Author: Kent

Reader, writer, arithmeticer. Proprietor of Newsome.Org, a tech, music and life blog.

All I Want for Christmas

It’s Christmas time and I’ve been doing a little shopping for Raina and the girls. They keep asking me what I want for Christmas, and I never know what to tell them.

But I have done a little thinking about my blog-related wishlist and here’s what’s in my email to blog-Santa.

Dear blog-Santa,

I have mostly tried to be good this year. Here’s what I want for Christmas:

1. At least one person to comment on one of my Flickr photos.

2. To get on Memeorandum again.

3. A place on Dwight Silverman‘s blogroll.

4. To learn how not to skip numbers in my lists. (NEW)

5. For Kevin Hales to blog more.

6. To meet the King of Houston Bloggers, JKOnTheRun.

7. For John Perry Barlow to blog more (or even some).

8. For Thomas Hawk to take and post lots of photos with his new camera.

9. A link from Fred Wilson.

10. To find more great blogs to read.

Thanks, Santa. I’ll try harder to be good in 2006.

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ScobleFeeds A-Z: The H’s

This is part eight of my A-Z review of Scoble‘s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

One of the things I have concluded based on my review of the Scoblefeeds so far is that there are an awful lot of blogs that either (a) have moved with no forwarding address or (b) aren’t updated very often. My rule of thumb is to move past any blogs that don’t have a least a few posts a week. I’d say between the two, about 40% of the Scoblefeeds are eliminated.

For all of those reasons, there’s not a lot to choose from in the H’s, but I did find one good one:

HorsePigCow (RSS Feed)

HorsePigCow has a little tech, a little photography, a little life. A nice mix of interesting topics by the Online Marketing Manager of Riya. I don’t know enough about Riya to comment one way or the other, but if a bunch of cool people decide to build something, that’s always a good thing.

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Lifehacker’s Top 10

top10Lifehacker, one of the best blogs in the world and an everyday read of mine, posted its Top 10 Computer Applications of 2005.

Their list and mine share Flickr and Del.icio.us.

The only app they listed that I affirmatively would not list is Yahoo! Widgets. I used that app back when it was Konfabulator and didn’t find much to get excited about. Otherwise, they list a bunch of very good applications for your consideration.

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Want to Read Newsome.Org Via Email?

While I believe the best way to read any blog, including mine, is by visiting this page or subscribing to my RSS Feed, I know I have quite a few readers who prefer to get their news the old-fashioned way- via email.

Now you can subscribe to Newsome.Org via email. See the Email Feed blank in the left column of this page (you may have to scroll down a little)? Simply fill in your email address and click Subscribe. You’ll be emailed a link to click on (to prove that it’s a real email address) and then you’re subscribed. You’ll get one email a day containing the stories that appear on this page that day.

You can unsubscribe any time.

Again, I prefer to visit a page or read the RSS feed, but if you prefer the email option, it’s an option that’s now available.

More New Music

tj-760871I may have come across some good new music today. After checking out a page about my current favorite band Chuckanut Drive, I followed a link to Tresa Jordan‘s web page.

All I can hear so far are the sound clips on that page, but boy do they sound good. She’s got a great voice and an excellent fiddle player. She seems to be somewhere between Alternative Country/Americana and commercial Nashville. I’m going to see if I can get a review copy of her record. If so, I’ll post a full review later.

If she is as good as she sounds (and looks) based on the sound clips and photos on her page, she ought to be on a major label.

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Top 10 Tech Products of 2005

2005 was a good year for tech products. Here are the top 10 items or services I started using in 2005, in order.

top101) A Flickr Pro Account. For all the reasons I have raved about here, Flickr simply changes the world as far as digital photography management and sharing goes. Too bad none of my friends and family use it, because they are missing some good photos that the public cannot see.

2) My Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC. Again, for all the reasons I have talked about, I can’t imagine ever traveling without it.

3) ACDSee 8. Simply the best desktop photo management program on the market. The batch renaming function alone is worth the price. The photo editing features are not as good as Paint Shop Pro (sadly destined to a painful death now that it’s been bought by Corel), but everything else is perfect.

4) Sony Cybershot DSCV3. Yes, this seems to be the year of the digital photograph. I love this camera. If feel and features are more important to you than small size, this is a great camera choice.

5) Audacity. While not a perfect solution, it makes making podcasts a whole lot easier than it was before.

6) Technorati. Great service. Great founder. It is the backbone of the blogosphere.

7) DigMyPics. This service converted a ton of our old prints to high resolution digital photos for a very reasonable price.

8) Del.icio.us. The runner up to Technorati as the most useful new web service of the year.

9) Linksys WTR54GS Travel Router. Hotel freedom for less than $80.

10) Alias Find and Replace. As I raved about a few months ago, this may be the best software solution to the problem of whole-scale web page revisions I have ever seen.

If 2006 is anything like 2005, there’s some good tech on the horizon!

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Performancing for Firefox

firefoxIf you use Firefox as your internet browser and you blog, you owe it to yourself to check out Performancing for Firefox, a plugin that allows you to create a blog post within a split screen right in your Firefox window. This makes it easy to add the links, images and content from one screen, as opposed to clicking around in tabs to get the links, etc. you need.

The extension supports multiple blogs, and it works with most of the major blogging platforms. As Duncan Riley points out, all it needs to be nearly perfect is the ability to easily include Technorati tags.

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BOB Awards – Rock the Vote

Qumana is hosting a Best of Blogs Award. The idea behind these awards is to recognize some lesser known blogs that don’t get the sort of publicity the most popular blogs receive.

I think this is a great idea and I plan to nominate a blog or two.

While I’d never solicit a nomination (well, I always say never say never), the entry form for the best overall blog is here and the one for the best daddy blog is here. Just in case anyone has any blogs they’d like to nominate 🙂

Whether you deem my blog worthy or not, consider nominating someone in one or more of the categories (there are a lot of categories to choose from). There are a lot of people writing away who would love the approbation and exposure.

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