Image by via CrunchBase

Back when I started this site, it was completely free. Built on Blogger, images hosted at photobucket, and email provided through a service that had just sprung up at AOL: My eAddress. At the time this was fantastic because I could pick an email for the site which was close to the domain that I would eventually purchase. It turned out that AOL was not going to give users access to the domain outside of emails, so I bought up a couple of domains anyway. Still ended up continuing to use the emails since the first hosting service I had was terrible and did not want to put emails there. A different host and a couple of blogging platforms later, the eAddress is no longer going to be around.

Today there was a lovely email in my inbox:

As of December 31, 2008, AOL will no longer maintain ownership of domain names registered through My eAddress. Before we release all registered names, however, we are offering our users the opportunity to take ownership of the domains themselves, while continuing to use the My eAddress service. You must take advantage of this offer before December 31, 2008 to avoid disruption to your email service.

So now its time to stop being lazy and then wait for the domains to go to back into gen-pop. Its too bad, those emails were handy for beta testing software and the spam that followed.

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Google Chrome was an awesome toy when it first appeared on our internets. Then came the talk of how it has an identifier and how it means that Google knows even more about you. Some people became frightened and ran away from Chrome, seeking solace in her older counterparts Firefox,  Safari, and Opera. Others, who were on Mac and other platforms chose to work with the Chromium backbone and build there own browser.

Far be it from me to rain on those folks ideas, but I decided I wanted a portable version of the browser and waited patiently for someone else to code it. Iron which also has a standard install version which I run on my main PC, has a handy little USB stick friendly edition which caters to my need to keep my favorite software in my pocket. Both flavors of Iron grant the user the sense of security they may want, and help keep the open source train going. Also, Iron comes packing a newer build of Webkit

Whether you believe Google software is going to become self aware and start cranking out Terminators, or even if you don’t mind a single corporation knowing just about all your business, Iron will probably suit your needs.

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Via geeksaresexy

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The demise of Twitter has been in conversations for about as long as it has existed. It has spawned several clones and a few incarnations which have improved functionality and flawless up-time. All these points have been mentioned by previous authors in the hopes to take down the behemoth service. Even with recent discussions of the impending necessity of monetization of the service, the detractors (including myself) have forgotten one thing about the service.

People love the thing.

After spending a considerable amount of time trying to understand the appeal of the service, and discovering an infatuation with Friendfeed in the process, it was quite a smack in the face to finally “get it”. Twitter is just not my cup of tea and no amount of bashing is really worth it because people still use it in droves. No matter how much you collectively hate and ridicule it, its not going anywhere yet. Even with tools that work better for the types of conversations enabled by Twitter practically growing on trees, it still holds its user base due to its ease of use. It also does not hurt that although just like everything that has been released in the past few years it has a stupid name, but it has an easy to spell and remember stupid name.

You could compare the use of Twitter to the patronage of Taco Bell. Its not the best taco you had in your life, but everyone and their mom goes there. Some of the other services like Rejaw are more like Qdoba where you get more options and hang out in the establishment a bit longer to enjoy the meal with other people if you choose. Its a little more difficult to drop by Qdoba on the way to work, wolf it down and go without having to get out the car and interrupt your normal flow.  Friendfeed and others are more time consuming, closer to a serious restaurant which facilitates heavy dining.

Twitter use is preferred in moderation, excessive users get blocked and unfollowed, previous acquaintances thinking those users are full of garbage. People who eat tons of Taco Bell are literally full of garbage food, and probably need to change their diet.  While we cannot force other users to stop fueling a service that needs work, we might be able to at least have them chew on something a little less bad for them every now and again.  Might keep them from having diarrhea of the feed.

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What We Saw

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Sure, it may only be mice at this time, but soon we shall have Siberian Tigers, Woolly Mammoths, and the great Dodo. (No, not you Mr. President, I meant the Dodo Bird, no, seriously, I’m not calling you a Dodo or a bird, I’m not British, sheesh, shut up! Stop talking! That’s it, I’m going back behind the bookshelf after this post, and won’t return until they elect a new president.. Oh, they did? Maybe I should pay attention some time?)

Even better, they can reproduce! So, if your entire family is inadvertently killed by the Robot Overlords, then you can replace them 100% now, and even have them reproduce, creating additional non-cloned children (Results may vary.)

Unfortunately at this time, it has not been proven to be able to recover damaged cells, or aid in the reproducing of hair follicles for those with thinning hair.

Lastly, there is no more need to take care of the environment if we can just recreate entire populations and house them in frozen tundras.

Via Pinktentacle

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to finish her sentence…creepy.

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Happy Birthday to Hulu! Although there have been some detractors since day one and there is still a bit of an issue with content making its way out of the country, Hulu is still kicking. Not only that, even with all the doubters they have managed to shake many hands and snag tons of content.

Congrats guys, hope you last quite a long time.

If you have access to the site…go watch something now.

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Image via Wikipedia

Technology is wonderful. Only technology could bring together tons of people who don’t mind throwing a few back, without them having to leave their house. Drinkolic brings the drinking expertise of many and presents it in a big list of recipes.

While it is not a social network (unlike most of the new guys lately) it is a nice portal to login, rate and make comments on just about any drink thats not bound by a trademark. The entries for the drinks are sorted by recipe, glassware served in, or ingredients involved so you could stumble over your favorite recipe at random.

Since it is a site all about drinking, it does not leave out the folks that do not drink alcohol. Drinkolic features Non-Alcoholic cocktails, milkshakes (just one for now since most of the content is user generated), coffees, and teas. One quick warning though, considering the names of many of the beverages have been coined by drunk people, this site is mostly NSFW.

A lovely addition to the option of listing recipes and posting photos is the option to add video of the drink being made. Right now the video content is restricted to youtube videos, but that will probably not limit the findings too much. If you like beverages you should check out drinkolic. Don’t let the simple design of the site fool you, there is lots of useful information in there.

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Image via PollDaddy

One thing I could never get to work the way I wanted in WordPress for a long time was a good plugin for polls and surveys. Had to give up on the available set and writing the code out myself–which was not pretty. Then PollDaddy showed up to save the day.

If you ever tried to do either of these things and are not a coder, you may have run into the same roadblocks. The folks at Automattic have swooped in to make this easier for us all. Automattic has just acquired PollDaddy, facilitating an easier to integrate (if not already included) system of polling/surveying.

Some will question the acquisition of a company that provides surveys into the blogging platform when it can be easily added by plugins. Many users of different systems currently recognize PollDaddy as the go-to entity for this purpose, and with this acquistion may be swayed to the WordPress platform. Also anyone newer to the circle will soon be able to implement a simple solution for their survey/polling needs.

Especially at a time when many less technically savvy users are starting their own blogs and want to use services that aren’t as well integrating in the blogging platforms, this acquistion is a great idea.

While many fully support acquisition of companies such as Intense Debate earlier in the year and Gravatar before it, there are many detractors who believe that WordPress should be kept pure and simple. What we all have to agree on is that there are many more bloggers out there who have great ideas but have no idea what PHP is, and that expanding the WordPress platform to these users is not always detrimental to the group.

We should wish Automattic luck with their recent acquisitions and hope it turns out to be a better experience for everyone involved.

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Image via Crunchbase

This post exists so that there is another link to Kiva.org.

If you didn’t know Kiva lets you loan money to an entrepreneur in a less fortunate country.

Feel free.

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Image via Wildlife Online

So after much whining about the fact that I could not play with the collaboration of Social|Median + Facebook. Well over the course of the past two days I have been reminded why I had stopped using S|M. Not being a fan of the crowded and somewhat tacky interface, it was just painful for me.

S|M feels like a quite clunky service, having a similar appearance to an excessively decorated blog. While it is easy to understand the mindset behind the layout, its still not quite attractive. The concept of the service is to make it easier for one to receive the news they want, but it just feels like a bombardment of trivial information once a user arrives.

Once there, the lack of intuitive controls make the user want to sign right off and go about their business. I do not want to incense the folks that enjoy the product as is and love the interface. I personally do not like the service but will not deter anyone else from picking it up. Fair warning though, its not for everyone.

As far as I can tell, the integration with Facebook only includes adding the likes and dislikes from S|M. Instead of possibly adopting an intermediate interface for the application, it just directs the user to the S|M main site. If you really want to checkout the not-so-chocolatey experience, you may want to wait until it makes it past the beta stage and has been cleaned up quite a bit.

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AddThis, the most popular tool for bookmarking on websites, has recently been acquired by the leading widget network Clearspring. Separately the companies were doing quite well, together the two pave the way to create a flawlessly integrated system for sharing content.

As is common with many acquistions, this forces any other similar services to step their game up a bit. Although we do not use AddThis currently on SDA, its now crossing our minds. It all depends where the platforms decide to take this new collaboration and what direction ShareThis turns with the new beta.

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