In our last episode we covered the basics of what makes Web 2.0 so… 2.0ish. In this post we’re going to look at some of the User Generated Video that’s out there, and what your options are as far as hosts.

First and formost, lets look at some of the biggest hits out there. I’m sure you have all heard of the “Chocolate Rain” meme:

You might even have seen this on TV, but I assure you, it all started here on Web 2.0.

There’s been a lot of variations on this theme, my favorite of which stars someone we’re going to touch on later in this post: Chad Vader.

I must admit, I’m pretty partial to Chad.

Of course, there are a number of other viral videos out there, like “Leave Britney Alone!!!“:

Nearly three million views as of this writing on this video alone. Wow. Good job, Mr. Crocker.

Now, remember above where I mentioned one Chad Vader? Well, he actually has his own series: Chad Vader - Day Shift Manager. One of my personal favorite shows, I can’t wait to see more (there are only a few episodes out):

Eh? Pretty sweet, huh? VERY well done, I say. Another good series is a new one, known as ./shutdown:

GREAT SHOW! At least in my opinion. Very super high quality production values, you can get a VERY high quality watchable version on Stage6, a subdivision of the DivX crew. Only a few episodes, but they are GOLDEN.

And of course there are a number of other greats out there, enough to keep some going for a long, long  time. Ask a Ninja, Snowman Hunters, God, Inc (or anything by Francis Stokes for that matter), Mr. Deity, and another personal favorite: Goodnight Burbank

Absolutely amazing.

Now, if you want to get into generating user generated video, the first place I’d go is YouTube. It doesn’t get much more straight forward then that. After you’ve gotten your feet wet you can try some of the others like Veoh, Stage6, Metacafe, or even the venerable Internet Archive (circa 1996).

Stay tuned (via RSS perhaps?) for next time when we delve into the beautiful chaos that is a user generated knowledge base: The Wiki Family.

And now, I bid you adieu with a delightful triplet for the road:

“The Polite War”

“Code Monkey Dance”

“A Love Song from Skullcrusher Mountain”

Tags: Video, Viral, YouTube, Wiki, UGC

This is the COOLEST demonstration of how lax security is for many people. It’s a display at DEF CON that updates in real time as people check their email, or log into myspace (as you can see from the bottom of the pic) or what ever. If it’s not secured (I’d assume one way is to make sure you’re logging into an https:// secured site), then it should show up there.

Now tell me: How stupid would you feel appearing on that wall? I’m just supprised. It’s the biggest hacker convention around (or at least the most well known), these are the people who made the shirts that say “I read your email”, and STILL people log in unsecured. I’m just shocked.

If any of you out there ever go to DEF CON, and you have two computers, install Hamachi on both, leave one at home, turned on and connected to the internet, and take the other with you. You can then remote desktop into the one at home through Hamachi, and then surf securely knowing that everything going from you at DEF CON to your home is MASSIVLY encrypted.

For more information on security in general, may I suggest the ever popular podcast Security Now!

Thanks to ZDNet for the original pic, and the story.

And of course, feel free to Digg the Story

Tags: +Narcipost+

I’m sure everyone out there has heard of the “Free iPod” scams, right? Well, I’m here to tell you that AT LEAST SOME OF THEM are *NOT* scams, and I have proof. You see, I just made my first $25 dollars through PayPal from a “Free iPod” style site called AnyGift4Points.com. Now, any of you out there who are somewhat ‘net savvy will notice that the URL above containes a little addition beyond simply the marker for the site (The site URL is missing the ?ref=774 that my above URL has). The ?ref=774 is a referance to yours truely, and it’s how AnyGift4Points.com knows that I sent you (so I can collect my bonus points, rewards, etc. for sending you). Now, I too was a skeptic when I first found this stuff. REAL skeptical. Like, I almost didn’t do it. But after perusing a website with forums dedicated to the subject, I thought to myself “Hey, self, I bet you can find find one that gives you money and doesn’t cost that much to try”. And that’s where AnyGift4Points.com came into the mix. See, they don’t require other people to sign up under you (though you earn bonus points if they do), and it’s all points based, not offer based. Some give you more, some less, but for every 250 points I get, I can trade that for $25 bucks of pure paypal cash goodness. For the record, 250 points is rather easy to rackup. Just one tickle test nets you over 280 points (though it does cost $10). So far, I’ve grossed $25, and profited $13.97 (Paypal takes out a fee for recieving cash). I’m going to keep persuing this, and see where it takes me.

If you’re interested in checking this out, I would say that at least BROWSING AnyThing4Free.com is a requirement. You’ll see a list of sites orginized by how good they are (”A” rank is the best, and it goes down hill from there). If you do, you’ll find me as TrueVox (anyone supprised?). And the owner of AnyGift4Points.com is known as Benjette. Remember, though. This isn’t me asking all of you to join up for my benifit. I can do what I need without referals. It helps, but it’s far from required for what I’m doing. I’m offering this as a way for you to make some (small) side cash, or a few minor prizes. Oh, and you might just wanna make a new email that can be forwarded to your current one, just so you can turn it off when the spam hits the fan. If anyone’s intrested in Gmail, you all know I can give you invites.

So, go check out AnyGift4Points.com. It’s free to look, and who knows, maybe you’ll find something that speaks to you. Oh, and the economics of this are sort of explaned in the Wired Article I linked to in the title.

Thanks for reading!

Tags: +Technology+; +Narcipost+; +Hacking+; +Maintenance+

Good golly, I’m sorry I haven’t been around for a while. I’ve been busy with college and I’ve been busy with work and THEN there’s our beautiful baby boy Matthew, so as you can see I’ve been a bit busy.

As I write this, I’m not using the included word processer in Blogger, but instead a much better replacement to Notepad, called Notepad2. It’s just as quick, almost as small, and (the programmer in me LOVES this), it supports Syntax Highlighting. Coolness. Oh, and I THINK it’s OSS to boot. At the very least, I KNOW it’s freeware. Good stuff.

Now, I know many of you are looking for more pics of Matt-i-chew. Well, I assure you we have them; I just gotta put them up.

So, how about that Xbox 360, eh? I have GOT to log more time on that bad boy. It’s sad, but about all I get is five or ten minutes a week (no joke!) to fool around with one of the Arcade titles (such as Marble Blast Ultra or the ever uber Geometry Wars). 3 processers, half a gig of ram, 20 gig HDD, and what do I do? I play a glorified Marble Madness.

Family life is fun, if stressful. I swear to god, I don’t know how single moms do it. I’m not even a mom, and I’m going insane. It’s crazy. Pure and simple.

I dream sometimes of making a game. It’s never going to happen at this rate, but it’s still nice to dream about it. I can’t help but wonder where I’ll be in five or ten years. I hope I’m filty rich and no longer working.

Gah. MUST UPDATE BLOG MORE OFTEN!!!

Found a neato little visual style for XP. Doesn’t require a program to install, but you DO need a hacked version of the uxtheme.dll file found in (assuming you have your main Windows install on your C: drive) “C:\Windows\system32\uxtheme.dll“.To get the patched version, just google for “patched uxtheme.dll“. After you have it, you can just copy it over your old one (I’d make sure to save a copy of the old one though), and reboot. Oh, and Windows may mention that a system file is being overwritten or something. Just “OK” it when it comes up.

All that work for a cool theme! It’s the Crystal XP Milk visual style. I REALLY like it. It’s a free download, and I think you’ll be pleased too. Check

Have I ever mentioned how huge of a fan of Gmail I am? I REALLY like it. Now they’ve gone and made it EVEN MORE COOL! They have a great new service where they’ll be rolling out Google Talk funcionality RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX!!! I, for one, think that is UBER SWEET! Anyone who want’s a gmail invite, just lemme know in the comments (or follow my email link over on the side of the screen). I’ve got a butt load to give out!

Wow. This is weird. I went to log into blogger, and someone, somehow, had posted spam as a actual blog post in MY BLOG! I’m not sure how (I use an alphanumeric password over 6 characters in length), but that is WEIRD. Has this ever happend to anyone before? It was saved as a draft, and it’s clearly Spam (though I’m not gonna post it, becuase I assume that would only make whoever it is happy). The listed email in the post is to HowdSeamGr@aol.com. Huh. This is weird. I’m gonna have to start hosting my own soon, maybe…

UPDATE: Ok, I think this happened because blogger has this feature that allows you to update by email, and I think some spammer just got lucky and spammed the email address I had set up for this site. Thank god I didn’t have it set to autopost . At any rate, I’m calling this case closed!

Ok, this has been long enough, I think. I’ll end by saying that when I hear anything cool about anything, I’ll try to make time to post. Oh, and I’ll hopefully be posting MUCH more when I’m finaly out of college, but we’ll see.

Thanks for reading!

Tags: +Games+; +Hacking+

Now, I reckon that if you really wanted a Wifi Sniffer you would have run out and bought a cheapo from Tiger Direct, but for the few of you out there (like me) who just couldn’t afford to shell out that bit extra for something we might not get much use out of, good ol’ Mario has taken care of us.

Yep, that’s right. The fat Italian plumber. Bow before his might!

You see, Nintendos new offering (Mario Kart DS) comes with the ability to connect to most wifi hotspots/access points (except any secured with wonderful WPA Security). Now, to the enterpriseing hacker, this is useful. You can use the integrated function of “Search for AP (Access Point)” to sniff out local unprotected APs (as long as the SSID is broadcast, and there’s no MAC Address Filtering, etc.). I can’t WAIT to check this out further!

I’ll try to get some pics up soon - ’till then, it’s pretty simple. I’m sure if you can find this page, you can manage to use this “hack”.

Thanks for reading!