Not a big truck

Oh man, I think the recent bugs at Facebook are all part of their rolling out of a shit-ton of contextual updates. Small additions that increase usability while increasing required bandwidth are good? Eh?

Virb is dead. Long live Virb! The social networking site that I fell in love with way back when is official closing—kind of. It’s no longer going to be a sexy alternative to MySpace. It’s no longer going to be a decent alternative to Tumblr and Posterous. Instead of being a mish-mash of not-so-complete social networking functions (including a short-lived Last.fm alternative), Virb will crack it’s cocoon in July and emerge as a Square Space competitor?

Details are a bit sparse right now, but that is exactly how it seems. Except, I don’t see any mention of a native blogging feature. So, it’s going to be an easy way to make/maintain staticy web pages? Yeah, the themes they’ve been spotlighting are quite sexy. And they seem to be internally excited about what they’re making. I can’t help but feel, however, that Virb could have built up into a great community for artists.

The new site looks like a fantastic tool to create a resume or portfolio site. But, it’s not going to be free anymore. And, they aren’t offering an easy way to save any content from the old service. Apparently there will be some tight integration with Tumblr, but I’m not sure why Virb is going to be better than Tumblr + Premium Theme + Tumblr’s Pages Feature.

I want them to prove my hesitations wrong.

(via PATH)

In light of Ruckus being shutdown, I’ve decide to post something here I wrote about DRM for StandUp a while back. It’s a crash course in DRM and how to get around it.

Digital rights management, DRM, is software employed by many copyright owners to protect their content from being pirated. Nearly all Americans come into contact with DRM on a daily basis. Enjoying music bought from Apple requires the use of DRM; even laughing at Garden State on DVD requires the use of DRM. So, DRM is good… right? Hardly a person exits who legitimately supports piracy; however, most DRM is extremely restrictive and takes away from what consumers can do with legally acquired content under their rights of “fair use.”

(more…)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPbdQ80VkyQ&fmt=18[/youtube]Watch in High quality: Start the video > roll over the up arrow > click HQ

MusicBox creates a map of musical attributes. A user is able to view their array of music through different qualities such as tempo, timbre and loudness. Unfortunately, this software will not be available any time soon.

The programmer, Anita Lillie, is an MIT graduate who recently started a new job at Nokia. Nokia’s current media offerings include Simulcast – some sort of simulated fishing apparatus, I’m assuming – and Nokia Music, which doesn’t support Firefox.

Lillie will not be releasing the software or code because MIT holds the intellectual property rights.

Scott Merrill has a great new post on CruchGear about early adoption and “Alpha Geeks.” He inspects why and how most people don’t really care about most sites. It’s well worth the read and his in-depth analysis/example of Google’s Grand Central is spot on.

Here’s an excerpt:

There are a dizzying number of cool new services, applications, and gadgets available to citizens of the world today. New stuff is coming out all the time and it can be hard for us Internet experts to keep up, let alone average human beings. For example, my dad — no Internet slouch — had no idea what Hulu was. How is he expected to care about the difference between Twitter or identi.ca?

I take a generally pessimistic view of new sites, assuming that I’ll either not like them, or they won’t stick around long enough for me to appreciate them. I have a few friends who are compulsive signer-uppers, gladly agreeing to the Terms of Service for any new site that comes along. One of these guys does it specifically so he can claim his preferred username, lest some other Internet a-hole tarnish his good handle. Another friend signs up for stuff with the expectation that he’ll actually use the service being offered. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t.

How many of us fall into one of these same patterns? I’m rather saddened to notify you that I probably have an account on well over 100 social networks/tools. Yeah… I’m on/was on Plurk, Jaiku (RIP), Twitter, Identi.ca and Pownce (RIP). I loved them all yet I only update Twitter now.

[via  CrunchGear]

If you’re into technology and what not. You might be aware of the massive trade shows going on right now in San Francisco  and Las Vegas. SF is hosting a new Macworld Expo and Vegas is home to the annual CES. If you haven’t been following them… you probably should. They’re where new stuff happens. The links above are to Google News searches with all the goodies from each show. It’s a start.