Brian Amerige is the developer of FTP application Flow, which is currently in its private Beta stages. Flow doesn’t yet have a set release date, although excellent progress is been made on a daily basis. I had time to catch up with Brian and ask him a few questions about the upcoming public release of Flow. Continue Reading »
I’ve had a few requests to change a little of the formatting for The Glenn Wolsey Show. Two of the requests were to get the show a proper RSS feed, and enable the show to be subscribed to via iTunes.
I immediately went on a search to find out the easiest and most cost effective way to get the show on iTunes and have a permanent online archive of the episodes. My search ended when I stumbled across Blip.TV. I’ll be uploading each show recorded both to Blip.TV and YouTube. Blip.TV will push the content through iTunes and the RSS feed, while YouTube will allow people to view the clips within their web browser and leave comments on the episodes.
On another note, a recording schedule. I’m aiming to push out one of these videos each weekday time permitting, starting this week.
One year old today. 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, or 8,760 hours. It feels like so much longer, I’ve done so much over this short year - met so many cool people, blogged about so many cool things, and had a lot of fun communicating with the people who matter, you!
July 22nd, 2006 stated the opening of this blog. Since then, I’ve published 270+ articles, collecting 4,641+ comments. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed meeting so many new people, creating so many new friendships, and further developing my writing in a community atmosphere.
One thing which has really worked for me over the past year is writing quality content on a regular basis. You need to personally be able to see value in the writing you’ve done, if you can’t, chances are no one else will either.
Write for a reason. Are you writing this post because you haven’t blogged for four days and feel you need to post something? You don’t. Only post if you have something to say, chances are, if you wait till it gets to this what you have to say will be valuable, and will be formed as quality content.
See people regularly commenting on your blog? Get in contact with them, reply to their comments, listen to them, and most importantly, communicate. It’s important to know what your readers want from your site - the only way to do this is keep the avenue for contact open and respond to all emails you receive. A few words in reply can go a long way.
Pick your niche/s and stick to them. Try not to sway off too far as you could lose your focused readership. Pick something you know a lot about, no one is going to listen to a blogger blogging about a topic they know nothing about.
This should be done in the early days of blogging, if not even before starting up the site. Make sure you know your stuff about what you’re writing about. Keep focused, and keep your readership.
I’ve seen too many blogger focus on stats in the early days of running a blog, sure, they can be exciting, but soon you will reach a stage where you need to step away from them and set some goals, think about exactly why you’re looking at stats - shouldn’t your main goal be to create great content? Visitors will flow in over time, don’t over scrutinize or analyze them before you need to. Keep writing about what you love, it doesn’t matter if 20 or 2000 people are reading, just keep at it.
What do you think of when you hear the word “Blogger?” I think of writing, I’m sure most of you do too. However, there’s more to becoming a successful blogger than just writing, you need to keep in the “know” about general happenings in your niche. I would estimate I read 50 fold what I write - not a small amount. Subscribe to sites, blogs and magazines and just start reading content, it’ll ultimately help you write/blog better.
Last but not least, thanks for all your support over the past 12 months. It has been great to have an audience as vocal and encouraging as you! I can’t wait to see what’s in store in the future, one thing I know for sure is that I will not stop blogging anytime soon - I love what I’m doing here. Thank you all!
Each and every Friday I post a desktop wallpaper which I have taken personally on travels and outings with my Canon 350D. The wallpaper is sized at a resoultion of 2560×1600 pixels, big enough to be used on a 30 inch Apple Cinema Display, so no-one will miss out.
Feel free to leave any comments or constructive criticism about this wallpaper below - it helps me grow and learn the art of photography. If you have suggestions for Desktop Friday, feel free to shoot me an email. Have a great weekend!
Download this weeks desktop wallpaper here.
The following is a reply I sent to blog reader and friend Seb Payne after receiving an email from him regarding boosting his blog readership. Thought it might be helpful for a few others, hence posting it here.
Consider why exactly you are after traffic? For bragging rights, to feel good, to make more ad money, or, in my case, for others to discover quality content. Think about what kind of visitors you want, and ultimately this will help you find where to pick them up.
If a quick burst of traffic is all you’re after then start off with an article you think will hit it off on Digg, this is the perfect way to create some exposure for your site first up. Prior to getting dugg, make sure that you have a truckload of quality articles in your archive, ensuring Digg users have lots to explore when they hit your site.
Personally, I wouldn’t normally recommend trying to get content on Digg too regularly because chances are it isn’t the kind of traffic you want. I try to attract a centric group of traffic - I value quality over quantity. My personal goal is to have a smaller, educated audience who really enjoy my content, rather than a huge readership who really don’t care what I write about. To achieve this, I write on a regular basis and I write more than reports and general reviews, I attempt to put a personal twist on everything I publish.
It all comes down to the same fundamental point, focus on creating quality content for the readers you currently have, and it’ll slowly spread one by one to more people. Value your traffic, and receive it for a reason.
Each and every Friday I post a desktop wallpaper which I have taken personally on travels and outings with my Canon 350D. The wallpaper is sized at a resoultion of 2560×1600 pixels, big enough to be used on a 30 inch Apple Cinema Display, so no-one will miss out.
Feel free to leave any comments or constructive criticism about this wallpaper below - it helps me grow and learn the art of photography. If you have suggestions for Desktop Friday, feel free to shoot me an email. Have a great weekend!
Download this weeks desktop wallpaper here.
I’ve finally managed to get my feet of the ground and launch the video show I’ve been talking about for a few weeks now.
My main goal with this show is to involve you, the community, in the general art of content creation. I’ll be creating videos from user submitted questions. That means if you have a basic (or advanced) question you want advice on, you can email it to me and should see a video appear in the near future on your topic of choice.
I see this as an excellent way for me to become more connected with my readers, and now viewers. I believe content creation has become a little stale recently, something excellent community interaction could, and can change. I currently have three videos online. The intro video, a video showing off my office, and a video answering a reader question on whether the iMac is a safe buy at the moment.
I’d also like to make a quick shout out to Kiro who created the excellent video intro to the show using Apple’s professional tool Motion. I know Kiro spent many hours perfecting it, and it shows. Thanks!
Lets get the ball rolling, send me any questions you want answered to glennwolsey@mac.com and I’ll add them to the queue.
While you wait for my full reviews on the Mac Pro, 30″ Apple Cinema Display, and the Canon PowerShot TX1, I decided to post a little “First Looks” post on how I’m finding these new toys due to many requests.
Please keep in mind that my full reviews with complete performance testing are around two weeks away, I want to do as much testing as possible before I publish anything. If you have any questions you’d like to see answered in the review regarding system performance, feel free to drop them in the comments below. Enough with the chit-chat, on with the first looks.
This machine really is a beauty, installing the RAM and hard-drive upgrades was a very simple process which only took a matter of minutes. I expected the tower to be much louder than it is, I have it sitting under the desk and can barely hear anything apart from the occasional disk noise. It’s whisper quiet even under heavy usage.
It has been very handy to have so many ports on the machine, the front USB and Firewire ports are lifesavers, I’ve used these constantly over the past 48 hours of data transfer and Skype calls.
Overall, I’m very impressed with this machine. It will be put to good use over the next few years (yes, it’s going to last me a long time).
I was a little skeptical if 3GB would be enough for a machine with 4 cores, since then my skepticism has been wiped - 3GB is plenty for general multitasking I’m doing. I have around 12 apps open at the moment, and still have 2.06GB of RAM free for the taking. This is a much appreciated improvement from my iMac, which is now sitting in the family room acting as a web browsing machine for the family.
One of the main factors which make the Mac Pro so fast is not its 2.66Ghz processor, but the fact that the machine has two, dual core processors.
When I’m doing general work, which includes having the regular applications open such as Safari, Mail, Skype, iPhoto, iTunes, NewsFire, iChat, etc, the machine barely eats up 3-5% of the processor load. When I launch into heavier applications like Aperture and Final Cut, I can still operate all my other programs smoothly without a hitch, even when exporting video (which is super fast).
The first time I saw the box, I was wowed. When I opened the box, I was wowed. When I placed it on my desk, I was wowed. When I turned it on, I was blown away - literally.
Now I’m rather accustomed to the size and resolution of this display. It’s really nice to be able to scan applications, rather than switch to them. If I get a new email while browsing in Safari, I can scan with my eyes to the left to view it rather than going down to the dock, clicking the app, reading the email, then clicking back to Safari which is what I had to do when I was using the iMac as a primary machine.
This screen has already saved me so much time, I highly recommend a 30″ display if you love multitasking. I couldn’t go back to anything smaller. For those interested, here is a little video tour of the office.
On a final note, if you have any questions for the final reviews, please let me know and I’ll do my best to incorporate them into the articles.
After going through a few phases of decision making for my new setup while saving, I can finally reveal my new office and really start to push the boundaries with content creation.
Even though I threw up some different ideas for my machine throughout the stage when I was saving, I’ve ended up with the machine I initially intended on buying, and the Mac all Apple fanboys lust over.
When I called Apple and placed the order I asked for the 2.00Ghz model, being the person I am it wasn’t even half an hour later I was back on the phone changing my order to the higher 2.66Ghz model. If I’m keeping this machine for a long time I might as well get the best I can afford at the moment.
Full specifications are. 2 x 2.66Ghz, 3GB RAM, 250GB & 500GB HDD, BT + AE.
The Mac Pro looks like an amazing machine which will last me for years and years, I finally have my computing setup at a point where no more changes need to be made to the main elements for a long time.
Initially I planned on Dual 23″ Apple Cinema Display’s, then changed my mind to Dual 24″ Dell’s. When it came to the crunch I couldn’t resist the drop dead gorgeous anodised aluminium Apple displays, and purchased the holy grail of all. The 30″ Apple Cinema Display.
This display appears to be drop dead gorgeous, and it’s ridiculously large. I’ve only played with it at an Apple reseller a couple of times. Standing in front of this monitor is a life defying experience, I can’t wait to be sitting in front of it on a daily basis.
I’m starting to experiment with different aspects of digital media as of recent, and I’ve been wanting to do a similar tech video show like Chris Pirillo for a while now. The only problem was my lack of video related hardware, and the iSight really didn’t cut it for video recording.
I did a little research and (impulsively) purchased the Canon PowerShot TX1. The TX1 is not only a 7MP still camera, it’s a High-Definition video camera which records directly onto SD cards.
I also picked up a few miscellaneous objects in the past 2 weeks, including an iPod nano dock, 4GB SDHC card for the TX1, and additional 2GB Sandisk card for use in the the 350D. Expect full reviews of all three large products soon.
Can you believe both the Mac Pro and 30″ Apple Cinema Display are still sitting in the box? I made myself wait until I wrote this post to unpack them. As for now, I’m off to setup the Mac Pro and have some fun with my new toys. Ciao!
Each and every Friday I post a desktop wallpaper which I have taken personally on travels and outings with my Canon 350D. The wallpaper is sized at a resoultion of 2560×1600 pixels, big enough to be used on a 30 inch Apple Cinema Display, so no-one will miss out.
Feel free to leave any comments or constructive criticism about this wallpaper below - it helps me grow and learn the art of photography. If you have suggestions for Desktop Friday, feel free to shoot me an email. Have a great weekend!
Download this weeks desktop wallpaper here.
The latest web application in the spotlight called Pownce was launched by a crew of four comprised of Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, Shawn Allen and Daniel Burka last week. Initial comments from on-lookers have been both rather skeptic, and rather ecstatic. I’m part of the second group, Pownce is everything a Twitter user could wish for plus more. I have mulled it over for a few days before segregating my personal opinion.
Firstly, I’ll put it right out there. I am right behind Twitter, I love the idea and originality Twitter brought to the table when it launched back in March 2006, I have no current plans to leave the service. However, for a two week old service, Pownce has thoroughly impressed me through both form and function. Pownce improves on Twitter’s current feature set and in addition, includes a few extra features which differentiate it from Twitter.
Pownce is very similar to Twitter from a quick scan. You add friends, post messages for others to read, and generally connect with other people. The difference is, Pownce adds to these features in a highly functional and appreciated way.
For example, messaging. When you post you have four options. You can post a Message, Link, File, or Event. Clicking on one of these dynamically refreshes that element of the page to reflect your posting choice. Your second choice is to chose who the message is intended for. The default setting is for “all my friends,” however this can be changed to either the public, or a specific person - in other words, Pownce can be used to connect with just your friends, the general public, or one specific person. Very handy for different instances and uses.
More specifically, you can set groups for different contacts. For instance, if you have a lot of Developers and Bloggers on your friend list you can conviently create a seperate Group for them. When posting, this group will be an option alongside all friends, the public, and individuals. This is essentially useful if you just want the Bloggers to know about your latest post, or just want the Developers to see a link you’ve posted to the latest Expression Engine build.
If you’re a Twitter use, you’ll be familiar with the process of using @YourNameHere to reply to others tweets. Pownce takes the art of replying to others in a whole new direction, just like Digg, Pownce has a threaded message system for replying to specific messages. This makes the process of holding a conversation very functional and easy to grasp a hold of.
To further test out Pownce as a tool of communication I asked my friends to post a quick one sentence review of Pownce in reply to my message. I received around 20 replies which can be found here. Below I’ve displayed a selected few which represented the views of a few different individuals.
Patrick Yan. Great web app from the $60 million man, Kevin Rose—but the lack of mobile (updating & browsing) and a real desktop app is keeping this from becoming as popular as Twitter.
Jeremy S. Pownce is basically a souped up version of twitter without the external inputs like texting and Instant Messages. Even though Pownce is currently small, I can see a bright future headed toward it.
Matt Brett. Seems like a lot of people are forgetting that Pownce is less than a week old and invite only beta. If this is beta, I can’t fu**ing wait to see what they have in store for 1.0!
Chris Marshall. I think Twitter is great for ’statements’ and has been massagd to death to allow conversation. Pownce has way more potential for developing discussions, building communities, and faciliating viral marketing
I’ve heard this statement numerous times over the past few days. People wanting to use Twitter in conjunction with Pownce instead of pick a favorite are in luck - you can cross post messages to both services.
The blog JetPacked has posted a brief tutorial on how to forward messages you post on Pownce directly through to Twitter.
Go to TwitterFeed.com and login with your OpenID. Create a new Twitter feed and enter your information. When asked for a feed, type in http://www.pownce.com/feeds/public/username. Select the frequency of posting. Be sure to deselect “Include description.�
This process will be handy for those who want to post messages to one service, but have them distributed to both. For now, I’m sticking with individually posting to both Pownce and Twitter, although cross-posting has struck me as a good solution for keeping involved in both.
Overall, Pownce hasn’t fail to impress. It’s a solid service which I assume I’ll be in constant contact with in the future. There are a few things I’d like to see added and improved on in the future, just like hundreds of other early adopters. Some features I’d personally be pleased to see in future updates include the following.
- Improved Desktop Application. Something which matches up to the elegance and functionality of Twitterrific, Pownce the desktop app needs thorough work if they want to take the service to the next level and be a realistic contender to Twitter. Kevin Rose, get in contact with the team at The Iconfactory and start talking. Period.
- Remove Default Email Notifications. Within hours of signing up to Pownce my inbox was full with over 50 automated emails notifying me of friend requests and messages. Please, have these turned off by default.
- Online Indicators. Allow users to see friends who are currently online by displaying a green indicator next to users logged in, and red next to users offline.
- Official iPhone Compatible Web Application. Move one step ahead of Twitter by developing an official version of Pownce directly compatible for the iPhone. There is yet no solid solution from Twitter for iPhone tweeting, here’s a perfect opportunity to gain one extra step in the race.
- Statistics. I’m a big fan of statistics, I enjoy seeing numbers rise (or fall) live, play by play. This isn’t an essential feature but it’d be “fun” to be able to view stats on your profile including how many messages you’ve sent, and how many times your profile has been viewed. Taking this a step further, how about Top 10 lists for various categories.
Overall I’ve been immensely impressed with the value Pownce has added to my online experience. I’ve felt so much more connected over the past few days - Pownce really is Twitter with all the trimmings you could wish for from a service which is only at version 1.0.
If you wish to add me on either site, feel free to do so. My Pownce profile is located here, and my Twitter profile is located here.
What are your thoughts about the Pownce vs Twitter clash? Which do you think will win the race, and most importantly, which are you using the most?
Unlike many others, I haven’t been with Digg since its inception in 2003. I’ve been a member of the worlds largest social bookmarking site since August 14, 2005. Since then I have submitted 174 stories, with a success rate of 24% from my 42 homepage stories.
Almost two years of my short life have been accomplished with Digg set as my browser homepage. I’ve found it handy to have the latest in the world of technology news directly in front of me when I launch Safari throughout the day. It’s a way to keep me connected and “in the know” of recent happenings and announcements. Digg can be simply described as my portal to the web.
Kevin Rose and the team at Digg have done a great job continuing to add new features to the site, while not groundbreaking, each new additional feature makes Digg a better and more enjoyable place for all who love sharing Technology, Sport, Business, or Offbeat News. There’s something for everyone.
Interestingly enough, the ten thousandth story I dugg was relevant to the fashionable topic of late, Apple’s new iPhone which I have purposely overlooked writing about to this day due to two facts. The point of fact I haven’t touched one yet, and secondly, I’ve found it to be a little over-talked on blogs over the past few days, hold on, make that months.
Moving back to the point of the topic, I’ve been a Digg member for just on two years now and it still has a hold on me. There’s something seemingly refreshing about Digg which keeps me coming back for more. I don’t know if it’s the downright widespread and opinionated community, or my desire to keep up to the minute with the latest tech news. All I know is that two years later, Digg still has a hold on me which won’t cease anytime soon.
How do you feel about Digg? How long have you been a member, how many stories have you dugg, and what keeps you coming back for more?
