Josiah’s Thoughts

So, my mom just asked me for some help because someone had posted a URL in a comment on a blog post that she simply could not get to work – the URL was too long, had some strange characters in it, etc. so I told her to send the user to urlTea, have them put in the URL and give her the shorter version so there would be less chance the comment system would mangle the URL – I show it to her and she’s like “Oh! this is like that other site, tinyurl“

Yepp, my mom knows how to use tinyurl and urltea, my job is done here.

Well, Colin is apparently giving away Skitch invites, no way I could pass up a chance to get in on this party.

Everything I’ve heard about Skitch has been positive, everyone that has used it is kind of “OMG, how did we live without this??” – I hear the Skitch team is some of the nicest guys ever – I like some of their other products too, their screensaver pack has some amazing screensavers in it … anyways, getting a bit offtopic.

I think the number one reason I want to try to Skitch is so that I can easily create lolrobs.

(This started off as a post on a friend’s wall on Facebook, and quickly got far too long to fit within that 1000 character limit, and since it’s about time I posted here…)

I’ve been getting into a lot of cool web services lately, and I think you should take a look at some of them and look at joining up if you’re not already a member.

First off, I’m in love with this video sharing site, Viddler.com, check out my profile at http://www.viddler.com/explore/josiah

Viddler has some really cool features! Highlights of what it has that other sites don’t would include (but not be limited to!):

Their great built-in record feature (You can record a video directly to the site within your browser, assuming you have a webcam attached to your computer.)

Viddler’s lack of restriction on video size/time (You can upload a video that is as long as you want and any size up to 500MB)

And then there is this amazing concept of timed tags and timed comments, which are tags or comments attached to a specific moment in any one video – really, really nifty.

I’m now a part of what is being called the Viddler Viral Team – we’re working towards creative methods for spreading the Viddler gospel – and having a great time doing it.

Also, I think I’ve mentioned Twitter before, but it’s really a great service (minus some recent downtime, heh.)
http://www.twitter.com/josiah

So far every friend I have sent to Twitter has said “this is stupid” but grudgingly joined and quickly become addicted, so I would recommend you try it out – it’ll be fun AND kill your productivity.

Another service I’ve come to love lately is Tumblr – a wonderful portal for tumblelogging – you can find my page at http://josiah.tumblr.com/

From Wikipedia:

A tumblelog is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary.

Tumblr makes this easy by providing great feed aggregation – essentially automatic, lazy tumblelogging by pulling what you’re already posting to other services (Mine currently pulls from this blog, my Viddler videos, my Twitter tweets, my last.fm tracks played, my flickr photos, and my ma.gnolia bookmarks) – as well as a great interface and bookmarklet for posting directly to Tumblr.

Another service I now adore is ma.gnolia – thanks Colin! I poked around with del.icio.us several months ago but couldn’t really get into it – felt awkward to use, just felt like I was wasting time with it. Enter ma.gnolia – there are so many things done right with ma.gnolia that it makes it impossible NOT to bookmark things, they just make it feel like a natural extension of reading any interesting page. (I’d say more, but Colin’s review – linked above – pretty much covers all the bases.)

You can find my ma.gnolia page at http://ma.gnolia.com/people/josgoodson

So, there ya go, a short run down of the various ways I’m spending my time online these days.

Michael Arrington writes over on TechCrunch about the disparity in price vs supposed value for YouTube and Photobucket at the time of their acquisitions by Google and MySpace, respectively.

I think the thing he failed to really directly address is the “hype factor” and the name-brand recognition that YouTube has/had versus Photobucket. Due to the copyright infringement cases, the controversial and/or wildly popular videos that have made it onto the site, phenomena such as lonelygirl15, etc, etc. YouTube had that name-brand recognition going for it. For instance, my grandmother (whom I love dearly, Luddite or not ) does not even have an internet connection and hardly ever turns on her computer, however she knows what YouTube is and has a general idea of how it functions, I seriously doubt she has ever heard of Photobucket.

At the time of their acquisition YouTube benefited from being a site that was wildly popular and growing quickly with the added eye-catcher steeped in a nice little dose of controversy. While Photobucket may actually numerically be a more valuable acquisition, in my opinion it just doesn’t currently have that zing behind its name that inspire multi-billion dollar bids.

That being said, Photobucket does have a lot going for it – though I personally use Viddler and flickr for video and photos, respectively. So I think that MySpace did get a good deal with their purchase price of the site – should be interesting to see what they do with the site though – MySpace’s excessive ad placement tends to vex me extremely.

There’s a story on Reddit’s front page right now, The avalanche has begun: Toshiba (Italy) considers preloading notebooks with Linux

I am all for the wider adoption of Linux, and vendors that are willing to preload a Linux distribution on their machines rise considerably in my estimation. However, pardon my skepticism if I don’t think this is necessarily the beginning of some avalanche – since when did a single rock rolling down a hill equal an avalanche? Might be a precursor to such an event, or maybe it’s just an interesting singularity.

Also, just read the title! They haven’t even committed to something! So I guess my earlier statement should have really been “A rock thinking about rolling down a hill does not an avalanche make.”

Sorry if I can’t get so excited about a single branch of a large corporation investigating the possibility of maybe providing their customers with the option of ordering Linux preloaded.

Well, Digg pretty much shot itself in the face yesterday with their handling of several of their member’s decision to post the HD-DVD decryption key that recently became available through a court document.

Allen Stern posted about this over on CenterNetworks, in the article he mentioned Y Combinator News as a Digg alternative – yeah, Y Combinator is pretty cool, but when it comes to Digg alternatives, where’s the Reddit love? From what I’ve seen Reddit is one of the closest sites, community and functionality wise, to Digg – without the big brother complex!

(Disclaimer: if you don’t like xkcd, Reddit may not be for you. )

Coming soon: A real, original blog post from yours truly, but until then, DON’T WATCH THIS VIDEO!