Service

Here is a new feature I stumbled upon last night. Google Maps has added the street view feature to driving directions. Now you can get a glance at the route before you even get in the car. When you look up driving directions on Google Maps, a little camera icon will appear next to the streets. If you click on the icon the street view will pop up on the map. From here you can zoom in and pan around to get a good look at the surrounding area. If you don’t see the camera icon, street view may not be supported in your city.

Overall it is a great addition. However, I only see one real good use for it. Sometimes when you are driving, street signs can be hard to see. This can be especially true late at night in a poorly lit area. With this feature, you can get a look at the houses and landmarks surrounding the intersection. This will make it easier to recognize your turn on those easy to miss streets.

Google has provided some other great uses in this video. Some of them seem a little far fetched to me, but your millage may vary.

The Twitter following is growing larger everyday.  It seems like more and more people that I know, both in person and through the internet, are joining.  One of the biggest hurdles is keeping these people on long enough so they see the benefit.  Here are some tips to make your trip with Twitter as enjoyable as possible.

1. Turn on phone updates. - Twitter works best when you have easy access to it, and what better way then through your phone.  If you are like most humans, you constantly have your cell phone with you.  This provides the easiest access to Twitter.  Once you link up your phone, it will only take seconds to post (send texts to 40404).  The other bonus is that you will receive updates from your friends.  You can choose whose updates get sent to your phone and whose will remain on the web.
2. Follow, follow, follow. - Follow people.  Get your friends to join and follow them.  The fun doesn’t stop there.  It is completely acceptable to follow people you have never met.  You may not know the journalists who write your morning paper, yet you still read their articles.  If you think they post neat stuff then they probably deserve a follow.  I understand that some of you may not know many people on the internet, so here is a list to get you started.  Remember that you can always stop following people down the road with no hard feelings.  Add first and decide later.
   • Biz Stone - He is one of the co-founders of Twitter.  His tweets vary greatly.  It couldn’t hurt to start here.
   • Jack Dorsey - Another co-founder of Twitter.  Again, it couldn’t hurt.
   • Veronica Belmont - Co-host of tech podcast Tekzilla.  She has some real quality tweets.  I highly recommend following her.
   • Annette - It is true that this is my girlfriend, so I may be a little biased.  But, my friends tell me they enjoy her updates more than mine.
   • John Gruber - He generally posts interesting tweets.  Be warned, he posts a bit on the techy side.
   • Amy Jane Gruber - This is a must follow in my book.  Her tweets are absolutely hilarious.  They are so good that me and my girlfriend often discuss them.
   • Scott Simpson - Another must follow.  He posts a real grab bag of material.
   • Scott Beale - Writter of laughingsquid.com.  He often posts links to other sites.
   • Gary Vaynerchuk - If you are a fan of Wine Library TV, then I don’t really need to say more.  Careful, Gary tends to post a lot.
   • Dr. Tiki, Johnny Johnny, Lala - Fans of Tiki Bar TV will like these.
   • Alex Albrecht, Dan Trachtenburg, Jeff Cannata - These are the hosts of the Totally Rad Show.  Great guys all around and good to follow.  Oh and I couldn’t leave out Steve who mans the camera and has mad editing skills.
   • Me - You can always follow me.  If you like the content of this blog, then you may find my updates entertaining.
3. Relax and update. - Don’t hold back.  If something pops into your head then send it off.  Something that you think is mundane may just make someone’s day.  The more you update the better Twitter becomes.  Have fun with it.  This service is meant to provide a good time and if you let it, it can be a blast.

This should be more than enough to get you on your way.  I wish you the best of luck in this crazy internet world limited to 140 characters.  

Jott is a great service that allows you to send messages simply by calling a number. The free service will transcribe your voice to text. You can then receive an email or go to jott.com to see your list. It is much faster to browse through a written list of items than listen to multiple voice notes. Jott also allows you to send notes to other people.

Integration

One of the greatest features of Jott is its integration with other web services. One example is with the excellent to-do service Remember the Milk. With Jott, you can add items to your to-do list while on the go. Just call Jott and tell it to send your note to Remember the Milk.

If you want to take notes on the go, give Jott a try.

Recently I have had the urge to learn Photoshop. I have always seen it as a powerful yet untameable beast. I have tried fiddling with the software before and got nowhere. There were just too many features and I didn’t even know the basics.

Awhile ago I heard about the site Lynda.com, which provides video tutorials covering a large range of subjects. The videos are led by some extremely talented professionals who really know their stuff. They peel back the various layers of the software, moving from the basics to more advanced techniques. The provide the viewer with numerous real world examples and teach tricks and shortcuts along the way.

Each subject (like Photoshop or Web Design) has multiple sets of videos that allow you to focus on specific topics and skills. Each set is then composed of many shorter videos that walk through the software. The short video format allows you to skip topics that you already know and cover a subject over many days. You can easily leave off on one video and pick up the next whenever you have time.

Lynda.com offers a couple free videos on every topic. However, to get the real benefit you should move up to the subscription plan for $25 a month. This is an outstanding price considering how much material is covered.

I am currently working through the Photoshop for Photographers and Creative Photographic Technique tutorials which are led by Chris Orwig. He does an excellent job of introducing ideas and techniques as well as reinforcing them throughout the trainings. If you have ever wanted to learn a piece of software I suggest giving lynda.com a look.

Photoshop Express keeps gaining more and more respect in my book. Today I discovered its “social” aspect. Some of you may already know this, but it is still an outstanding feature.

Photoshop Express integrates with Facebook, Photobucket, and Picasa. Now you can edit your photos on these services through Photoshop Express. It is all done within the comfort of the Photoshop Express interface. You get all the features just as if the photo was in Photoshop Express to begin with.

I would be even happier if it were integrated with flickr as well. Hopefully this is what the future brings.

Starting today, you can enrich your social web with videos on flickr.  This great new feature basically does what you would expect, it allows you to put video on your flickr account.  However, the services does come with a few restrictions.

First, you must be a pro member in order to enjoy these benefits.  Second, videos are limited to 90 sec and 150 mb.  These limitation are trying to prevent it from being a youtube clone.  Instead, it aims to help supplement your photos with self created video or “long photos”.

These videos can be played on your main page alongside your photos, or they can be viewed on their own page (just like photos).  You even have the ability to embed them elsewhere on the web, like your blog.

Some people may dislike the limitations that flickr has imposed.  I for one don’t mind them.  They did get in the way with my first video (which was 3 min long), but I feel that this will help keep the sub-par content out.  The limitations are similar to those that Twitter imposes.  On Twitter, it is 140 characters and on flickr it is 90 seconds.  The limitations should encourage people to edit their clips and only grab the best part, which would benefit everyone.  If you want to put your entire *insert event here* video online, there are plenty of other media distribution services.

Overall I think this is an excellent addition to flickr and hopefully we will see it grow and develop more in the future.  By the way, I love the sleek clean interface for the video controls.  I will be posting a video as soon as I can get it uploaded (probably in the morning) and you can check out my flickr site here.

EDIT: My video finished uploading sometime last night.  It was put together by my girlfriend.  You can find the video here (or below) and her flickr page here.

Have you ever wanted a quick overview of the latest news? Need somewhere you can drop in and quickly catch up on current happenings. I would recommend checking out popurls.com. At Popurls you can read up on current topics in different categories of your choosing. This site will give you a quick glance of current news that only takes a few minutes.

Popurls has some great features that help you digest news quickly. You can organize the site so that the topics that interest you most are at top while the rest remain near the bottom. You can also sort the page by either website, category, or even chronological order.

Another feature is a pop up news bubble. When you hover over a headline, a little bubble appears giving you a summary of the article. You can then choose to click and read the entire article. This helps save time so you can quickly find more information and more interesting articles.

What about RSS? Why use Popurls when you can get your news through a feed reader?

Popurls and RSS feeds both offer ways to read news but are not mutually exclusive. RSS readers are great for keeping a stockpile of articles and provides you with in depth reading from your favorite sites. RSS is akin to sitting down with a newspaper and reading the news for the day. Popurls, on the other hand, provide you a way to keep up on breaking news. Similar to turning on the TV to catch up on the day’s breaking news.

If you are interested in catching the breaking news head over to popurls.com. For an introduction to RSS, check out this post.