Saturday, January 26, 2008
Easy Access to Sports Scores
I am not sure if ESPN had this for a while but they finally released some widgets that will be very useful during the run to the Final Four. The widgets actually look pretty good in iGoogle. I may actually start using iGoogle now as I keep trying to optimize the number of key strokes and mouse clicks I use to access useful information. Plus there is now an iPhone version of iGoogle which looks pretty good.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Qik is Probably Waiting for the 3G Version of the iPhone
On Twitter, I have seen a lot of links point to individual streaming video of themselves on Qik.com. I followed a few links and I think it is an interesting concept. If you are somewhere interesting rather than twittering about it and risking RSI you can just chill with your camera phone.
With all the reports about the iPhone dominating the mobile web usage market I bet Qik is anxiously waiting for the iPhone to support 3G and a video camera. It is a tremendous market opportunity. I use the camera on my iPhone to share things with people, and having video will be icing on the cake. Qik better ensure they can scale up when it does happen, since the blogosphere will be pissed if they have any downtime.
With all the reports about the iPhone dominating the mobile web usage market I bet Qik is anxiously waiting for the iPhone to support 3G and a video camera. It is a tremendous market opportunity. I use the camera on my iPhone to share things with people, and having video will be icing on the cake. Qik better ensure they can scale up when it does happen, since the blogosphere will be pissed if they have any downtime.
Great Deal on MacHeist.com
MacHeist.com has a great bundle of software available for only 49.95. I really like 1password and CSSEdit. I hope to improve my design skills in the near future and hopefully I'll be able to leverage Pixelmator a bit more.
Be warned, CoverSutra only works on Leopard. That was the app I was hoping to play with most but I have not upgraded yet.
If you don't mind it would be great if you could use the following link before you make a purchase. It will help me get two additional apps and I am hoping to use Launch Bar and see how it compares to Quick Silver.
Be warned, CoverSutra only works on Leopard. That was the app I was hoping to play with most but I have not upgraded yet.
If you don't mind it would be great if you could use the following link before you make a purchase. It will help me get two additional apps and I am hoping to use Launch Bar and see how it compares to Quick Silver.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Is Apple Really Going to Release this Tomorrow?
I think the name Air is appropriate. Apple's frequent product releases make my wallet feel like it is holding nothing but air as well lately. If the AIR is as good as "rumorized", I need to figure out how to ditch my macbook pro.
Web Apps Win in My Opinion
A week or two ago the blog world was abuzz about NewsGator making their Blog Reader apps freely available. I thought it was great. I am an avid Google Reader user but I thought having an app running on my desktop would be better as long as it could insure my "reading status" was synced across machines. I installed NetNewsWire since I use a Mac and I was just unimpressed.
There was no compelling reason for me to continue using it and move off of Google Reader. I have become so accustomed to the Google Reader shortcuts, interface, and love the iPhone application. I had programmed myself to expect the same interface from any other Blog Reader I installed. When I couldn't find the "Email This" or "Share This" links at the bottom of a blogpost in NewsGater I just got frustrated. I did not want to learn a whole new set of commands just to have a desktop client. I think people call this "consumer inertia". It is the same reason the enterprise space is so slow since people do not switch apps once they are reasonably happy with a certain version, and the reason mapquest is still the most popular map app in the US despite all of its shortcomings.
Web apps rule when they are done right and more importantly they are not a click away from being obliterated. As long as you listen to your end users, and build the right functionality the "people will come". I have the same experience with my iPhone. I installed the "Apollo IM" and other chat clients via Installer.app, however, I still use meebo or beejive. They just did a better job with their apps, and I do not need to hack my iphone to get them to work.
At work right now, we use all of our own apps and every once in a while people comment if they lost their hard drive today they would not be at a lost. Most of our work is stored on the cloud so we can access it from anywhere and anytime. It is great to be hard disk independent and still work with great applications!
There was no compelling reason for me to continue using it and move off of Google Reader. I have become so accustomed to the Google Reader shortcuts, interface, and love the iPhone application. I had programmed myself to expect the same interface from any other Blog Reader I installed. When I couldn't find the "Email This" or "Share This" links at the bottom of a blogpost in NewsGater I just got frustrated. I did not want to learn a whole new set of commands just to have a desktop client. I think people call this "consumer inertia". It is the same reason the enterprise space is so slow since people do not switch apps once they are reasonably happy with a certain version, and the reason mapquest is still the most popular map app in the US despite all of its shortcomings.
Web apps rule when they are done right and more importantly they are not a click away from being obliterated. As long as you listen to your end users, and build the right functionality the "people will come". I have the same experience with my iPhone. I installed the "Apollo IM" and other chat clients via Installer.app, however, I still use meebo or beejive. They just did a better job with their apps, and I do not need to hack my iphone to get them to work.
At work right now, we use all of our own apps and every once in a while people comment if they lost their hard drive today they would not be at a lost. Most of our work is stored on the cloud so we can access it from anywhere and anytime. It is great to be hard disk independent and still work with great applications!
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Stop Playing Video Automatically on Your Website
If you go to espn.com a lot you probably understand my pain. The moment you go to espn.com they got some guy providing the same commentary over and over on another ball game (i.e. too much pressure flustered the quarterback, you can't make mistakes in the playoffs)
I am now forced to mute my speaker on my computer and once I go to youtube or find another interesting video and click the play button I have three or four browser tabs contributing different sounds. If you have 10 - 12 tabs open on Firefox it is a pain in the butt to find out which sites are causing the issue.
If you own a website and you have video on it please do not play it automatically. Let the user click on the play button.
I am now forced to mute my speaker on my computer and once I go to youtube or find another interesting video and click the play button I have three or four browser tabs contributing different sounds. If you have 10 - 12 tabs open on Firefox it is a pain in the butt to find out which sites are causing the issue.
If you own a website and you have video on it please do not play it automatically. Let the user click on the play button.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
What is Apple Going to Do Next Week
Apple released some major improvements to their Mac Pro and Server lines. I do not follow their server market too much, but judging by the covering on gizmodo, and others I think a lot of people do.
I think the image from Gizmodo depicts next week best:
The CES updates as of now have been pretty much a bore. I have heard about a TV that is going to support 2 - 3 times the resolution of current TV sets but it is estimated that no one will broadcast in that resolution for 4 - 5 years, you can see a bunch of souped up cars with LCD TV's in 30 inch grills. No matter how much money you have or how much you love gadgets, I would have to agree with anyone that says that is a waste of money. The most interesting announcement in my opinion is Comcast's announcement to support 100 Mbps in the future. That is going to kick ass especially when services such as Hulu start serving HD Content beyond basic trailers.
I hope Apple's announcement next week is going to make January exciting again. If the rumors about the ultraportable, multi-touch macbook are true it is going to be amazing. It is going to be even better if Apple puts them on their store an hour after the conference is over. Keep your fingers crossed.
I think the image from Gizmodo depicts next week best:
The CES updates as of now have been pretty much a bore. I have heard about a TV that is going to support 2 - 3 times the resolution of current TV sets but it is estimated that no one will broadcast in that resolution for 4 - 5 years, you can see a bunch of souped up cars with LCD TV's in 30 inch grills. No matter how much money you have or how much you love gadgets, I would have to agree with anyone that says that is a waste of money. The most interesting announcement in my opinion is Comcast's announcement to support 100 Mbps in the future. That is going to kick ass especially when services such as Hulu start serving HD Content beyond basic trailers.
I hope Apple's announcement next week is going to make January exciting again. If the rumors about the ultraportable, multi-touch macbook are true it is going to be amazing. It is going to be even better if Apple puts them on their store an hour after the conference is over. Keep your fingers crossed.
Yahoo's Cool MP3 Player
Yahoo released a new browser based mp3 player and I wanted to give it a whirl. Rather than creating a special site to host it I thought I would just use this blog. Below are a couple of songs and the player should pick up the song and let the user scroll through them. Let's see if it is as good as advertised.
Maroon 5: This Love
Kanye West: Hey Mama
So what are the use cases for this app. My guess is people probably send a lot of mp3's via yahoo mail so yahoo can put this widget in your mailbox and you get a playlist of all the songs you have sent or your friends have sent you. Then you may be given the option to share those songs with friends provided there are no legal issues.
By the way, if you are looking for an online media player with a great song library checkout seeqpod. I have noticed a lot of people using it and the tool is pretty impressive. I think it uses the special search capabilities of the major search engines and adds nice playlist functionality.
Maroon 5: This Love
Kanye West: Hey Mama
So what are the use cases for this app. My guess is people probably send a lot of mp3's via yahoo mail so yahoo can put this widget in your mailbox and you get a playlist of all the songs you have sent or your friends have sent you. Then you may be given the option to share those songs with friends provided there are no legal issues.
By the way, if you are looking for an online media player with a great song library checkout seeqpod. I have noticed a lot of people using it and the tool is pretty impressive. I think it uses the special search capabilities of the major search engines and adds nice playlist functionality.
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