Got a beta invite to Hulu.com today, the new video sharing site backed by the actual media conglomerates…NBC, FOX, ABC. More thorough review as I play with it.
Surprisingly, there’s an embed function. This post is just to test it, see how long it lasts, and if eventually they time-phase these out.
I am just blown away by the 3D ultrasounds that we had done yesterday. Not just because she’s my little girl (or soon will be) but the technology is insane. I watched it being done, and grok the how of it, but seeing it in action is difficult to wrap one’s head around. Tiny slices of imagery, layered and stitched to build a virtual 3D model, and then displayed and rotated for the best possible angle…
In any case, I’m trying not to go too much into babyland with this blog (that’s reserved for Brand New World) but I had to throw one of these up.
Just another amazing video from the maker of The Machine is Us/ing us. Digital information, as much as we like to treat it like paper, is just different.
The sooner librarians get their heads around this, the better for our patrons. I’m trying desperately to wrap my head around how this influences our new library building…
Or maybe just Opera in general.
I own a Samsung Blackjack, and it probably comes as no surprise to anyone that Internet Explorer on it sucks. Just a horrible browser. Enter Opera Mobile, a really great little browser for mobile devices. I downloaded the trial version and gave it a month…good interface, fast, let me do everything I wanted.
So I decide I want to purchase this piece of software. It will make my life much easier, and is worth the $24.
I got to the Buy Opera page, tell them I want to buy a copy of Mobile for Smartphones, and it asks me for some info…including my “Device ID” which is evidently their method of DRM. By using a code specific to the phone, they can control whether or not I share the program by making it impossible for me to do so.
Ok, whatever. I can still move my install to another phone if I want by calling them, not perfect but I’ll deal. So how do I get the Device ID? By going to the “menu” function on the browser, on the phone.
Which doesn’t work, because the trial has expired, and all I get is an error message when I try to run it.
So…I can’t buy the software I want to use, because I tried the software to determine I wanted to use it.
Somehow, this seems appropriate again:
Here’s my favorite tidbit from my writing fest this evening.
…links are the currency of the web. In network theory, Metcalfe’s Law says that the value of a system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system. That is, for any network, adding a node increases the value of that network. As well, adding a link to any piece of information on the web increases the value of that piece of information from the perspective of search engines, and increases its findability. Every bit of content that you re-purpose and link to becomes more valuable simply by the fact that you have chosen to do so.
Is that a law of the internet yet? “The value of any piece of information increases geometrically in relation to the number of links pointing at it…”
Not only is Radiohead releasing their newest album at whatever price their fans are willing to pay, and not only is the digital release completely DRM free and 160kbps MP3, but it looks like it was ripped to MP3 using LAME 3.93. An exploration of the MP3’s in a text editor reveals:
They need to upgrade…LAME is up to 3.97 now.
Looking at the header and footer of the files in both a text and hex editor doesn’t show any tracking numbers or codes tying the songs to a particular download. It really does look like these are regular old MP3s.
Thanks, Radiohead, for showing the recording industry how business should be done these days.
Yahoo recently launched a new beta service, mash.yahoo.com, which seems to be their attempt to enter the social networking fray.
Similar in style to iGoogle, you have blocks of content (modules) that are available to add to your page. These act as you expect AJAX sorts of pages to work: you can drag and drop them around your two-column layout. To customize your page you can also add a background image (similar to Twitter) and manage the colors of your modules (background, border, text). All the expected modules are around: Flickr, Twitter, a generic RSS module.
Here’s where it gets weird. Your friends, by default, can edit your page…move modules around, etc. They can also affect it in other ways…one of the default modules is a “pet” (represented by a line drawing) that you can interact with…feed, pet, etc. You can also lick, smack, kill, and snorgle it. And you can do so to other people’s as well.
In the end, this ends up being a sort of aggregator for your virtual life, but others have tried that (correlate.us) and failed to gather speed online. The addition of a social networking component to that is interesting, but I’m not sure whats gained other than the potential strength of viral growth from spread from friend-to-friend.
It’s interesting to see what Yahoo is doing here, trying to leverage their way into the social networking world. They own two of the most popular (and most original) social sites on the ‘net…del.icio.us and flickr. I would expect them to do more cross-pollination, but at the same time I hope they don’t. Del.icio.us and flickr are two of my favorite things online, and I don’t want to see them change too much. I’m already frightened by the upcoming delicious 2.0.
If anyone wants an invite, leave your email in the comments.
Yet more in the LOL meme: Lolzilla!
