For those of you who actually read this blog, you may have seen my post on Sharing News Articles. It seemed like I had things going pretty well.
I could click on an article from my RSS reader and share it, or add a bookmark that was shared - and have them all published from one URL.
There was a comment about the fact that there are entire systems made for this - http://www.tumblr.com/ was mentioned.
Then I noticed that Paul's shares (the guy who actually figured this out - and never wrote it up) were coming up with comments and excerpts all of a sudden. So I asked him what he was doing. In the usual google way, they added another service - Shared Stuff.
Like tumblr it was made for sharing things. I still like the convenience of being able to just click in google reader, but now I can add comments too. Because of the setup that I described in my previous post, I just added my google shared stuff link to my shared link - and now it includes all three feeds.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Amazon Unbox
I'm typically not a huge music buyer. I think part of that is that I really can't stand the time it takes to go find a song, go to the store, buy a CD, rip it, put it onto some music software, sync to a device.
Ugh.
So I'm still mostly listening to stuff that I had from 10 years ago - I purchase maybe 1 CD per year.
I liked the idea of iTunes - but couldn't really get behind it because I used multiple device - my computer runs Linux, my phone has MP3s on it, my Car has a CompactFlash card slot (which I love), and I now have an iPod Touch. But only the iPod can play M4Ps.
Well, I just tried Amazon MP3 Downloads for the first time today - because it lets me download 256kbps MP3s - for $0.89 each (or less if I get the entire album). I used their downloader to get two new albums - really really simple. I one-click shopped to download two albums, and poof! There they were in iTunes.
Plugged in my iPod and they were sync'ed - and they live as MP3s on my drive - so I can copy them to anything I want.
This is totally the way that music should be. I'll be going to Amazon for all of my music from now on.
This is both a "easy to use" and a "meets my needs" thing as well as a thing based on principal. A lot of the new music that I get I find from Pandora - and I want to send a message to the labels that making their music available without DRM is the right way to go!
Ugh.
So I'm still mostly listening to stuff that I had from 10 years ago - I purchase maybe 1 CD per year.
I liked the idea of iTunes - but couldn't really get behind it because I used multiple device - my computer runs Linux, my phone has MP3s on it, my Car has a CompactFlash card slot (which I love), and I now have an iPod Touch. But only the iPod can play M4Ps.
Well, I just tried Amazon MP3 Downloads for the first time today - because it lets me download 256kbps MP3s - for $0.89 each (or less if I get the entire album). I used their downloader to get two new albums - really really simple. I one-click shopped to download two albums, and poof! There they were in iTunes.
Plugged in my iPod and they were sync'ed - and they live as MP3s on my drive - so I can copy them to anything I want.
This is totally the way that music should be. I'll be going to Amazon for all of my music from now on.
This is both a "easy to use" and a "meets my needs" thing as well as a thing based on principal. A lot of the new music that I get I find from Pandora - and I want to send a message to the labels that making their music available without DRM is the right way to go!
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Posting Media
Up until recently, I had been posting any new pictures I had at flickr, and then just expecting people to get them. That was a great idea, except it only worked for images. I've been branching out to video a little lately - I have a nice little camera that can take videos as well as pictures - so I've been using that and I'm trying to publish some of them on google video. Unfortunately that meant that people had to go look in two different places.
So in the spirit of stealing ideas from the Russell's, I finally figured out why John has been posting his pictures to flickr and also putting them up on a separate blog. Now I know.
Anyway, you can find our media over at Mike Meg and Connor's Media.
So in the spirit of stealing ideas from the Russell's, I finally figured out why John has been posting his pictures to flickr and also putting them up on a separate blog. Now I know.
Anyway, you can find our media over at Mike Meg and Connor's Media.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Sharing News Articles
I've been watching the set of posts and articles that Paul has been putting up an RSS feed as shared for a while now.
I really like the fact that he did this, and I asked him how he managed to get stuff that came as part of RSS feeds as well as stuff he just found online and shared the articles. He was nice enough to tell me.
So I now have a page and RSS feed of articles that I think are interesting.
Since he hasn't gotten around to writing it up, I figured I would. Its a really cool combination of using del.icio.us and google reader, both of which are really smart applications that don't think of themselves as data syncs - in other words, they let you expose data that comes into them.
Google reader allows you to mark any article that you read through RSS as "shared". It then creates an RSS feed for those articles that is published to anyone who's interested. Google reader also lets you tag feeds, and for any particular tag, you can create a public feed for that tag as well.
del.ico.us likewise allows you to create bookmarks with tags. For any tag in del.ico.us you can get an RSS feed (starting to see a trend yet?).
So what Paul told me to do is to create a new tag in google reader called "share", then import both my del.ico.us "share" tag feed, as well as my google reader shared items feed into that single tag. Then publish the "share" tag as a public feed.
What you get is the ability to share any article from google reader, or any page that you may see on the net you can share too.
So
I really like the fact that he did this, and I asked him how he managed to get stuff that came as part of RSS feeds as well as stuff he just found online and shared the articles. He was nice enough to tell me.
So I now have a page and RSS feed of articles that I think are interesting.
Since he hasn't gotten around to writing it up, I figured I would. Its a really cool combination of using del.icio.us and google reader, both of which are really smart applications that don't think of themselves as data syncs - in other words, they let you expose data that comes into them.
Google reader allows you to mark any article that you read through RSS as "shared". It then creates an RSS feed for those articles that is published to anyone who's interested. Google reader also lets you tag feeds, and for any particular tag, you can create a public feed for that tag as well.
del.ico.us likewise allows you to create bookmarks with tags. For any tag in del.ico.us you can get an RSS feed (starting to see a trend yet?).
So what Paul told me to do is to create a new tag in google reader called "share", then import both my del.ico.us "share" tag feed, as well as my google reader shared items feed into that single tag. Then publish the "share" tag as a public feed.
What you get is the ability to share any article from google reader, or any page that you may see on the net you can share too.
So
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
2007 Flower Show
Every year we go to the MassHort annual Flower Show. Its a great chance to get out of the winter doldrums, and really enjoy a preview of spring.
Every year, I bring a camera, and was really looking forward to playing with my new Sony A100. I figured that I should be able to do some new cool things that I never have done in the past with it, since its a full DSLR.
As we were starting to head out, I had the crazy idea that I should give Connor my compact camera to bring with him and take pictures if he wanted. I figured that he'd have fun taking pictures, and maybe even get one or two that came out pretty well.
What surprised me is how many good pictures he got. I don't think I'm just saying that cause I'm his dad either :)
Anyway, if you want to take a closer look, check out his Flickr PhotoSet, or if you want to see boring pictures from me, you can check out my Flower Show Pictures.
Every year, I bring a camera, and was really looking forward to playing with my new Sony A100. I figured that I should be able to do some new cool things that I never have done in the past with it, since its a full DSLR.
As we were starting to head out, I had the crazy idea that I should give Connor my compact camera to bring with him and take pictures if he wanted. I figured that he'd have fun taking pictures, and maybe even get one or two that came out pretty well.
What surprised me is how many good pictures he got. I don't think I'm just saying that cause I'm his dad either :)
Anyway, if you want to take a closer look, check out his Flickr PhotoSet, or if you want to see boring pictures from me, you can check out my Flower Show Pictures.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Outsourcing...
I'm moving my blog here to blogger, because I'm slowly outsourcing our house's entire IT hosting operation.
At one point we ran our own DNS server, DHCP server, mail server, our own web server, our own photo gallery, etc. When I was right out of college and didn't have anything else to do it was fun, and I kinda enjoyed it. And it really made me learn the then newish technology linux.
As I started to get a bit older, and realize that there is life outside a computer, I got sick of having to upgrade, patch, tweak, and fix problems. This blog is one of the last things to leave. Here's a list of where things have gone, and the order they left:
At one point we ran our own DNS server, DHCP server, mail server, our own web server, our own photo gallery, etc. When I was right out of college and didn't have anything else to do it was fun, and I kinda enjoyed it. And it really made me learn the then newish technology linux.
As I started to get a bit older, and realize that there is life outside a computer, I got sick of having to upgrade, patch, tweak, and fix problems. This blog is one of the last things to leave. Here's a list of where things have gone, and the order they left:
- DNS Server - www.worldwidedns.net - dns hosting for not too much money
- DHCP Server - Linksys (WRT54G - not really outsourced, but I don't have to deal with it)
- Photo Gallery - flickr.com - great app - allows me to backup all our photos for like $20 per year, almost unlimited uploads, and a cool community where I can see other people's pictures
- Mail Server, Web Portal - Google Apps for My Domain - this was awesome. I could move everything over, and point my old domains to this one. I didn't have to worry about any more stuff.
- Blog - here!
- Hosted web applications - when I used to run a D&D campaign, we used GEAS to keep track of the campaign. A few other people have picked it up and have their campaign there. I'd have to figure out how to move it to a hosted wiki somewhere.
- File and Print Services - I like having the ability to ssh into my fileserver from both inside and outside the firewall - I'm tempted to get something like a Bufalo TeraStation, but it seems pretty expensive for less that what I can already do.
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