That Tall Dude.com

Did Yahoo silently declare that MyBlogLog is walking the green mile?  Yahoo announced a new user profile today (mine here), and it seems that it is in the very early stages of doing exactly what MyBlogLog does, keep you updated about things.  Whereas MyBlogLog is focused on the blogging sector, Yahoo seems to be challenging Facebook’s info tab (for now).

At the moment, you can put your picture up, leave a status message, the basic assortment of about me info, leave messages on the guestbook, and see friends updates.  Updates currently consist of Yahoo 360/Avatars/Buzz/Shine, and personal info.  More things are in the works, like email, with an emphasis on the messages from your contacts.

While Facebook is working on becoming Friendfeed, but with more pictures of yourself drunk, Yahoo is creating a one stop spot for everything under their own umbrella.  Once email is integrated into (what I am now, uncreatively dubbing) Yahoo Connect, I imagine that Flickr won’t be far behind, and next up will be MyBlogLog.  While the former won’t be going anywhere, the latter is ripe for being replaced by a blog tab.  Yahoo Connect could easily separate things in that manner:  social, blog, pictures, dating, videos, events, etc…  While they still have a long way to go to rip away the momentum that Facebook has, email integration could be the feature that kills Facebook.

While this is rampant speculation for now, I don’t think it’s far off base.  Yahoo Mash didn’t pan out very well, but this could be the fruit of all they learned from it.  The current trend is efficient aggregation, and Yahoo might be onto something, as long as they don’t screw it up.

So, today I got my brand new iPod Touch (2G) from the nice UPS dude.  8 Gb of storage isn’t as much as I’d like, but I’m just a poor freelancer in southwest North Dakota, so I’ll take it.  I had the opportunity to play with a first generation Touch recently, and it has some definite advantages.

I was all set to hop in the car tonight, and rock out to a new playlist.  The receiver in my car has a nice cable running from the back of it that can plug into the little iPod docking port.  When I plugged it in, it gave me a little warning about not being able to charge.  I thought that was odd, but whatever.  I cued up the playlist and it started playing from the iPod speaker.  The port on the new iPod is recessed juuuuust far enough that my cable won’t plug in enough to connect.  Ok, I can live with that, CDs won’t kill me, yet.

But now, for the first time ever, I decided to sync up a calendar with my iPod.  I went into the settings, where it gave me a nice little warning.

Well isn’t that nice.  As I had just installed Sunbird for this very purpose, thinking I would need an actual calendar to sync with, I was perturbed.  It does support the same standards as iCal does, doesn’t it?  After syncing a Google Calendar with Sunbird, I really wanted to sync to the iPod.  I went to do research, and discovered a horrible thing:  I would need to get Microsoft Outlook to sync a calendar to the iPod.

Windows Vista has Windows Calendar built in.  That won’t sync up either (you’d think it would essentially be the same as an Outlook calendar).  Maybe somebody has a Sunbird addon that will enable me to sync up with the iPod, although I doubt it.  Apple gets an EPIC FAIL for not supporting Sunbird (come on now, it’s open source).

If anybody knows of some kind of workaround for this, please let me know.  Windows Vista, iTunes, iPod Touch 8 Gb (2G), Sunbird, everything as up to date as it can be.  I want to sync my iPod with Sunbird.

Side note:  I really like the new built in speaker and external volume control.

As we all know by now, the US government, or rather, the US taxpayers, are funding a $700 BILLION bailout for some companies that were recklessly throwing money around.  I can understand not wanting our economy to fall into a depression, but why are we essentially giving money to people who apparently haven’t been able to take care of it?  Should an investment bank that failed be dug out by the American taxpayer?

Small Town, USA has long been the heart and soul of America.  Yes, the big city is portrayed as the hip place that everybody wants to go to, with their massive skyscrapers and millions of people, but it all starts in rural America.  Whether it’s raising grain, mining for coal, drilling for oil, or going there to visit Wally World, those big cities wouldn’t survive without the basics we provide.  Your resources for manufacturing have to come from somewhere, and it isn’t Central Park.

For decades and decades and decades, small town folk have started businesses, and upon reaching a certain level of success, often expand the business to other places, big cities often being a prime location, as people from small towns all over visit the big city.  So why don’t we use that money to help promote small business?

Of the $700 billion dollars, allocated equally, each state could have $14 billion.  Yes, $14 billion.  Tell me Nebraska and Kansas can’t find something to do with that?  I know North Dakota can.

That’s a lot of money, and we want to make sure this is used to get the economy rolling again.  So no more than $10 billion of those dollars will be put into a small business fund that can replenish itself year after year.  Each year, a set amount of that money can be doled out equally to every county in the state.  It is now on the counties to determine how many people can get to that money, and how it will be divided among them.  I put this at the county level, because more people know each other within the county, and should have a better idea of what will work there.  Rather than having state legislators scratching each others backs every year, every county will get the same amount, every year.

The emphasis of this money each year will be placed on NEW business.  Some could be given to existing business that is ready to make a push for major expansion, but we want to grow our communities, and a new business in town every year would go a long way towards helping that cause.

We will now have $4 billion left, possibly more.  Some of you may be thinking about building a new city hall, or a brand new football field, but I’ve got much bigger, more impactful plans.  Push that $4 billion dollars out right away to those who can bring true high speed internet to rural areas.  We’re talking fiber in the ground, to the house, and beating Verizon’s FIOS.  Don’t give this money to Verizon or AT&T or any of those big corporations.  Give it to smaller players already serving the town with 300 people in it.  It’s a global economy, and the new small businesses are going to need fast internet.

• $10 billion in a self replenishing fund, divied down to the county level annually, for new business
• $4 billion given out now to bring high speed internet to rural America

I’d like to see someone prove, without a doubt, that that won’t have a more meaningful impact on the economy than bailing out a couple of big investment banks.  Our economy is supposed to thrive on successful business.  That means if you can’t cut it, your business fails, and somebody else picks up the pieces and does it better.  Where there was once one big, bumbling giant, there are now 20 smaller, nimble, aggresive groups looking to be very competitive with each other.

All we’re doing right now is sending a message out that you can run a place in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars into the ground, and the government will bail you out.  We need to send a message out that America’s entrepreneurial spirit is not only alive and well, but we’re going to make it easier to get your idea off the ground.

I went to check out a new fan on SocialBrowse, and discovered there are some big refinements happening.  Our SocialBrowse is growing up, no longer getting dressed with help before school.  SocialBrowse is now older, in an older class where hip looks matter, and you want to fit in with your classmates.  Bringing out a sleeker look, a bit more refined, nobody will be making fun of the kid that dresses nice but doesn’t overdo it.

As more and more 2.0 sites pile on the features, and the clutter with it, SocialBrowse is doing a good job of enhancing their service without bringing unnecessary clutter.  Not only does this help make everything we’re looking for easy to find, it also ensures that the site continues to be snappy.

The right column (see below) on your profile page has been cleaned up just a touch, not so much that you can immediately pinpoint what was changed, but enough that you know you like it more.  The messages that were once at the bottom of that right column have now been moved into a tab in your main column.  I’d like to see the text in that main column a touch bigger, but it’s not a big enough issue for me to worry about, it would only make it easier to scan.  I suppose it’s probably better that I pay closer attention when I read.

The sidebar (see to the left) has also been out getting a makeover.  As all the girls can tell you, the best makeup is the makeup you can’t tell is there.  Just as with the right column on your profile page, you automatically know it looks better, but aside from the invite a friend section, you can’t quite nail down what they did.

The embedded icons that show next to a link have also been refined.  They used to show the picture of whoever shared it, now it’s a nice little SocialBrowse icon, but will still show who shared it when you hover your mouse cursor over it.

I don’t edit my profile often, so this could just be something I don’t remember, but there is an accounts tab in there now.  At the moment the link doesn’t go anywhere, but I am curious as to what is behind it.

Be sure to let the guys at SocialBrowse know what you think.  As they say:  ”Send us feedback, we respond really fast!”  I can vouch for this, as I’ve had response times anywhere from a minute to ‘as long as’ a half hour.  If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to check your addons for updates, so you can get the new sidebar too.

Keep up the great work guys!  I love me some SocialBrowse!

The rumors have been out for a couple of weeks, and they’re true, iTunes 8 incorporates a new visualizer.  I find it to be quite amazing.  However, it doesn’t have the same options the classic visualizer does.  Going through it, here are the options I have found it gives us.

• F Key – Pauses the movement and gives a flickering light show effect, or in some visual situations, goes into a slow motion effect
• I Key – still shows the song info
• N Key – alternates the background between its standard moving texture and plain black

Does anybody know of anything else we can do with the new visualizer?

I recently put up a post, Who To Follow On SocialBrowse.  The goal was to create a list of people who are active on SocialBrowse, even if they aren’t on any of the Leaderboards yet.

Shawn Kirsch shares a lot of tech news, offbeat, business, sports, and entertainment.  He also blogs right here at th@talldude.

Justin Llata shares tech news, startups, comedy, science, and offbeat.  He also blogs at JustinLL.

Dave Fowler shares lots of startup, tech news, lifestyle, offbeat, and business.  He is one of the cofounders of SocialBrowse, and blogs at Leaving Corporate.

Kathleen Anderson shares tech news, travel, news, offbeat, and gadgets.  She also blogs at SpiderWebWoman.

ChaCha Fance shares offbeat, technology, gadgets, and startups.  She blogs at  Social Web Tools.

Che Style shares tech news, business, offbeat, comedy, and world news.  His blog can be found at Che Style.

Mark shares startup, technews, business, offbeat, and programming.  He lists his blog as Tech Crunch.  (No, I’m not sure if his picture is really him or not.)

Grape Ape shares startups, offbeat, lifestyle, business, and tech news.  No blog is claimed.

Geoffrey Allan Plauche shares tech news, offbeat, gadgets, lifestyle, and sports.  He also blogs at Libertas.

The Norba shares tech news, startups, science, programming, and gadgets.  He can also be found at The Norba Blog.

Samir Balwani shares technology, startups, tech news, offbeat, and news.  He also blogs at Left The Box.

If you would like to be featured in this listing as well, please leave a comment with your profile link, as well as a link to your blog.

Thanks to the guys at SocialBrowse for making this great service, and all of the people who stay active with all the great links!  Let me know if you need an invite, I’ve got some to give out.

I bopped on over to Mixx this afternoon to submit a link, and as I often do while I’m there, I visited my profile to see how my previous submissions were doing.  I noticed several of them had been voted up, so I went to see who liked them (I’m a curious guy).  Well, Mixx has been doing some work under the hood, as the normal spot on the right side no longer shows who voted for you, it is now located in the Activity Graph, right underneath the description of your submission.

While I think the graphs are cool, I liked having a list of voters off to the right, now I have to put forth an extra click to do it.  I suppose I’ll have to learn to live with it though.  Visit the Mixx Blog for more info on their tweaks.