Ramblin Words

I was reading an article by Alfred Thompson at the Cyberspace People Watcher blog, called "Who the famous people are following " and it go me thinking about the word fame and how its definition has changed over the years.  When I was younger, a famous person was someone like John Kennedy or Willie Mays or a movie star like John Wayne. Everyone knew who they were and what they did to become famous.   Yes, except for in rare cases you had to actually do something to be famous, you couldn't be famous just by being in the limelight (see Paris Hilton...) The other change is fame has become compartmentalized.  By this I mean that you can be famous in one area and be completely unknown is the wider world.  For example, Robert Scoble is famous among those who are part of Social Media, blogging  including microblogging.  In the rest of the world he is virtually unknown.  If I asked my family or friends who Robert Scoble was they wouldn't have any idea.  This doesn't mean he is not important or famous, he is in his small niche, just not on a global scale.   We also tend to mistake fame with importance.  Fame and importance can go together , but they don't have too   Britney Spear is famous, but let's face it she is not very important.  The group that invented Small Talk, aren't  famous (outside of  Linux's Geeks) but they are very important.   It is important not to mistake one for the other.

I recently purchased the flip video camera.  I have  been fooling around with it for about a week now.  I do like it, It is very simple to use.  It has basically four  buttons, on/off   play, record and delete.  You turn it on, hit the record button and that's it.  It records in avi format and the quality is good, but not great.   

I would recommend this video camera to anyone who wants to record video, but do not  want to spend hundreds of dollars on a video camera.  It would be a great camera for a young person, who has shown interest in doing video work or making a movie.   

Due to  how Friend Feed aggregates your different social networks, I am rediscovering networks  that I had signed up for but had either forgotten about or stopped using.  One of those networks is Pandora, I liked Pandora but one of its disadvantage was that you had to have a browser window open to use it. Due to this, I stopped using it.  I was reading my Google reader feeds and saw an article from Lifehacker about an application called Pandoraboy.  This is an Mac only application, once you download it  you sign in with your Pandora Information and its sits on your desktop.  You can use it as you would the reqular Pandora website.   I only used for a couple of hours this afternoon, but I do like the product so far. 

My Series 2 Tivo is dieing, or at least I think it is.  I am actually not sure if the problem is with the Tivo box or with the Comcast cable box.   I not seeing any pictures on certain channels, I can still hear the audio but no pictures, at first it was just one or two channels but now its getting worse. If I reset the Tivo the pictures come back for awhile, but then go away again, which is the reason I think its Tivo.  The other wierd thing thats happening is now if I hit a channel where there is no picture, instead of staying there, the system starts moving up and down the channels untill it finds one that is coming in.   It hadn't done that before, just started happening a week ago.  I could get a new series 2 tivo pretty cheap, the problem with that is that I am thinking about upgrading to an HDTV, which would make the series 2 Tivo useless.  I was hoping to have this tivo last untill I got the new TV, but it looks like that not going to happen.  I am going to test the Tivo, without the cable box and just attach to basic cable to see if the problem persist, so I can elimininate the cable box as the source.  I will need to find a way to transfer the video from this tivo to my other one easily. I don't think I can stand being without Tivo and neither can my husband.  

What happens, when two views of a site conflict with each other.  The reason I thought of this was the latest Flickr uproar this past week.  In case you are not up on the latest news, Flickr is now allowing 90 second videos to be uploaded to the site, and many flickr purist are up in arms.   Part of the problem is that although many flickr users, especially ones that have been members for a long time, still see Flickr as a site set up for user and owned by a small user friendly company.  In reality Flickr is now owned by Yahoo, whose main focus right now is making money and staying out of  Microsoft clutches.  I think many Flickr users were upset by the announcement, because they were never consulted. There was no beta testing or blog post saying this is what we are thinking about doing, what do you think, instead it just happened.  I am sure upper management ot Yahoo, can't image what all the fuss is about, after all  they make decision like this everyday without consulting the user of the product.   I understand from other posts that there is an option in the default menu to have it set so they don't start playing automatically and that Firefox has an extension to block them altogether.   I personally wish that option was available for all user no matter what browser they were using, since most people especially at work still use IE.   I have nothing against videos, I have an account on a multiple number of video sites including Youtube, Viddler and Seesmic to name a few.  That being said when I go to Flickr, I expect to see still photos.   Plus since it is for pro user only most user will not be able to take advantage of it unless they upgrade, which of course means more  in Yahoo coffers, which is exactly what they are looking for.  

I  was viewing Leo Laporte's pictures of his trip to Australia on Smugmug and I like what I saw.  The pictures of course were beautiful.  The thing that caught my eye though was SmugMug itself.  I have a Flickr account, but I am not quite satisfied with it.  There is something that is missing, I am not sure what exactly it is, I can't quite put my finger on it but there is.  I have been trying to find another photo site for my favorite photos.  I think I have found it in SmugMug.   Right now I am using the 14 day free trial, after that it is about $40.00 a year for regular user $60.00 for power user and $150.00 for professional.  You can purchase pictures on Smugmug.   You can also do simple editing within the web site including cropping and some color effects.  In sideshow mode your pictures are full screen.  It is very easy to create galleries and to move photos to and from different galleries.  You can locate the photo on google map.  You can also explore other peoples photo, either by using search or the explore button.  The interface is easy for anyone to use. 

Can we please stop calling every music service that is announce the next itune killer. It is annoying and riduculus.  Yes someday someone will produce something superior to Itunes, but we will not know it untill the product has been around for awhile.  The latest attempt is a joint venture between My Space and several major record labels (Universal, Time Warner and Sony)  announced earlier this week.   There were no details given on how this service will be set up, whether it will be sales only or sales and subscription.  What kind of portal players it will work on.  Will it have dmr, the questions go on.   According to the article in Eflux media  Myspace  executive  would like a free streaming service, where people could share music with their friends along with buy tickets and not just a music store.  The record  companies  see it as a way to increase sales and clearly to break Itune's lock.  The problem, will as usual be in the details.

 

In my eyes Amazon services has the best chance to compete against Itunes.   Yes its  now only 6% of the total sales, but it has the potential to grow and Amazon has already shown it has staying power.   It is a website that everyone goes to and is not specific to a certain age group.  Once you download the music from the site you can use it on any media player. It has a large library.  You already go there to buy products, so the idea of purchasing music to download there isn't strange.  The main drawback is that is online and the layout is not the most user friendly

  Aren't large corporation suppose to have research and development groups.  If they do don't they ask the public if they think something is a good idea.  The reason I ask is because according to New York Times article.  Sony is developing away to stream full length movies to your mobile phone.  The movie is going to be on a continual loop so there is no way to stop or start it.  Which means you have to watch  a full length movie on a tiny screen for 2 hours. The movies that are being offer will be things like the Karate Kid, Ghostbusters  I don't know anybody who is going to want to do that.  I have a Iphone and my limit on watching it without some kind of break is about 30 minutes. On this you wouldn't be able to take a break, because according to the story, there would be no way to restart the video from where you stopped.   Now if you could stop or start the movie when ever you wanted that would make some sense, and I might avail myself to that service.  Also just to add to the length of the movie there will be commercials added.  It would be my guess the Sony is trying to provide a service that they think the public wants, while trying to appease the movie industry, which of course produce something that nobody likes.

This is my recipe for no meat lasagna.
Preheat oven to 375
32 oz container of Ricotta cheese (can substitute cottage cheese but drain well)
1 16 oz package of mozzarella cheese
1/2 a cup of grated parmesan cheese
1 large package of frozen spinach (thawed and  the liquid squeezed out)
two eggs
1 32 oz can of tomato sauce
1 32 oz can of diced tomato
2 large cloves of garlic
one small onion
1/4 cup of wine
oregano, pepper, salt. 
a package of no cook lasagna  If you use regular lasagna, cut back on the sauce. 
one glass pan large enough to fit four pieces of lasagna noodles so they over lap each other.

Mix the ricotta, 2/3 of the mozzarella cheese and 1/2 of the parmesan cheese together along with the two eggs.  Then add and mix in the spinach,  It's very important that the spinach is well drain squeeze as much water as you can out of it or your lasagna will become watery.  Season with salt and pepper and about 1 tablespoon of oregano. ( I am sorry I don't really measure things I just do them to taste and smell)  Set aside.

Meantime in a saucepan at medium temperature cook one small diced onion plus two cloves of crushed garlic in about a tablespoon of olive oil.  Once the onions are soft add the can of diced tomato and 1/4 cup of white wine.  Season with a large pinch of  pepper, oregano and rosemary do it to your own taste, just remember once you add you can't subtract. (You could substitute two jars of your favorite spaghetti sauce)

Put a layer of sauce in the bottom of the pan.  Place four sheets of lasagna over lapping each other slightly.  Spoon on 1/2 of the cheese and spinach mixture and spread evenly over all the noodles.  Repeat the process again, sauce, noodles and the remaining 1/2 of the cheese mixture.  Put another layer of noodles on top and pour the tomato sauce over top.  Take the parmesan and mozzarella cheese that you reserved and sprinkle over top.  Cover with aluminum foil and place in oven cook for 55-60 minutes.   Remove the foil and cook for another 5 minutes until the mozzarella starts to bubble.  Remove from the oven and let it rest for at least 5 -10 minutes then serve.  It very good with a light salad and some beer or your favorite wine.

 

I often wonder why Youtube is so popular, in my opinion its not the best video sharing site.  The video quality is low and the comments section is inadequate.  I prefer the way Viddler does its comments.  The way viddler is set up it allows the creator to put tags on the video.  A  person watching the video can make a comment by clicking on the video and either doing a text comment or if they want they can do a video comment.  Those comments become visable to anyone who watches the video after that.  The comments also gives who made the comment  and allows you to go to their profile. For longer comments Viddler does allow you to do it the old fashion way   The video quality appears to my eyes to be better then Youtube, but of course the quality is dependent on the original product. .  Viddler also allows you to blog

directly from the site.   The video above explains how it works.  I know there are alot of other video sharing sites out there, each having there own strengths and weaknesses.   I do wonder what other people like and do the producer of the  videos like the same sites as the watchers do.