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Monday night, I thought gmail was down so I tweeted. I got plenty of responses from other gmail users that lead me to think I was the only single person on the interwebs having and issue. @quecojones shot me a link that I immediately bookmarked. The site, downforeveryoneorjustme.com, answers that very important question: Is [insert the name of a Web site here] having a major problem or am I delusional?
Page2rss.com is another recently bookmarked Web site that turns a non-RSS enabled Web page in to RSS enabled content. I tried it with a T-Shirt company I like. If it works, I should see an update in my feed reader when they add new shirts.
In prep for William the former Geek Brief Intern’s 21st birthday, we were searching for Wii news and we came across MiiSculptures.com. You can upload a picture of your Mii and they’ll turn it into a little sculpture for $75.
Wireless HDMI technology will soon be available in the Sharp X-Series of HDTVs. Japan will get them first. The rest of the world will have to wait.
Viewzi is a visual search engine that is really fun to use. The invitation code, “geekbrief” will get a couple hundred of us into the semi-public beta. I really like Viewzi, except for the Video x3 feature. I’d like to know what you think.
« GBTV #0353 | GeekBrief.TV
GBTV #0355 | GeekBrief.TV »
April 30th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Thanks for the heads-up on Viewzi but for me at least, it’s just way too slow to be usable. It’s undoubtedly a pretty cool idea with a sort of iPhone-like feel to it. But unfortunately it seems to be a few years ahead of its time in terms of the demands it places on computer hardware and the network. Despite being on a pretty decent software development workstation with oodles of RAM and a 3 Mbps ADSL connection all to myself, Viewzi is just crawling for me (and I started using it before America got up out of bed, i.e. at a time of day when the Internet runs fastest for Europeans). Being the impatient type, there’s no way I’ll be trading in the speed of a traditional search engine in return for cute renderings and swish visual effects.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Hi Cali, I watch your show and a few others ever day and even as a PC user I find it very informative. On todays show I was distracted by a little white bouncing icon on the right monitor (over your left shoulder). I know it is small and shouldn’t have distracted me as much as it did.
Anyway what was it and why was it bouncing up and down on your monitor.
All the best, and keep up the great work.
-Joe Dawson, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada
April 30th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Viewzi is awesome. I did not have the trouble with it being slow that Dave Mc had. I am on a T1 though. I cannot wait to try it out at home on my DSL. I do a lot of searching in my job and it will be nice to see what the page is before going to it. Thanks
April 30th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Ha ha, when I first saw the jumping icon in the display behind you Cali i couldn’t stop staring at it :O didn’t hear half of what you said, so had to watch the episode again ha ha :)
April 30th, 2008 at 10:45 am
The icon jumping is Final Cut asking to save a file we were working on. :)
April 30th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Ok dokey :)
April 30th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Thanks Cali, I just tried out viewzi and it’s a realy cool concept and design. It was kinda of slow on loading on my DSL connection, but thats ok. I’m pretty sure it will get better as time passes and they get out of beta stage.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Yeah, the bouncing icon distracted me a little too much too.
Viewz is interesting, but I agree with Dave, it is very ahead its time. I picture that search engines will take on this approach when multi-touch desktops are mainstream, when computing will become more organic. Until then, this probably wont be very practical, more of a quirk than useful.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Viewzi is definitely cool. I wouldn’t use it for heavy or quick searching, like for academic purposes. But, if you are just browsing around the web and want a fun alternative to all the bland search engine pages, viewzi is pretty sweet.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Hey Cali,
The icon…keeps bouncing…must…do…updates….ugh.
Any chance that sweet coffee mug might go out to a loyal viewer someday?
Ed
April 30th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Hey, Jonathan…I feel ya man! I got ADD and when that jumpy little icon caught my eye I was GONE! Good episode Cali thanks for all the goodies. Thanks to XBox360 and Media Center, I’ve been watching for about 6 months and have watched as many back episodes as possible. I am senior Worship Tech (soundguy) at my church and enjoy seeing your behind-the-scenes episodes but, heck, it’s all good.
Trent
April 30th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Cali,
In the “Never Judge a Book By Its Cover” category, the motorman who let you drive the McKinney Avenue trolley is actually a PhD physics and chemistry teacher at the college level. He is actually an incredible teacher who has inspired students of all ages.
Barry
April 30th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
@Barry – I know! We volunteered with him at KERA, and filmed a bunch of stuff with him for a Big Trip episode (www.bigtrip.tv). Hopefully that will be out soon.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Gah! Where did that iMovie icon come from?
April 30th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Just want to comment on the viewzi search. I think is awesome now is matter of playing with it to see when it crashes. Koodos to the creator.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
i really like Viewzi it is a really cool site!!! An alternative to the basic Google, ask,ect.,ect.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Cali,
I’ve been having problems with Gmail too or more the past few days. It keeps trying to load but sometimes takes severa, and keeps l minutes. The progress bar in Firefox goes up some and acts like it’s loading, then goes back down again, and keeps repeating the process. Really annoying. It’s actually doing it as I speak. Is this the same problem you’re having?
Jon G.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
@Jon I was getting a message saying “Gmail is temporarily unavailable”. It was up by the time I went to bed and haven’t had a problem since.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
try PicLens too : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579
April 30th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
sorry, here for all browsers: http://www.piclens.com
April 30th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
I like Viewzi… it takes a little getting used to but, it’s cool. :)
May 1st, 2008 at 5:59 am
hey, is that an EeePC on your desk? How long has that been there… first time I’ve noticed it
May 1st, 2008 at 7:55 am
hey cali just tryed viewzi out i do like it alot but it is abit slow
May 1st, 2008 at 11:01 am
Thanks for the Viewzi invite. You’re right, it’s definitely the most innovative wannabe Google killer out there. I really like the “Celebrity Photo View”. Exactly why don’t you like the “Video x3 View”?
May 1st, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I really like Viewzi. It was surprisingly fast in my experience. I liked the the novel and varied interface, but frankly don’t know how much I’ll use it. Google is just too quick, easy, comprehensive, convenient and accessible. If/When Viewzi becomes available to add to my Firefox search engines or becomes a Firefox add-on, I think it would then give Google some real competition, and I’d be more likely to use it. Thanks for the invite.
BTW keep those icons jumping! ;-)
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:25 am
so our internet at work is really lame. and i saw your comments about downforeveryoneorjustme and tried it this morning. And this is what i got:
http://www.madtm.com/images/downforeveryoneorjustme.jpg
How funny/ironic is that. Anyway, your show is the best. I’m assuming your publicity is what is causing the site issues for them.
Peace!
Todd
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:17 am
@ Cali, I absolutely love that RSS website. I was disappointed that one of my favorite online comics didn’t have an RSS and after I told my husband about the site he made me a feed. How sweet! Thanks for letting us know about it.
downforeveryone is also a eat bookmark-worthy site. I love it when I learn about new websites, keep them coming!
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:33 am
I was just about to try downforevery… but guess it saids the page i am looking for is unvailable, I wonder if its just me or everybody.
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:39 am
I tried out viewzi, but so far I can’t see it providing me with additional insight with the searches I’ve done. It probably works better with searches that have visually oriented results rather than text.
May 4th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I’m loving viewzi. Unlike some of the others, I have had no speed issues, however I am on a T1 connection in my office, on a Sunday, alone. The smooth I-Pod/I-Tunes ish scrolling feature is a nice touch. Now if only we could get viewzi.com together with the folks over at hrp.com and make it possible to navigate the site via web cam motion. I look forward to what comes from viewzi.
May 4th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
When a site is down for you and not everyone else it’s possible the DNS server(s) provided by your ISP are just not resolving the URL properly. I started using http://www.opendns.com as my DNS servers instead of the defaults provided by my cable company. Besides being free, setup for it is a snap. It optionally provides features like configurable web site blocking/filtering to keep the kids out of sites they shouldn’t be, phishing site protection, and several other goodies.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Hi Cali,
Was just catching up on the podcast and saw the downforeveryoneorjustforme.com and thought I would give it a try with my site, however it was down!!! Where do I check if it is down for everyone or just for me. See the following:
http://digg.com/comedy/When_downforeveryoneorjustforme_com_is_down
Andrew.
May 11th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I tried Viewzi and really liked it. I am just using a DSL connection and I had no problem with it being slow. I cannot wait to try it when I am searching for good websites to show to my students. It will be much easier to find good stuff. I will keep trying it. Thanks for the introduction to this site.