Personally, I rarely read these articles because I don’t find there’s much value in a large list of resources that usually lacks a per-item description. If I want a list of resources, I can perform a Google search. A long list of resources usually means the article’s author hasn’t actually reviewed anything.

I would find greater value in an article titled “Top 3 Recommended Design Blogs” with a subjective review of those three items, and perhaps a link to a larger list. I personally don’t have any need to read about more than 3-5 resources in the same category. Granted, there are situations when a large list is valuable, such as when you have a very specific need for a tool or website, but that’s a rare case, at least for me.

Of course, using “valuable” in the title of this post brings into question the value of this rant.

• Current Create Adobe PDF Online
• New Create Adobe PDF Online

I converted the same Word doc which contains several photos and is 6.2 MB with the current Adobe PDF Online and the new one. With the current website I was able to choose to optimize for Web, no such option in the new version. The Current conversion was much more efficient. I also saved the document as a PDF on the Mac for comparison.

Original doc size: 6.2mb
Apple PDF: 6.2mb
Current Adobe PDF Online: 164kb
New Adobe PDF Online: 3.7mb

In addition, the New site messed up some of my formatting and did not preserve web links.

Hopefully Adobe will take what they already have in the (fairly outdated, but much more functional) Create PDF Online and incorporate it into the new version.

I have uploaded the three docs (Original, New PDF site, Current PDF site) to drop.io for comparison. Note, the current Adobe PDF site only allows 5 free conversions per email address.

I’ve decided that WordPress might not be the best option anymore, mainly because I’m not in need of all the features it offers. I’m looking for more simplicity, and I think Tumblr offers that. Getting started with Tumblr is really simple, and their website claims you can be up and posting in 10 seconds, which I can attest to. All you need to enter on their signup page is your email address, a password, and the URL you want (i.e. whatever.tumblr.com).

I’ll be using Disqus for commenting. The main advantage is that Disqus allows you to track conversations across multiple websites, meaning you don’t have to sign up on each blog you visit to comment (or leave anonymous comments).

I will be using Sweetcron for my “lifestream”, which includes Twitter posts, Flickr uploads, Youtube favorites, etc. Sweetcron checks the sites you specify at a specified interval and converts any new items it finds to individual posts. I’ve incorporated Sweetcron into Daniel Novick’s website.

Sweetcron is self-hosted, whereas Tumblr is not. However, a Tumblr blog can be embedded into a site, which is what I plan to do. I am currently using Dreamhost, but have a Slicehost account I have been playing with. I’m going to benchmark the two to get some sort of speed comparison. I’m hoping the Slicehost account will beat my Dreamhost account, because that means more geekery on the backend. I must be clear that I’m using the bottom account for both Dreamhost and Slicehost and that I’m confident upgrading either one would yield very different results.

The general theme is streamlining and centralizing, and I think this combination will help achieve that. I plan to use the same tools to build the new Wizkid Sound website, but with more media-specific elements including a music player and some sort of embedded Mogulus feed.

As for the design, well, I’m thinking Helvetica. That is all.

It appears the final goal is to have voicemails and SMS messages show up in Gmail, but for now you have to log in to the Google Voice interface. Sending text messages is dead simple, and if you have all your contacts’ info in Gmail (or synced with your OSX address book) you can simply click the SMS button and type the person’s name. Messages show up in a thread-like display, and you can archive and mark as read as you would a Gmail message.

There are a couple of things that I’m hoping will be improved with the SMS interface. One of those things is the SMS notifications. If you have your Google Voice number linked to a cell phone (as I do) by default you will receive any SMS messages sent to Google Voice on your cell phone as well as in the web interface. This is ideal if you’re not at your computer, but what if you’re sitting there with your browser open? It seems counter-intuitive to read SMS messages on your phone and in the interface. What I’ve been doing is disabling SMS notifications in the Settings > Phones > Edit when I’m at the computer. But what if you forget to do this, or don’t re-enable it when you leave the computer? You’ll either end up with double notifications or none at all.

Another item that is slightly confusing is, when someone sends an SMS to your Google Voice number, it shows up on your phone as being from some random 406 number. This is so that when you reply to the message it gets routed through Google rather than through your cell provider, and Google explains it here. Makes sense, but still confusing.

Overall, very promising, particularly from the SMS side. I like not having to get my phone out when I get an SMS…I can just stay at my computer and get to the SMS when I want to. I’m not going to port my number over just yet, but would entertain the idea if the features continue to improve.

The obvious workaround is to put “@ ” at the beginning of any tweet that I don’t want to show up on Facebook…but that’s kind of annoying.  I also use Ping.fm which I have  written about previously.  So, I thought, how about I sync my Facebook status to one of the other services that Ping.fm posts to?  Unfortunately I couldn’t find one that had a decent Facebook app. Supposedly the Pownce app can sync, but I couldn’t get it to work.

The upside is that Ping.fm will be able to post to Facebook soon. They had the feature for a while, but with the recent Facebook upgrades the feature broke. Once it’s up and running again, I’ll be able to use the “triggers” feature to choose which services to post to post to select networks only.

All this for pretending folks want to know what I’m doing

Flickurbook is a very barebones way to transfer a Flickr album to Facebook. It’s as easy as typing in your Flickr username, authenticating with Facebook, and choosing which album(s) to import.  The import takes a few minutes (it took about 5 minutes to import a 22 photo album). The Flickr titles you have for your photos are transferred too, which saves some hassle.

What about transferring the other way, from Facebook to Flickr? You’re better off uploading the originals straight to Flickr since the resolution on Facebook photos is pretty low, but there are apps out there, including this one for the Mac. There are also quite a few Facebook apps for displaying Flickr photos on your Faceobook profile.

There are several ways to submit updates using Ping.fm: via IM (several services), through the web interface, by email, and others.  I update using the email option from my iPhone because I don’t have to worry about my internet connection…the email will get sent as soon as there’s connectivity, and my updates will get processed.

The development team (Sean?) is very active…it seems that every week there’s a new service to ping (that I just have to sign up for) or new features, like automatic link shortening, the ability to send updates to a specific set of services, and also the ability to post to blogs.

Send me a message if you’d like an invite as Ping.fm is currently in private beta.

Craigslist is a great place to sell or give away pretty much anything, and you might be surprised at how much people are willing to pay. I have sold a car, furniture, computer parts, and various other items. I prefer Craigslist over Ebay because buyers are usually local, so you don’t have to deal with shipping.

If you have stuff to get rid of that you don’t necessarily want to sell, try Freecycle. Most major cities and a lot of smaller cities in the US have a Freecycle group, which is a Yahoo! group where you can post an item you want to get rid of for others to pick up. I’ve used this service several times and have gotten rid of everything I’ve posted.

Two sites I discovered recently but haven’t looked at in depth are Wigix and Ztail. Wigix (an acronym for Want It Got It eXchange) is essentially an online classifieds system with a pricing structure similar to but cheapter than eBay’s. Ztail lets users post and sell items and have other users determine their value or worth. There’s also Costco’s Trade-In program. I haven’t tried it yet, but it might be worth a shot.

Of course you could use most of these sites to acquire more stuff, but that would be defeating the point, wouldn’t it?

There are plenty of arguments supporting digital downloads, some quite surprising, like the environmental impact of purchasing and (eventually) disposing of compact discs.  Lately I have been thinking more about the clutter aspect.  I have many CDs that I’ve listened to once or twice on disc, and have ripped to my hard drive.  Of course there are some that I’d prefer to have on disc, but what about albums that would be fine in MP3 format?

I recently tried out Amazon’s MP3 Downloads and was surprised to find their prices were cheaper than Amazon’s, and all of the downloads are DRM-free.  So I downloaded a couple of albums at $9.99 a piece and am quite pleased with my decision to save a few dollars on albums that I don’t need a hard copy of.

What about this price difference?  According to some sources, the major record labels are offering companies other than Apple, such as Amazon, a price break because they’re not so happy with the iTunes domination.  Check out the Coding Horror article about this.

All that to say, check out Amazon’s MP3 Downloads.

Here are a few features worth pointing out:

• Broadcasters have a “channel” where viewers can watch most recent broadcasts and highlights if there is no live feed at the time.  There is a standard chatroom-type interface for communicating with the channel owner and other viewers, again, even if there is no live feed.
• Broadcasters can schedule shows and have MySpace bulletins and Twitter tweets sent out when a broadcast begins.
• The quality of the broadcast can be tweaked for specific applications by adjusting bitrates on video and audio independently
• Starting a broadcast is really simple…it takes a matter of seconds to get up and running.
• You can embed a video player into any site, meaning a viewer does not have to visit Justin.tv to see a broadcast

I have not played around with the service enough to get a good feel for it, and have not yet tried it using a wired internet connection.  There are other services, too, like Ustream, and supposedly Youtube will have a live feed service soon.

You can visit our recording studio channel at http://justin.tv/wizkidsound.