Category: Blogging

FriendFeed

Posted on by Sol Young with Leave a comment

FriendFeed

Added FriendFeed as a combinatorial service. You can get all my updates and information in one single location there. There will be tons of these sites very soon, followed by an inevitable shakeout. Should be interesting see who and how the best of these services connect.

http://friendfeed.com/sol You can follow my blog, Google Reader, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Stumble Upon, and LinkedIn streams there.

It should be even more interesting to see how much funding they get and whether Web 2.0 falls for the ‘eyeballs-are-worth-more-than-revenue’ bologna.

UPDATE: Hey, wait a second… Why not just find me at solyoung.com, where I’m already combining these streams!?

Posted in Blogging, Prediction, Social Networking

The tools we use – I’m not Scoble yet – I was

Posted on by Sol Young with Leave a comment

Chimp

I’ve been reminded today about how easy life is when we use the right tools. My wife and I were out skiing and watching Spring Mountain‘s Big Air Jam. I took pics with an iPhone and Canon SD-1000 and was blasting them straight to Flickr/Twitter. I was also taking video…

At lunch I pulled out the MacBook Pro and iMovie. In fifteen minutes I’d imported and edited the videos, laid a techno track, and exported. Sure the videos could have been uploaded raw, but a highlight reel is better edited, cleaned, and combined. Check it out after the jump.

For those that enjoyed the photostream today, I’m pleased and hope you’ll spread the word.

I like Robert Scoble’s preference of broadcasting live (I was doing this in 2001).

A historical note: I used to broadcast live. I was the General Manager at LIvVE.com, from 2001 to 2004. We would do live remote broadcasts with nothing more than a Sony GT1 and a high (cough, cough (28.8k)) speed cellular connection. Back then we risked a punch in the nose when going about an interview with an UMPC device shoved in someone’s face.

The highlight live broadcast was on the 4th of July in 2001 at the New York Trade Towers. A guard offered to let us film from the top of a tower if we slid him a fifty.

Continue Reading

Posted in Blogging, Flickr, iPhone, Photography, Twitter

Random House really going DRM-free

Posted on by Sol Young with 1 Comment

randomhouse.png

Yesterday I asked the question, “Random House DRM-free a hoax?“ The question was based on Cory Doctorow’s post announcing a big move by Random House towards DRM-free MP3 audiobooks. The PDF on his site links to a letter by Madeline McIntosh detailing the move to Random House’s partners.

Since my post both Cory and Madeline have confirmed the validity of the letter. Thank you to both for following up and answering the question.

Posted in Audiobooks, Blogging, Etiquette, Prediction

Blog integration of Twitter starred items

Posted on by Sol Young with 14 Comments

Dave Winer has been asking in Twitter for a way to incorporate specific twitters/tweets in to his blog over at scripting.com. My suggestion is to use the starred items feature (Favorites) on Twitter.

I too would like to integrate Twitter more selectively in to my blog. Twitter’s API, under “Favorite Methods” allows you to set specific tweets to be starred, or favorites.

If you want to want to have a set of targeted tweets which you’ll highlight in your blog, star your own tweets and pull the feed (here’s their RESTful documentation for how to do that):

favorites

Returns the 20 most recent favorite statuses for the authenticating user or user specified by the ID parameter in the requested format.

URL: http://twitter.com/favorites.format

Formats: xml, json, rss, atom

Parameters:

  • id. Optional. The ID or screen name of the user for whom to request a list of favorite statuses. Ex:http://twitter.com/favorites/bob.json or http://twitter.com/favorites/bob.rss
  • page. Optional. Retrieves the 20 next most recent favorite statuses. Ex: http://twitter.com/favorites.xml?page=3

In other words, with the above documentation, you would just pull the RSS feed for your favorites and have it rendered on your blog. This method works best for me since it allows after-the-fact selection, addition, and removal.

Posted in Blogging, Twitter, Web Services

Random House DRM-free a hoax?

Posted on by Sol Young with 8 Comments

While it seems many are rejoicing over the supposed announcement of Random House going DRM-free, it also seems this could be hoax. BoingBoing, care of Cory Doctorow, brought the story to light. But something doesn’t smell right…

Don’t get me wrong – this would be groundbreaking and very fast for an industry that doesn’t usually take big risks. But there’s a lot bordering on the edge of too-good-to-be-true and not sitting right.

Cory Doctorow broke the story on BoingBoing.net, where he claims to have gotten hold of an announcement. The announcement isn’t available anywhere else on the net.

The content of the letter is downright mouth watering for folks looking forward to DRM-free content.

“The results: we have not yet found a single instance of the eMusic watermarked titles being distributed illegally.”

Seriously? Not a single one? Were there no sales? There will be piracy with any content. Everyone expects this. The issue is not whether it will happen or not, but whether DRM-free content leads to increased sales, increased profits, and increased customer love. The statement that not a single instance occurring is hard to swallow.

I’m not saying it’s a hoax – only that I’m looking forward to getting more facts and seeing how this plays out. I’ve written to Random House for comment but have not yet received a response.

UPDATE: Madeline McIntosh, Random House publisher and author of the letter, confirmed this morning via email that the letter is not a hoax (also confirmed in the comments below). This is exciting and game changing news in the audiobook industry.

Posted in Audiobooks, Blogging, Prediction