Jeff Keeping It Real!

Friday June 27, 2008 @ 1800 PST I had the pleasure of stumbling upon a Ustream live cast called Taphandle-tv.  Instantly I was personally greeted by Greg Lordo, call him Lordo.  He was pouring a concoction of rum and fruit juice.  He has a home bar setup in his basement (built by Curt I found out).  The bar is not very big but I must say as an ole bartender and manager he was well stocked.  Here is a picture of Lordo at his bar hard at work.

Later we found that the concoction was actually Passion Fruit Mojito made with

Malibu Passion Fruit Rum
Passion fruit puree
Sour mix
Mint
Limes
Sugar
Club soda

He switched over to the close up cam (ingredients cam (see pic below)) and he added the mint, limes, and sugar in a mixer and muddled  the ingredients together then added ice to top.  Added 1 1/2oz of Malibu Passion Fruit Rum, puree and 1oz sour mix.  Then shake, shake, shake then poured into a Collins glass.  Topped off with club soda.

He went on to taste two beers and gave a rating of them.  One was Mickey’s Big Mouth and the other was Goose Island Summertime IPA. He pointed to the lower left corner of the window and had us vote on the beers.  Yes it was a poll a live interactive poll while the show was going on.

Every time he would post his website address on the screen he would call a social.  That means bottoms up and have a drink.  If that were not enough every time someone would enter his web address in the chat he would call a social again, cheers. A hand with a beer would extend on screen as though he was personally handing me a beer, thank you Lordo for the many beers last night.  If I were trying to keep up with all the socials I would have been passed out on the floor or praying to the porcelain gods.

He threw up a poll to see what shot of tequila he would be doing.  There was Cabo Wabo, Pepe Lopez or Americana Vodka.  The votes came in as Pepe Lopez so he poured a shot and switched over to the shot cam and here he is getting ready to have one on us.  Bottoms up Lordo and Cheers!

If your wondering what this Ustream TV is let me give you the run down direct from Ustream itself.

Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. In less than two minutes, anyone can become a broadcaster by creating their own channel on Ustream or by broadcasting through their own site, empowering them to engage with their audience and further build their brand. Click here to start a broadcast now or learn more about broadcasting.

Ustream’s one-to-many live interactive video encourages broadcast-to-viewer and viewer-to-viewer interaction, empowering a much more engaging experience for everyone involved.

I have been hooked on Ustream for a few weeks and must say if you have never seen it or heard about it stop by and surf the various channels.  There are some great shows and some not so great shows.

Lordo, D, Bob, and Curt thank you for making me part of the Taphandle-tv bar I feel like Norm of Cheers.  Let me leave you with the live feed of Taphandle-tv on Ustream TV.  There may or may not be video all the time but highly recommend checking out Taphandle-tv.com.  Cheers!

Jack Dorsey CEO and Founder of Twitter talks about how Twitter was formulated in his mind.  Then he talks about his vision of Twitter.

 
A few things come to mind while watching this video.  The first and foremost is WHY does society care about there friends going to get a haircut?  Amazes me Twitter was thought up to help his mother find a purse.  He goes on to say he started to watch different agencies use short messages (SMS/text messages) to convey a message.  Now this idea sounds more like Twitter.

I watch tweets fly by and it seems there is a lot of talk about when Twitter was down last night or having issues again.  Seems to be a regular occurrence.  If this was your Internet provider you would have changed providers by now.  Sure a lot of people have jumped over to FriendFeed and other knock offs but if you look at there feeds a majority are from Twitter.

I think people these days are in a hurry and want simplicity.  They want to give people updates quick and on the go (160 characters or less).  I notice since using Twitter, FriendFeed, and Tumblr that I do not blog as much.  The other morning, 2 am, my brain was wondering why I use these easier services more than I post on Fam5?  The simple fact is I like the ability to post small random thoughts I have throughout the day.  As I am surfing the vast world wide web I want a way to mark things I enjoy and perhaps that others will find interesting. 

I have even tested a few apps (tinytwitter, twitterlicious, and twittoday) for my windows mobile 6 device.  Even though you don’t need an app to send tweets you can just text message (send updates to: 40404) your tweet to twitter. The apps allow you to read other tweets and reply to them.

Still trying to find my niche with Twitter.  Right now I just send little thoughts of the day or comment on other tweets.  I guess I need to get a family member or friend on Twitter and see if it changes my perspective.  I tried to put Twitter away a few times but keep going back to it because of how simple it is.

What about you do you use Twitter? 
If you do is it useful to you?  
What do you do with Twitter?

I can be found on Twitter @admiral70 look forward to following you.

After my review of Flock Web Browser For Serious Users I received an email from Vysr asking if I would be so kind as to try there new app that would be out in a couple of days. The techie in me said sure I would give it a try. I received my invite/link today and installed the new app in my flock web browser (also works for Firefox). The toolbar to the right showed up in the lower right corner of my browser’s status bar.

The app is clean and inconspicuous you hardly notice it there. This app works by select text in the web browser and clicking on one of the buttons. Here are what the buttons look like and represent.

Lets test roamabout social plug-in/app. I went to Vysr’s contact page and highlighted the address and then clicked on the mapquest icon. You get a popup/pop out next to the toolbar. A map of the address I highlighted shows up, pretty cool!

I highlighted the zip code and clicked on the weather icon and magically I see Vysr is having a lovely day in Palo Alto, CA.

As you can see this nice light weight app/plug-in is indispensable in it’s capabilities. I have not touched on the other buttons such as stock quote: Highlight a company name and see there stock price and performance. Wikipedia: Highlight any word to see what Wikipedia has to say about it. There are many more worth looking into like You Tube, Flickr, news, share, and even play a game.

The only issue I am having is the Twitter button is not allowing me to login. This is a must for me as I use Twitter a lot. I have personally spoke to Vysr and they are looking into it as it is working for them. Well it works for 2 out of 4 people. At least Vysr took my call and I spoke to Erica the Product Manager and she was insightful and very knowledgeable about RoamAbout. We talked about how the error messages (user error messages) could be a little more intuitive.

I suggested a few things that would make my experience a better one.

1. Allow login to your You Tube and Flickr accounts. That way I can see my favorites and pictures.
2. I use Tumblr and Friendfeed a lot and suggested maybe adding a button for those.

If your a firefox or flock user I would recommend looking at this add-in to make your surfing experiences just that much better. I would like to thank Bernadette for the invite and look forward to watching Roamabout application take off and go mainstream.

This review is not paid for and is solely my opinion. However, if Vysr wants to send me some logo items I sure won’t through them away. Oh and I wear a XL t-shirt

Hope everyone enjoyed this review and if you have any new application’s for Windows XP/Vista, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock or Windows Mobile 6 you would like reviewed feel free to contact me via the Contact us page at the top.

There is a new web browser in town and it’s name is Flock The Social Web Browser. What is Flock you ask, from the pages of flock…

“Flock is built on the Mozilla Firefox open-source browser, so it has
all the features you’ve come to expect in a high-quality web browser,
like intuitive buttons and menus, personal customizability, reliable
security, enhanced privacy protections, and automated updating.
However, Flock is much more than that! The Flock Social Web Browser has
been fully integrated with a wide range of social networking websites
and popular blogging tools. So with Flock, you can now keep in touch
and share text, links, pictures, video and more with friends, family
and co-workers across the entire internet with unparalleled speed and
seamless ease.”

It allows you to customize your sidebar with your online accounts for one click easy access. I am still working with it to see how it may benefit a user. I have in recent months switched from IE to Firefox and who knows maybe a new one in my future. I am using there Blog editor that is built into the browser.

As I was typing this I tried to paste a copy of an image I made and it shut everything down. Now normally I would not be happy but upon launching Flock again it asked me to restore my last session (humm Firefox like) and all tabs were up and running and even started my steam I had going of Twit Live and by the way thanks @leolaporte for recommending this browser. I than launched the blog editor and it to restored my failed session and away I go continuing this post.

I highly recommend checking out Flock and see what you think. Be sure to come back and leave me a comment on what you think.

Tags: flock, web browser, internet, twit