The excitement of having a new webcam hasn’t worn off yet. I decided to try out two more video services, Ustream.tv & Mogulus. I took some pretty crappy video, mispronounced a few names, but all-in-all, enjoyed test driving both of these services. Ustream is definitely the easier of the two to use, but Mogulus has some really cool features. Ustream was also the winner in the live streaming quality department, but as for recording they seem about the same. If you watch the video you’ll see my excitement at finding some new feature midway through the recording.
Ustream also supports embedding your videos on another site, something that I couldn’t figure out how to do with Mogulus. I could embed my Mogulus channel, but if you are not live and don’t have loops setup, it isn’t very useful. If you want to see my video there, you’ll need to head over to my Mogulus page and click “On-Demand” and select the clip to play.
I like Ustream better, but you be the judge. In addition, I’ve posted the blip.tv upload from my AT&T Tilt that I mentioned on the Ustream vid. Oh, and remember, I am a newbie – so be kind if you comment.
Here I am testing out my new Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000. I want to start doing some video blog posts and video calls. Remember: be kind, I am camera shy!
Removed Google Reader stream Removed Twitter stream –> Replaced both with friendfeed stream. friendfeed displays my shared content from around the web, including my shared items from Google Reader & my updates on Twitter. friendfeed is a keeper, but might build a widget..see below. Sidenote: The friendfeed embed script doesn’t seem to render properly in IE6. It required a change to the stylesheet (inline changes at this point) to redeclare width & to set the overflow as hidden. Ex: <div id=”some_div” style=”width: 400px; overflow: hidden;”> I’ve checked out 2 different widgets, but neither worked well with my current theme and didn’t display thumbnails.
Tags, Archives, and Contact info removed from sidebar —> They are incorporated into the tabbed box at the top right.
Removed/Readded/Removed/Undecided on the ShareThis widget. —> Caused slow page loads & is blocked by websense, need to find an alternative. That’s why you see a blank space under leave a comment & before Related Items. When I think about it though, do people actually use the “share this” button on web sites?
Updated Related Items display —>Now inline versus bulleted text.
Dropped Lijit Search —>I was torn on this one. I really like the widget, I like the company, and I like the concept. However, I found that I used it more to display my social homes than for searching. In a perfect world, I would have kept it , but I just couldn’t figure a good way to integrate it. They still get the big recommendation from me.
Added a Social Homes plugin & widget (hacked & edited) —>More customizable as a simple social homes display than lijit. You can get the original wordpress plug by Elie Zananiri from silentlycrashing.net. I hacked it to add a couple of new social network, i.e. Mento. [I freaking love Mento, only use del.icio.us now to back my links from Mento]
Considering Disqus —>I don’t have that many folks who post comments, but I like the community idea. Am not sure if I really want to direct people to another site.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study(pdf) in May regarding the different search and purchase strategies used to buy goods online. Jack Loechner at The Center for Media Research has already done a good job of recapping the study, but two call outs of particular importance to me were:
1) Participation after the purchase is surprisingly rare. 2) That the “growth of broadband adoption at home and the buzz about online participation in a Web 2.0 world, widespread activity in this arena might be expected. Yet the data in this report do not show this; there is clearly distance between the number of those who contribute and those who lurk.”
