Nick Projects

A while back in my post about collaboration while working in a group over the internet;  I mentioned Meebo and that I hate meebo.  This is still true,  but I have found a replacement for the ad-bloated POS.  It is called Chatterous and it makes it easy to have many people on the same conversation.  Chatterouse provides the typical chat interface via their website,  but they also integrate with jabber or G-chat so that you can add a chat room to your instant message utility (digsby).  This eliminates all of the annoying adds from meebo,  but also makes it super easy to make sure you are logged into your chatroom each morning.  There is no browser to close, nothing to open each day.  You just fire up the IM and your golden.  I stongly recomend this format if you work with a few people at once and need a quick way to stay in touch.

Good Job Chatterous!!

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Feed My Inbox is a cool service that alows you to subscribe to blogs for email updates.  We have added their subscription box in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.  Another cool use I have discovered for their service is the ability to monitor craigslist categories via email.  This makes it easy to stay on top of all kinds of potential summer steals.  All you have to do is add the craigslist RSS URL to the feed my inbox page and your set.

Check out the video tutorial

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Sometimes its difficult to follow a blog. Especially one that posts irregularly (like this one). FeedMyInbox makes it easy to stay on top of different blogs. To subscribe to the nickprojects feed just use the form at the bottom of my right menu.

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Somethings just aren’t good for powerpoint.  Powerpoint is great for giving presentations and using as a tool for speeking,  but watching a powerpoint without a speeker leaves alot of holes.  Prezi is cool because it is good for showing large concepts with relationships between them.  You can construct large diagrams and walk people through what is going on without loosing the concept of the relationship as a whole.  

Also the resulting presentatins are really cool.  Prezi is fun to play around with and it makes pubishing very simple.  I would urge any powerpoint user to take a look at prezi as an alternative or just to spice things up once in a while.    

As an example I made a really quick prezi of how NickProjects.com works.  Check it out at this URL: 
 http://prezi.com/64602/

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Kindle DX

The new Kindle device from amazon is completely amazing looking.  I presently own the sony PRS-505 and can justify that device vs a kindle because of the price and pdf functionality in exchange for not having the integrated 3g provided with the Kindle.  The DX, however, is a completely different story.  Amazon now has the best device hands down as well as the most access to content and best delivery method. This is the trifecta of death for anyone entering this space. Not to mention being first to market.

I think best case scenario for any new entries would be that they get to pay amazon to license their kindle software on the devices.  This would prevent them from being completely left on the sidelines.  

Good Job Amazon, if you want to send me a device I would be happy to give it a hands on review!!

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Screen recording is an incredibly useful invention.  It allows you to show people what’s going on in your PC record tutorials of how to perform functions and document errors in software when they come up.  In this article I am going to talk about a few screen recording tools that I use and why I use them for different purposes.  

My Primary high quality screen recording tool is Camtasia (www.camtasia.com).  Camtasia has great quality screen and audio recording capacities.  It has a killer noise reduction function for  using mediocre computer microphones in noisy areas.  Camtasia also has a great editing wizard that allows you to quickly fix your recordings without having to start over again.  The downside is,  the system isn’t cheap.  It’s a completely worthwhile expense if you are running a training group or find yourself making screen recordings all the time,  but for a casual user it’s not economical.  

Jing (  http://www.jingproject.com ) is a great tool for casual screen recording and image grabbing. It doesn’t have as many cool features as camtasia for editing or noise reduction, but it does have a super simple interface and very easy file uploading capacity.  You can upload to a few services and also your own ftp location with the push of a button.  This is great for those ” the button is here” conversations over the phone.  

BB Flashback (http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/Home.aspx) is another cool screen recorder that has a very unique feature,  it lets you run rolling recordings that don’t exceed a certain file size or recording length.  This allows it to run like a tivo on your pc giving you time shift power over what you have done.   I will often find myself hitting buttons in software to get something done and then forgetting what series of steps I went through to get something done.  With bb flashback you can just rewind and see what you did.  The company sells screen recording software for several specific purposes and has versions at different price points.  Their developer version is designed for testers to produce perfect error reports including all kinds of relevant information.  They also have an express version that is a great free alternative to camtasia.  It provides more functionality than jing but less than the full software suites.

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I have stopped using key lemon,  mostly because my crappy Microsoft web cam often decides it doesn’t want windows to detect it anymore,  which sort of messes up key lemon.  The technology isn’t perfect,  this product won’t be used by the NSA or any high security entity to keep out spies,  but… it has a ton of potential from a convenience perspective.   In this post I’m going to talk about some of the ways facial recognition could be integrated into different devices to make the world a better place.  

Message Status:

Some people are great at updating their status on messenger,  most people aren’t.  If a simple web cam could let my computer know when I was at my desk and when I wasn’t that would be awesome.  Of course blue tooth proximity or GPS aware cell phones may be a more logical solution for this type of thing.  

Personal Portal Sign In:  

Since I just made up the concept of a personal portal lets start with that idea.  A personal portal would be something like net-vibes or yahoo when it was cutting edge,  that aggregated information into one place online.  In theory this could be your calendar, to do list, email, and relevant news.  I would have a significantly different personal portal than my wife or brother etc.  If there were a system that could automatically load content like this based on facial recognition that would be really cool.  This would allow you to put a computer in the kitchen or corner of your bedroom to check the world when you woke up or had your coffee. Each member of a household would be able to have their own profiles and effortlessly switch between them.  

Adaptive Art:

A long time ago people used to talk about how in Bill Gates home you could carry a chip around and art would change to your preferences.  Now days most people can afford digital picture frames and LCD televisions are significantly less expensive than high end paintings.  There is really no reason that these settings couldn’t change based on the person looking at the picture.  

Automotive Preferences:

High end vehicles already can remember settings based on the key that the driver puts into the ignition.  With facial recognition this would be even more powerful because it wouldn’t be linked to a key.  Also beyond seat settings if cars could remember preset stations and play lists for music based on the driver’s face.  That would be killer.  

Comments:

I’m sure there are a million ideas I haven’t thought of,  have fun with the comments.

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