I love to poke through the web and constantly add bookmarks to my Delicious profile. The subjects vary, but I do my best to only tag content that I find particularly interesting. At the end of each day you’ll find a listing of my most recently tagged bookmarks posted here.
These are my bookmarks for April 21st through April 27th:
txtDrop.com – Completely Free Text Messaging – Our goal has always been to make web based text messaging free and as simple as possible and we're sticking by that in 2008. Which is why we let you do everything in one easy step, on one simple webpage. TxtDrop enables users in the United States and Canada to send text messages
with instant delivery.
IdeaPaint – Turn Walls into Whiteboards – "IdeaPaint helps you make ideas happen in the existing areas around your creative space or office. We recommend using IdeaPaint to boost productivity while brainstorming. By transforming your walls into useful space, you can track ideas, capture action steps, and bring order to the creative process."
I love to poke through the web and constantly add bookmarks to my Delicious profile. The subjects vary, but I do my best to only tag content that I find particularly interesting. At the end of each day you’ll find a listing of my most recently tagged bookmarks posted here.
These are my bookmarks for April 7th through April 21st:
Social Media Classroom – This website is an invitation to grow a public resource of knowledge and relationships among all who are interested in the use of social media in learning…
usbcell – usbcell – revolutionary rechargeable battery that can charge from any USB port
“Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained extensive notability and popularity worldwide. It is often described as the “SMS of Internet,” in that the site provides the functionality (via its application programming interfaces) for other desktop and web-based applications to send and receive short text messages, often obscuring the Twitter service itself.”
If you take a look at my tag cloud (look over to the right –>), you’ll quickly notice that the vast majority of my blog posts — at least thus far — consist of my compiled tweets/twitter updates/twitterings/whatever. I’m by no means an authority on the service, but I consider myself enough of a Twitter user (Twitterer?) to make this post. *ahem*
I’ve had some folks in class ask me what I think of Twitter. I’ve gotten into pseudo-arguments over it with professors during lectures. At a recent class party — one that involved everyone wearing a white shirt and having messages scrawled on it — the phrase “Twitter this, bitch!” was scribbled on my back. In a relatively small market like Kingston, Ontario, I guess I’m in the minority when it comes to utilizing this sort of stuff. (Does that make me an early adopter? Hmm…)
Anyway, this is how I typically describe it (if you have a differing opinion, post a comment):
Everyone knows what a chatroom is. You log on, choose your name, and enter the room. You’re instantly bombarded with lines upon lines of text; folks having conversations with themselves, with others, or just speaking into the void hoping someone will respond. You don’t know where to begin, and the lines of text just keep on coming.
Now imagine that you enter another chatroom, but this time, you’re not being bombarded with text. For you to start seeing what the users are saying, you need to follow them. And because you get to choose who you follow, chances are that the updates you get will at least be somewhat related to your interests.
And this, my friends, is Twitter.
It can be a one-way communication tool — pushing content out to the masses, posting updates for your followers to see — or it can be a platform for communication and dialogue. Unlike instant messenger systems, there is no need for a downloaded client. Unlike Facebook, there is nothing beyond the basics of the service. And unlike RSS feeds, you do not have to wait for the feed to be checked – the update is immediate. Take into consideration Twitter’s functionality with virtually every mobile platform, and you have yourself an extremely robust — and extremely powerful — method of communication.
Things have been hectic around here lately. Very hectic. Seeing as things are so hectic, I’ll write a hectic list of hectic things that are going on:
Wrapping up my second (and final) semester of studies at St. Lawrence College. Only one week left!
Bouncing around between various local businesses, somehow attempting to stay on top of work with all of them.
The 29th Annual Greg Awards (SLC’s annual awards show for Advertising and IMC students) wrapped up nicely. Things went much smoother than last year, and the tech pit was a much more enjoyable place to be this time. (The post-Gregs celebration was also good.)
I’ve started playing World of Warcraft again (erk) to keep myself sane. Ulduar ahoy!
~ Mith, 80 Warlock of <The Unsummoned> on Garrosh (PVE-US).
Looking forward to doing more work with the Ontario Heads of Business campaign. (Expect more blog posts about it in the coming weeks.)
I’ve been trying to get some stuff done with GTANet, but college keeps getting in the way. (Heh heh.)
…hectic.
Anywho, I’ll try my best to keep this blog updated over the next week. Classes have pretty much come to a halt, so I should have more time to get back into the swing of things for all of my web geekery.
“The host of CBC Radio’s arts and culture program Q gave his usual, upbeat introduction to Thornton and his fellow musicians in the Boxmasters, Thornton’s hillbilly-meets-British Invasion-inspired rock band. As a point of reference, Ghomeshi mentioned Thornton’s Oscar-winning screen career.
So far, so good.
But when asked about his influences, Thornton mumbled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you mean by that.”
It went downhill from there, into left-field non-sequiturs by Thornton about reading Famous Monsters of Film Land as a kid, until the truth came out. Thornton’s handlers had told Q’s producers to talk about music, which Ghomeshi was happy to do, since the segment was all about the band and its swing through Canada.”
Earlier this evening I recommended a variety of free web dev and media production programs. Being the keener that I am, I decided to use a few of those programs to piece together this little how-to guide for extracting audio from YouTube clips.
It’s 10:30pm on a Wednesday evening. Today has consisted of presentations, phone calls and project deadlines. I’ve barely had enough time to do my daily RSS crawl, and my Twitter account has been neglected for the past 48 hours. It’s a sad state of affairs.
To make up for it, I’ve pieced together a small list of handy (and free) software, stuff that pretty much anyone can find useful. Consider this to be my Chris Pirillo moment; once things settle down a bit I might even go as far as to start doing this on a regular basis.
And if you’re curious: yes, I do use everything that I list here. (Hence the recommendations.)
This installment of Andy’s Recommended Software (heh heh) focuses on web development and media — or, in other words, my favourite applications ever.
DEALING WITH FTP:FileZilla is a totally free and extremely useful FTP client. I’ve been using FZ for about three years now and couldn’t be happier. The support forums are also a great resource for troubleshooting any issues that arise. Also worthy of note is the recently released FileZilla Portable; it’s a must-have for anyone that finds themselves working with limited administrative access from multiple machines. I keep a copy on andymci-usb (my creatively named USB external drive) at all times.
EDITING CODE:Notepad Plus (aka NOTEPAD++) is an opensource source code editing program. I use it for all my development work, but it also works well as a clipboard or generic notepad. It has a variety of additional plugins available, as well.
RECORDING SCREEN CAPTURES:CamStudio is a lightweight application that does everything you’d expect it to. I’ve used it several times for class-related projects, including my brief experience as a class tutor with 3rd year Advertising students. Also check out the official CamStudio blog for updates and related info.
DOWNLOADING FLASH VIDEO CONTENT: The DownloadHelper extension for Firefox is the best tool I’ve used to accomplish this.
MEDIA PLAYBACK: Get your hands on the VLC Player. It’s extremely handy and comes packed with a variety of features (including streaming media support) and a wide range of supported media types. It’s also portable, which makes it perfect for tossing onto an external drive.
AUDIO RECORDING/EDITING/MIXING: I really, really wish I could get Garage Band on PC. Until then, however, I’m sticking it out with Audacity. Audacity is a free, open-source application for working with audio, and it’s arguably the best free audio editing platform out there.
And that’s it. There’s a bunch of other stuff that I use as well (computer maintenance, iPhone apps, various Firefox plugins, etc.), but I’ll cover those things at a later point. If you’re like me — a college student strapped for cash who still wants to do something creative and effective — the programs I’ve listed above should come in handy.
Saying that Trent Reznor has a bit of a following on the web would be a drastic understatement. He’s well known for going against the grain and trying new things with online distribution, including the release of entire albums at no cost (and somehow making money from it) and elaborate Alternate Reality Games (definition of ARG is available here, via Wikipedia).
Trent recently sat down with Kevin Rose on the latest installment of Digg Dialogg. The majority of the discussion revolves around marketing, promotions, product distribution and doing business online (all relative to the music industry, of course), but is nonetheless worth a watch even if you’re not involved in the music scene.
The entire video is about 40 minutes long, but it’s absolutely worth it.
Think of personal blogs as a series of show-and-tells that are indexed and archived for future reference. More bloggers = more posts = more shared knowledge. So even if you don’t have a mob of readers subscribing to your RSS feed, it doesn’t mean your blog is useless.
The internet is a busy place, and there’s way too much activity going on for folks to start reading personal blogs on a regular basis. Most of us lead completely mundane lives that are of no interest to anyone (and I’m not about to start pretending thatmy life is any different), so it’s no surprise that the average blogger doesn’t get a whole lot of exposure.
But personal blogging shouldn’t be about having a dedicated stream of followers keeping tabs on our every action; a blog should be more of a database for our knowledge and experiences. Our incoherent musings will go unnoticed for the most part, but every now and then we may post something that is of interest to a wider audience. You never know when an inconspicuous blog post might come in handy for someone.
I don’t expect my blog to be bombarded with traffic at any point in the near future, and that’s absolutely fine with me. But for all I know, I may end up posting a tutorial (or some other equally geeky thing) that proves to be of some use. The same could be said for anyone and everyone who maintains their own personal blog.
With that in mind, I urge everyone to at least give it a shot.
(This post was created in response to the generic “blogging is retarded and useless” comments I’ve seen scattered on various sites.)