Digg: A Geek’s Domain – or Hitting the front page

An interesting timeline of how the Digg’s built up. A single-author niche blog pulls 50,000, then 80,000 page views on consecutive days, up from an average of 1,000/day since being launched only 10 days beforehand.  But do the general online newsreading population use Digg, or is it just the geek’s domain?

The Digg Effect: A Deconstruction | Linux Brain Dump

Internet video usage survey results

The Pew Research Center has released a report about online video usage in the US that shows more than half of all adults have downloaded online video at some point, and 20% regularly watch online video every day.

Pew Research Center: Online Videos Go Mainstream

To make the online video point, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com has put together a video entry about the research findings.

From the Pew survey link:

• Online video now reaches a mainstream audience; 57% of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video
• Three in four young adult internet users watch or download video online
• News video is the most popular category for everyone except young adults.
• More than half of online video viewers share links to the video they find with others.
• Most online video viewers have watched online with other people.
• Professional videos are preferred to amateur productions online, but amateur content appeals to coveted segments of the young male audience.
• Few pay to access online video.

Broadband

If you weren’t aware, Australia has nearly the slowest broadband and most expensive telecommunications services in the developed (OECD) world, running second-last and third-highest, respectively.

Low on speed, high on cost | Australian IT

“Markets with healthy levels of competition have led the introduction of innovative services and appealing pricing packages,” the report said.

I expect broadband prices in Australia will drop when Telstra is finally opened up to widespread competition, and so I impatiently wait.

An excellent site for Australians looking to compare broadband packages, as well as quality of service (they list over 6,000 plans and 250 providers), is broadband CHOICE.

Not Point-and-shoot

The other day I mentioned a few digital video cameras. Camera site camcorderinfo.com has a comparison review of four good compact digital video cameras:

The Great HD Shoot-Out – Canon HV20, Sony HDR-HC7, Panasonic HDC-SD1, JVC GZ-HD7

I was surprised to see the Canon HV20 take top spot. I thought the JVC GZ-HD7 was the hot new thing, but they weren’t too impressed with it.

Online Video overdose

The most basic and free video editing software (as in, you don’t have to go download/install it because it’s already on your computer) is usually okay for basic video users.

For Windows users there’s Windows Movie Maker, while I’ve found iMovie for the Mac is an ample resource for those quick edits and exports.

If you don’t have any video software that you can use on your hard drive, or are up for a little experimentation, there are a lot of online editing solutions.  I would recommend not trying them on dialup (as I have to at home).

Mashable has put together a very comprehensive resource.

Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources

There’s more information there than anyone can reasonably be expected to digest, and the following are just the categories under which they list resources:

• Live Video Communications
• Online Video How-to
• Online Video Editors
• Online Video Converters
• Video sharing
• Video hosting
• Video organization and management
• Vidcasts & vlogging
• Video mashups
• Mobile video apps
• Video search
• Online video downloading services
• Miscellaneous tools
• Online TV

They also have other posts in the series, with the Online Photography Toolbox, Blogging Toolbox, and Online Productivity Toolbox.

Twitter

Social networking is all the rage at the moment.

I’ve signed up to a few popular sites to see how useful they are – and because I’m a complete nerd. I did hold off for a quite a while on signing up to some of these, but I now feel it’s almost a responsibility to be involved and try to understand them more.

I honestly haven’t put much effort into expanding my social networks across these sites yet, and hadn’t visited some for several months before writing this post.

I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Friendster… probably something else, but I can’t remember at the moment.

You can read about Twitter in this article in The Australian yesterday, where it’s suggested Twitter may not be a complete waste of time.

“There are people who talk about their frivolous daily activities,” Owyang says.

“I remove them. For me it’s more of a business communication tool than a frivolous personal introspection tool.”

LinkedIn has been described as invaluable for professional and career networking. The following is a profile link promotion button. It will probably be part of a future redesign of earleyedition.com.

And Twitter has been described as inane, which of course it can be, as can blogs. But there are useful ones out there too. The badge below may be incorporated into that redesign I mentioned.

iPhone

Apple recently announced the much-anticipated iPhone. It’s a camera-phone, an iPod, possibly a PDA, and wireless internet device.

One of the biggest considered drawbacks right now is the battery life, not to mention the possibility of locked-in two-year contracts with a phone provider. It may give you 16 hours of music, but only 5 hours of battery life when actually being used as a phone. While it is a rechargeable battery it’s not a replaceable one, except by Apple, so good luck with phone contact for however many days or weeks Apple keeps your phone after you send it in for a new battery.

Read all about it, and see the pictures, at iLounge.

You, Robot

Always with the robots.

We hear about the magnificent advances we’ll have in the near future, and everyone wheels out “the robot“, ol’ faithful.

New generations of service robots will not be very intelligent but will provide cheap help for a range of tasks such as packing, cleaning, checking and basic assistance.

Polish that chestnut, lads! Of course, robots making our lives easier has been on the cusp of realisation for the last 60 years if you believe the hype. Realistically, the scenes from AI and I Robot are a long way off, not to mention Bicentennial Man. The first robot programmed to think and talk like Robin Williams will indeed signal the end of civilisation as we know it.

While those lifelike robots might forever be consigned to the realms of science fiction, we haven’t even managed to come up with something as useful as Number 5 from Short Circuit, who was particularly unattractive.

But all those disappointments and shattered dreams end THIS year, Doctor? 2007, who woulda thunk it.

Well, then it really is only a matter of time before Robots could demand legal rights. Einstein certainly would have.

HELP

Back from holiday. Just quickly throwing these things out there because I need some help

1. Skype – I’m trying to configure Skype to record straight into Garageband (or other similar/better audio recording software for the purpose of online voice interviews. I’ve seen some stuff but am yet to get it to work. Specifically, I can’t find a step-by-step guide I saw a few months ago that dealt with Skype to Garageband specifically.
2. Does anyone know how to make an iPod function as a storage device that will work in both Macs and Windows-based computers? I thought I had enabled it on my mac, but when I went and tried to use it on PCs at university it wasn’t recognised, and asked if I wanted to format my external storage device in FAT32 format or something. I didn’t because I didn’t know whether or not that would end up being a bad thing for the iPod as a whole, and didn’t want to lose the files I HAD transferred onto it.
3. Quick links. Because I hardly have time to read these, but I really want to, maybe after putting these links here I can shut all the tabs and unclutter my desktop. These are all the websites I have open in tabs at the moment, with plans to read in full. Some are read and awaiting posting here, but this will have to do.
   • Skype on a USB drive
   • Portable Firefox 1.0.7 (USB Drive-Friendly)
   • Advanced Podcast studio setup with Skype and Audio Hijack Pro (not quite doing what I want yet, although getting close!
   • The True Face of War – I hesitated putting this one in, but I was reading it, more for the shock value of the line
     

     American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.

     It’s really bad. I would recommend you DON’T follow any of the links to pictures if you go to read the thread.

   • PR Newswire.com – now has RSS feeds.
   • Can Bloggers Strike It Rich?
   • Suppression of dissent – this one was just reading up on stuff for a story.
   • Podcasting from Mac OS X – A Recipe – I actually haven’t read all through this one – it could be a winner.

Alright, there’s a big storm rumbling through, and I’ve been trying to rush this post so I can unplug everything. Take care, see you soon. Oh yes, and help with 1. and 2. above would be appreciated.

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