Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Something just occured to me. Google are well known for introducing something and blitzing the competition. gMail beat all the other webmail services, I use Google Maps loads and Google Local, Blogger is one of the most popular blogging tools on the net, I use Froogle loads, I have Google Desktop on my laptop, the list goes on.

But when it comes to Google Video, Google is getting beaten. Quite badly beaten actually. YouTube is kicking ass. Speed is the main reason. If I want to get a video on Google Video I have to open my uploader application, upload the video, go to the site, log into my account and fill out all the details. I then need to wait for validation before it goes live.

YouTube, I just open the site, click the upload tag, fill out a few forms and then select the file for uploading and give it 15 minutes or so and it will be processed and live on the site.

You could argue that they are serving different audiences and that Google Video is more interested in selling videos and such but I disagree. If I was to guess at what YouTube’s eventual business model would be I would have thought that would be a good way for go to them.

YouTube have also managed to do what Google do best – embrace the first stages of Web 2.0. YouTube is packed with AJAX, there is loads of it! Deleting comments happens via AJAX, ratings uses AJAX, many other features to do, saving videos as playlists happens live in the flash windows. The site has tags which did a lot of the popularity of Flickr too.

I think this is one of those rare occasions when Google didn’t get it quite right. YouTube on the otherhand have come in as the fresh blood, Google has become the corporate giant interested in profit – Google sell all the premium videos, YouTube don’t really have a business model at the moment. It’s a weird reveral. Usually it’s Google coming in as the renigade offering a great service such as gMail vs. Hotmail, now the tables have turned. That’s the way the crazy tech market works I guess.

Tonight was cool. I got through 5 bottles in about 90 minutes so I felt crap by 12:30. Got myself a coke though and spent about 45 minutes sobering up though so that I could dance the night away. As my sobering up was nearing completion I girl names Sarah Jane (which is such a cool name) came over an introduced herself so I ended up dancing the night with her.

Bondi is such a good night over Easter. The music is so so after midnight as the rock ends but the atmosphere is just great. As usual we stayed till kicking out time then wandered around a while before ringing for a taxi. City Cabs got us home for £9.60 which I thought was pretty good. I paid £12 last time although that was with an extra drop-off and detour in order to do so as I had to drop John off.

Got recognised again plus as soon as I walked in the girl working the bottle baths (the one Fonze claimed was either checking me out or laughing at me last Monday) recognised me and I saw Speight, Laura Fletcher and Emma Shorthall which all adds up to coolness as it’s like everyone in there knows me :p. You absolutely cannot go wrong with Bondi over Easter.

I ended up on Tickle just now after Fran sent me an email (one of those invite you’re friends to take this test too things). I haven’t been on Ticke for ages – to show you the length of time it has been, it was still called eMode when I joined ;).

So anyway, here are the results I got…

Your Unconscious Mind Is Most Driven by Reserve.

You approach the world with reserve because unconsciously, and perhaps consciously, you like to be in control. You keep your emotions to yourself and you may seem mysterious or enigmatic to others. You’re often very cautious about truly expressing yourself.

Even people who have known you for some time may find it hard to get close to you. Your psyche is very deep and rich; the more you learn about it, the more you will understand who you really are…

While I don’t heed particuarly significance to this, I do accept that by personality profiling they can achieve some results (unlike horoscopes) and I do think what some of what it says is true but then that’s nothing really I couldn’t have told you myself beforehand :p.

I love YouTube, it’s cool. The people however, are not. There are so many assholes on there! I go round looking at videos and see comment after comment saying “what the hell is this crap?” You don’t like it, don’t watch it! Maybe rate it down but why do you have to throw abuse?

Personally, I delete the abusive comments posted on my videos but a lot of people leave them on. I’m thinking of just disallowing comments on my videos.

It’s just not abusive comments, it’s just generally crappy comments too. When the 5th person posts “wooh, that’s my sister!” on a video it’s just stupid. They are clearly just posting crap for the sake of it.

So yeah, I’m not a fan of the community on YouTube. It has the wrong element on it shall we say.

The new .eu domains are selling well. Over 1.3 million have now been registered since going live just before the weekend. (But don’t quote me on this as the stats are not particuarly clearly explained so it could be talking about a larger period of time :p).

Panorama are doing a thing about whether old people can work as well as young people by comparing a 1949 Land Rover with a 2006 one. Not that I am saying that old people can’t work as well as young people, I think the greater experiance allows them to work just as well, if not better. But this comparission is biased BS.

Yeah, maybe the 1949 Land Rover can get through the muddy track as well as the 2006 model but then, this is 2006, who actually uses it for that? The new Land Rovers are more about comfort and looking cool (because that’s what the target audience really want). If you compare the sound system and air conditioning of the 2006 model and the 1949 model, there would be no competition. I very much doubt the 1949 model actually has those.

I agree with a lot of what the documentary is saying in that there is age descrimination but I think the documentary is just BS.

I also want to talk a bit about religious discrimination. Apparently the new laws prohibit discrimination in employment on grounds of religion or belief. Belief? Come on, if someone has a belief that you should kill people for sport, can I discriminate against that? That’s awful language for an act or if it actually means that, then it’s just retarded. Of course you should be able to discriminate against such a belief.

However I read over this page on Direct.gov.uk which explained a lot to me. It basically said that businesses don’t really have to make allowances for religion if it affects their business. While I wouldn’t just rule out things like giving time off for religious holidays, etc, you can’t let it damage your business.

The thing is though, when I start hiring people, say content writers for websits and such, they are going to need to write from an Encorian perspective. Of course, if someone of a different religion was fine with that (which they should be, it’s just a job) then I wouldn’t have a problem with that but what if they did and refused to do it? Obviously, they wouldn’t get the job but could I get hit for discrimination for that? I clearly shouldn’t be.

One of the problems with WordPress 2.0 (compared to 1.5) is the lack of ability to choose you’re thumbnail size. So if you really want to see this you’re just going to have to click the thumbnail.

It’s the holding page that appears while YouTube was offline for a roll-out, I found it fairly amusing.

I don’t feel I am panicing enough that bird blue has now reached the UK. I mean, I heard about it like two days ago but I haven’t really thought about it. I mean, who is going to spread the panic around Leeds if I’m not doing it?

Speaking of panic, I’m guessing Sarahann is running round screaming at the moment. Although as long as they don’t have birds in Cumbria she should be fine for the moment.

But yeah, we are clearly all going to die, it’s just a matter of time.

I’m giving the old podcasting a go with the new Celeb Storm Blog. It’s a video podcast dealie which is just basically me talking to the camera but some celeb photos and such stuck in every now and then to relate to what I’m talking about.

I’ve choosen to host the videos with YouTube and embed them into my posts although I’m also going to offer my own hosted video for the podcast URIs. At the moment though it’s in Windows Media Video format so I think I am going to re-encode it in something else to make it more accessable. What’s the best video format to use for a podcast? I don’t seem to be able to encode into MPEG-4.

Before it’s completely up and running I need to work out what I’m doing about my podcast feed, set up the subscription buttons and such on the right hand side menu, make sure my YouTube video is working, sort out the video encoding format and then get promoting it.

Went to Star tonight. We had been planning it for a while, since the last Wendy House really. Craig and Fonze bailed in the evening though so I was debating whether to go myself. In the end I resolved to go and walked down to the bus stop. The bus was late (that or it never actually showed) but John came past as his dad was dropping him in town so I got a lift with him.

We spent some time in Fab Cafe (myself, John, Lunn, Andy P and Ashley Banks) which wasn’t bad – they had Transformers on the TV dealie :D. We hung round there a bit as it was raining and then headed into Star. I was disappointed there though. The £1 Star Spit drink things were cool but I wasn’t a fan of the music, even the indie room seemed to lack any flair for me.

So I decided there was no point me hanging around if I wasn’t going to enjoy myself and left at 12:35. That way I could get the bus at 1:10 which would be way cheaper than a taxi, even if we were splitting one (although I think it’s on-peak prices as I paid £2 for my ticket). The gap was to give me time to go down to Subway and speak to George who was doing the night shift there. So on the plus side, the Subway was good :p.

I think I’m giving up hope on Star though. I was hoping to run into someone from uni but no such luck. I did run into Big Ash, Andy Bob, Little Ash and Arthurs though. But anyway, I think my resolve to go to Friday Flock has now loosened, that’s down to a maybe. Although Sarahann is back on Tuesday so that’s good news.