StockTwits builds vibrant community on top of Twitter
This is an outstanding and candid interview with Howard Lindzon, cofounder of Stocktwits. He discusses a lot of interesting topics outside of Stocktwits which I really enjoyed. He is an interesting guy and definitely gets it. Thanks to Robert Scoble and the building43 team for bringing this to us.
Milo: Check Real Time Product Availability At Local Stores
Oldie But Goodie: Sketching with a Sharpie - (37signals)
A great common sense tip from Jason at 37Signals. This makes perfect sense but is one of those things that's easy to trip up on - I personally find myself doing this - using a detail tool for the project requiring broad strokes.
Blog workflow adjustment
Today I made a slight adjustment to my blog workflow after reading some or your comments and looking at some other workflow example. I decided to set up Posterous to autopost to my main blog, Tumblr and FriendFeed (I removed Twitter). FriendFeed is grabbing stuff from other places, excluding Posterous (since content is already pushed there), my Blog and Tumblr. Friendfeed is now my "middleware" and is pushing content to Twitter as the final broadcast bit. This is how I originally designed my workflow pre-Posterous. This post will be the inaugural post to this workflow, and if all goes well, there should be no duplicates and content properly archived and distributed everywhere. Let's see how this goes.
Gmail Gives Labels the Folder Treatment (Lifehacker)
I mentioned this one yesterday but favorite site Lifehacker has a nice overview of this feature. I have been playing with the new implementation and really like it. I was an avid label user before and now find them even more useful (if that is even possible). I find when I am at work, I miss Google Apps and Gmail features with our corporate mail system. GMail gets it. And finds are super fast when Labels are used correctly.
GFI Backup automates tedious backup tasks
This looks like a great product that fills a niche I have needed to fill for a while. I have been using Carbonite for remote backup and this would be a handy tool for automating the local backup process (right now I drag and drop to an external SUB drive). Plus the home edition is free.
More info from the gfi.com website....When was the last time you backed up all the important files on your hard disk? Do you have a backup copy of those precious photos taken on your last holiday, of your resume and other important documents you have created, or of your favorite music and movies? While most computer users admit backups are important, few people actually do so… until it is too late and the damage has been done.
By minimizing the risk of loss, backing up your files is similar to taking out an insurance policy on your data. Now, with GFI Backup™ 2009 - Home Edition, you will never have to worry if your hard disk fails or a virus wipes out your data.
More info and a download link can be found here at gfi.com
Blog Smarter | Zemanta Ltd.
Great, another tool I can't help but try. When will it stop? LOL, hopefulyl it won't. This is another example of the cool, free stuff coming out these days to improve efficiency and communication.
Google Wave presentation - abridged
Spoke with Apple at lunch time today about the YouTube posting issue. Turns out not all YouTube content can be played on the iPhone, even if its on YouTube. Did not know this. Just assumed it would all play. Must have missed that day at school! Anyway, here is another post that I think will work - and its smaller. This is a heavily edited Wave preview video. Posting it here more for testing than anything else. But its a tenth of the size of the original post in case you have ADHD and still want to learn about Wave.
Why do I care about iPhone playback on my blog?
A short side post - why do I care if iPhone users can view my YouTube embeds? Having a portable platform for my content is a large part of my blog "masterplan". The combination of WPTouch for a killer interface and the upcoming submission of my "cjsparno" app to the App Store means I am really concerned if stuff magically starts breaking on the iPhone and its not something I have done to break it. And trust me, I break a lot of stuff on my own!
First off, Apple, get your Sh** together and support Flash natively. Oh, and support Hulu too, the world is not 100% Quicktime, even if it is a superior product.
Second, don't break aforementioned Sh** and not tell everyone you did that. Oh, and let me know where I should send the bill for my wasted time last night.
PS - Dear Apple, your tech support for this type of problem sucks it.
iPhone 3.0 video playback fail
I attempted to recreate the link numerous times. Even installed a plug in called Smart YouTube (which I highly recommend) to get around the whole "copy the embedded link or just the plain link" dilemma. Still nada. The weird part is that older YouTubes I have embedded prior to today are working fine. At first I thought it was my WPTouch template, but it fails in regular safari too. Of course I played around with it till 1:30AM before thinking I should see if it works on my wife's iPhone (running OS 2.x). It did.
This morning, I started the process at 8AM of backing up and restoring my iPhone with a clean install of 3.0. Mid way through, prior to restoring my settings and apps, I tried hitting my blog again and the link still is broken. So a clean install did nothing to resolve the problem. By the way, it is still restoring my settings and apps as of 11AM, not a fast process, and not sure why it would take so long to reinstall less than 1GB of data (since its not restoring my music or pics).
So I am completely lost at this point and tired of dealing with the problem. The techie in me wants to resolve this of course, but frankly I am disappointed I even have to deal with this. Especially when older posts work just fine. Did YouTube change something with their embedding code? I have no idea. But if anyone has ideas, I'd love to hear em.
