Kaela and Jonathan have a blog: Rasa Yang Tidak Biasa
They are staging for a tour of Asia. Awesome.
Thanks Jude.
Category: blogs
the truth about blogs …
Thanks Kate.
Imagewell, Snagit, Jing for Mac
I use “screen grab” software every day.
This image was created by Snagit:
There are many screen grab options on the Mac. But I’m happiest with Imagewell. It’s been free … until recently. I just dropped $14.95 to get the paid version. Money well spent, I feel.
Snagit and Jing are similar products, both free (for now). And both being developed by TechSmith.
Both have features not available with Imagewell. I’ll use them for special jobs, each perhaps 5 times / year.
Only Jing captures video.
videos – embedded or on YouTube?
by site editor Rick McCharles
On this site I try to give you a choice between watching videos on the same page. Or by jumping to YouTube or another site.
It’s faster to watch the embedded video. AND embedded YouTube videos normally do not have those annoying overlay ads.
If you’re in a hurry, just watch the embedded video.
But when you jump over to YouTube you have the option of watching a higher resolution version. You can comment. Rate videos. And see more links to related videos.
It’s nice to have a choice.
The future looks bright. YouTube and Vimeo have begun replacing “memory hog” Adobe Flash format videos with the new HTML5 standard.
The sooner that happens for you, the better.
missing FRIENDS in Facebook?
I love Facebook, but some of their redesign decisions SUCK.
Recently I’ve noticed that some of my friends updates were not appearing in my Feed.
Why is that?
Turns out that Facebook decided to show me only 250 of my 500+ friends. Somehow they were choosing what 250 I’d want to see. Those who post most often, I assume.
That’s LAME, Facebook. LAME.
There’s a fix explained in this blog.
=== UPDATE:
Only those who get a really high volume of posts in their stream can use the fix that worked for me. (see below) Most people get all their friends posts and won’t see the box below.
… you can quickly restore all your friends by scrolling to the bottom of the home page -> click on EDIT OPTIONS -> and change the number of friends from the default (250 in my case) to a number greater than your total number of friends.
Boing Boing – 55,000+ posts
Blogging is dead. Again.
I guess Boing Boing didn’t get the memo.
From Cory Doctorow:
… I still feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface of the Internet’s inexhaustible supply of “wonderful things.” You know, you sometimes hear people talking about how crap everything on the net … and I wonder, “Are these people looking at a different Internet than the one that I get?”
There are more than 100 million blogs today.
Perhaps 5 million use Twitter. At least 150 million post on Facebook. Those are micro-blogs.
This is all new in the last 10yrs.
Do you actually believe those numbers will be lower in 5 years?
If Shakespeare were alive today, he’d have a very popular blog.
State of the World 2010
Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.
Bruce Sterling annually addresses the State of the World and Things Various and Sundry.
It’s very amusing, scary and thoughtful.
… the polarity of the world is changing, literally and figuratively; the climate’s wonky, the economy’s tumbling like a house of cards in a demented wind, political will is weak and the body politic is disfigured in ways that are gross and fascinating.
It’s a circus, and the tent’s on fire.
I asked around for thoughts about what we should discuss, and got this from science-fiction author, Internet maven, and new Dad, Cory Doctorow:
… If you were in my shoes, what concrete, discrete, individual steps would you take on behalf of your snoring little toddler? “
read Sterling’s rambling answer on The WELL
… The WELL?
Is that online community still around?
They haven’t moved to Facebook or Friendfeed?
Shelter vs House
One of my favourite blogs is As The Crow Flies.
Long distance hiking, primitive cabin dwelling, hermit life
Crow actually lives my philosophy of Voluntary Simplicity. I admire her.
Here she explains why a simple cabin is far superior to a modern “home”.
… When it’s dark, you know it’s dark. When it’s cold outside, you know it’s cold.
If you want heat, you go chop wood. If you want water, you need to melt some snow.
If the cabin burns down, you need to figure out a new shelter. But that’s all it is—shelter.
Some people think my life is harder than for people who live in a house. I can tell you, from my house sitting experiences, that I have far more time and far less chores to do than a house dweller. …
read more – Shelter vs House
The future of news is entrepreneurial
There’s a brilliant guy named Jeff Jarvis with a blog called Buzz Machine.
Rockin’ reads it religiously.
I find it bloody dense. Wordy. Few graphics or photos. A video once-in-a-while if you’re lucky.
But one dense Buzz Machine post is dead on, something explained better than I’ve heard before:
The future of news is entrepreneurial:
The future of news is not institutional… The news of tomorrow has yet to be built…. The structure – the ecosystem – of news will not be dominated by a few corporations but likely will be made up of networks of many startups performing specialized functions …
That statement also holds many implications for sectors of the economy and society: investment (put money into the new, not the old)… public policy (don’t protect and preserve the incumbents but nurture the startups by creating a fertile and level playing field)… education (how do we train journalists when everyone can do journalism? – how do we train everyone?)… marketing (advertising won’t be one-stop shopping anymore and that means it may support news less)… PR (influence will be no longer be concentrated)…
He writes this, I think, as a response to the idiotic proposals that governments should support your local paper with tax dollars.
Are you telling me the Calgary Herald is too big to fail? … It’s not.
There’s a cheesy sounding news service called Demand Media, founded 2006. It’s already the single largest contributor to YouTube.
Also founded 2006, but better, is a company called Examiner.com. My friend Blythe Lawrence went to work for them. She’s a trained journalist. Check out Blythe’s “blog” – Gymnastics Examiner. It’s as good as any of the old media in my business.
Jeff Jarvis is associated with another new (2007) media company called Daylife.
Looks like all 3 of these companies are going to survive. Dozens more will be founded. Some will flounder.
All 3 are radically different business models. In all 3 most of the people producing the content are paid very little.
Those are all “news” sites. More likely to survive longterm are speciality sites. I frequently read Matador Travel, for example. It’s an online travel magazine and social network. I’m more likely to check Matador for travel, or the Gadling travel blog, than look at travel pieces in a news site like DayLife. Matador and Gadling specialize in travel.
A friend of mine Kraig Becker went to work for Gadling recently. He’s getting paid something, and really enjoying posting for them. I’m totally happy with the quality of Kraig’s writing. And scan each and every one because I like his perspective on adventure travel.
We don’t know yet how we will get our news 2 years from now. It’s being fought out in the market place of ideas right now.
Perhaps they’ll even find a way to monetize news. To pay the people that produce it in micropayments. … My guess is that very few journalists will be well paid in future, however.
Certainly I won’t be subscribing to the Calgary Herald dead tree edition, ever again.
==== UPDATE:
I heard Jeff Jarvis on Leo Laporte’s new audiocast, This Week in Google.
Jarvis is a genius. Much better in audio than in text, IMHO.
His book, however, What Would Google Do? is high on my “to listen to soon” list.
Facebook After You Die
For the record, I’d love to have a memorial page on Facebook once I’m gone.
Time – What Happens to Your Facebook After You Die?
In fact, I assume software is in development that I can program to keep blogging for me … after I’m gone. How difficult would it be for a machine to put up snide posts like this?
Rick McCharles 