoc Music TV: Worldwide excluding Japan
• HealthiNation: Worldwide
• Heavy Animation: United States
• Hollyoaks: United States
• Hot & Wet Worldwide
• i-concerts: United Kingdom
• IMF Asia: Worldwide
• IMF Australia: Worldwide
• IMF France: Worldwide
• IMF Germany: Worldwide
• IMF Hip Hop Society: Worldwide
• IMF Italy: Worldwide
• IMF Journey to the Centre of the Rock: Worldwide
• IMF Mexico: Worldwide
• IMF One World: Worldwide
• IMF Passage To India: Worldwide
• IMF Puerto Rico: Worldwide
• IMF Scandinavia: Worldwide
• IMF Spain: Worldwide
• IMF The Bridge- Latin America: Worldwide
• IMF The World's Best Music: Worldwide
• IMF UK: Worldwide
• IndieFlix Premier Hits: Worldwide
• Indy 500 Films: Worldwide
• IndyCar Series: Worldwide
• Intimate & Interactive: Worldwide
• Joost Suggests Worldwide
• Jump Off TV: Worldwide
• Jump TV Arabia: Worldwide excluding Middle East
• Jump TV Latino: Worldwide excluding Latin America, Canada
• Lassie: United States
• Lazy TV: United States
• Lazy TV UK: Worldwide
• Lime: Worldwide
• Live @ Much: Worldwide
• Logo: United States
• LXTV: Worldwide
• Ministry of Sound TV- Access All Areas: Worldwide
• Ministry of Sound TV- Music Videos: Worldwide
• MTV: United States
• MTV (International): Selected countries in Europe, South America, US and Japan
• MTV Staying Alive: Worldwide excluding United Kingdom, Ireland
• Much Does Wakestock: Worldwide
• MuchAdrenaline: Worldwide
• MuchMusic Video Awards: Worldwide
• MuchNews Weekly: Worldwide
• MuchOnDemand: Worldwide
• Music Nation: Worldwide
• Nardwuar: Worldwide
• National Geographic History and Exploration: United States, Canada
• National Geographic People and Places: United States, Canada
• National Geographic Wild: United States, Canada
• National Geographic Animals and Nature: United States, Canada
• Nettwerk: Worldwide
• New Atlantis: Worldwide
• Off the Fence Docs: Worldwide
• OnSet: Worldwide
• PokerHeaven TV: Worldwide
• Red Bull: Worldwide
• Rehearsals.com: Worldwide
• Ren and Stimpy: United States
• Reuters: Worldwide
• Rhino Records: United States
• Roadrunner Records: United States
• Saavn: Worldwide
• Saturday Morning TV: Worldwide
• SecondsOut.tv: Worldwide
• SHORTSTV: Worldwide
• SHORTSTV Corto: Worldwide
• SHORTSTV France: Worldwide
• Snowvision: Worldwide
• Spike TV: United States
• Sports Illustrated Swimsuit on Demand: Worldwide
• Terra: Worldwide
• The Circus Channel: Worldwide excluding Italy
• The Fit Show: Worldwide
• The Hobby Channel: Worldwide
• The Horror Channel: Worldwide
• The New Music: Worldwide
• The Recipe Channel: Worldwide excluding Spain, Portugal
• The Roger Sisters: Worldwide
• The Silent Movies Channel: Worldwide
• The Soccer Channel: Europe, United States, Middle East
• The Trance Channel: Worldwide
• The Westside Eclectic: Worldwide
• Transformers: United States
• Travelistic: Worldwide
• U.S. Soccer: Worldwide
• VH1: United States
• Virgin Fest 2006: Worldwide
• VOY TV: Worldwide
• Wall to Wall Documentary: Worldwide
• Wall to Wall Lifestyle: Worldwide
• Warner Bros. Records: United States
• Watchmojo.com: Worldwide
• Whereitast.tv: Worldwide
• WildLight: Worldwide
• Witness: Worldwide
• World Championship Sports Network: United States
• World Poker Tour: Worldwide excluding United States
• World's Strongest Man: Worldwide
• XL Recordings Channel: Worldwide

Take it for a test run and be part of the next step in TV evolution.

According to the Fox Searchlight website Nathan Fillion has won the Audience Award for his role in"Waitress" at the Newport Beach Film Festival. The film itself also won the Audience Award for Best Feature. Congratulations to Nathan, a well deserved win, I am sure there are many more awards in your future.  :grin:  Click through for the complete list of winners.

clipped from content.foxsearchlight.com Congratulations to WAITRESS on winning two awards at the Newport Beach Film Festival! It won the Audience Award for Best Feature. Nathan Fillion won in the Best Acting category as the awkward but lovable Dr. Pomatter.

Do you ever wish you could be more productive? Do you find that no matter what you do, you seem to fall further and further behind schedule? If that is the case, then I am sure you would find a free e-book with 100+ tips on productivity to be very handy, so keep an eye on Ben Yoskovitz and his Instigator Blog. He is compiling a list of tips from around the Blogosphere so that he can produce a free e-book to help us all out of slacker hell. One of the contributors is Lisa Sabin-Wilson, the author of WordPress for Dummies, who has been kind enough (?) to tag me to try and provide a tip or four.

1. Just start
2. Get organized
3. Prime Time/Best Time
4. Slack off

Just Start Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy and over think things when what we really need to do is just get on and do them. Seemingly impossible tasks can seem surprisingly easy once we get into them.

Get Organized Clutter can be your worst enemy, especially if the job in hand requires a lot of information/paperwork. Try to stay on top of this, for example it is a nightmare to try and sort out all your insurance details if you have several policies on the go and have never put any of the information in one central place. It becomes even more impossibler when you can't even remember how many policies you have and which companies they are with. Yikes!

Prime Time/Best Time All of us have a natural bio-rhythm, find out what yours is. Are you at your best early morning? Lat at night? Midday? Once you know this try and optimize your efforts accordingly. Slack Off Sometimes you are beating a dead horse, it isn't the best time for you to tackle a job. When something urgent needs to be done it may be that the best course is not to do it, take some time away from the project and relax. But be on a timer. Half an hour of reading a book, TV, reading your RSS feeds, napping, sometimes these are the things you need to do to increase your productivity, get yourself back in the groove. Just make sure you don't use this tip too much. :wink: I'm sure there are plenty of other excellent tips in this series, I am now off to read some of them, which is in itself an extra bonus tip, if I had taken the time to read everyone else's ideas first I probably would never of got around to writing this article at all! So, sorry for any repetitions, and I will edit in a few links to some of my favourite tips at the bottom of this post. Then all that will remain to do will be to decide who to tag to carry this on. :twisted: Recommended links: Gia Combs-Ramirez, overcoming procrastination. Don The Idea Guy, he Ultimate Guide To Productivity. Randa Clay, Secrets To Productivity. Dave Olson, Becoming A Productivity Guru. And I tag . . . Aaron at miLienzo.com

A topic I have been following recently is that of whether to use the “rel=nofollow” command, which by default most blogging software adds to all links in comments. Undoubtedly the intentions behind this are good - to prevent spammers benefiting from the link juice they could gain from commenting on your blog. But with the arrival of such anti-spam plugins as Akismet and Bad Behavior is there any real need to keep using this command? Many feel that it is time to move on, that it is time to allow those that comment on our blogs the opportunity to share some of the SEO benefits that Google can give through those links. Having read the article over at MiLienzo calling for more bloggers to join the "revolution" I have decided to try out the plugin from Semilogic that should override the default setting. That's if I have installed it right, anyways. If you notice a problem with this plugin please let me know and I will do what I can to correct it. I have added the U COMMENT I FOLLOW badge to my sidebar to let people know that this is now a "Do Follow" blog, it was originally created by Randa Clay and she has made it available in several colours to suit your blogs design. If you are not sure about whether to change your blog over, take a look at the 13 reasons given to do so by Loren Baker on his blog Search Engine Journal.