So I revisited Operator 11 this past weekend. It seemed really really quite, me thinks it could be fading out or I dunno slowly dying? The site used to be jumping often, all the time, then like any social network, it fades.
Still its a cool site for what it does. Good broadcasting medium.
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Korg's Kaossilator continues to provide me with seemingly endless entertainment. It's my little zen box. Stressed? Go make a quick tune. Humming something in the show, bang it out on the kaossilator, it'll take ya 2 seconds, if that.
Here's another video I recorded the other day mixing up a Kaossilator jam with the MiniKP effects pad.
Tags: kaossilator, minikp, korg
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Ok that's a lofty title but after reading Seth Godins intriguing post on what $130 oil prices will do to meetings, I can't help but consider other possibilities as well. Namely, collaborative web applciations.
Meetings usually suck. I mean it's good to be there and nod your head and go yeah, we got together, but meetings that drag on past say 30 minutes or so, really suck the life outa people. Most cubical farms in corporate america are nearly back to back meetings for people. Lets have meetings about more meetings. Its amazing people get anything done.
I'm always on the hunt to do meetings better. In research you're often meeting with people, and its combo task for the researcher, you're interviewing them, keeping them engaged in conversation and you often have to take notes at the same time. Finding unique ways to keep conversation going, and somehow recording those nuggets of goodness that occur is an ever changing art form.
Thinking about oil going up and how it make meetings more meaty as I think Seth is pointing to where we'll all get damn active in each others faces cause time and money are not on your side is a solid theme here.
The latest collaborative app we've used at work is called Octopz, and ya know it was pretty decent. Wyatt at work seems to give me these kinds of mini fire drills, we need to find a cool app fast that does x, y, z, p, d, q and so forth. We landed on Octopz after trying PalBee, Brio and a few other flex like apps that basically help bring people, web cams and content to talk. You'd think just use WebEx right? I feel like thats pretty bland and I dunno, I'm always on the hunt for the newer stuff.
Conference calls is another aspect thats always on the rise at work. However we rarely record these calls and lately that's come up, recording and getting mobile folks to connect easier and not have to navigate a complex voip system that only the installers really know how to use. Once again, the web saves me. I used Drop.IO and a cell phone to record calls, and I've messed with using TalkShoe to do the same as well. At the moment, Drop.IO is nice because its simple clean interaction just rules.
Another thought is to use Jott, but I doubt it can really transcribe a call as well as we'd like it to. Its more geared for short burts o text.
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Ok so a couple of things. First, the web is an amazing place. It not only lets you do cool amazing things it connects you with people in ways you just don't think are natually possible at times.
Last night I ranted and raved about my woes with Instapaper. I got all down on the app, not realizing that the fault wasn't the app, but me and my multiple identity crisis on the web. I had two accounts on Instapaper, not sure how that happened, but it did, and last night I looked at the wrong account.
I know this now because of Marco Armet, the creator of Instapaper emailed me to explain what happened and clear Instapaper's good name. Shame on me, bad user.
Users get frustrated with technology all the time, not fully understanding where the fault lies. We often shoot first, and not so much as think.. but more of wonder, was that right? I shoot first last night, as my expectations turned to dust.
Until they build sensors into everyday products, the experience with this Instapaper mishap on my part could only be corrected via the web, or by me reaching out via the phone and going off on someone, but man that takes energy. Bring on the smart coffee table, the self aware razor and the human sensitive sleep apnea mask.
So my apologies to Marco and his app Instapaper. And while my right brain is back to going "gah, another app to remember!" my left brain is overjoyed to see the data back and realize we have a blog entry to write now about the various ways to save data on the web.
Long live the paper.
Tags: instapaper
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When Instapaper first hit the scene a few months ago I really liked the concept, so much that I started using it all the time thinking, ya, I'll get back to those reads. Tonight was just one of those moments where I had time to look back at what I saved, and well? Its all gone. Instead of seeing a few weeks worth of reads, I see nada.. like three, one really old one and one new one. I have no idea why my insta-reads are gone, and the site is so simple and so clean, I don't see where anything could of go wrong on my part, it must be the app itself.
Saddened by my loss of potential reads I'm bummed on two fronts. One, I liked the idea, it wasn't delicious, and it wasn't bookmarks, it was something in the middle, a transitory place that didn't make a complete memory, ready to be absorbed when I had the chance. It didn't clutter up my delicious, nor my bookmarks, it was nice. Secondly I was gonna write a nice blog entry at work on how saving things on the web was getting easier, yet, here we go tonight, and I guess I can't talk about instapaper, something I had hoped to be a main point of my talk. Drag.
When you're a beta junkie like me, its kinda nice when something really fails like this, bye bye instapaper my right brain says, good riddens, one less thing we gotta think about, save a place for on the bookmarks bar and line up in the to do list to remember to do. My left brain is tormented by the idea of cluttering up delicious with a tag like "to_read" or "may_stuff_08". But hey its one less thing to do overall, I think right brain wins.
Tags: instapaper
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I really need to redesign this website, the blog, it needs a new fresh coat of paint.
Maybe I should put it up as a contest in some crowdsourcing site. Speaking of which, they added a long time crowdsourcing site to the deadpool yesterday. For yee new folks, deadpool is basically, you did an idea, built a biz, but it didn't pan out so now you're dead. Like anything these days on the web, there's blogs and folks that follow the deadpool as well.
So Cambrian House enters the deadpool. I honestly say I never liked CH's take on crowdsourcing. It just seemed like it was some design house type firm that did this site on the side, I never felt like it had a clear idea of what the site was about.
Now I love the idea of crowdsourcing and its not going away any time soon, but making money on the idea may be harder than people thought at at first. For me, its another strategy in staying in the awareness radar of consumers, you don't do it to get paid per say, you do it to stay on the radar. Because where ever you find fresh ideas you typically find lots of people, hence the crowd.
It looks as if CH sold out to Spencer Trask's investment firm who will spin it into VenCorps, basically reshaping the idea and attempt to lure more ideas from people for major profits. If that can be had really, the crowd is pretty smart these days.
The Techcrunch article and a recent bit in Read Write Web both have excellent reads and takes on crowd sourcing today.
Last but not least check out brandtags!
Tags: brandtags, techcrunch, readwriteweb, floozyspeak, crowdsourcing
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I ran across a few new things today for the blog and of course, I really need to redesign this blog in general so it can have cool video, tell you about places like beijing maybe france or even the kaossilator my favorite toy ever. In general I love this blog, its me and more so its everything I do and feel like at various times in my life. Its an archive of old thoughts, cool ideas, and reminders of where I need to go next.
So that's it for this entry, lets see about jazzing it up in Apture and taking it from there.
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