Archive for the ‘Web Tools’ Category

Rediscovering Music

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

While we were living in Hawaii, I had a lot of things I wanted to do for myself. Most of them involved learning something. I wanted to become a better web developer, wanted to be a songwriter, wanted to be a media mogul, wanted to be an IT guru, wanted to listen to new music.

My friend Marty introduced me to podcasts. They have been wonderful tools for me. I can learn stuff passively without needing to pay attention. Unfortunately, my commute in Hawaii was 10 minutes each way. That’s not long enough to listen to most of the podcasts I like all the way through. So I was trying to cram  a podcast into each day, and music ended up getting pushed out.

Now my commute is ridiculously long, and I have a lot of downtime when I can either doze off or listen to something. I now have the time to listen to podcasts.

And now I’m getting a little tired of them.

I’m in no way saying I’m going to stop listening, but I don’t want them to rule my ears. I’d forgotten the joy of just listening to music.

Yesterday the Blackberry Appworld launched, and in it was a BB app for Pandora, an internet radio station that guesses what you like based on a few choices you make to start with, your feedback, and the music genome project. So far, it’s remarkably accurate. I’m now rediscovering music, and I’m loving it. If you want to hear what I’m listening to, it’s that blue box on the right, a little bit down, labeled “My Stations”

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Posted in Music, Technology, Web Sites, Web Tools | No Comments »

Communities

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

This day and age, it’s amazing to think how interconnected we are all. I post on about 5 forums, text 4 people, IM my wife, call about 3 people, work with about 30, see about 20 more that I don’t work with, and am on Myspace and Facebook with people I’ve known since I was just out of diapers.

Wow. Who would have though 60 years ago that we’d figure out how to stay connected to so many people?!

This was brought to my attention via a post on a web development forum I frequent called Sitepoint. They also publish books on the subject, many of which I’ve bought. I’ve noticed that the forum is useful and informative, and it really feels like a community. You see peronalitiy, humor, helpfulness, the things we look for in friends and hope for in collegues.

I’m sure I had more to say on the matter, but a heated descussion about driver support for Vista erupted in the office and I kinda lost my train of thought…

I am GEEK! Hear me roar! *beep*

Posted in Technology, Web Sites, Web Tools | 1 Comment »

Everywhere and nowhere

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

If you’ve noticed some unusual activity on my blog, and on MySpace, it’s because I’m trying out some new things.

I like having/hosting/maintaining my own blog. However, I’m well aware that with the connectivity of this age, where people have more friends and acquaintances than ever due to the web, asking ALL of my friends, past and present, to always check this bog is totally whacked. It’s just not going to happen.

I’ve already got an app on Facebook that reads my blog posts and updates my feed with them, driving the visitors here.

What I was lacking was something similar for MySpace. I gave up blogging on MySpace over a year ago, but I realize that a lot of my friends are still there, still blogging. So I found a plug-in for this WordPress installation to post my published blog posts to my MySpace blog.

It’s a little funky. It doesn’t quite work right, and I actually had to go into the code for the plug-in and modify it to get it to work a little better.

I also had to decide whether or not to post the whole article to MySpace or to just post a notification. I went with the latter.

Part of the problem with hosting content in different places is that it becomes nearly impossible to keep up with the feedback. Trying to read comments on Facebook, MySpace, and the blog itself every day would become pretty tiresome. So I’m making the best compromise I can. I’m having all of them come back here. Hopefully, my friends will come visit me here more often, and leave their feedback.

I’m also subscribing to all of my friends blogs in my feed readers on my computer and my Blackberry, because I miss knowing what’s going on in their (your) lives as well.

So here’s hoping that these tools help me maintain the close relationships I once had.

Posted in Blogging, Friends, Technology, Web Tools | No Comments »

Technorati!

Friday, June 1st, 2007

I’ve submitted my blog to Technorati, a place that collects blog addresses and tries to help people find relevant blogs based on the post categories. For all my friends who are reading this, I suggest doing the same with your blogs. It’s just a good idea. :)

Posted in Technology, Web Tools | No Comments »

The tools of my onlife

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

So I thought I’d share some of the web based services and applications I’ve been using lately with my readers (all five of you…). These have either made my life easier, or more enjoyable.

  1. Flickr : Flickr is a photo sharing site, with a limited free version, and a paid version. I pay for it, as it’s only $30 a year and it rocks. It allows you to store, organize, manage, and share pictures. It serves as a backup if you are afraid of losing the ones on your hard drive. If you like prints, you can order them through Flickr affiliates. There are applications that allow you to automatically upload pictures from certain cell phones to your Flickr page. You’ll have to check it out to see for yourself. It’s awesome. My Flickr page can be seen HERE.
  2. del.icio.us : This site is a social bookmarking site. It’s free. If you’ve ever bookmarked a site, only to go to a friends house and wish you could remember the site’s address, then this is the site for you. It allows you to save your links to you account, so that you can access, organize, and share them anywhere. MY del.icio.us links can be seen HERE.
  3. Google : Everyone knows Google. But they do more than search nowadays. Although I don’t personally use Gmail (Google’s email service), I’ve head rave reviews about it. The things I use a lot are the Google Calendar and Google Maps. Once again, the “I can get it anywhere” aspect of the Calendar is just awesome. The only drawback is there’s not free way to automate syncing your Outlook calendar with Google Calendar yet. It’s only a matter of time. You can plug your Google calendar into your own website if you want. Examples can be seen at Romaka.net and joyofchristonline.org. The second link also shows how you can integrate Google maps in a site, too.
  4. WordPress : This one is obvious. It’s the engine behind this blog. If you don’t have your own web server or the technical know-how, you can have you blog hosted at WordPress itself. I have my own server, so I run my own implementation of the software.

That’s it for now. I’ll talk about more tools as I discover them.

Posted in Life, Web Tools | No Comments »