Streaming your life away

It’s support for “lifestreaming” – combining your online identity from various different social sites into a single stream. Very much like a diary or timeline of events, grouped by date.

The inspiration for this feature came from a blog post by Jeremy Keith (hence the title) so props to him for the idea.

Lifestreaming is like Twitter, but covers everything you do online that is publicly available and has an RSS feed. Currently there’s support for Delicious, Flickr, Twitter, Upcoming, Last.fm, your own blog feed (RSS) and any other site that provides an RSS feed.

You can see an example of my lifestream in the screen shot. If you already have a trawlr.com account then why not give it a whirl and create your own lifestream. Don’t have an account yet? Registration is quick & simple (with no email activation required) and once you’ve tried out the lifestreaming, you might also be interested in the main RSS reader.

Once you’ve created your lifestream, it’ll be automatically updated throughout the day.

Let me know if you can think of any important sources I’ve missed, such as; YouTube, Picassa, SmugMug, FaceBook, MySpace, Google Reader shared items, Digg (dugg by) and Reddit (activity).

I’m planning to create a “widget” version of the lifestream so that it may be embedded within your own blog or website, allowing customisation of the display

Thursday was the launch party for Cominded’s latest social application yabb. It’s currently still in private beta, although everyone who attended the event had the opportunity to register on the night and should have received an invitation the following day.

Paul Walsh was first off the mark to blog about yabb and followed up with an interview with Paul Birch. On Friday, Techcrunch UK (followed by US) wrote about the launch of yabb and there were further blog reactions. Oli Barrett at the Daily Networker wrote a great article about yabb titled ‘A Little More Conversation’.

yabb lets you talk more and type less by connecting you with people and topics you’re interested in

For those who haven’t yet joined yabb (with a lowercase y), it’s a social network that facilitate one-to-one conversations between like-minded people using Skype. With yabb we’re promoting the art of conversation; you find a topic you’re interested in, choose who you want to talk to and invite them to contact you using a call request.

Why not head along to register and keep up to date via the blog. If you’re already signed-up and using yabb then we’re very interested in getting your feedback and any ideas for new features.

Fans of the original Golf GTi are in for a treat after Volkswagen announced a new version of the seminal hot hatch – in South Africa. The Volkswagen Citi Golf R-Line has the boxy, retro looks of the Mk1 Golf GTi, but has been brought up-to-date to make it easier to live with.

If only they still made them here in the UK (although being RHD an import might not be impossible)?

VW’s iconic hot hatch reborn (autortrader.co.uk)

sudo port install ffmpeg +lame +libogg +vorbis +xvid +x264 +a52 +faac +faad +dts

ffmpeg -i input.avi -s 320x240 -r 15 -b 250 -acodec mp3 -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv output.flv

Each week, the Magazine chronicles interesting and sometimes downright unexpected facts from the news, through its strand 10 things we didn’t know last week. Here, to round off the year, are some of the best from the past 12 months.

100 things we didn’t know last year including the answer to the chicken vs. egg question (the egg came first)!

Wrapping code at 80 columns?

To wrap or not to wrap?

Alex Tew is back with the successor to his genius idea the Million Dollar Homepage. In the spirit of sticking to what he is good at, the new project is an almost identical clone of MDHP. The new site, Pixelotto, features buying pixels for adverts – the twist this time is that each pixel costs $2 and there will be a lottery where a lucky pixel clicker will win $1,000,000.

I have some very exciting news I’d like to share with you. Next week, on 5th December, I am launching a new venture called ‘Pixelotto’. It’s similar to The Million Dollar Homepage only this time I will be giving away $1,000,000!

It’s all based around pixel advertising and generating big traffic for advertisers. Visitors play for free – all they have to do is click on the ads for chances to win the jackpot. The more they click, the more chances they have – and the more traffic you receive.

As a valued customer of The Million Dollar Homepage, I’d like to give you an exclusive opportunity to purchase advertising space on Pixelotto before the site goes public. The world will be watching next week and this is your chance to get on-board before everyone else.

The following link will give you exclusive access to Pixelotto, where you
can buy ad space right now:

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to e-mail me and my team at
info@pixelotto.com I look forward to welcoming you on-board for this new pixel adventure!

Cheers, Alex Tew
Pixelotto Limited is registered in England & Wales. Company no. 05972757

Good luck to Alex, I’m sure this will take off just as quickly as the original. he’s already had enough (free) PR to kick-start the traffic, plus access to a whole list of existing pixel buyers.

Update: The site has now gone live.

References

Million Dollar Homepage Becomes Multi-Million Dollar Homepage (Techcrunch)

Site design on Flickr

Million Dollar Homepage

Keep, share and discover all your favorite things. This is the “classic” official extension for del.icio.us, updated to work with Firefox 2.0.

Adds two buttons (next to the home icon) to quickly a bookmark a web page and access your del.ico.us account page. (There is also a Yahoo! version of the extension which adds your del.icio.us bookmarks to Firefox)

2. Flashblock

Never be annoyed by a Flash animation again! Blocks Flash so it won’t get in your way, but if you want to see it, just click on it.

Works really well for blocking annoying Flash adverts and helps when you vist Flash video sites with multiple tabs open.

3. Adblock

Once installed, it’s a snap to filter elements at their source-address. Just right-click: Adblock: done. Filters use either the wildcard character (*) or full Regular Expression syntax. Hit the status-element and see what has or hasn’t been blocked.

Not too useful on its own, but combine it with the next extension and you’ll rarely see an (image-based) advert again.

4. Adblock Filterset.G Updater

This is a companion extension to Adblock or Adblock Plus and should be used in conjunction with it. This extension automatically downloads the latest version of Filterset.G every 4-7 days. Filterset.G is an excellent set of filters maintained by G for Adblock that blocks most ads on the internet.

5. Gmail Notifier

A notifier for Gmail accounts.

Adds an icon to the bottom status bar to notify you when you have new mail (can also popup a new message alert under Windows).

5. Web Developer

Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

Very useful extension for anyone working in web development.

7 Javascript Debugger

Venkman is the code name for Mozilla’s JavaScript Debugger. Venkman aims to provide a powerful JavaScript debugging environment for Mozilla based browsers.