Digijustin

Now New and Improved

September 17, 2007
by justin
11 Comments

iPod Touch versus iPhone

So I am at a crossroads. I keep hearing all the hype with the new iPod Touch (iTouch, horrible name but I keep calling it that for some reason). So I have decided to upgrade my iPod to the new iPod Touch. But as I am reading other blogs and talking to friends, I’m wondering if I should get the iPod Touch or just an iPhone. At first I think that is a stupid question. I am a T-Mobile client and just got the new Dash from them a few months ago. And being a T-Mobile client, I am NOT a AT&T client. There are several unlock software options out there but why would I want another phone?

It seems idiotic that this question is even a question. I like my iPod now but it doesn’t have video and all the cool features the new one has. I am always one who likes to have the coolest geek toy out there and I think the iPod Touch is it right now.

I think back to a few months ago when I knew people racing out to get the new iPhone. They weren’t too happy a couple of weeks ago. I hope I won’t end up like that if I was to get an iPod Touch. I doubt it with all the heat that Apple took with how they handled the iPhone situation but you never know.

In the end, all I am looking for is a new MP3 player and the iPod Touch sounds like it will do excellently. But on the other hand, all the features like e-mail and EDGE network are nice.

I would like someone to tell me why I should get one over the other. Right now I am leaning towards the iPod Touch but if anyone knows an argument for or against my opinion, please share.

September 13, 2007
by justin
2 Comments

What do People Look for in a Blog?

I’ve been blogging for maybe a year now but nothing serious. Picked it up more in the past few months with my discovery of WordPress. It’s a truly great tool. I’ve never been much of a writer nor do I think I ever will be one. But I do feel that I have a lot of opinions about different topics and find this as a good way to get those out. But I got to thinking about what people look for in a blog.

Blogs are an important part of the internet today. Quite possibly the foundation of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. But why are some blogs more popular than others? Are they better written, have better content, what? I read quite a few blogs on a regular basis and wonder what those guys have that the average Joe doesn’t. I watched a video blog on ProBlogger.net last night that mentioned one blog that happens to come at the right time. He did a blog asking people what they thought about who had a chance to win American Idol and before he knew it, he had tons of people looking to talk about American Idol and who would win at his blog.

That seems like the easiest way to “make it big” in the blogsphere. That one hit that gets you noticed. Many blogs would love to have one article featured on Digg or one of the other popular book-marking sites out there. This will usually work to get a lot of users to your blog for a short period. But if my personal experience is common, I very rarely go back to a site that I have dugg.

I’m not sure of the magic mix to get a successful blog going but hopefully I find out someday. Would be fun to look back at this entry and think to myself that this was all crap and something else pushed me over the hump. If you like what I’m doing and want to know more, subscribe to my blog via email or via my RSS feed. Always feel free to leave me a comment, I like to hear what people have to say.

September 12, 2007
by justin
0 comments

Streamy Review – So Far, So Good

So I hunted down and finally received and invite to Streamy last weekend and got to get my grubby hands on it. So far I like what I see. I tried so hard to get it because of what I had heard; that is was the “Next Latest and Greatest” web app. While I can’t quite agree with that, I definitely can say that I would give it a “Thumbs Up”.

I have never been one to really get into the RSS readers before. I have one on the gadget bar for Vista but nothing other than that. Streamy has a really good way of handling RSS feeds. Very easy to add and go through. After you see one, it marks it read and takes it away. Not sure if it is lost forever from your subscriptions but it does what I would want so I’ve never looked.

I do like the start page but have run into a few situations where I have seen some old stories that should have only been up there for 24 hours. Not a big deal at all.

I really like the instant messaging offered. I haven’t used it yet but it seems really easy to IM your friends and share articles that you are reading. I can see this as very productive.

This brings me to my negative comment about the site. I really wish that they would open it up to more people. I would love to get some more friends of mine in here but I am only given a limited amount of invites (2 per email address). If they were to make that something in the 5-10 range, I can see this thing really taking off. If I was able to easily invite more of my friends and co-workers, I think my experience would be a whole lot better.

Overall I would give Streamy a 7 out of 10 rating (9 out of 10 if they let more users in). It’s a great app and I highly recommend begging anyone for an invite. I still have one left ;)

September 11, 2007
by justin
5 Comments

UPDATE – 2 Streamy Invites Available

As an update to my post a couple of days ago; I have 2 Streamy invites to give away. Here are the rules:

Tell me in 50 words or less why I should give “You” an invite and not anyone else who is requesting. So to enter, enter a comment to this story (or the original) and tell me why you deserve the Streamy invite over the others. I look forward to getting some creative answers.

September 8, 2007
by justin
9 Comments

Streamy Invite Available

I have one Streamy invite and would like to share it with you. Now I could be nice and just give it to the first person who responds but what’s the fun in that? So I started thinking of different ways to do this. I could trade it for a iPhone or iPod Touch. That would be nice. Or how about a Wii? While that would totally work, I feel that might not happen. (If you do have an iPhone or Wii to spare, we can talk.) But I would like to do a contest. But what???

Tell me in 50 words or less why I should give “You” an invite and not anyone else who is requesting. So to enter, enter a comment to this story and tell me why you deserve the Streamy invite over the others. I look forward to getting some creative answers.

UPDATE – I have 2 invites total so let’s get this going. Comment away if you’re interested.

September 4, 2007
by justin
0 comments

Beginning of the End for Online Ads?

I saw an article today regarding a Firefox plugin “that erases advertisements from web pages”. It got me thinking about the effect that this would have in today’s web world. Most of today’s Web 2.0 sites make their money via placed ads on their sites rather than the old way of charging their users for the service that they are providing. That or Google spends $400 million to buy them out. Either way, if this really takes charge and more and more people start doing this, what will happen?

Now most web users don’t seem that savvy to install a Firefox plugin to me but that’s just my opinion so I really don’t think that the ship is starting to sink. But I also think that most of the Web 2.0 users out there are more savvy than someone like my dad who calls it the “interweb”. So if enough of the regular 2.0 users stop seeing ads, how will these companies make up the lost advertising money? My thought is that they will start charging a fee for the use of their previously free tools and most people will just say forget it and leave. Not a lot of people want to pay $10 a month for some cute 2.0 tool.

To me this might signal the downfall of the Web 2.0 wave that has been riding so high. Not as bad as the dot com bust years ago but still not good. Now I’m not saying that this little plugin will cause a bust so don’t start calling me out on that. I just saying that if people didn’t look and click on the ads we see on every web site, things might be a little different. I personally don’t mind the ads that aren’t intrusive on a web page. Ones that you see on the side or bottom of a site. 99.9% of the time, I just ignore them. I have been known to click on 1 or 2 in my life.

Plus imagine with Google will do if they started seeing a decline in ads server via Adsense? I’m sure they would come up with another way to get them in front of users. They have smart people there.

I doubt that this plugin will be the end of Web 2.0 but it was just a thought that I had reading this article today. What do you think?

August 31, 2007
by justin
0 comments

Failed Debugging with IIS7

Yesterday I ran into an issue when I was debugging a web application that I was building. It was debugging but as soon as I installed the “Not So” RAD Controls on my machine and restarted Visual Studio, I was lucky enough to receive this error every time I wanted to debug and step through my application:

Debugging Failed Because Integrated Windows Authentication Is Not Enabled iis 7

I wasn’t sure if it was the “Not So” RAD Controls or something else. So I went to Google and did a search for my error and came across this page. Very helpful as apparently at that time, my computer realized that I needed that patch. Weird but it worked so if you run across this, get the hotfix from Microsoft.

August 20, 2007
by justin
1 Comment

Denver Airport gets the Blue Screen

So today I was waiting at the Denver Airport to pick up my wife and saw this at the airport so I had to take a couple of picts of it. Not the BSOD but that’s what everyone thought as they walked by. I found it pretty funny. I guess they were installing some new software in the middle of a busy day. Enjoy…

Blue Screen at Denver Airport

Blue Screen at Denver Airport

August 8, 2007
by justin
0 comments

Online Digg Top Whatever Lists

So today I’m looking at Digg and I see an article for 100 Essential Resources for Web Developers and I check it out because I am a web developer and these things interest me. I click the link and see quite a few links for cool resources. One thing glares out at me and that there are barely (I think I counted 3 or 4) .NET references on there. Being a .NET guy made me wonder why. I am a big fan of Digg and all that it does for the online community but it seems that this Web 2.0 is going in a direction away from .NET and towards more open source languages like PHP or Ruby on Rails. Those are fine languages (I’ve even worked a lot in PHP) but so is .NET.

So this made me think, why not make my own list? There are a lot of places that I look for resources so why not share? So here they are in no particular order:

It’s not very impressive but these sites can do for me what 25 PHP sites will do for the normal PHP guy. If you have one that I didn’t include, send it to me. I didn’t include it because I don’t know about it.

August 7, 2007
by justin
0 comments

New home

So I have move my blog to a new home here at KodedKreations.net. My old blog, mythoughtsaboutcode.blogspot.com should be pointing here but just in case, there’s the news. I feel like I have more freedom with WordPress and especially on my own hosting account. Let me know what you think. I’m in the process of getting my own design in here but until I can get it how I like, I’ll be playing with a bunch of themes that I have found online.