spipasucci.com

So first off, sorry for slacking on this blog. Granted, nobody on earth may be reading this, but alas I apologize anyway. Lately, its been way too easy to plop some interesting tidbit on my ‘facebook’ page instead of here, plus things have been ‘mad-crazy’ the last month or so…
Spent the last day or so trying like mad to backup all my files as the laptop on which I type is doing that ‘downward spiral’ most windows machines are prone to after a year and a half of constant use. It started with a few flaky actions here or there and over the past week has led to daily crashes, weird screen flickers and general ‘wonkiness’ (kinda like whats going on with the world these days)…
The plus side is a rebuild gives a nice chance to get reorganized. I can start fresh, clear away all the crap, and get another solid year of computery ‘good times’ back in action. I kinda wish there was a way to do that in life as well.
I’ve got a weird anxiety about all this data I’ve amassed over the past year and a half. Copying 65+ gb of stuff off a machine looks insane and quite daunting to reorganize. I’m sure by this time next week it will be ‘usiness as usual’, but heading into seems a bit freaky.
And it got me thinking about what would happen if I lose all that info. Sure, its amazing to live in a time where you can have access to a terabyte of drive space. But what about backing that up? My goal is to have all my music, videos, pics, etc organized into a nice neat bundle on a drive for instant access (and to get rid of boxes upon boxes of CD’s), but will that hold up?
Okay, time to head off to work, clear off the machine and get the process started…
Laptop…I’ll see ya on the other side…

Today had some fantastic presentations…

Finally! One of the sticking points for people NOT wanting to use Flash has been searchability (SEO ya know…). Now Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo to get this all rectified and this is a very good thing!! Read more…

Along with just being the right thing to do (although I’ve been using Flock for the past week and am kinda hooked…), Firefox will try to break the Guiness World Record for most downloads in a day…

Wow, this is going to be pretty fascinating. Warm up the inner geek child for this one. Ever wanted to zoom around the Universe and see all these other galaxies? Well looks like you’ll be able to do that real soon (like Spring ‘08!).
Click the image or here to view the video demo from TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), a wild Invite only conference of the worlds leading innovators and thinkers…

Sorry, this is a geeky post I know, but thought this was a nice piece of work about common application design mistakes (and web design), and some ideas on workarounds…

In a very ‘uber-geek’ sorta way, this video is very cool. Kind of a 4 minute history of the web, a statement on it’s impact on us all and the world around us. It’s an exciting time and just to think how the world has changed since I was in college, let alone since my parents or grandparents were my age is remarkable (re:Shorpy)… Also, there’s a weird little watermark in the ‘You Tube’ segment of this vid that caught my attention… Strange…

The latest Winamp is out of Beta and ready to go! It’s always been one of my favorite media players and I stopped using it for a while when i first got my IPod. But now the IPOD support on this is awesome so I’m back in the Winamp camp. There’s a ton of skins and plugins (I recommend SoundSolutions for making my crappy speakers sound decent). The new Bento Skin that comes with it is awesome. All the album art off the pod is shown and there’s a real nice web interface with extra info about whatever I’m listening to. Haven’t played much yet with the video channels or the Winamp Remote (access your music from another PC thru winamp) but will look into that as well…  Get it today!

I’ll admit, I was very hesitant at first to run with Google Desktop. I mean, this is Google on my computer, scanning everything and indexing it and who knows what… But the apps they’ve been pumping out are pretty cool and after seeing an article on the sidebar and all the related desktop apps in the Google Desktop Pak, I thought I’d give it a try.

Verdict? Pretty freakin sweet so far. It doesn’t take up too much room but I love having the stuff along the side for quick access, reference and viewing. No more toggling back and forth in Itunes to see what’s playing, and I can see some of my favorite RSS Feeds without having to hit a bunch of web pages over and over…

The whole suite includes Google Earth, a great Screensaver, Google Chat, some security and anti-virus stuff (which I opted not to install as I’m happy with what I already have) and much more… Even Star Office (a Open-Source Microsoft Office Suite Alternative! Check it out as it’s very cool and quite a production enhancer…

Joost - Way Cool. What is it? Well, it’s a Beta Internet TV service that has some really cool partners so far (Comedy Central, Adult Swim, some Independant Film groups, music, etc…) And the interface and functionality are impressive as well. It streams full screen video to your computer, but uses the space to the sides and bottom for extra information. It’s very intuitive and has many cool features like instant access to all channels and program descriptions, the ability to chat and learn more about what your viewing, and just an all around cool look and feel to the web Tv viewing experience. At some point I’d like to hook this up to my main TV and see how it looks, but for now the experience of viewing some full screen content on the laptop is quite enjoyable.

Joost was in the news recently as, even though they are still in Beta, they’ve landed a new VH1 series (called I Hate My 30’s) before it airs on TV. I know Adobe has a video program coming out soon, and there are probably others, but I’d say Joost has a jump on the competition and seems to be doing it right!…

By the way, I’ve got invites if anyone is interested in taking part in the beta program!..(Just leave a comment or shoot me an email)…