Jason's Blog

TweetPhoto Shoots to Take Out TwitPic and Scores

2009-05-05T18:42:00.000-05:00

TwitPic has always been the go to application for sharing photos on twitter but a new service, TweetPhoto, aims to changes that. If you've ever used TwitPic you know it does what it aims to do, share photos, which is nice but I've always felt wanting for more. The feature set is downright sparse compared to TweetPhoto and you'll see the difference right off the bat. In addition to signing in with your Twitter user name there are photo and meta-data filters, photo favorites, friends photos, customizable widgets, expansive API and a seamless integration into Twitter and Facebook Connect. In fact it not only is probably the most complete way to share photos on Twitter, you can share them on Facebook just as easily. TwitPic has a over a year head start on TweetPhoto but if nothing else I'm sure we'll start to see more capabilities from both and the user wins either way.

TweetPhoto greatly improves the user experience for those people who share photos on Twitter through the service. The capabilities include:

Upload photos via mobile phone and the web to TweetPhoto; share through Twitter and Facebook

Favorite the photos you like

See who views your photos; favorites your photos, comments on your photos

Track how many people looked at a photo

Automatically geo-tag photos sent from a GPS enabled phone

Use an integrated URL shortening service, http://pic.gd Filter photos by Twitter or Facebook friends

Self-moderate comments

Search tagged photos throughout the site

Subscribe to RSS feeds by user or tags

Twitter users can get started at http://tweetphoto.com by entering their Twitter username and password.

Would a Big Screen Kindle Save The Newspaper?

2009-05-04T09:47:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid I always assumed that the newspaper format would change. I figured we'd be reading from a tablet but that we would receive our daily newspaper via cd rom. I also thought we'd be in flying cars and our tv would be a hollogram. I was also 11. Does that mean those things won't happen, no but it also shows how slow we are to change. We drive cars today that get less gas mileage than they did ten years ago. Our televisions are basically the same as they were 50 years ago. And our newspapers are the same as they were 400 years ago. We as a society are better at developing new technologies than updating old ones. Where is our e-ink newsprint? It's not going to happen but Amazon want's to use a new technology to replace an old one.

Nothing has been announced officially but word is that Amazon will release a bigger screen Kindle to better support newspapers and magazines, two areas that have been hit hard in print. E-readers have yet to revolutionize the way people read books and it has yet to steer consumers from brick and mortar stores but there has been growth. About a half a million people bought a kindle last year, and while that's not enough to start a mass exodus of advertisers from print, it is expected to show the growth to tempt them. Kindle users are in the right age range 25-45 and have the disposable income that ad execs covet. Is that enough to supplant newspapers? Probably not. Radio, television, and the internet all were supposed to be the death of newsprint and so far newspapers and magazines have survived. Your big city newspaper will do fine as long as they manage to adapt like they have in the past. Readership will be down but as long as they change thier expectations of what makes a successful newspaper and stay profitable, the 11 year old in me will have to wait a little while longer for the future I dreamed about. With the trouble automakers are having I might never get my flying car.

The New Friendfeed... Is It All That Different?

2009-04-29T22:37:00.000-05:00

Way back in '07', the infancy of micro-blogging, I was not only an early adopter of Twitter but of Pownce. Like Twitter, it allowed users to tell their friends or followers what they were doing with as little prose as possible. I actually preferred the latter because of not only the ability to share links, images, and music, but the ability to create events. Pownce (who was created by Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, and Daniel Burka) was acquired by Six Apart and subsequently shut down two weeks later. I, along with many other former Pownce users, were looking for another place to call home that offered more than Twitter but not as involved as Facebook so we drifted to Friendfeed. I enjoyed the conversational aspect but it didn't seem to have the sticking ability of Twitter or Facebook, not to mention it was a harbor for early adopters and not much else. Friendfeed's new push for a simpler interface is a step in the right direction but is it enough?

At first glance it may seem like Friendfeed has taken a page out of Twitter's design playbook, but actually has more in common with Facebook and my beloved Pownce (R.I.P). The ability to share more than text and expanding your thought to something more robust than 140 characters has always been there but now everything has been streamlined. You will recognize the standard input box and river of messages below from every other micro-blogging site you've ever used but it now it is in real time.

Having the feed in real time takes a bit getting used to and if you take your eyes off of the screen for a second you will have lost your place. Friendfeed anticipated the learning curve and implemented a pause button. Pressing the button queues up the backlog of posts the makes you feel like you are sticking your finger in the dam. If you subscribe to a lot of user's feeds you'll quickly have a drowning sensation.

You may still be thinking it's just a faster Twitter, and you'd mostly be correct, but I'm not sure that would be their competition. Facebook and Friendfeed have been trying to "one up" each other for a while now, and there were rumors of an acquisition, and this is just one more chapter. Would a simpler theme and real time updates be enough to turn the tide? I doubt it. In fact it seems like a last ditch effort to stay relevant in the social networking space. Pownce was almost a carbon copy of this new Friendfeed, with even more features, and they barely lasted a year. Sure they may survive in its niche but it's simply a case of too little too late. That's not to say I don't want them to succeed. I actually am surprised that Twitter became the media darling but the simplicity drew the laymen to it. I will continue to use Pownce... I mean Friendfeed, but if you want a mainstream audience, innovation, timing, and luck is your friend. Just ask Kevin Rose.

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 Available

2009-04-28T19:59:00.000-05:00

Mozilla has released the newest beta of Firefox 3.5…

Please note: Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this beta.

Firefox 3.5 (formerly known as Firefox 3.1) Beta 4 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.5. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.5 can be followed at the Firefox 3.5 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #shiretoko.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

This beta is now available in 70 languages - get your local version.

Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.

Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.

The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.

Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.

Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.

Support for new web technologies such as: HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements, downloadable fonts and other new CSS properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 offline data storage for applications, and SVG transforms.

Testers can download Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 builds for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 70 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3.5 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Zoho Goes Mobile

2009-04-28T10:19:00.000-05:00

Zoho today released mobile versions of many of their web office applications and it’s easy to see why some refuse to use anything else.

Zoho Mail, Calendar, Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator are now available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices (Palm support is in the works). Zoho has many features not found anywhere else like group sharing across multiple apps and multiple log in options. You can log in with your Google or Yahoo IDs, along with a unique Zoho login. Go to http://mobile.zoho.com (or http://m.zoho.com) on your mobile device and check it out. Leave your impressions in the comments.

When Did You Join Twitter?

2009-04-27T09:20:00.000-05:00

I found this article for a new Twitter app today :

WhenDidYouJoinTwitter is one of the simplest twitter apps I’ve seen. But a much needed one! It’s so good to know the date you joined twitter and realize twitter only gets more exciting with each passing day!WhenDidYouJoinTwitter - do you remember!?, Apr 2009

You should read the whole article.

Beyonce’s Unedited Vocals

2009-04-22T08:42:00.000-05:00

I originally was going to have my first post back be an in-depth review of social networking today or reflect on Earth Day… but this was just too good to pass up!

Beyonce was performing a song live on the TODAY show and apparently her vocals are feed through a soundboard that adjusts her pitch before it goes out. Some ~~spiteful~~ enterprising person was able to record her original, unedited vocals, allegedly. Take a listen if you can take the pain but make sure that dogs and/or small children aren’t in the room.

P.S. This may be a hoax so please don’t sue if it is.

Well that was a long vacation!!

2009-04-21T23:36:00.000-05:00

It’s been over two years but I’m finally getting back into blogging. Real world things like getting married and having a baby kind of extended what I thought was going to be a two week break form blogging into a two year one.

If you are a returning reader you’ll still find the same tech coverage you were used to seeing but now with a bit more reach hopefully. This time around I plan on having contributors (so you don’t get sick of reading just my point of view) and hopefully get some press credentials. If you would like to help in either area please let me know.

This blog used to be known as infoblog 3.0 and was at a different location (which is still up btw) but I imported as many posts as I was able to. Somehow I lost about 500 posts over the years but I will make up for it. I also plan on using social media to expand my brand and this blog. I have already set up J-M-Williams as a Facebook application and am looking at doing other exciting things.

Please take the time to let me know your ideas on this blog, what you’d like to see and how we can make it better. I’ll talk to you again!

Test Post

2008-10-06T10:09:00.001-05:00

Flicker blog test post

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Infoblog on vacation.

2007-03-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

If you've noticed a slowdown here in the last few days that is because Infoblog is on vacation. We will return on March 24th, rested and ready to go.

Robert Scoble bites the hand that used to feed him.

2007-03-16T15:46:00.000-05:00

Robert Scoble wrote a scathing entry in his blog attacking Microsoft's focus (or lack of) in its "we're in it to win" campaign.

I don’t think Microsoft is. The words are empty. Microsoft’s Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks (look at that last post again). If that’s “in it to win” then I don’t get it. I saw a bunch of posts similar to the one on LiveSide coming out of the MVP Summit. I didn’t post any of them to my link blog for a reason: All were air, no real demonstrations of how Microsoft is going to lead.

Microsoft isn’t going away. Don’t get me wrong. They have record profits, record sales, all that. But on the Internet? Come on. This isn’t winning. Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where’s the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo’s Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?) That’s how you win.

He's got a point. When was the last time Microsoft catered to the user instead of the business. When was the last time they innovated?

Microsoft has two problems really. 1. They don’t develop, they takeover/buy (although Google seems to be heading in that direction). 2. When they do develop, they do it for the lowest common denominator (Reminds me of AOL).

Its all about the bottom dollar and not innovation for them. If it’s not pre-installed it doesn’t do well. Give anyone a choice and 9/10 times they will use a competitors product.

With all their problems with One Care... is now the time for Microsoft to be beating thier chest about how great they are?

VideoTube of the Day - A Thriller of a Wedding

2007-03-15T18:18:00.000-05:00

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPmYbP0F4Zw]

Need To Shorten Those Long URLs?

2007-03-15T18:14:00.000-05:00

Scoble posted this link on Twitter today and I thought I'd pass it on to you.

Ruby URL is a lot like TinyUrl except created with Ruby on Rails. It shortens your long urls into shorter ones and counts how many letters you are saving. They also provide you with a bookmarklet that automatically shortens any url you are at.

Quick Hits - Google Talk, Facebook

2007-03-14T14:39:00.000-05:00

Google has made available a new widget for its personalized homepage: The Google Talk Gadget. You also can embed the widget into your webpage or blog.

Facebook had added some new fuctionality into its photo section. You can now organize your photos within albums using drag and drop.

VideoTube of the Day - Remove Logos From Your Cell Phone With Sugar

2007-03-14T13:48:00.000-05:00

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOSVmvsSNR8]

VideoTube of the Day - Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator

2007-03-13T17:08:00.000-05:00

Democracy Player Undergoes Name Change

2007-03-12T20:48:00.000-05:00

It's still a little early to speculate what will or won't happen with the product but the Democracy Player seems to be getting a name change to Miro. I'll reserve comment until the first release with the Miro name because, well basically, they don't seem too sure of it themselves. Until then this is their blog post on the subject.

This is some big news for us. We are planning to change the name of Democracy Player.

We chose the name ‘Democracy’ almost two years ago when we were first setting up PCF. We knew it was an ambitious name, but we thought that it made a clear statement about how important it is that an open internet TV platform is for our culture.

Our early Mac beta versions of Democracy Player were called ‘DTV’– we didn’t think that we could be ‘Democracy’ until we had something substantial to offer. When we released version 0.8 for Mac and Windows one year ago, we called it Democracy Player. In the weeks before that release, we agonized over the name. It was risky and unusual and we were both excited about it and worried. Cory Doctorow, who’s on our Board of Directors, tried to talk us out of it. And we take his advice very seriously. But we still felt compelled by the name and we decided to go for it.

And, even though I’m about to explain why we need to change it, I’m glad we’ve had this name for the past year. It’s funny that a name like ‘Democracy’ can become a name for software– I think it turned out to be less odd than we expected. When people hear a name, they tend to accept it. And it helped us assert our mission clearly: free, open, and dedicated to democratizing video online. I think conveying that mission so strongly was crucial for us.

But the name also confused a huge number of potential users. In all our debates about whether you could call something ‘Democracy’ and how people would react to the name, we hadn’t realized that so many people would simply assume that the software was for politicians and videos about politics. We hear this response over and over, and it’s a real limitation to our user base.

So we’re changing the name to Miro.

We’ll working on a new icon / logo and a new website, which will be at getmiro.com.

The name change will happen over the next month or two (now would be a good time to let us know if the word ‘miro’ means something bad in any languages). Our next release will probably still be called Democracy Player, but the one after that will be Miro. And the release after that will likely be Miro 1.0.

VideoTube of the Day - The Facebook Song

2007-03-12T17:16:00.000-05:00

8-Core Mac Pro Leaked

2007-03-12T14:41:00.000-05:00

We've heard rumors about this for about a year now but it seems it is now a reality. The 8-core Mac Pro was listed on the Apple UK website and was taken down as soon as they realized the mistake. I don't know when the announcement will be, tommorow or a month from now, but you can be sure it will be met with a bit of a snicker. After all once the cat's out of the bag...

Who Knew Infoblog Would Be Affected By DST?

2007-03-12T12:45:00.000-05:00

Ok I think the new DST schedule may have screwed me up a little. I slowed down my postings to a crawl but don't worry, I'll reset my body clock and get back to a regular posting schedule ASAP. In the meantime, if you have any news or stories you'd like to see here let me know. Send your tips and/or suggestions to Infoblog3.0@gmail.com

Comic Break

2007-03-11T19:19:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of Penny Arcade

Time To Spring Forward

2007-03-10T07:59:00.000-06:00

In case you've been living under a rock, you've heard that the start of daylight savings time has changed this year. In what might go down as the most futile attempt to curb energy consumption, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed both the starting and ending dates of DST. The new dates this year are March 11 to November 4.

Some people are predicting this year to be another Y2K but there are a few steps you can take to protect yourself from imminent doom and disaster.

To make sure your system clock and Outlook appointments are correct, Microsoft offers a Time Zone Update Tool as a free download. Check the list of products affected by DST to see if you need to crawl back under that rock and wait it out.

If you are an OSX or Vista user you should be fine. Also make sure if you use XP that you set your computer to update automatically.

Related Links:
Lifehacker 1
Lifehacker 2
History Of DST

Netvibes Announces Universal API For Widgets

2007-03-09T07:03:00.000-06:00

Netvibes just announced the release of their universal API that will allow widget builders to use the API for Netvibes, Google IG, Apple Dashboard and many more...

The Universal Widget API (UWA for short) is the name of the 1.0 release of the Netvibes API. With it come major changes and possibilities.

While previous version of the API only let you build modules for Netvibes, UWA makes it possible for you to see your widget be used not only on Netvibes or on personnal websites, but also on many other platforms, both online or on the desktop. For instance, it is already possible to install a UWA widget on Google IG, in Apple Dashboard, soon the Opera browser, and many more to come...

Thanks to its open-source JavaScript runtime, the Netvibes UWA can be easily ported to other platforms. As a developer, you can leverage your existing code on a large number of platforms. As a user, you can use all your favorite UWA widget on your favorite platform - it doesn’t have to be on Netvibes only.

The reliance on open content pushes for the availability of more and more web services, leading to a “Wall of APIs”. Netvibes UWA promotes the use of legal or personnal web APIs, thus leading to a blossoming of web services, all available to UWA widgets users and developers.

Related Links:

Google operating System blog

Netvibes Blog

Jury Awards Verizon $58 Million in Vonage Suit

2007-03-08T11:18:00.000-06:00

It what could have wide ranging effects on VOIP providers, a jury ordered Vonage to pay out $58 million dollars to Verizon in its patent case. Vonage was found guilty of infringing on 3 of the 7 patents Verizon originaly sued on. Verizon originally asked for $197 million in damages. The Judge may issue an injunction but that will be decided in the next two weeks. Vonage has announced they will appeal and that thier customers will not see a change in service.

Related Links:

Vonage Press Release

GigaOM

AP Story

Picasa Undergoes Major Update

2007-03-08T07:22:00.000-06:00

Picasa Web Albums, Google's online photo sharing tool, underwent a major update today.

The free version of Pacasa Web increased its storage from 250mb to 1 gig (and counting) mirroring its Gmail plan to increase with time. 1 Gig is enough to hold about 4000 standard resolution photos.

Picasa Web also allows users to search for photo's withing the community. Previously you could only search within your contacts.

Another new feature is better integration with Blogger. You automatically get new albums for your Blogger pics and a refined linking system.

For information check:

Official Google Blog

Google Operating System