")) { $ctr++; } } } if ($ctr > 0) return("(".$ctr.")");} ?>
You are cool.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

badge: squirl

Non-interactive badge. Widgets coming soon?
Also, oh, man, I find myself not especially motivated to accept the data-entry position Squirl offers me to catalog my stuff.
x-posted on web2.0depot.net
erik 2:20 PM | permalink | yap

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Friday, September 22, 2006

web tool: GroupLoop
With its page title, "GroupLoop ™ - Centralize, organize. Keep your group in the loop!" you can see GroupLoop is an online collaborative manager. It seems to me it falls somewhere between 37signals' Backpack (more of a personal organizer) and Basecamp (project manager). I may give GroupLoop at try to see what it's like, though I've been planning on using Backpack for my next small group project. I'm already invested in Backpack and it will keep my group stuff right next to my personal stuff.
xposted on web2.0depot.net
erik 11:24 PM | permalink | yap

badge: Twitter
flash version:


follow Erik at http://twitter.com


JavaScript version:


xposted at web2.0depot.net
erik 11:15 AM | permalink | yap

thoughts on the convenience of the new iPod shuffle
The super-small footprint, integrated clip, and anodized aluminum casing make the new iPod shuffle hott (that's with two 't's). However, the new suffle dock leaves something to be desired.
It's included, which is nice, but it's required, which is not. I'd like to get a MacBook in the near future, so my computing will become mobile. That means if I want to sync a new shuffle, I'll have to connect the USB dock before dropping the shuffle in the dock--with the older shuffle, you could just slap that sucker into a USB port. Of course, if you have a desktop, like I currently do, it's no big thing; a dock might even be nice; indeed, I spent $30 to buy the old shuffle dock so I could stop having to reach around the back of my Mac and find a USB port.
A more glaring flaw is with the shuffle's ability to store files. If you want to use the new suffle as a USB drive, you'll now have to cart around the dock, too, to connect to other systems. That's a serious drop in usefullness. Of course, I don't use my current old shuffle as a USB drive because doing so causes a major loss of stability (I'd have to do a system restore almost weekly when it started locking up).
One of the major selling points of iPods is their ease of use. Other mp3 players I've owned have been a real hassle to use. These little issues are only slightly nagging, but still, that's a step backwards for Apple.
xposted on my iPod blog
erik 10:18 AM | permalink | yap

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Thursday, September 21, 2006

mashup: Flickr + business cards = MOO
MOO has launched to great fanfare, and without actually having used it yet, it's probably deserved. Glossy, half-business-card-sized cards with your flickr photos on one side and some contact info on the back--pretty neat! For a design professional, these should make for some distinctive business cards, and they'll be appealing in lots of other cases, too: bands, events, real estate.
Once I get my hands on some, I'll update with a review of the quality and the experience.
xposted on web2.0depot.net
erik 3:38 PM | permalink | yap

web tool: Weebly
You'll need an invitation to join the beta of Weebly - Website Creation Made Easy, but that shouldn't be too hard--drop your email in the form on the front page, and the creator of Weebly will probably get back to you right away.
Weebly is a very slick AJAX WYSIWYG editor. It's incredibly stylish and easy to use.
I've just started playing with it, and it's admittedly a beta; so, then, my hiccups: the text fields (really the main thing you will be adding to a site) won't render JavaScript, so you get a funky looking mess like http://esswedl495.weebly.com/. Also, you'll notice that publishing is to their own server, not via FTP--kinda like the Blogger Beta, which forces you to use BlogSpot servers. Speaking of Blogger, here's one more limitation of Weebly: we're talking static pages.
Still, looks promising.
xposted to web2.0depot.net
erik 10:59 AM | permalink | yap

You are cool.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

mashup: BookMooch meets LibraryThing
So, I've been reading a lot lately (and I should be talking about that more here), all thanks to BookMooch, a very cool book swapping website. More on that later.
It's still hand-driven at this point, but I like the idea of using LibraryThing's bookshelf and tags to display my BookMooch inventory.
LibraryThing has an awesome Universal Import function that can grab all the ISBNs off my BookMooch inventory and add them to my bookshelf. Then, it's a simple matter of using their widget to output the covers of the books I've tagged bookmooch (automatically done on import, natch):

Unfortunately, the cover links lead to Amazon, not my BookMooch inventory, should someone want to mooch a book. Another annoyance: my LibraryThing shelf will have to be manually updated when I do give away a book.
I'll have to see what I can do about that.
xposted on web2.0depot.net, Wrybrarian.com
erik 4:14 PM | permalink | yap

shiny new toy: web2.0depot.net
Lots of activity over at web2.0depot.net, a new blog where I'm testing out all the nifty badges and live content you can get nowadays.
xposted to ErikSwedlund.com
erik 1:37 PM | permalink | yap

You are cool.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

badge overload
If I ever get around to putting all these web 2.0 badges in my sidebar, it's gonna get busy (okay, busier) around here.









See more of esswedl's picks at ThisNext.






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erik 11:29 AM | permalink | yap

You are cool.

Monday, September 11, 2006

fit news
More web 2.0 fun at traineo.
traineo
erik 8:32 PM | permalink | yap

You are cool.

Friday, September 08, 2006

tricksy
There are just too many web 2.0 tabs open in my firefox! I'm drowning in a sea of gradients.
I remember seeing someone's suggestion on digg that you could use Google's personalized homepage as a Google Desktop-like proxy with Firefox on a Mac, by loading the bookmark in your sidebar, and arranging all the modules on your IG into the left column. I tried that out for a day or two, but wasn't thrilled (though it certainly seemed like a great idea). The problems were that I had too many modules, and couldn't lower the font size in the sidebar; lots of scrolling.
Now I've had a flash of my own: load meebo in the sidebar! That sucker can be skinnied right up, and I can have my buddy list always visible. Every once in a while I need to resize to grab a chat box that's popped up too wide, but the meebo virtual desktop is very flexible.
I followed someone else's suggestion a few weeks ago to set meebo as my active desktop on my Windows machine at work, but that also failed to impress. It was always hidden behind my pile of maximized windows, and there's something flaky about the active desktop connection that caused meebo to log out on an annoying regular basis.
erik 2:22 PM | permalink | yap