I enjoy Jason Calacanis. I guess it’s his downright cheek which makes him entertaining. If you view everything he does in terms of self promotion and publicity then it all makes perfect sense.

Lifestreaming aggregates all your online activity into one place. A while back I discovered Tumblr (thanks to Leo Laporte) which is perfect for the task. Seems Steve Rubel thinks the same.

My lifestream.

Twitter now allows users to send direct messages to followers. A great idea to cut out some of the noise.

Having been an avid user of Google Reader over the last few months I finally realised that it was controlling me rather that I controlling it. With over 100 feeds I became a slave to the RSS torrent.

The answer has proved to be Netvibes. I started to use Netvibes as an online manager for my new music show and has ended up being my preferred RSS reader. It forced me to strip out all the feeds I didn’t really read but thought I needed. Now I’m down to only 16 blog feeds. Much better.

Finally Google Reader embeds and plays videos from Google Video, YouTube and a few others. It only plays the video if it’s embedded in the original web page however and not if it’s an enclosure. Shame. I want Google Reader to play video podcasts in the same way it plays audio podcasts.

Now that my reading list is so large and unwieldly I have ditched just listing all the blogs I read in the side bar and replaced it with a link to the page of stories I read/share in Google Reader (my RSS feed reader of choice).
Robert Scoble does the same thing.
Google Reader is reinventing publishing, syndication and subscription in a fundamental way and it won’t be long before everyone else follows suit.

Technorati tags: blogroll, google, googlereader

This is just a test post written in Google Docs.

A great little movie made by Steph. Shot on an old Fuji Finepix digital camera and edited using Windows Moviemaker.

Two of the simplest and best web services I’ve come across lately. Jajah let’s you make VOIP phone calls at Skype Out prices (or free calls between Jajah users) using just your landline or mobile phone. Twitter provides a public messaging system that’s lies somewhere between SMS and blogging - blogging lite. They remove the technology from the user experience and that’s crucial for any web service to achieve mainstream usage.

Technorati tags: jajah, twitter, voip, skype, sms, blogging

I have to say I’ve found the belated Blogger updates excellent. Despite adding features than many other services already offer I’ve still found using it very easy and intuitive. Way to go Blogger. Now, how about innovating a bit and doing something before everyone else?

Technorati tags: blogger, bloggerbeta

I read a live newspaper which is updated every minute. The content comes from hundreds sources all over the world including established media outlets as well as my friends and myself. It features news, photographs and video. I can enjoy it on my computer, my mobile and my iPod. The times they are a changing.

Technorati tags: newspaper, aggregation, rss

It's a measure of Flock's dedication to high quality user-centric development that the built in blogging interface with, in my case, WordPress is actually easier and more functional than the original WordPress.com posting page. It also let's me insert Technorati tags without having to touch any code.

The integration with Flickr is superb too. Flock's own photo uploader is far superior and less buggy than Flickr's own uploading tool. The RSS reader is excellent also. And while I will not be using it since my feed needs are more catered to by Newsgator's syncronised multiplatform offering, Flock have done the best job so far in this space of introducing RSS to the masses. The metaphor of creating your own newspaper is a powerful one and calling the homepage of your feeds the Front Page is a masterstroke.

Technorati tags: flock, wordpress, tags, technorati, flickr, rss, newsgator

Apart from its seamless WordPress, del.icio.us and Flickr integration Flock just feels so, well, Mac-like. It's as if someone decided to create a browser for frustrated Windows Firefox users. I'm not frustrated any more. Who'd have thought a browser could make you happy.

Technorati tags: flock, mac, browser

If there was any incentive to move away from Firefox, Flock is it. Essentially Firefox by another name, Flock has a couple of nifty features right out of the box which I think are great.

Firstly blog integration with WordPress.com comes as standard and it’s Photos feature lets you upload and view Flickr or Photobucket pictures in the toolbar. It has a very usable RSS reader and built in integration with del.icio.us for sharing bookmarks/ favourites.

It has a very nice ‘chrome’ theme but no doubt more themes will become available. In fact the overall feel of Flock is one of elegance. It reminds me of my experiences with a Mac which were always good.

I've was tinkering and fiddling with the visual design of this site when it occurred to me - who cares? I'm only doing it for myself and my favourite themes wax and wane weekly. In an RSS/ subscription world how a site looks is virtually irrelevant when compared to the value of the content. Website themes are like clothes. Wear whatever takes your fancy on any given day. The person wearing them doesn't change and neither does the inherent value of the content of your website. Mmm, what shall I wear today?

You know the entire fabric of publishing and media is undergoing a revolution when you look at the phenomenon of Roger Smalls.

This lone (and by his own admission lonely) soul hooks into the network via nothing more than a lowly dial-up modem from his home in Guildford, Surrey. He blogs and records audio clips on his mobile phone. Many of these clips have been played by Adam Curry on the highly successful podcast The Daily Source Code. Roger's audio clips have proved so popular that they get their own jingle whenever Adam Curry plays them on the show. It has even been reported that some media executives have the Roger Smalls theme tune as rings tones on their phones.

This has not gone unnoticed by Nokia who have given Roger a free phone to review and record podcasts with. And it's on this very phone that Roger now contributes a one minute spot to BBC Radio One's oneclick/ future show.

'The Roger Smalls Show' is only a matter of time. Ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated while the incumbents make their way to the exits.

Where indeed? While I admire and respect Rocketboom as one of the web's innovators helping bring about the reinvention of media, I just don't find it particularly funny. Amanda Congdon may be a skilled actress (I have no idea having never seen her act but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt) but she's no comedienne.

And right now it's definitely the latter. I'm not feeling quite myself right now so it's best I keep away from publishing on the net until such time as I really feel up to saying what I want to say.

The furore surrounding TechCrunch's redesign reminded me of a debate I used to have with clients all the time. They would insist that their website was theirs because it belonged to them. I would say quite the opposite is true. Your website belongs to your customers/ users not yourself. You don't actually use your website. You might look after it, tend it and generally make sure it's working for it's audience but the idea that you would redesign your site for yourself seems peculiar.

This is hilarious. Mike 'TechCrunch' Arrington does Spain the hard way.