For the first time ever, this blog is involved in a contest. This isn’t like a “who’s got the best blog” kind of thing, but one that gives you the chance to win a prize. I know, I know… that’s mighty nice of me, isn’t it?
Well, to be honest, I’m not really the man behind the curtain on this one. The contest is actually being run by Andy over at commentluv.com. That’s one of the plug-ins I use on this blog (it appends the “last post” link to commenters who have their own blogs). Andy apparently has some stuff to give away and has decided to run it this way, so we can all benefit from his beneficence.
So here’s the deal:
You have to comment somewhere on this blog (not necessarily this post). The comment has to be relevant to the post - spam is disqualified, as is the “oh, pick me! pick me!” kind of nonsense. You also have to meet Andy’s requirements (copied below):
You must also have a profile description entered at CommentLuv.com.
You cannot spam.
You do not need to have CommentLuv installed on your own site.
So in order to win, you must have a site of your own. It doesn’t have to be an old one, though… it can be brand spanking new. There are plenty of ways to start your own site for free.
After you post the comment, if you win, you’ll see a prize notification link in your comment (in the “Last post” area). Click on that link and fill out the details on the “Claim Your Prize” page to receive the prize. The first two winners got a 2GB memory card.
So go ahead and start commenting away! You might just win. (contest runs through 11/21 or so)
I have been looking for a utility that will let me rearrange those stupid Windows Taskbar buttons. I like to keep my email client as the first program on my taskbar. Sometimes it crashes (these things happen) and I have to reopen it, but to get it back to the beginning of the line again, I had to close all my other programs and then reopen them in the order I wanted. If I’m running a couple of browsers with 18+ tabs each (not that unusual), that’s a huge pain in the neck.
Finally, Taskbar Shuffle comes to the rescue! My thanks to the contributor over at Gizmo’s site, who listed that software and three other Taskbar and Windows management tools.
No, I’m not talking about downloadable, put-it-on-your-iPod-and-go music (well, the sites do make it easy to buy the singles as a download). I’m talking about music to listen to when you’re connected to the internet.
There are lots of sites that provide ways to listen to songs online. There are three that I want to briefly touch on. Each require a free registration to do anything beyond listen.
On-Demand: iMeem
First, imeem.com bills itself as “a social network where millions of fans and artists discover new music, videos, and photos, and share their tastes with friends.” That’s great and all, but for my money, it’s a place to get on-demand singles to listen to. Do a search and you can come up with at least one song for most artists. I’ve even searched for artists I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have and gotten a hit. There are a few that don’t have representation yet, but it is a social site, so you can even upload it yourself if you want. It’s like YouTube for music. As a social site, one of its focuses (foci, for you elitists), is sharing. It’s easy to embed clips (not full songs, usually) on your blog, or Facebook, or wherever. That’s a nice feature, though I’d prefer to be able to choose the part of the song for the clip.
Other than YouTube, that’s the best way I’ve found to get a quick hit of on-demand music.
Internet Radio
The other two sites I’ve played with are both “self-programmed” internet radio stations. “Self-programmed” is a bit of a misnomer, though, because it’s not like you choose the individual songs, or even artists, to play on the station. You identify some criteria and it pulls together related songs for you to enjoy. As the songs are playing, you can rate them and that affects the frequency of that and similar songs/artists on the station. That’s still a step up, in my opinion, from a traditional radio station where you have no control over the playlist at all. And because the choices are based on some criteria you entered, any songs/artists you haven’t heard before have a better chance of being something you like.
LAUNCHcast
Years ago I found a site that has since been bought by Yahoo! and is now Yahoo! Music’s LAUNCHcast. I put a lot of time into rating songs on my station, but there are still some surprise entries in there every once in a while that I downright hate. The self-referential ads inserted between every fifth song or so get annoying too. Still, it’s a good eclectic mix of my favorite types of music, and the good far outweighs the bad.
On LAUNCHcast, music is chosen by identifying artists and genres initially, then rating individual songs, albums, and artists. I like that you can be pretty granular in your ratings (scale of 1-100 or a 5-star method - your choice), which gives me a sense of better control.
The downside of this one is that it only works in Internet Explorer, which means I rarely listen to it anymore, because I rarely fire up IE. Plus, it drives me crazy that they refuse to support the other browsers so I stay away on principle for the most part. Still, I do enjoy listening to the station every few months and would listen more if they were more open. If you’re on IE all the time anyway, this may not be an issue for you.
Pandora
More recently (today, in fact), I ran across Pandora.com. This gets my vote for the best way to listen to internet radio. The interface is Flash-based, so over 90% of the world should have no problem with compatibility. It’s also incredibly simple to get started. Just identify a single artist or song that you like and it will identify characteristics in the Music Genome Project database that are shared with other songs to build your playlist (called ’seeding’). These guys know music, and they are matching that knowledge with technology to support them. It’s a beautiful thing.
There are ads supporting it, but they are visual, and therefore easily ignored.
There are three minor downsides that I’ve found in the few hours I’ve been listening to Pandora. First, the rating system is kind of limited (thumbs up/down), but that’s only a problem for the obsessives among us, I’d imagine (others would use terms like ‘elegant and simple’). Second, there is no easy “embed this song” or “embed this station” options that I’ve run across yet. Again, not a huge deal, but it’d be nice. Finally, a few songs seemed to repeat in a relatively short time period (an hour or so). I’m guessing that’s because I marked them as “thumbs up” and I have relatively little other information that I’ve contributed at this point so it will improve as I add further variation.
Overall, I think I’ll be spending a lot of time on my Pandora stations. The experiments I’ve been doing on it so far are promising. It does a better job of pulling together playlists I’m interested in than Yahoo! does with less interaction. Once I really start putting together ratings and additional seeds I think it will be a great station (or set of stations, as the case may be).
If you’re looking for some background music at your computer, you could do far worse than Pandora. If you’re looking for on-demand tracks, give imeem a shot.
Just ran across this free application that could be a replacement for Adobe Captivate, if you’re looking for a quick and dirty way to create software demos. Did I mention it’s free?
Just from the screenshots and incredibly short example, it looks like it does a pretty good job, but isn’t as polished looking as Captivate.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan to soon. It might be a decent alternative for Subject Matter Experts who need to do something as a one-off, rather than purchasing a Captivate (or similar tool) license for them.
Free business cards! That’s pretty cool. Via the excellent Parent Hacks site (see below) I’ve now found two online printing companies that will print business cards for free. You have to pay shipping/handling charges, which probably amount to about $5, but that’s not bad.
The two sites are VistaPrint and ooprint. VistaPrint.com provides 42 design options and 250 cards, while ooprint.com provides 32 options and 100 cards.
Obviously this is a benefit for small (very small) businesses, and they’re hoping to get you to print more with them. However, as Parent Hacks points out, there are other reasons to use business cards beyond the obvious:
We use them to facilitate playdate set-up, as a quick reference for babysitters (in addition to our list of emergency info), as luggage tags and I put one in the back pocket of each kid when we go to crowded venues.
That’s a pretty smart idea. Good thinking. Here’s another idea: use them when you move into a new neighborhood to give to your new neighbors. I know I am terrible with names and it would benefit me to see names written down, plus the process of exchanging phone numbers would be much easier. The same would apply for attending a new church, or social gathering, even if you’re single.
Heh… if you’re single, you could give them out to potential dates; or if you’re desperate, just leave them lying around in malls or bars…
More about Yugma (related post) from a blog focused on Webinars/WebConferencing. The author spent time reviewing Yugma and talking with Yugma’s COO, Karl Lukas, about the product and company.
Karel tells me that the company spent time analyzing how to meet the demands of the largest possible market for web conferencing software. They decided that the masses were calling for several features: They wanted something that was easy to learn and use, with a very simple interface. It had to work on a variety of computer platforms. And it had to be inexpensive. Yugma built a product dedicated to fulfilling those goals.
Karel says that while real-time group collaboration is the “sweet spot” for Yugma, it has also been successfully used for 1-to-many presentations with up to 50 people in the audience. Still, the product at this time doesn’t support formal structured webinar features such as audience registration, password control, polling, and reporting, so I am more comfortable classifying it as a collaborative group conferencing product at the moment.
There’s much more in the blog post, but all in all, it looks like my initial analysis was right: it’s not as full-featured as some other conferencing apps, but it certainly has enough to do what I, individually, and many small companies, would need. And they have an active development plan, too!
Okay, the term “Web 2.0″ is utterly useless, but you gotta admit, there’s some cool stuff out there.
Instead of listing all the cool apps that will make your life wonderful, I’ll just list one: Go2Web20.net will help you find the app(lication) you are looking for. It’s basically a Web 2.0 enabled index of a slew of Web 2.0 tools.
For example, searching that site for “webconferencing” got me to Yugma - which is a free, cross-platform alternative to expensive business tools like Microsoft’s Live Meeting, or WebEx. My guess is that it’s not as fully featured as the corporate tools, but it seems to have everything I’d need for personal use, like helping my sister-in-law troubleshoot some issues on her computer. And for a small business it still may do the trick. It even seems to place a value on security, which is excellent.
In trying to find some more information on Yugma, I also ran across a competitor - the equally free Vyew. There are some technological differences between the two (e.g., Vyew is Flash-based, while Yugma employs some Java and requires an installation), but their goal is the same - information sharing and collaboration. They both even offer free teleconferencing bridging (though not toll-free numbers).
There have been a few times that I’ve been tempted to use my work conferencing account to make some personal tasks a little easier (though I’ve managed to hold off). Now I think I might just have found a viable option!
Okay, “life transforming” might be a little extreme … but then again I haven’t tried most of them yet.
I have tried GAIM, and I like it. I use Firefox, Thunderbird and (obviously) WordPress on a daily basis (though I haven’t heard of most of the extensions he mentioned).
I loaded Open Office once, but I had a really hard time letting go of Excel. Oddly, I had a hard time letting go of Word, too, and I HATE Word. I guess I’m familiar enough with them that I don’t want to learn anything new anymore. That’s depressing.
I’m intrigued by a few of the others. Once I rebuild this system, as I keep promising myself I’ll do soon, I’ll try a couple of these and see if they live up to the hype.
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