Twitter

When Twitter is overloaded you get the Whale image - little birds trying to pick up a whale. It's a good metaphor for what's happening with server load. More recently the Owl has been showing up when I try to perform a user search. The owl says "Night-time" but really means that WHO you're looking for isn't going to happen.

I love that their errors are sweet images in the blue/white/orange color scheme.

Macgruber

Oh man, SNL's Macgruber series is hilarious! Each SNL that sports these nifty skits has 3 mini clips and each set is themed to a different issue Macgruber has in his life.

This week on SNL (May 10, 2008) Macgruber deals with the sexual orientation of his estranged son played by Shai Labeouf:

Virtual Chumby

I wanted to share my Chumby widgets with everyone so I've created a virtual Chumby for everyone to enjoy. It is connected with my actual Chumby so if I make a change to it, you'll also see it here. Cool Eh? It'll start with a clock but if you wait about 15 seconds you'll see the next widget. Each widget appears for an amount of time I've chosen ranging from 15 seconds up to 5 minutes. Enjoy.

1972 - Good vintage

Growing up in similar cultures does matter. It's been a trend for some time now, running into like-minded others who I later realise were born in 1972 too. I never used to think that it mattered (as I am currenly married to my best friend ever who was not born on or near 1972) but I am now sure that it adds something to each professional and personal relationship. I find an odd connection here or there with others born the same year and think about how we were all growing up together, experiencing the 70's, 80's, and 90's as a group.

(Photo: Easter Sunday 1977 - I am the cute girl in the middle - love the green shag? Plaid clothes?)

Many of those I meet are into either educational technology or writing or both and it makes me wonder what about our upbringing brought it on. Do you remember learning to make your name scroll on a black and green computer screen in 7th or 8th grade? Do you remember your first 3-D movie? How about wearing bell-bottoms in elementary school and then pinned jeans in high-school? Neon shirts with poof paint? Wearing two polo shirts with the collars up and then socks that match both shirts? Sweats pushed up to the knee, Star Trek? There's too much here to write about.



Am I the only one?

Lots of new stuff

My Twitter account has been the best thing ever. Brian introduced me to twhirl which has allowed me to view people I'm following when they post rather than browsing to the twitter page to read through the items.

I still sometimes go right to twitter because it's type in area is nicer due to recent improvements.

In the last day I've also learned about Blubrry for podcasting, hulu for watching free movies and tv shows, FriendFeed to compile social networking accounts, and someecards which are free ecards and totally for entertainment purposes - and you can of course also purchase paper cards too. I'll post more as I begin to use these new web tools.

Chumby!!

I am waiting for my Chumby (http://www.chumby.com/) to arrive and excited to have this little widget holder in my hands. Chumby allows you to have your entertainment and informational widgets on it rather than a webpage such as iGoogle or other RSS feed organizers. Widgets are created and developed by anyone and uses Flash as the programming language. Chumby also can be an alarm clock which means I'm going to put it at my bedside. I will be able to check the time, weather, entertainment news, iTunes music, Facebook, view my Flickr photos, and much more - before I go to sleep at night and when I wake up in the morning.
Kirk Yuhnke (Brian's older brother) got one to review and did so on his blog: http://community.myfoxutah.com/blogs/KirkYuhnke/2008/03/07/Check_Out_The_Chumby
I can't wait to play with this cool little bit of technology!

Update:

Got my Chumby within a few days of ordering and am adoring it. I immediately opened it up, plugged it in, and registered my Chumby online. With the Chumby you can create multiple 'channels' with an infinite number of widget combinations. Want to have a channel just for games? You can do that. Want a channel for webcams? You can do that too! I created two channels - the default with a variety of the most interesting widgets (in my opinion) that I was pretty sure to use. A second channel is for experimentation with widgets that look interesting but that I'm not positive about.
Each widget has settings for how long the widget will display on-screen before moving to the next widget. If you engage with the widget it will not move forward until it's been inactive for that many seconds. I set most to move on in 15 seconds.
There are new widgets being created every week but for the current list see: http://www.chumby.com/guide.
If you're into Web 2.0 technologies like Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace; you can activate a widget with your personal information. If you're a Flash developer you can even create widgets for yourself or to share.
My current favorite feature on the Chumby is the Alarm system which is as versatile as you wish your ho-hum bedside alarm clock would be. You can set up weekend and/or weekday alarms, special alarms, and as many as you want. You can wake up to a traditional tone alarm or to any variety of radio stations. You can play the alarm for any amount of time before an auto snooze for (again) any amount of time. The configurations are endless and can suit your preferences for waking up.

So yes - I'm enjoying Chumby.

Watching a Blimp take off

Last week Dave and I saw the Blimp heading in for a landing and stopped at the field to watch. Turns out they were unloading and loading passengers so we got to see it take off. Such a cool thing - pretty much right here in our back yard. We often see it flying over the house or when we take a drive to Hartville Hardware. We saw it crash while driving by on Rt. 43 in October 1999 but didn't realize that it deflated until we heard it in the news later that night. I'm glad they were able to repair it!

Here's more information about this Blimp - http://www.goodyearblimp.com/fleet/spirit_goodyear.html

Yahoo Live Chat with Broadcasted video

So I'm experimenting with Yahoo Live at the moment and trying to embed their code into this blog. Here goes!



Thanks go to Brian for twittering about this Yahoo feature. I don't always have my camera with me or attached to my computer so you might not see a thing here!

I love twitter

(most of the time)
Even when they're experiencing a technical issue they can be fun. I haven't been involved in any other site that made outages a neat thing.

Don't get me wrong - outages aren't good when you're talking about a social network and it would be nice if they weren't necessary - but why not have fun while you're at it?

I've heard some neat twitter ideas lately, many from Cnet Gadgettes or Buzz Out Loud podcasts. The best one is a twitter novel. I searched for people currently doing twitter novels and found a small number. Some approaching it like mini, 140 character, novellas and other like each entry is one part of a much larger novel. Seems that there are people in China writing novels through phone texting as well. Is this the new way to communicate? Short and sweet? I wish my clients would take that approach when communicating with me!