I made my first dashboard widget a few days ago and I’m surprised at the positive response. I made a remote control for the social media platform Boxee. If you happen to run Boxee and want to control it from your Mac laptop download it and give it a try.
I’ve already had some requests for a windows version so I will try to port the code over to a gadget soon. Or maybe a Yahoo widget as well. If you really want a linux port of some kind let me know and what widget platform would be best.
I finally got my invite to Google wave and it looks like the many youtube videos I have seen of it so far. It’s fairly responsive and things seem to work well-ish. There are some noticeable bugs, like folder organizing not being as smooth as it should be etc. The biggest problem with Wave at this point is I have no one to wave to. No one I know has a wave account. Google has pulled the direct invite method and gone to an invite queuing method. I’ve read reports of people getting their accounts between 15 hrs and 5+ days after being put on the invite list.
It’s like getting that amazing new toy on Christmas and finding out batteries aren’t included. So you end up hunting through the house steeling batteries from remote controls. Well unfortunately there are no remotes to steal batteries from here. Google is holding all the remotes and there is nothing I can do about it except wait.
I’ll post my thoughts of it once my invite list get their accounts.
I must become a collector…An avid collector. A collector of information, ideas and associations. Here is where I begin. This is a challenge to myself, to my ultimate sense of creation. Do these thoughts have more value than the pretty echoes they create as they bounce around.
Two of my newest geek crushes are Boxee (an internet on your tv solution) and BuzzFeed (one of the best viral web blogs of all time). If you haven’t checked out either please do so. Today Boxee released a method for getting Vimeo channels onto Boxee with ease. Vimeo is one of my favorite video sharing sites and they maintain a spectacular product. So, I eagerly created a Boxee app for my own channel. Considering I only have 5 videos on vimeo I decided I should make one for a more productive channel. My thoughts turned to BuzzFeed and one of my favorite video bloggers Ze Frank, who’s been doing a rather interesting series on BuzzFeed and Vimeo called HardTimes. Anyway, here it is, the HardTimes Boxee app.
You’ll have to install it manually for now.
::Link Fixed::
Download the app here and extract it to ~/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/User Data/Apps
Then edit up the sources.xml file under ~/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/User Data/Profiles/<username>
and add this peice of code in the video section.
<source>
<name>Hard Times :: Ze Frank</name>
<path>app://zefrank/</path>
<thumbnail>http://images.vimeo.com/11/30/60/113060111/113060111_300.jpg</thumbnail>
<private>false</private>
</source>
You may need to restart Boxee after doing so to get the app to appear. I submitted it to boxee, who knows maybe they’ll put it in their repository.
So in a moment of nostalgic weakness we decided to watch all the Alien(s) movies this weekend. Not having a single one in my collection, I turned to the legal online services I enjoy. I began with Netflix and they had the first three movies. So without much hassle and thanks to the new silverlight player we were watching the first three movies, no problems. Then came the 4th movie in the installment. Now I know it’s not that good a movie but it was a marathon, it can’t be stopped. Netflix however failed me. They didn’t have it on play it now. No biggie, I can’t expect them to have all of them. I turn to hulu in hopes that they might have it. Nope, just a few clips to entice. So I broke down and rented it from iTunes. Now the pc I have hooked up to my TV isn’t the greatest so the rental ended up crashing iTunes every time I tried playing it. I copied it over to my intel iMac and was about to watch it there when I get a prompt saying that the movie was authorized on a different computer. This is one of my 5 authorized computers for music but apparently the rental movies are locked to one machine. I ended up letting iTunes support know about the problem. I think after all that including paying the 2.99 rental fee from iTunes I’m entitled to watch the movie. So I torrent the flick and within about 40 minutes we were watching the movie. We used the break to make snacks and the like. BTW 20th Century Fox I deleted the movie after viewing. I just wanted to watch it, not sell or distribute it. Hell I don’t even want it as part of my collection.
If only apple would release new Mac mini’s, so I can make a new media server. *sigh*
There is this interesting mashup site called YouTube Doubler that basically plays two Youtube videos at the same time. Well a couple of more famed tubers decided to really exploit this and created whats below. No matter what you think of the song itself this is rather interesting. This new read/write culture that we’ve created never ceases to amaze me. Not only are the two collaborating without being in the same room but they added a third layer ever so slightly, we have to collaborate with them to get it to work right. Even something as simple as playing to videos together gives another layer to this project.
Hit play on both videos below and then pause the one on the left. Wait for the countdown to hit :00 on the right then hit play on the left video and enjoy. It might take you a few tries before you get it in sync.
I stumbled across this short film on the internets and I liked its premise. This idea of finding a common ground between intellectual and social classes.
I’ve been having small conversations about how the labor worker is endangered in this country for a while now. Moreover thanks to technology and necessity there will be a need for more and more knowledge workers. Which we are currently at a deficit, I believe. Mainly because we’ve made it terribly difficult to become a creative knowledge worker. First, its expensive and second, we tend to pinhole a specific discipline and beat them over the head with it. So much so that it begins to dominate their lives. Architects that believe everything is Architecture, because of the very nature of the metaphor. We build relationships and design the very boundaries of our existence, etc… In every discipline as the focus becomes narrower I think a persons entire scope also becomes narrow and they believe that all life subsists of their discipline. Which is an easy correlation to make but we make it at the sacrifice of the myriad of possibilities from every other discipline. Artists love to believe that what they do and what a mathematician does is hugely different. When we know for a fact that both are interrelated. The golden ratio is a prime example as it relates to aesthetics. More over plenty of mathematicians can submit to the idea that a proof can be elegant or even beautiful. Using terms of aesthetics to describe mathematics. Sometimes science becomes more about creativity, rather than logic. Take string theory for example which states that all possibilities exists and are collapsed to a reality by an observer. Granted that being a rather simplistic statement of a particular part of string theory, nonetheless it almost sounds like philosophy rather than physics. These field experts are knowledge workers but they work at a deficit of interdisciplinary knowledge. Which is why collaboration is so important. But what if we were able to collaborate in our own heads as well as with other people. What if an Artist could put down the paint brush and discuss metallurgy or the kazimir effect. Or a chemist having a conversation on color theory or Calvino’s Lightness. What if we found a common ground in our own heads, would it be easier to talk to each other? Would the conversation be good?
With the most ironic move of the year, Netflix brings watch on demand to the Mac thanks to Microsoft’s Silverlight. I must say this implementation of their player is fantastic. The quality is excellent, sometimes resembling 720p HD. Not quite getting there but close, close enough for streaming. The player has had no problems playing a few movies. I had more problems on the windows side even a few weeks ago. Having to upgrade to Windows Media Player 11 and getting the Netflix player plugin and lets not even talk about the auto licensing issues that can occur. Also if you have the wrong monitor the movies won’t play properly some times because of the DRM solution. Lets just say it takes some trouble shooting to get the windows version of the player working properly in some cases. I actually hope they adopt the Silverlight player on the windows side as well as it was completely painless.
I took the time last night to create a new show called The App Set. A look at iPod touch/iPhone apps. Reviews, demos and what not. Have a gander if your into that sort of thing.
Two of my newest geek crushes are 
