Born On The Web

After I learned how to use PHP to move files to S3. I was looking for a way to do this in a transparant way, so you’ll still be able to use your own domain name when storing your files on S3.

Twitter uses S3 for storing its user avatars, try loading the timeline and you’ll see the amazonaws.com url coming up in your browser status bar. While this is just a small and visual annoyance, it becomes an issue when people start linking directly to your files stored on Amazon S3. The direct link to a file on S3 will look something like http://aws.amazonaws.com/your_bucket_name/your_file_name . This is not exactly pretty and you’re missing out on a lot of Google juice. In this post I’ll show you how to avoid this in a few simple steps. Only thing you need is an S3 account and access to your DNS config file.

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I’m explaining this to a lot of people recently so I guess it was time to make a blogpost about it.

I manage a few domains, mostly for myself, but also for a couple of friends. I do this because my hosting packet is pretty extensive, it doesn’t cost me more if I add extra domains to  it.

The only thing I found that was a pain, was managing dozens of emails for each domain. Most hosted mailboxes get pretty spammy after a while and have a limited storage. So for me, google for domains really came as a solution, and now I use it almost exclusively for handling my emails. Here are a few reasons why :

• It provides unlimited storage , well not unlimited, but I haven’t met anybody who came close to the limit.
• It has a nice and lightning fast interface (a real upgrade for users who are used to work with squirrel mail)
• It supports imap and pop3 access
• It’s free
• It can be accessed on a mobile phone.(via web or a mobile tool)
• Easy to use control panel to create new users, you can create extra administrators, administrators can create aliases for email addresses. (so most of my friends can manage their emails themselves)
• Easy to create mailing lists
• Possibility to use more than only email: docs, chat, sites, …

However changing email provider without any problems is considered impossible. Since I’ve done it a few times now, I think I’ve found the best way to do it. Without loosing any mails.

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According to Facebook ads, there are 1 462 760 Belgian facebook members and 378 200 facebook members from the Netherlands. What a huge difference …

Does this show the popularity of Hyves in The Netherlands?

Does Flickr love you to?

*hint: Check the new logo

via

Scoble has a very nice blogpost on Zooomr its recent problems, I don’t know if you followed the story. But after releasing its next big update to the site it went down for 2 weeks. Be sure to read to the end and see the embedded youtube… inspiring.

http://scobleizer.com/2007/06/04/zooomr-next-big-inch/

Quote by miss rogue from citizen agency. They travel around speaking on conferences, but also have customers, how do you handle this?

Question:

How do you guys get any work done with all of the things you are involved in?

Answer:

I wasn’t aware there was a difference between the two…I realized long ago that cutting back on the latter, rendered the former banal. The mojo comes from the being part of the community one serves. If a company prefers an agency that brainstorms in boardrooms and comes up with ideas, they should hire them.

There is nothing better then being challenged by presentations, conferences and like-minded people to keep you sharp. If you are regularly updated with fresh knowledge and insides the work goes much faster and almost automatically.

Community guidlines – a mish mash of tips and interesting theories. A lot of this theories are directly copied from Tom Coates his presentation at the future of web apps. So credit goes to him. But his slides are simply so true and so valuable I couldn’t have let them out. I hope you don’t mind, Tom…

Today I noticed an interesting thread in the flickrcentral group, you can read the rest at i-wisdom.

I suppose that all people that read this blog have a good life. I know I do. I’ve got people that love me, live in a stable environment and get all the chances to develop myself socially an culturally. But off course millions and millions of people on this globe live in much worse conditions.

The bridge is big a charity effort that wants to unite people in a creative way to build a better future for others. Everyone can help build a mile of a virtual bridge around the world and for each mile companies like Adobe will give one dollar to a charity that you care about the most. It’s a great initiative and there are already pretty beautyfull creations and words added to the bridge. Currently there are 585 miles built and 24317 to go. So, get creative, let your heart speak and contribute.

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

And on a professional note: the site is very well executed and the concept is strong.
We cannot speak of consumer generated content here, but a better term could be carer generated content.
Good use of audio and video. The messages that welcome you speak immediately grab your attention and make you clear what it’s about on a very personal way.
I like the visual style to, but it took some time. The colours are very strange, even somewhat ugly. This could be deliberate so the site looks more spontaneous and from the hart then it would when the site would look very clean an over styled. This style makes the barrier for posting graphics yourself a bit lower.

It’s also worth noting how they integrate MySpace. The Bridge organisation has their own Myspace and user are invited to link to their own Myspace pages and most notably to download backgrounds and banners for your Myspace pace.

The bridge – building a virtual bridge around the planet

Dabble beta just launched after a year of alpha and beta testing. It’s a very handy community site you can use to gather and organise videos from all over the web. Currently they index more then 240 sites, including youtube, google video and the internet archive.

Dabble allows you to make your own playlists or to subscribe to ones of friends.
It can’t wait till some people with excellent taste and lots of time on their hands start making über-cool playlists so I can add those to my rss feeds.
The use of ajax is pretty good with the playlist interaction. A little ajax form at the side of the page lets you add new playlists and easily add videos to it. Very good use of ajax, it would’ve really bothered me if the page had to refresh several times in order to go through these steps.

There’s a section for requests where you can ask others to help you find video you’re looking for. For example, right now someone is looking for 10 seconds footage of and exploding catsup bottle. Anyone? :)

Another handy feature is a bookmarklet that enables you to easily add media from other sites to your Dabbler user page. It seems that Dabbler analyses the content of the page and automatically fills out the form for you so you just have to submit the form to add the video to your own collection. Killer feature!

This definitely is a must for online video enthusiasts since so many new video sites keep popping up that it’s getting harder to find out where to go find info or to remember where you saw a clip. This seems like a winner!

Dabble