[internisus]

Even before all this Web 2.0 business kicked into gear, I found myself consistently overwhelmed by the myriad topics I had interest in, the plethora of information I had gathered, the expanse of links I had attempted to track by straight, old-school bookmarking... Even my own offline writings have always frustrated me by being random and unarranged, without clear relations to one-another or location within the non-existent map of my mind.

I knew some rudimentary HTML back in the '90s, but when useful web improvements like XML and CSS and RSS came along, I took no notice. I still don't really know exactly what a podcast is. But lately I've been learning a lot, trying to bring myself up to speed, and I'm just stunned by the enormous amount of quality web applications for blogging, bookmarking, tagging, notetaking, screencasting, etc. etc. I don't know how to even begin to make it useful for, you know, organizing and sharing my life.

So what do you all do? What do you use and why? How do you keep it all together, offline as well as on-?



As a tangent, if anyone hasn't seen this little introduction to the spirit of web 2.0, I like it a lot. It's very inspirational and exciting.

[smartblue]

One of my favorite artifacts of this idea are these badges and buttons that are created for your user content. My flickr account which documents my new found interest in photography has a nice unofficial avatar.


There's lots of these things for all kinds of accounts and places. Many of them are video game related and such. I know Machine Gun Heart uses her Beatmania VJ Army user data in her sig, and many SB posters use their Xbox Live gamer tag data in the same way.

EDIT:



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[shrugtheironteacup]

web .72 for life (yo)
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[Kappuru]

Web 2.0 is mostly hype.

But Usability, UI, and such have really come into their own lately.
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[Koji]

That video is pretty fantastic. I mean, beside the fact that I think that it's just evangelism/propaganda/advertising. It delivers its point very well, and it makes the web seem exciting, new, intriguing, surprising and dynamic, even when you're well accustomed to everything presented. And it didn't use any poetic representation of the Internet, either, like pipes interconnecting crystal squares in a world of flowing lights.

So, Web 2.0. It's just a buzzword, but there has, evidently, been a shift in the business approach to what constitutes the web, and the interactions with the users. It's part of the evolution, or the realization of the potential. The 'copyrights, government,' etc. thing is the one part that no corporate entity is thinking about seriously, other than as a trend to strategically use.

Wait, scratch that. I don't suppose I'm the first to get this feeling, but... could the big corporate names be plotting to turn the web into the ultimate neoliberalist valhalla? Removing any manner of government regulation, but at the same time putting the whole network into the hands of the highest bidders? Is this obvious to the rest/am I getting paranoid?

[The Troops]

CBS buys music and social networking site Last.fm, continuing its transition from a "content company" to what CBS CEO Leslie Moonves calls an "audience company."

Last.fm's demographic of younger music lovers is an attractive one, says CBS CEO Leslie Moonves. "Their demographics also play perfectly to CBS' goal to attract younger viewers and listeners across our businesses. Last.fm adds a terrific interactive extension to all of our properties and also is a huge step in CBS Corporation's overall strategy of expanding our reach online to transition from a content company into an audience company."

[psiga]

Heh, if anything, the "web 2.0" push has overwhelmed me more than b'fore. I must have about 60 tabs open in firefox right now.

As far as organizing ideas, this is still pretty fucking nice to me: http://www.gersic.com/zulupad/

I suppose it could be better, but I suppose a lot of things could be better.
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[Quick Shot II Turbo]

[psiga]

[negativedge]

I have no fucking idea what web 2.0 is, but I'm pretty sure I don't use it. Though, uhh, I guess "internet culture" is kind of big and all over me and such. Fuck.

[taidan]

A good friend of mine is a web 2.0 junkie, sending me invites to whatever is the next crazy idea or gizmo around the corner. Half of them I don't even go past the sign up page, though I've found uses for things like Flickr. I think much of it depends on not just the idea but the execution; some of the things I've seen take a little too much time to be worth my while, and others are a little too simple for my liking.

Waiting for BeniotRen to crush me under his giant, standard thumb any moment now.

[internisus]

I agree that a lot of those social sites aren't appealing, but the idea that unites all of them is, and every so often you come across one that is extremely cool. I think, at some point, the gimmicky quality of individual sites will pass, because before long the participatory paradigm will have seeped into every aspect of the net. For me, all of that Web 2.0 stuff is wrapped up in my recent discoveries of enormous amounts of awesome software and reading about programming and stuff, so I'm on this high where the internet and personal computing in general looks positively utopic. The present looks like the future to me -- especially on the Mac, which is the platform for most of the beautiful software I've found recently. I've got to spend the next year or so learning and purchasing and creating and ultimately refashioning myself as one of those Apple snob writers/designers/coders/philosophers/developers/neohippies. Here's some stuff that I've either found lately or just think is cool (or pretty) as an application. It may seem random, I guess. Programs like those various web browsers are there because I have never really looked into alternatives to FireFox (2.0 is bangin', by the way). In general, you'll notice that a lot of it involves organizing information and such. Oh; if you had the Shiira browser, you could open all the links on this page with one click and quickly skim each one.

Web Services:

Mozy
Todoist
Stikkit
Notefish
Avanoo
Screencast-O-Matic
WordPress
Zoho Notebook
del.icio.us
Blue Dot
Google Notebook
Chipmark
CrossEngine
Hiveminder
Digg
Stage6

Software:

Scrivener
Ulysses
Papers
Yep
Yojimbo
Tinderbox
Zulupad
Mori
Coda
Stattoo
Unison
Notae
Transmit
Curio
Nisus Writer
StorySpace
TextMate
SuperNotecard
PageFour
Inform 7
Gambit
Quicksilver
Cyberduck
CSS Edit
MacJournal
CopyWrite
viJournal
WriteRoom
SideNote
Journler
DeskTopia
Mellel
TimeLine
Temporis
TimeFlyer
OmniOutliner
DevonThink
Boswell
iGTD
Midnight Inbox
Ghost Action
iCal
OmniFocus
Skim
Bean
TextSoap
ThinkingRock
Glass Writer
Avenir
Z-Write
LaTeX
iText Express
Sente
EndNote
BookEnds
Zotero
FileMaker
IdeaMason
iClip
Opera
Camino
Shiira
OmniWeb
Tofu
StyleWriter
Grammarian
Slife
Think
Deep Notes
PDF Pen
Smultron
AppZapper
Make Notes
Storyist
Delicious Monster
RapidWeaver
NewsFire
NetNewsWire
Vienna
File Buddy
Shadow Clipboard
FoxTrot
Bookpedia
iSale
Ergonis Software
ProVoc
Ebbinghaus
iFlash
Back Track
Eagle Filer
NovaMind
Papyrus
Stories & Sources
Zotero

[aderack]

IT'S YOU!

[Mr. Mechanical]

I've played Halo 3 with AutoKaufen. He's good people. He posts around here under a different name but I forget which.
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[Predator Goose]

AutoKafen is smartblue. He's a pretty class act on Xbox Live from what I've seen. Even when running my Aegis ship into wall after wall.
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I can no longer shop happily.

[BenoitRen]

[Kappuru]

[psiga]

I'm thinking it's about time to start a del.icio.us account, since my little bookmarks drop-down menu is getting ridiculously cluttered. I kept putting it off, telling myself, "I'll do it when I see the need for it," and now seems to be that time.

Are there any preferred alternatives to delicious yet?
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[Kappuru]

delicious is pretty good. so is stumbleupon.
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[negativedge]

I'm with benoit, actually. I have no idea what the appeal to making an intertron page about my bookmarks is. Hell, I don't even use bookmarks. My internet useage is pretty much stuck in 1998.

[psiga]

[Kappuru]

[gooktime]

Last.fm and Flickr are useful, and with most of these web 2.0 outfits you get pretty comprehensive privacy options.

del.icio.us seems pretty pointless to me, but I guess it's good if you use a browser plugin to sync bookmarks between multiple computers with it.

[psiga]

I guess I never understood last.fm. Has it grown appreciably from when it first came out? I would listen and it would make me feel numb inside and then I'd give up on it. I know their goal is to have like every song ever omg, but A) they don't yet, and 2) their system for picking songs does not please me.

Sigh. Maybe I'll try it again while putting my hundred or two bookmarks into del.icio.us -- do I need to sign up for last.fm in order to REAP THE WHIRLWIND or whatever?

Also, yeah, if someone can't see the point of flickr, then they likely have zero tolerance for visual stimuli.
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[psiga]

lawlawlawl

So I try signing up to delicious, but it bitches at me that my password needs to contain a number or character of some sort. I mean, nevermind that it's a 12 letter interlaced password. Okay, I make another password, now with numbers.

It takes me back to the signup page -- no error messages, but all of my info is blanked. I'm becoming annoyed.

As I start typing information in again, I receive an email -- turns out that the previous signup went through after all. I open the confirmation email, which has a special activation link...

"This link is invalid or expired."

Meanwhile, I'm listening to last.fm again.

Artist name: Live
1. junk Live track from the middle of one of their unremarkable albums, SKIP
2. something from staind which had decent guitar and shitty everything else, SKIP
3. don't even remember the band, but it was bad, GIVE UP

Artist name: Astral Projection
4. nice track from Astral Projection, and I listened for all 8 and a half minutes
5. something from Yahel, not bad, listened to completion
6. junk track from some group I forget the name of, SKIP
7. discomforting track with the heavy breathing of a man, lots of repetitive beats, GIVE UP

Artist Name: Fang Island
no results (none expected, I guess)

Artist name: Lucid 3
8. nothing from Lucid 3, so they play forgettable junk from band I've forgotten already, SKIP
9. IM GONNA CUT MY NAILS BEFORE I GO / IM GONNA CUT MY HAIR AND GET REALLY SCARED over and over again, SKIP
10. some chick song, inoffensive but also not remarkable, listened to completion
11. another chick song, brooke fraser, inoffensive, kinda catchy, but girly

And that's where I'm at now.

Overall dissatisfied with last.fm and del.icio.us alike. My WEB TWO-DOT-NAUGHT EMPRISE ends in a whimper.
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[Hot Stott Bot]

[Jeff Garneau]

which is also tied up with the movement of the "application" from the client to the server.

[Broco]

Web 2.0 is curvy borders and fancy Javascript.

[psiga]

[The Troops]

And gradients.

[psiga]

Gradients! Fuck, I knew I was forgetting something.

Oh, hey, that last song I heard that I liked but said was girly? The video for it is shot in Japan. Neon and clear umbrellas: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1341591137

She's ridiculously pretty to me. That one-big-step-out-of-my-league pretty, like the actress girl that thatbox digs. That "try not to think of how spoiled with attention she is by now, or how little we'd actually have in common" pretty.
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[rabite gets whacked!]

[psiga]

Ohhh. So you look at what other people listen to, then go out and, uh, well, arr the everloving shit out of those bands. It's not a one-stop music discovery service so much as a hastily drawn treasure map.

See, I listen to slacker.com a goodly amount, and it's pretty much only for mainstream stuff, but that stuff is picked out intelligently. You don't really have to worry about being randomly given some bullshit song from the middle of an unremarkable album. I would not hear any Astral Projection on slacker, nor would I have ever discovered this New Zealander girl, but the featured content is highly listenable. I guess I'm aiming for the best of both worlds. Might have to wait a bit longer, then.
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[rabite gets whacked!]

[psiga]

So do you have to sign up and create a profile of yourself before you can effectively cross-reference with other people's tastes?

Oh, and regarding the girl: I figured the makeup was just a music-video thing. And the chin doesn't seem so bothersome; it takes a certain number of physical imperfections to get close to being even with my own number.


Man, I'm still miffed at del.icio.us not working for me. Guess I'll look at stumbleupon.
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[rye]

[parkbench]

Hot Stott Bot's post hits the nail on the head.
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metafilter vs. youtube comments

[rabite gets whacked!]

[remote]

[psiga]

Looking at some of these services on the big list:
Notefish - It apparently lets you put notes on web pages. The interface looks unappealing. I go looking for an example. Click on a tag, click on the first outbound link... Receive a page redirection error.

Screencast-O-Matic - Not impressed by the look of the page. I persevere. Requires JAVA. I should probably install that eventually.

Avanoo - I can't tell what the shit it is, but it's cluttered, uses odd terminology and seems to require effort.

Mozy - Online backup, 2gigs free to start. Nice interface. I like. Don't think I need it right now, but who knows.

BlueDot - Appears to be a social news and media aggregator. No need here.
(EDIT: Last minute save: slightly NSFW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJJL5dxgVaM )

Chipmark - Bookmark syncing app. Looks nice, but doesn't help me organize.

Hiveminder - "(Get used to the bee puns.)" I'd give a care if I were, you know, productive in any way.

Stage6 - Requires DivX web player. Maybe it's worth installing. I'll pass, though.

CrossEngine - Appears to make searching on multiple search engines easier. Okay. I don't have a need for it, but I guess they did fine.


Applications...

Stattoo - OSX, a stats widget. Can't use, and wouldn't bother, but it looks pretty.

Yojimbo - A file sorting and organizing tool. OSX only. I'd look into it, but I can't use it so why bother.

Yep - Tag-based PDF sorter. OSX only, not that I have any PDFs that need sorting. I like that interface, though, and want something practically identical for images.


I get the impression that most of these are OSX, so I'll just throw in the towel now and go get some breakfast. At 3 in the PM. It may or may not be steak.
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[dessgeega]

psiga i appreciate the link in your signature.
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