OK, Facebook has this interesting feature whereby they (after getting the proper information) log into your email, and find out who of your contacts are already part of Facebook. Great, right? Well, after that, they ALSO offer to notify the REST of your contacts (the one’s who arn’t part of Facebook already). And it defaults to them all being messaged. Well, needless to say, one miss-click, and my ENTIRE FREAKIN’ CONTACT LIST (which is large, to say the least) got spammed with my Facebook invite. So, Facebook, I hate you. I hate you like George Bush Jr. hates the SATs. I hate you like Paris Hilton hated her virginity. I hate you harder then Superman’s abs. I hate you.

Just want to give a quick shout-out to the good folks over at Flock.com. They make one hell of a browser (keep up the good work gang!). Thanks a lot to my friend Paul for reminding me just how good they are. Now, if they’d only integrate with Myspace (and let the Blogging Client cross-post to it too!), they’d be golden!

Just thought it’d be nice to send some more music out there, so here’s another piece I’ve written over the years, it’s a string quartet piece that’s currently played electronically. Free, in low bitrate, dialup friendly glory! Click and enjoy (or not, your call )!

In other news, I loves me some Guitar Hero, er, Frets on Fire, rather.

I was recently lucky enough to happen upon a X-Plorer for $16 (a gentlemen was being offered $15 for it at Gamestop, I upped the ante ). Ironically, I got it the same day I got my other piece of news. Speaking of which…

It’s odd. When I think of Amanda, I don’t really feel like it’s Over. Instead, I feel really at peace, like I’m biding my time or something. I don’t know if it’s just some self defense mechanism (as opposed to opening itself to depression, maybe my brain has decided that I’ll deal with this better), or if I’m subconsciously picking up on something she’s doing/saying (it’s kind of nice, her siblings seem to be rooting for her to get back with me instead of this other fellow), or what’s going on. But, well, I have hope (and interestingly, this feels different from my previous “hope” with Deanna; it’s less about what I’m losing (in terms of my son and such forth), and more about her specifically), and as humans, is there really much more that we require for basic mental sustenance (surely not for health, but just to “get by” mentally)? And the weird part is, it’s not a desperate hope. It’s, well, more inexorable. Likely just my brain trying to take care of me, but it’s still a nice feeling. I can safely say that this is the best breakup with a girl that I really cared about that I’ve ever had. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy that we broke up. But it just feels so… temporary for some reason. Yeah, I know I’m weird. But that’s why you folks read me, right?

‘Till next time, my dear readers, I thank you for your time, your support, and your interest. Adieu, and good night!

Tags: RomanticInterest, Guitar Hero, Frets on Fire, X-Plorer, Deal, I Hate Facebook, Flock, Amanda, Girlfriend Situation, Rock God, String Theory

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

Ah… good ol’ Web 2.0. We’ve heard about it for a while (starting with the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004), but really, what is it?

Web 2.0 is not so much an advancement of technology (in fact, many of the fundamental technologies are fairly old - recognizable components of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) are over a decade old), but more a collection of Memes. I suppose, to put it simply, you could view Web 1.0 as mostly a “Read Only” Web (you surf around to other peoples pages and view them, or other people come to yours and view it), where as Web 2.0 is more of a “Read/Write” Web. A participatory culture, if you will where a person will go to someones site and add content to it (be it in the form of comments, videos, news submissions, or nearly anything else). Think Geocities vs. Blogger. There are a number of sites that epitomize this “Read/Write” web, and over the next few posts we’re going to take a look at some examples across different media formats.

First, let’s look at so called “Social News” sites. There are many out there, but the two biggest that I’m gonna focus on are Slashdot.org and Digg.com. They are similar, but different in some very important ways. Slashdot has been around for a while and they seem to have (in this writers opinion) a more erudite crowd (Caveat Emptor: there are trolls on both site in fair quantity). Digg is a younger site, and seems to have slightly younger users (not a knock either way, though). Both sites provide a stream of user submitted news (Digg is a bit more broad in terms of content, with Slashdot more focused on tech topics), both sites allow users to comment on each news article. They both offer social networking features (such as friends lists, and RSS feeds of just about everything). The major difference between the two is that Digg is quite democratic in how it decides which stories get to the front page, where as Slashdot stories are promoted via a number of editors. You’ll tend to find (again, in this writers opinion) that Slashdot tends to have a better “Signal to Noise Ratio“, where as Digg will often catch stories that would just slip through the cracks. However, there IS quite a bit of overlap between the two. There used to be a site that kept track of the various submissions and duplicates, but I won’t link to it because it’s since become a link farm.

Stay tuned next time when we delve into user created Video - all the world’s a stage, and all of us are the star!

-Note: I’m currently laid up with Back problems (we’ll find out for sure what’s going on Wednesday when I go see the results of my MRI), so I should be able to put aside a little more time to get articles up. Thanks for reading!

Tags: Web2.0, Digg, Slashdot, Social News, Narcipost, History

*Sigh*. I told myself this day would never come. I declared ‘No, Marvin, they just can’t win. Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!’. But, alas, all such things must.

Yes, dear reader(s), it’s true.

I’m not proud, I’m not boastful, but I feel it’s time to come out of the closet. To show myself as I really am (I’m sorry Mom & Dad). I’m….. I’m a MySpace user.

There! I said it! Hatefully trendy and poorly engineered as it is (and I assure you, it is), it’s amazing how many people are on there. I have 46 or so friends, and get this: I know EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM IN REAL LIFE. Not from college, not just online “Hey, you look cool, let’s be friends, tee hee!”, just from day to day “Yeah, we know each other. We have for years!”. This is the first site I can say that for.

I’ve been doing the deed in private for a while (a couple of years, truth be told), but I just had to come out, and tell you.

However, there are some upshots: Our good friends Google (hosts of the original Monkey Dog Cafe via Blogger.com) have recently announced that they’re gonna open up social networking with the Open Social standard, allowing communication and interoperability across providers!!!

Also, the other upshot is that now, I have more friends then you, and I can prove it. ;P Well, except for this guy, maybe. But, being the creator, I guess he has an excuse. ;D

Tags: Google, Myspace, Narcipost

Microsoft launches Windows Live Writer, a new publishing tool for authoring rich blog posts on Windows Live Spaces, Wordpress, Typepad and other blogging services.

How many different languages can you say “Crap” in? I *JUST* move to Linux and Microsoft releases the best Blogging client I’ve yet come across. It supports all sorts of good stuff. Pics (either from file or URL), Maps (from the new, though somewhat cool Windows Live Map service) but to me the coolest part (apart from the interface which automatically shows what it looks like in your blog) is the fact that it AUTOMAGICLY figures out what the settings for my blog are. Yep. Just put in the blog URL (truevox.net), the username and password, and it figures it out for you! Frankly, I’m impressed. THIS is what other blogging clients need to figure out, it’s finally what a blog should be like.

Come on, Google, we need something like this!

EDIT: Though the screen cap above shows a map, I wasn’t able to upload it because Microsoft puts it into the blog as a standard pic hotmapped to their servers, and I don’t like to host pics on my servers ‘cuz I’m cheap and pay by the byte. But it DOES work (and well too!).

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