Monday, September 29, 2008

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Chris Pirillo - GEEK KING

If you need to know why Chris Pirilo is the King of the Geeks see the following from YouTube:

Name: Chris
Age: 35

Chris Pirillo has been participating in Internet conversations since 1992, having launched Lockergnome.com as a content publishing network and building Gnomedex to be one of the blogosphere's highly regarded conferences. He publishes a personal blog and lifecast to tens of thousands of viewers, and is a top subscribed partner on YouTube. When searching Google for "Chris," his site is listed as the first result. Chris also produces weekly video segments for CNN.com Live, where he offers tech advice to a savvy audience.

Geek, Internet Entrepreneur, Hardware Addict, Software Junkie, Book Author, Once TV Show Host, Technology Enthusiast, Shameless Self-Promoter, Tech Conference Coordinator, Early Adopter, Idea Evangelist, Tech Support Blogger, Bootstrapper, Media Personality, Technology Consultant, Thicker Quicker Picker Upper.

Having recorded over 1,000 videos in the past year, we once cracked the "Top 100" most subscribed throughout the whole of YouTube. Our live stats are even more impressive: over 5 million unique live video viewers watched Chris do his "thing" in 2007 - a total of 2+ million LIVE viewer hours with an average viewing time of 25 minutes per visitor. In August, stats from the live video feed were recorded at 279,878 Viewer Hours, 1,141,472 Viewers, 827,159 Unique Viewers, 395.5 Average Viewers, 707 Hours of live broadcasting.

In the first seven days of launching his most recent Web community, the logs recorded 587,402 pageviews, at 11 pages per visit, 40% bounce rate, ~10m sessions, and 50% return visitors with 3,000+ registrations. It's in his blood to build experiences with communities. He's a monthly columnist for CPU Magazine, and has authored books on business and personal technology.

City: Seattle, WA
Hometown: Des Moines, IA
Country: United States
Occupation: Geek
Schools: University of Northern Iowa
Companies: http://www.lockergnome.com/
Interests and Hobbies: Tech
Movies and Shows: TRON
Music: Techno
Books: Techie
Website: http://chris.pirillo.com/

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

My New iMAC is due Friday


Here's a post I found regarding upgrading to a new MAC (I hope it's true!!):

When migrating from and old to a new Windows machine, I would always plan for two days of hell, followed by two weeks of minor (and sometimes major) aggravation when some utility that I needed in that moment had yet to be installed or configured. I had heard that Macs have a migration assistant, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Find out what happened (as if you don't already know) after the jump.

Well, tonight I connected the two machines via a FireWire cable, and let the Migration Assistant do its thing. At first I was a bit put off by the four hour estimate to copy 60 GB, however, that quickly dropped to under two hours. To be honest, it was a loooong two hours, since neither machine was available to me during the process. You know, it can get a bit like watching a pot waiting for it to boil.

But the moment of truth came when it had completed. I dutifully turned off the "old" Mac as I was told to do, but I could barely contain myself from scoffing at the very idea that I might not need it further tonight. Then I let the MacBook Pro boot up. Hey, it knew my name and contact info already. Hey, it had my profile picture already set. Hey, that's my desktop wallpaper. Holy #$^*, all of my startup utilities are dutifully starting up, and my dock is identical to what it was on my MacBook!

That was all well and good, but are any of these programs actually going to work? I launched BonEcho (the Intel-Mac optimized version of Firefox), and was blown away to see all of the tabs that I had left open using the TabMixPlus extension opening up here on the new machine!

Other than needing to install keyboard and mouse drivers for my (gasp) Microsoft keyboard and mouse, I have yet to find anything that doesn't just work. I'd like to accuse all you long-time Mac types of keeping this secret from Windows users, but the truth is that you have been telling us, and we haven't wanted to hear it. My biggest fear when getting my first Mac was that I didn't want to become an elitist Mac snob - they drove me crazy. But now I realize it's not their fault; when your computing platform is so noticeably better than Windows, it's hard not to get a bit full of yourself. Just ask my family, friends and co-workers. Really.

Full article:
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/08/30/migrating-to-a-new-mac-say-hello-to-a-mac-switcher/

Also see: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1554

Monday, September 15, 2008

Google Android powered Mobile Phones

True to form Google is planning on offering a lot of value to mobile phone users.

Google is not manufacturing phones but instead making the software for them - called Android - and relying on a consortium of hardware partners to make handsets in an array of shapes and sizes.

In stark contrast to Apple's "one handset fits all" strategy with the iPhone, Google is hoping to mix Nokia's approach of "a handset to suit every style" with Microsoft's tactic of making the software, then winning market share by roping in many partner companies.

However, while Microsoft charges phone makers for its Windows Mobile software, Google's Android software will be free. Google says it just wants to create the ultimate internet-enabled mobile phone. The payoff for Google is obvious: more consumers of Google services, especially in large developing countries such as India and China, where many people have their first contact with the internet through their mobile phone.

"What's good for the web is good for Google," says Dan Morrill, a Google developer advocate in the US. "The more comfortable with using the web that users are, the more frequently they'll do a Google search.

"We needed it to exist ... we took a look at the mobile space and realised some of the things we wanted to do were not possible in the current landscape of the mobile industry."

What could Google not do? "It came down to permission," he says. "As a PC user, when you open your web browser, you don't have to ask your ISP's permission to change the homepage. When you want to install software, you don't have to go to your computer maker and ask permission."

Morrill is referring to the way telcos have controlled the settings on mobile phones to funnel users back into their WAP portals and the way companies such as Apple have full control over what software can be installed on an iPhone.

"We wanted to create a platform that was open from end to end," he says.

Given its history of free services, Google may also win market share quickly by providing premium services such as push email - where email is delivered to the phone instantly - and free, rather than levying a monthly or annual fee as do BlackBerry maker RIM and iPhone maker Apple. "I can't comment specifically," Morrill says, "but it is safe to say we are not going to radically change our business model of providing value to users, just because this is a mobile device."

Google's business model parallels that of the AreaGuides.com Network as many of the services offered by AreaGuides are easy to use and, at the same time, FREE.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro


BUY THIS CAMERA!

The Logitech website says "Enjoy image-perfect detail and clarity. Carl Zeiss® optics and autofocus keep images razor-sharp, even in extreme close-ups."

The bottom line is it works! I just plugged the camera into my USB port on my PowerBook G4 and it works. No software to fool around with - plug and play all the way! Just buy it!

Can be used with VidBlaster Home a very easy to use video production tool. Stream live multicam video to any Windows Media Server, or to video streaming services like Ustream and Stickam. Quickly create videos thanks to one take live recording, mixing your camera video with video clips. No editing required. No rendering needed. One click publishing to Mevio or any WordPress blog included. VidBlaster Home supports two cameras and up to four players.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Justin.TV

AreaCable and AreaRadio going LIVE?

Justin.tv is all about the live in “live broadcasting”. Everyone knows that video is now, finally, a big deal on the Internet. But the video that is a big deal is recorded video: clips on YouTube (or a bunch of other sites that aggregate or distribute video) and movies and TV shows on iTunes or Amazon.com or wherever. Justin.tv specializes in live video. What impressed us and lead us to invest in the company is that the co-founders didn’t just turn on a web site that let people broadcast live to whoever is watching; they designed a system that allowed anyone to broadcast live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from anywhere that has a reasonable cell phone signal: the most extreme version of live broadcasting.

This accomplishment was first shown in alpha versions earlier this year by the eponymous Justin Kan attaching a web camera to his hat and committing to broadcasting his life, or “lifecasting”. Out of that experience, Justin and his co-founders, CEO Michael Seibel, CTO Emmet Shear and VP Engineering Kyle Vogt, figured out how to build an end to end system that made broadcasting a video signal with even a marginal cellular signal tolerable and, most particularly, made it possible to broadcast high-resolution video both functionally and at extremely low cost. On top of that, the team has built a system for letting viewers and broadcasters cooperate in real time to make sure that the most interesting stuff being broadcast gets promoted to the “front page.”

Call us crazy but we think that a business that can reliably and systematically show people the most interesting things going on in real life in real time anywhere in the world might well be a really popular destination on the Internet. I like to think of it like this: If you can get a million people out of the six billion in the world to create a live broadcast at any one time, there’s bound to be something interesting enough to get a significant percentage of the people sitting in front of their computers to check in and see what’s happening.

Indeed, we believe that Justin.tv could well represent the first instance of a new form of media. With each new turn in technology comes a new form of media. Usually the first thing people do with a new technology is to adapt the old thing. When movies where invented, everyone stuck a camera on a tripod and filmed plays. The first radio broadcasts were simply the audio for staged plays being sent over the airwaves. We think YouTube represents early broadband video, essentially redistributing home movies and other recorded videos. Justin.tv is the first instance of a new media.

As always, there is plenty of competition for Justin.tv including Ustream, Stickam and others. In our case, we have bet on an extremely talented team of youngsters who have shown clear vision and motivation to build a business. Alsop Louie Partners lead the Series A financing of Justin.tv, which closed in August, after the company was seed-funded by Y Combinator and other angel investors and bootstrapped by the founders in an apartment in San Francisco. Check out the team on their own office camera.

(Screenshot above from http://www.justin.tv/ijustine)