Lofbomm.com

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q[/youtube]

I recently came across this incredible video on one of my favorite blogs, “Shlog” written by Nashville musician Shaun Groves, and I got involved in a mini debate in his comments section.

I have experienced this shift firsthand: Online, I found Adam, we found and later sold our cars, we found our house, our travel companions, many of our friends, and my job here in Korea. We keep in touch with family and friends all over the world though email, this blog, and internet phone. Adam is completing his degree online. We get all of our news online. We conduct business online (selling my CDs and Adam’s voice and photography work). We book travel online, we buy our music online, we buy almost everything but groceries online. Technology is such a gift.

However, Adam and I have been feeling the weight of technology lately. With the conveniences available to gain more information and complete tasks quickly and with a greater scope, the information, expectations, and “noise” are becoming exponentially greater. We feel guilty for not being able to keep up with emails and phone calls (no, you’re not the only person we’re ignoring).

Our generation has the gift of meeting and maintaining more friends because of the conveniences of CouchSurfing, MySpace, high school and university alumni pages, Skype, Gmail chat, email, blogs, the ease of international travel, etc. It’s just getting overwhelming, and this video reminds us that it’s not going to slow down.

Adam and I actually talked this morning about the ramifications of a year without any long-distance correspondence other than hand-written letters. We’re not going to do that, but imagine…

-Jessica

I haven’t really talked about my emerging career in voiceover here on the blog, but I’ve been doing it off and on for a while. I really enjoy doing it and it’s beginning to pick up.

I just signed up to be a voice actor in Voice123.com’s pool of talent. What they’re doing is really pretty cool. Essentially, they serve as an online middle man between voice actors and clients. Clients post their demos, voice profile and resume. Then, clients can search for actors that fit their desired criteria for a job they have. Sort of like online dating for voiceover.

To audition and bid on jobs, you just record an mp3 to their specs and email it. If a client selects you to do the job, you can either go to a studio to record it or (as I plan to do) record it right in your bedroom. You can audition for and do jobs for people all over the planet from anywhere on the planet.

With all of the content-rich media being produced these days and the fact that North American males are by far the most sought after sound, I’m in a pretty great position.

I love the way that more and more industries are being revolutionized by the networking power of the Internet. The ‘Net brought me a wife, a life in Korea, and now a fun career that I can do from anywhere in the world.

Anyway, you can check out my demo here.

You can also check out their main site here:

Voice123.com - The Voice Over Marketplace

Two days ago we had a hard drive catastrophe. I fired up iTunes and pressed play on the Party Shuffle. iTunes started hiccuping out the track and then up came the dreaded spinning beach ball, telling me wait since it was thinking really hard about something. This was not normal.

I waited for a bit and still nothing, just the spinning ball. Soon, the whole system froze up and crashed completely. Yuck.

I rebooted, which took ages. When OSX finally came to life, my external backup drive was missing from the desktop. ‘That’s no good,’ I thought. I ran some disk utilities (OSX Disk Utility & Disk Warrior), and came up empty handed. It seems there was a mechanical failure, as far as I can tell. Almost 220GB of trapped inside that dead drive.
Fortunately, it was my backup, so nothing critical was on it, but a couple of months ago I needed to free up some space so I moved my entire music library (over 60GB worth) over to the external drive. It was a highly rated FantomDrive and only a year old, so I felt pretty safe. The irony is, next week when we go home there is a 320GB Western Digital backup drive I ordered to backup the backup that just died. It could have waited a week and a half to die, couldn’t it??

I still have some hope. Once I have the new drive in hand, I’m going to try out a data recovery program for the Mac, DataRescue II, that I heard about. It’s a last ditch effort, but it’s worth a shot.

Anyway, this little scenario has woken me up to just how valuable (and fragile) data is, and how important a sound backup strategy really is. Right now, I’ve got four years of priceless digital photos sitting on my hard drive, vulnerable until I can back them up again. I’ve got the drive at home, but what if my iBook’s drive crashes too between now and then? That’s scary.

In comes JungleDisk. JungleDisk uses Amazon’s new online storage service, S3, to create a virtual drive that mounts on your system like a regular network drive. Instead of your data being stored in one vulnerable location, though, data on your JungleDisk is stored at multiple datacenters. Distributed, redundant backups- very good thing. On top of that, all data is encrypted, you can schedule automatic backups and space is unlimited. Here’s an excerpt from their site:

What is Jungle Disk?

Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com’s S3 â„¢ Storage Service.

• Store an unlimited amount of data for only 15¢ per gigabyte
• No monthly subscription fee, no startup fee, no commitment
• Your data is fully encrypted at all times
• Data is stored at multiple Amazon.com datacenters around the country for high availability
• Access files directly from Windows Explorer, Mac OSX Finder, and Linux

So, I’m really tickled pink to find this. Paired with automatic backup to our external drives, JungleDisk will help us create a really simple, very safe solution to protecting our data.

This little story also reinforces the ideas I discussed in my Society and Technology discussion post the other day- high bandwidth internet has changed the game, and moving data and applications off the desktop and on to the servers can be really beneficial to the end users like you and I. Case in point.

-A.

p.s. Geek Notes: Is it fast? Speeds will be determined by the bandwidth of your connection, of course, and will vary, but I uploaded 225MB in a minute and twenty seconds today. That’s pretty darn fast. Also, to clarify- you only pay when you play…15 cents per month, per GB, and 20 cents per GB of bandwidth used. Phenomenally cheap. There’s no file sharing option or web access interface yet (like Xdrive), but there is talk that these features are forthcoming on their FAQ.

Here’s a recent posting I made to a discussion in the Society and Technology class I’m taking right now at DePaul. Nothing highly novel here, just my thoughts on the future importance (and unimportance) of processing speeds.

Partly I’m posting this since I’ve been so dry lately on the blog front and figured it was time to say something. More coming soon, I promise.

Personally, I tend to agree with software developer and author Paul Graham that for personal computing and even a good deal of the business market, we will see an increasing move toward web-based applications. Paul goes so far as to say that in 5 or 10 years, most computers will be running not much more than a web browser on the local machine. He cites a number of advantages, among them that for the end user this model would be: “easier, cheaper, more mobile, more reliable, and often more powerful than desktop software.” On the back end there would be greater security, distributed backups, faster software development and easier update deployment. You can find his great essay (and others) by clicking here.

Using the Web 2.0 type applications currently available, one can email, calendar, archive and manipulate photos, manage projects, create and collaborate on documents and spreadsheets, read aggregated RSS feeds,and much, much more. Here’s a good idea of what is out there along these lines today.

OK, so what does all that have to do with this discussion? Well, I think that for the average computer user (with the exception of gamers that demand more and more power to run their virtual worlds), processor speeds will mean less and less in the next few years. Web applications do not depend on processor speed on the user side as much as they do bandwidth. Far more important to the end user will be processor miniaturization, but that is another discussion entirely.

However irrelevant speed will become to the average user, processor speed is still immensely important for professionals working with digital media production, and will continue to be so for a very long time. The only limit to the need for more powerful processors in those areas is the limit of human imagination and creativity, as far as I can tell. Artists will continue to push the envelope in terms of the definition and complexity they want to use in their films, music and art.

Also, as we rely more and more on information technology to make our world work on the large scale, processor speed will continue to be crucial for creating the infrastructure of the internet, banking systems, transport networks, medical facilities, telecommunications backbones and so on. A more connected world means more data. More data necessitates more power, plain and simple.

Overall, I don’t see the push for increased processor power to wane any time in the foreseeable future, though we should expect processor speed to decline as a key selling point for manufacturers in the next couple of years.

-A.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbAHUe-TW6Y[/youtube]

We were having trouble getting our video-embedded posts to show up here on the new site (since the re-design also involved moving to a self-hosted WordPress site. The old version which was a patchwork of Rapidweaver and a self-hosted Blogger site, and a Flickr iframe page, if you happen to care.), but I found a great plugin for WordPress that has us up and running again! Lovely.

I was feeling homesick again for Nashville and for our fantastic neighborhood over on the East side, so I checked to see if there were any interesting videos in or about East Nashville. Found this funny news spot that I thought was worth sharing. I can’t wait to visit the old haunts when we’re home in February. I know it’s a little sweeter in our minds just because its so far away, but it really is a great place.

I’m resolving this year to write shorter posts and way more ofter. Jess has 139 posts to my 30 or so in the last two plus years. That’s pretty lame. I gotta represent…

Take care.

—A.

Our major renovations came along side a move to a new server, and a bit of restructuring. Thus, our old RSS feed is now dead. If you subscribe to our feed, please update your RSS reader of choice by clicking on the big orange button below or using one of the many-flavored subscription buttons to the right. Thanks for bearing with us during this switch!

p.s. We’ve both been using Google Reader for a while now and love it. You can access it from anywhere at all and stay on top of the latest news. Pretty cool.

I have to be careful what I say on here- we wonder sometimes, but it seems people actually are listening to us. The other day we got the following email message in our inbox:

Hi Adam and Jessica,

I came across your blog for the first time today and have really been enjoying it. I love the phrase ‘travelogue of the mind,’ it’s so descriptive.

Since you are LibraryThing fans and have written about Web 2.0 sites, I thought you might be interested in checking out and posting about a site my friends and I recently launched called Squirl (http://squirl.info). It’s somewhat similar to LibraryThing, but where LibraryThing focuses on books, we let users create archives of pretty much anything. Books, but also music, movies, comic books, and many categories of collectibles. Cataloging your collectibles is at the core of it, but it also has social networking features, including a new ‘Groups’ feature, and the ability to upload photos of your stuff a la flickr.

Thanks for your blog, and your time. Hope you have a chance to check out Squirl :)

Regards,
Kristy

Really nice email, I thought. I checked out their site, and they’ve done a really nice job with it. I think it would be a great way for people to share their passion for collecting and find others who have similar interests. Better than just keeping it on a dusty shelf, I suppose.

I’m sticking with LibraryThing, since books are the only thing I collect any more, plus I really don’t need to sign up for another web service (my list of web ID & password pairs topped a hundred a couple of weeks ago!). For those of you who have some obscure collection you wnat to share, check Squirl out.

Scrybe
Originally uploaded by Adam & Jessica.

Companies like the soon-to-debut Scrybe stand to put the smackdown on the Microsuck, er, Microsoft camp. Scrybe is a suite of web-based, personal organization software that is not chained to the web like Google Docs & Spreadsheets or 37 Signal’s Backpack. Offline functionality has been one of the weakness factors for the full emergence of web-based apps.

Until now.

Really innovative stuff from these guys. I cannot wait for this beta test to open up! Here are a few more reasons why I think Scrybe will be so good:

1. Clever, intuitive and beautiful interface design. Check out the contextual zoom, for example.

2. Syncing & offline functionality. Huge.

3. Never leave the browser. I know I live in my browser much of the time these days.

4. Plays nicely with existing platforms (sync to and from Word, Excel, etc.). This will go a long way to make them viable with the enormous business sector.

5. Collaborate & co-create from anywhere.

6. Amazing degree of seamless interoperability within the various components. Everything appears to play together nicely.

But don’t take my word for it, go check out the Scrybe preview video for yourself.

-A.

p.s. Paul Graham has written a great essay on the future of web-based applications and why they make sense which you can find here.

I can’t believe that I’m just now finding out about this. LibraryThing is a way cool web service/community/social networking thingie for geeky bibliophiles. If you know me, you know that I no doubt qualify. I found it on a site called MoMB that my buddy Daniel turned me on to, that lists the newest and hottest 100 Web 2.0 sites on the scene.

A quick aside: For those of you who asked me what Web 2.0 means in response to my last post - As I understand it, it basically refers to a internet paradigm shift from static and owner-created web content, toward more dynamic and user/community created content. Web 1.0…think checking the weather forecast, or reading an article in the New York Times. Web 2.0…think dynamic content driven web apps like GoogleCalendar or Netvibes and user/community driven content of MySpace, YouTube, and Wikipedia, or my personal favorites, Flickr and del.icio.us.

(If you’re still confused, a nice, extensive treatment of Web 2.0 from tech guru Tim O’Reilly can be found over here.)

Anyway, I’m just loving LibraryThing. It’s a mash-up of several things I really enjoy: books, thinking about books, looking at my books, talking about books, meeting people who like the same books I do, and leveraging internet technology to engage in our real-life passions and interests in new, dynamic and global ways.

Adding books is as simple as looking for a book on Amazon, since LibraryThing is actually tied in with the search englines of Amazon & The Library of Congress. Once you find your book, you can choose to edit or add information, such as date purchased, date started & finished reading, and so on.

You can tag your books by topics covered and then see which topics define the nature of your collection by displaying your ‘tag-cloud’ (some pretty strong themes emerging in our still small library here in Korea, as you can see in our tag-cloud below). You can also use these tags to see what other user’s books share the same tags.

Other users with similar interests can be found in the topical Groups and Talk sections, and in the Zeitgeist section, you can get your fill of statistics to pull out at parties such as top 75 authors, top 25 books, 50 largest libraries, 50 lowest-rated authors and so on.

There’s even a book swap option built in, which is tied-in with swapping communities that have appeared recently, such as BookMooch and Bookins. I don’t suppose that option would work out so economically from the other side of the world!

I think this would also be a great way for friends to see what the other is reading or what may be collecting dust on the shelf that they might borrow. They make this part really easy by offering the javascript widgets like you’ll find on our Welcome and Connexions pages.

In short, I think LibraryThing is a well thought out technology for bringing freshness into an old relationship for people who really love books. Feel free to visit my library and let me know if you end up using and enjoying LibraryThing as well!

—A.

Some of you know that I am a little bit computer geeky. I haven’t shared any of this sort of musing here publically, so unless you and I happen to have chatted about Web 2.0, RSS feeds, OSX, HTML or what-not, you may not even know I care.

I actually spend quite a bit of my time exploring the internet, trying out new software and technologies, and thinking about the impact of emerging technologies on our lives in the decades ahead. I get really excited when I consider the massive, global changes that I have witnessed/been a part of in the last 10 years since I first typed ‘www’.

Oh, and it’s very important that you understand I am completely, totally Mac-centric nowadays. My CTRL-ALT-DELETE reflex hardly functions any more, thank heavens.

I don’t profess to know much, or have anything really valuable to say, but I do enjoy this stuff, and I decided today that I will begin blogging from time to time about things I feel are worth sharing.

You are, of course, free to ignore them. As always.

That being said, I thought this chart I found at SkyHorse.org was a very clever and accurate little diagram treating the current state of Web 2.0 services with a healthy dose of tongue and cheek. I found it helpful to see the different ingredients broken out this way. I’ve used all three of the example sites at some time or other (though Flickr is the onl one that has proven indispensible for me), but I wasn’t aware of the underlying technologies they were using, per se.

How to create your new Web 2.0 startup company

Looking at Lofbomm.com, that has been revamped to integrate several Web 2.0 platforms would go like this: It’s a PERSONAL site that uses AJAX, STREAMING, TAGGING, RSS, JAVA and FLASH to do PUBLISHING and RECCOMENDATIONS in a BLOG. We call it Lofbomm.com.

That’s all for today, folks.

-A.