November 2007 Posts

Facebook, the Devil, and Me (historic)

Think back to two years ago - had you heard of the Facebook? If you were in college, you most certainly had. When I returned home on a trip from Michigan for a fraternity convention, all of my friends asked "are you on facebook?" and seemed shocked that I was only on LiveJournal and MySpace... they were ALL on facebook, and they were all friends from the first time they'd met. It was the "real" Second Life. After lots of "no, I don't have a school e-mail", I found that Nathan had two school emails, so he let me use one. It was a great community back then, before the feed, before the apps, before the statuses, even before YouTube! ::gasp!:: "Was there life before YouTube?" It doesn't feel like it sometimes.

Yes, I really used to terminate all of my LiveJournal posts with a line from Tron.

I have crossed over to the dark side.

Facebook me!

End of Line.

Tags:

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

Nice website, but not very "community" COME ON!

Let me start off by saying that it is so utterly amazing that Central Florida has groups with funding who can do stuff like this, and we wouldn't be where we are now without CFACA and UA. Love ya, mean it.

Jim Morris of the Central Florida Arts & Cultural Alliance (they changed their name from Performing Arts Alliance) posted an article called "I get the change, but how are you different than United Arts?". He then tries to describe it. I think I get it, but it's hard to keep tabs...

Who works for UA? Who's in charge of the Red Chair Project? How do I get Florida Creatives Happy Hour listed there? How can I blog for them?

Why isn't there an official RCP blog, and why do Jim and Jessica have their blogs hosted on Google's server instead of their own?

Where are the graphics for the Red Chair Project I can post an official link on my website? (see the Miro logo, for example)

Where's the iCal/gCal/RSS of upcoming events? Where are the comments on events? Why use a proprietary system? If you didn't use a proprietary system, where are the dang comments and RSS feeds? GO OPEN SOURCE, guys, you'll never regret it! EVER.

Give me a call 407-484-8528. If you don't see this post, I'm sure I'll see Jessica around town.

Edit: This is a re-post from May 21, as Mark Baratelli pointed out.

Why did I post this twice? I just haven't seen a move towards anything like this in the last 5 months, and Jim and I haven't really gotten in constant contact. They have this great opportunity in that they are at the center of public attention with this stuff. Me, as a lowly developer, can hardly make waves as big as United Arts and the Arts & Cultural Alliance.

Tags:

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

Flock and Facebook Screencast

The new Flock is out and better than ever, so I'm inspired yet again to screencast about it and show you more about this browser. In this edition we talk about how Flock has integrated your Facebook friends (and Flickr, MySpace, YouTube) right into the sidebar. You can keep the People bar open while you surf the web and make updates to your status, write messages, subscribe to media and share with your friends with just a simple drag-and-drop. This is the version of Flock you've been waiting for, trust me.

Download the Screencast (iPhone friendly!)

If you want to see anything else demonstrated, like if you want to teach your boss how to upload YouTube videos, I would be happy to create something custom for you. We do dedications!

Categories:

Tags:

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

Lijit Wijit makes a useful Search Landing Page

A nice follow-up to my last post about SEO and Landing Pages, Lijit!

Lijit is a Google Personalized Search wrapper that helps you add all your sites and content to one search box. People can also search your MyBlogLog and LinkedIn networks, Ma.gnolia bookmarks and Twitter updates. Someone searching for "Jenny K Surrounded by Wolves" on my blog will see a search results page, but then when they return to my blog, Lijit picks up on the referrer and tries to suggest other stuff. Cool!

This page is a video I made about a local band, but if you look in the sidebar, you also see that we've referred to them on OrlandoScene.TV, so the person who came here looking for Jenny K might find what they were looking for on another one of my sites.

Mark Baratelli and I have talked about this problem before - we both blog in 23 places, so how can someone search all of our stuff? Do any of you fair readers use personalized search engines? I'm interested to see what else is out there.

Tags:

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

Use Yahoo Site Explorer to get Top 10 Pages for your Site

A while back I installed an excellent plugin for Firefox called SearchStatus. In addition to showing me the pagerank and compete score of any page I visit (I think it does Alexa, but I have a different plugin for that), it also gives you this handy right-click menu with lots of neat stuff in it. Most useful was a list of all the pages that Google, MSN and Yahoo! index on your site. For this blog, the list is interesting, but I'm not trying to make a living being me, so I checked out OrlandoScene.TV, my up-and-coming video podcast.

From Google, most of the top pages were wordpress archive lists - not very interesting, but it does prove that older pages get more juice in Google. Here's Google's top 10 OSTV category pages:

coffee

podcasts

relayforlife

maitland

austinscoffee

pandos

michelle

theatre

rogers

loch haven park

Here's Yahoo's top 10 pages for OSTV:

Orlando Scene TV

OSTV on B & S Daily Market at Orlando Scene TV

OSTV 03: Taste Restaurant at Orlando Scene TV

OSTV Still Getting Started at Orlando Scene TV

OSTV 01: Relay For Life Concert at Orlando Scene TV

OSTV 02: Enzian FILMSLAM at Orlando Scene TV

2007 Orlando Fringe Festival at Orlando Scene TV

Orlando Video Blog Kicks it Off at Orlando Scene TV

orlandoscene.tv/feed

2007 archive at Orlando Scene TV

The MSN top 15 pages for OSTV (MSN was the only one with an RSS feed) were interesting as well. Kind of neat was every so often they would publish a date that specified the last time they indexed it (I think).

Orlando Scene TV

orlandoscene.tv

orlandoscene.tv/feed

orlandoscene.tv/comments/feed

OSTV on B & S Daily Market ...

OSTV 01: Relay For Life ...

OSTV 03: Taste Restaurant ...

OSTV 02: Enzian FILMSLAM ...

Orlando Video Blog Kicks ...

Join us at E.L.L.A Music ...

Subscribe at Orlando ...

I didn't make those linkable because those are mostly in the yahoo list as well. It's interesting to see where MSN puts pages vs. Yahoo! I don't know how their algorithms differ, but it's worth looking in to...? Also, MSN repeated the first result... why?

I think Google's results are the least useful here (until I start optimizing and theming my category pages). For now, I have a neat wordpress plugin called Landing Pages that helps out by showing the user something like this:

orlando video coffee

You came here from www.google.com searching for orlando video coffee. These posts might be of interest:

* OSTV on B & S Daily Market
* Join us at E.L.L.A Music Festival
* OSTV 01: Relay For Life Concert

But I think each category - like coffee, theatre, etc. should have a graphic and some related posts like this. That's also a great place to do some contextual advertising. I think I might throw adsense on my archive pages - especially since google thinks they're so important.

Categories:

Tags:

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

What do we make of this? Commercial Sexess?

While doing some surfing today, I came across a videoblog called Body of Art. Apparently this guy is a director working on a film called "Safety First: The Rise of Women". I don't know if there is a real film, but all of these clips intrigue me. They border on tasteless, and if it weren't for the half-dressed women in the shots, I'd almost believe what he was serious about what he was saying. Still, you have to give this guy some credit for owning a great camera, and that dancer in red appears to know what she's doing.

Is he doing anything different from The Man Show, a la Comedy Central? I can't figure that out. Here are two clips for you:

"Donuts and Holes"

"Dancer in Red"

This is the sort of thing that just makes me curious - how does a project like this get started? How is it that he's made 16 of these videos on a $0 budget - he must have something, right? There is some interesting commentary on Hollywood in the more recent videos, but it's still weird.

I do understand that being an art filmmaker is wholly frustrating, so aiming at a larger demographic and chasing commercial success is just where some of us have to go. That's cool.

Tags:

Links

Reviews

Video

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

WiMAX in Miami?

For non-geeky types, just stop reading. I'm complaining about not having wireless being truly wireless.
TowerStream Rolls Out Enterprise WiMAX Service in Miami, Florida

Wow, this was from almost 9 months ago - I wonder how it's going? The first page of Google was not super-helpful - it mostly said Sprint is not moving as fast on this as they'd like, but they are doing something in Chicago and Seattle.

In Miami a number of services appear to be available, like T1 Speed for $399 from ClearSurf! Awesome, I can pay the price of an iPhone every month just to get broadband... Then there's Towerstream, weighing in at $498. This service is clearly targeted at business. The stupidest part is how they say "T1 speed". The industry passed T1 speed a long time ago. Why not just say 1.5Mbit? The cable companies have us chasing the Megabits all over town, so why should the wireless broadband companies be any different?

Search for "WiMax Orlando" and all you get is announcements from CTIA Wireless - because all the TelCos come here to have fun and use our convention center - but yet they have no interest in equipping the millions of conventionistas with their precious WiMax service... why?

I would pay $60 - $80 for this service for my home - especially if it meant I could pop a card in my laptop and get it anywhere downtown - I mean I'm already going to have to pay $50 to get it through the ground, so i might as well be a bit more untethered? Maybe I should just sign up for EV-DO or HSDPA from the cell phone company and get something similar...? Sigh.

Categories:

Tags:

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

Veronica Belmont Â» Console Rundown

I saw this hilarious and only slightly bombastic (and I actually meant to use that word, I feel so smart!) video review of the three 7th generation consoles (watch the video, I didn't know that) and their respective shortcomings. At the same time, I sometimes view these types of rants as being slightly insane, maybe because the people saying them sound smarter than me, and i don't agree with what they're saying because I didn't think of it first.... HA!

I've been subscribed to Veronica's blog ever since vlog deathmatch: air guitar. I don't know why Mark hates her, but then I never listened to Buzz Out Loud every day at the gym like he does. Now I'm watching Mahalo Daily... semi-daily at least - mostly when Jason Calacanis posts it to my Facebook feed. I have to say that she and Tyler have a super-fantastic show, they're actually showing us NEW stuff, instead of the same 15 stories that are everywhere on the web.

Also of note in this category is BoingBoingTV, an excellent daily show with the excellent Xeni Jardin. So nerdy. So beautiful.

Categories:

Tags:

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

Photos from London

It was awesome. I'm going back at least twice next year. I have lots to catch up on, but it doesn't feel like a chore. I'm getting some nice solidification of some of my crazy ideas, and some perspective on some of my old ones. 2008 will be the best year ever, and I have Kait and London to thank for it in part.

I have a few more photos to edit/upload yet, but that will be reflected in this slieshow when they're ready. This player also has pics from my last trip to London in April as well. Cheers!

Tags:

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

OSTV ELLA Music Fest Teaser

Download OSTV ELLA Music Fest Teaser

The first ever ELLA Music Festival took place at the Rogers Building in downtown Orlando in October 2007. The festival was a celebration of female singer/songwriters and female fronted bands.

In this video, one of the performers, Rachel Goodrich, turns the tables and interviews our host Becky for a change! We also get a sample of Rachel's musical stylings in the background, recorded upstairs just minutes earlier.

This is just a tiny sample of what happened at the ELLA Fest. Subscribe to OrlandoScene.TV to get updated when new videos are posted.

More videos coming out every week on Miro and iTunes. If you'd like to get involved by suggesting an event or venue for us to highlight, get in touch with us at OrlandoScene.TV - thanks for watching.

Categories:

Tags:

Commenting on this Blog post is closed.

Search form

You are here

Pages