Slacker (Finaly a website after my own heart)

Free streaming music, that is what Slacker does and they do it well. Slacker is in its simplest form a internet radio site, but offering much more then your average internet radio station. First unlike most internet music stations, that are an after thought of their physical radio station counterparts, or other media streaming services (e.g. Rhapsody) slacker is devoted to bringing you uninterrupted music for free. They say that you can expect about two ads per hour but I have been listening to it for the past hour and I have yet to hear a single ad, but there is a pay version for those who don't ever want to hear an ad. Second unlike other streaming music services that make you pay if you want to take the service with you slacker enables you to take the service with you where ever you might go with their portable radio players that can hold 15, 25, and 40 stations with prices of $200, $250, and $300 respectively. Slacker is a great service that is worth a little time and attention.

My play list while writing this:
"Hey Hey"-October Fall
"Crushcrushcrush"-Paramore
"I Woke Up In A Car"-Something Corporate
"Ocean Avenue"-Yellowcard
"There's A Case For This"-Cute Is What We Aim For
"I Write Sins Not Tragedies"-Panic At The Disco
"Thanks For The Mmrs"-Fall Out Boy
"Tonight Lites"- A Cursive Memory
"Hate (I Really Don't Like You)"-Plain White T's
"Hero/Heroine"-Boys Like Girls
"Flashlight"-Punchline
"Sweetness"-Jimmy Eat World
"Light Up The Sky"-Yellowcard

Stuff

Recently on Richard Dahlstrom's blog he posted about a video on the web called the story of stuff. In the video a woman named Annie Leonard takes you through the complete process of production of stuff, from extraction to disposal and the effect which each stage has on the environment. It is only twenty minutes long and is an eye opening video. Click the link above or the picture below.

More Free Stuff

I, like most people, love free stuff, so anytime that anything free pops up on my screen I take notice. That is just what happened the other day, thanks to Webware, when I found Giveaway of the Day. Giveaway of the Day does just what the name says that it will gives one software title away everyday for free, the thought is that the more people have and are reviewing the software that is given away the better it is for the company, a way to get free advertising. This is one of the best ideas that I have heard about in a long time, I don't get why Microsoft can't think like this. To see what todays free software is take a look at the ticker below.

Darwin

No matter what your personal view of evolution is one thing can't be denied, that is that Charles Darwin was a very intelligent man. He wrote many books and papers in his life time and since his death in 1882 only a small group of people have been able to read his actual hand written work at the library of Cambridge University. But now, thanks to a small group of people, anyone can look on anything that Darwin ever wrote along with first drafts of his papers and theories. It is worth looking through but if you want to read any of his work that is edited and in print most of it is in the public domain and so it can be accessed through Google books here.

Update: I actually wrote this post about a week ago and scheduled in to post today, but it you are interested in a little more about atheism check out the discussion to my post titled Let's Kill God.

China and Tibet

Most people, in western culture, know about the terrible things being perpetrated by China in Tibet. But the knowledge of what is going on in Tibet is not reaching the Chinese people because of the strict censorship law that are in place in China. However there is a site called Wikileaks which is trying to force information, about what is going on in Tibet, through the Golden Shield Projects (a.k.a. the Great Firewall of China) censors to give the people of China a look into what is going on with their own country. To do this Wikileaks has released over 150 videos and pictures about the Tibet uprising and are asking everyone to help them push these through the censors. I do feel the need to warn anyone who would want to look at the photos, that are extremely graphic and brutal, it made me sick with the first picture that I saw, I knew that it was bad in Tibet but it didn't quite hit me how bad it really was until I saw these pictures. It is hard to get through the Shield Project but I hope that they can so the the Chinese people can be informed about what is going on right next door to them.

This web site is already blocked in China, if you want to see if a site that you have is blocked just go here and find out, you would be surprised to see just how little it takes to be blocked.

The Human Footprint

Recently I was looking on Google video looking for something good to watch, I came across a show that appeared on Channel 4 in England. The show is called Human Footprint and it was a very insightful show. The idea behind the special is to show you how much stuff you will use in your life, from how much you will eat, how much milk you will drink to how much hair you will grow in your lifetime and how many times you will fall in love (which is three times in a life). The show blends a good amount of humor (if you like English humor) into the hour long program and kept my hooked for the whole run of it. If you have an hour and are looking for a intriguing look into what the average consumption of material over a lifetime (at least a British lifetime) give this program a look.

Changing Church Forms

There are definitely some sweet churches out there that are trying new and different ideas out on how to do Church, and with society changing so fast it is good that there are people out there that are trying new things out to see if they work. Two churches that are doing Church differently are LifeChurch.tv and Epic Church.

LifeChurch.tv is one of those churches that is on the forefront of technology's and the internet. LifeChurch has grown from a small house church to to having several campuses around the U.S. including one in Mesa, AZ, they also started YouVersion which is one of my favorite Web 2.0 Bible utilities out today. But one of their most innovative ventures is that they have a campus set up to run exclusively on the web, not only can you watch regular sermons but at that same time you can interact with other people that are watching at the same time. I would encourage people to look in their local communities for a group of people to connect with but this is a great option as well.

Epic is a church that is doing things just a little bit differently as well, which is something that you can see that second that you step in to its doors. The reason that you realize this instantaneously is because once you step into the church you actually find yourself in the Park Place movie theater. I went to this church the second week that they had been open and didn't know how this would work but after I sat down into the big comfortable chairs of the theater I realized that this is a place that you could do Church quite nicely. The church being located in a movie theater is not the only unconventional part of this church, people are also encouraged to bring their laptops and log on to the Epic web site via the free internet that is provided, once there you can ask questions about the topic that is being spoken on, if you forgot your laptop or you would just feel awkward bringing your desktop to a movie theater you can also do the same thing through text massage. This is an idea that I like a lot, the pastor of Epic, Jake Rasmussen, seems to have a good idea going with this and it has been getting a little bit of buzz around town as well.

If you have the time it is definitely a good idea to check one or both of these place out.

As Fun Goes Up Productivity Goes Down (InstantAction)

Online games can be one of the best wastes of time that one can take part in. Now in beta is a site that specializes in wasting time...playing games, which are web based, called InstantAction. Now this is nothing now, there are hundreds of flash game sites out there that you can jump on and spend hours tooling around on, but InstantAction is different from the rest of these sites because it doesn't just have 3D games but it also does multiplayer and adds community elements in to the fold to. The site is free is part of a new trend in video games that cost little to nothing, which is great for people who don't want to spend a lot on games (which should be just about everyone who plays video games). Accounts are easy to set up and the controls for the games are easy to use, right now there are only five games to play but they will be adding more as time goes on. If you go and set up an account my gamer ID is pjdamws.

GeoCities Web 2.0 Style (Google Page Creator)

So most people know that I am a huge Google fanatic, I use Google for almost all of my day to day Internet activity. Recently I was going through my Google account and came across a part of Google that I had forgotten about, it was Google Page Creator. Back in February 2006 Google launched page creator as a way for people to create their own custom site, much like GeoCities back in the 90s. At first it was a little awkward and not really the best that Google could do. Now, however, Google has greatly improved it, anyone who finds Blogger or any other blogging site easy will find making their own web site easy to. There aren't a lot of templates to choose from but just like any other thing on the web right now all you would really have to do is a quick Google search for templates and you would get thousands in 0.28 seconds. There are also a few other kinks that need to be worked out but it is a fun and easy tool that can be used to create a free web site. You can check out a site that I created the other night for all of my web based ventures here (I am still working on a lot of this).

Picnik (Online Photo Editing)

Sometime last year I tried to move as much computer-based stuff (Word Documents, Music, Calender, etc) as I could to web-based, even going so far as trying to get an online OS, which I didn't like. One of the things that I tried and liked a lot was a service called Picnik. Picnik is an online flash based photo editor capable of editing photos very well, I would say that for most people it will edit your photos as well as Photoshop or any other professional software but you won't have to have a bloated program filling up your hard drive. For Picnik is ad supported and you do have to have a place to host your picture files (Picasa, Flikr, Facebook, Your hard drive, and many others). There are two membership types to choose from, one free and one that you pay $24.95 per year, not a bad price but right now I don't think that there is really a reason to get that but they are adding more things as time goes on so it might be worth pay the $25 for. So if you are looking to touch up some of your picture and want an easy and free way to do it without getting a bulky program on your computer then you should give Picnik a try.

Potential (In YouVersion)

A few months ago I was turned on to a new website called YouVersion, I singed up with it but didn't give it much attention at the time, but recently I re-found it and have started to like it very much. What YouVersion is doing is trying to make the Bible web 2.0 friendly, and it is very interesting how they are doing it. YouVersion is combining Facebook and Bible Gateway to give the user the ability not only to search scripture on there own but to also talk to other people and friends about what they have found, share insights and resources along with many other features (some of which will be coming out soon). Right now it is still just in beta but I have been using it for the past few days and I think that at its present state it is giving Bible Gateway a run for its money. It still has a lot of things that it could work on, and since it is still in beta I love to give the developers some of my ideas on how to make it better. I still like the pen and paper method of reading the bible but seeing as how most of my life is spent in the virtual world YouVersion would be a close second for me. Check it out and when profile views become available I will post my link.

Best Online Storage

searching the If you are anything like me you are a Google freak, and again if you are anything like me any time someone comes out with a new rumor about a Google Hard Drive (a.k.a. GDrive) you are instantlyinternet to see if it is true. Unfortunately the GDrive hasn't come true yet but in the means time I found a site (thanks to Webware) that is a close second to the mythical Gdrive. The Site is called ADrive, this site gives you an amazing amount of storage for free 50GB. ADrive gets a lot of things right, the upload speed is amazing I was able to upload a little under 310MB in about 10 Minutes, it is a nice clean interface, it is a great option for hosting our files, and if I didn't mention it earlier you get 50GB for free. That all being said there are some down sides, the download is not as impressive as the upload taking me about 15 minutes to get a 30MB video (I did only do the test once so it could have just been the time of day that I was trying to get it at), when you are uplaoding that is all that you can do in that browser and it sucks up all of our bandwidth when you are doing it, also there is no option to get for room (not that you need much more room then 50GB, and it is an option that they are trying to add at a latter date). But if you are starting to run out of room on you computer or you want to share files on two computers this is a great way to do it.

For all you who want to write a book

Today I was watching Mahalo Daily, which is hosted by the wonderful Veronica Belmont who I use to love to watch on Cnet.com, and to day they were talking about how to go about publishing your own book. One of the sites that mentioned to do this was called Lulu, they said it was free so, of course, I went to check it out. I found a lot there, some of the books are really well written and if you are willing to take the risk on some undiscovered writers this would be a good place to start. But even if you aren't there are some great options for picture albums, calenders. Not only is it a great place to discover new writers but since it is a site that specializes in helping people self publish for all of those people who feel that they have a good story, or something meaningful to say (and think that they can fill up 100 pages or so) you should give this a look. I myself have a few Sci-fi stories that I have been throwing around in my mind that I might try to weed out, I also might try to create a 2009 calender with some of the better pictures that I have from Estes Park.

Battlefield Heroes

Battlefield Heroes is a new game coming out from the people who developed the Battlefield series. This looks like a very fun game, unlike the other Battlefield games this won't take up a lot of system resources so they can reach a larger audience, which is an idea that I love because it means for the first time I can run a Battlefield game on my computer. The graphics look great, game play seems solid (of course I have only seen the preview), and the rest of the mechanics seem to be on par. But the best part about this game is that it is going to be free at launch, the reason that they are going to be able to do this is because they are working under EA's new "play 4 free" business model. So instead of charging you for the game you will see and ad when you boot up the game, and then you will have to buy some upgrades if you want them (nothing that will effect game play). All of that combined and I am really looking forward to this game, even if it sucks its not like you paid anything for it.

LibriVox

For about a year now I have been using a website called LibriVox. LibriVox is a great website made up of volunteers who record themselves reading books that are in the public domain and then upload those recordings onto this website that you can then go and download for free. If, however, you aren't big on the whole audio book thing you can always try Project Gutenberg which is basically the samething but you download text files instead of audio files.

LEGOs

Everybody remembers LEGOs, those wonderful little bricks that would let you go anywhere your imagination would take you. That is until your mom said that you were to old for them and made you through them away. But a few people have been able to keep the magic alive for themselves and are sharing the joy with as many people as they can. The web site is name The Brothers Brick and they have amassed a significant collection of pictures and stories about LEGOs. The one pictured is my favorite so far but they have a lot more on the site. Check them out if you can stand to waste some time.

Sweet

So right now I really love emusic. About a year ago I signed up for one of emusic's cheapest services to get their promotion for 50 free songs, after downloading my songs that day I canceled the account before being charged anything. Now a year later I get an email asking me to reactivate to get 25 free songs plus 1 audio book, which translates to 30 downloads. Now that I have canceled that account again I have gotten 105 free songs for free and completely legal, sweet.

Apartment

I got an Apartment yesterday and am going to move in this weekend. I also have two invites for Joost, which is a really cool program, if anyone wants them email me at gonzo4god@yahoo.com.

Good fun

Enough said!

Mindless Fun

Brings a new meaning to drag and drop

Free Internet Games