WANT! Nokia N97 February 17, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Video, phone, Reviews, Video ; comments closedStill the best camera of any “smartphone”. AT&T or T-Mobile should really start carrying these things…
Central Florida Geeks January 28, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, email, linux, phone, Video ; comments closed
CFGeeks is a community / mailing list / meetup / whatever mostly made up of Linux guys, sysadmins and Ham radio operators. I have been following the mailing lists since some time last year, after I found a bunch of pointers to it through local Linux user groups, like GOLUG and LEAP-CF.
The group was created by a guy named Kevin Inscoe (ke3vin), who currently does some administrative stuff at local publishing juggernaut Harcourt.
The other day I went to a lunchp, which is based on an old LISP joke… adding -P to something is like asking a yes/no question. Moviep? Skycraftp? and of course Lunchp? are asked quite often on the list.
To my understanding, this was the first lunchp in some time, but it was well-attended, and there were some good conversations, stories and historic context thrown around, along with the random YouTube video on someone’s laptop. It kind of felt like all the time you spend in a big office wasting time standing at your friend’s desk… except none of these guys work in the same building (though I think some of them used to).
In true new media fashion, there’s a Flickr set of photos from lunchp, and a uStream video Kevin made just as I got to the meetup.
If ANY of the above are remotely attractive to you, or if you want to talk about iPhone development, I highly recommend you join a mailing list, give out your callsign, follow these guys on twitter, and go to lunchp this Friday downtown at Panera Bread. It’s worth it.
Palm Pre, it’s better than Ritalin January 24, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, phone, Reviews, Video ; comments closed“At CES, Palm announced that the new iPhone/BlackBerry/Android KILLA would be out in the first half of this year.” (CrunchGear)
If this video is any indication, the main two features I see in the Palm Pre is multi-tasking, and fancy ways to hide and show the interface. I also have to say that the combined, yet sepatate, email inboxes, calendars and contacts are a nice-to-have.
The little chicklet keyboard reminds me of my old Sony Mylo, of which the best feature was the feedback that I had pushed a button. Still, unless they put a light behind that keyboard, say goodbye to typing in the dark.
With all these applications staying open, I can’t imagine battery life and speed being all that great, but I may never find out, because the phone is on Sprint! Sprint?
I wonder what ever happened to Sprint’s “draw in the air” guestures? Is touch really a superior technology? Hmm, I think it must be… I can’t even find any references to the announcement about drawing in the air to dial numbers, answer calls, etc. – just a bunch of videos with light painting.
Will the Palm Pre be the light painting commercial of tomorrow?
Peter Hirshberg on TV and the web – TED Talks November 23, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Video, Digital Media, Historic, Radio, TED, Trends, TV, Video, Web Sites ; comments closedJust a few minutes after I wrote my most recent “Internet killed TV” rant, I see this more well-informed and context-rich talk about the very same subject, complete with references to Marshall Mcluhan.
From Peter Hirshberg on TV and the web | Video on TED.com:
In this absorbing look at emerging media and tech history, Peter Hirshberg shares some crucial lessons from Silicon Valley and explains why the web is so much more than “better TV.”
A Silicon Valley executive, entrepreneur and marketing specialist, Peter Hirshberg might just be the definitive voice on how new technology affects business and culture. Full bio and more links
YouTube Has Replaced MTV
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Video, Trends, TV, Video, youtube ; comments closedIt’s official – crappy reality TV has been replaced by reality, captured on your Flip™ brand camera!
You tube held their first ever awards show – YouTube Live, complete with Discovery Channel stars, pop (and anti-pop) music, ukuleles, breakdancers, vulgarity and lots more, all in a familiar MTV Music Awards-style format.
Now that YouTube has peaked, it’s time for some of the verticals and startups to try again. A few years ago, all you heard about was Yet Another Video Site popping up every 5 minutes. Now I fully expect cable networks, magazines, radio stations, and companies none of us have heard of to adopt similar tactics — most will fail, but a few will succeed, and we can stop subscribing to cable TV, because crappy entertainment, gossip, infinite programming and cheesey awards shows have now arrived on the internet too!
I expect also (more like hope) that there will be lots of directory services and lowest-common-denominator channels showing up, like the TV Guide of the web, the Home Shopping Channel (I guess SlickDeals and the like have gotten us part-way there), the religious video, and what have you.
One reason why we don’t see more cable networks rushing to put all their content online in its full form is the on-demand nature of it all. If you want to watch the Sopranos, you’re forced to watch what comes on a few minutes before and after, perhaps the entire show, and for HBO, especially the commercials for their other original programming and the movies of the month. This was an important way to hook the viewer into coming back.
However, DVRs and Tivo have killed that for people who don’t care about watching it in real time, so why do prime-time schedules even matter any longer? Everyone made a big deal about Barack Obama breaking in to the World Series for his 30 minute commercial, but weren’t people watching it on Tivo a few hours later, or the next day?
In the future, there will not be any possible way to grab the attention of that many people at once, unless we have another 9/11 (knock on wood). I don’t even have to watch the Superbowl any longer, I can catch all the commercials on YouTube the next morning.
What do we do now?
Larry Halff and Tara Hunt – Ma.gnolia 2 October 28, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Entrepreneurship, Love, microformats, OAuth, open source, OpenID, Social Media Events, Trends, Viddler, Video, Web Services, Web Sites ; comments closedVideo introducing Ma.gnolia 2 from this year’s Gnomedex conference:
Larry Halff and Tara Hunt [...] discussing how Ma.gnolia has implemented many of the tools of the open web such as OpenID, OAuth and Microformats and [...] unveiling Ma.gnolia 2, the next evolution of Ma.gnolia and a building block of the open web.
The real Web 2.0 entrepreneurs like Larry will realise when they’ve got something great — and how they can get that something into the hands of the most people possible might be by giving it away, opening the data for unknown uses, letting you import (and export) as much as you want, giving you tools that don’t just raise their bottom line, but instead make you love the service so much that you need to invite everyone you know to use it.
Letting go the Strings of Servitude October 23, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, BarCamp, Blogging, bloggingfringe, Career, CoLab, Coworking, Drupal, floridacreatives, Liberatr, Orlando, OrlandoScene, PopSci, Site News, Social Media Events, Teaching, Trends, Video ; comments closed
That’s right, folks, I quit my job at Bonnier. No more PopSci, no more corporate life.
Somehow I thought our friend Jonathan (above) working his VCRs and television sets helped get that message across. As Pandos, instead of fighting against modern technology, just letting a couple of simple magnetic tapes play serves as a more entertaining picture than a single curated stream.
My life working at Bonnier had become a lifestyle – long days (and nights), spending all day in the same place doing the same thing. I couldn’t even take 7 months of that.
So now what?
I’ve got a couple of freelance things lined up that should bring in the next month’s income alright, but I don’t want another hourly job. Here are some ways I plan on keeping myself distracted:
- Drupal Easy – this is the home for some (free) Drupal advice, and hopefully some (paid) screencasts, eBooks and tutorials. I will be doing a Drupal conference circuit in the next few months to connect with folks who are looking for training more than straight-up work. I hope I am a good provider.
- Orlando Scene TV – I still have yet to see a project emerge that achieves the goals of this videoblog. The more I think about it, the more it needs to be a one-on-one account of some fun stuff. We were trying to bring more of a TV correspondent feel to the show, but that takes work, and this is supposed to be about fun! Maintaining this channel gives a place for the Blogging Fringe videos and Orlando Puppet Festival content to go, and video is so engaging, measurable and portable — I really love doing this.
- Florida Creatives Podcast – I have been meeting some great people who need to get pulled in to this community, and one of the best ways to get them to care about you is by doing the completely selfless thing and asking them about themselves for half an hour, and sharing the conversation with the world on a well-trafficked web site. The happy hours will certainly continue.
- Florida Creative Summit – the idea here is to do something like BarCamp, but that covers more than just geekery – I am talking to some folks about how to pull this off right now, most of that goes down at Florida Creatives Happy Hour. This is the whole point of Florida Creatives coming to be in the first place.
- Coworking Orlando and our first coworking space in Orlando, CoLab – Coworking Teusdays are still going strong after some 8 months — also, I have already paid my $49 for use of a desk at CoLab in November — I’m not sure whether I will be full-time or part-time there in the future, but I know I want to be present for the birth of the formal coworking movement in Orlando. This is something I’ve been talking about for years, and now it’s downtown and affordable. Couple that with all the communities looking for useful consistent space, and the need for something like this is even greater. This probably deserves a separate blog post…
- Oh so many more things… like getting other Florida Creatives chapters going in other cities, like Brevard, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Tampa, South Florida — helping Petentials get to a happy place — doing a joint event with Doterati — creating a DIY community, a graphics hackers community, a podcasting community, a blogging community, an independent microblogging site, and lots of things I can’t think of just now.
To all my Bonnier peoples, I will keep in touch. Let’s do lunch! Blackwater BBQ?
To everyone else, it’s good to be back!
Ubiquity: Web Services + Microformats + Quicksilver = Mashups (in your browser) August 27, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Browsers, Google, interface, mashups, microformats, open source, Trends, Twitter, Video, Web Services, Web Sites ; comments closed
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Introducing Ubiquity
The overall goals of Ubiquity are to explore how best to:
* Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
* Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)
* Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.
* Extend the browser functionality easily.
I think Microsoft is going to copy the hell out of this and release a “Microsoft Live OpenWeb Command Window Beta” before mid-September.
Posting Oasis: Pumpers vs. Tumblers August 12, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Video, Memes, Video ; comments closedPumpers like to pump. Pumpers NEED to pump. Pump, pump, pump, pump it up!
Tumblers better than Pumpers. Look at those Tumblers. Ain’t those Tumblers cute?
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
Luck is where Preparation Meets Opportunity: CMU’s Randy Pausch July 12, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Career, Disney, floridacreatives, Love, Storytelling, Teaching, Trends, Video ; comments closedSo many great things in this video – it’s an hour and fifteen minutes, but you really should watch this.
Not only did Randy achieve his childhood dreams, but he has taken his process for doing so and boiled it down to this talk, which we can now pass on to others. This guy is dying, yet he is so positive. I love it and I love this talk. Thanks @supaben34 for bringing up my day (actually, my whole year).
Some key points:
- The Head Fake: we don’t send kids to sports to learn about football.
- To achieve your dreams, you have to get over the brick walls. The brick walls are there to weed out the people who don’t want to achieve their dreams.
- Even if you are denied at first, you can still reach your dreams through karma and more brick-wall-jumping.
- Carnegie Mellon’s ETC is freaking awesome. So awesome, they’re spreading their labs to other continents, and five companies have letters open guaranteeing to hire their students.
- There are some great examples of interdisciplinary stuff – putting left- and right-brained people on the same teams.
- It’s nice to have metrics telling you how well you work with others.
- Always put others before yourself.
- If you are patient, everyone will impress you. Just keep waiting.
- I am going to have to check out the Alice project, like a lot
