6.26.2008

Retiring from this blog.

Time to change things up again. I'm going to be leaving this blog for my shiny new Wordpress self-hosted one. Please update your feed subscriptions, bookmarks, tags, etc. as necessary.

http://blog.infinitelymeta.com
http://friendfeed.com/infinitelymeta
http://twitter.com/infinitelymeta

- ∞ +

6.25.2008

Reef Tank Live Feeding

View of my 300 gallon reef tank during feeding:







Camera 2:

.TV online : provided by Ustream

6.24.2008

Twitter, where I can have open conversations with amazing people.

Just had an interesting twitter @ exchange with Werner Vogels, who happens to be the CTO of Amazon. It's incredible how accessible Twitter, Friendfeed, and other socnets make folks such as he. Scoble proved that it also seems to be working in the US Government. Interesting times these are.

6.22.2008

I have a 2 BR / 1 BA apartment for rent in the Eastlake Neighborhood in Seattle, WA. $1395/mo

Details can be found on Craigslist:
http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/apa/728705385.html

6.20.2008

Ran into Chris and Ponzi Pirillo at Fast Pitch today


guess who i ran into :)
Originally uploaded by Brian Daniel Eisenberg

I just happened to be scanning Upcoming yesterday and found an interesting event happening in West Seattle today.

See: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/660044/

Basically was a fast pitch event where entrepreneurs get 2 minutes to pitch to a panel of VC types and also get questions from the "crowd". I streamed it live on UStream (as did Chris Pirillo).

I've interacted with Chris on several occasions online, but never met him in person. Was good to finally meet him and Ponzi. Good people all around.

So the event was pretty cool. I sat next to a bunch of folks who work for Amazon and specifically for AWS. Funny how being at the right place at the right time makes all the difference.

Then I met the guy who basically was behind MTurk, who was one of the entrepreneurs who pitched to the panel/crowd.

So 1.5 hrs of time spent quite well. Got at least 3 new contacts at AMZN and also guy from MIT. I'm thinking about trying to build one of the engines I have sketched out. Already have the perfect domain. Just need time and a couple of coding ninjas to execute on this plan.

Will ponder this as I sip ice cold drinks at my sister's in Ballard, which is where I'm heading right now.

6.19.2008

In order of importance: Yahoo services I rely on.

1. Flickr
2. Del.icio.us
3. Upcoming (updated)
4. Pipes
5. MyBlogLog (updated)

That's about all I can come up with lately.

What other services do you use from Yahoo? Follow the conversation on Friendfeed

Update: mybloglog is another service I used to use a while back. Thanks to Mike Doeff for the reminder about MBL.

6.18.2008

what do you think?


what do you think?
Originally uploaded by pplpwrd

Friendfeed gets more social with new "Like" enhancement.


Can now expand and see all "Likes" for stuff on Friendfeed
Originally uploaded by pplpwrd

You can now expand and see the names of everyone who "Likes" something on Friendfeed, a highly desired feature from a lot of early adopers, myself included. Good stuff.

Infinitely meta


DIY mirror project. v1. essential for bending streams
Originally uploaded by pplpwrd

A new name for my poor neglected blog. I do intend to eventually migrate this to a custom Wordpress setup, but for now this will do. Just configured blogger to point to one of my existing domains.

With that I welcome you to infinitely meta.

I'll explain the concept behind infinitely meta in a future post.

6.13.2008

Buy your 3G iPhone on a Microsoft Surface Computer?

I find it interesting that one of the biggest initial customers for the Microsoft Surface computer is AT&T who will be rolling out the Surface at their consumer stores to sell/configure/personalize mobile devices and "woo" customers with their bleeding edge storefronts.

This got me to thinking... Hmmm. I wonder which device AT&T will want to be be showcasing come July 11?

Wouldn't it be ironic if AT&T uses the Microsoft Surface computer to market/sell the Apple 3G iPhone?

I'm surprised no one else has picked up on this.

3G iPhone rant & desire to just wait for 4G

At first, I was excited. Following the WWDC events unfold live via Leo Laporte's choppy Stickam stream, then listening to that guy who was broadcasting on Yahoo Live!. Then switched to UStream which had the audio only. All to hear about the new iPhone. Turns out UStream was most reliable for the audio stream, although Leo had crazy numbers of viewers 7k+ at times.

So Apple announces that developing apps for iPhone is easier with tools, apis, etc. Ok. And new iPhone is announced with 3G HSDPA capabilties (which is actually more like 3.5G) and built in GPS. A bunch of games and other apps (ebay? mkay). Better email/productivity tools aimed at the business customer demographic. Great.

The biggest thing missing in my opinion is a better camera (or two cameras for that matter) and the ability to stream live video over 3.5G HSDPA. Well, it turns out they stuck with the same 2.0MP camera and no built in video support (more on this later).

Overall, I'm also pretty disappointed that the 3G iPhone still only has a 2MP camera when other phones that support Qik streaming - like the Nokia N95 - come with a 5MP camera. I want to use my iPhone for rapid fire posting of pics to Flickr and other photo sharing sites and socnets, and more importantly streaming live video on sites like Qik, Flixwagon, UStream, etc. If I'm going to be limited to a 2MO camera, I think my UMPC w. EVDO and Logitech webcam is a better setup for mobile streaming.

The bottom line is that I'm not sure that GPS & 3G HSDPA is enough to convince me to switch plans and providers from Verizon to AT&T and buy a new 3G iPhone. I got a pretty good deal with Verizon as I have 1 mobile and 2 USB EVDO cards on this account and I get a special discount so the EVDO cards only cost me $39/month.

I'm sick of hearing about 3G anyway. It's been a huge failure by the wireless companies, especially when we see 4G and 5G being tested/rolled out in Europe, China, etc.

I talked to a guy at the Jeff Pulver breakfast event the other day about T-Mobile's plans for a 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) network capabable of speeds of 50-100MB downlink. Good article here from WWDC coverage (scroll to the bottom to get the plans for 4G network plans). Still a ways off though. Double Sigh.

The question is do I switch my mobile from Verizon to AT&T and get the 3G iPhone or wait and see if Verizon has any more powerful devices in the pipeline? At this point I could be swayed in either direction.

Convince me why I should buy the 3G iPhone.

Qik Launches new UI & Announces iPhone support

Popular mobile streaming vendor Qik announced upcoming support for the iPhone as Apple gets ready to roll out the new 3G iPhone on AT&T's network on July 11. Looks like they updated their UI and may have sprinkled a few features in as well. Sadly, I still don't see any support for my Verison 3G EVDO REV A LG VX9900. Sigh.

Check it out here: http://qik.com

Some of my favorite qik'kers:

http://qik.com/johnculberson
http://qik.com/scobleizer

6.11.2008

Mars Rovers Mission Planning - Behind the Scenes

Want the inside scoop you'll never see on Nasa TV. Check out these Qik videos from John Culberson: http://qik.com/video/98040 (part 1), and http://qik.com/video/98088 (part 2). Amazing use of Qik to get the inside scoop on the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

Awesome interviews with Dr. Steve Squyres - lead principal investigator of the Mars Rovers mission at Cornell. Amazing stuff. You can see other cool videos from John Culberson here: http://qik.com/johnculberson

Mission Site: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Social Media Tagging Breakfast w. Jeff Pulver, Robert Scoble, & Friends

Three days ago I had no idea that this event was happening. I happened to be trolling the FriendFeed river of meta, when I see this conversation thread that Robert Scoble started. I hopped over to scobleizer.com and found the post on the event. Unfortunately the link to get the juicy details took me to the deep dark abyss of a socnet I call Facebook.

I had previously deactivated my Facebook many months ago when the Beacon and Scoblegate news broke. I've been quite content keeping my account in deactivated status until I couldn't get the info for the event that Robert commented about in another conversation on Friendfeed.

So I decided that it was worth reactivating my Facebook account to see what this event was all about and I'm glad I did. Warren sums up the morning events quite nicely with his blog post here. It was great to meet some of my existing twitter "friends" in person, putting a name to an avatar as Warren puts it, and to make some new friends as well. Really good conversation.

It's always a pleasure to have a few minutes to speak with Scoble, and I got to meet Rocky as well. Great people all around. Thanks to Jeff Pulver for organizing this unique and interesting event.

Next up: barcampseattle this weekend! I might bust out my post its and lead a panel/session. Will see.

6.09.2008

Crazy Seattle Weather today. Definitely NOT Summer

Crazy weather predicted for tonight in the Cascade Mountains. Up to a foot of snow with levels droping down to 2000 feet. This appears to be the calm before the storm (25 MPH sustained winds). Enjoy the view.

6.08.2008

2x meta - Taking a pic of my Panasonic AVCHD High Def Video camera.


2x meta
Originally uploaded by pplpwrd

This is what I'm using to record in AVCHD. It's the Panasonic HDC 501 High Definition Video Camera. I got it almost a year ago and am quite pleased with how well it works.

Using My Macbook for something else besides Firefox, Adium, and Flickr Upload

Just got done editing my first video! Ever! That's why I supposedly bought my Macbook in the first place right? So after an awesome outing with Logan yesterday, I finally had some decent HD quality content (after losing a year's worth of pics & vids when my macbook HDD failed) to make my first attempt at editing raw video into something less...well... raw. Yup, that's right...I'm a video editing noob.

I do have a rather nice Panasonic HDC-501 High Definition Video Recorder that is capable of shooting 1080i, so I figure I owe it to myself to do something with the HD content I'm supposedly producing.

Happy to say that I just finished my first iMovie 2008 project and I'm in the process of converting it so I can email/share with others. Figuring out iMovie was pretty straight forward, but I did run into a couple usability issues that left me scratching my head. iMovie does have a few quirks (or at least I did) - like when reviewing my movie project (after adding all clips), sometimes the Frame preview panel goes blank and the only thing I could figure out to get it back was to change the display options for frames/sec using the slider thingy.

Overall, it was pretty easy to start using iMovie though, yet the whole process can be pretty time consuming (editing, adding effects, previewing, etc). At least I now know, and can appreciate what others go through to edit their video content! I could so see myself staying up late night / early morning stuck in the zone editing footage.

I'll update this post with the actual video as soon as it is done rendering and I have a chance to upload it to You Tube or somewhere else.

One final question - what video sharing site do folks use most to share videos online with Friends, Family, the public? You Tube is clearly "the place", but I'm just wondering if there are features/other reasons to use one site over another.

5.26.2008

5.16.2008

view from west seattle

too nice to be stuck inside. moving the office here for rest of today.

5.14.2008

It's a Twit-Out! When Twitter Goes Down, Where Do You Go?

I go to Friendfeed. Apparently, so do a lot of other people. It's cool to see the conversation light up over at Friendfeed when Twitter goes down. I've seen this happen a couple times now. I find it a fascinating to see it unfold. Don't get me wrong, I'm a HUGE Twitter fan, but the outages are getting old, especially with the rapidly growing ecosystem of third party Twitter sites.

To send a message to Twitter, that we are sick of the downtime, some are suggesting a Twit-Out! A day where you boycot Twitter and move the conversation to Friendfeed (and possibly other socnets?). Thanks to Shay for starting this meme, and Bwana, Susan, and everyone else on Friendfeed who got the conversation going!

At this point, it's not entirely clear where we are "taking the conversation", but I think the idea is to boycott Twitter next Wednesday (May 21, 2008) and continue the converation over at Friendfeed. What do you think? I'm game. Not that I really think it will have much affect on Twitter uptime, but I'll be keeping an eye on the conversation to see where it goes.

I'm finding that there are somereally interesting conversations happening on Friendfeed these days and a Twit-Out! might be a great way to see how many people on Twitter will move their conversations to Friendfeed. I think there will definitely be some resistance to this idea by the Twitterati faithful.

It's unfortnate that we don't yet have DataPortability for syncing friends across socnets, because I have a lot more friends on Twitter than I do on Friendfeed. Either way, I'll be following the conversation unfold.

Sun Pirate.

My 3 yr old niece Leah made this for me.

Disqus or Intense Debate? Anyone care to comment?

I'm just getting back into the habit of posting here, so please bare with me as I dust off the cobwebs. I'm trying to figure out if I should give Disqus a shot for richer comments than what Blogger natively offers, but some are complaining that it doesn't support comments syncing with your blog and that it's an all or nothing kind of thing. Some have suggested using Intense Debate, which I have not yet taken for a test drive.

For me that's not as important, as I don't get much traffic and I have no problem "starting over." I know that I should migrate my blog to WordPress and host it myself, but I'm lazy and don't have the time to set it all up. That's why I came back to Blogger after not having posted for a year or so.

This will be my first post where Disqus comments are enabled (if I've done everything right). Will see how it works for now and then maybe try Intense Debate later. Will also keep watching Friendfeed and Summize to see what others are saying.

5.11.2008

Testing Disqus comment integration

Just testing to see if the new template I just uploaded to Blogger works for Disqus comments.

4.23.2008

branching hammer coral


branching hammer coral
Originally uploaded by pplpwrd

Test post to bdeseattle.blogspot.com directly from Flickr. Flickr just rolled out some cool new features. Check out the "Share This" button on your photostream. Coolness!

4.07.2008

How much is too much? How many online accounts do you have?

How many online sites/services do you belong to? Here's an attempt to enumerate the ones I've signed up for at one point or another. It is by no means exhaustive, but I wanted to try and get this list started after thinking (again) about the topic of socnet fatigue and the sheer number of sites that I have at one point or another established an account on. In no particular order, here's my list: 

  1. Gmail
  2. Yahoo Mail
  3. Hotmail
  4. eBay
  5. Amazon
  6. Paypal
  7. del.icio.us
  8. Blogger
  9. Wordpress
  10. Netvibes
  11. Twitter
  12. Pownce
  13. Jaiku
  14. Talkshoe
  15. Skype
  16. AIM
  17. ICQ
  18. MSN
  19. Youtube
  20. Viddler
  21. Revvr
  22. Ma.gnolia
  23. Flickr
  24. Picassa
  25. Ustream
  26. Stickam
  27. Justin.tv
  28. Feedburner
  29. MyBlogLog
  30. Technorati
  31. Digg
  32. CNN
  33. King5
  34. Slashdot
  35. Seesmic
  36. Oovoo
  37. Mahalo
  38. Friendfeed
  39. MyopenID
  40. Twitxr
  41. itunes
  42. Y!Live
  43. Joost
  44. ImInLikeWithYou
  45. Kaboodle
  46. Godaddy
  47. Fanfire
  48. Comcast.net
  49. Zigtag
  50. Ping.fm
  51. Last.fm
  52. 103bees
  53. 30boxes
  54. Slashdot
  55. Zoomr
  56. SecondLife
  57. Feedburner
  58. PlayCafe
  59. Askville
  60. Orbitz
  61. Expedia
  62. Hotels.com
  63. Wikipedia
  64. Pandora
  65. Reddit
  66. Fark
  67. Mixwit
  68. Muxtape
  69. Socialspark
  70. Tangler
  71. ...
Surely there must be more. I'm sick of thinking about it and am moving on to something else. Will update this post as appropriate. 

4.06.2008

3.25.2008

This weeks' latest craze. Friendfeed > Twitter > Quotably > Tweetburner

In case you haven't tried any of these sites out, I'd highly recommend you take a look. This is for anyone who is relatively new to social media, microblogging, and socnets (social networks) in general and hasn't yet heard about twitter and the amazing things you can do/learn from the twitterverse.

1. Twitter - the center of the interwebs. http://twitter.com

2. Friendfeed - the latest uber-socnet aggregator. http://friendfeed.com 

3. Quotably - new site that allows you to better track twitter conversations. http://quotably.com


4. Tweetburner - nifty new URL shortener, but geared for Twitter. Similar to TinyURL. http://tweetburner.com 

That's all for now.

PS - I so want to get this new gadget to compliment my Verizon EVDO USB modem. 

Dusting off teh cobwebs. hello world. again.

It's been almost a year since I've written anything on this blog. With all of the change that's happened in my life this past year and the somewhat chaotic roller coaster of a ride I've been on, it's been difficult for me to muster up the time and energy to contribute on a regular basis.

This post is a new attempt to change that trend and start contributing quality content back to the interwebs. I'm gonna keep my posts short and sweet, but I hope that this is the start of what will become a more consistent and interesting forum that allows me to post more than 140 characters per post (no offense twitter)