Happy Halloween!
“You registered a domain name and set up the free Google Apps Standard Edition to get Gmail, GTalk, GCal, and GDocs running behind it. Now, take a look at some advanced settings Google Apps (for your domain) makes available.”
“It’s become common in most households to recycle your discarded paper. Instead of tossing it in the bin, try making your own notepads, customized with a photo or two, to squeeze a little more life out of your scraps.”
This is good advice and a fun craft project all in one.
GetGlue.com: Distributed Networking & Recommendations Made Simple & Fun
“Once just a browser add-on that allowed users to surf smarter across several verticals, AdaptiveBlue’s Glue is now a site-centric product that acts as both a hub and a spoke of the social web.”
All Your Docs Belong to You: Google Docs Now Exportable
“With no fanfare or as much as an official announcement, Google has taken an important step in making users’ Google Docs more open and portable.”
Facebook Launches Share Buttons for Publishers“Sharing content on Facebook hasn’t generally been as easy as it has been on Twitter. Part of Twitter’s advantage is just how easy it is to share from blogs and other websites.
The Open Source Toolbox For WebDesigners | Home
“Today we take a look at some of these tools which can ease the job of a Web designer immensely. From text editors and templates to websites and communities, these Open Source resources are some of the finest in the field of Web design.”
55 Astonishing Online Generators for Web Designers | DominickGatto.com
“I have frequently found myself getting stuck in a project and losing all motivation due to repetitve tasks such as creating a looping background or styling a basic CSS menu that actually works.”
Remember the Milk task manager exits beta in meaningless gesture
“Four years after the service opened to the public, popular web-based task manager Remember The Milk is finally out of beta. What does that mean? Nothing really.”
Microsoft’s new Twitter account offers quick, brief Windows 7 tech support
“Basically, if you have a problem with Windows 7, a question about features, driver support or pretty much anything else, you can just direct it at @MicrosoftHelps, and it looks like there’s actually a decent chance of getting a response.”
I’m actually impressed that Microsoft cares enough about their customers to offer support via Twitter.
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Tags: Saturday Summary
I want this bumper sticker!!!
“Darmak and Jalad at Tenagra!”
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
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Tags: picture
Beeeeee-otch!
Woot! I made an A on my programming test. Yay!
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
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It’s my window…
I-I can’t stand the rain.
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Saturday Summary
Hi! Welcome to the Saturday Summary, my weekly link-dump of all things interesting. Again, I’m posting through Posterous so I can share with all my blogs. As always, you can see my links on Delicious and Diigo. Enjoy:
Eli Bendersky’s website » Blog Archive » The C++ bashing season is back
“It seems there is a lot of dislike and hate for C++ out there. This isn’t new – it has always been like this.”
Actually, C++ is my first programming language. I can’t really bash it myself.
The Hero Is In Your Pocket « Blog « WordPress.com
“Today we’re launching a couple of mobile themes that will automatically be displayed when your blog is accessed with a compatible mobile phone.”
10 Useful WordPress Coding Techniques « Smashing Magazine
“In this article, we have compiled 10 useful WordPress code snippets, hacks and tips to help you create a WordPress theme that stands out from the crowd.”
Essential Blogging – Google Preview – O’Reilly Media
“Essential Blogging — An O’Reilly manual.”
I’ve never been too keen on O’Reilly books, but this one seems suited for me. =)
BREAKING: Google Announces Search Deal With Twitter
“While we’re still digesting the news of Bing adding Twitter to its search engine, Google has some news of their own: they’re about to do the same exact thing.”
Job market lands more grads back at home
“They feel like failures. Disillusioned, like a runner who trips out of the starting gate. But many college graduates who’ve been forced by the worst job market in decades to move back home with Mom and Dad say they also feel, to their surprise, fortunate.”
“Here are 51 web apps to make web designer’s and developer’s lives easier than ever and crank up their capabilities.”
IdeaPaint: Turn Your Entire Office Into a Whiteboard | Design & Innovation | Fast Company
“With just one coat, IdeaPaint turns any surface into a dry-erase board.”
I’m going to do this when we buy a house.
Rape Victim’s Choice: Risk AIDS or Health Insurance?
“Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month’s worth of anti-AIDS medicine…Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.”
This is just sick. I’m showing this to all my anti socialized medicine friends.
Blogs.mu – DIY Blog Networks and Communities
“Blogs.mu is a site that allows you to setup your own WordPress based blog community or network – with the minimum of fuss. Set up blogs yourself or let users come to you.”
Facebook launches new homepage feed.
“The default News Feed that users will see is becoming “Today’s Top News,” which Facebook’s Peter Deng says will have the “most relevant information” when users get to the site. “The spirit of the change is that you’ll see a summary of stuff you missed while you were gone,” Deng says.”
Free Programming Classes : Learn How to Program
“A comprehensive real-time course on programming for everyone from total beginner to experienced programmer.”
Fonts for Designers Series Issue no. 1
“Fonts for Designers is a new series of posts that proposes every week a selection of the best free fonts for web designers. Each new issue will present five interesting fonts you can use on your web projects.”
Ooh, fonts! I’m going to love this series!
“Friendfeed is not dead. It’s transforming” says Friendfeed Co-Founder
“What is fact, is that Friendfeed as a tool and social medium, ranks above virtually every social networking stream based application currently available – yes, including Twitter with lists. To see it essentially fade into a ghost town would be a huge waste, particularly since the site still maintains an incredibly loyal userbase, whose limits have unfortunately been pushed of late.”
Poor FriendFeed. I’m going to miss it when it finally goes. But I’m going to use it until it does.
Clip it! Capture Any Web Page Into a Single Image
“Clip It! is a free Mac application that quickly captures and saves web pages into images for easy preview and presentation.”
PRS’s Latest Trick: Demanding Money From Shop Assistant Who Was Singing At Work
“[The PRS] threatened a shop assistant for singing out loud (public performance!) while stacking the grocery shelves, demanding she pay £1,000 for the privilege. Of course, why was she singing? Because PRS had already threatened the owner for having a radio — so he got rid of the radio.”
Flickr finally implements the tagging of friend, family and foe
“At long last, after what seems like an eternity compared to the usually-rapid pace that most social networks evolve at, Flickr has implemented people-tagging.”
Lifestreaming Service Storytlr to Shut Down and Go Open Source
“In a blog post on October 10th the team at Storytlr let users know that they will be shutting down the service at the end of this year. It’s just another casualty in a long list of Lifestreaming services that have shut down over the last year.”
More bad news. But at least it’s going open source. That’s good news at least.
Stop Overreacting: Hulu Not Ditching Free Yet
“So… this is really no different than what was said a few months back, when News Corp’s Jon Miller started saying that Hulu should add subscription offerings. It’s the official News Corp. position, ever since Rupert Murdoch suddenly flip flopped and decided free content online is evil. All News Corp. execs have now been making noise about trying to charge for content.”
Billionaire Offers $75 Million to End Pet Overpopulation
“Every year, six to eight million unwanted cats and dogs enter shelters in the U.S., and three to four million are euthanized according to the animal welfare organization Found Animals.”
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Tags: economy, Facebook, fonts, FriendFeed, healthcare, hulu, programming, Saturday Summary, Wordpress
Revival!
With WordPress.com now automatically supporting mobile themes, I now feel motivated to use WordPress.com again. Woo!
My posts will come from Posterous, however, so they can appear elsewhere too.
Filed under: Wordpress | Leave a Comment
Tags: Posterous
Cataclysm: The New WoW Expansion
Oh for god’s sake, why does WoW have to release another bloody expansion pack?!?
This news comes less than a year after the release of WotLK, and as I recall, news of the WotLK expansion pack came less than a year after the BC. I still play WoW occasionally, but I’m by no means a hard core gamer. Never was. I don’t go on raids, nor do I go into dungeons. I’m very much a Hunter — alone in the world with my pets. =)
To be honest, I’m tired of WoW. I can’t keep up with the new patches, new expansion packs, new lore, etc. I really miss the classic days of leveling to 60 and rejoicing when a raid guild took down Onyxia and everyone in Stormwind got Rallying Cry of the Dragon Slayer. Sometimes I don’t play for months at a time and I miss a lot of key features and changes. For instance, when they changed the pet learning system into a pet talent tree, I was completely lost. The WotLK expansion pack overwhelmed me; this Cataclysm event is where I draw the line.
It’s hard to quit WoW, but the complexity of the game helps ween me away for goon.
Filed under: Video Games | 1 Comment
Tags: Cataclysm, expansion pack, World of Warcraft
Movie Review: District 9
I can’t do a summary of District 9 without ruining it. Don’t worry, there aren’t any deus ex machina twists involved, but it does need to be seen. This is a movie that just cannot be summed up properly in words, it has to be absorbed visually.
I will, however, tell you the basics: It’s based off a short film called Alive In Joburg (directed by the same director, Neill Blomkamp), which you can watch here. Basically, an alien mothership is hovering above Johannesburg, South Africa and the alien inhabitants are now living in District 9, a slum. The film draws it’s inspiration from the directors youth, growing up during apartheid and observing the overt and violent racism of the time. And there is no shortage of racism in this film: the alien race (derogatory called “prawns”) are subjected to decrepit conditions, violence, and open discrimination. They are forced to trade their powerful weapons for cans of cat food and stand by helplessly as their “illegal” clutch of offspring are aborted “for their own good.” It’s a disheartening but objective truth: this is what humans would do to aliens if the scenario were true. It makes me sad for the state of mankind.
I liked this movie not just for it’s subtext, but for it’s ability to cast unknowns. I did not recognize a single actor, therefore I didn’t judge them based on their past work. I know that’s unfair to a lot of prolific actors, but there is only so many times I can see an actor – say, Tom Cruise – before I think, “Oh look, there’s [famous actor's most famous role] trying to play someone new.” New blood in movies is always nice. =P
The last 25 minutes of this film are the most intense that I’ve seen in a long while. And I can’t give any of that away!
Filed under: Film | 1 Comment
Tags: District 9, sf
I’m Not Dead Yet
I was listening to two really interesting netcasts (TWiG and net@night) that got me thinking about the “state of the web.” As a lover of all things internet, I’m really emotionally invested in things like Twitter, blogging, and even FriendFeed and I hate hearing phrases like “[Insert name of internet app] is dead.” To me, nothing on the internet dies unless it shuts down completely.
For instance, Blogger. As you may know, Blogger turned 10 this week and promised a lot of presents for it’s faithful users. I’ve been using it since 2003 and I’ve enjoyed the changes Blogger has gone through over the years. I don’t think Blogger gets the respect it deserves — it’s been around so long and is still alive and kicking. Yes, it lacks a few small, simple features but it has always been free and simple. I think those two elements are what has kept Blogger around all these years — at least, that’s why I still use it. And in these ten years, Blogger has created thousand and thousands of blogs that are STILL updated and new blogs are still being created all the time. With Blogger having the longevity that it does, I’m going to be using it as the true test as to whether blogging is “dead” or not. If Blogger shuts down, then blogging is truly dead.
Like Anil Dash said (and I’m paraphrasing), when something is so ubiquitous that it’s almost invisible, it only seems like it’s dead. Blogging is NOT dead. It’s still around. And just because a few internet celebrities “quit” blogging to become fulltime Twitterers does NOT make a recognizable platform “dead.”
That brings me to Twitter. As someone who has had a Twitter account for several years now, I’m not turned off by celebrities latching onto it as means of getting more attention. People like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah are annoying, but since I feel that way I don’t follow them. =) I am, however, reaching Twitter burnout. Lately, I’ve been limiting my tweets to maybe one or two a day, not counting replies and re-tweets. I’m not too eager to post personal tweets (pointless babble) much anymore, mostly because I’m not doing anything worth noting. Not that I’m uninterested in what other people are doing at a time — I just don’t feel like saying “I’m doing homework” lately. Furthermore, I’m not exactly eager to re-follow new followers. In the past few months I’ve been followed by porn and spam and that has REALLY lost it’s appeal. (I guess I’m old fashioned. If I want to look at porn, I’ll go find it. I don’t need it coming to me.)
But that’s not to say that Twitter is dead. It certainly isn’t, and though I’m tired of it that doesn’t mean that other people are. I’m sure I’ll get a second wind with Twitter, but it’s good to take a break from things every now and then — at least for me.
Filed under: Internet | 2 Comments
Tags: Blogger, blogging, Twitter, web 2.0
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