So, after a long stent with Tumblr I have moved back to WordPress. I really enjoyed Tumblr, and love some of the simplicity…but WordPress just seams to have more “things” I was wanting. So, hello WordPress again.
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There is a common trend: the most well-rounded pairs recognized their individual limitations and respected what the other could bring to a partnership.
Read more: http://t.co/8VVgZlA
Why am I waiting to switch to Android?
First blog post in almost a year…so here I go with answering a question I am getting a lot. Am I switching to Droid…or staying with the iPhone. So, for the record I am staying with the iPhone for now.
Why am I waiting.
1) Apps. 10,000 Android apps…and growing. That is great. But it’s not with ones I use regularly. Android is attacking great developers, so this is solve itself in a few months.
2) Device. Bottom line, I want a physical keyboard. I love my iPhone, but really miss the amazing keyboard that I had with my BBerry Bold. The devices out right now with Android are not good enough to pull me off the iPhone. Droid is really, really, REALLY nice. But, IMHO it is not great. The keyboard is lacking, and overall the device is not refined yet. Soon and very soon I am confidant gen2 / gen3 devices will be killer.
3) Music/Media. iTunes makes music/media sync amazingly simple. I take this for granted, I bet you do to if you are a iPhone/iPod touch user. Apple rocks a this! Android must solve this problem soon…but they don’t have a solution yet.
4) World Phone. Droid is not a world phone…no GSM sim card. This is not a killer or show stopper, I could switch devices when I travel the internationally…but I would like to have 1 device.
—>that is it, there are my 4 key reasons for not moving to Droid/Android right now.<— But I will throw #5 at you, just because lists feel better if they are 5 long and not 4.
5) Carrier. I am unsure what carrier I will be going with. Verizon, ATT, Sprint, or T-Mobile? I need great coverage and data in the states…and I need the ability to travel internationally and have data follow me…Unlimited Data across the globe. And to complicate things, I need the ability to add and remove Unlimited International Data on a month by month basis. ATT does not offer this! From my current discoveries, Verizon and Sprint can handle this with “world phones”.
So there ya go, my post about switching to Android. What I have not talked about is how amazing the platform is, how I think Android will continue to take market share from all others, and how Android will continue to attract the best developers…Nope, not in this post. Maybe later…or maybe not.
Send Flickr Pictures to Twitter
Two of my favorite tools are Flickr and Twitter. For me, Flickr hands down is the best online photo management site, and Twitter is just amazing! But the fact that I can now use them together…that makes them both even better!
TwitterGram, a tool brought to you by the amazing Dave Winer, allows me to send pictures to Flickr from my Blackberry Curve, and those pictures and messages automatically route to Twitter. I personally added the Special Tag feature with TwitterGram. I have my TwitterGram set up with “Twitter” tag. So, when I tag a picture with Twitter it sends that photo to Twitter. Here is how I use TwitterGram.
- Take picture with my Blackberry
- Add “Twitter” post in the Subject line of email.
- End the subject with “tag: twitter”
- Email picture to Flickr (how to set this up)
- Thats it…in about 5-7 min the Tweet will end up on Twitter and looks something like this.
TwitterGram is a great tool, but who knows how long it will be a service. On the site, Dave tells us it is an experimental service. It may be taken down at any time, without notice.
Enjoy!
SXSW – Crunching and Streaming: Online Video Distribution Challenge and Opportunity Tidbits
Crunching and Streaming: Online Video Distribution Challenge and Opportunity
Brendon Mills – CEO, RipCode
Todd Bryant – CEO, Netcast HD Inc
Jeff Kramer, Polycot Labs
Sloan Foster – Chief Mktg Officer, DCI
Ashley Still, Adobe Systems
This was a very good session with some good information. However, I do think that a running rule should be no more than 3 people on a panel. When you get more than that everyone has something say…a lot of resaying and restating the same information….tends to drag! Here are my tidbits.
The Holy Grail of video ubiquity is about the user interface, accessibility and….content, content, content! – Brendon Mills
U-Verse a 25 mbps service from ATT that you will see improve over the next 3-5 years. Problem is…U-verse is a closed network….wondering how long the public will let closed networks exist.
Scalable Video Coding looks like something we really need to take a look at.
The recent Writer strike showed us that people can and will move from television to the pc. The future will be one…you have to be able to go back and forth between the two!
The panel was asked who is doing online video well…here are there responses.
- www.hulu.com nice interface, easy to find…and have great content
- www.abc.com video unique interface, nice video,
- www.vtap.com mobile video is critical
- Miro
- Whole Foods Market, videopodcasts are amazing!
Dirac looks very interesting!
SXSW – 10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment Tidbits
10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment -
Bryan Mason – Chief Operating Officer, Adaptive Path
Sarah Nelson – Design Strategist, Adaptive Path
One of the best sessions so far. Similar to the Jason Fried session…nothing really new, but amazing information that we all need to hear again, and again, and again! I missed the first 7 or so minutes, but I caught the list…so here are the tidbits.
1) Cross training the entire team. Teaches you the possibilities within the team!
2) Rotate creative leadership.
3) Actively turning the corner. Creative period to production phase. Creative leadership.
4) Know your role! Successful team know what they do and what they are responsible for.
5) Practice, Practice, Practice! In crunch time you need to know how the team is going to respond.
6) Make your mission explicit to the team. -make sure your mission is actionable. Constrains are really good! Even when you don’t think they are…
7) Killing your darlings. Be respectful, but cut the fat and execute on the projects.
8 ) Leadership is a service. When successful, the leaders are servants.
They recommended The art of possibility
9) Generate projects around groups interest.
10) Remember your audience. They talked about this a lot!
11) Celebrate failure. Must take risks!! What worked, what didn’t, what can we learn?
SXSW – A Critical Look At OpenID Tidbits
Artur Bergman – Dir of Engineering, Wikia Inc/O’Reilly Radar
George Fletcher – Chief Architect, AOL LLC
Jason Levitt, Eep! Eep!
David Recordon – Open Platforms Tech Lead, Six Apart Ltd
Andy Smith, Google
Simon Willison, www.simonwillison.net
I will go on record and say I am a big fan of OpenID. I have been an OpenID user for a while now, and really see this growing, and growing. The panel for this session is a group of studs on this topic! Here are my tidbits…
The web NEEDS a single sign on, and many have tried and failed: Microsoft Passport, TypeKey, Facebook.
Basecamp, a 37signals product uses OpenID really well.
Simple Registration – OpenID can help with the registration process. Example: http://jyte.com/auth/signup
Great presentation on OpenID here.
Stuff on OpenID from Yahoo:
Yahoo became an OpenID provider in Jan 08
Yahoo is NOT a relying party
Yahoo only supports 2.0 and will never support 1.0
http://developer.yahoo.com/openid/loginbuttons.html
http://gallery.yahoo.com/openid
Wordpress PlugIN – http://code.google.com/p/diso/source/browse
http://developer.yahoo.com/openid
Simple Registration will play a big role in the future with OpenID.
Critical…. Pick an OpenID provider that will “not go away”. -How do you do that?
Site Launching tomorrow to help- http://www.clickpass.com/
Great session! Would of liked to hear more about the core security issues with OpenID.
SXSW – Lost in Translation? Top Website Internationalization Lessons Tidbits
Lost in Translation? Top Website Internationalization Lessons
Stephanie Booth – Web Consultant & Commentator, Climb to the Stars
Brian McConnell – Founder, Worldwide Lexicon
Kelly Thompson – Exec VP, iStockphoto Inc
Stephanie Troeth – Director of Interactive Technology & Solutions, CloudRaker
Kevin Marks – Dev Advocate, Google
I was running about 15 late to this session, so a lot of the core content up front I missed. Here is some of the things that I picked up…(oh, I felt like an idiot..I think I was one of only 4-5 people in this session that did not speak multiple languages.)
Internationalization is not only a language issue, it is a very challanging technical issue.
Translation is critical to find people who understand what you are asking then to do. Get translators that understand tech and web if they are working on your site. If you have HR or legal docs online, make sure that you have someone who understands the legal side and can translate effectively.
Creative Commons is doing a great job with translation, and Internationalization.
This is a very interesting site with Translation/Internationalization for video… http://dotsub.com/
SXSW – Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users Tidbits
Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users – Kathy Sierra
Opening question: What did (do) you really, really want to be good at?
20 Things
1) User Telepathy, read facial expressions.
2) Serendipity, filter things for our users so we help with the Wow!
3) The dog ears principles.
4) Create Joy!
5) Inspire First-person Language, your site should NOT be about you.
6) T-Shirt First Development, have users passionate about you and share it with others.
7) Easter Eggs are great! A Smile in the Mind
8 ) Tools for Evangelism, give your users a way to woo other users.
9) Reduce user Stress!
10) Help Improve users body.
11) Give them superpowers quickly.
12) Did not catch this one!
13) Speed up user knowledge.
14) Make your user documents reflect great feelings.
15) Oops, missed this one.
16) Create a culture of support. No dumb question, no dumb answers.
17) Do not insist on inclusivity.
18) Practive seductive opacity, its not secrecy-it’s theater.
19) Missed it!
20) The man…he is all the above Gary Vaynerchuk
