Video Downloads From Amazon

In less than a month, Amazon will launch a new video download service. As reported in a trade magazine called Advertising Age, this new service will offer both movies and television shows for download. The content will be available to purchase either a la carte or via a subscription service. In order for Amazon users to download the videos, software will need to be installed on the users’ computers, although exactly what software it will be is something that is not currently known. However, rumor has it that the downloads will be in Windows Media format, which makes me wonder if Windows Media Player will be the required software. That would certainly make it easier since the player comes pre-installed on PCs. Also unknown is which companies have inked a deal with Amazon, but the New York Times had reported in March that Amazon was in talks with Universal, Warner Bros, and Paramount. TV network execs have also been in talks, except for ABC, who announced that the network is "not close to any type of deal with [Amazon]." So if you want episodes of "Lost", you’ll still need to go to iTunes…(or torrent it.)

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I tried a new service called diigo. (dee’go). The diigo service is not only an alternative to del.icio.us, but aspires to more. Using diigo, you are combining social bookmarking, clippings, in situ annotation, tagging, full-text search, and sharing. You can add highlights and sticky notes on any web page you read. To get the most out of diigo, it’s recommended that you install the adware-free diigo toolbar. Or if you are like me, and are completely dead-set against toolbars (except the Google one, of course), you also have the option of using a bookmarklet instead. Diigo users can write on a transparency of sorts that overlays the webpage you’re bookmarking, leaving either private notes or public comments. You can even import your del.icio.us bookmarks, a necessary feature if they want to woo away those users. Not a bad service, but perhaps a bit much for me. There’s something to be said for the simplicity of del.icio.us. However, if you’ve wished del.icio.us could do more, you may like diigo. I have 20 invites; comment if you want one.

Update: Joe has a nice, detailed review - click here.

Still Flocking here. Can’t blog with it, so wondering what’s the point? However, I really like the little "X"’s on each tab. Firefox 2 will have this feature, though. Not worth switching for little "X"’s. Realized I don’t have the "Copy Plain Text" extension - a must for bloggers (esp when I can blog with Flock!) Thank goodness for the Flock’d extension. With this extension, you right-click on the .xpi (the download) from the Firefox add-ons page and you’re jumped over to the Flock’d website where you can search to see if that extension has already been converted to Flock. You don’t really need the Flock’d extension to visit the site though, just the URL: http://www.outraged-artists.com/flockd/list.php. "Copy plain text" was there - whew! (Remember to use the "find as you type" feature to find your extension quickly).

The Technorati website has just had a major revamp and I must say the end result is glorious. In fact, there’s so much new stuff, it’s really something you have to see for yourself. The short list of features according to the Technorati blog include :

• A major update to our site and to back-end systems.
• Major speed and accuracy improvements in core search.
• Link counting is more accurate and timely.
• A Personalized homepage so you can get a look at all the stuff you care about on one page.
• Technorati has been made understandable to normal people.
• New features, including Discover, which is topic-based, Favorites, which gives you the power to pick your favorite blogs, and Popular, which algorithmically derives the most linked-to items in the last few days.
• Changes to blog profiles
  - get stats about any blog that Technorati tracks,
  including the tags used, posting frequency, traffic, and Technorati
  ranking.
• Plus more to come in the coming weeks and
  months, including better charts, more real-time spam detection and
  elimination, more real-time media indexing, microformats integration, and additional localization and language support.

What I noticed right away was the redesign. Although initially I was thrown off by the different-ness of it, when I settled in and took a long hard look, I realized how well-organized and useful the new homepage really is. Everything’s one click away. For example, all the previously hard-to-locate Technorati tools are now easy to find in one location at the bottom-left of the homepage. You can even update your ping right from the homepage now. Nice. There’s even a new tool available called the Technorati Mini, and it’s definately worth checking out. The Mini is a little pop-up that searches the blogosphere for your search term by listing conversations about your search term in its window, and refreshing that list every 30 seconds. Very cool.

A New York Times article is reporting that Google Talk has only 44,000 users, and it is all the talk of the net today. However, on the GigaOM blog, there’s an update to the post that states that 976,000 people have downloaded the app, but only 44,000 people are using it. Really? Including the GoogleTalk interface in Gmail? Is that being counted? Because I haven’t used the application itself much at all, but I have used it in my Gmail. It doesn’t sound like Gmail users are being counted in this report, and that’s more a bit unfair. What’s revolutionary about Gtalk is the integration with the mail client and I wouldn’t doubt that the majority of Gtalkers utilize the app within their Gmail.

Speaking of Gtalkers…remember that lovely, AJAX-y Gtalkr website I told you about ages ago? Well, those guys were snatched up by Google to work on the GoogleTalk program and Gtalkr was no more. As of last month, Wes and Dudley Carr, the developers behind Gtalkr, were still working on GoogleTalk. Of course now they can’t tell me anything about what they’re doing. Not even a hint. But we can speculate wildy, can’t we? Hmmm. Last thing I had posted was that they were working on integrating Libjingle into Gtalkr.  Libjingle, I was told, is a generic platform for negotiating peer-to-peer communications. Dudely had said file transfer and file sharing are common uses. And that video would be the next step after voice.  Then came the Google offer. Video? Are we talking more than your average webcam chat session? OK, geeks, fill me in. I know you’re out there. Libjingle possibilities?

Blogged with Flock but picture uploaded with TypePad & trackbacks sent with TypePad. Lame.

Well, the themes part is easy - there are none. The Flock themes page is completely devoid of any alternative themes. I know it’s important to work out all the kinks in Flock first before making pretty buttons, but c’mon, no one built at least one alternative theme? Hmmph. Now I know someone once told me how to port my Firefox themes to Flock, but I’ve lost that email or link. I even tried Googling my Gmail, but I have so many Flock emails, it just would have taken too long to wade through them. Besides, truth be told, that’s great that we geeks have figured out how to port themes from Firefox, but we shouldn’t have to! There should be a few already built to choose from. Beta or not.

However, there were definately some good extensions to choose from. I went with Session Manager, Flock’d, del.icio.us, Gmail Manager, Google Toolbar, and IE View Lite. Maybe I’ll pick up some more later. We’ll see.

OK, I’ll admit it. I’ve played around with Flock, but I haven’t switched away from Firefox yet. Have I really given Flock a fair chance? Probably not. How can I, as a blogger and social networker, not at least give it a good try? So here goes. This week, I’m going to Flock just Flock and nothing else but Flock. (Ahem…except at work, where I must IE).

Task one: customize Flock. I had Flock installed on my desktop, but now it’s time to put in on my laptop. The installation wizard prompts you to run a customization wizard, too. Do it. I customized my settings, hooked Flock up with my del.icio.us and flickr accounts and imported everything from Firefox. Don’t skip this step.

Task two: Customize even further. Customize the toolbars by adding buttons, moving things around. Made a new toolbar and added all the Flock buttons (home, blog, downloads, forward, back, refresh, etc.) on it. Why can’t I put my favorites at the end of my new toolbar? Why do they have to be on their own toolbar? Ugh. Better to just hide the favorites toolbar then.

Task 3: Yahoo is the default search engine? Double-click in the search box and go to "Search Preferences", change to Google. Check and uncheck other search engines for the "Search Elsewhere" settings.

Task 4: Advanced Customization. (Hey, I can’t even begin until I have everything set up). Tool –> Options –> click "Tabs". Check box that says "Force links that open new windows to open in: a new tab". Now on to the "Downloads" settings. Select "ask me where to save every file" setting. I am not cool with everything being saved to the desktop by default. Go to the "Advanced" settings. Check "Begin finding when you begin typing" checkbox. I cannot live without this timesaver.

Next step…extensions & themes….

Update: I had to go back to TypePad and edit this post to get the photo right. Although Flock easily let me drag and drop the pic into the post, there was no setting to "create thumbnail" or wrap the text. NOT Good.

Blogged with Flock

Everyone is talking about Zune, Microsoft’s announced answer to the iTunes/iPod combo. I debated giving my 2 cents, since it would be just another echo in the blogosphere chamber. I’m not overly excited just yet. Maybe when I see the hardware and Microsoft’s verision of the iTMS, it will be something worthy to write about. However, I welcome the competition as it will hopefully bring lower prices to the mp3 player market. (I have yet to upgrade to the $300 iPod for the sole reason of price). In the meantime, I’ll subscribe to the Zune Insider blog written by Cesar Menendez, a Microsoft employee working on Zune. I’d like to point out that he doesn’t blog on the horribly ugly MSN Spaces; he’s on TypePad, like yours truly. Hmm. I like him already.

Earlier this month, a developer preview of Firefox 2, Beta 1 was released. The beta was made available soley for testing purposes, not for everyday users. The Mozilla site even warns: "Firefox 2 Beta 1 is intended for web application developers and our testing community. Current users of Mozilla Firefox 1.x should not use Firefox 2 Beta 1 and expect all of their extensions and plugins to work properly." I learned my lesson last time, I rely on my extensions too much to go without them just so I can play around with a beta. It wasn’t worth it. However, if you are ready to go boldy ahead, extensions or not, and download the beta, then you may be interested in this article from lifehacker: "How To Enable Your Extensions in Firefox 2.0."  The article refers to an extension for developers called "Nightly Tester Tools," which will make your extensions compatible with the nightly builds of Firefox 2.

Me? I’m happy to wait for the full release in all its debugged glory. So many new features to look forward to! Here’s the official list from Mozilla:

• Built in Phishing Protection. I don’t fall for those schemes, but good to have.
• Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com.
• Changes to tabbed browsing behavior. Like Tab Overflow scroll buttons
• Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs. Thank you, I really needed this one!
• Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds. Bring RSS to the people!
• Inline spell checking in text boxes Wait, is that "spell check" or "spellcheck"?
• Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
• New microsummaries feature for bookmarks Eh…who needs bookmarks when there’s del.icio.us?
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash yipee!
• New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
• New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
• Support for JavaScript 1.7
• Support for client-side session and persistent storage
• Extended search plugin format
• Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
• Support for SVG text using svg:textPath I have no idea what this means.

I just received two Vox invites. First come, first serve. Comment if you want one, but c’mon…not if you just want to look around. This is a super-cool blogging service & I want to see people using it! Anyone who comments after the first two comments will get my next set of invites, whenever that may be…