digsby
digsby is an IM+E-mail+Social Networking client. So far I have not found anything that comes close to its capabilities. It handles instant messaging for MSN, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, AIM, Facebook, ICQ & Jabber. It will work with e-mail from Hotmail, Google, Yahoo & AOL/AIM as well as any POP3 or IMAP mail service. It also plugs into 3 of the top social netowking sites Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. That’s a lot of stuff eh? The best part is that it does it all really really well. Have a look at their screenshots gallery to see some of the configurations and to get an idea of the features that I am discussing below.
My favorite feature of digsby by far is the little balloon that pops up on your main screen with the info you have asked digsby to provide, the best part of this is that if someone sends you an IM you can type your response right into the balloon, no switching to the IM client window, this is really handy if you just need to send a quick reply back to someone and is much less disruptive. The other most excellent feature is the ability to combine multiple contacts into one, if you have friends on more than one network you can group them into one contact on Digsby and they show up with whichever service they logged in under but you only have one contact entry. It also has a great chat widget for Facebook or that you can embed in a blog. What makes that cool is that when someone hits your page you see a guest show up under digsby chat in the Buddy List.
There is also a Mac OSX and a Linux client in the works. I am hoping that they will add other social networking sites in the future as well as a mobile client that way I could use digsby everywhere!
Not approved for comments?
I have been a lifehacker reader for quite some time, but I never bothered to get involved with the community. That was until a few weeks ago when I tried to get in on a discussion about Dropbox. At this point I didn’t have Dropbox and there where people in the comments offering invites. What better to get involved in the conversation than get an invite and try it out for myself, so I left a comment asking for one. That’s when I found out that the team at lifehacker moderates their comments, big deal right I mod mine to make sure they are real and relavant to the topic. It turns out that at lifehacker you have to be an approved commentor. How you become an approved commentor is a bit of a mystery to me, lifehacker Comments FAQ. Ok so it’s not that much of a mystery but who reads these things through right off the bat anyway. Well I guess I should have paid more attention becasue as a result of my asking for a Dropbox invite I have been banned from commenting, and there is no mechanism in place to change that either, no 2nd chance, no appeal, nothing. You can send an email but you won’t get a response, they make that quite clear with this disclaimer:
Please note that due to the amount of emails we receive, we may not be able to reply to every email.
lifehacker - posting comments denied
I know it says “may not” but it might as well say “don’t bother”. I have sent an email asking that my account be removed because I thought like other blogs they were trying to build a community but it turns out that they are just building a clique and I am not interested in that. So I will save my comments for other blogs that talk about the same things as they do and spend my time on them.
Oh and to make matters worse, they pointed out that I don’t have any friends… nice.
hurt my feelings too
20 Minutes To Tobago - Short Film
20 Minutes To Tobago from Todd Hodge on Vimeo.
This is a short film I co-produced and edited a couple years back. It was an interesting experiment. I might write about it someday but for now you will just have to settle for watching it. In case you hadn’t guessed it’s about 20 minutes long.
Old Media
I decided that since I am trying to break into new media production that I should get some of my old media production out and post it on the web. This is a demo reel from my editing days.
*NOTE: If any of the copyright owners object to their portion of content being included here please just send me a message and I will remove it. (All rights reserved)
The Social Networking Experiment
It’s a busy time on the internet these days. Since the inception of hugely popular Twitter in 2006 we have seen an explosion in micro-blogging. There are now several micro-blogging services available and they are also integrated into the popular social networking services like Facebook. The list is getting really long http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites sufficed to say that if you use more than one or two of the services on that list on a regular basis you are probably a social media junkie ( or are becoming one like I am ). The micro-blog is an extension of the traditional blog and there are a fair number of A-list bloggers out there that use these social networking services.
I have had a great time meeting people, discovering services and learning the jargon. It’s a fantastic world out there and services like Twitter, Plurk, Indent.ca, Tumbler and Pownce are full of great people that have something to share. Sometimes it’s about breakfast and sometimes its about the more serious things in life. There is a fantastic amount of information shared, and it is being used to motivate people, like this recent blood drive in Austin Texas. This is the aspect of the social network that I find so fascinating. The idea that as you build a group of followers, that you interact with, share stories with or just listen to, you can wield a great deal of internet clout. An a-list blogger who undoubtedly uses most if not all of the aforementioned micro-blogging services and has a following of several thousand people can drive traffic to a website for the purposes of promotion or because they don’t like something that is on a particular site.
The addition of easy video services like Seesmic and Stickam will also change the dynamic of the web in a large way. Adding a face takes away the safety of anonymity and provides for a different type of interaction. Leo Laporte is an excellent example of this. He has recently set himself up in his own studio with some cool gear on a reasonable budget (from traditional TV production studios) and is broadcasting 6 days a week at Twitlive.tv. He is usually recording one of his many podcasts with other Twits who are either in the studio or who join him via Skype. He also takes live video calls through Skype and ooVoo as well as from Stickam users in between recordings and just generally talks tech.
It’s going to be really amazing to watch this evolve further over the next few years, but I think we will see a lot more indpendant production making headway over the major traditional broadcasters.
Control your Windows Mobile from the desktop.
I just stumbled across a cool little application for Windows Mobile devices. Its called MyMobiler its a slick little app that connects to your mobile through ActiveSync and lets you view and control your phone from your desktop computer. You can take snapshots of the screen like this one:
Features
- View your mobile screen on your desktop.
- Control your mobile by using desktop keyboard and mouse.
- Copy/Cut/Paste text between mobile and desktop.
- Capture mobile screen.(Still or Video)
- Drag and drop files to your mobile.
- Support ActiveSync / IP Connection
- Support Mobile Explorer (File Browse)
The drag and drop files to and from will be really useful, and I can sit the phone off to the side with my headset on and answer calls right from my keyboard.
Dropbox…. is good!
I finally got a Dropbox invite from Sean ( of ping.fm fame, which I will talk more about when I get to my post about the Micro-blog & Social Networking ).
Dropbox in simple terms is a folder sync utility. What makes it unique is that it cross platform, Mac OS and Windows, with Linux support close behind. It has some very slick features that you don’t find in ordinary folder sync utilities. It allows you to share folders across the internet, it keeps backups of changes, allows for resurrecting of deleted files and it provides direct links to folders or individual files that you can email or IM quickly. It uses some smart technology to transfer only the parts of the files that have been changed or updated thus saving bandwidth and making the syncing process faster. It also has a super simple photo sharing, you can put pictures in the Photos folder and share out individual pictures or entire folders and it creates a gallery that is viewable in a web browser. So far I am really happy with the performance and at 2GB the storage is adequate for documents and images. I am willing to bet when they go public this will be the free version and that you will be able to purchase more space and possibly some other collaboration features.
The one thing that is not mentioned in the Dropbox video is what happens if two people have opened the same file and are editing it at the same time. I had to try it to see what would happen, and just to cause even more confusion I saved the files from each computer at the same time ( or as close to the same time as possible ). To my surprise the system didn’t even blink, it saved the version I updated on my Mac and it saved the version I updated on my PC, the system did tag the PC version as a conflicted copy so that I could see the difference. I would guess that this is not going to be a major issue for most people as they would each do their revisions one at a time.
Edit (July 08, 2008) I have 5 Dropbox Invites for the 1st 5 people who leave me a comment telling me why they would like to use Dropbox.
Edit (July 09, 2008) You must also leave me an email address to send your invite to.
yobird… what is it?
You may or may not have heard about yobird they caused a bit of a fuss on Twitter for following too many people.
Well they launched their site and some of their products yesterday (July 1st ). So I took some time today to have a look and try out their new offerings. First is Passwordy a password generating utility, it’s very simple, it works, there is no installation it just runs from the desktop. You can create passwords of any length and complexity, including the use of custom characters.
Passwordy is a fast and clean password generator that can generate up to 9999 passwords with up to 9999 characters.
It took less than a 2 minutes to generate all 9999, 9999 character passwords. A useful tool if you need to create random passwords for a large group or if you can’t be bothered to come up with a password on your own.
Their next offering is Folderflop This utility is a disk usage viewer. Point it at a drive or folder and it will tell you how much space it is taking up. You can drill down through the folders to see what is taking up the most space. Again there is no installer for it which I like because that means if I decide that I don’t want to use the software I can just chuck it in the trash instead of having to worry about the registry changes and leftover install directories. It’s pretty fast, it took 2.5 minutes to get the listing for my full 500GB media drive.
They claim there is more to come including web services but since they have been working so hard toward the launch of the site, I guess they are taking a bit of a break. They are based in Norway so there is a bit of a time difference as well. So far I like their first two offerings and I am curious to see what else is coming.
Amish Peanut Butter Spread - I Feel Duped
That’s right, I feel duped by Amish Peanut Butter Spread. Some friends of ours make few trips a year down to Amish country in Ohio state. It’s just a day trip and my parents have even gone with them on one occasion. They love the atmosphere the artisans and the food, especially the big glazed donuts that you get hot from the firer. On their last trip they brought us back some Amish Peanut Butter Spread. I thought “Oh boy another homemade Amish treat!” I tried it and it is very tasty. I thought I was getting something special… I was wrong. Although it looks very old fashioned:
And its website claims:
A unique Old Fashioned Amish treat made from peanut butter, marshmallow cream and our special syrup.
Have a look at the ingredients:
Now call me crazy but I don’t think Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil or Artificial Flavor are old fashioned ingredients even for the Amish. I know that companies do this sort of thing all the time, I even expect it from corporations like Nestle, Kraft or Nabisco. What I don’t expect is a Mom and Pop operation who’s company motto is: “Just plain good food.” to do it. For me the incentive to buy these kinds of products is that they are made in less of a factory and more of a kitchen with a tradition behind them. I am not picking on Mrs.Millers I am sure they are a wonderful family run company trying to make their way in the business world, but I really would like to see them and other companies like them actually make their products as wholesome as they advertise them to be. I don’t mind paying more for quality!
Snoop Dog and Willie Nelson
This is the coolest team-up I have seen this year. It’s a great tune too.
Snoop Dogg & Willie Nelson, My Medicine via YouTube
P.S. Universal Music… YOU SUCK!!!! for disabling the embed on these videos. When will you learn.
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