I’m a storyteller. I find cool new things, use them to make my life better, and teach others to do the same.
Everyone and their dog is talking about Google’s new IM client. I’m playing with it now. The Windows client is clean and fast - no ads, no cruft (like most other IM clients). Haven’t tried out the VoIP capability yet, but people say it’s great - at least as clear as Skype.
I’m jabancroft@gmail.com if you want to add me. Drop a note and say hi!
Saw this at Target the other night - Roboraptor. From the makers of Robosapien, the cool walking, dancing, remote control robot.
Who wouldn’t want a raptor with:
I certainly would, but not for the $120 they wanted for it…
EDIT: Actually, I have to say, the more I think about it, the more I’d really like to have one of these. We’ll see if I end up actually wanting it enough to spend the money. Expect full audio and video impressions if I cave in.
Tom Higgins put this together for the Portland Podcasting group. Awesome!
About the only gadget I’ve used this weekend is my PSP, for browsing and Lumines.
In fact, I’m posting from it right now.
Got it in Curitiba, Parana, Brazil when I was there in 1996, and it’s served faithfully ever since. Got it stuffed with gadgets and toys (Camcorder, PSP, etc.) that won’t fit in my cargo pants pockets.
Sorry I haven’t posted much here this week. I’ve been busy at work making sure all of our servers are patched for the latest MS vulnerability and worm that’s going around (none of my servers were impacted - my reputation is still safe!). I’ve also been busy with the Blogging Academy site and wiki, and we had the Portland Podcasting meetup last night at Urban Grind. I took Rachel and Emma this time - Emma quite enjoyed the play area they have there, and Rachel even said that she enjoyed and learned something from the presentations that were given.
I’ll probably try to relax/unwind a little this weekend, so blogging will be light. But there’s always the TinyScreenfulsWiki to play with!
I’ve started a blog for a new project I’m working on. It’s called Blogging Academy. I’ve found myself more and more frequently evangelizing the usefulness and “that rocks!” factor of blogging and podcasting. I’ve already prodded and helped friends and family into blogging, with great results. I’ve started conducting informal Blogging Academy “brown bag” sessions every week at work, which I’m recording and intend to make available as podcasts.
I wanted to have a place I could send people who ask “where do I start?” after I pique their interest with one of my excited, breathless speeches about how cool/useful/powerful blogging is. I want to make www.bloggingacademy.com that place. I make no assumptions about how much or little someone may already know about blogs, blogging, and podcasting, so hopefully I won’t scare off anyone who’s interested in learning more. I want this to be the place to start, no matter what your knowledge level.
I’ve posted an introduction and “manifesto”, explaining the purpose of the site, and I’m working on getting the audio of today’s brown bag session posted as a podcast there. Check it out, and hopefully you’ll find it a useful resource.
As always, let me know what you think!
My boss Kevin is going nuts on accessories for his new iPod. This is the one he brought to show me today - the iDog. Reacts to room sounds and music you pipe into him, and supposedly develops a personality and moods based on what kind and how much music you “feed” him. Lights up multicolored LED in his head and moves his head and ears to indicate his mood. And he’ll lower his ears and growl at you if you tweak his tail.
Verdict: possibly the most pointless yet oddly attractive iPod accessory ever.
For more photos, check out the TinyScreenfuls photo group or the iDog tag on Flickr.
I suck. Had some upload problems last Friday, when we recorded this show, then I was out of town for the weekend, and busy at work protecting against the latest worm outbreak. But the show is finally here! You can download the MP3 file directly (right-click, save as), or subscribe to the TinyPodcast RSS feed in your favorite podcast aggregator to get the show delivered automatically to your computer and MP3 player. This week’s show is back to normal length and size - about 20 MB, 40 minutes.
Brian and I chat about his chance to play with the Lenovo X41 Tablet PC, the Creative Zen Vision portable video player (30GB, VGA screen, plays most any kind of media, $399), the rumored Treo 670 that runs Windows Mobile, and my experience presenting to The Oregonian newspaper on how they can get into podcasting.
As always, we love to get feedback! You can email us at tinyscreenfuls@gmail.com or call our voice feedback line and leave us a message - 206-339-TINY. Let us know how we’re doing - good or bad.
Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed!
PortlandPodcasting - TinyScreenfulsWiki
For quite a while now, we of the Portland Podcasting group have been talking about the need for a good place/way to put documentation, howtos, and demos where we can all find and share it. Wikis are perfect for that, and a few days ago, I finally got around to installing one. You can find the page I created for the Portland Podcasting group at the link above.
If you don’t know about wikis, they’re basically sites that anyone can edit or add to. Great for collaboration. Go to a page and click Edit to make a change or addition. Want to create a new page? Create a link to it from an existing page, then follow the link, and you’ll be prompted to edit/create the new page.
Anyway, this is all new territory, so there may be bumps. The wiki software I’m using is MediaWiki, which is the same wiki that powers the famous Wikipedia. It’s very powerful and full featured, but there’s a bit of a learning curve. Drop me a line if you need help figuring it out or posting something to it.
Now that we have a wiki, go forth and populate it! Questions, answers, links, howtos, whatever. It’s your resource - use it well! 
I’ll be putting some TinyScreenfuls.com content, and probably a whole lot of other stuff, on the wiki as time goes by. I find I’m thinking about the wiki as my own gigantic brain dump and scratch pad that just so happens to be accessible and editably by everyone on the Internet.
www.flickr.com
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Need to lighten up - I’m doing a "Twitter Boot Camp" with the ISN team in 1 hr. # # #
# # # http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ # # # http://tinyurl.com/5gswmy # # # http://tinyurl.com/5hla4f # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # I hear @motherpopper’s around somewhere. # # # # # #
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # AP said its an "educational" software company. Guesses? # # # # (That goes for anyone else, too.) # # # # # # # And, uh, what does "PR’d" mean? #
http://tinyurl.com/3pcktn # I’ve still got it if you want another copy. # # http://tinyurl.com/4gnccd # Look up my code via @wii. # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
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