You see, there was no reason to panic October 27, 2006
Posted by Angus in Podcasting, TWiT.add a comment
Leo posted this response on the TWiT site to the hurricane he created on Sunday night:
Submitted by Leo Laporte on Thu, 2006-10-26 00:34.
I had no idea what a storm my little sentence would generate. Hey, I was tired, dispirited, and trying to figure out how to do a show without any contributors. I really didn’t mean to scare you!
I do appreciate the incredible outpouring of support. Over 400 comments on my post, thousands of Diggs and comments, and many of you even added to your donation. Thanks so much! (Some asked for additional levels of support – I’ve added a $5 and $10 monthly subscription for you.) Money’s not the problem, but it is a great way to show your support.
I’ve exchanged emails with all the TWiTs and we’ve agreed to keep the show going, with some new systems in place to reduce burn out (including my own) and keep the shows fresh.
So thanks for all your support. We’re so glad you like TWiT and we’ll keep doing it as long as you keep listening.
This Week in Tech (TWiT) is the flagship podcast for most techies – there is no way he would be so shortsighted not to know that. What has happened though – the blogosphere went nuts (creating huge publicity), he’s had a surge in donations (it sometimes takes a fright to get people to open their wallets), he’s added 2 more donation levels of $5 and $10 per month, and without much fanfare, there are 4 new podcasts in the TWiT.tv Network.
Inside the Net looks like it has changed its name to net@nite – still with Amber Mac and Leo. There was some new artwork on the site earlier – not there now for some reason.
iLifeZone
You have crossed over into the iLifeZone. It is a special place where you can learn how to get the most out of your investment in your Mac hardware and software. Our blog is updated several times each week. And listen to our podcast on the 1st, 10th and 20th of each month.
Inside the Black Box
Join Alex Lindsay and the Pixel Corps crew as they give you an inside view of visual effects production techniques and tools.
VFX: The Visual Effects Show
VIDEO: Ron Brinkmann, Alex Lindsay and friends review visual effects of the latest movies while discussing the challenges and technologies of today’s visual effects pipeline. A great show for beginners, experts, and even bystanders!
Interesting times ahead for the best podcast network (and no, I don’t like netcast as an alternative to podcast).
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I’ve had it October 26, 2006
Posted by Angus in South Africa, YouTube.1 comment so far
Little confrontation today with pests. Have put the video up on GooTube -
How’s the way he says he is there to collect bricks, when the tipper truck has just dumped a 6m3 pile of crap.
Parts of Sandton have become free-for-all building rubble dump sites – and I’m now tired of it.
My next project:- find a way to use the web, mobile phones, digital cameras, video cameras, anything etc to fight general lawlessness. With the power of communities, these things can be beaten – preferably with a heavy blunt object.
All ideas/input/suggestions welcome!
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Is TWiT on the way out? October 23, 2006
Posted by Angus in Uncategorized.add a comment
Leo LaPorte hints that the flagship show of the TWiT network may end soon.
I think that the blogosphere has got a little ahead of itself here. Leo is probably a little miffed that no-one showed up, and needed to clear his head/vent some frustration.
Also – probably said this so that the no-shows for the TWiTcast bear a little of the brunt that he will be feeling after letting the TWiT Army down.
If you read the posts on www.twit.tv that relate to this – there are far too many people that have are not being sensible – such as wanting to cancel their dontations, etc. Calm please.
Leo has too much riding on the flagship show to let it die or even for him to deliberately kill it. Take a break Leo – see you, John, Will, Paul, Patrick and Molly back when its time. Oh, and please don’t bring Jerry back.
Product Placement the Google Way October 22, 2006
Posted by Angus in Google, TWiT.add a comment
I was reading my daughter a new Noddy book – and what do I find?
Googleberry Muffins! Now if that’s not a strong sign of the far reaching influence that GOOG has, then I don’t know what is.
Next – Gmailite Soda? Digg Spades? TWiToes Sneakers? Flickrex Pesticide? Could this be the start of things to come. What would Enid say?
Oh – and as for my Post a Day attempt – what a shocker I have been. I’m going to kick my own butt into gear and reattempt my Post a Day this week.
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A real post about Firefox Extensions October 15, 2006
Posted by Angus in Firefox.add a comment
After my weak attempt at pinpointing a couple of useful FF extensions a few days ago – I have found one that someone has put some real and ongoing effort into. Quite a nice idea to keep adding to posts so they have ongoing appeal.
My suggestions are included in the list – but there are many more, organised by use. See the Top 50 Firefox Extensions here.
The post comments also make for great reading.
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Firefox Memory Issues October 14, 2006
Posted by Angus in Firefox.1 comment so far
So I wasn’t imagining things. Seems like there are loads of other people that have been experiencing memory/performance issues when using Firefox – especially when having multiple tabs open.
So it is a feature that has caused the pain. From Element 14
‘Firefox does not have a memory “bug”, but here’s how you improve mem usage
Even after at least hundreds of posts on digg.com, even after a Slashdot article there’s thousands of people out there complaining about the Firefox Memory Bug. Lets get it straight. It’s not a bug. It’s part of the cache feature. This ‘feature’ is how the pages are cached in a tabbed environment. To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all page navigations are renavigations to pages visited less than 10 pages ago, usually using the back button), Firefox 1.5 implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last five session history entries for each tab. This is a lot of data. If you have a lot of tabs, Firefox’s memory usage can climb dramatically. It’s a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web.’
Apologies to Meebo from my post yesterday.
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Who are these people? October 14, 2006
Posted by Angus in South Africa, Web2.0.1 comment so far
Who are these people that drift around aimlessly in the middle lane of the N3, N1, N12 – going too slowly to be in the middle lane, too erratic to be sober, too dangerous to be on the road at all.
Funny thing is that they are not drunk, they are not blue-rinse 80 year olds, they are not blind, they do not have a rugby team scrumming in the back seat. Then what is the reason for the driving rot? Its their damned cellphones – and they are not even talking on them!
In the past few weeks – I can’t help notice the number of people sending SMS messages while they are driving! What the…WTF. This is far more serious than talking while driving – imagine trying to manage a 1.5 ton vehicle travelling at 100kph with cars, trucks and taxi’s whizzing past while you are trying to get some erratic predictive text feature to get the word Hartebeespoort into your next message.
Hmm – time for a Flickr Group that outs all the rubbish drivers we have in Joburg. Then pray that Metro Police use that as a source of inspiration to get on duty, off the alternative payroll and protect the weary, nervous, honest road users.
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Meebo me Meebo you October 13, 2006
Posted by Angus in Web2.0.2 comments
Found a great Ajax app a few weeks ago. Have a look at Meebo.
It is a web based IM consolidator – so you can have your MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, GMail/Jabber and AOL IM (AIM) all in one place. Sort of like Trillian – but the best thing about it is that it is online – so your IM’s go everywhere with you. And you dont have to worry about updating software, system resources being chomped on startup etc.
As with all great Ajax apps – it has drag and drop and no page refreshes. It does a great job of creating a desktop environment within the browser.
A nifty component is Meebome – which allows you to include a web chat
window on your site/blog – so when you are online, you can chat to your
site’s visitors. See the sidebar on the right of this post —–>>>.
They have 500,000 users in under a year – pretty good going. Now to try to make some money I suppose. Has to come from advertising. Other streams will probably be some premium services, content sales, possibly a corporate/enterprise version (especially for the Meebome offering).
On a downside – I seem to get system overload (Firefox freezes) when meebo has been running for a while – not sure if its related to meebo, or the other 20 Extensions I have installed. Will have to work it out soon.
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Blame it on the Bandwidth (and Firefox) (and Google) October 12, 2006
Posted by Angus in Firefox, Google, Media, South Africa, Web2.0.add a comment
After the dark years of the internet (2000-2004) there certainly has been a remarkable comeback. So what was it that has made the difference? A culmination I think:
1. Broadband – only in the past few years have there been enough people on the internet with broadband that have made the richer applications like YouTube, Writely (now Google Docs), iTunes, podcasting, video blogging etc really accessible.
2. Firefox – the browser that changed the web. I never really understood what difference a browser could make, or what the real tech geeks at work were on about when they were getting hot under the collar about tabbed browsing. Now it all makes sense.
The ability to develop and use Extensions that integrate with social applications – like del.icio.us, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon has fuelled massive adoption of these services. Imagine your browsing experience without Firefox – without Extensions.
I think that we are still only at the beginning of the ‘web as a platform’ – and the catalyst? Giving power to the people by letting innovation, creativity and utility meet in the browser through the little things like Extensions. Wait until the mighty corporate market wakes up to the power of ‘distributed content’ and ‘opportunity presentation’ using Opera and Mac Widgets, Google Panels, and Firefox Extensions.
This leads back to an adage I’ve used over the past 8 years – ‘insert your content in your customers daily activity’.
3. Shifting the Power Base – closely linked to the above point. By harnessing the collective power of the web users, special things have been created. Think social news sites, blogging, open source software, and most importantly, open source thinking that have made this era in the life of the internet so different to the past. When Tim O’Reilly coined the Web2.0 moniker – that was only just the beginning. We are still only fractionally beyond the beginning. I can’t wait for the times ahead.
The incumbents in the telecoms, utility, media and advertising worlds are (or should be) very aware and weary of the power shifting to the edges of the network – and them not being able to exert the control that they are used to from a central point. The likes of Telkom, Vodacom and SABC will continue to see their positions of power being eroded as disruptive technologies and significantly – disruptive consumers & customers, competitors, applications & software and disruptive thinking leads to innovations that leave them isolated with large expensive infrastructures, dissatisfied customers and declining revenues.
4. Google – some credit has to go to Google for making the web a different place. Fresh thinking, amazing search results, simple interfaces, and a coolness have all come at exactly the right time for the web resurrection.
The final thought – all of the above are governed by the law of abundance. I just hope that it stays this way – so that this amazing thing can continue to change the way we learn, play, work and live.
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Comparing the top Social News sites October 11, 2006
Posted by Angus in Great Sites, Web2.0.1 comment so far
Great comparison between Digg, Netscape, Reddit and Newsvine.
Its amazing to see how the dominant site, Digg, is miles ahead of their competitors. Some of the best things about Digg are the visualisation tools from Digg Labs. There is the Digg Swarm that has linked bubbles displaying the popularity and relationship between Diggers – and the Digg Stack that is a more linear, sequential display of the article/story popularity.
The big next step for them is to regionalise their sites – look out ITWeb when Digg South Africa becomes available.
