An overview of Delicious Library 2
Our friends over at TUAW.com have scored yet another great video out of the goings on at Macworld. This time they’ve gotten one of the Delicious Monster team, Mike Lee, to sit down and give a pretty broad overview of what is coming up in Delicious Library 2.
Some of the main things that stand out to me during this video are:
- Public collections: I think it will be pretty neat to allow people to browse through your collection online. Not only will it be fun, but I can see some useful applications coming out of this feature.
- AppleScripts within the menu structure: As Mike Lee says in the video, I’m pretty sure that everyone else will begin to do this very same thing in their applications too. Not only is this good for Delicious Library, but the more applications that do this, the more I think we’ll start to see AppleScripts for your favorite applications popping up.
- CoreData: A lot of times the best updates to an application are the ones you can’t really see. I think the best update to Delicious Library is that it now takes advantage of CoreData.
What are your favorite features of Delicious Library 2? Sound off in the comments.
Also see: You can find more information by looking at our coverage of Delicious Library from the past, as well as TUAW’s coverage, and I even featured it on Viddler today.
Miyazaki’s next movie Japan release date
Princess Mononoke
Miyazaki is probably the most recognized anime director around the world. He’s been able to capture even most American audiences with his amazing animated features. I mean, the body of work this guy has is astounding. Nearly every one of his films is one my favorites. Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away top the list, while Kiki’s Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds, and My Neighbor Totoro round out his impressive career.
Ponyo on a Cliff
Nausicca recently reported that the Japanese release date of Miyazaki’s next film, Ponyo on a Cliff, will be in the middle of July. Why is this important? The sooner it releases in Japan, the sooner I can see it here in the US.
Each new film released by Miyazaki is translated and exported faster and faster. Princess Mononoke took over two years to reach our shores, while Spirited Away was a much quicker 14 months. And the last major picture released by Studio Ghibli, Howl’s Moving Castle, took half as long, at only seven months. Hopefully, this one will follow suit and arrive only a few agonizing months after the Japanese release.
My favorite of his films has been Princess Mononoke, but Spirited Away I find is his most popular among people I know. I wonder where Ponyo on a Cliff will fit among them. Which one is your favorite?
Netvibes: My New Home Page
Google has some competition in the customized home page field. And the new winner for the love and affection of my start page is: Netvibes!
I’d been using the customized iGoogle as my home page for the last year and a half. It gave me immediate access to my inbox, weather forecasts, and whatever RSS feed I thought was important enough to throw on the front page. And I was satisfied. I never really used it all that much though, still using NetNewsWire as my primary feed reader. This is when Netvibes stepped in.
The first thing I noticed was the look of Netvibes. It has 14 different themes pre-made themes and a customizable color choices. In addition, you can change the background with 18 of their own images, or choose your own from flickr accounts, Myspace.com, Twitter, or any image url. You can really make it your own, something that iGoogle didn’t provide too well with their small selection of themes to choose from. The presentation of feeds and modules on the front page can be tailored to take up as much or as little space as you want, their color, and amount of information shown up front.
My Movie Tab
Netvibes also has more functionality than iGoogle. When browsing RSS feeds, like most other readers, you can open the websites in the page window. But this is all in one place. It’s also a launching point for web searches, let’s me directly edit my Facebook profile or see if there are any immediate updates, and keep track of Twitter!
So far, I’m loving my experience with Netvibes. While I liked iGoogle, Netvibes offers so much more and in a sleeker presentation. But it does more for me than just showing me my feeds in a pretty UI. I have a hard time keeping up to date on a lot of smaller apps. Twitter being my primary example.
Launch Web Site in Window
I used Twitterific for a while, but I found myself updating my status only a couple times a week - whenever I actually remembered to. Twitter is right next to my RSS feeds now, so I don’t even have to remember to actively check it because I just see it. I don’t have to remember to check my feeds on NetNewsWire anymore. Every time I open Safari, I see it then. I spend a majority of time in Safari, so having a single portal to get to all my needs, and one done as well as Netvibes, keeps me productive and on top sites I have a tendency to forget about.
I missed my chance at the private beta for Ginger, the next version of Netvibes. But it will be released to members mid-February, so I guess I won’t have to wait too long. I’m looking forward to anything these guys do from now on. Have you given Netvibes a shot?
Dustin Kensrue - Please Come Home
Song Name: I Knew You Before
Artist: Dustin Kensrue
Album: Please Come Home
Why This Song?:
Most will know Dustin more for his screaming than his singing. Others will be even more shocked that Dustin went from working on a band like Thrice to a solo project that sounds closer to Nashville than the mosh pit.
For many fans of Thrice, it doesn’t really matter what type of music Dustin makes. All that matters is that he is an extremely talented musician. It’s nice for a fan base to recognize that it’s not always about sticking to a genre, to a specific sound, or what they think a band should sound like. Most fan bases throw some serious temper tantrums in the face of such musicial exploration, but most fans of Thrice that I know are just very impressed at the many facets of Mr. Kensrue. The backlash is almost non-existent and the addition of different sounds into Thrice’s current reprotoire seem to be more welcomed than pushed aside.
Dustin’s short, but excellent and inspiring solo album, is a complete departure from anything he had previously done before. A clash of country, folk, and soft rock fill the short playing time with an unexpectedly light and refreshing sound. Granted, some times the lyrics are extremely heavy handed and a bit too gospel for my taste, it is still something that is worthy of respect.
This isn’t your empty, run of the mill, country record. Dustin takes his time to talk about matters that are important to him - spirituality, loss of innocence, depression, and redemption. Though you can tell many songs are inspired by other artists (”Blood & Wine” sounds like it could be straight out of Johnny Cash’s collection), none seem to be cookie-cutter knock offs and each hold their own against those that helped shape his style.
“I Knew You Before” and its poignant, well-written tale of lost focus, friendship, and purity, is without a doubt my favorite track on the album. Its scatching animonsity towards everything that our generation holds so dear (MTV, magazines, media) would seem more likely written by someone twenty years older. It’s truly admirable, though, to see a younger musician not give in to the cliché, society-molded mindset of most artists his age. These aren’t just empty words though, he demonstrates his belief in them in everything he does - from his willingness to take chances that assuredly make record labels cringe to his lyrics that have far more depth than almost anything being released, let alone bought today.
Dustin is definitely one of the best, most ambitious young talents in the industry. His willingness to take chances has yielded unexpected, yet interesting results on every project he has worked on. I highly recommend that any fan of music check out anything and everything that Dustin has his hands on.
Enhance Safari’s search with Inquisitor
Recently Dave Watanabe released a version of Inquisitor, a Safari plugin that turns Safari’s default Google search box into an asynchronous (or, search-as-you-type) search, that sported some affiliate ads within the results.
Some people didn’t like that.
He then released an updated version that “now explicitly tags product/affiliate links in search results and, furthermore, now includes an user preference to disable these links all together” [source].
I had tried an early version of Inquisitor, and it didn’t really stick. Trying to think back I’m not really sure what it was lacking, but it may have been that at the time I was using a much older system and so perhaps Inquisitor wasn’t as responsive on an older machine. I can’t be sure.
While this whole ‘affiliate link debacle’ was going on, it reminded me that I wanted to give Inquisitor another try and I must say - it is extremely useful and I highly recommend giving it a try.
Key features
- Search as you type: Since Inquisitor searches as you type, it is able to give you the “top” few search results and also a few other possible search terms as you type. After using it only a few days, I can honestly say this has saved me a lot of time.
- Records number of visits: I have yet to figure out exactly how this works, and if it keeps a record forever, but - Inquisitor will show you the number of times you’ve clicked on a search result.*
- Preferences: There are several preferences that you can modify to customize your experience with Inquisitor. As promised, the latest version allows the removal of affiliate links.**
Inquisitor really is a quality product and it saves oodles of time. Dave Watanabe has a few other applications like Xtorrent and NewsFire. Give the most recent version of Inquisitor a spin and come back and let TUG.n know what you think.
– Footnotes below –
* I think the # of visits could be more accurately described as the number of times you’ve clicked on that search result. For other searches I’ve done, which return results to sites that I’ve visited, it doesn’t show this running count. So Inquisitor does not search your history and provide you with the correct number of times you’ve been to a site.
** I leave the affiliate links on. The developer was kind enough to provide this tool free of charge, and so if that is how he’d like to make money on it, I’m ok with that.
What’s next for blogging in 2008? - An interview with Paul Stamatiou
Paul Stamatiou, a friend of mine and student at Georgia Tech, has been an active blogger since mid-2005. He has accomplished many things with his blog, and from that, he’s had opportunities that he may not have had otherwise.
Paul was nice enough to answer a few questions about where he sees things heading over this 2008 year, and a little bit about his startup Skribit. Below is our interview with him.
Paul Stamatiou, New York City, Nov. 2007 (original)
Colin: Hi Paul, thanks for taking a few minutes to talk about one of your favorite topics: yourself.
Paul: Thanks for the interview opportunity Colin. For those unfamiliar with me, I’ll give a brief summary. I’m a 21 year old Georgia Tech college student majoring in Computational Media (half computer science, half new media and so on). I’ve been blogging for a few years at PaulStamatiou.com about pretty much everything tech-related. When I’m not in class or blogging, I’m working on my blog-related startup Skribit or thinking about what meeting Steve Jobs would be like.
Colin: You and I have been using the Internet for long enough to see some major changes happen in the world of personal publishing. Blogging, as it is now commonly called, has grown to proportions that I don’t think you or I could have ever predicted. When did you start publishing content to the Web, and what have you seen as being the major milestones of change since?
Paul: I have been blogging since the summer of 2005. When I started blogging, social news/bookmarking sites were just starting to pick up speed. Now everywhere you turn someone is trying to get you to digg their article or bookmark it here or there. It’s quite a different online world. Back in 2005 it was very easy to start a blog from
scratch with hosted blogging platforms. Now anyone can publish content online even easier and quicker with micro-blogging services ranging from Tumbler to my favorite Twitter.
Colin: I come from the “copy and paste HTML” generation as it pertains to blogging. Now, we have more tools than we probably know how to use making it easier than ever to publish a really great site with minimal effort. What would you say will be the biggest change in publishing to the Web in 2008? More rich content like video/audio?
Paul: I definitely think you’re on the right track. People want a more in hands-on and richer experience. While I don’t think video blogs will even come close to replacing standard blogs (people like to skim through text, not sit and watch everything), there will be more weight on visual complements to publishing. It’s already been happening for a while with sites linking to massive image galleries of products they’ve reviewed in addition to quick video clips summarizing the review and so on. For the most part, we’ll have to wait and see.
Colin: Several things have “happened” to you as a result of your Web site. A recent thing that comes to my mind is being in a Nike+ commercial. Perhaps you could list a few things you’d think are notable that have happened to you since you started your site - and comment on whether you think this sort of “self branding” will prove crucial to those that work on the Web in the future to find opportunities like you have.
Paul: My blog has brought me a tremendous amount of opportunities. I’ve always tried to keep it professional and publish well-researched and thought-out articulate articles to make it a portfolio of sorts. I was found by Yahoo! and ended up being an intern for them in the summer of 2006. General Motors found me online and has graciously flown me out to some events including the 2008 Detroit Auto Show. More importantly though, I’ve been able to establish some connections with people I may have never met before had it not been for my blog. I receive a few job opportunities every few months so it will be interesting to see if I can leverage my blog to help me in the job hunt when I graduate in a year.
Colin: What about for readers? Not all of us can write as much as the Stammy. What do you see happening in 2008 for people that like to find great content to read about their favorite topics? Will good things happen? Or will it get harder to find the signal through the noise?
Paul: I might be biased but I think 2008 will be big for my startup Skribit. Skribit lets blog readers suggest things they want to see on blogs and rank them, in a nutshell. I’ve been using it for a few months and have already had a few posts that close to 400 people recommended I write about. It’s a great way to gauge reader interest and cure writer’s block.
Colin: What about your thoughts on sites that monitor current news, or conversations, happening on the Web? Sites like Technorati, TechMeme, etc. are making it fairly easy to find out what the top bloggers are talking about. But, it also drowns out “the little guy”. Any thoughts on this?
Paul: I tend to stay away from the “echo chamber” and focus on more unique and original pieces. However, I love TechMeme because in a 10 second glance you can immediately see what is happening in the tech world and how important each news piece is.
Colin: One final question and I’ll let you get back to taking over the world. What do you think is the best blog that you’ve found within the last three months? Why? And what do you think makes you subscribe to a site?
Paul: Hrm, you’ve got me in a corner here. I really can’t think of a noteworthy blog I’ve discovered in the last three months. I’ll get back to you on that. As for what qualities of a blog get my subscription, it’s really only just one thing, dedication. They don’t have to blog everyday but it’s nice to see effort put into posts and not just blurbs from stories on digg.
– End interview –
Thanks to Paul for taking the time to have this chat. It is always great to get the opinions of where things are going from those that are using the tools, using the Internet, and living it everyday. Best of luck with PaulStamatiou.com and Skribit!
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