Archive for Reviews

Pikipimp.com – pimp your photos

By Bob | Published January 8, 2007

Do you need to create a customized birthday card ? Do you want to mess with someones face ? Or maybe get a revenge on a fellow prankster ?

There are plenty of web 2.0 applications that enable you to modify online a photo that you just uploaded. You can put your picture in a fantasy scenery, on the Playboy magazine cover, or just add eyebrows, glasses, beards and a bunch of other “features”.

Click on the thumbnail above to see what you could do in less than 5 minutes on pikipimp.com

You can find other similar services here:

www.zingfu.com
www.photochop.com (professional photo retouching – not free, but pretty cheap 2,99$ – only if you are satisfied with the result)

Posted in Misc, Reviews | Leave a comment

It’s the content, not the icons

By Bob | Published January 7, 2007

I was getting caught in the “pimp my blog” frenzy and after joining multiple ad networks and displaying different adds on my new blog, I realized that this will actually drive people away from my content.
With this lesson “learned” I decided it’s time to add social network items, bookmarklet replacements to all my posts – so everybody can add my content to these so popular social networks and that will of course bring me more visitors, comments and high google rankings.

Alex King saved my ass this me. I discovered his brilliant projects, called “Shared This” & “Shared Icon“.
“Share This is a (wordpress) plugin that provides an unobtrusive way for your visitors to add your post to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail to a friend.”
He also created a soon-to-be-standard icon for this, similar to the RSS and OPML one. You can see this plugin & icon implemented in all my posts, from now on. Just click on it and a nice “pop-up” will enable you to do whatever you want with my post link, in an elegant, unobtrusive way.

“Excess Blog Flair” is another excellent post on this topic.

Matt from 37signals.com concludes “…focus on delivering great content. If you do, people will figure out how to spread the word just fine” in his article, called just like this post, “It’s the content, not the icons“.

If you know about similar plugins and projects meant to simplify the user experience and primarily focus on content, let me know by posting a comment below. Thanks.

Posted in Lessons to self, Misc, Reviews | Leave a comment

Bob Dylan Europe ‘07 Tour – LET’S GO !

By Bob | Published January 5, 2007

Bob Dylan - younger While doing a vanity search on Google I accidentally found that 1st result if you look after “Bob” is Bob Dylan’s website. The big surprise was not that I didn’t turn 1st in the search results page, but to see that “the man with no teeth” has concerts all over Europe, this spring.

This 66 years old man is a living legend, who inspired generations and who’s music and voice I would like to hear in every important moment of my life.

Today I decided that no matter the costs, I will do my best to catch at least one of Bob Dylan’s concerts this spring. If I cached your attention and would like to go as well, leave a comment and maybe we can get group discounts – I am aiming for the 8-April one in Amsterdam, as it’s right on Orthodox Eastern and we have some free days ++ what could go better together than Amsterdam & Bob Dylan ?

You can see a list of concerts on Bob’s live event page.

REGINA HACKETT has some very nice words about Mr.Dylan, words that fully match my feelings. Read on this post or you can see the full article here.

Posted in Misc, Reviews | Leave a comment

2007: Top Web 2.0 Companies

By Bob | Published January 3, 2007

Michael Arington from TechCrunch posted the 2007 version of his list “Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without“.

Although this is just a alphabetical list of products he uses every day, Mr. Arington’s visionary skills and the success of his investments recommendations are well known in the online industry so if I was and advertiser or an investor I would keep a close eye on these companies:

800-Free-411	Amie Street	Ask City
BlueDot	Digg	Flickr
Flock	Gmail	NetNewsWire
Netvibes	Pandora	Skype
Techmeme	WordPress	YouTube

Posted in Misc, Reviews | Leave a comment

Settlers of Catan

By Bob | Published January 2, 2007

During these holidays I was out of town with my best friends to properly celebrate the New Year’s Eve bla bla bla
Although not planned, 80% of our daily activity consisted in playing a “popular” board game – called – “Settlers of Catan“. Reluctant at first, with almost zero experience in board games, I found this game to be quite addictive and fun to play in a alcohol-motivated crowd. Believe me, this game can take you through lots of emotional stages – the excitement of grabbing a resource-attractive piece of land, the joy of getting your land number rolled by the dice, the passion that some of us put in building the longest road or having the largest army, or the ruthless negotiations for a needed resource. Highly recommended for friendly crowds!
Settlers

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Web Trend Map 2007

By Bob | Published January 1, 2007

I found this article on Information Architects, a branding agency from Japan, with the help of Kottke. A pair of trend maps for 2007, both based on subway maps.

1.Top online companies/brands & how they’re connected
“The iA Trend Map shows all the big players, the current Internet trends and how they’re connected. It’s totally unscientific and almost useless, but definitely fun to look at.”
Well, they invested some serious time in creating these and I doubt it was just for fun. Something similar was done but in another form, targeted only toward seach engines.

2007 Trend Map

You can also find a list of “50 loudest websites in 2006 and what made them successful”

2.Ross Dawson’s amazing Trendmap 2007
This one deals with ideas (with the River of Consciousness standing in for the Thames), a global overview of next years trends.

trend blend 2007

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Larry Ellison on Microsoft

By Bob | Published December 27, 2006

Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO, demonstrates some brilliant presentation skills. After watching this movie there are pretty big chances that you will "realize" how bad Microsoft really is. On this interview he repeats the same idea several times: “they copy other people software and add it to Windows” and the way he says it gets the idea across.
My favorite line is “Bill and I don’t talk much personally any more…” :)

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Just what the doctor ordered

By Bob | Published December 23, 2006

Gents,

This evening, the eagle has landed….hmmm that’s from another movie …anyway, what I wanted to share with you (if any :)) is that the New Years Eve Party shipment just arrived. In total 13 L of pure-bred quality alcohol. I think I speak for everybody when I say that a party without Jack Daniels or Absolut is like super hot babe without a puss…ahhhh…brains.

Enough talk, just enjoy the view: