./janella.com

A few things to look at for today.

A sad story without words. You can figure it out, can’t you? (Imageshack) [Update: If you can’t access the Imageshack link, please try this link)

Turtle soup. What do you have in your fridge? via steveny (DailyMail)

Guilty! But of what? (GuessMyCrime)

Cool invites. Evite is cool, but Pingg is looking interesting. via Techcrunch (pingg)

This is a new type of blog entry for me, at least on the main blog. It is simply a collection of links that were either IM’d to me or I ran into through my daily browsing. This type of entry takes the place of my now dead Tumblr account. I like to call these entries “Around the Horn” (another baseball term).

Obama Hype or Substance? Well researched write up on Obama versus Hillary. “In my eyes Obama is the superior choice in every way. ” Food for thought. (Daily Kos)

I guess the NRA send their kids to college in Utah. “Utah is only state where students, professors can carry guns at all public colleges.” (CNN)

Stairs Bookcase? I got vertigo just staring at the initial photo! (Gizmodo)

If I ever get plants, I should get this thingy to keep them alive - hopefully. (ThirstyLight.com)

Show me the money. Who’s on the the $10,000 bill? Link provided by steveny. (PurpleSlinky)

Lindsey Lohan poses in the nude. You can find the photos on the Internet if you do a simple search. I’m linking to the article in the New York Times about the sitting. (New York Times)

…or post private photos online.

A 17-gigabyte file purporting to contain more than half a million images lifted from private MySpace profiles has shown up on BitTorrent, potentially making it the biggest privacy breach yet on the top social networking site.

Sounds like it’s possibly a very bad thing. But I’m wondering who has the bandwidth to download all 17-gigabytes of data. Read the rest of the article here.

Anyone one a invite to Skitch?  I just got invited, and have been playing around with it.  I think the only requirement is Mac 10.4.6 or later.

Leave an email address in the comments if it’s not visible in your profile.

People are crazy interesting, aren’t they? For example, take a look at the below photo.

Yes, what you see is a wedding cake made in the bride’s image. Very disturbing, isn’t it? You can find more photos on CNN through this link.

It has to make you wonder, “How the heck did the groom get talked into this?”

A cool map - at least I think so - of “200 most successful websites on the web” done as a tube/subway map. You can see the original map here with further information on its creation as well.

I received an invitation to Pownce the other day. I must say I was really curious about Pownce when I first read about Pownce on Techcrunch. After several days of using it I am on the fence if I will continue to use it or not.

What is Pownce?

Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You'll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast.

From the Desktop software image on their web site it almost looks like an IM program, but it is not really one. Then again it sort of is.

First off, you do not need to download the program available on the site. You can do everything you need to do on the web site! I did download the program for the Mac and runs and looks nice. But I really don’t need one more program running on my computer.

Second, it is nice to post little public blurbs on Pownce. But doesn’t that just make it another blog/tumblelog/twitter thing? Yeah, but the fun part comes when you are able to share links, files, events, and other things with specific friends or group of friends privately.

For example: I want to share with a few friends a joke, link or file not meant for public consumption. I couldn’t blog about it for all to see. Yes I could email it to them but email can get lost, have bandwidth limits, or be just plain cumbersome. But if my friends were on Pownce, I could send it to that group of friends privately. It would be posted on their Pownce page. They could comment on the posting or access the link/file any time they wished. Like IM the posting shows up as a little blurb. But unlike IM you don’t have to view the message right away. Check out my Pownce page here.

Both the client and web interface on Pownce is straightforward and easy to use. The learning curve is almost non-existent. But will I use it beyond the next few weeks? It really depends on the traction Pownce gets from my friends who join. Without friends or contacts, and it’s true on any social network, it is difficult to be…social.

For some reason I don’t think the current feature set is the be all end all Pownce. But it is a promising start.

If you would like an invite, I have a few to give. Just email me at the usual places. I’ll hook you up :)

Did you know about Google Voice Local Search?

Google Voice Local Search is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.
Using this service, you can:

• search for a local business by name or category.
  You can say "Giovanni's Pizzeria" or just "pizza".
• get connected to the business, free of charge.
• get the details by SMS if you're using a mobile phone.
  Just say "text message".

And it's free. Google doesn't charge you a thing for the call or for connecting you to the business. Regular phone charges may apply, based on your telephone service provider.

Note: Google Voice Local Search is still in its experimental stage. It may not be available at all times and may not work for all users. We’re fine-tuning the service to get better at recognizing your requests. It’s currently only available in English, in the US, for US business listings.

I should program this on my cell phone because Verizon charges, I think, $1.99 per information call!

There is also Google Notebook which can be used while you’re surfing to gather information.

picnik - Great online photo editing site. You can upload photos or access your Flickr photos to edit. Very easy to use.

tripadvisor.com - Are you planning a trip this summer? Good site for hotel reviews, as well as advice on what to do when you get there. The forums are very helpful.

gorillapod - One of my wife’s birthday present to me this year. This little gizmo is very cool and can support my Nikon D70s. I can’t wait to use it on our trip! I’ll provide more details on the trip in a later post.

Battlestar Galactica - Briliant gripping sci-fi show that is so different from what I watched as a child. They had their season finale last night. We now need to wait until 2008 for answers!!!

How Clean is Your House - New show - at least stateside - from BBCAmerica. Now I’m not the neatest person in the world, but after watching this show, it really wants me to strive to be much more organized.

Corinne Bailey Rae - Love her CD with Like a Star. Get the two disc CD to hear her cover Bjork’s Venus as a Boy.

It’s a Grind - New coffee place I like. We tried the one in Gilroy and in Cupertino. It’s difficult to beat nice service and free Wi-Fi.

Brightcove - The easiest way to share videos, at least I think so. They have a simple to use interface to upload and share videos. I think the results are much better than YouTube (see below)

If you haven’t heard, Late Night with Conan O’Brien is coming to town. His show will be filming at the Orpheum Theatre from April 30 to May 4th. You can find more details through this link.

I’ve only been to one television show taping in my life. It was back in the 80’s when I went to a trip to LA. The show I was lucky to see: Gimme a Break. Yeah, I don’t remember much about the episode that was taped. All I can recall is that it was well rehearsed and pretty much lasted 20 or so minutes.

BossaNova asked me to look at some web hosting companies for him. The rates on his account were going to increase over 50% I believe - I’m not good with math. He called in to complain. To appease him off the bat they offered to keep his pricing the same as his current hosting price. But at that point he was upset that it was necessary to call in at all.

I have personally experienced the same type of tactic. AT & T would do the same thing when my DSL passed each contract year. They would send me email saying my DSL price was going up unless I committed to another year. Then one year they decided not to contact me or offer me any special pricing. I think it was because they noticed my account was very old and that I had services they offered at a premium price without any additional cost on my part (e.g. a static IP). I would need to call in, being on hold anywehre from 10 to 30 minutes, just to get my pricing back down. Finally I got fed up with the customer service and crappy speed and went to cable.

So, I told BossaNova there are many good web hosts out there with many more features than his current one offers. I volunteered to do the legwork for him. This also gave me an opportunity to use Google’s Spreadsheet.

I find the free service easy to use. I was able to put the data in (hopefully) a presentable format. The service only freaked out on me once, saying I lost my Internet connection and any changes I made weren’t saved. Good prompt warning message as the only modification I made was in a single cell. If you have an Internet connection and don’t have access to Microsoft Office but need a simple spreadsheet program, I’d give Google Spreadsheet a try.

So, BossaNova, here is the spreadsheet for you (and anyone else I suppose). I may update it again after this post, but it will be accessible at the same link.

I hope you are able to find a good host out of the ones I have listed. From the list, I have personally hosted websites at four of the six companies. I recommend them all. But for me lately, disc space offered hasn’t been one of the features I’ve been looking at since I host my photos on other services. If this is the case for you, and if you like good service and reliablity, I’d go with Dotable. I’ve only been with them for about a month right now, but it’s been pretty smooth sailing. You can see their uptime server stats at http://status.dotable.com/.

I was listening the TWIT podcast this past Tuesday. Leo mentioned a site called Tumblr which sounded interesting by his description. (He also writes about it on his Vox page here). From their FAQ, Tumblr describes themselves as:

To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.

Save & Close

Setting up a Tumblr page is quick in easy to do. What do I put on there? I’ve been posting photos, stories, sites and other small things on there that I want to revisit or share that I really don’t want post a lengthy blog entry about. It’s pretty easy to post those items through a simple bookmark link you add to your browser. For some reason it doesn’t feel redundant having a Tumblr page and a Vox account. Not sure why this might be the case.

So visit my Tumblr page when you get a chance. Some of the links I post might be NSFW (Not Safe For Work). I’ll try to denote when it is so.