DISQUS

Nice finds! I'd like to see Wolfram|Alpha answer:

"pirates or ninjas"
"mac or pc"

If you enter your birthdate (with the year), it'll give you some stats, such as how many days old you are, what phase the moon was in that day, what percent of the year had elapsed, what time the sun rose and set, etc..

Yeah, like RKW said, the servers must have been overly hit when the news first broke, but it's fine now (for me at least) because I was able to download it under four minutes.

Thanks for the head's up, Mashable!

Relatively smart decision. I should probably follow suit. Good luck with your exams!

Whoa! I'm not big on 3rd party Twitter apps (call me paranoid), but I might just have to try this one out. Looking super slick in Gmail.

Thanks for sharing!

I received a beta invite to Prezi some time back and had an excellent opportunity to use it while giving a general presentation. It's a fun tool. And everyone was pretty much wowed. :) Give it a try if you haven't yet.

I find this to be interesting. More integration between social networks and search engines. It'll be interesting to see what this leads to.

And will Facebook push towards putting forth a true competitor to MySpace Music?

I determine the number of friends I have by whether or not I consider my use of the site as "personal." Sites like Facebook, where I post pictures, my phone number, address, and other things, I keep limited to people I actually know and communicate with, despite knowing that I can limit who sees what.

On the other hand, I don't consider sites like Twitter and Last.FM to be "personal," because I use them as a medium to connect with more people, thus am willing to friend or follow anyone, as long as I see that it would be beneficial.

Thanks for posting this! I hadn't heard of it until now, and am definitely liking the looks of it. So much, that I think I'm going to subscribe to the email list..

Haha, I was actually searching today for blogs which covered lesser-known artists.
Tumblelogs will just have to suffice. :) Thanks for this post!

Seriously, Facebook?
All users should receive some sort of email or notice,
or something when they make a change to the TOS. And this
isn't something I would have accepted to when I had first
opened my account.

My question coincides with olvado's.
How legal is this, making such a change
without prior warning, giving people a
chance to remove anything they'd like?

Absolutely love this show.

I looove Blip.FM!

And though it's been a long while since I've used Grooveshark, it certainly proved to offer a good user experience.

Yes, Last.FM definitely wins in my book as well (though Pandora is my choice of online radio). I had given Slacker a chance, but the site's look and feel are major turn-offs to me.

Gave it a shot today, and I must say that I'm somewhat impressed by the Photoshop rendition. Is it enough for me to become a full-fledged GIMPshop user? Definitely not. Then again, I don't have Photoshop on my personal PC. Like you said, GIMPshop does build a great bridge for full-on Photoshoppers, but it's just not going there for me. I'd rather stick with just GIMP. Which do you find easier to use: GIMP or GIMPshop?

I've been using GIMP for quite a while for various at-home projects, but I would much rather be using Photoshop, since that's what I've become more comfortable with as a Graphics student.

Never heard of GIMPshop though. Will give it a spin, thanks. :)

Very nice list. Unigo is pretty helpful. I've used it before to help narrow down my choices. I've been looking for something like CoolPeopleCare to help find more volunteering opportunities within my community for a while, so thanks on the head's up! Will also give the other sites a visit.

Very nice list. Unigo is pretty helpful. I've used it before to help narrow down my choices. I've been looking for something like CoolPeopleCare to help find more volunteering opportunities within my community for a while, so thanks on the head's up! Will also give the other sites a visit.

Very nice post!
I'm actually working on some cleaning of my own as well, but am taking a slightly different approach, first weeding out any feeds that are dead, or flat out uninteresting (I've cut back a total of 85 feeds so far). Perhaps I should utilize the folders in a better way...

Congrats on becoming a staff writer! A good way to start off the new year. :) Oddly, I do follow all of the blogs you've mentioned, but for some reason never caught onto the fact that you write for all of them!

My resolutions are to become better at managing time (I fail at this), reduce the number of blogs I follow (over 200 right now - probably contributes to resolution 1), and to participate actively in everything I do. Happy New Year!

Very nice article, Chris!
My three are Participate, Network, and Discover. I will do everything within my power to make 2009 count.

I agree with you on this one. The idea's pretty much spot-on ridiculous. Popularity shouldn't be associated with authority. And authority isn't always the equivalent of quality. Believe it or not, there are some people out there who turn out quality content, but aren't among the more well-known. This isn't to say that those with more followers don't turn out good content - it just doesn't hold true for everyone.

Hehe, tweetbomb, eh?


Happy Holidays, everyone!

While I still back up my first suggestion (Flip; ultra-portable, and looks super-slick - though your camera takes some nice video too..), here are some other suggestions:


- Consider investing in a Kindle. I prefer curling up with an actual book rather than reading electronically, but you may think differently. But this goes over the $249 limit, I believe, so..

- If you don't have an iPod yet, go get yourself one.

- Or consider investing in a sound system.

- Audeo earphones. Way more than I'd ever consider spending on a pair. Several blogs I follow have reviewed this product, and all apparently have nothing more than praise to offer in it's name.

- Want a tech toy? Try out the Chumby or Nabaztag (did I spell that right?).

- An external hard drive? Something to be considered, at least.


Hope some of these suggestions help you in choosing. Good luck, and Happy Holidays!

Well, it's not just limited to Twitter; this change encompasses any site where users can update statuses (stati?)/micro-blogging tools. For example, I wouldn't think that it'd be uncommon for people who don't use Twitter, but do use Facebook to update their status when some large event happens via mobile.
The people I've asked about news sources say that they'd be more likely to believe in news coming from someone who actually experienced the event rather than a news report for a major corp. It's easier to relate to eye-witnesses rather than reporters.
With that in mind, I'd say that major corps will be filtering sites like Twitter for breaking news (and eye-witness accounts), but will have to justify whatever they find with more plausible facts before they release a story (because, well.. anyone can post anything, but that doesn't make it true), if they aren't already. Which I'd highly doubt, especially after the hype Twitter got after the Mumbai attacks.

Haha, you look like you had a blast!
If I won, I'd like Package #3, please. Have wanted an iPod for a while. And seriously, who doesn't like the Dark Knight? ;)

Happy Holidays!