fastr – a flickr game
If you have some time to kill check out fastr, a flickr game. It pulls up 10 pictures from flickr sequentially and you have guess what tag it's using before the other people on the web page. A bit addictive..
Google Earth available for Mac
Google Earth is available for Mac now. And it's not beta. Go figure.
Create an Easy, Free Video Blog with a Patchwork of Web Services, Here’s Mine
Since I don't have a TV, most of the video I watch comes from the internet. A lot of it is really interesting stuff, stuff they would never put on anything mainstream. So I was trying to figure out a way to share these videos I found with friends. I wanted to make an RSS feed with enclosures that they could just stick into iTunes or whatever and watch when they felt like it, a video blog. That's actually how I get most of my news and video now, Democracy Now video podcast instead of CNN. So I made another WordPress blog and tried uploading some video but it didn't do the enclosures right. Turns out, Feedster will take a regular RSS feed and turn any video or images in the feed into enclosures and make sure the feeds all valid and shit for you better than you ever could.
That gave me the idea, I don't really need a blog, I just need an RSS feed. Del.icio.us does that. Which is even better, cause I don't have to deal with the files. When I find an interesting video I can just tag the video url with del.icio.us and I'm done. Feedster looks at del.icio.us' RSS feed, finds the video, puts it in the proper enclosure so it shows up in iTunes. No posting, no uploading, no cost.
To use your own video you just need to add a place to store the video file into that mix. Ourmedia.org is one of many sites that will host your content for free. Just upload your video then tag the file's url with del.icio.us.
So, here's a video RSS feed with enclosures of some stuff I find interesting on the net. You can stick it in your iTunes or whatever and watch stuff as I find it. In iTunes, choose the menu option "Advanced" > "Subscribe to Podcast." I have no idea why it's hidden under the "Advanced" menu and there's no little plus button in iTunes or Safari for adding a podcast.
Feel free to add some video if you want. Just make sure you tag the actual video file url and not just the page that it's on. And wnly quicktime (.mov, .mp4) shows up in iTunes though.
Flock
I'm testing out new this web browser called Flock that lets you post to your blog from within the browser. It's pretty nice. It syncs with my del.icio.us links and has some kind of flickr option too that I haven't figured out yet. Looks pretty nice. It's uber-beta now I guess, but it runs pretty slow on my mac. I wonder if the tags work?