Ryan Trembath (dot) Information

Just thought I would write a quick post while waiting for the overly large Java runtime add-on to install on my computer. I need it to upload my videos to myspace and become a **star**. This is a prime example of how to piss your users off. If I was Joe Suburban I would be terrified to install this monster, it’s already taken me 15 min just to try and upload a video. I had to uninstall my old version through the control panel than download the huge installation file.

Myspace video will not kill you tube. I think I need to restart my browser for this crap to take affect.

There is a new DEAFWISH template up and in progress, expect it to get better in the next couple days. Take a look and tell me it’s pretty.

I’ve also stumbled across some lost DEAFWISH recordings that will soon be available. WoOo!

In Music:
Von LMO - http://www.myspace.com/vonlmo
Johnny Thunders - http://www.myspace.com/johnnythundersmusic

They revolutionized your email:

Then they changed the way you shop:

Then they realized nobody cared. Or do they? Does anyone remember VRML? I didn’t until I saw a posting about the kinset shopping experience and realized people were still trying to take the look of the ‘meat space’ into the virtual space.

My professional opinion is: that is stupid.

Elegantly put, I know, but putting an elaborate 3D interface between me and the information I want isn’t a benefit. Does this appeal to the second life users out there? The kids maybe?

…

Not that I can tell. I would say apps like these are a key indication that there is too much money being poured into the internet.

Despite my complaints about the Rodgers service I receive, I decided to stay on with them.

What does this matter?

Well with Rodgers (less than stellar) upgrade incentive I hooked myself up with a new BlackBerry pearl.

I’m curenetly on the bus, on my way home from the office. Overall i’m pretty impressed with how well wordpress works in the blackberry browser.

After about two weeks on the keyboard I’m getting faster and am well on my way to cramped thumbs and anxiety attacks.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of substance in this post. I just wanted to see how it would work out.

Onward!

So hip in fact that we’re doing wild style! Meaning it’s part of one of my work projects and I’ve spent some hours reading, trying to get into the “tag space” and understand where the world is at on the subject.

Of course I had to check out some implementations of the concept so Flickr, de.licio.us, ma.gnolia and a bunch of other tagging sites have crossed my screen.

If you’re new to the concept and looking for a little more insight I found these articles that might help to understand, at a high level, where tagging is at and where it might need to go.

• Ontology Overview - Musing on Value of tags for organization
• Cognitive Analysis of Tagging - Insight into how the mind process behind reading and tagging a piece of content
• Automated Tag Clustering - Discussion on making sense of large sets of tagged data
• Database Schemas for tagging - the geekdown on how a database could be set up to manage tagging in an application. Honestly, parts of this were over my head, but it may be useful if you’re looking to program

Yesterday, a friend and I were doing some basic searches to see if his name came up online. Having deleted his myspace profile weeks ago, nothing should come up right?

WRONG!

Check out this little scraper site operating under the guise of a Myspace search engine. Looks like they’re scraping profile information and (for your added benefit!) putting their own Yahoo! and Kontera ads on the page.

There is nice little disclaimer noting that:

All profiles and associated pictures are copyright their respective authors. MySpaceProfiles.org is not affiliated or associated with MySpace.com in any way.

Does that carry any weight? I’m not a lawyer.

I did find, via the remove my profile link, that you can paste this code:

META NAME=”MYSPACEPROFILESBOT” CONTENT=”NOINDEX”

into your profile so that their robot won’t index your page. This will also (apparently) delete any existing profile on your id. But what if I already deleted my profile?

There is a form where you can enter your id and request it removed, which I have done for my friend. I will keep you posted on whether or not it’s actually removed.

Managing your image just got tougher.

This falls inline with Lisa Barone’s post yesterday. Lisa made all of her personal facebook information private and still ended up in the search results. Turns out that her friends don’t keep the same privacy settings she does.

Where’s my publicist!?

Big companies spend time and money managing their online appearance and now you will have to as well. It’s already a well documented fact that most employers will do the Google, Facebook, Myspace search on you. This wonderous two point oh world of search, social and advanced scraping has the potential to be a headache for us all.

Are you prepared?

You may have noticed the make your own Simpson’s character fad courtesy of the the Simpson’s Movie page. Guess who’s on the bandwagon?!

Go give it a try. It’s easy to use and walks you through what to do with the picture once it’s generated.

I saw the movie last night at the cheap seats. Since it’s probably been 6 years since I actively tried to watch an episode of the show it was good to see everyone still kicking.

My friend called it “mediocre” but I thought it was pretty funny. There was quite a few little throwbacks to episodes for the Simpson’s geeks out there. What do you want?!

Sorry the site was down. Let this be a lesson in redundancy. If your site is important, make sure it’s on the web in more than one place or you’re in trouble when things go wrong.

The most recent issues came about when I used Fantastico to manage my wordpress installations for this site and another site I have.

It seems re-installing Wordpress on my other site caused the database for this one to be deleted without me knowing. A little TOO quick and easy. I managed to scrape the one post that wasn’t backed up from the Google cache of this page.

Thanks G, you’re always looking over my shoulder when I need ya.

Can anyone say bandwagon? Myspace is sooo last year and since I need to be on top of the tech tidal wave I finally surfed up a facebook account.

Over the past week I’ve been able to unite with many of my friends from myspace under this new (pardon the pun) face. Back to being internet hip (for now).

We can thank this new trend in social media for the devaluing of the term friend. Soon enough everyday conversation will require clarifying statements. Is this friend in your immediate meatspace or virtual? Are they top 8? pfff….

Since originally writing this post I’ve returned to the spammy haven known and loved as myspace. The music keeps bringing me back. Soo many good bands at the click of the button. When are they gonna let you make playlists? I’d pay a small amount to be able to stream lists of songs from their site in the order I choose.

My blog looks so bare, where’s all the ads? As a user I’m sure you’re thinking “Am I on the internet?”

Since ads make the world go round, I’ve decided to help keep your online experience consistent and find an ad company to push “relevant contextual advertising” to you, the viewer. The search begins!

You’re welcome

1. Friend Posts Bulletin
2. I think “whoa! pics from her crazy vacation…” I click link.
   Timed out session?
3. I type in my login info and press ‘enter’
4. Where’s the pictures man?
   Then I notice the red text saying check the URL in the address bar.

Netted and clubbed. Left to swear, laugh out loud and quickly go change my password.
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