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I was editing a video yesterday using Final Cut Express 4, and wanted to create a version that would play on the iPhone. The timeline I was using was 1080i60, and the aspect ratio was 16:9. First I tried File / Export / Using QuickTime Conversion, and selected iPhone as the format: This created a video that would indeed sync through iTunes to my iPhone, and play successfully, but it messed up the aspect ratio - it exports a video that s 480 320, which is a 4:3 ratio, so everything in my video was tall and skinny. Pretty useless. Then I tried File / Export / Using QuickTime Conversion, selected QuickTime Movie as the format, and set the compression type to H.264. Dial the bit rate down to say 900 kbps, set the audio to AAC 128kbps, and export. But - no matter what I did (and I tried just about every combination of settings I could think of), this video would not sync to the iPhone through iTunes - it had to go through a conversion (in iTunes, Convert Selection for iPhone/iPod) first. Definitely not what I wanted. Then finally, I tried File / Export / Using QuickTime Conversion, and selected MPEG-4 as the format: Click Options , then make the following settings: File format: MP4 Video format: H.264 Bit rate: 900 kbps Image size: Custom (set resolution you want here, e.g. 480 270) Frame rate: current But then, here s the key to making the whole thing work, which unfortunately took a while to figure out. Click Video Options , and set the profile to Baseline : Finally, set the audio to AAC-LC, and you should be good to go. Hope this is helpful for someone but at very least, the next time I need to do this, I will have it written down. :-)

My friend Grant McCracken wrote a blog that spurred these thoughts.

I am so in love with this video. Found via MyRagan.com

By now we all know about the couple of days it took for the .Mac to MobileMe transition to happen. I didn t really complain about it - during the whole time, email was working fine (from a mail client), and sync was working most of the time. It was just the new web apps that took a while to come up. More recently, on Friday, there was a complete mail outage for 1% of MobileMe users, and said outage has still not been fixed (as of Wednesday mid-morning). I m in that 1%. I m not really too upset for myself; I m watching this more from an academic perspective. I use the MobileMe sync a lot between two Macs and an iPhone, and I do use the email, but not often. The fact that mail is down doesn t dramatically affect my life at the moment. And in general, I ll be the first to say I really like MobileMe and what they re doing with it. But after the email being down for 5 days so far, the techie in me can t help but wonder what is wrong. Apple put up a KB article about it, saying: On Friday, July 18, 2008 (2008-07-18) we experienced a serious issue with one of our MobileMe mail servers. This issue is currently affecting approximately 1% of MobileMe members. Affected members are unable to send or receive email at www.me.com or access email using any email client software such as Mail on a Mac or Microsoft Outlook on a PC. Let s look at what could perhaps cause something like this: 1. Complete server failure. Well, in 5 days, you could for sure have another server in there. Actually in more like a couple of hours, assuming their service contract with Sun (they appear to be using Sun s mail servers) is up to date. 2. Disk failure. Perhaps the entire disk array that this 1% of mailboxes is stored on melted down. Even if this was true, you could almost certainly restore from backups in hours, or worst case days. 3. Centralized disk failure. If they re using large storage arrays, it s possible there was a systemic failure and they can t get it back online. However, they d probably have a much bigger problem than a 1% outage if this was the case. 4. Multiple storage failures. If multiple drives all failed at one time, causing an array to come down, and there was no usable backup, then they might send the failed drives out for data recovery - eek. But still - I would think this could be completed in a day. I ve never done it, though, so perhaps this takes a while. 5. Data corruption. If something went terribly wrong, and the server was writing corrupted data, it could conceivably destroy a lot of data before your monitoring knew something was wrong. Hmm. Restoring from backup is the obvious thing to do, although you might have incremental data loss from the window since the last backup (assuming transaction logs corrupt also). Like I said, I like MobileMe, although it s certainly taking a PR beating right now. But I m definitely curious what s going on, and what could possibly take 5+ days to recover from. Any ideas?

It seems lot of folks are having problems getting Exchange push email working reliably with the new iPhone 2.0 software. For me, it worked flawlessly when I was outside of the office, but when I was in the office and connected to our corporate LAN via wi-fi, it was unreliable at best. If I instead connected to another wi-fi network (like the guest network from the folks two floors below us), everything worked fine. There is an Apple KB article talking about this: When roaming between home and office networks with Wi-Fi enabled, push may stop working if your company s Exchange ActiveSync server has a different IP address for intranet and Internet clients. Make sure the DNS for your network returns a single, externally-routable address to the Exchange ActiveSync server for both intranet and Internet clients. This is required so the device can use the same IP address for communicating with the server when both types of connections are active. A workaround to avoid this issue is to disable Wi-Fi on the iPhone. Yep, that sounded like the problem. Our internal and external DNS for our corporate mail server is different, just as the article surmised. But it turns out in our case, it was non-trivial to change them to be the same thing. But it turns out there is a workaround that works for me. If you go into Settings / Wi-Fi, find your wi-fi network, and click the blue button next to it, you ll see something like the following: And here s the tricky part. Tap on the DNS setting, and edit it. In my case, rather than using the internal DHCP-assigned DNS servers, I typed in two external DNS servers. These new servers will override whatever is returned from DHCP, and when asked for the IP of our mail server, they will return the externally-facing IP, since that s all they know about. And that was it! The push email is now working 100% reliably. A little too reliably, actually. :-) Note - I obviously no longer have internal DNS resolution within my corporate LAN, but that s not a problem for me. Your mileage may vary. Note 2 - this also assumes your external mail server IP is accessible from your LAN. This may or may not be the case, depending on how your firewalls and the rest of your network are configured.

Last time, we looked at how clippings work in NewsGator Enterprise Server.  At the end of the video, I mentioned that there are other ways to share clippings with other folks I was referring to a feature called group clippings. Group clippings are basically clippings that are shared among all the members of a group.  That group might be an Active Directory (or LDAP) group, or it might be an ad-hoc group defined in NGES.  The clippings for that group are, by default, private to that group - so you can have a confidential conversation among the members. View QuickTime video YouTube version: And as always, you can try all this out for yourself by downloading the free 20-user version of NewsGator Enterprise Server.

One of the first Mac apps I bought was Delicious Library. Not that I desperately needed it, but it was just too darn pretty not to buy, especially for a new Mac owner to use to show his friends. And when version 2 came out, I was super excited about being able to publish my library on the web. Here s my use case. I travel a lot, and I like to read books on the plane, rather than do my usual work somehow I feel more relaxed when I arrive to where I m going. Anyway, so I ll be in the book store in the airport, and I ll see an interesting book. But if it s not a new release, then I often can t remember whether I ve read it before; I know I like the author, and I know I ve read a lot of his work, but not positive about this particular book. So DL2 and the iPhone to the rescue, right? Pull up my library, do a quick search, and I d be all set. But herein lies the problem. The out-of-the-box templates can be seen on Adam Betts blog. While pretty, here are the issues with the iPhone templates, at least for my particular use case: 1. There are only 12 books per page. Yikes - that means I have 20-some pages, and I m not sure which page I need to go to. Or with the other template, all the books are on one page - which is nice, but leads to problem #2. 2. See all those pictures of the book covers? Those are coming to about 90KB each. Each! That means a page of 12 books is over half a meg. That s a lot on a phone. 3. I don t need the book descriptions and links to Amazon in there either. Those are pretty big also, although down in the noise compared to the image sizes. What I really wanted was one page with all my books, or at least 100 or so of them, and have the page be small enough that I could load it over EDGE without having to sit down. I d like search features too, and I d like to be able to sort by author s last name (so Tom Clancy would be before Brad Meltzer), but hey, there are bigger problems to worry about. While I was browsing around, trying to figure out a way around this problem, I saw Mark Burgess site, and he had some sample templates. While his template wasn t what I wanted, it showed me how to make one. So I worked on it for a bit, basically just modifying the one that ships with DL2, and this is what I ended up with: Over 200 books on one page, and it s coming in at just over 200KB including the images on the page. Now that I can live with! As to how to install it it s not super easy. Here s what you need to do: 1. Install Mark Burgess s HTML template, and install it per his instructions (in the readme file). 2. Download my changes, and replace the files in the iphone directory in Mark s template with the contents of this zip file. No warranty, of course this is at the it seems to work for me stage. :-) If there is some documentation somewhere about how to make DL2 templates and get them installed without resorting to such hackery, I d love to know about it, and then I can make this into a real template. Anyway - hope this is helpful for someone!

The development of NetNewsWire for iPhone just might be the worst-kept secret in NewsGator s history. But hey - that s ok, especially since today is launch day! NetNewsWire for iPhone uses the NewsGator Online sync platform, so you can use NetNewsWire on your Mac, FeedDemon on Windows, NewsGator Online on the web, or any of our other applications, and they will all sync together. I ve talked about this a lot in the past but this is really the only reasonable way to build a mobile reader, IMHO. We use mobile devices as companion devices, in addition to our desktop and/or laptop computers - they re not the only devices we use. The first thing to do is head on into the iTunes App Store (click the image below): Assuming you have iTunes 7.7 installed, that link will take you to the App store, where you can download NetNewsWire: And then you re all set. Here are a few screenshots while you re waiting for your iPhone 2.0 firmware to download! Main screen: News items: Reading an article: This new app also supports clippings - so you can find articles on your phone that you d like to read later, and save them in your clippings folders. Those folders are also synchronized to your desktop apps and the online system as well. If I sound excited, it s because I am. :-) So stop reading now, and go to it! And did I mention it s free?

Onward, I say. Time for the next installment in the series, this one covering clippings. There s a lot of buzz about clippings in NewsGator Online (and shared items in Google Reader), especially with apps like ReadBurner making them easy to discover. There are similar use cases for clippings in the enterprise. NewsGator Enterprise Server supports two kinds of clippings - personal clippings, and group clippings (which are shared by a group). This video covers personal clippings; group clippings will be coming next time. View QuickTime video YouTube version: And don t forget you can download a free 20-user version of NewsGator Enterprise Server. :-)

As you know, we recently made NewsGator Enterprise Server free for up to 20 users. We ve had quite a bit of response to this - thanks to everyone who has downloaded and is using it! On a somewhat related note, I ve decided to make a series of 60-second screencasts demonstrating some of the features of NGES. The first of these is below, on the integrated tagging features. Why 60 seconds? I mean, as someone mentioned to me last week, the shorter the video the harder it is to edit (so true). My thought here is, everyone has time to watch a quick 1-minute video of something cool but much more than that is tougher. So, I m going to give the 60-second thing a shot, and we ll see how it goes. Feedback would be appreciated! So on to the first video. This shows the tagging system in NGES: The YouTube version is a bit hard to see due to the size and quality; click here for higher quality QuickTime version.

Each of us works best, most creatively, in a certain zone. I think of this as a sweet spot. Here are a few thoughts about creating in that zone. iTunes version

Ah, an old-school audio podcast today! What a treat!! This morning, Ralf Beuker of Vol. 2: design management.de and I recorded a discussion about social media, business uptake and cultural differences. Hope you enjoy it. Subscribe to The TrueTalkBlog on iTunes. Podcast with Ralf Beuker MP3 Version iTunes Version

In this video, I pose a question to the three remaining presidential candidates. iTunes version

We're all so immersed in the political narratives today that it's sometimes hard to remember the parallel evolution of media and politics. A few thoughts on how the two have enabled one another over the past seventy or so years. iTunes version.

It s been about 8 months since I started using an iPhone. Oddly, I wasn t even interested at the time; I got the phone as a freebie for going to the Office 2.0 conference in 2007, and it sat on my desk for a week before I even activated it. Color me unexcited. But then, things changed. Turned out I did like it, a lot. It was fun . I m a sucker for fun gadgets. I switched my regular phone number over about a week later, and I ve been using it ever since. So the other day, I was out to lunch with someone, and he asked how I liked it. And while I was answering, I had two interesting realizations: 1. It s still fun. I mean, all the little animations and eye candy. The little things. Could I live without them? Sure. But having them there somehow makes the whole experience continue to work. 2. It s the first smart phone I ve ever had that didn t annoy me. I mean, really. Smartphones I ve had in the past (from Audiovox, Motorola, Palm, and others) all eventually sucked at the little things. You know, like making phone calls. Sometimes I d find that the phones were too busy doing something (gosh knows what exactly) to even let me make a call. Or too busy to ring when a call was coming in. Sometimes they d lock up. Sometimes they d get into a weird mode where anything I did would take 10+ seconds. Sometimes they d make me want to throw them against a wall. But oddly, the iPhone has done none of these things. It s not perfect by any means - it s got a few little bugs but at risk of sounding like a fanboy, I have to say it works better as a phone than any phone I ve had in the last 3 years. And that is something I never thought I d say.

Ever since we first shipped NewsGator Enterprise Server back in 2005, I ve had this blog post in the back of my mind. We never had an easy way for folks to actually take a look at the product, and kick the tires for themselves. We had demos, webinars, conferences, and all that but you couldn t actually download it and try it for yourself, without buying it (or entering a trial agreement). Well today, all that changes. You can now download a free 20-user version of NewsGator Enterprise Server, install it, and use it! Why would we do such a crazy thing? We want more people to see it. More feedback. More visibility. This product has been extremely successful - our customer list reads like a who s who of the Fortune 500 - but it s been primarily deployed in larger installations. But what about smaller companies, or individual departments within companies? This will hopefully remove the barriers involved in trying out these technologies. And in the latter case, we re confident it will lead to larger sales as the deployment grows beyond the initial 20 users. But for those first 20 folks, it s free! As in beer. There s only one catch, and it s not really a catch. Regular paying customers get dedicated support from our enterprise support team but if you download the free version, FAQs and community support will be via the forums. That should be ok, though - we really don t think you re going to have many problems. One caveat, though - this is a server product, and the installation process will ask you questions about your Active Directory or LDAP configuration and such. If you don t think you can answer those questions, you might want to find someone to help you install it. In case you can t tell, I m totally excited about this. But enough of me rambling here is the NewsGator Enterprise Server product site, technical requirements, and the download page. (you ll have to fill out a form to download, but don t worry, it s short.)

The second round of the Enterprise 2.0 Launchpad videos are online, including a new video from NewsGator. We took a different approach than the others - rather than just a screencast, we made a spoof of The Office, showing how NewsGator Social Sites totally rocks all over the status quo. So if you can spare two and a half minutes to watch it, head on over and vote for us! The 4 winners will be presenting their solutions on stage at Enterprise 2.0 and I promise you re going to want to see the new stuff we ll have at the show. :-) Here s the voting link: http://launchpad.enterprise2conf.com/. Make me proud!

When our differences become more important than our similarities, we've lost sight of something fundamental. iTunes version

Client Retrevo's Alka Gupta was on this morning's Ronn Owens show in San Francisco's ABC KGO studio. With Retrevo being the only site solely dedicated to all things consumer electronics and Mother's Day coming up this weekend, Alka talked about the kinds of things that women want in a gadget, what is important and why. She also had a host of consumer electronics gadgets that would be great for Mom this Mother's day. She was in the second part of the segment so if you want to tune in, click here and scroll the bar half way across to listen in. In the last few weeks alone, Retrevo was also on KUFX-FM/KFOX-FM: the Greg Kihn Show (top rock music station in the Bay Area with over 300K listeners), KVUE.com, KBAY/KEZR FM, KEZR-FM: Marla Davies morning show, and KSCO-AM. Note that Retrevo did not have any sponsorship, advertising and other connection to the vendors that were discussed. They were simply chosen based on their design, price and whether they'd make a great gift, particularly for moms who want gadgets to be simple and easy-to-use. Some of the suggestions included the Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth headset, which looks like a piece of jewelry, the Flip Video, which comes in an array of fun colors, and is small enough to fit in a purse or pocket, key chain photo frames, floating rose lights, webcams, and the new Canon SD1100 which comes in blue and pink as well as silver. Ronn Owens remains a fabulous radio personality and has had a number of high powered guests on his show; Barbara Walters is slated for this month. In a format which explores everything from politics to popular culture, current events, personal issues and just plain gossip, his program is the ultimate electronic town meeting. Before our segment, State Senator Carole Migden, the incumbent was on to discuss the issues. Many of the most colorful personalities of our times have been guests, including Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Barbara Bush, Desmond Tutu, Walter Cronkite, Burt Reynolds, Lauren Bacall, Caroline Kennedy, Huey Lewis, Summer Redstone and Barak Obama. Enjoy!

One of this years best TED Talks. I just finished reading her book, basically an extended version of this talk.

Here's the morning kickoff video as I prepare to leave our apartment for Brooklyn. Stay tuned!

Here's the morning kickoff video as I prepare to leave our apartment for Brooklyn. Stay tuned!

JVP's Managing Director Erel Margalit talks to our blogging group this week about start-ups and innovation in Israel. Their Jerusalem outskirts office is not unlike a Silicon Valley-based VC office except that the printers and fax machines might be a tad older and like every other company's kitchen, they're well stocked with Nescafe instant coffee. The latter is an integral part of the culture here in the same way it was 20'ish years ago. We learn about their DreamWorks-like initiative Animation Lab, which extends beyond a typical technology play. “The line is blurred between where technology ends and content begins," noted Margalit. As the former head of MSN Israel, he has a background and perspective on digital rich content. Erel and his team 'get' social media. We were introduced to three stealth mode companies and saw 'on-screen' demos. I can't talk about them just yet, except to say that they're dabbling in virtual worlds, interactive games and social networks and online video. When asked about entrepreneurship and why there's so much innovation coming out of Israel, Erel says, "Israelis don't think about what they can lose but about what they can gain. Unlike Europe, they don't have a plate on their door in a town where their family and history was rooted for 1,000 years. Israel is new and full of immigrants from all over the world. So its much easier for us to take risks." JVP is currently the king VC in Israel, having launched between 20 and 40 companies, with most of their exits in the communications and media space. "We're on our 5th fund," he added. "The key is to make a few home runs in each fund." We got the impression that they're on track and that the climate was ripe with opportunities. Eran continued to rave about the opportunities that Israel has over Europe and the states.....and why. "Silicon Valley is very engineering driven versus the rest of the world. Not having that as a major driving force gives us an opportunity." He sees other opportunities in Asia where they're developing a lot of interactive content. During his last trip to China, he observed that 500,000 were playing online warfare games. In LA, it was all about broadcasting entertainment. In Europe, mobile continues to take a leadership role. I captured the tail end of his interview on video - see below (also uploaded to Flixwagon.com). Click play to tune in.

It has been more than two decades since I last walked through Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre (black and white shot is of the church in 1885). A deeply spiritual and moving place, a Greek orthodox woman prayed to my left, a Polish catholic priest led a group to my right and every religious variation in between stood among me. Within its walls, you can either pray or quietly reflect with every other walk of life from around the world and be at peace. I took a few short video clips while inside which are captured below. Click play. As I took these earlier today, they were streaming live on Flixwagon.com, a real-time video solution by an Israeli start-up. More on them later.

From chips to healthcare, we leave Zoran in Haifa and drive north to Rambam, one of Israel's five major hospitals and the only tertiary care center serving the northern third of the country. They take 'everyone' in, so an Israeli soldier could be lying next to an Arabic terrorist. IDF soldiers, UN and US Sixth Fleet troops have all passed through these doors. Some never leave. The center was named after Rabbi Moshe Ben-Maimon "the RAMBAM," the greatest Jewish physician of ancient times. A photographer follows us all into a large overly air conditioned room (I think Israelis 'think' that yanks need to have rooms at subzero temperatures because its so hard to find a public space in the states that isn't "iced"...). It turns out that he typically shoots body parts during an operation. Rambam's Director of Public Affairs David Ratner talks to our group. We learn a bit about its history before we get the 'emotional story.' It was built in 1938 by the British as a government military hospital. They now take in roughly 83,000 annually, and there are 120,000 emergency department visits and 44,000 surgical procedures. All of this is handled by only 700 physicians; 23% of these doctors are Jewish, Muslum and Christian Arabs. Located only 35 kilometers from the Lebanese border, they have gained international recognition in trauma medicine since they took care of so many wounded during war time. They're also making significant progress in stem cell and genetic research. A renovated emergency trauma center is currently the top priority of Rambam's campus wide Vision of Adam master plan. Their dream is to render ER into a full emergency medicine center 24/7. That means a self-reliant ER with emergency medicine specialist physicians trained to provide primary care to every incoming patient. They host a trauma program four or five times a year where doctors from around the world can come and learn 'best practices' of what the Rambam medical team learned while under attack. When missiles started hitting in June 2006, patients were admitted to Rambam from various sources: from deadly missile attacks in the immediate vicinity, from other hospitals unable to handle the injuries and from helicopters who were bringing in wounded from the border. Today, they treat a lot of people from the West Bank. Arabs and Jews. This is not an issue. The medical center is also located between two navy bases. During times of peace, there is an area that is being used as a parking lot. During war time, it would only take 72 hours for them to turn this lot into a place where they can treat an additional 750 people. Trauma comes to them in many forms. David reminds us that a bus accident full of injured children is far worse than three soldiers who have been shot. Rambam is also doing a lot of work cardiac tissue engineering. Rambam and Technicon are both working on combining cardiac stem cells and polymer to generate artificial cardiac contracting sheet. This center deserves more recognition than it has received worldwide - perhaps not enough people know. The Rambam Healthcare Center an amazing example of co-existence in Israel and how life 'could be.'

Late last month, Random House's Crown imprint launched its first free book experiment, which quickly became more controversial than the publisher expected. Crown released Scott Sigler's new book, Infected, online as a free (no DRM) pdf on March 27th, five days before it would be available in stores. The hitch was that this was limited-time deal: on March 31st, the day before the book went on sale in stores, they would take down the file. This elicited the following rant from Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow: Publishers are schizophrenic and often end up acting really dumb in the service of trying to do something smart. Crown is putting Scott's book online for free as a PDF, but they're taking it down after only four days -- presumably just in time to kill whatever momentum the downloads are generating. If you happen upon this blog-post next week when it shows up on Digg, you're out of luck -- no download to use to figure out if you want to buy the book. Worse still: Crown is only making the download available before the book goes on sale! This is an act of massive goofiness. Here's what this means: the book's promotional download period ends before you can buy the book. If you download this book and love it, you can't walk down to the bookstore and pick up a copy. Sure, you can pre-order it on Amazon, but I know from watching my affiliate link payments here on Boing Boing that ten times as many of you buy books that are on sale when I blog them than buy books that have to be pre-ordered. The Internet exists in an eternal NOW, and expecting someone who downloads a book to hold onto the impulse to buy it for four days is so unrealistic, it makes me suspect that this strategy was conceived of by someone who doesn't actually use the Internet. Either Crown believes that free downloads sell books or they don't. There's no coherent explanation for a ticking-bomb download like this one; it's like the hesitation marks on the wrists of a half-ass suicide. So which is it? Does Crown believe that free downloads sell books, or don't they? I talked to Shawn Nicholls, Crown's Online Marketing Manager, to find out. The short answer is that Crown does indeed believe that free pdfs will sell more physical books. "We definitely subscribe to the believe that offering something online isn't going to take away from sales," says Nicholls. "The one thing I tried to do when we started this was to make a distinction between free music and free books. A MP3 can be a substitute for a CD, but we're not at the place where a pdf is a substitute for a hard book." But Crown also believes in the concept of artificial scarcity: "Our goal was to create some buzz. Four days of availability gives a sense of urgency and makes it more of an event," he says. And although Crown did take the book down from its official site, Nicholls said that they wouldn't stop people from mirroring it elsewhere for as long as they want. Here are the initial results of the experiment: The book was downloaded 45,000 times over that four days, compared to just 15,000 times for a previous experiment in free ebooks, The Beautiful Children, which was published by Random House in January. (That pdf was posted after the book was on sale.) Over the four days, Infected went to #1 on Amazon's Horror List, and #150 overall in book sales (from being in the two thousands before). It's too early to know what the bookstore sales are like, but on the online sales alone, the experiment looks like a success so far. The Infected microsite became Crown's top site. Nicholls suspects that fewer people were inconvenienced by not being able to buy the books in stores over the free pdf window than Doctorow predicts. "The online audience we were hoping to reach is more prone to buying from web retailers, so for them pre-ordering on Amazon four days before publication isn't that frustrating. It shows up just a few days later than it would have if it were purchased after its on-sale date." "The way we looked at is that we straddled the line a bit. Giving away the full content of the book at all is a service to the consumer. Cutting it off short was simply us looking at all our long term goals--balancing the marketing buzz of a limited-time event against the virtues of longer availability. However, I can see the logic in Cory's point. It was an experiment, but if we see it as successful, we'd only want to go further, not go back. What we did this time was a calculated trade-off. Next time the conversation might be entirely different." My take: the important thing is that Crown believes that free digital books can sell more hard copies. Exactly how to do it is a work in progress, but the philosophical hurdle has now been crossed. Now we can expect more and better experiments and less hand-wringing about FREE. Which is quite an advance, any way you look at it.

Tonight I was playing around with some CSS and wanted to look something up. There is a tutorial I ALWAYS use for CSS, but I've never bookmarked it - I just Google it and it is usually the first or second entry. I did the same thing tonight and *this* appeared in my Google results: I'm sure it's just cookies, but still. Also, not entirely accurate - I've actually visited that site since Feb 8. Maybe this is a good thing b/c they are making transparent data they collect and that is already stored about your searches. But all the same .. creepy. Update: via Twitter @chesh200pro (aka Jay Goldman) tells me that they've been doing this for a while. A feature if you're signed in. So clearly I've never searched and been signed in. Still find it a little creepy. I do like how they try to sell it: follow interesting trends in your web activity . I don't know if I want to monitor my own activity that much.

Innovation, much of it built on playfulness (a topic for another post), is pouring out of Silicon Valley at an amazing rate. Scribd is a site that permits users to share documents using a proprietary Web viewer called iPaper. Robert Scoble recently interviewed founder and CEO Trip Adler on his new Fast Company TV show. I thought I'd test out Scribd by uploading a PDF of the slides I used for my recent TED-U presentation on social media. Here they are. The slides don't completely stand on their own but you can probably get the gist. Read this doc on Scribd: TED 2008 Presentation

I love Photojunkie (aka Rannie Turingan)! This is a video he created for SxSW's 20x2 panel in Austin this year - the theme was What's the Difference? . 20 x 2 : What's The Difference? from photojunkie on Vimeo. Aside from it being an inspiring sentiment with some great photography and a kickass soundtrack, it's also really neat to see these quiet, private moments in a number of my friends and colleagues lives. Well done!

Got 19 minutes? I know, that's quite a chunk of time in today's thin-slicer of a world. But here's a video presentation of an amazing TED Talk that's worth every second. Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher at Harvard. One December morning, she awoke with a wicked headache and began experiencing some very odd things. Turns out she was having a stroke. She recounts that morning in this talk. I was fortunate enough to be in the room when Jill gave this talk. The beauty of it was her ability to intertwine the clinical and human aspects of the devastating events that were overtaking her. Her vivid depiction of her brain alternating between a familiar, left-hemisphere-dominant world and surrealistic right-hemisphere world-immersion is the best I've ever heard. And then, just when you think she's given all she has, Taylor sums up in one of the most emotion-filled moments I've ever experienced in an auditorium. Do yourself a favor. Sit back, watch and listen to this extraordinary talk.