by Matt | Jul 5, 2007 | Reviews
By now, most of you will have heard of Twitter. That horribly slow, painful to use “instant-mini-blog” piece of internet 2.0 bloat that everyone seems so attached to lately. Essentially IM, only slow and unfriendly, Twitter makes mini-blogs out of “what you’re doing at this exact second”. Perfect for 12 year olds, functioning alcoholics, people with ADD and geeks in general. Heck, even I have succumbed to it’s wiley ways, though indirectly. I started a mini-feed with one of it’s direct competitors, Jaiku. I don’t use it. It’s simply impractical for me to keep a browser window open 24/7, or near me at all times. I don’t live at my desk, I’ve got shit to do. Plus, while I don’t think anyone cares about what kind of food I’m eating at lunch, I could never think of anything more meaningful to put on those damn things. You’re not supposed to. They’re “mini-blogs”, snippets, tiny pieces of what you’re doing. They’re also horribly boring and I don’t give a crap. Neither do any of you.
There is however, something a bit more interesting. Pownce. Brain child of Kevin Rose and various Digg crew members, they’ve come up with something I might actually use. Basically, Pownce is a few things rolled into one. It has Twitter mini-posts. It has IM functionality, although it’s more along the lines of PM’s. It has link sending, event planning, feed tracking, all sorts of goodies. Most importantly, they’ve written an Adobe AIR wrapper around it, so you can use it as a desktop app. Personally, I can’t be checking web pages all day, but I can respond to messages from this little gray and green box in the corner of my screen. So, basically, take MeetUp or EVite, add Twitter and (insert IM system here) and basic ftp, and you’ve got Pownce.
The main appeal for me is that I can use this at the office. I can send files back and forth between the people here, they can do the same, we can send each other notes, reminders, links, all that good stuff, and it’s not nearly as distracting as IM. IM is, by definition, instant. So, if you get an IM you feel compelled to answer it, you’re having a “conversation”. Sending someone a note saying “remember to buy more lighting gels” isn’t exactly a conversation, so the distraction isn’t there. Pownce just sits there quitely until you’re ready to use it.
I’m sure some people will love Pownce because it’s exactly like Twitter, perhaps Twitter on steroids, which in some ways it is, but I like it because it has the convenience of IM and file transfers, only with half the distraction. That, and my boss in on board, so, I get to actually use it.
As an added bonus, I signed up for an invite the day it was announced, so, just a week later, I have my invite codes. Plus, as an early adopter, I get first dibs at the cool screen names.
If you’d like an invite, let me know. I only have a few, so I can’t send’em out all willy-nilly. If you have an account already and you’d like to add me, the screename is simply: Doc. That’ll be my home account. My work account I’ll keep secret until you sign up and I can add you as a friend.
Check it out at Pownce.com, and let me know if you want an invite. Also, check out my profile here: http://pownce.com/Doc/
Matt out.
by Matt | Jun 29, 2007 | Personal, Web
Anyone ever wanted to write a novel? I have, on a daily basis, been thinking about doing just that. Something about spies, black-ops, explosions, that sort of thing. In case you haven’t noticed the “Now Reading” sidebar, I’m on a bit of a spy/thriller novel kick. I have been for the past 3 years. So, thinking in my head that I’m a far better writer than I actually am, I’m adding “write a spy novel” to the list of things to do before I die. Not that I’m going to get around to it any time soon. Writing something like that is the sort of thing you do when you’re 65 and retired. I don’t know why I felt like mentioning that, it really has no bearing on anything at all. Except maybe to illustrate that while I have grandiose plans, I rarely actually accomplish anything. Plans, like those for SavvyNation.
To be blunt, I don’t have the voice for radio. Hell, I don’t even have the face for radio, let alone the voice. I tried several recording of myself talking about various things and none of them seemed post worthy. It’s a terribly sad realization that you sound like an aggravating 12 year old with a nasal sounding voice and a bad habit for saying “ummmmmm….”, especially when that opinion is coming from yourself. Let’s just say that I hate my own voice and wouldn’t force anyone to listen to it.
So, what’s the fall back plan? Not much. Instead of posting a review for a movie/game/thingamabob here, I’ll post it there and direct people to it via a link from here. Something to the effect of “oh, by the way, check out SavvyNation to see what I thought of (insert newest thing here)”.
I can’t really think of anything else to do with it. Sad, I know. So, scratch “have a radio/podcast show” off my lifetime to-do list and insert “write a book”. It seems far more likely I’ll be able to annoy the world with words than I will with speech.
Matt out
by Matt | Jun 16, 2007 | Aggravation, Web
Apparently, even with an upgrade for K2 and a plugin problem workaround, it’s still horribly mangled. Since the developers of K2 have moved on to other things, so shall I. I guess this kinda forces my hand at yet another redesign. Something a bit more compatible with the new WP widget system. We’ll see what I can come up with on Monday. Until then, enjoy this rather lack-luster theme.
UPDATE: Yup, you guessed it. Still broken. It seems like none of my themes, plugins, archives, etc even remotely like WP2.2. Awesome. I didn’t end up coming up with anything that would work as a theme, especially one that would be compatible with the new widget system, which seems to be 99% of the problem with this release. I’ll have to work on it more over the next week or so. Chip also gave me a heads up that the theme I was using temporarily wasn’t able to submit comments, so, now we’re back to the rather pathetic default theme for the moment. It seems to be the only one anything will work with.
by Matt | Jun 15, 2007 | Aggravation
It’s one of those days.
Apparently, upgrading to WP 2.2 breaks the K2 theme and all of it’s goodness. Nice.
by Matt | Jun 14, 2007 | Web
Don’t answer that.
My problem is that I read sites like StyleBoost, CSS Mania and Light-On-Dark way too much. As someone who doesn’t so much “design websites” as “tinkers in Photoshop”, it’s really hard to see all the great styles and ideas out there and then try and design a site of my own. I see stuff like Nagle’s “Roots and Shoots” and other vector and nature based designs and I think “that’s kinda cool, I’d like to design something like that”. Then I open Illustrator, play around for an hour, make a “root” and go to bed. The next day I see something dark and glossy and I think I’d like to do that. Then something kinda retro and collage/vintage/distressed looking. Then something really minimal and techy. It’s a never ending cycle.
While I appreciate the inspiration, I’m never getting anything done. I constantly see something else cool that I’d like to try and do. Then I abandon whatever design I had and start over. Do you know how many unfinished (read: barely started) website designs and PSD files I have in my “ideas for websites” folder? 67. How many of those actually became a website at some point? 2.
Alas. That’s the great thing about the internet. There’s anyways something new to look at. Some day I’m going to stop designing pages in Photoshop and just start creating WordPress templates that I can change with my mood. That way I can change my site daily and never be unhappy with it.
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