Bnpositive's Blog

I’m really excited about the Olympics getting ready to start on 08.08.08. Even as simple as it is, I love the date it’s about to start.

One of the other things I’m looking forward to this year is the ability to really be able to enjoy the highlights of the various events that I will inevitably miss because of work or other responsibilities.

NBC has used the Microsoft Silverlight media technology to make the videos come alive.

The only problem is I’ve gone to the site now a few different times now and I’m continually prompted to download and install the Silverlight 2.0 software, which I’ve done. You know what the problem is? Firefox, or at least Firefox 3.0. As good as Silverlight 2.0 might be, I’d think Microsoft would want to make it work on Firefox wouldn’t you?

What’s the deal here. Doesn’t seem smart to me.

The Windows Live Search has gotten another overhaul now, and they’ve taken a little bit of a different slant on what their home page looks like as you can see from the screen shot.

Along with a new background, which I’ve yet to figure out if you can change it to something else you would like. If you hover over certain sections Microsoft kinds of leads you on the types of information you can search for and use with Live Search.

Most of the settings you’ve come to expect from customizing your search experience is available: filtering, language, number of results, etc.

One pretty neat feature of the new search results is that the video search results allow you to play the video preview by just hovering your mouse over the results instead of waiting to click on each video and let it load to start playing.

Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet has more information about what’s happening with Microsoft Live Search and their Live Mesh application. The article also quickly let me know that the search background picture changes and highlights more vertical search results related to the photo that was set as the background.

I probably have changed my opinions on gas prices very dramatically in the last few months and it?s really not only related to the cost of gas right now.

I used to drive somewhat out of my way to save less than $.10/gallon. I then realized that for my car, a 1996 Toyota Camry, which has a 17-gallon tank, I was only saving at most $1.70. I will admit though, I?m usually always interested in saving money any chance I can get, regardless of the actual amount. But, is going out of my way, and using more gas, worth the $1.70? I doubt it.

The reason I say that is because there are hundreds of other places and situations where we spend much more than $1.70 and don?t even think about it.

• buying a drink at a restaurant instead of water w/ lemon
• using an ATM from another bank
• going to Starbucks before work instead of getting free coffee at work

It wasn?t too long ago that my wife and I started looking at the idea of trading her van, which gets about 17 miles/gallon if we?re lucky. Oddly enough her van also has a 17-gallon tank, so we both spend about the same amount of money on a fill-up.

We thought about trying to sell the van and get a new Honda Civic Hybrid. The gas savings by comparison would have been tremendous. But with the increased and extended car payment, it would have taken a number of years to come out even.

Do you think it?s worth it?

Dave Ramsey?s Thoughts on Hybrid Cars

My wife and kids are out of town this week and I’ve been working my butt off on a variety of projects for work, side-job projects, blogging and some house work. I decided to take a few minutes earlier this evening and played some Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007. I’m guessing I’d yet to play it since I’ve hard-wired my Xbox 360 to my home network. The ESPN updates through the game are live and current updates from ESPN radio, now that’s really cool!

I’m a little torn right now between a couple of decisions. I’ve got to say that Tiger Woods is probably my overall favorite game to play on a console. I’ve spent more time playing that game through the different updates and versions than any other game. Because of that history, I’m challenged with what I want to do next. Because I’ve been so busy the last year, I never went out and purchased Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008. Part of that reason is that I was debating on whether or not I was going to grab it for my Nintendo Wii or continue with the Xbox 360.

Now that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2009 is coming out, do I still pick-up 2008 or just move onto 2009? Do I buy both? Are there features and courses on 2008 that aren’t on 2009 that are worth picking up just to play them? Do I pick-up 2008 for the Wii and decide later on 2009?

Have you heard of Photrade? I uncovered the Photrade website awhile back through another website I’d visited and an email newsletter I received about the upcoming blogINDIANA conference coming up in Indianapolis. I then realized they were also advertising on this blog here so decided to check them out.

I was quickly impressed with what you could do with sharing your photos and even making money from them as well.

Photrade is where photographers reclaim ownership of their photos. Photraders decide how, when, where and at what cost their photos are used online. We provide unprecedented protection for photos and offer a free photo marketplace where photographers can sell stock, prints and merchandise or use our Adcosystem (TM) where photographers get paid for every view of their photo, anywhere on the internet. Through Photrade, publications and blogs can access a fast-growing library of legally licensed, ad-supported photos. Reclaim your photos, start photrading.

Now they’ve expanded their offerings some more an can now provide an even broader range of border options available for your photos.

The Photrade site is currently in beta and you need an invite code to sign-up and join, but don’t worry, we’ve taken care of that for you as well. Just enter B5UTI as your invite code to let them know you heard about it here and check them out.

When you sign-up for an account look me up, I’m “bnpositive” on the site. I’d love to hear what you think.

Uncover your own photos and some money at

www.photrade.com

Hat tip to Aaron Brazell for reminding me of this great example of clueless people making important decisions in Congress.

It looks like Senator Stevens cluelessness has caught up with him though as he’s being indicted on 7 counts. Sadly, there are probably a number of other Congressmen that should be caught up in that indictment as well.

Uncovered by Aaron Brazell

Cuil.com brings another search player into town to do battle with the existing sites that we’re all already familiar.

It used to be that Google was the king of simple design and layout but Cuil.com makes Google’s homepage look more like a cramped portal site with more items there to distract you from what you’re really there to do… search!

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Big talk from the new guy, but in my brief experience of playing around with the site so far, they’re delivering on their expectations and doing it in a nice layout and style.

I really like the multi-column layout view and potentially pertinent image thumbnails to help you decide about the search results. I don’t expect it to last long, but I also like the page devoid from advertisements and sponsored search results.

What’s been your experience with Cuil.com? Have you uncovered anything new with Cuil.com since you’ve been using it? What do you think about their accuracy and relevance to what you’re searching for online?

Let us know.

www.cuil.com

I still have conversations regularly with people who don’t understand what the deal is with twitter. Most of the time people make a comment about why in the world someone would care what you’re having for lunch or where you’re at? Although that is a part of what happens on twitter, along with the help of complimentary services like brightkite, it’s not even close to all the benefits twitter can offer the “real world”.

A recent story in the Technology section of the New York Times talks about how Frank Eliason, a digital care manager, uses twitter and the web to take a pro-active assistance role for people who are having less than satisfactory results from Comcast.

Long before I got introduced to twitter, I had a personal interaction with Frank himself from recent comments on my own blog here.

After that contact and I began using twitter, I had a few more interactions with Frank where he took care of my questions, even after I was no longer a Comcast customer. I can tell you this, if for some reason I decide to leave AT&T U-verse, Frank has probably done enough for me to give Comcast another try. Plus, since I’ll be a new customer again I’ll be able to take advantage of their triple-play pricing again.

For anyone wondering, you should really read the NYTimes article, it may help you understand a little more what can be achieved with twitter and how other companies besides Comcast are making it work for them.

Comcast is not the only company trying to reach out to customers online. Using the social messaging service Twitter, Southwest Airlines answers customer questions about ticket prices and flight delays, Whole Foods Market posts details about discounts, and the chief executive of the online shoe store Zappos shares details of his life with 7,200 ?followers.? Many other companies also monitor online discussion groups.

Although I don’t follow Southwest Airlines and Whole Foods, I do follow Zappos, and another company called ChoiceShirts which is making twitter work for them as well.

Frank, if you’re listening (and I know you are) keep up the good work. You are making a difference and more companies should model their customer service meaning and methods after what you’ve achieved so far.

Jake just let me know about a new site called Scour that lets you search the web like you normally would but adds a few different things to the mix:

• Get results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN all together
• Rate search results instantly
• Get rewarded by searching with Scour

Why does it seem to be so hard for me to think about using any search engine other than Google as my default? I’m sure that’s exactly what Google is wanting me to think though isn’t it?

I like the concept, but one thing I immediately noticed that I don’t like is that this is the URL you get when you click on the results to a link:

http://www.scour.com/view/result/?URL=http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/

The reason is because there’s a little comment bar on the bottom of the page that let’s you rate the page and give more information back to Scour about what you think. You can click on the “X” to close it, but that’s annoying to me. Not sure how else you’ll get the feedback they’re wanting though.

The idea of making some money for doing what we’re already doing by searching the Internet. According to their site, here’s the type of money you could potentially be making with getting more people to sign-up under you and get a little kick back from their search results too.

Give Scour a try and sign-up now for their beta. Of course I’d love for you to sign-up under me so just click on one of the links above and sign-up. If I make enough money to retire on a private island in the Caribbean, I’ll let you know.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I don’t think you can help from smiling while watching this video! Good stuff. Do you have videos of yourself dancing you’d like to share? Send us a link in the comments!

This little bit of dancing joy was uncovered by Jane on twitter.

I can’t embed this video from YouTube, but here’s a link to the original skit. Just for a little humor to your Thursday.

I?ve been dealing with a WordPress comment issue like the one above the awhile now. Initially I only got them every now and then and pretty much ignored them. This week however I?ve received probably 50 of them now. I used to only get them on my personal blog too, but now I?ve noticed a couple of them happening on other sites.

My initial though was just figuring out how to block them so I didn?t even see these kinds of comments come in at all. After talking to Doug though he wondered what if they were legitimate comments from people that the data is getting erased or lost at some point.

If you?ve visited this site and left a comment, but never saw it posted, let me know. I pretty much approve everything unless you use too much foul language or something.

Has anyone else seen this happening on your WordPress blog? Let me know because I really want to get rid of the messages or fix the problem if I?m losing comments.