When I was a kid I had a pen-pal. I couldn't tell you their name or even what country they were from but I do recall exchanging a few pieces of coorespondense (through snail-mail of course). Topics mainly centered around our families and culture. It was fun and I got to learn about a different culture and in some way, felt connected to a bigger world.
It goes without saying, things have changed since then. There are hundreds of different ways to connect but most still have to do with writing... or typing.
Well, a 17-year old Russian named Andrey Ternovskiy has come up with a way to change all that. Messing around with his friends, he created a site called Chatroulette. It's Russian roulette except with the internet and a webcam and not a revolver. The basic concept is that you connect to Chatroulette and randomly get someone else on the other end.
Wired writes:
Think of Chatroulette as a gigantic dinner party, only there’s no need to awkwardly excuse yourself when you’re bored with chatting with a fellow guest. If your Chatroulette partner is droning on about his pet ferret or his fancy hat collection, Next him! Warning: At some point you will, too, be Nexted. It happens to the best of us. It may hurt your feelings...
...Mike from Palm Springs summed up Chatroulette’s allure best of all: “You never know who you’re going to meet. One minute you will be talking to a person from Europe, and the next minute a guy will hold his cat up to the screen and tell you to make a face.
Check out the brand new chat tool from LifeChurch.tv called BabelWith.me that lets you communicate with anyone, anywhere in up to 45 languages. BabelWith.me is a simple, free group chat that automatically translates your conversation as you type. It’s built on Google App Engine and uses Google Translate, making it possible to enjoy real-time conversations with people around the globe, no matter what language they speak.
Man, I wish I'd had this app when we were in London. Would have saved us some migraines. Finally, augmented reality hits the big time with something useful and let's hope this is just a taste of things to come. Check this out.
I love Wikipedia. It's one of my goto sources for information. I know, I know... it can't be trusted. Or can it? I remember reading in the book, "The Starfish and the Spider" that Encyclopedia Britanica has about four errors for every hundred entries. Wikipedia has about six errors for every hundred entries. So, it's not that far off. This collective knowledgebase is pretty stunning when you think about it. So stunning in fact, that printed, it'd be virtually unusable.
2,559 of Wikipedia’s best articles are ‘featured articles’. It’s these that Rob Matthews decided to press ‘cntrl + p’ on and print out (probably at work). The result is this weighty tome of some 5000 pages. I believe his piece was to convey that it is only through computers that this amount of information becomes palatable, searchable and essentially useful.
I wonder how this easy access to vast information will change our education priorities and systems. I wonder if there will be a shift from having knowledge to simply knowing what knowledge to access and where for the right application and context.
I know I wouldn't want to go studying that pile right there. I'll stick with Google... and Wikipedia.
What's your goto for information? Any library goers out there? Any Excite or Yahoo! users?
Controllers are getting crazy these days. Gotta be the Wii that paved the way. First the announcement of DJ Hero and now this. Tony Hawk's Ride includes a new controller with motion sensors. "Grabs can be performed by actually grabbing the edge of the board, with infrared sensors picking up your hand position, and pushing is performed by running your foot along the side of the board. Ollies and flip tricks are obviously going to be a bit different than the real deal, while manuals and steering are pretty much spot on, and apparently there's a lot of choice as to how much "realism" you'd like in controlling the thing."
Apparently, Hawk is quite good at the game. No surpise there. All I know is that Josiah would have killed for one of these things. Check it...
Honestly, I don't know why Microsoft and Yahoo! even bother. I swear, they're like the MySpace of search engines. Check out Google's new search options. Looks pretty useful. Yet another jump for Google towards world domination.
I was never any good at Guitar Hero although I had a blast in playing with Benaiah and Tyler at our house in Derry.. I wonder if, because of my love for hip-hop, I'll be any better at the soon-to-drop DJ Hero by Activision. I can't imagine how this is going to be played but the controller sure looks like fun.
They're also releasing a Rock Band-like, Band Hero for the entire family. I still think I'm gonna hold out for Rock Band: Lego Edition instead though. Just not sure Benaiah is ready to go round two with all the lovely pentagrams and skulls (In reality, I'm just scared of the biker chicks).
A lot of people ask me how I find so much content and variety for DNSLNS. The inference is that I must spend hours upon hours poring over websites to find this stuff and that I don't have a life. Well, only the latter is true but it doesn't take a ton of time to process information efficiently. I've written before about RSS and how it works, but I wanted to let you in on a little piece of RSS heaven.
I realize I'm about to isolate 35% of our readers which are on PC since this app is for Mac only and for that I'm truly sorry (not really). But, I'm sure there are apps out there for Windows that will do the job just as well (again... not really).
Anyway, if you're not familiar with RSS, you need to check out the two posts I referenced above and then head over to NewsGator to download (Mac only) a little gem of an app called NetNewsWire.
Basically, NetNewsWire looks a lot like Mail except that instead of email, it processes all of your RSS feeds. It syncs with NewGator which in turn syncs with the iPhone app that is available.
You're able to zip through a ton of sites in no time at all and keep up to date on all your favorites including DanisLinus. Of course, you could always just subscribe by email but that's so 2008. Check out the screen shots below for a visual. (Click for enlarged viewing)
It goes without saying, things have changed since then. There are hundreds of different ways to connect but most still have to do with writing... or typing.
Check out the brand new chat tool from 
