Floozy Speak!

Sometimes I'm convinced that work is really about managing wasted time.  Ya zig ya zag and in the end all you know for sure is that time is missing.  I feel sorry for those that zigged and zagged under the assumption that their time wasn't wasted when in fact.. we knew it all along.. yep that time was wasted. 

Wasting time, I think, is one of the biggest morale erroding aspects of today's workplace.  When people feel the impact of wasted time it stirs up all kinds of emotions.  We huddle around and have a meeting about lost time, how to prevent lost time and how to evade the vile evil of lost time. 

Lost time usually occurs when leadership is non-existant or goes bad or when worker bees feel that loss of connection with the greater work objective.  When you lose your baton in the race going back for it seems like a major no no, you're better off sitting it out and contemplating your lost time.  If ya go back for the baton, well, we all know that drill, will that cause us to lose more time?  Losing time breeds uncertainty within our own being. 

Sometimes we dance with time, we know we should go forward but someone or something stands in your way and asks you to dance with time.  Dancing is a stop gap before the realization that yes, even that dancing was actually wasted time. 

I think I compartmentalize wasted time.  I save it up, all bundled and ready to unleash in some form, maybe a wicked 360 in the mini or the cranking of a good song - make it loud, hear me damnit, someone hear me!!

Ways to prevent wasted time.  Stop blogging about it.  It's gone, get over it.  Though its nice to write about something that you probably wouldn't ever really write about unless it tucked on your shirt long enough.  That in itself is worth blogging, save the note, save for all time.  Leak your thoughts into the google machine.

In the end, I wasn't really reflecting on my time being wasted, I was watching anothers and observing the loss of time impacts on them. 

Powered by Qumana

Posted by dan at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hmmmm today we are testing qumana, which i hate the name of, i can never find it when i want to try and find it in google.  I've played with this app off and on.  I usually use ecto, but ever since i ran into issues using ecto to do blogger blogs, and then accidently destroying my ability to do this blog, and never getting an answer to my emails, i decided to try this tool again.

Here's one thing this tool does beautifully.  Pain.  Install pain.  Its painless.  Meaning the blog setup part is a breeze, it figures it out.  I'd give ecto $20 more bucks just to the frickin work for me.  And Journler which looks really cool, and i tried to use it to blog, and it said it could "sorta" support movabletype only later to find out in the forums it cant support movable type which im like dude just tell  me up front, could of had this simple ease o use major win material as well but no.. only Qumana which sounds alot like qmana which i was searching for not able to find it etc. 

Posted by dan at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I talked to Andy today.. ole Andy of ADVfilms fame. I guess he's back at the factory working on new special project like gigs. That's cool.

I bet alot has changed in the anime since. It's been 7..8.? years since my departure from that world. It took 8 years to really see internet video take off and its just now hitting that edge that will soon fold into the masses I think.

Part of me thinks yer anime company is only as good as your core product. Of course I'm always gonna say that the old days of ADV were the best, back when no one really knew anything we made it up as we went along. But is it just me or is the material we had back then better that I see right now?

Seems like alot of what ADV is sportin today is magical girl wonderness type titles. ADV always had a knack for attracting the wonder girl anime fans and features... at least I know Brad would be pleased, he loved that magical girl department.

Personally I'm more of a odd ball left wing mystery devil god vs man inside yer brain cool mecha holy crap kinda anime guy. I like the stuff that screams edit me, or that you can tell it was put together with real passion, passionate enough to kill off main characters early on and stuff. Looks like ADV has a few of those kinds of titles but its clear the bulk of it is leaning toward the magical wonder world.

I still cant my brain past the dub too. I think a dubbed voice, just fits wrong. Maybe ADV just has too many same actor sounding voices. Alot of the trailers all had the same girl sounding voice that just doesnt fit. One thing I dont think ADV has ever tried really but i wonder, is that phoneticly? i would love to use actors that really fit the characters in the film. I mean all you really care about is that you can understand the english right? But why not get a japanese or chinese america actor to do the voice of a animated character of that type in origin? Probably sounds racist but its not.. i mean to me its like - if this guy is a bad guy, lets get a real bad guy to do the voice. Maybe they can bring something to the sound that is different than generic do all voice talent folks.

Not to dis those folks and all but I think studios, especially ones like ADV should push the boundaries on what they can do, cause they can really do anything.

Watching the trailers on the ADV site just sent me going gaga at the voices. And if yer gonna do fast editing videos, slip some sound effects in there. It'd be nice if the japanese would give ADV masters that have effects and music split vs just the language and music+effects tracks. With effects trailer editors could do a much better job in creating trailers that kick ass.

No more era of the do it now folks, its gone!

Anyways... gluck Andy man!

Technorati Tags: advfilms, anime

Posted by dan at 04:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sony gets plenty of crap online these days, but they are AMAZING on the security IP camera technology. We use four SNC-RZ30 pan tilt wireless IP capable video cameras in our retail video ethnography rig. They are awesome cameras. To do what we wanted to do with our retail research rig, we had to make some modifications to how the cameras would operate. Mainly we wanted to able to walk into a store environment put up cameras in a flash and get down to observation and research. To do that you have to think about power, battery power, our RigMasterTroy whipped up wheelchair battery powered camera setup for us. We use wireless B to run the cameras, snag a few laptops and yer doin some fun stuff. Best of all the cameras are placeable anywhere now free to give their pan till goodness.

Pretty soon we knew we'd need some cases. How do you ship a rig like this? Its bulky, batteries are heavy and so on. We ended using some good cabbage cases that do the trick however, in our last rig, the cameras we're damaged in shipping.

By now I've had the cameras 3+ years, and I didn't really expect Sony to walk to water for us in helping us out with broken cameras. I wanted FedEX to pay for the repairs cause they basically threw these cases off trucks. The cameras were packed good, foam padding, bubble wrap and all. To damage cameras you basically need to drop them off a truck, 5-6 feet would probably shake anything inside to pieces.

Sure enough when I was back in Hartford last spring thats just what happened. I had 3 damaged cameras and I had 2 days of research to do. I pulled a win via a linksys wireless webcam, that we made work for our purposes. But I was still hacked off at FedEX. As time went on and FedEX finally sent a guy out to visit us and review the damage, and he never said anything yes or no on the outcome. FedEx told me weeks later ummm no. Great. Out of warranty cameras, damaged and now what? I call Sony and say, ok I need to get these repaired or replaced if thats too expensive.

Sony service center people in the security division are godly!! They told me "oh ya know... there's a flaw in those cameras, you may of never noticed, but we'll replace them for free.. in fact probably upgrade you to a newer camera... is that ok?" OK?? ARE you frickin serious?!? OK!?!? That's awesome!!!

UPS blue, bam new cameras on the way. That people is frickin delivering on the promise for life. These cameras aren't cheap, and maybe Sony just wants to keep ya security folks happy but holy frickin yaness!

Thanks SONY!!! YOU GUYS+GALS ROCK!
PS- Big thanks to Jackie!!!

Technorati Tags: sony, cabbage, buddychrist

Posted by dan at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello my floozykuns, how are you today?

Here's the skinny, its June 29th, 2006 and here is the story thus far...

Lots going on as usual. Work is good, I'm leaving the ohio.gov.taxation world and moving into retirement services for the insurance world, man does that sound soo unsexy or what? Ahh well.

ideas ive had lately:

1. Shoot a short film about identity, its one of my favorite topics to think about. I mean every day its like I get yet another reminder that the state of identity in this digital world is like crazy. Its only gonna get worse. In fact its going corporate, its become yet another income stream for the giants, they must protect us, and collect a fee and continue the madness of the ever leaking identity. So i had this daydream of a shot of gal getting mugged in an alley for her email address. Two thugs grab her and she thinks at first, the purse, but nooo, they want her email addy, and then her logon to Somethingster. Seems kooky really but there's viruses and trojans out there right now on peoples pc's doing that, so why not act it out, could be fun.

2. I missed supernova again. Well lets be frank really, I always miss whatever is happening on the east/west coast and no one seems to bring an interesting conference to ohio really. Someday I'll attend Etech, DEMO, SIGGRAPH, and NAB.

3. The word "innovation" is the big league chew of our time... at least lately. Everyone has got to slip the word "innovation" into their blog. news article, or witty writing lately. Its everywhere. More and more people are talking about innovation, or at least flaunting it around lately... my sally, that a truly innovative blender you have there... Ahhh well.

4. Keeping up with 96 blogfeeds in bloglines is difficult. In fact its a job in itself. In fact, read blogs less, read actual books more. Currently I'm reading Ultra-metabolosim.

5. Playing in Garage Band makes me want to have like a week off to mess with all these cool mac toys. I need to take more time off just to create ya know.

6. Working on a new podcast, I need to get into the habit of just podcasting and videologging ya know.

7. Beening playing with voice candy, peanut gallery, edo, noodle flix, djay, wirecast, flock, sketchup, visual hub, frameline, foottrack, oh my... gonna get final cut HD express this weekend too.... well more to come

Posted by dan at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Experimenting with the ecto + kml + google earth goodness. Let's see if this worked.

meta-longitude=-82.99750124184956
meta-latitude=39.97452422857913
meta-altitude=0
meta-range=266.5082175024137
meta-tilt=49.97150273713007
meta-heading=-31.94593050680841
meta-coordinates=-82.99749631632565,39.97479392661569,0

Technorati Tags: ecto, google earth

Posted by dan at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wooooosh, seems my youtube video goodness has been gettin a wee bit of traffic off the Windows XP on an Intel Mac story lately. Someone did it, they actually got Windows XP to boot on the intel Imac. Their video was posted to youtube and well my imac switch video action was up there as well, so i caught a wee bit of traffic off that interest. Not bad for just screwin around really. I'll be putting together another bit feature this weekend about the mac experience thus far.

Goin the way back machine I picked up this story on boingboing.net talking about 70's computer promo photographs. I actually remember my father giving me tons of punch cards from OSU. We had them all over the house. My father would use them as ToDo lists on saturday mornings. The punch cards were always in Moms kitchen drawer for quick and easy access to jot down notes. We had shoe boxes of these things. Funny.. memories...

I tried last weekend to find a bookstore in town that had Bruce Sterling's Shaping Things book. I keep seeing that referenced in various web 2.0 blog postings. I feel compelled to read it.

I'm reading bloglines right now.. reading...? glancing? grazing.... whatever you wanna call it, yes I have alot to catch up on.

I just wrapped up a bit of research work yesterday.. soo happy to do be done with it. I hate "extensive yet small topline" reports. A true topline is six bullet points on a page. My topline "report"... was 31 pages long. But thats what you get when you wanna ask a thousand questions. No matter what you WANT to do, you still have to DO what yer client wants you to do, despite yer eagerness for them not to do what you think they'll do, odds are in the end, you have to adapt to their needs. So I did that, and then i got a groovy idea on how to get even more goodness out of the topline and then, as bearer of the neat idea, thoust be the doer of such activity.

In the end it was good. I presented it well I think although a glass of water would of been darn handy. I'm rather animated when it comes to presenting. I used to get beat red too, thats kinda gone, though i still attempt to read people and talk at the same time, always checking to see if what im saying is actually impacting people. But I deliver my presentations in a real upbeat honest kind of way and I think that translates well.

The best thing about research is that you are projecting the customers voice, you didnt make this shit up. People didnt like it, they told you, you analyzed it, and now yer passin the vibe along to the client. Sure they could get mad at you.. but hey, umm these are people that either bought yer dealio or didnt. I always feel bullet proof when it comes to that. People matter, simple as that. They are always in the researchers pocket.

Barcamp Delhi pics and video are up and out there... yet another barcamp, unconference, type event i didnt attend.... er phyisically....

Blogbits...

skinny themes, good stuff!

will it be a doorstop?

SeeMeTV tops 4 million downloads... and may be I need a new phone?

I probably need to give secondlife another chance.. at well.. a second.. ha!

awww ya breakin it down.. the real biz of the mashup

Posted by dan at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Its a bit windy out.. i just about wrote that as "wendy...". I've had a rough week. Yesterday I endured a long 12 hour day talking to consumers about insurance. Its hard to get excited about insurance really. Being in the midwest we seem to have a lot of insurance companies and they spend oooodles attempting to get inside the minds of their consumers.

ya, so not the the sexist thing to research really, but it is primal in many ways. Ya got money on one side the room, protection on the other, honesty in the middle and then the deal and lastly.. the red tape. So ya, its an endurance test at times.

Tablet PC Education...

Aside from the mayhem of research I still make time to chase down bit projects. Today I attended a presentation at Bishop Harley High School here in columbus. In the past 5 years BHS has been on the edge of technology implementing its tablet pc education program to junior and senior high school students. They were the first school in the country to arm 300 students with tablet pcs, construct a system to teach all classes with them and more. Ken Collura the tech head behind the project is amazing guy.

I arrived on the scene about 2 years ago when I met Ken at a local tech conference. I was immediate intrigued with his program. To me its like the grand experiment unfolding. In the past I've done some early adopter studies, and BHS is a prime piece of material for that kind of work. 300 students are given, yes thats given, a tablet pc. They use them in tablet pc enabled classes, take them home, lug them around instead of books. Is it the future? Well from what I've seen its damn near close. Collaborative software has come a long way, and it still has plenty of room to grow.

What really amazes me about the BHS project is the absence of major player interest on the part of Apple and Microsoft. I'm seeing mass adoption to a handful of applications that these kids will no doubt take with them into college and beyond and none of the major players are in the scene, aside from an OS stand point for Microsoft. I mean they're in the biz of tablet software with onenote, and all their efforts yet in the classroom its not being used. I suppose k12 isn't their audience but regardless of that, adoption to other apps that blow onenote outa the way is on. And thats just one application, what about the innovations, the bootstrapping happening in the background with server apps, administrative back-end programs and more. Its really odd to see this huge experiment go down and nada interest from the big MS.

Apple on the other hand could learn alot about what BHS has done in the 4 years to kick this kind project off the ground.

Today I watched student interaction with the tablets in 4 classes. The first two classes we're italian and french. Just a few students had tablets and were taking notes. After the Sopranos lesson we checked out a social studies class where the students we're engaged in a global game. Several high schools around the country and even a few overseas we're all part of one massive simulation- Arab Israeli Conflict. Students split up into teams, each team represents a country and they all have to get along. Everyone had their tablet pc out and was working a way, connecting online, interacting with students from afar etc. Pretty slick. We saw alot of smart board technology being implemented and used as well, especially handy in some classes.

After the class walkthroughs we had lunch with a select group of students. I quickly proceeded to put my researcher cap on and started asking questions drilling down into user habits on campus and at home. It was fun to poke around things like social networks, mobile phones, digital cameras, wifi access and more. A few of these kids we're up on ajax as well. I asked all the standard research questions but my style quickly broke into more progressive interests once i started seeing that glazed over participant look. Then we got into some fun conversations about their behaviors and patterns they themselves saw in their adoption of the tablet.

Kids are great subjects when you tap into them. The minute you start to get their space, they just let go and the faucet is on. Sure these the occasional ego trip but in general I feel once you get them to see you as someone that keep up with their world, the gloves are off and they really spill it. Throw some jokes in there too, that always help. One girl had 500+ buddies in her instant messagener, that led to a conversation about MySpace and from there we got where mobile phones, tablet pcs, the home pc and more all either worked together or didn't.

One thing I thought was interesting was that the students really didn't want the tablets to evolve into superior hardware pcs like their home pcs. Enabling tech like GPS, wifi, etc, thats all good, but please whatever you do, dont improve the core graphics abilities. It's like pimping out yer notebook.. hey i use that to learn man, my pc is for pimping. Heh. Good stuff. I hope to do more studies with the kids someday. Again just an incredible scene unfolding there, soooo much to learned.

And the winner is...

The results for Project Runway 2 are in... and its Chloe! Surprise win and probably not picked for her line as much as she carried herself thru the challenges. That and I think she got the win for her biz sense. Daniel V was my favorite, I think his designs were excellent, but I also think he had an amazing model to display them. Rebecca wasn't hot, she just had the look, the right look for Daniel V's clothes and the two made an unstoppable pair there for awhile. Santino, well I loved his in yer face energy, but the broke him, the pounced on his spirit and threw Tim in there to basically tell him to calm it down.. so he did, he still cranked out an amazing collection but it was tame Santino and not the same Santino we all got to know thru the episodes. I bet her returns next season. Either him, Nick, or Andre will return for season 3.

In all a great show, totally hooked me, love it. I love the design process, the challenges and the sheer innovation you get to witness as crazy challenges get tossed at designers. I even p2p'd the english version of the show. :P

Books

Reading Getting Real from 37 signals...considering Lifetime Growth, looks very cool... keep hearing about Shaping Things from Bruce Sterling, so i need to read that. Another excellent PDF...

Sexy Beast

I've been working on a new video blog idea...

Want to see!!

Scanner Darkly.. must see.. Google's open source innovation... and this thing... hmmm, this is cool too, hmm need to translate. I keep finding videos. Maybe a listen or two as well.

Blogwatch...

Some good bits on Solution Watch on 2.0 vibes on gettin back to business.

Technorati Tags: floozyspeak, tablet pc, projectrunway, scanner darkly, youtube

Posted by dan at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well I think ecto is it. This is a very polished blogging tool, and I've only really messed with it for about an hour now. It seems to have all the perks I like - does tags very well, categories are there, image placement is working, itunes and amazon inserts are a bonus, clean and tasteful UI. I dig it.

Tune of the week: >> Motion of Commotion from the album "You Should Be Like This More Often" by PTYLTD

State of the Flooz

So carrying on let's talk about the state of the flooz here. We're coming up on 30 days in on the intel imac dual core experience. So far its been a slick transition.. except no gaming, just hasn't come into play yet. (pun!), Anyways ya no games. In fact the gaming/pc/xp box is off. And ya know.. that box was dying.. lol. With it off, the room is much quieter.

So far I've just been truckin along on this planet mac. I like it. I've done downloaded a handful of apps and started playing around with new things:

• cmaps - to create concept maps
• ecto - looks like the new blogging tool for me
• handbrake - makes rippin dvds fun and easy
• flysketch - love the onion skinning feature
• voodoo pad - nice little note taker

...and now a word about STATS!

As some of you may know I recently began video blogging my intel imac experience via youtube. At first i did them just to test youtube.. and well, after a combined total of 3000+ views across several different video posts.. i guess you can say they're official, thats a video blog that will be ongoing.

The intel imac series will be mirrored on the floozyspeak podcast as well, best place to grab that is in itunes. So two good places to find that videoblogpodcast whatever the heck people are calling that now.

YouTube has been interesting. Some of the videos ive done only have a few dozen views while others, mainly the video blog entry kind and the anime video kind have really taken off in views. One of the Neon Genesis Evangelion music videos I put together almost 10 years ago is slowly climbing up the charts.. very slowly, but hey i'll take 800+ views!

In other news, semi related to stats, the newly created Seriously Curious podcast for my job here at lextant has 61 subscribers on itunes, hey.. now thats excellent considering only a handful of folks really knew about the podcast internally at work.

On the Production Wire...

...two new websites in the works, GatorDave revisited and a new vodpodcast show with my first iWeb website launch coming soon. Probably see some interesting works coming from my darling gal Mary as well, gonna try for some fun improv on camera action here soon.

Blogwatch

...the blogosphere scene is full of noise lately. CNet talkin trash about apple, Microsoft gettin viral hype over a tablet gizmo with gps and wifi, MaBell on the loose and gettin hungry, players getting on the scene to try and tax your emails and more...

however.. with the strange and bad.. come a bit of good..

getting real from 37 signals makes a splash with a tasty well received read, rubyonrails gets a big plug from apple, seth cranks out an excellent video, steve goes education, ajax galleries of usage hit the web, and much much more...

Technorati Tags: ecto, floozyspeak, imac, mac, youtube, puppy

Posted by dan at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok so here we are in ecto testing... testing... and.. let's see what can I do...

I can do this

and that

"The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture" (John Battelle)

amazon placement.. neat...even with modifications

and this other thing

Angels (Santos "Come With" Mix) from the album "Angels - EP" by Ils

itunes track placement.. thats spiffy...

I can say it like this

or say it like that, and then restate what i said only this way and not that way...

interesting.. not bad ok how bout this.. i want

• cookies
• candles
• and shakes

groovy... thats pretty

1. wow
2. zamobo
3. franken

what about this

though?

Technorati Tags: ecto, mac, test, floozyspeak

Posted by dan at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What is it about Rolo’s?  I can consume a whole pack of rolo’s in like seconds.  I think they are designed to do just start, you start unraveling them and presto they are all gone. 

Sooo much new I say, sooo much new.  First the Mac.  The mac is good.  The transition going to mac has been much easier than I thought it’d be.  In fact its pretty damn slick.  I like the mac alot.  It’s a bit like my first pc experience, in the sense that i bought my first pc to play Doom.  I bought my first mac to use ilife.  Cause that’s all i got on it.  Heh. 

If you sold ilife on its own, it’d cost $500+ easy on a pc.  I mean imovie is a great little editing tool, iphoto and making books and calenders is a snap, and you can do effects in it too, then idvd which i havent even touched yet but I know is gonna be good.  iWeb is cool, and i’ve just glanced at its abilities for a sec.  Garagband is waaay cool, GatorDave and I took a tour of that this weekend, very cool ablities in that software alone could cost ya big bucks.  Folks, ilife is an excellent deal of a suite o tools. 

On the browser side of things, Safari is, well, a browser.  Its clean and mean and is fast as I would expect.  Its built in RSS reader is kinda handy but I miss the extension goodness firefox enables me with.  The biggest thing that bugs me is the lack of delicious integration.  I dont bookmark in the traditional sense any more, I’m all deliicous enabled.  I want to tag my bookmarks and send them directly to delicious in a smart and simple way. 

Some of the simple things in the mac are there, but i cant think of them yet or I dont know cause i’m well, new i guess and I have an old way of doing things, but i havent found a simple way to get safari to consider delcious just yet.  If i could get over that one hurdle i wouldnt have any complaints about the browser. 

Theres aspects of the mac where you feel OS X is basically telling you “stop thinking”.  Little things that get to me in using the mac at times.  On the PC you get a big eject button on drives cause theres something about the comfortable phsyical representation of a button you can actually have command over that will enable you to eject a disc.  I know that if my finger hits that button, i’ve told it to do something, and its phsyical, its my finger to do, where as on the mac its my hope that my intent to do, will be understood as a do, and thus done based on what command ive asked it to though theres a chance its also thinking about other stuff to do at the moment of the do. 

Its like powercords, you yank them and you have assured result – power off.  You had control.  You feel powerful.  The mac does away with a bit of that control and enables you to find it in ways well… you have to get used to.  Its not that i couldnt eject a disc, it was the uncertainitly in finding the way to eject that bothered me, even if it was just for a split second, that feeling of no control, at the whim of a “clicking” disc drive was incredibly painful.  The same kind feel sits in me when i download and install files, where do they go really, they just install, they just work, all is well is what the mac tells me.  I’m so used to being uberly nosey on the pc, where’d that file go, make room here, there, and so on.  I just dont have that knowledge to be percice on the mac yet, and i sometimes wonder will i get it? 

Another point in fustration is software.  On the PC the question is never “is there an app that does x” its more of finding it via the web.  All the pc apps are done, they are out there, go find them.  On the mac its different, did someone make this kind of app yet?  Like blogging clients on the mac so far as dismal compared to the pc, in fact its really kinda lame at best on the mac.  Your choices are 1 or 2, and the pc, you have the choice from a dozen i bet.  And then on the mac where theres no apps, there may be widgets and vice versa.  Widgets in the desktop are handy, neat and semi-useful.  To me, its cool code that if you got a purpose great, if not…… well. 

One thing that is fun is resting on the heels of all these intel-native-binary RSS sites for the new mac systems.  There are daily posting of apps that are not native on the new dual core machines.  Watching these lists is like a constant new high you can tap into daily.  You know how I love the new, well, RSS brings you the beauty of new daily on these babies! 

Hmmm…. in other news, on the blogsphere side of things… ok one thing, had to go…

Drowning out the good vibes of LazySunday

Apparently LazySunday had to be yanked form YouTube because it was copyrighted and thus really SNL’s right, yadda dadda material.  Its sad when the struggling show like SNL makes a clip, it goes viral on the web, gets massive, makes SNL come to life again in the hopes and dreams of consumers and then.. legal freaks SLAM on the breaks, take it off the sites that made it massive and of course.. they decide to then sell it or promote it thru more certified channels, tis a shame they didnt do that in the first place but then again they wouldnt of known if it wasnt for sites like YouTube.  This is classic corporate agenda crap that can really back fire on end users.  Now I have a host of mixed feelings, I love LazySunday but I’m pissed that SNL/NBC doesnt recogonize the fact that the web made breathed life into their otherwise nearly dead show in fact, I watch SNL now, on my tivo, soley for the hope to see more digital shorts.  In general the writing of the show has been in the dumps lately. 

The viral ad scene on the net has exploded lately.  Has anyone seen those clips of the Burger King and Brooke Burke on the web lately?  They are hilarious.  And its all web, strictly on the down low in the hopes to generate more buzz, and the more underground it is the better it seems to grab at folks.

Posted by dan at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now playing: ILS - Angels

Today’s Findings:

Buzz-o-Phone, cool idea, makes for a fun podacast!

Why can’t we have cool events like this in ohio?

Strange Habbits:

Ok I admit it, I sometimes scour the net for pdfs.  Why?  Cause.  Every now and then I come across a really good thought provoking PDF, and then i tell myself.. there’s gotta be more of these babies on the net.  I feel like if it ends up in a pdf odds are someone thought it was worth saving, saying and telling to others.  I used to use google hacks to find pdfs, now I use delicious.  Its kinda fun really.  If you like to harvest data off the net then go for it ya know. 

PDFs also give you some insight into how people brand themselves.  You can often collect a few good ideas on useful graph ideas and so on too. 

Sometimes I click on really strange pdfs, factoring in, odds are i can’t possibly read them.. and then maybe I find a gem every now and then. 

Alot of them are filled with wild math equilizations that I will probably never understand.

Often if i’m totally clueless about what the PDF is, I can always look at its assoicated tags to give me a clue.

Some of the tastier PDFs come from universities.

I find that tech companies, 2.0 folks, and especially mobile people like Nokia make some of the coolest, thought provoking pdfs out there.

Some PDF finds today.  Web2.0, IRAQ, WhyTaggingMatters, FlickrAPIYahness, RubyCheats, AngelInvesting, IRS, State-of-Virtual-Schools, deliciouspower, Misconceptions?, HideNSeek, Linkology, Realitynation, Peekaboom, Nokia’s UMA, HybridControl, SweaterDesign? BehaviroalCash, DontForget, …

ListsAreBad

USA-EcomonicReport020106

Posted by dan at 06:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Leah wants to know what is up with this blog?

Posted by dan at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok so much for why, now how did it go down?

Boxes.

Every pc I’ve gotten has come in a box that is half in chinese and half in english.  In fact I’ve never really understood all the markings on a pc box.  Who cares, sure nobody does but interesting to me really.  PCs dont have boxes, there are no champions in the world of mass clones, its all guts, its this board plus these chips do this thing, get windows installed and go.  The mac experience is more elegant.  I get a box that reinforces to me what I get every which angle I look at.  It’s always telling me I got something for the money paid. You get a handle too, you can carry your pc, neat.  Right when you open it you get hit with “Designed by Apply and made in California”.. not made in the USA, made in california.  LOL  Thats classic america pride there.

One Wrong.

I was wronged however that fate saturday morning as I broke open my new imac and began installing.. wait a sec, everything was installed already.  Well one thing did go wrong.  They power-corded me.  Power-corded, comes from the world of selling pcs at Computer Success a local computer store that I used to work at way back when.  At CS, we often power-corded people when they bought new pcs.  We never power-corded anyone on purpose really, it just happened.  To be power-corded means to not get a power-cord when you get yer pc.  And yes Apple did that to me.  Instead I got a cool groovy european/asian/power cord.  Neat.  Luckly I had a standard power cord from an older pc, that worked fine.  I even made a little video entry about how i was power corded on my new imac.  I’ll post it here in a bit.

One button.

Only having one button on a mouse is interesting.  Just about everything I need to do with a second mouse button is tied to a keyboard shortcut.  In fact i’ve found myself doing more keyboard shortcuts on the mac then ive have done on the pc before.  The little nip button in the center of mouse works a scroll and as a “bring dashboard” up button.  Thats pretty slick.  Works great.  So far, I can deal.

What’s Being Used So Far.

At first i resisted the dot.mac account but then got one what the heck.  I’ve been using Safari so far and its fast, but then I’ve never really thought about browsers and speed before. 

Self aware.

Net wise the mac is self aware out of the box.  It found 9 near by network connections for wireless.  I thought that was funny, my tablet pc could only find 2 if that, i think the antenna in tablets is bad, or poorly placed.  I turned bluetooth off on the imac, cause i dont have a wireless keyboard/mouse to play with it, I need to read up on what could play with bluetooth next.  Connection wise, like anything, simply plug it in, it goes. 

…more to come…

Posted by dan at 05:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So its official, I've gone mac.  Why did I go mac?

1. Cycle of Newness.  There is a cycle of newness that I couldn't resist any longer happening on the Mac scene.  It’s best described as a barrage of newness that appears with the voice of a champion and presented with blissful excellent via marketing.  iPods are funnelling a horde o cash into the Apple empire.  As a result their pcs are getting better and better and they’re tellin you they are every day, every six months every year there is something new.  This constant cycle of updates and newness especially on the video editing side of things couldn’t be held back any more.  I had to give in. 

2. Motion.  First of all, one of the two apps I wanted to use more than anything lately resided on the Apple.  Mac Motion and Final Cut Pro… More so for Apple’s Motion. This app just looked like a killer screw-around tool, I must play with it.  Thus it requires a mac.  Doh… Could I get PC apps to do the same?  Sort of.. still I wanted to play with this app.  I wanted to learn FCP, I wanted to have those plugins, those built in effects and more. 

3. Experience.  Despite Clint’s persistence in having me build a hackintosh pc with mac os, I really wanted to experience the mac platform outa the box.  So far the 17” imac is a dream, with minor nitpicks.  There will always be nitpicks really.  But the imac is a slick frickin box, it actually feels right for the future, this is 2006, and the imac is a computer that screams “we’ve made it”.  Things like front row and well the units overall sleekness no doubt help convey the fact that mac got it right. 

4. Mac Enabled, Not Switched.  I don’t look at this as if I’ve switched, I see myself enabled.  I have a the pc and I have the mac, and i’ll remain between the two for awhile i’m sure.  Adopting the mac is going smoother than expected once you open up a bit and let go.  I never really got the whole us vs them thing when it came to macs vs pcs.  When I worked in texas, I didn’t have a mac, I had an Avid.  The media composer took over the mac, at any one time I never really considered that mac a real mac.. it was always the avid.  In fact I kinda miss those days of having a computer totally dedicated to a single app. 

5. Mini vs 17 vs 20 vs tower.  So many macs to choose from.  I almost bought a mac mini two weeks ago, in fact the timing was right, i had a few drinks in me and dave was even eggin me on, but i resisted.  Mini isn’t right for my needs, the price point was there, but something was missing.  Alot was missing, ram, vram, superdriver etc.  If Mini was the low side the tower and the 20” were on the high side.  The tower was out of the question, thats not the computer i wanted to own.  I wanted a mac, not a tower.  I wanted what macs have stood for in the past 3 years, simplicty and elegance and more than just that tower design.  Sure I know the tower is just a box, but well I dont want that.  And I dont want its price tag.  The 20” is nice, real nice, that screen is frickin amazing.  But the 20” is more for me at work.  For home i need the 17”, middle road goodness. 

Ok break for now, lunch es here.  More to come on out of the box impressions.

Posted by dan at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mark this day.. Feb. 10th. 2006 - dan goes mac. 

its here

its official

its different

its wonderful

its a new time for the flooz - get ready!

Posted by dan at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gah exploring new apps is always painful.  Sure i do a whole entry on peformancing and then..  i play with some options and BOOM content i wrote is wiped!  GRRR, apps need to see, sense and know where crap is, if content is there, don't wipe without asking, just ASK!!  Ahh well performanicing works, seems ok i guess. 

Posted by dan at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now playing: Snake Sedrick - Only One Way - Ambient Mix

You all keeping up with today’s flurry of updates?

Just updated to firefox 1.5, it is goodness on a stick!  AndI dig thenew delicious add on action.

Posted by dan at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just caught this on Terra Nova, yet more perdictions from folks..

 2) Apple's share of the PC market will double to 5%

I actually think that one is true and will happen. 

Posted by dan at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First up a taste of nanotech, I love big yummy PDF’s.

Posted by dan at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Are you grading me?” I asked Jen in a slightly cowering voice.  It’s review time again here at work.  Not really reviews, just more fun with who you are sorta tests.  They seem to get old to me after awhile, I want a better more vividly wild test result vs the standard – yer a captain or a leader.. I say you tell me what kind of off brand orange soda i am please.  I mean come on.  Ahhhh well. 

Anyone notice the pixelvision rocketboom now on the tivo lately?  Kinda fun, bad quality but fun. 

Posted by dan at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BlogJet 1.6 now supports flickr!

Posted by dan at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

HELLO blog. 

The year is 2006.

I spent my new years day watching the documentry “The Corporation”.  Has anyone seen that?  That is a long ass docu’.  Some 2.5 hours long, but really good in a kind of depressing human way.  Its a flick I think all the local friends should see, especially Clint, and Mike, Nik and so on, good conversational fodder there.  …. and if you dont know… its:

SYNOPSIS

THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation's grip on our lives. Taking its legal status as a "person" to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

Winner of 24 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS, 10 of them AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS including the AUDIENCE AWARD for DOCUMENTARY in WORLD CINEMA at the 2004 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. The long-awaited DVD, available now in Australia and coming in March to North America, contains over 8 hour of additional footage.

The film is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan.

Now before you get all fussy and think “great another psycho babble dan flick” well it could be just that but hey its pretty darn entertaining as well.  Over the past year or so I kept seeing it at blockbuster, the one lone copy on the shelf and it was always out.  Visit after vist after visit.. dang, still out.  Had to pick it up when i saw it. 

It is a bit depressing to watch at times and it seemed to go on and on and on and on, still one little thing kept nagging me, is that documentry voice chick the same voice on the Animatrix DVD?  Ya know the cyber computer voice?  It seemed awfuly close.  Anyways, some cool research studies in there as well, like the nag factor which isn’t suprising but i guess I dont want to think that its really crafted and sought out to do. Seeing all these power point slides that show how to manipulate childern into nagging for better increased sales is pretty sad.  Its that part of research thats a bit of a bummer really. 

Ya know the web is pretty hilarious at times.  I did a quick search on the nag factor to get some linkage here and then i across a site called word spy.. had to look further.. HA!  Check out this hilarious word… “time porn”

time porn (TYM porn) n. Television shows and other media that portray characters as having excessive amounts of spare time.

Too funny. 

So ya, go catch the Corporation, lemme know what you think. 

TESTING TESTING

I am testing the new firefox plug in, well not on this post, but soon to be other posts for the blog via the new plugin “performancing..”. 

Let’s see.. whats new in blogosphere.

BLOGWATCH!

Ya know I heard Google was up 7 frickin bucks.. SEVEN.. to a mere 400+ change?  LOL thats crazy.  Go Google. 

One of the best blogs to watch during 2005 was, is, and shall be, Design Sponge.  Tons of great craft ideas on that gals site.  Calssic stuff goes there.  Go get now, go see.  Love it! 

I love the “Enemy of BIll Gates” poster.. LOL

Creating Passionate Users is another awesome blog filled with these perdictions for 2006 and a post that led me to The Book of Cool, which i need to get for office folk.

Jo Ito is the man to watch if yer interesting in conferences that you thought never before existed.  This guy is everywhere.  He’s one of the prime navigators of the blogosphere, in Dune he’d be one of those spice gobbling space worm things that say things like “no.. paul atradies… we want him KILLED…”.  Actually I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but bow before this man’s connections is what i mean.  All over the map.  I dare yee to follow Jo for a month or so and u’ll see.

HobbyPrincess was one of the better read blogs of 2005.  A new comer to the flooz list the princess delivers on multiple angles.  At first yes, its crafty, and we like that, DIY is good, but then you get a taste of tech, and then deep thought on tech and craftyness.  Good stuff.

Take the Web 2.0 quiz!

Ok its not a blog but Nokia’s site is on eof the coolest most impressive mondo data sites i’ve seen on the web.  I love thier design, their imagery, their message, everything.  And did I mention I think I want a new phone?

AlarmClock is that cool IPO to be / who’s buying who site out there.  I love that blog.  Today’s digs on it included ScanR which I recall seeing awhile back, very cool and LifeSize a “life size” video conferencing type system.  Now why do we care about these techs?  Its not that we care, its that someone cares enough to funnel oooodles of millions into them as to why we should then care and follow and see. 

One thing that rings in my head from last year is Innovation.  Clearly one of the bigger buzz words of 2005.  Everyone had a taste of it, from Apple to Google to Web2.0 etc.. from metacool today I come across it again. 

On the social gaming side of things, Terra Nova goes off to do what i’ve wanted to do for a long time. I too have wondered what it would be like to have this mystery account just sprung on you, the disorientation of “ok this is who i am..” could it be like buying idenitiies online?  Cool research material. 

Top 50 Music Videos of 2005 while yer at it, love Jason.

Posted by dan at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hmmmm Dave asked me this past weekend “why the lull in blogging… “ and i don’t know.  Things have been busy i suppose.  The audio blogging is fun though. 

Let’s see what can i post for content?  I sent this list out to the team here at work yesterday. We had a brainstorm the other day about how to collaborate with folks now working in texas and california, so the discussion was about collaborative writing tools and well this list was created and then I added other good stuff..

Collaborative Writing Tools

http://www.writely.com/ - currently the most popular collaboration word processor tool out there

http://writeboard.com/ - the other real popular writing tool

http://www.conversate.org/ - group conversation program

http://www.zohowriter.com/Home.do  - online word processor, share documents

http://www.jotlive.com/  - live group note taking tool

Web & Usability Sharing like Apps

http://www.jybe.com – this like netlabs, its browse a website together type technology with chat and more

https://www.copilot.com/ - more of a “let me show you what I mean” type software via remote

Meeting Apps

https://www.gotomeeting.com/ - I hear this is the new end all be all webex like site

Project Management & Tracking Applications

http://www.rallypointhq.com/ - brand new, people are buzzin about it

http://www.sidejobtrack.com/  - web based job tracking, for contractors and freelances,  

http://zimbra.com/index.html - a big suite of tools

To Do Sites

http://www.taskspro.com/

http://voo2do.com/

http://www.trackslife.com/  - used this one for awhile

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ -  a popular todo site with reminders

Collective Intelligence & Reviews

http://www.judysbook.com/ - its like angie’s list, but on a google maps, national size scale, cool use of empowering consumers and leveraging their collective voice

http://www.frappr.com/ - another google map experiment site, search by zip code, document your home town, 180,000 people have already

Photo Sharing

http://www.flickr.com/ you cant beat flickr, this is probably the end all be all image site on the net currently, tagging is in! 

http://www.slide.com/ - slide rides on your desktop and on the web and continually shows your friends your pictures

Cool New Idea Sites

http://www.bandnews.org/ - band news tracks news dug up from search engines and the blogosphere regarding bands, it can also inform you on the latest from bands such as station 14 (once it knows of course)

http://fundable.org/ is a service that lets groups of people pool money to raise funds or make purchases.  

http://www.peertrainer.com/ - its on my “soon to check out list”, I need every bit of support possible to keep me motivated to lose the poundage 

http://www.typedown.com/external-01/news/yahoo-wordnews.php - I love sites like this, this one takes top news stories and does a kind of concordance with them creating a kind of visual representation of the data, the bigger the word the more times it appeared on all the news sites, visualization is cool and fun, it’s a unique way to sum up that moment in time on one page 

http://sandbox.sourcelabs.com/livemarks/ - one of my favorite websites, livemarks shows you bookmarking in real time from delicious users, (delicious is a popular bookmarking site) - what you are seeing in livemarks is real time real people bookmarking sites, it tells you how many people are watching, and what the most popular links have been recently.  Why should u care?  Well, if yer curious about what people are getting into at the moment, new sites, new services, cool news, anything right about now, that is, livemarks is a good place to go – it is geared more for the techie of course.  

http://www.mapbuilder.net/ - this a cool site where you can make your own google map pages, for example, we could map out all of our “experiences” in research around the globe, and give people a way to surf the map, see what we did where and so on, we could even attach images to those map points, audio, video, links back to our site and so on. 

http://www.etsy.com/ this was one of the best beta’s of the year, it’s a collaboration buy/sell site for DIY crafters, joo young and Justine, Jeaneen, check this out…

http://www.netvibes.com/ is a dashboard site, more dashboards are coming, google has one, yahoo has one, msn has one, everyone wants to be your home page, your dashboard where you have all the essentials right when you connect.. netvibes is your open source, open module one, its pretty popular on the net, attach your gmail, your price watch, flickr, bookmarks, top news sites and more

http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/ - what book should you read next? 

http://www.peerflix.com/ trade your own library of content

News

http://www.dailyrotation.com/ - 300 tech site sources all in one page

Collect and Organize

http://del.icio.us/ - great tagging book marking site

http://www.onfolio.com/ - a few of these kinds of programs hit this year, its basically data harvesting, your bookmarks, images you’ve seen, things you like while browsing, whats a better way to remember it all, recall it all later, at the moment I use delicious as my master book marking archive, but some folks think tools like onfolio are the way to go

http://www.flock.com/ - flock is a new browser idea built on top of firefox, its aimed at bringing this tagging concept to a new level, its been talked about heavily in wired magazine, appeared in several biz mags, sign up and see! 

Mashups – are site examples where two or more kinds of technology get mashed together to offer a new experience, examples like these show you the power of databases merged with mapping tools online, now think about a mashup of our data findings with enabling technology online like this, could create some cool deliverable materials. 

http://www.chicagocrime.org/ - the most compelling mashup this year, Chicago crime, tagged, sorted and google mapped

Posted by dan at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)