Sociosophy

BlogLovin‘, much like McLovin, is a useful character in a bigger story that doesn’t really need to be here, but at the same time, you can’t help but to love it.

What?

With sites like FriendFeed, MyBlogLog… the mighty Google Reader, feed readers in browsers, email clients, cell phones..,. BlogLovin’ is, though different, sort of unnecessary. The funny thing is, I like the interface, I like the fact that you can follow what others are following, in the fashion it’s displayed. BlogLovin’ gives you stats, tosses recommended blogs at you, and you can comment, etc just as you’d expect to do on a site these days.

In a way, BlogLovin’ gives people who want a neat presentation of the blogs their interested in a place to save’m and read’m in one spot, if for some reason RSS is just too much trouble, or they just don’t want to deal with it.

Here you search, save, come back and read. It’s pretty simple; just like most other aggregating reader applications out there. Perhaps this one’s for you.

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Here’s a thought. Let’s pretend that you have this idea, you really like your idea, but something missing. Right now your idea is simply called “your idea”, or more properly Your Idea, and Your Idea really needs an identity that reflects Your Idea. What do you do? Think of an identity on your own? Sure, you can do that, but what if it totally sucks, and the name just makes Your Idea wither and die. Even worse, Your Idea can end up hating you, throw a huge fit, and simply refuse to work because you named Your Idea, “Wilbur”, after some pig your aunt used to own when you were a child (they turned it into bacon by the way).

I recommend, namethis. The concept is simple, let other people pick the crappy names for you! That’s right, let’s just say that 200 people try to name Your Idea, well, if 195 of them are horrible, chances are you’ll have 5 pretty nice ones… and there you go! All the hard work of filtering through crumby names to get to the good ones is done by the masses. Your Idea stays happy, you stay happy, and you can move onto other things like advertising, being choked by venture capitalists, and selling your soul to the devil (a bank).

Flixwagon is a service similar to Qik that allows you to post video live from your Nokia 3G enabled phone to the Internet. There are some interesting differences between the two of them that I found in the trial moments I spent on Flixwagon.

1. Flixwagon videos stream to the web, and stay on your phone. (+)

… Ok, that’s about it, actually.

I’ve only really been in one situation where I thought it would be awesome to have the video I just streamed up to Qik available to me for preview… But then I found out that Qik has a mobile site that I can watch what I just posted, and that eliminated that mess.

Given the “me being spoiled” with Qik factor, I don’t really see the benefits of switching services. Besides, there’s no means for me to post the video to Pownce, Mogulus or Seesmic via Flixwagon. In the end, I’d prefer to use Qik’s service for streaming, even if Flixwagon is the new and “improved” with the fancy feature of keeping it on the phone. That’s just my opinion though, I recommend downloading them both and giving them a try. Pick the one that makes you feel more awesome.

If you’re anything like… most people, and have a tendency to be rather forgetful when it comes to just random stuff, perhaps you need a little help. If this is you, and you are that, than reQall should become your bitch, and rightfully so – you can man handle your reminders from email, phone, iPhone, web, etc… quickly and fun.

I forgot I had to do a few things other than write a post on this site, so I’m gonna cut this short. Cheers!

Ok… When I was at BarCampLA-5 one of the attendees introduced me to Qik. Still in alpha and already loaded with tons of awesome, but before I get into exactly how rad it is… allow me to poach from their FAQ about what it is:

What is Qik?
Qik is a little piece of software that enables you to stream videos directly from your phone to the Web. Use it to stream engaging videos to your friends in Facebook, Twitter, etc. or as your camcorder to capture entertaining and special moments.

Now, first off – this application, though “little” is far from little. I think it’s the damn near most awesome thing EVAR for cell phones. Multi-touch is novel… Live streaming video is awesome, useful, a tool for blog, a utility for life-catching, and it goes beyond just a camcorder. While you’re streaming? People can watch on your profile (mine) and chat with you, and all over the air. No WiFi required, but it is optional. You can title and describe prior to recording, and also set up your account to upload to a number of services:

1. Twitter: “I’m streaming come watch… <link>”
2. Seesmic
3. Mogulus
4. Blogger
5. Mobuzz.tv
6. Justin.tv
7. YouTube
8. Pownce *new*

I just found out they allow for Pownce, how neat. Right here, live, during this post… and the setup was a charm, only took me “…” to do it. Not bad.

Unfortunately, this is for Nokia S60 phones ONLY, here’s their list:

N71, N73, N75, N76, N77, N80, N82, N91, N92, N93i, N95, E50, E51, E61i, E65, E70m E90 Communicator, 3250, 5500, 5700 Xpress Music, 6110 Navigator, 6120 Classic, 6121 Classic, and 6290

But in due time there will be more support for other handsets I’m sure. They’re actively working on the project right now, and making it VERY well known – especially by flooding SXSW with Qik enabled Nokias for live feed from the conference.

Mine will be at the Web 2.0 Expo at the end of April, that’s for sure. Until then, I’ll keep randomly doing whatever it is I do on the web with this thing… Pretty much take up bandwidth.