Slideshow

Just realized you can now embed Picasa albums as slideshows. How cool.

Playing With Angel

Doing things the "Mac" way: A Skitch mini-review

Uploaded with Skitch!

I had a discussion earlier today with a friend of mine who is a die-hard Windows user and occasional Microsoft fanboy/Apple basher. You know, the kind who buys a Zune or Sansa just because it isn't made by Apple. We were talking about Skitch, a cool little app that I was just "invited" to beta test. What is Skitch? Essentially it's a whiz-bang annotation tool that allows you to add text, lines, shapes, and arrows to a screen or webcam capture (see the sample skitch above). I've heard a lot of good things about Skitch so far, especially from Merlin Mann, so I was overjoyed when I was allowed to download it. I even stayed up extra late just to play around with it a bit. Indeed, I was so excited that I saved the overview of Skitch (available in Skitch's help) as a Quicktime file and e-mailed it to my friend. I also sent him a few of my early skitches (see my tumblelog for these) to show him what I'd been doing with the program. I was sure he'd be as impressed with it as I was.

He wasn't. First response: "It's like Paint on Windows. I've had that for years." My response: dumbfounded. How could he even be comparing Skitch to Microsoft Paint? I asked him to elaborate. "I can take a picture with my webcam, save it, open it in Paint, and draw on it. Then I can save it again, and do whatever I want with it." Ok, I thought. I can see he is not getting this.

"But Skitch can do it all in one program." I thought I had won him over - yes, you could perform the same functions in Windows and get the same end result. But it was not as easy, and by no means as slick. I thought I had him for sure. Then comes the kicker:

"I don't see the point of it. I don't think I would have any use for it." And that was where it ended. How could I argue with that? If you don't need a program, why use it? I let the conversation stew all day and then while at work it hit me. I have discovered what I feel may be the fundamental difference between Windows users and Mac users. And it all comes down to one thing: my thoughtful rebuttal to his final comment. What do I think the point of Skitch is and what do I use it for?

It's only been a day so I'm not sure if I'll be using Skitch a year from now - I'll say that much right from the start. I think I've already hit on what the point of Skitch is in my introduction - annotation. But why do I need to annotate? And what? This part almost stumped me until I arrived at this: I don't need Skitch, Skitch needs me. I have never had the need to annotate a screenshot or webcam capture before nor have I ever attempted the procedure. Why? Because the old way of doing it - the Windows way - is a difficult, multi-step process that requires multiple saves and several programs. Why would anyone want to do this on Windows with tools like the "PrtScn" key and MS Paint? You could draw a picture of what your trying to say quicker. Skitch is useful because it's there - because it does something that heretofore had been difficult and time consuming. Yes, I might not have a need for Skitch, but because I have Skitch I will find ways that it will work for me. In essence, I am more productive because of Skitch because I am doing something that I would have never considered doing before.

I think my take on Skitch can be applied to the whole OS X experience. OS X is an operating system just like Windows and I will not deny that there are strengths that are inherent to both platforms. But OS X's true strength is its ability to reveal a level of productivity that Windows can only dream of. I do things with OS X that I had never done before on my Windows machine - not because I couldn't do them but because it was either difficult or not readily available. And I'm sure if you would have asked me back then if some of the things I do now were "useful" or had a "point" I would have said no.

Skitch is a fun, easy-to-use app. Do I need its functionality in my daily life? No, not in the least. Do I need to annotate screenshots and webcam captures? Not at all. Will I do these things now because I can? You bet.

iPhoneChat - iChat for iPhone in JavaScript

These little iPhone apps keep coming and some of them are really interesting. It is truly amazing what you can do with AJAX and a little ingenuity these days.



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Facebook, Twitter, et al.

It's been a while since I've done a substantial post to my "real" blog (that is, not a miniblog or a microblog). Funny enough, though, that my thoughts on Facebook also relate to Tumblr and Twitter as well as the whole "Web 2.0" phenomenon in general.

First, Facebook. I've been on and off Facebook for a while, first discovering it in early 2004 shortly after its founding as a way to keep in touch with my former classmates at the University of Oklahoma. At the time I didn't "get it" so I let the account fade away. Later I re-registered because I'd been locked out of the original account due to the fact that I no longer had access to my ou.edu e-mail address. I was surprised to find out that this is against their terms of use and that I should've just e-mailed them about my situation and they would have fixed it for me. Nevertheless, my original account was disabled so I had to rebuild my friends from scratch. This ended up being not too big of a deal for me since it allowed me to "rediscover" Facebook as I went along. I grew to like it more and more but now with the release of "Facebook Applications," I don't see any reason why Facebook shouldn't be my - or anyone's for that matter - primary network. The advantages over Myspace are too many to count, perhaps the number one being that Facebook limits what you can do with your profile as far as customization is concerned. Some may see this as a drawback but I'd wager that no one can say that they've never been to a poorly templated Myspace page. I'm sure I'm also to blame for this as who could resist the tempation to decorate if it's offered to you? Facebook doesn't offer this but they do allow you to arrange the components of your profile which is a handy way to keep what's important to you at the top where it's easily visible. I've just started exploring the available applications (I'm way more liberal than I thought I was, for example) and I'm especially excited to see how the Twitter application works.

Ah, Twitter. The day I discovered Twitter (I'm not sure if it was Leo Laporte or Buzz Out Loud that tipped me off to it first) I jumped in to it head-first. I thought the mobile aspect of it was great until I had two months of cell phone bills with text message overages. For some reason I thought that my plan included 250 outgoing messages and unlimited incoming messages when in fact the 250 number included all messages. This prompted me to turn off the mobile updates but I still enjoy the ability to post an update via my cell once in a while. What's really cool about Twitter - like Facebook - is the open API. This allowed for lots of cool 3rd-party extras, including the most awesome Twittervision and the excellent Twitterific. Posting via a Jabber-enabled chat client (Google Talk, Adium, etc.) was great too - when it worked. Despite the bugs I was hooked from the start and still am. My overall post volume has gone down over time and when I do post it seems to come in fits and starts. Somehow, though, the idea of having three types of blogs - macro, mini, and micro - is on one hand extreme overkill and on the other infinitely satisfying. Sometimes I have a thought or an announcement that needs immediate broadcasting - Twitter solves this for me. Sometimes I see links, stories, videos, photos, etc. that I find interesting and Tumblr makes it very easy to post these in an intuitive and seamless way. And when I really want to sit down and type something out - like this post - Blogger fills the bill nicely.

Speaking of Tumblr...the premiere miniblogging service, at least in my eyes. Like Jaiku, Tumblr lets you import posts from just about any feed you like. So, I have my Blogger posts go there as well as my Picasa Web Albums updates, my Google Reader shared links, and my del.icio.us bookmarks. I'm about to add my Twitter feed to that list so that Tumblr can serve as a repository for nearly everything I do online. What I like about Tumblr is its simplicity which is most evident in its lack of a commenting system. Sure, Tumblr has added the ability to have "friends" as every Web 2.0 site seems to be required to do. But Tumblr's friends are non-intrusive - the only thing that happens is that your friends posts show up in your Tumblr Dashboard. Sure, you could put your friends Tumblr feeds into your favorite feed reader and get the same effect but for some reason it's nice to keep everything Tumblr-related on Tumblr. Google Reader is for my news and Tumblr is for my...fun? I mention Jaiku because after the Great Laporte Exodus from Twitter I headed over to Jaiku like a good little lemming and felt...overwhelmed. Three types of blogs doesn't bother me but hundreds of comments to read through does. Sometimes a thought should be just that - a thought.

The last piece of my Web 2.0 missive is on video. Once upon a time (like what, last year?) YouTube and Google Video were what web-based video was. Uploaded user generated content - what could be cooler? The answer: LIVE user-generated content. This is where Ustream.tv comes in. I know for sure that I learned about Ustream from Leo Laporte and I owe him a debt of gratitude. I also owe a bit to Skype which prompted me to purchase a webcam for video calls. While I ended up not using the webcam much for Skype it has become very useful for my forays into the world of live webcasting. As Leo says, if you would've told me last year that I'd be streaming live onto the internet for all to see form the comfort of my living room I would've called you crazy. The future is here and while I'm not streaming at the moment (transcoding video takes a lot of processor power as it is), the ability to do so at any time is extremely powerful. All one has to do is consider the ramifications of this ability on communications in general and you can get the idea of how big this is. One to one video (e.g. Skype) is cool but one-to-many opens a whole new world of possibilities. Impromptu TV shows, presentations, heck whole new business models could spring out of this ability. It will be interesting to see where Ustream goes from here. I'm sure they have more up their sleeves.

The question all of this Facebook-Twitter-Tumblr-Ustream talk inevitably raises is: what will I be writing about next year? What's the next step? What new idea will someone dream up to revolutionize communications once again? I'm not one to predict so I'll leave those questions for you and me to ponder over the next 12 months. In the meantime I'll be anxiously awaiting WWDC - only 11 days to go!

Live Video

You may have noticed my new live video stream located in the upper right corner of the page. I'm going to try to stream live whenever I'm at the computer. Also I've got some videos that are archived on the ustream.tv site. Click here to go to my page. Every time I make a recorded video I also post it on my tumblelog (benhinc.tumblr.com) so it will also appear in the tumblr feed in the sidebar of this blog. Here is my latest just for good measure.

Back Online

Finally got my internet back yesterday (after a week offline) so I've been busy downloading/reading/catching up on podcasts/vidcasts. It's hard to really know how much you miss something until you go a week without it. Oh TWiT, MacBreak Weekly, Windows Weekly, Buzz Out Loud, etc....what would I do without you?