Bloglines makes linkblogs easy :)

I decided to start a linkblog to keep random clippings from the blogosphere. If you use Bloglines as an aggregator, it’s remarkably easy. You just click the “Clip/Blog This” link, add comment(s) if necessary and publish.

Now if only there was category support and searching on the Bloglines blogging system I could use it as an archive of all the stuff I think is cool in the blogosphere.

Hey Bloglines team, are you listening? How about adding some features?

Plaxo retreat this past weekend

Went to Costanoa for the Plaxo company off-site this past weekend. Being a small company, family and significant others were invited to join as well. It was a great time and it was nice to get to meet other important people in my colleague’s lives – what!? you mean people have lives outside of work? just kidding

The retreat was from Friday night to Sunday morning. Rose and I got in late Friday night so we just went straight to bed. Speaking of bed, Costanoa is kind of funny; it’s sort of like super watered-down camping. They have these really nicely done up tents with electricity – to power lights and heated blankets – and beds. Check it out:

Not exactly roughin’ it.

On Saturday, we went on a hike around the area. The hike itself is very easy, but there’s a ton of poison oak along the trail. Rose got scratched by poison oak or something, so when we got back, we spent some time with Tecnu Although I’ve gone hiking numerous times before, I’d never seen poison oak until this past weekend. It was so thick in places that sometimes you had no choice but to brush up against it since it was overgrown on both sides of the trail. Looks like we should’ve worn long pants! Here’s a picture of us at the “viewpoint”:

Not much to look at eh? Compared to Yosemite that is…

Saturday night, we had an awesome BBQ dinner – Omaha Tri-tip and gourmet sausages yummmmm – watched Incredibles (first time I’d seen it, it was… incredible haha), and had a camp fire… in an outdoor fireplace. We made s’mores and just hung out. Check out these pictures we got of the fire:

Finally on Sunday, after leaving Costanoa, Rose and I went up the coast along Highway 1. We stopped by the tide pools by Pigeon Point lighthouse and that was super cool. There was lots of marine wildlife to play with and take pictures of.

All in all, it was a fun weekend. I’m glad Plaxo is small enough where it feels like an extended family and we can do events like this. Maybe next year I’ll be able to convince people to go backpacking around Half Dome or something :O

Downloadr v 0.1 available for download!

Just finished putting in the bare minimum features!

Here’s what Downloadr v 0.1 does:

• Grab an arbitrary user’s photoset(s)/photo(s)
• Allow you to grab sets or photos from a user

Here’s what you need to get started:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1
• A Flickr account

Pretty easy huh? It doesn’t do all that much yet and I definitely didn’t do enough QA, but it’s available for download at http://www.plaxoed.com/Downloadr.zip. The source is available at http://www.plaxoed.com/DownloadrSrc.zip.

Downloadr v 0.1 lives!

A few people have commented that it would be nice if they could download pictures from Flickr. I thought that would be a cool idea too and I figured someone would write it sooner or later… but AFAIK, no one has yet.

Well, I got tired of waiting for someone else to write it, so I wrote it myself – “Downloadr” (an obvious name choice considering the uploading tool is called Uploadr).

I used the .NET since I happen to have VS.NET 2003 installed on my machine and I’m most familiar with C# right now. Currently, Downloadr is a hacked together WinForms app that uses the Flickr.Net library, has no options, and can only download your own pictures. Next, I’ll probably clean up the UI a bit, add support for download other people’s pictures, and support for selecting specific files to download instead of entire sets.

One day, maybe I’ll write “Syncr”. I’ll let you guess what that will do

Anyone else out there interested in Downloadr? Drop me a line and I’ll send you a copy.

My room 3.0

I few weeks ago, with the help of my friend Bryan, I was able to rearrange my room. I moved things around so I was using space more efficiently and opened up enough room for a computer desk. Yesterday, I finally went out and bought a desk and today I got a chair.

The desk is nothing spectacular. I found a used Ikea desk on Craig’s List for $50. I like it because it’s adjustable, it provides for a ton of leg room, and there’s a lot of desk space. The main desk part is a little heavy though, which makes it a pain to assemble by yourself. (Also, since it was used, I didn’t have any instructions, so I had to wing it)

Chair-savvy people will immediately recognize my new work chair – it’s a Steelcase Leap. Bill Tani, one of my co-workers at Plaxo, has one and highly recommended it so I looked around on Craig’s List and found one for $350. I asked if they’d take $250 and they said sure. I went over to check it out and found that it was in excellent condition. I took it home.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about this chair. It’s amazing. Years ago when I worked at an Internet start-up, I had an Aeron chair. I find the Leap to be more comfortable than the Aeron; the seating area is solid, the lumbar support and arm rests are more adjustable and it just feels great when you sit in it.

Perhaps I had a low-end Aeron chair or perhaps it’s been too long since I’ve sat in a nice work chair, but my new Leap was just what the doctor ordered.

I know some readers are saying: “Mark, are you crazy? Office Depot is selling nice high back leather executive chairs for $40 after mail in rebate!” But I tell you, I’ve had many of those chairs and they suck. I’m through with the sucky chairs. I spend enough time in front of my computer to justify a nice one.

Thanks for helping me find new furniture to complete my room Craig!

Just got an invite for Odeo

This morning I was in an audio conference about blogging and PR and podcasting was mentioned briefly as an upcoming medium much like blogging was a few years ago. During the session, I mentioned that Evan (of Blogger fame) had recently left Google to work on Odeo, a podcasting service and lo and behold, when I checked my e-mail later, I found an invite to check it out. Coincidence?

Anyways, I immediately went to sign up and check out what they’ve got going on over there. So far it’s exactly what I was expecting, kind of like a directory + bloglines for podcasts. However, the most intriguing part was the “Create” button. It claims that they are creating something called “Odeo Studio” which will be a browser-based tool to help you create podcasts. Browser-based?! This could be hot! Talk about lowering the barrier to entry…

Unfortunately, they haven’t released it yet so if anyone from the Odeo team is reading this (Evan? Noah?), give me early access please! I want to check it out!

Oh, also, they named their podcast downloader “OdeoSyncr” – an obvious reference to Flickr. Nice

Back in Michigan this past weekend… let the weddings begin!

I guess you know you’re getting older when your friends start getting married. This past weekend I hit that milestone – my friends Jason and Nicole got married on Saturday.

It’s a strange thing when your high school buddies start getting hitched, but I think it’s quite exciting as well. Jason is a very close friend of mine and he requested that I be one of his groomsmen. I’d never been a groomsman before and I didn’t really know how weddings worked either. Needless to say, it was quite a learning experience. I was really quite clueless – I didn’t know that the groom doesn’t see the bride’s wedding dress until she walks down the aisle, I didn’t realize that the groomsmen and bridesmaids would be “matched up”, I didn’t know that the bridal party sits at the head table at the reception… the list goes on and on.

In my opinion, it’s quite complicated, but at least now I’ll be a tad bit more knowledgeable when it comes my turn. :-O

I must say though, Jason did a great job planning the weekend. Basically, the whole time was hanging out with friends, partying and/or eating. I flew in on Thursday, picked up my tux, picked up Rose, went to a party Jason was holding, went to a bar in Ann Arbor, and drove home to Troy. On Friday, we woke up, met with the other groomsmen and went to eat, went to the mall and picked up a drink at a restaurant. Then, we had the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner/party. Saturday was the wedding day and it was pretty much a blur. Woke up, got ready, had the ceremony, took about a billion pictures, went to the reception and finished with an after-party at another friend’s place.

Sunday, we got a chance to chill out a little bit. My mom, sister, Rose and I stopped by my home church and then headed to Ann Arbor to meet up with my brother. We hung out around the University of Michigan campus and then had a nice family dinner. We finished up just in time to run to the airport and catch our flights back to the west coast.

Whew, it was a packed weekend… and the memories live on in Flickr!

More newspaper sightings…

I was in the SF Chronicle on Monday and USA Today today (that sounds kinda funny hehe). They both got a picture of me – sorry Jack, I think I like the Chronicle’s picture better

Interesting thing was, on Monday, I was actually at Google visiting for lunch. I was waiting in the lobby when one of the people who I was with saw the Governator on the front page of the Chronicle and picked up the paper. I saw myself on the top left corner and grabbed the Technology section, where there was a huge picture of me above the fold on the front page!

Right then, my friend from Google (who will remain anonymous) walked out and saw the paper. We all thought it was quite the scene; me standing in the lobby of building 42 at the Googolplex holding a newspaper with my picture on it for being fired from Google and writing our blog policy at Plaxo.

Anyways, the free lunch is still pretty good – especially the chocolate mousse desert! Any Googlers out there want to host me for some more lunches?

Lemmings remade in DHTML!

Wow! Saw this over on Dare Obasanjo’s blog, someone has recreated Lemmings in DHTML. One of the best games of all time is now playable through a browser.

When are X-COM: UFO Defense, Civilization, and Colonization coming out in DHTML?

Uh oh, Gmail broke :(

Hmmmm… I wonder what’s going on.

While we’re on the topic of web mail, anyone notice that AOL/AIM provides e-mail now? Go to http://mail.aol.com and sign in with your AIM screen name.

You get 2GB of storage, some integration with AIM and you get IMAP access (use imap.aol.com, port 143). IMO, the web interface isn’t as good as GMail’s yet, but with IMAP I can just use Outlook or Thunderbird. Nice!