Some photos from Niagara Falls. You can view the album here:

Blackberry Part Two

I Love my Blackberry Curve

Content

(warning: long post)

The web is a complex tangle. There are literally thousands of places that you can spread yourself around at from blogs to facebook to comments on Amazon. No super-stores exist; there are no singular places where you can go to that can sufficiently support everything you could or would share on the web. Facebook comes close but it’s not easy to meet new people there nor does it sufficiently organize your content in a manner that takes advantage of it’s full capabilities.

When I built my new dashboard approach (www.danbuell.com) to my content a few weeks ago I called out and linked to the following sites:

Tumblr. For blogging

Picasa. For photos

Flickr. For videos

Google Reader. For link sharing

Twitter. For Microblogging

MuxTape. For Music Sharing

FriendFeed. For Feed aggregation

Facebook. For Social Networking

Disqus. For Comments

GoDaddy. For password protected directories for private files.

LinkedIn. For professional networking.

I’ll get into why I chose each of these places in a moment but there are a few important things to call out first. This list will be perpetually calibrated as web services become more mature and as new entrants (such as Muxtape) come onto the scene.

This is both good and bad. It is good that the web continues to grow in capability but it is bad from a content management perspective because it risks orphaning things out there that happened from the past. For example, if I move from Google Reader to Delicious for link sharing, which I believe I am, a lot of the old links that I referenced on Google Reader are pretty much gone forever as it is unlikely that I’ll refer people to both.

It is this phenomenon that makes me “freak out” every once and a while and pull everything together in one place, one blog. Wordpress took big steps recently to be able to do this better but it’s still not perfect and I pretty much hate every cartoonish, pastel-colored Wordpress Theme I’ve ever seen. I looked at over 800 themes today and they all pretty much sucked, come on people!

Anyway, why did I choose who I chose, what is lacking and where might I go ultimately?

Tumbler. I chose Tumblr because it was easy. Super easy. It still lacks some build in features like comments, etc. but still. E-A-S-Y! The only blogging service to come close to being as easy is Blogger and I can’t use Blogger on principal since they haven’t added new themes in over 5 years. The other thing about Tumblr is the cool people are here. Enough said…

Picasa. I like Flickr much better but Picasa’s photo organizer and editor software is probably the best freeware on the planet and adding photos to Picasa/Google’s online photo service is a breeze. I’ve added buttons for Facebook and Flickr. Flickr use to have the best uploader application but they’ve overly complicated it and although Facebook is every bit as easy as Picasa, Facebook limits you to 60 photos per album, it’s harder for non-Facebook people to use and most importantly, it displays the albums not based on when the photos were taken but when you uploaded them, which I’ve always had a problem with most services who adhere to that silly logic. It’s a trend of sorts but Picasa is just easier.

Flickr. I do use Flickr for videos. I think the 60-second rule is a bit silly but I like how I can organize the videos into sets and collections - you can do that at Vimeo as well but it’s not as intuitive and their video quality and upload restrictions are not as good.

Google Reader. I chose Google Reader because it seemed pretty easy, was web-based verses the slow desktop applications you can use. I love how it integrates into Facebook, if I was going to use Facebook more, I’d stick with Google Reader but the biggest constraint with GR is that I can’t add comments to what I’m sharing - who designed that by the way? They should be fired! Delicious allows me to make little smart ass comments when I share a link. I will be moving to Delicious in the coming days.  I am beginning to use Netvibes to sift through web content and will use Delicious to share it.

Twitter. I use Twitter for Microblogging although I’m not sure why I do to be honest. Their service is down all the time and even though I have a nice community, I do not believe that we read each others Twits. It seems like we’re just chirping into the breeze. Perhaps this is my experience and others have a different experience but I post on Twitter 4-5 times a day, have about 60 people following me and in one year have received 3 replies. The bigger challenge that I have with Twitter is that I can send an E-mail message to Tumblr, not be restricted to 140 characters and pretty much accomplish the same thing - not sure why I continue to use Twitter, maybe it’s their cool widgets? If I were to move to a less mobile blog such as Wordpress, I can see continuing to use Twitter but if I stay at Tumblr, I can’t fathom why I would keep using Twitter.

Muxtape. Muxtape is clean, simple and nice. It has some restrictions. I actually like how easy it is to share music on Wordpress or Vox but Muxtape has definitely caught my attention. Will continue to use it for now.

FriendFeed. FriendFeed is cool so long as you’re not back-dating posts. I really like the service and think if they were a little more creative and allowed you to date stamp things and embedded a full-fledged blogging/posting capability instead of the Twitter light thing they have now that this could become a central blogging repository.

Disqus. I used Disqus for comments, only because Tumblr does not have built in comments (which is just plain weird by the way). If Tumblr had comments or if I moved to another blog hosts I wouldn’t use Disqus, don’t really see the value.

GoDaddy Password Protected Directories. I have a lot of video and audio files from when we were kids that I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Henry listening to or watching. I store those in a really organized fashion with GoDaddy’s password protected directories.

LinkedIn. I don’t use it much, don’t understand it all that well. Seems like a grown up Monster.com essentially.

What’s Lacking?

1. A good service that allows me to share my movie and music reviews.

2. More integrated blogging with other types of content.

And Again...

After a somewhat heated discussion last week about the state of things it appears that I am going to have to take a day off work to get the house clean as it appears that a band of crackhead gypsies has overrun my house…

Very, very sad… 

A Drumstick in the Eye

It’s been quite a year for souvenirs so far. I got an autographed baseball by my hero Johnny Bench in February and in May I caught the broken drum stick of Glen Graham, drummer of Blind Melon, which about pierced Debbie in the eye.

It was easy really, we were about 5 feet from the band on stage.

I saw Blind Melon with Travis Warren in Chicago in October. Since then, the show has become a lot more tight. Maybe it was the lasagna I ate while waiting for BM or maybe it was that I could play with Brad Smith and Christopher Thorn’s pedals or maybe they’re just that damn good but this was one of the best concerts of my life.

Travis Warren has become a lot more confident in his voice and his style and emulates Shannon Hoon a lot less but hits his notes a lot more. The guy has a lot of talent, here’s hoping that gloss in his eyes was allergies and not some sort of chemical.

Anyway, super awesome concert!!! Here are a couple of blurry photos and a video snip. I didn’t record much video, I wanted to but thought it wouldn’t be right to infringe upon them - besides, I just wanted to enjoy the show, which I did.

Blind Melon Awaits

The Golden Compass

Music, Photos, Video

Slow and Unreliable

1.) I have lost all interest in this alleged Facebook redesign.  They keep talking about it, changing their mind and pretty much dragging it on way too long by trying to please everybody.  Newsflash, you can’t please everybody!!!

2.) Does this ever happen to you?  You can’t use Twitter…  Yeah me too, often.  Twitter has to be the most unreliable service on the web, nothing is down more and I wonder how they are maintaining Golden Child status even though they are completely unreliable? 

Sicky Poo & Websites

Still sick.  Shaky, feverish, stomach ache, dizzy, might be a flu, I thought it was just vertigo, maybe not…

I am really digging how my website is working all through Dan Buell.com… If I feel like making a post, I make it here.  If I feel like making a small, easy post I make it on Twitter, if I take some photos, I can upload a few here or just upload them to Picasa.  Videos?  to Flickr.  I bookmark articles on Google Reader, I might start using Delicious again too but not now.  Music?  Muxtape.  Old Admiral Tape stuff or secure private video/audio, I can upload it to my password protected directory and it’s there.

There is no longer any need to have to get every single thing on this blog and nobody will miss a step because of FriendFeed - it’s all on my sidebar on Dan Buell.com - pretty nifty!  Kills a lot of birds…