The newest social networking site has premiered - ncludr.com!

I already have profiles on so many of these type of sites, but this is one more I will add. How can I resist a marketing pitch that claims that the site is "the most awesomest ultimate social network ever?"

I love the capabilities the site touts:
"Upload photos or publish notes, get the latest news from your friends, post videos on your profile, tag your friends, use privacy settings to control who sees your info -- NOT WITH nclüdr!"

As if all of that wasn't enough, the home page features testimonials from PeeWee Herman and Mr. Wizard (apparently raised from the dead). I drilled down to sign up and whose testimonials should I see, but Rudy Giuliani and Mr. T!?! Can you think of any other website that features both America's Mayor AND Bad Attitude Baracus?!? AND a tile ad for a company that will help me lower my funeral costs? I can't think of even one.

As you probably assumed, I just had to click on the FAQ page...and, boy am glad I did! I stumbled upon an ad for a Virus Detection software that promises a Premium Gouda Cheese Wheel! WOW! These guys are already generating "revenue" through advertising on the site, which is not really hard to understand since everyone in the world has already signed up!

Speaking of, the sign up was a snap using ncludr's Personal Profile Generator V2.01. It was only 3 questions long and quickly told me who I am. Facebook has never once given me this level of self-discovery. Right off the bat, I had 12.3 billion friends! I only have about 30 on Facebook!

Check it out - you won't be sorry! ncludr.com

Are you tired of missing "The Office" every week... well not anymore thanks to Hulu.com. Now you can watch it when you want to, where you want to. Hulu was created by NBC and Fox to deliver their content free, but with an advertising catch: with a 20 minute clip you get about a minute to a minute and half of advertising (one 30 sec spot and two 15 sec spots in something I watched).

With the user sitting in front of the computer, visiting a sponsor's website would be as simple as the click of a mouse. I've been watching alot of shows on Hulu.com and I don't know about you, but lately I've been wanting some thick bacon from Chili's.

Although you may be saying "Why didn't they do this earlier?" well a few companies had, even now Hulu is still competing with companies such as Brightcove which allows companies to join their network and get a personal channel.

The really neat thing about Hulu though is they even offer the ability to select clips of a video to embed on your website, blog, etc. Who wouldn't want to see Peter from Family Guy fight a Giant Chicken!

Of course last but definitely not least: HD movies(720p)! It's mostly just previews for now, but this will definitely be the biggest hit of the site if users meet all the requirements.

All I have to say is so long broadcast, hello digital!

Well, Hulu officially launched yesterday after many months in beta. Better late than never? The "video online" market is fairly crowded right now, but Hulu does bring the powerhouses of NBC and Fox under one umbrella, not to mention many other smaller channels as well (like Bravo, Fuel TV, FX, Sci Fi, Style, Sundance, and Oxygen). In the last year and a half all the broadcast networks have really ramped up their online video presence.

The Wall Street Journal posits that Hulu is coming out as a competitor to YouTube. Does anyone else out there have an issue with this? The bread and butter of YouTube is not shows (though they are pirated on there, or show up in snippets only), but UGC -- User Generated Content! Hell, its one of the biggest successes of the Web 2.0 "amateur created" internet fad we're all wrapped up in. YouTube is popular because it shows cats tackling babies, old ladies punching other old ladies in the face and of course The Evolution of Dance video.

Now, Hulu does have a good shot at doing this better than its competitors. Its archives are ripe with much wanted older episodes of popular shows (*cough* Simpsons *cough). And the ads that it is serving can be targeted towards the end-user (I get to choose what type of ads I see) and big companies are going to eat that up. Especially since ads in video is still experimental for marketers and there is a lot of drool over the expected ROI.

That is until someone makes a site that rips the content, strips the ads and reposts everything free of annoyance. The legality of this is of course obvious, but that hasn't exactly stopped people from posting shows online already, has it? If anything Hulu might be making it easier. Now all a site needs to do take the videos and keep the ads there, but put in "jump points" to allow the user to choose to skip the ads. They're there, but the user decides to skip them and jump to the next point in the real show -- definitely doable.

HuluDVR.com upcoming? Totally predicting that.

Yesterday morning Gary Gygax passed away, so I'm a bit nerd-sad at the moment. Like many other computer geeks, growing up I was into roleplaying games and Gary Gygax was an icon as the Father of Dungeons & Dragons. Though it was in person, sitting around with some pencils, paper and dice was our social networking back then. Later when the internet was picking up, but before the label of "Web 2.0" was slapped on it, to have "online friends" was still seen as anti-social.

And now everyone and their mom has a Facebook or MySpace page. If you don't, you're the odd one out now. The irony is particularly interesting because the nerds, geeks and dweebs of 15-25 years ago are now leading the technology behind Web 2.0, social media and all things "hip" about the Internet right now.

If anything, I'm more anti-social now than I used to be -- except for the fact that I interact with more people online now than I ever do in person. I've put down the d20s (those are twenty sided dice for you non-initiated) for now, but I'll always be a roleplaying nerd at heart.

Recently, I completed a project in Flash that required all of the graphic elements to be rendered as vector shapes. I decided to use ActionScript only to draw every interface element. Why? Well, as our French friends say, "For the challenge!" There are practical reasons too involving control over look and feel of the page and other esoteric issues, but that is for another post.

What's important is that I developed a burning desire to add Apple gel-type buttons to my interface (I like the way they look, so sue me), and I searched online for ways to create these buttons using vector tools. I found many links like this and this and this, but none addressed creating the buttons using the Flash Drawing API. So I studied each tutorial, absorbed the process, then automated it. And I will show you how I did it.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago I came across some neat advanced search techniques that you can use in Google’s search and here are a few of my favorites:

inurl:<keyword> this will only return websites the keyword in the url

allinurl:<keywords> this is the same but allows multiple keywords

Along with these there are a few operators that you can use also:

+<keyword> this will return all pages that include the keyword only.

Example: Louisville +interactive agency will return only Louisville agencies that have interactive describing their agency.

-<keyword> this will return all pages that don’t include the keyword.

Example: Louisville –interactive agency would return all agencies that don’t have interactive describing their agency.

Here are a couple of links if you are interested in learning more neat tips and tricks for optimizing your searching in Google:

Google Search Operators

Google Query Tips

Mac Tricks and Tips recently came out with a list of the Top 100 Essential Mac Applications, so I think I'll list my own essential apps (but not 100, sheesh!) that I use as Geek in Charge at CurrentMarketing.

1. Komodo Edit : If I'm not using vi as my text editor, I'm using this app. I could use any old plain text editor, but I'm addicted to syntax highlighting for code and hate working without it.
2. Fetch : I think the list from Mac Tricks and Tips is wrong about Cyberduck. I've had nothing but issues with it, and that's why I love Fetch as my FTP client.
3. Parallels : When needing to check a site across multiple browsers and multiple platforms, Parallels sure beats the pants off of a desk full of hardware. Gone are the days of 3-4 computers on or around my desk. Well, working ones that is -- I have a graveyard of dead towers behind me right now.
4. Spaces : Every Leopard install already has this, but if you don't have it enabled you should! I simply couldn't work as effeciently without it. I normally have my editors, terminals, Parallels, Photoshop, iTunes and numerous browsers all open at the same time. Without Spaces, I'd go mad (even before Leopard I used 3rd party apps to perform similar desktop magic).
5. iTunes : Okay, so this is a given. Every Mac-head out there has this favorite app, but as a developer it is very important to my work. How else could I stand banging out line after line of code if I couldn't fire up iTunes and listen to Green Day, Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin and Lady Sovereign (or a mix thereof) to blast in the background?

Well, those are the applications I wouldn't want to function without daily on my Mac. Now I'm going to go check out a lot of the apps mentioned in the Top 100. Which, by the way, is only a Top 99 -- Wallsaver is listed twice (47 and 58). It must be that good!