websites Articles
04/10/2008 • comments (1)
flickr community divided about video
Posted by Rick Rey

photo by sa_steve

Video on Flickr has only been active for a day, and already a subset of the Flickr community has banded together against it. The We Say NO to Videos on Flickr group has 20,000 members and has submitted over 1,200 photos to the group's photo pool -- most of which carry an anti-video sentiment like the one above.

The introduction of 90-second video clips has many members worried that their beloved photo site will turn into a YouTube clone.

Personally, I like the idea of videos on Flickr -- especially considering the ultra-short nature of the clips. But I wonder if they should have a better way of distinguishing between the 2 types of media (e.g. video clips still have the word "photos" in their URL's).

What do you guys think? Will Flickr be forever changed?

filed: tech, websites
tags: tech
03/28/2008 • comments (0)
cool firefox addon: shareaholic
Posted by Rick Rey
Shareaholic

I recently started using the Firefox add-on Shareaholic, and it's truly quite awesome in a mega-useful way. It lets you quickly submit the page you're browsing to a bunch of different bookmark/sharing websites, including del.icio.us, Digg, Tumblr, Twitter, and a lot more. It's a must-have for all you hot and sweaty social web lovers.

filed: tech, websites
tags: firefox
03/26/2008 • comments (2)
personal aggregators vs. blasters
Posted by Rick Rey
hellotxt
hellotxt is an example of a "blaster"

This week Zadi talked about a few of the personal aggregators out there that let you pull your feeds from services like Twitter and Pownce so all your updates show up in one centralized location. If you use an aggregator like FriendFeed, Socialthing, or iminta it doesn't matter which networks you use and which ones I use -- we can keep up with each other on the same website.

An alternative approach sort of accomplishes the same thing by doing the exact opposite -- instead of pulling from multiple places, it lets you send to multiple places, and it's causing a bit of controversy in the social space. I'm talking about "status blasting" services like HelloTxt, which let you to ping multiple services with the same message simultaneously.

» This article continues

filed: tech, websites
tags: geek, story, tech
02/29/2008 • comments (2)
LOL speek iz easy now
Posted by Rick Rey
TXT2LOL: Translating to and from LOL
Has youz ever wanted to translate sewmezthin witten in LOL but youz just couldn't do it? Now youz can fanks to teh wonderful TXT2LOL trahnslatah.
filed: websites
tags: funny, geek
02/22/2008 • comments (2)
trek and other classics now streaming at CBS
Posted by Rick Rey

Forget Hulu and their private beta shenanigans. CBS is now streaming all 3 seasons of the original Star Trek series (and a few other classics, including Twilight Zone) on their TV Classics destination. No sign-ups. No international restrictions. Just pure unadulterated Trek madness.

Zadi will get a kick out of this, because I know she's a big fan of TOS. I'm more of a TNG guy. Sadly, no full-screen or embedding options, but the 15-second ads are very bearable.

EDIT: Seems like some of our international commenters aren't able to view the videos after all. Sorry, guys!

tags: video
02/22/2008 • comments (1)
hillary is mom jeans
Posted by Rick Rey

Can't. Stop. Reloading. HALP!!

tags: politics, weird
02/16/2008 • comments (0)
beat-boxing hound
Posted by Zadi Diaz


A dog with fresh beats? What more can you ask for?

This made me laugh pretty hard. Play around and record your own mix.

tags: music
02/05/2008 • comments (1)
rorrim kcalb is black mirror
Posted by Rick Rey
Black Mirror / rorriM kcalB

Explore the music video for Arcade Fire's Black Mirror at rorrimkcalb.com while deconstructing its tracks while you listen. Press the numbers shown underneath the video to enable/disable the tracks. A very haunting experience.

01/26/2008 • comments (0)
web trend 2008 map
Posted by Zadi Diaz


Check out the web trends map for 2008 by Information Architects. They've taken about 300 of the most influential web sites and mashed them up with the Tokyo train map. Check out the clickable online version. You can get a large poster size PDF for your home or office and they're coming out with the desktop wallpaper soon.

[Via informationarchitects.jp]

filed: tech, websites
tags: mashups, tech
01/21/2008 • comments (0)
track candidates at politweets
Posted by Rick Rey
Politweets

Here's a cool site I discovered recently for keeping up with real-time conversations about the presidential candidates. It's called Politweets and it's a Twitter-mashup that tracks mentions of the candidates' names and organizes the discussions into columns for Republicans and Democrats. It's not perfect, especially for Ron Paul -- whose last name is pretty common so only his full name tracked, but it's still useful for keeping up with what's going on in campaign-land.

Definitely check it out tonight during the South Carolina Democratic debate on CNN.

tags: mashups
01/16/2008 • comments (13)
the joys of private bittorrent trackers
Posted by Rick Rey
SANY0016.JPG
On this week's EPIC-FU Zadi talked about the new BitTorrent search engine YouTorrent.com -- which is an awesome site for the average person looking for files available on public trackers. But if you want to get your hands dirty and really explore the torrent scene, you should consider joining a private tracker. Why go private?


It's faster.
Leechers are the scourge of the peer-to-peer community. They disable uploads during their download sessions and slow down the network for everyone else. Leechers run rampant on public trackers where there's no accountability.

Because private trackers enforce ratios, leechers are spotted quickly and their accounts are disabled. Ratios work like this -- if you upload as much data as you download, you have a 1:1 ratio. Better trackers have higher ratio requirements, but generally speaking 1:1 is considered good.

» This article continues

filed: apps, tech, websites
tags: tutorials
12/16/2007 • comments (0)
tweetgifting!
Posted by Zadi Diaz
tweetgift.png


Now you can give your twitter friends free virtual gifts with tweetgift! Just an extra little way to brighten up someone's day. :)

filed: apps, tech, websites
tags: apps
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