This post is a continuation of Saturday’s which can be found here I recommend reading it first.

Ok so continuing where I left off Saturday night (Sunday morning technically)..

Twitter has a few neat ways to contact people, if you are “Friends” with someone (meaning you are both following each other) you can send that person a “Direct Message” which will only be visible to them. You can mention somebody by typing the @ sign and then their name (like @tfantina), this tweet will be visible to everybody who follows you and the person you mention will also be notified even if they don’t follow you. The highest complement you can give on Twitter is a re-tweet. If you like somebody’s tweet and want to show it to your followers just type “RT” then mention the person and paste their tweet ( “RT @tfantina ‘Some how I always cross the border during rush hour.’”).

So far I’ve covered the basics of Twitter, however it’s much more fun once you start checking the amazing apps that have sprung up around Twitter.

Some people will tell you to download a desktop app for Twitter like
“Tweetie” or “TweetDeck” however I don’t use either of these, however if you are tweeting from a smart phone or an iPod Touch I recommend getting an app for it. When it comes to apps here is a list of ones that I could not live without (this is relative we are talking about a micro blogging service);

Brizzley is a fun app that displays pictures and video in tweets (usually you have to click a link to see them), among other things it also allows you to organize people you follow into lists. I highly recommend it, it’s currently in beta however if you want an invite just drop a line in the comments and I’ll hook you up first come first serve.

Tinyurl is good when you have a super long URL that you have to fit into 140 characters or less (they usually shorten any URL to about 30 characters).

Twitpic allows you to post photos to Twitter from you cell phone or the web.

Tweetstats is cool if your geeky like me and want to know the statistics of your tweets (time of day you tweet the most, day of week you tweet the most, where most of your tweets come from, ect.).

There are hundreds of cool apps for Twitter, a good place to start looking is Oneforty.com they have organized most of the major apps for you to try, rate and review.

Sorry it took so long, Twitter’s a bit of a hard sell at first but I take it with a grain of salt and appreciate all the neat apps and trends.

Image: Pasquale D’Silva courtesy of Function

written by Travis \\ tags: blog, Micro-blogging, Re-tweet, topics, trends, Twitter

What is Twitter? It’s stupid! Why do you use it? Are you by any chance stupid? These are a few of the question’s I’m faced with when I tell people that I use Twitter. My goal with this post is to hopefully educate and enlighten readers about the wonderful world of Twitter.

What is it? Twitter a micro-bloging service, it allows users to convey short amounts of information (called ‘tweets’), in no more then 140 characters; this makes it compatible with SMS messaging from cell phones.

Once you join start following people. I know it sounds stalkerish but one has to assume that people aren’t going to post something on the public web that they don’t want everybody on Earth to see, if not why post it. This is not always the case but it’s there problem not yours. Twitter makes it very easy to find people; you can search by username, first name, last name, business or brand. In addition to my friends, I follow several people who’s tweets I find particularly interesting. With famous folk (like KevinSpacey and Oprah to name two) people like to create fake accounts in their names and post stuff, recently Twitter introduced verified accounts so you can tell if your really following Oprah or 14 year old in Santa Monica. As you start to follow more and more people you will get a feel for what tweeting style you like, some people tweet fifteen or twenty times a day others only once or twice a day. Some people’s tweets are more interesting then others, which brings me to my next point…

Don’t tweet useless junk!

One of the major stigmas surrounding Twitter is that it’s all really useless junk, people tweet stuff like “Eating breakfast”, “Going for a jog”, “Going to the bathroom”, “Washing my hands” and “Gross I touched my phone before washing my hands!”. True, all these tweets are under 140 characters, however that does not mean they should be posted. A quick and easy way to become a Twitter outcast is to post lots of useless jargon nobody reads or cares about. Twitter should be used to share stuff that you find funny, cool, interesting or enlightening. When I stumble across a neat blog or a funny video on Youtube that not to many people have seen, I tweet it. If I see something cool or something funny happens to me I tweet it. I don’t tweet boring junk that everybody already knows I do (like eating), and neither should you.

So, Twitter is a fun and quick way to share links, quick stories, and see what famous people are doing. However in my opinion the real genius of Twitter comes from two features, “Trending Topics” and “Search”. Trending Topics takes all recent tweets and arranges them looking for patterns; so lets say that the Yankees just won the World Series, a lot of people would be tweeting “Yankees” and “World Series” for instance. If enough people posted tweets with the words “Yankees” and “World Series” in them, they would both appear on the “Trending Topics” list. “Trending Topics” is a way to see what’s going on in the world as it happens. “Search” is also useful, but I don’t think you need that explained.

Click here to jump to part 2.

Image: Pasquale D’Silva courtesy of Function

written by Travis \\ tags: Micro-blog, Travis Fantina, Tweet, Twitter

My Latest Purchase

In June I made a life changing decision, I decided to never again (never is a long time, but I’ll try my best) purchase music or movies on the iTunes store. I don’t have cable so I may still purchase a TV show or two just to keep up, but music and full movies are out.

Why? What is the method to my madness?

Well it all began a few years ago when iTunes started releasing movies. It was cool and novel but tragically iTunes could just not match the glory of a DVD or Blu-Ray case, a hard disc and all the special features that went along with them. Perhaps for some the movie is all they want, but I can’t bare to forego my making of, still gallery and director’s commentaries. So I decided I would not buy any movies with the iTunes store. (Back when they first added movies I got ‘Clue’ and ‘Rocky’ just to test it out).

However recently I have been thinking more and more about the music component of the iTunes store. I like it, but quite frankly it’s too easy, I just sit on my computer and get music, I feel like if I want music I should walk or drive (easier then walking not as easy as sitting on the computer) down to the local music shoppe and actually buy a CD which spins in my disc drive and scratches when I drop it. I guess you could say then that my main problem with iTunes is the lack of hard media, you know, CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs. That is one of two major issues that I have.

The other issue I have is something that I had been sitting in the back of my mind for a while but I really started thinking about after reading J.J. Abrams article in the May issue of Wired. It was an amazing issue and J.J. Abrams’s article was the crown jewel of the issue. Be sure to check it out. Basically J.J. basically stated that our lives are becoming too easy, you can get all the music you want without leaving your house and experiencing something new, you don’t hear music you haven’t heard before (maybe you don’t even like), you don’t see strangers flipping through CDs, you just sit at home and stare at your download’s progress. It’s easy, and the problem with that as the old saying goes “no pain no gain”. However that’s even becoming archaic because downloading music on your computer is just the opposite it’s “no pain all gain”, which is sort of a shame because if everything in life was free and easy people would become fat hermits who lived out of there beds (we’re not too far away from that). We have no social stimulus of any kind when we buy music online.

Now, please dear reader, don’t take this hate for purchasing media from the iTunes store as hate for iTunes. In my opinion iTunes is possibly the best program of the last ten years. I know there are a lot of haters, but I am certainly not one of them. It is really the best program to organize and listen to your music collection. And if I had to buy a song from the iTunes music store a month to keep iTunes I guarantee I would.

So in the interest of actually working up a sweat, smelling nasty smells, being stuck in traffic and occasionally getting a headache, I now purchase all my music at Borders and The Beat Goes On (which is a great place for cheep used CDs in the Kitchener/Waterloo area). It’s obviously not as easy or as convenient but I get a hard disc with album artwork and personal credits, I get fresh air and a chance to experience something I otherwise would not have.

Abrams, J.J. “The Magic of Mystery”. Wired May 2009: p76

Image: brucespringsteen.net

written by Travis \\ tags: Apple, Blu-Ray, Borders, CD, DVD, iTunes, J.J Abrams, Music, The Beat Goes On, Used CDs, Wired

On Monday night I stuffed my wash in and turned it on- Warm/Cold, Extra Large, and went to bed knowing that in the morning I would have shinny clean clothes (same as usual). Now, I have forgotten why my iPod was even in my pocket (I usually take it out as soon as I walk in the door) but it was there none the less. After the washer had finished it’s cycle my iPod sat face up all night at the very bottom of the washing machine, with all the damp clothes unto dripping down for a good six hours.

Tuesday morning when I went to stuff my things into the dryer just as I was removeing the last sweat-shirt I saw my iPod. I took my Nano out, devastated, I put it on a window sill right above a one of our radiators (I did not place it directly on the heater). I turned it over every now and then, I don’t know if this did any good but it may have, until the fallowing evening (Wednesday). Hoping, praying, but not optimistic I plugged it into my computer and immediately the little Nano lit up! It said the battery was very low and it needed to charge up for a bit after about 15 min of nothing else happening I began to loose the good feeling I had gotten when I first plugged it in. I looked around online and found a site with a simmilar story to mine. Apparently sometimes if the battery is super low you have to plug it into the wall because the USB ports don’t supply enough power. I did this and immediately it worked, really just like new. The click wheel works fine, there’s no damage to the screen, the speaker which emits the ‘clicking’ noise still works- in short I am very, very lucky. An answer to my prayers.

The one thing that’s not working (as of yet) is the battery- you have to plug it in to get it to turn on and when you unplug it it shuts off. However, I don’t really mind this because I mostly only listen in the car with my iTrip.

I would post pictures but honestly, you would not be able to tell anything at all- it looks the exact same. I’ve heard other stories like this where the screen ends up getting damaged but mine works fine.

I’ve heard people complain about how fragile iPods are and how many they’ve broken but this is not my experience whatsoever, these little guys are tanks!

written by Travis \\ tags: Apple, cool, fixed, iPod, Machine, Nano, power, Washing, washing machine

I bet your thinking- what on earth is that 16:9 screenshot doing with a youtube play bar at the bottom of it. Good news! Youtube has converted it’s player to a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio to fill the growing demand from content producers. I have to admit the few videos I have watched so far in widescreen look amazing.

Most of the videos on Youtube are not widescreen, these still look good but sense the player is now in 16:9 format you see a large black box on both sides of the frame (it’s really less distracting then it sounds).

Youtube still gives you the code for the old 4:3 (or something close to it) embed the video on an external website, for example if you go to the movies section of my site where I have some Youtube videos you’ll notice there still in the square 4:3 frame not the widescreen one. But if you shoot films in 16:9 there is a work around, I found a good tutorial on how to embed the new widescreen videos here.

Thank you Youtube for being awesome!

On a related note;

A few months back I discovered the magic &fmt=18 code. This code gives you a higher quality video when pasted at the end of the video URL, not HD but higher quality.

But if you want the official HD code is &fmt=22 just paste it at the end of the video URL to watch it in HD. But keep in mind this code will only work if the video uploaded is in HD to begin with.

written by Travis \\ tags: 16:9, 4:3, Aspect Ratio, code, HD, video, Widescreen, wikipedia, Youtube

Just a quick post to let everybody know I set up Lightbox on the blog. Basically Lightbox allows you to view full size images without ever leaving the page.

Click on one of the images below for a demo;

Now it’s your turn, in the comments section tell me if Lightbox is awesome and I should keep it. Or lame and I should get rid of it. Or if you don’t care either way tell me anyway (I’ll listen).

written by Travis \\ tags: 5:00, feedback, Lightbox, Mythical Beast Films, Posters, test, Travis Fantina