Feedly. It’s like an RSS feed digest thingy.
So about six months ago I checked out Feedly after reading about it on some tech blog. Chances are, I read about it in Google Reader which I wrote about a while back.
Google Reader is great, but after seeing Feedly, I gotta admit I think it makes for a more digestible way for consuming news. It makes your feed content look almost like a newspaper or an online news site or magazine.
Feedly's built on Google Reader's API, so you need to be using Google Reader in order to use Feedly. But it uses more of the Google Reader features than even Google Reader does, or at least it displays them better. It takes popular articles and features them. It pulls from my Twitter feed. It is that huge firehose of information to which I subscribe on a daily basis rendered in the form of a tall, refreshing glass of water.
They also provide you with a dozen different ways of consuming this information. Cover mode is like an online magazine, providing compartmentalized summaries with a Popular section (based on Likes and Shares) and a Must Reads section (still trying to figure out how this is determined). Latest is for the more traditional types featuring a streaming inbox/list of the most recent items from sites to which you subscribe. Digest mode is a hybrid between the traditional Latest and Cover modes, featuring highlights from your favorite categories, but in a list (sort of like a newspaper). There's also Popular which features all the most popular news items across the entire web (not limited to what you're subscribed to). Buzz shows you what's most popular amongst your Google friends.
I've made it my homepage, so that when I come in every morning, I can consume current affairs in a more civilized fashion.
All in all, definitely worth checking out. Click on the image below to check out a lifesize version of "Digest" mode.
An experiment in personal branding
A few months ago, I bought the domain gha.ly. I was ecstatic at the thought of having a domain which was my last name.
Then my coworker Jeff came up with the idea of starting a site with the domain name http://rommy.gha.ly which would behave as a sort of personal portal or business card. Well then that was just an awesome idea. So I did.
Since I'll be spending the rest of my life living all around the world, with little-to-no hope of settling down at any point, I figured I'd make it easy for my friends and family to find me, whether it be crossing a border illegally in Nepal or eating herring out of a jar in Sweden, I will always be accessible in some way.
Thus rommy.gha.ly will, for the foreseeable future, be purely a site where people can connect to me or find me. I've optimized if for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, so if employers or randoms are looking for me, they'll be directed here first. Anyone will be able to call me via Skype or contact me via email.
Oh before I get lip from Bucky or JT or anyone of you other dbags, yes this is my recent foray into online nerdiness. No there is no reason for you to mock me in the comments (you probably will anyway), but definitely let me know what you think of it or if you have any ideas to make it better.
By the way, in case it isn't intuitive enough, there are arrows on the left and right of the home page leading to my links and contact info. I'm still questioning if I like the theme so if you know of any other basic WordPress profile-like themes, let me know.
Hipstamania!
So a couple guys created an awesome app that's taking the iPhone and its camera by storm.
Hipstamatic turns the iPhone camera into a replica of a vintage camera created in the 1980s by a Bruce and Winston Dorbowski. Sadly, Hipstamatic suffered a sudden and tragic end.
The legacy was kept alive by their brother until it was discovered by a couple of iPhone developers who wanted to bring the legendary Hipstamatic to the iPhone. What resulted is one of the COOLEST apps ever for the iPhone.
The business model is also intriguing. You pay 15 SEK for the app (which comes with some upgrades). Then you can add additional upgrades known as Hipstapaks at just 7 SEK each. A Hipstapak includes a lens (for the different filter and visual effects), paper (framing and/or rendering), and a flash (adds to the visual effect). If you buy everything, I think it runs you around 50 SEK total, which is totally worth it for the quality of the output. Amazingly, everyone I've told about it (including a few who have never paid for an iPhone app) shelled out the cash for this.
There is a rabid community building around the application:
A Flickr group for Hipstamatic photos: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1271604@N24/pool/
Hipstamatic is also hosting themed contests: http://community.hipstamatic.com/
Below are some pictures my friends and I took:
My photos
Omid's photos
Lauren's photos
My love affair with the NPR News iPhone app
I am on an unlimited iPhone data plan in Sweden now.
The implications of this are immeasurable. The ability to check email, browse the web and check-in as often as I want, to tweet, to upload pictures and video have all just made it immensely easier on the wallet. It's the future of mobile, the future of internet, the future of epic awesomeness.
There are two iPhone apps which will now see a huge uptick in usage from me. Spotify which, previously mentioned, streams music thus eliminating the need for downloading it, is now my primary source of music-listening pleasure. The second is the NPR News app.
I appreciate the BBC and the awesome news options available to me in Europe. But the one thing I was missing were the fantastic cultural, political, economic, and social commentaries and shows that NPR was airing. This American Life, Car Talk, A Prairie Home Companion, and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me were among the shows that allowed me to focus and relax when I was living in San Francisco. Don't get me wrong, I could listen to them through my PC at work, but too much multi-tasking wouldn't allow me to enjoy them as much. The NPR iPhone app allows me to walk through the streets of Stockholm while I hear the self-deprecating Click and Clack give advice to hopeless yuppie intellectuals about their outdated modes of transportation. This is the stuff I miss.
The NPR app is flawlessly executed. Traditional media outlets are complaining about their demise while the one without any money to begin with goes out on a limb to take risks and become part of the technological revolution. Within the app, you can read news articles and listen to news stories. You can create playlists of broadcasts and stream them all in a row. You can save favorites. The ads are non-invasive and quick. And the app is so easy-to-use (and easy on the eye) that you're almost having fun while you're using it.
Kudos to NPR for pioneering the way we consume news in the future. You've set an example for others to follow.
*Nerd Alert* Geotagging
I recently got an iPhone through work. I know, I know. Welcome to 2007.
Well I'm thrilled with it. In fact, I can't believe I ever used another phone. I am ashamed and annoyed that I spent the last two years frustrated with technological excrement when I could've had a device as well-thought out and useful as an iPhone. Now, that's not to say it's perfect, but I like it and it serves a good purpose for now, until I can jump ahead of the curve and get Google's Nexus One.
One of the things that makes owning an iPhone so thrilling is the concept of geotagging. Geotagging is a technology/concept where content can be associated with a location. Photographs, editorial content, and personal messages between friends are all examples of things that are being geotagged nowadays.
The exponential growth of the internet and the information therein has made it exponentially more difficult to find information that's relevant to me and my immediate lifestyle. Thus the internet moving towards "local" is becoming far more important to the average person. Sites like Craigslist in the US (Blocket in Sweden) and Yelp are two strong examples of why local is key. It combines the virtual proximity of information on the internet with the physical proximity of your surroundings.
More recently some of the biggest communities on the internet have begun introducing geotagging. Flickr has had it for some time. Twitter introduced it in early 2009. Google Buzz is built around this concept. Bing built Twitter maps allow you to see what is happening (i.e. being tweeted about) in your immediate vicinity. Twitter maps on the iPhone through apps like Tweetie 2.0 allow you to see what's going on near you from where ever you are. Other applications like Foursquare and Gowalla are location-based and allow you to check in at bars or restaurants and to see which of your friends are nearby.
Facebook on the other hand arguably moved further away from this when they hosed the local networks. This will probably come back to bite them sooner rather than later.
Geotagging doesn't come without controversy. Many are arguing this is a breach of privacy. And I'd argue that you only give what you want to give. But it's the constant argument between information and privacy. That line gets blurred more and more.
I'm totally thrilled by this. The ability to shrink the internet again, to what's relevant to me, in terms of content and location has made it more appealing to me as a person who craves information and as a total geek who likes new toys.
My new Geo page has three maps, one that indicates where I am now, with the help of my iPhone and Google Latitude. The second is a Twitter map where I'm geographically charting my 140 character moments, and the third is a Flickr photo map wherein I take pictures with my iPhone and upload them from that location, thus plotting them.
The Great Expat Super Bowl Challenge
The Super Bowl is the biggest American holiday of the year. Furthermore, it's the one event of the year that we American expats can all get together and overindulge in our American culture - our spectacle, our tradition, and our competition. In short, our hard-hitting, meatheaded, Americanism.
But it's not so easy to be an American abroad during football season. Being abroad has made following the NFL very difficult. Games are on Sunday and Monday nights, which for us translates to ridiculous hours of the morning. So we feel a bit more detached from the tradition of American sports.
Then on the ONE night of the year, the night of the big event, the Super Bowl, the tables turn. The NFL season we've had such a tough time following all fall and winter, all culminates in the single championship game. It's the one event of world sport that all of a sudden the whole world chooses to watch, report about, talk about, Facebook about, tweet about, Gmail chat about, email about, fart about, etc.
And I'm simply too old to want to start watching a three hour game at midnight on a school night. So tomorrow night, I'm hosting some friends at my place to watch a re-airing of the Super Bowl in HD on Viasat Sports. We will have guacamole, pizza, chips, beer, etc. etc. etc. And we will be Americans. And it will be great.
But tonight begins the Great Expat Super Bowl Challenge.
When I wake up in the morning, I will need to avoid, at all costs, any connection to the world, until 6pm tomorrow night.
I will need to:
- Not turn on the television.
- Not check email.
- Not access Facebook.
- Not access Twitter.
- Not read the news.
- Not look at my iPhone.
- Not talk to any American friends.
In other words, I need to not do ANYTHING wherein there's even the slightest inkling of a chance that I may find out the score of the game before we start watching it tomorrow.
I was successful last year, but to stay completely disconnected from the world, in such a connected world is an EPIC challenge and just gets tougher year after year.
My love affair with Spotify
Thus begins the second in the series of things to which I want to make sweet passionate love.
Spotify is taking the music industry and music fans by storm. Though it's not available in the US, and though it hasn't shown profitability yet, Spotify is paving the path for the future of online media distribution.
Spotify is a streaming music service, which eliminates the need for downloading music, and recentralizes the distribution of music. In an industry running rampant with piracy, Spotify has used technology to not only legitimize the distribution, but also to quell the demand for pirated music. Digital rights management (DRM) is maintained centrally at the distributor and simplifies the complexities that iTunes faces on a daily basis. From a consumer standpoint, it eliminates the limitations of digital storage, and places the burden on the digital pipeline, which is rapidly expanding and is a shared cost among consumers. It eliminates the need for consumers to backup media files and to manage their personal, digital libraries.
In short, it's the future of music, books, and film. For me personally, it's practically rendered iTunes completely obsolete. I haven't bought an album off iTunes in months and it feels great. Spotify is a light, lightning-fast client application which you download. The user interface is easy-to-use. For free you can listen to Spotify's entire catalogue and every few songs you hear ads. Users can also pay 99 SEK per month (around 15 USD) to get a wide range of premium options, including: no ads, higher bitrate quality, offline playability, and early access to music. For me this is worth it, because these are features I use AND it's still cheaper than what I would spend on iTunes to buy albums of the course of a year. I also don't have to back anything up or worry about losing music. I can create playlists and email my friends links to any of the music from a catalogue that is the best among all streaming applications and frankly has just about everything my wide taste in music seeks (though iTunes catalogue is still bigger). There's also a 24-hour premium option for those that want to have a wide music catalogue for an event like a party, and don't want to hear ads (brilliant, btw). Furthermore, there's a Spotify application on the iPhone which allows you to stream on-demand music to a portable device. This is awesome and ridiculous.
It's not the first time we've seen streaming music services. Rhapsody, Pandora, Last.fm, Blip.fm, Lala, etc. etc. etc. However it seems to be doing it more successfully than anyone else. This likely has to do with significant investments in early business development, securing distribution deals with major music distributors and building a large music catalogue up front.
Though this early widespread success doesn't come without struggle. Spotify is 7 million strong in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France, and Spain. Only 250K of these are paying subscribers (3.5% - 4%). And although in Sweden, Spotify generated more revenue for the major music distributors than iTunes did in 2009, it's likely because most Swedish consumers were getting their music for free. My true belief here is that Spotify simply gives too much away for free, and provides little reason to go premium, unless you are a tech geek who is really into music.
Spotify is attempting to make its entrance in the US market in 2010, but rumor has it it's going to be very difficult unless they get rid of the ad model. Distributors simply don't believe in it. However I do believe that if Spotifycan create a content-based ad model (similar to Google), tailored to different listener segments (heavy metal v. classical v. jazz v. pop) they could be successful. Furthermore, if this ad platform can allow for local ads, I can imagine it would be essentially on-demand internet radio station. I do believe the ad model can work, and I do believe that this can be profitable (as it appears to be for radio), but Spotify needs to make some significant short-term investments in its ad platform for longer term profitability, and furthermore to sell the distributors on it.
Spotify is top-notch, cutting-edge, and smart. But the next few years will be critical to determining its long-term success in Europe and eventually abroad...especially with Rdio just around the corner.
Spotify is currently invite only, but I have three outstanding invites and I get two every month, so if you or anyone you know needs one (and you live in the aforementioned countries), let me know.
The $100 million global impact of Kiva.org
I received an email from Kiva.org this morning and was completely floored by what I read.
Kiva.org has enabled $100 million in loans between individuals all around the world.
Kiva.org, for those of you who haven't heard me preach about it before here, is a microfinancing non-profit wherein people like you and me, have an opportunity to loan money directly to individuals in developing countries, looking to get on their own two feet, to support their families, and to make a living for themselves in countries where they would otherwise get no support or aid. More importantly, they pay their loan back over a predetermined period, assuming they are able to.
Some other impressive stats (from their email):
- Kiva is 49 months old.
- 98% repayment rate
- 250K entrepreneurs funded
- 587K lenders (Kiva users)
- 185 countries represented
- Average total amount loaned per Kiva lender $172 (including reloaned funds)!
These are some amazing statistics, made more amazing by the fact that Kiva has essentially created it's own massive economy of those with the means lending to those without, and those without paying back.
It's really a gratifying experience and it's extremely simple. As you get paid back, you can then re-loan to another individual.
My personal stats:
- 19 loans totaling $475 lent.
- 19 individuals: 58% female, 42%.
- Countries include: Tajikistan, Uganda, Togo, Cambodia, Palestine, Philippines, Nigeria, Ecuador, Benin, Peru, Kenya, Nicaragua, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and Viet Nam.
- Sectors include: food, retail, agriculture, services, housing, clothing, and health
Check out my lender page: http://kiva.org/lender/rommy
I highly encourage anyone with the means to get started. You'll find that it's highly addictive and a great way to invest your disposable income in helping enable and empower others.
Greatest James Bond Tracks
So I found some gold on Spotify (sorry Americans you are unable to access it).
The Best of Bond...James bond
It's a collection of the best tracks from the Bond films. It's more or less all the ones that mattered. This album reminded me of why I loved (and later despised) Bond as a kid. This album also reminded me of what fantastic pop hits came from these films. I mostly like the sultry spy theme that permeates throughout many of these tracks.
Some tracks of course stand out more than the others. Here are my top 5:
- Thunderball by Tom Jones
- A View to a Kill by Duran Duran
- Goldfinger by Shirley Bassey
- Live and Let Die by Sir Paul McCartney
- You Know My Name by Chris Cornell (though I really like THIS version far better which has a prime spot on my gym mix)
Then there were those from the extremely cheesy Roger Moore 70s Bond films, easily in my mind the absolute bottom of the Bond years (ok fine, the Timothy Dalton era was worse). I didn't mind All Time High by Rita Coolidge or Nobody Does It Better by Carly Simon, so I'll just give them an honorable mention, but they simply don't have the edgy Bond spy appeal of the above.
Another honorable mention is the classic Bond theme from Dr. No.
Epic fail is For Your Eyes Only. What the hell were they thinking?
PS - In case you're wondering, the Bond reboot with Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace have absolutely reinvigorated my passion for what was a completely dead Bond franchise.
WTF is a feed? How do I subscribe?
For the non-cyberdorks (i.e. mostly my east coast friends (zing) and my family) out there, a very quick and easy way to get access to instant updates from all your favorite sites is using an RSS reader or feed aggregator.
BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!?!?
Most content-driven sites today are built as feeds. From news sites like NYTimes.com, to media sites like YouTube.com, to social sites like Facebook.com, everything uses a feed to deliver and syndicate information across the internet.
RSS readers or feed aggregators make it easier for people to consume information from multiple sources. They act as inboxes for quick consumption of content. So rather than have to go to every site to gather my information, I just have to go to my reader to pull it all in.
Well-known RSS readers include Google Reader, Bloglines, NewsGator, and Thunderbird.
RAD! How do I get started?
I personally prefer Google Reader and I think you will too (this sounds like an infomercial). It's easy to use and has a wealth of simple features for sharing all the stuff you read with the people you care about. Here is a great, easy tutorial from the Google dorks themselves on Google Reader:
How do I subscribe to feeds in Google Reader?
After you've set up your Google Reader account, think about all the sites you're frequently going to for your information and entertainment, then go to them. When you're there, look for an RSS link. It usually looks something like this button below. Click it and it either copy the link and paste it into Google Reader or follow the instructions. Most sites give the user a very easy subscribe experience:
You can also search for feeds directly within Google Reader. Google Reader will also provide you with recommendations based on the feeds you're currently subscribed to.
Some of my favorite sites to which I subscribe, include:
- NYTimes (RSS Links)
- /Film (RSS)
- Mashable (RSS)
- Slow Food USA (RSS)
- Tuk Tuk Goose (RSS)
Why are you telling me this?
Using a reader is like watching the news in the morning. You have instant information at your fingertips and everything you need to know in minutes.
Also recently, I've been moving my blog around a lot and optimizing it and stuff, so if you use any RSS reader, make sure you're pointed to the correct free rommy feed so you can get all the updates about my mindless musings in real-time. Or just click on the big orange button at the top right. If you don't use one, I highly recommend it. It can save you a world of time.
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