Creepy Ad, Tech or Coincidence?

  By admin | June 1, 2008 - 4:30 pm | Social Networking, Web, Web Marketing Comments Off

A recent post on Techcrunch retells the story of one particular individuals “creepy” experience with a Like.com ad placed on his profile page that seems to “match” his sunglasses on the particular profile pic in current use.

Erick Schonfeld poses the question whether this is a coincident or Like.com’s previously demonstrated technology in play.

My gut feel is that unless there is some particular special reason why they want to/can match random things in profile pic’s and facebook has catered to them for this purpose, as the standard target ad builder which only allows you to use certain profile items (age, location, interest) as matches, then no.

In order to utilize the likeness search tech, that ad on facebook is going to have to have a pretty decent plugin to the facebook backend and you are going to start getting some performance issues as a likeness search can’t be a particularly fast thing to do.

No I rather suggest this is a massive coincidence based on some other interest expressed by Mr. Bearden in his profile. (Yes, they kinda know you better than you think) Perhaps he expressed an interest in the Topgun movie, Magnum P.I, or he is a fan of cocktails (which matches well with other topgun/tom cruise fans, which lead to aviation sunglasses). Lol

NAJA King iPod/iPhone stand

  By admin | April 6, 2008 - 6:52 am | Geekness, iPod Comments Off

So I am looking for some accessories to pimp out my new 8GB Ipod Touch — btw, it’s pretty schweet –.

Watching the latest episode of D&D Tv , Drew Domkus, revealed the new stand by the maker of the PED3, thoughtout.biz

Naja King

This new one is called the NAJA King (a reference to a species of snake) is based on a flexible coil of wire/cord/cable that can be wrapped around, shaped or hung in whatever way you please. It also incorporates a rotating holder so you can make use of your iPod’s auto sensing widescreen/portrait layout modes.

Nice.. definitely considering this one.

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Old-ass recording played back .. definately worse than 128kbit MP3's!

  By admin | March 27, 2008 - 8:38 pm | Geekness Comments Off

Scientist at Berkeley have played back one of the oldest recordings of the human voice ever made, made by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville.

Why is this significant you may ask?

Well the device that made the recording, a 19th Century Phonautograph recorded the sound visually 17 years before Edison got his patent for the same device. The clincher? There was no way that recording could be played back until now.

Pretty cool? Yeah, but still receives my vote as one of the most useless devices ever made. “Ok Remy, ze first reecording ever! Now how do wee play ze thing back? Oh, um …”

Here’s a link to the MP3: Link

Image courtesy of:
NY Times

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Podcasting startups on deathrow?

  By admin | March 27, 2008 - 8:05 pm | Podcasting Comments Off

There’s a worrying article on Valleywag on possible issues at Podango, this following in the wake of 20 Podshow employees getting laid off two weeks ago. The Podshow layoff’s where confirmed and explained away by John C. Dvorak on a recent episode of TWIT, he’s take was that the staff has become redundant since completing a major round of development. Where there’s smoke there’s fire?

Granted, Valleywag can hardly be called a reliable source, but I suggest keeping a close eye on this. Everyone is feeling the strain of the apparent US recession, and this could just be the slow meltdown leading on to the current bubble bursting.
I do however believe that the face of podcasting has changed over the last year, its no longer really the “voice of the people”, and people are realising that unless you are really good at what you do, you are going to battle making a living of this.
Rather its going to develop into just another delivery mechanism and those that people want to listen too will position themselves accordingly in the market. More of a traditional media pattern than the golden ticket everyone was looking for perhaps?

I will be monitoring this story closely, I really hope its all just stupid rumors, but can’t shake this feeling of dread.

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Bristle Bot, simple bot that takes five minutes to make …

  By admin | March 26, 2008 - 6:33 pm | DIY Comments Off

Pretty cool. Make a simple “Bot” in 5 minutes with a toothbrush, watch battery and a pager motor.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcgsv75TSzY&hl=en]

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Audiobooks, the commuters friend

  By admin | February 7, 2008 - 7:01 pm | audiobooks Comments Off

I have tried to listen to audiobooks on a few occasions, but that ended up being a complete failure when I realised that not unlike the famous myth, and all those smart quips I have had to eat from wife for years, the rumor is dreadfully true, men can NOT multi-task!

Silently I have lusted after the carefully selected “Book picks” on TWIT, knowing deep down that slapping together an epic page of computer prose in PHP and surfing the records of a SQL database like a dashing keyboard cowboy whilst listening to an audiobook means that you end up missing four chapters and wasting 20 minutes of your short and precious life trying to find the last known sentence still captured in the cobwebby reprieve of you subconscious brain.

Alas the spoken wordy goodness of the audiobook was something I could admire from afar! Oh cruel world!

Then one day while acting as a passenger on my hourly commute, I realised that due to my lift club situation I am wasting nearly two hours of my life every business day doing little but listening to the annoying grovel of drive time DJ’s and old Backstreet Boys hits. The lightbulb switched on at last!

Ok, so now I had the time, but where to source the books? I could join audible.com sure, but I am a cheapskate and I would rather use that money to sponsor my afternoon snack. Much better to use the money to expand the waistline than the brain I say..

So a little digging has revealed some reliable sources of good free books to get started on, though once these are depleted everything points towards that dreaded audible subscription and the unfortunate sacrifice of a fair amount of Dr. Peppers and franks for mid afternoon snack.

Right now I am delving into the decent selection of books over at Podiobooks, these are free, but I urge you to donate something to the writer and staff if you like the book, as I intend to start doing (infernal maxed credit card). Earthcore cover Right now I am downloading and “reading” (is it reading? or is it listening? heck I dunno the lines are blurred!!) a novel by Scott Sigler, its his first podcast novel and its called Earthcore and I find it thoroughly enjoyable. Scott has written a handful of books and they all seem promising.

Another possible source is Podshow Press, an initiative by Podshow to get some decent young writers published with 100% royalty to the writers. These books are published exclusively on the Podshow website.

Thats it, I am looking forwards to hours and hours of entertainment, funny, I don’t mind that long commute so much anymore?

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Knocka.tv knocks one out

  By admin | December 6, 2007 - 7:48 pm | Social Networking, Web Comments Off

If its not community or social net based its not cool. Period.

In a world where the power of the collective is becoming increasingly popular TV is still pretty much left behind. OK OK, we all know about YouTube and all its spinoff’s but YouTube is more like a massive media library and you search and drill through content. However when it comes to solid 24 hour streaming blocks of content not much has been done online.

Enters Knocka.tv, but with a twist. How would you like to be able to chat live while watching a clip (similar to uStream), how would you like to vote for a piece and thus make it appear less often or make it appear more often depending on the vote.

These are just one of the many features present on Knocka. Users will also be able to record and upload content, which others could then eventually vote onto the streams.

I have registered for a Beta account, but in the meantime you can have a look at a demo showreel on the site that shows content seperated by typical flash fillers ala MTV. Could this become what MTV should have been, the ultimate in shortform entertainment formats? Possibly this is what could make it work, at the end of the day even if a 3 minute piece is horrendously terrible you will keep watching because you know something new is around the corner.

Good lock to Knocka for throwing one of the first punches in this segment, and lets keep an eye on it.

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Geek Dinner was fun

  By admin | August 31, 2006 - 5:55 pm | Blogging, South Africa 3 Comments

The Cape Town Stormhoek Geek dinner, another first in South Africa, was a ton of fun!

Thanks to Graham and the crew from Stormhoek, and to Dave for getting it going.

I particularly made sure to gobble up some prize winning Pinotage!

Herewith my very amateur wine review of the 2 wines I had:

I started of with the Pinot Grigio and found it pleasantly bubbly and quite fruity, not too dry, but not sweet. I think it will make a great accompaniment to seafood or a wine to pop open on a lazy summers afternoon with friends.

The Pinotage was fabulous, I have had some pretty awful pinotages that often sport a very unpleasant burnt and overly smokey taste (I hope that comes across right) , thankfully this is a very civilized taste, it felt rounded and smooth and was a very pleasant experience as a whole. I’ll be looking out for this one in the shops!

Thanks again guys!

The Bloggers Identity

  By admin | August 31, 2006 - 5:28 pm | Blogging 5 Comments

Hello universe

If I write this, does it really matter? In one hundred years I will be long forgotten, no one will know my name. My life is only a spec in the history of time. Not only that, I am one of billions of specs on this planet. Do I really matter? Do I have a purpose – or am I just waisting my time? *

But wait..

I blog, therefore I am.

We blog.

But who are we?

We are all different but our blogs are all similar in structure, we don’t judge on page design or layout or spelling or vocabulary but we relish in the inspiration of others.

We write about what we love generally for no reward – we share our passions with those willing to lend an ear.

We write so others can listen – and hear our voices drowned out by the constraints of traditional media – take for example our friends at United We Blog! who are carrying the flame for a Democratic Nepal.

Sometimes its a plea for attention, literally a fight for life.

Sometimes we share our joys and good news like the new baby on the way or the photos taking in Rome last vacation.

Our writings are informal and engaging- we love to discuss open-ended topics and comment on the inspired or misguided writings of others,

We are always there available via comments, and email, and boy, do we love to chat!

You can get to know us by our writings, get the meat via the long post or share a short brainwave via a short post.

We Blog-roll our friends and nurture those relationships with the recognition of a link.

We promote exciting brands like certain wines and a coffee shop in Sea-point.

We take our virtual friendships and make them real by attending Geek Dinners!

Some of us are techies in the industry and we make fun of the latest tech news or wallow in the prospects of WWJD or “What Would Jobs Do”?

Some of us are fashion trendies with the iPod as our bible and the latest mp3 our hymn, others are housewives posting about the latest under 9 soccer score.

Some of us , like Jason Calacanis and Om Malik, have or will be making millions from our hobby-slash-jobs.

We are one in a million, 50 million to be exact.

Our time is now, this is the time for the revolution. Are you getting heard?

So back to my question, do I really matter?

Well you are reading my blog, aren’t you?

*Quoted from and inspired by the book: I Blog,therefore I am by “The book of blogs”

Rolling down the river

  By admin | August 28, 2006 - 9:09 pm | RSS, Web 2 Comments

There certainly seems to be a lot of excitement around the “Dave Winer River of news”, what he is done is actually pretty interesting, sure this is just a rehash of an RSS feed but it IS a very easy to use way of reading news, its lightweight and quick loading.

The most common anti-arguments are: (followed by my short followups)

1) Its been done before? Sure, but Dave has a way to strip things down to the bare minimum and its a case of simplicity through minimalism. River puts newest categories first which is surprisingly not a common feature and well its Dave Winer and he’s buzz worthy and gives things weird names, so there!

2) Why not just use RSS? Its a pain to research and install the software for your mobile.

3) Why not just read news on your PC? Well from a South African perspective, most people don’t have on not too mention don’t have Internet access, but a phone with a Wap-type browser and a 3G/GPRS connection is commonplace and convenient for most and the sub 80 Kb pages means 12 plus headlines at R2.00 a MB

Some other interesting things coming out of the river is the legality of republishing another’s feed is illegal or not? The argument is that if you provide full public feeds that it shouldn’t be a problem. Others argue that you are removing valuable advertising revenue for those sites.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: In case you dont understand what a River of News is, its basically a simple technique to display a conventional RSS feed in a cellphone friendly, zero setup format. Example: http://nytimesriver.com/

FAUX PAS: Hmm I just realised that the older generation wap browsers wont be able to deal with pages exceeding +- 30 KB, but those with Blackberry’s, 6 and N series Nokias and other higher level phones won’t have a problem. What is the solution? Maybe some paging?