Gspace: Great New Feature March 24, 2007
Posted by theexpress in email, web 2.0.add a comment
Just about everyone I know who uses Gmail has the same comment on the amount of space available: there is too much to use. It is not necessarily a complaint, but it raises a good question. What is there to do with all of this space? Three gig isn’t too much for most things, but for an email account, it has plenty of space for even the most intrepid spammers.
Well, I was browsing digg this morning in school and came across this article, but since I was still in class, there wasn’t much I could do with ten minutes left in the period. The first and – in my opinion – best featured item in the article is the Gspace feature which completely blew my mind. It is basically a way to utilize all of your Gmail space with things other than countless emails.
I’m certain that many have felt the same as me sometime, as I have sent countless emails to myself containing papers and projects that I need to complete. Well, this kind of takes out the middle man when doing this. You basically just install the program in Firefox and set it up with your Gmail account. After this, you upload your documents, music, pictures, videos, etc. and after transfer on Gspace, an email is sent to Gmail containing the files you’ve uploaded.
I would have to say my only problem with the files being sent to Gmail is that each file gets a separate email, even if you upload a few at a time. It’s a minor inconvenience, though, considering that for the most part, needs will be limited to one file, and as long as they are all properly labeled, you can just keep them all in one place.
After my initial excitement, I began to think that, for the most part, this wasn’t going 
to save me much more time than just emailing the files from Thunderbird, but then I stumbled over what I consider its killer application. I sent a few songs through Gspace to see what I could do with them when they made it over and had a pleasant surprise. When clicking on the email with the song in it, there were two options: download or play. Well, naturally, I selected play and this player came up, conveniently playing my song quickly and without hassle, but what else would you expect from Google.
Overall, the feature has enormous potential to utilize some of that Gmail space. If anyone else has been using this, feel free to comment with some tips or tricks that I haven’t mentioned or discovered yet; I’ll be very interested to hear them.
Twitter: A Phenomenon? March 19, 2007
Posted by theexpress in rant, web 2.0.add a comment
No need to re-introduce myself. You and me both know that this blog is about as dead as they come, apart from the comletely inactive ones. WordPress has changed a lot since a year ago when I updated regularly, but besides a years extra knowledge, I am pretty much the same.
But, never the one for formalities, I’d rather get to business. Just because my posts are often months apart from one another, it does not mean that I’ve been living under a rock for all of this time. True, I have fallen out of the loops and circles that I once actively participated in a while back, but I still keep track of everything Web 2.0 (does anyone even use that phrase anymore, besides those outside of it). Because of my lack of contribution to the web and active participation in everything I could lay eyes on, I began to develop a clear head above the flurry of web activity. Don’t get me wrong, I love diggnation as much as the next guy, but my previous praises and condemnations have changed over the time.
Where, you may ask, am I going with this? Well, as I scan through my Google Reader, more and more often these days, I hear all of this buzz around Twitter. I admit, it looks kind of cool for a minute, but what is the point to it. Yeah, its cool that Tom from Baltimore just ordered a pizza 15 seconds ago…wait, no it’s not. Why would one want to know the mundane of another persons life when they have their own boring-ness to deal with. Not often does anything interesting come up on the title. Just looking at the front page now, there are two people updating their blogs, and one person eating. Not quite the jet set we have on this website.
And for those who claim it helps keep in contact with friends, I would liken that to looking your friends number up in the phonebook every time you call them, even though you have it programmed right in your cell. Your just going through a clunky middle man that serves no good. Yes, I am usually one for pointless web apps that dont serve much of a purpose (see my former praises of librarious), but this has crossed the line for me.
P.S. I am not a member of the Twitter community, so if there is some kind of killer app to it that I was too blind to see, please tell me. I wont be embarassed or upset, rather I’ll be happy that something with this much buzz is actually worth its weight.
Election 2006: During November 7, 2006
Posted by theexpress in election, politics.add a comment
I know that I haven’t posted in ages, but i ran out of juice, so to speak, and if all goes well, I’ll post semi-regularly from hence forth. But the real reason I decided to post was because of the elections today, whose results are coming in as I write. I have good news from my home state of Pennsylvania, Santorum has been ousted and Rendell has held on. Its looking good for the Democrats to take Congress after the pathetic excuse for the one we have now. I’m pretty excited, but I’ll have to hold off my full post until all of the results have been tallied. This should be a very good night.
How the Cup Unites July 13, 2006
Posted by theexpress in Sports, world.2 comments
A few months ago, when the World Cup buzz was just starting to surface on peoples minds, I thought that it was a little over-done in terms of hype. I didnt pay too much attention to the last World Cup and I was just too young to remember enjoying any before that one. I like soccer (which I sometimes catch myself calling football), but the idea of watching it for a month and tracking a tournament seemed less than exciting for me. 
That was a few months ago. By the time June started and everyone was eagerly anticipating the Cup, I started to get wrapped up in the flood of fans. Before the Cup started, I found myself doing research on teams and picking a favorite. I wont even mention who I picked because that team, as well as my home team, USA, were out before the second round ended.
This year’s tournament taught me that soccer truly is the world’s sport, because even people who dont watch much of it are wrapped up in the tournament. I’m an expample of that, as I have established, but I have also found people just like me all over, who changed greatly. Though most people were bitter enemies when their countries were playing against each other, they became good friends joining together with the world in the most border-breaking game of all.
It’s Been a Ghosttown July 3, 2006
Posted by theexpress in personal.4 comments
This blog has been all but dead for the past couple of months, but the finger of blame points to only one person. He is typing this right now after being guilty of letting himself fall into a rut. For a while, I was busy, so I didnt feel too bad about neglecting the blog. I had greater priorities than updating regularly, so I rightfully took care of all of the things involving school and so forth. But school ended two weeks after June began, and I anticipated a jump back into things with regular posting (every two to four days) like I did when I started the blog. But a week passed and so did another one without any activity, and the guilt began to set in. I’m here on vacation now, and with my down time, I thought I would let everyone know that I am still alive and still on the web. So be expectant because my next post could come any time this week, and it should be the start of the turning of a new leaf.
Objectivity on the Ropes? April 22, 2006
Posted by theexpress in media, politics.3 comments
A few weeks ago, I was watching CNN Sunday Morning when the topic of objective journalism came up in a round table discussion of topics. I believe that when reporting a story, a journalist should keep his/her opinion to himself, but there are times when we should feel some strong opinions coming from the news desk. Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine came on and strongly supported the side of subjective journalism. It was quite funny that he came on the typical, relaxed Sunday morning show with strong opinions while pushing for strong opinions on static-viewed shows.
Those who opposed him, and supported objectivity, had the good point that the reporter is meant to tell the facts of the story and let the people draw their own opinions. The media has enough sway as it is currently, and expressing even more opinions could have a major effect on the country. Since the media is typically seen as liberal (except for a certain channel), it could push the majority of the country to the left side of the aisle after these past few years of conservatism. Objectivity is something that was always looked at for the perfect newsman, but it is being questioned and now viewed as an old quality. With the internet and its eclectic group of billions, one doesnt have to search too far for an opinion, so should the mainstream media show opinion?
Being objective is still something I prize when I try to make a post, but it is not something I break my back to achieve. After all, this is my blog and I belive that the few people that do come on here dont just want to here me reporting the news. They come on different blogs to hear people comment on the news, not just deliver it. It is and will continue to be an issue in the newsroom and all over for a while, but I believe that the future of news lies in hearing everyones opinion, not just the facts.
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With the pressures of school, I had to take a rest from blogging for a few weeks. I hope eveyone forgives me as I re-adjust to my old, blogging habits.
Tracking the Traffic April 2, 2006
Posted by theexpress in internet, web 2.0.add a comment
I was curious to how some of the current Web services are doing in terms of traffic, and I stumbled across Alexaholic, a service built to do just that. It is a site built to track some of the top sites in terms of traffic per day. You can compare up to five of your favorite sites and see who is performing the best. You could also compare similar or competing sites and see who is winning out. However, if you site is not in the top 100,000 in terms of traffic, you wont see you site or blog there.
After having more fun with various other websites, I thought I’d take a look at the matchups that Alexaholic has already. They compared the top trafficed web sites on the Internet: Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. The sites started out vey far apart because it tracks back a few years, but as one can see, the gap has closed and Google is number one.
As you can see, one can get wrapped up in comparing web site traffic. Everyone must go out, compare websites, and find out the most fascinating results. If you’ve ever thought one website outshined another, and it turns out that you were way off, let me know about it.
Mozilla’s New Toys March 25, 2006
Posted by theexpress in browser, open source.2 comments
This past week was one in which Mozilla launched some new things on their web site. If you remember back before Firefox 1.5 came out, they had the Deer Park alpha and beta tests, something like that is coming back. Their developer precursor to Firefox 2, nicknamed Bon Echo has its Alpha 1 release out. 
Bon Echo was released on the 21st of this month and is geared mainly towards the developers who want to work on the code and fix some of the bugs. The new features and modifications are:
1. Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
2. New data storage layer for bookmarks and history (using SQLlite)
3. Extended search plugin format
4. Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
5. Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
6. List of bug fixes
Bon Echo isnt the only thing around the Mozilla these days. Their new calendar program, Lightning, had its 0.1 release on the 20th. It is not a standalone like Sunbird, but has the same features on it. 
It is designed to be integrated with the Thunderbird e-mail problem. It is the first release, like Bon Echo, so dont expect the best from it now, but it is still pretty cool. If you want a calendar program that doesnt require you to have Thunderbird or Firefox, download Sunbird, Mozilla’s current standard for calendar excellence.
Mozilla has been rather quiet recently, so it is nice to see them come in with a strong week, full of new things for us to enjoy. The Mozilla organization still remains on the forefront of the open source community an is an example to other coders and groups set to give us our software free.
Computer-Run Radio Stations March 23, 2006
Posted by theexpress in media, rant.2 comments
Here where I live, we have a few radio stations that are entirely controlled by computers with a fixed song list, and no deejays. I know that they are still playing music (whatever genre they want, or all genres), but I just dont get the same feel that I do with the DJ-operated radio stations. There are no call-ins from people, no requests, and no commentary or jokes from the DJ.
The main one in my area is called BOB FM, and it is supposed to play all music that is good, no matter what genre. In my opinion, the music that is played is not even that good (I wont base the musical choice by opinion, because we are all different) and it all seems to be within a span of 20 years. I feel like it is all from 1980 to 2000 with very few exceptions. Is that the only time period when good music was released? Another problem with having a relatively genre-less station is that you wont get too many frequent, loyal listeners. For example, say someone likes 90’s rock. They could chose BOB FM to listen to a few of the best songs from their favorite genre, but it will be sprinkled among other styles and periods of time. It would be much better for that fan to tune into to the local station that plays the songs they like much more often.
Not only are these stations impersonal, they are impractical. With listeners that are only casual, they cant make much of a profit, and certainly cant find out what they like more and less. I dont see the station lasting too much longer specifically because they are so out of touch with their occasional listeners. The lack of any real people behind the station also adds to the feeling that the radio station has nothing that will keep people coming back.
P.S.-I am also writing this rant because BOB FM took over my favorite radio station to listen to in the area, WRRK. Most peole I know prefered WRRK, but I dont know if it will ever be back.
The Wonders of On Demand March 19, 2006
Posted by theexpress in movies, tv.3 comments
We’re living in a busy, on demand world, right? So why cant our TV be stocked on demand for us. It can, and some just dont realize how convenient it is. OnDemand has been available on Comcast (I have Comcast, I’m not sure how long it has been out for others) for over a year, and even though I’ve used it quite frequently in the past, I never realized how convenient it really is. On Friday, I thought to myself, since I had the school day off, that I should make this weekend a Hitchcock one. The only thing holding me back from actually doing it was that I would have to run to the rental store pick up a few films. That is not a very attractive offer, seeing that I dont yet have my drivers license. 
My last-ditch effort to keep the weekend plan was to check Comcast OnDemand for any of Hitchcocks films. I scanned through a few sections and the search was fruitless, but then in the last section of OnDemand I checked, there were three Hitchcocks available, free of charge. On Friday night, I enjoyed Rear Window, around noon on Saturday, I watched The Birds, and today, I watched Vertigo. Thanks to the free service my plan was a sucess.
I find that its the little things like this that make On Demand so valuable. I used to watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus on OnDemand a lot last year, but that was before the service matured to what it is today. There is so much more than there was before, and it is nice to know that movie night – or weekend – is even easier.
—————————————————————————————————————- A little side note: My trip is over and it was fun. My life is back in order, even though I promised a post much earlier. You can start expecting regualr posting again.
