The Twelve Days of Christmas Wordled

The Twelve Days of Christmas
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NetFlix Watch Instantly For Mac

I was delighted to see earlier in the week that after a very long wait, NetFlix instant movies had finally come to the Mac community. It does requires a download and install of Microsoft Silverlight before you can watch.

I grabbed a BBC import and started watching in less than a minute. No ads. Reasonably good full screen quality on a 17" iMac. There were two brief periods where the video was choppy and in the second half the audio and video got out of sync. But, it is a beta app with expectation for improvement.

There's no limit to how many instant movies you can view as part of your existing subscription. I haven't yet look at how many instantly viewable movies are currently available. It's not the entire NetFlix library.

All in all, it seems the wait may have been worth it.

Posted with LifeCast

Wikilook 1.3.1 -- Firefox Add-On

Wikilook 1.3.1 is a Firefox add-on that allows you to look up the meaning of a word on a web page without leaving the current page. Simply hold down shift, then hover the mouse pointer over the word whose definition you want, wait a second or two. A box will appear with the definition of the word, a usage example, and a direct link to the word in Wikipedia.

Plurk Plus One Month

In early June, I began using the micro-blogging site Plurk. I posted previously a few days in. About a month later, though it seems longer, I'm updating my impressions.

First, Plurk is not a Twitter clone or substitute. The principle difference, aside from the obvious cosmetic ones, is the ease with which conversations are carried on. It's easy to follow the evolution of the sometimes lengthy conversations that develop in the drop-down that appears below the original entry. You don't need to scroll through a lengthy list of posts picking out the threads of a discussion.. Plurk verges on being a chatroom, far more immediate and decidedly more social than competing sites.

During the past month, the Plurk development team has been steadily rolling out more features: conversation muting, private messaging to individuals or groups, search, and more. Plurk has bugs, no question. I find it odd that features that function well for some don't work for others. For instance, I have a friend who can't send private plurks though most people can. The conversation mute feature works sporadically for me.

One of the nicest and most used features of Plurk is the ability to link to images and videos with a thumbnail. Clicking that thumbnail will open a Plurk window for inline viewing without opening a new tab or browser window. Not that this is perfect yet. You can't go back to your timeline while continuing to play the video, something that frequently causes me to decline playing an entire video. However, in the Plurk media window is a direct link that will open the item in a new tab/window.

The people who populate Plurk are it's true strength. Most are very friendly and open, interested in the type of social exchange that seems unique to Plurk. I can usually pick out a new plurker who has a hardcore Twitter history. They tend to make announcements and don't get very conversational. Included in a plurk member's stats are two key number: plurks and plurk responses. I generate a sort of social index (plurk responses divided by plurks) that I think somewhat quantifies a plurkers sense of community. A plurker with a small quotient tends to make a lot of announcements with limited engagement in social conversation.

Plurk is not going to be for everybody. I don't think it was ever intended to be. But, for the people who use it regularly, it seems to be a genuinely good experience.

(Notice, a blog post about Plurk with no discussion of karma!)

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Plurkerrific!

For the last several days I've been checking out a new social micro-blogging site, Plurk.com. Actually, I'm way past "checking it out," I'm nearing "consumed by" status. I had tried Twitter twice in the past and it just didn't work for me. But Plurk has grabbed me by the *****!

The community is still small but vibrant and enthusiastic, and growing. I think that they, like myself, are excited about being in at the start of something with potentially a great future. Plurkers appear to be a more mature, more sophisticated group. As yet, not a lot of kids appear to be plurkers. I have met a lot of really interesting, wonderful plurkers so far and had a blast!

The quirk of Plurk is the horizontal timeline.Newest items appear at the left and by dragging or using the scroll wheel you can go back in time. It has a bit of a learning curve, but as I got more familiar with it, navigation became relatively simple.

I really like the conversational threads that develop from individual posts and appear in a drop-down window. Sometimes these convos go on for hours with various plurkers jumping in and out as they can.

You can also preface your plurk with a choice of verbs and choose from an assortment of emoticons.

There's a system of karma points with certain plateaus that open new features. For example, when you reach 25 karma points, you're emoticon set increases.

You can group friends into cliques and send private plurks among the members of that group.

Pictures on other image hosting services such as Photobucket, Flickr, and Picasa Web can be linked to as can YouTube videos.

Plurk is not feature-rich. There is no search capability as yet. There isn't a way to ignore a conversation or save one, but it's early days yet.

I'm hooked, as are most of my pleeps. They are the best thing about Plurk ☺.

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Read an eBook, Save Some Trees

Read an Ebook Week is March 2nd through 8th. Novelist Michael Pastore lists thirty reason for reading ebooks. The top ten follow ...

1. Ebooks promote reading.

2. Ebooks are good for the environment.

3. Ebooks preserve books.

4. Ebooks are faster to produce than paper books.

5. Ebooks are easily updateable.

6. Ebooks are searchable.

7. Ebooks are portable.

8. Ebooks (in the form of digital audio books) free you to do other activities while you are listening.

9. Ebooks can be printable.

10. Ebooks can be delivered almost instantly.

See the entire list.

Free Online eBook Reader

Book Glutton launched today in public beta. Book Glutton features an online reader which you can use to read public domain titles from their collection on your own or in groups with others reading the same book.

Watch the video to learn more ...

ServiceBeacon for Your Car

ServiceBeacon is a free online service that lets you ...

• Track your car's maintenance schedule
• Receive recall notices by email
• Make service appointments online
• Store your car's service history
• Track multiple vehicles

Take the tour of ServiceBeacon.com

Quick, Easy, Free Reverse Phone Lookup

Quick, easy, free! The only way it would be better is if it were useful, too. It is. Simply enter the area code and the phone number, click Find, and have the caller's name and address in seconds. You can also view a map of the caller's location.

Sullr : USA
Argentina, Belgium, Italy, and France are currently available, too.

Read with Speed

Zap Reader is a very interesting Web site I stumbled upon that may help you read faster. Watch the video clip below and take a look. It's totally free, so what have you got to lose!

ZAP Reader is a web based speed reading program that will change the way you read on your computer. Current beta testers report reading twice as much in half the time—that's a 300% increase in reading speed, without any loss in comprehension! There is nothing to install, it works with most popular browsers, and it's totally free!

If you like this, I suggest you go to the Tools link and put the bookmarklet in your bookmark bar.

Looking for that one really clever idea that will make a fortune?

The Directors Bureau Special Projects Idea Generator may be just the trick for for you.

Spin the wheel and you'll get three words that may spawn the next big thing. Following are some examples of ideas I generated:

• oversized nuclear vehicle
• erotic vibrating book
• electric torture furniture
• dramatic concrete clothing
• geometric virtual furniture

Take the wheel for a spin or two. You never know what could spark that magical concept.

U.S. government web sites for everybody

There are thousands of US government web sites full of information, publications, and other resources available to everyone.

Technophilia: U.S. government web sites you didn't know you could use - Lifehacker

Web Browsers Color Rendering

I learned today that Web images don't look the same on the same system in all browsers. Color rendering is processed in different ways by the various browsers.

Apple's Safari browser does the best job of rendering deeper, richer colors. It's reported the next version of Firefox (v3) will render better color.

My principal browser is Camino, an OS X browser that uses the same Gecko engine as Firefox but functions similarly to Safari. I also use Firefox for some activities which are handled nicely with FF extensions.

This web site tests how well your browser renders colors. I first visited with Camino and the image appeared like the third example at the bottom. I then opened it with Safari and the image looked like the first one.

I like Safari, it's very fast. But Safari is not supported by some sites I use frequently: Google Documents and Spreadsheets, Wikispaces, or editing in Blogger. Safari is now available for Windows as a beta version.

Firefox is a somewhat slower browser with a not-very-Mac-like interface. Camino, though, not perfect, is kind of the best of both worlds.

Protect Yourself with a Temporary Email Address

You are always being asked to submit an email address when you register or participate in for something online. I'm always a little concerned who's getting hold of my address even when a web site claims they will not redistribute your address.

You can get around this by using temporary, disposable email addresses which will allow you to get and respond to those confirmation emails before doing a Mission Impossible-like self-destruct.

jetable.org provides you with a temporary email address. As soon as it is created, all the emails sent to this address are forwarded to your actual email address. You specify the lifespan of this address from 1 hour to 1 month.

GuerillaMail provides you with disposable e-mail addresses which expire after 15 Minutes. You can read and reply to e-mails that are sent to the temporary e-mail address within that time.

Any e-mails sent to 10 Minute Mail's temporary e-mail address will show up automatically on their web page. You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes.

These are all free services. For a more extensive listing of temporary, disposable email addresses click here.