Bnpositive's Blog

I did something tonight I haven’t done in 22 years. I tried to figure out and work on Slope Intercept Equations from my old Algebra 1 days. I didn’t actually need to know the answers, I needed to remember how to explain it to a high school freshman that needed help with her own homework.

The challenge with picking up this math stuff wasn’t so much the remembering how to do it myself. The challenge was both reminding myself of what was going on, understanding the concepts involved and then, the hardest part, being able to explain it to someone else.

It’s said if you want to know whether or not you really know something, see if you can teach it to someone else.

I’m not sure I really "taught" this girl more about math, but I hopefully helped her understand the concepts a little more. I owe that credit to the EasyCalculation.com website which both explained the concepts of slope-intercept equations, but also provided a calculator for us to be able to check our work to make sure we were really understanding what we thought we were.

If you need help with a mathematical concept, go uncover some homework help at EasyCalculation.com.

My family has become keenly aware of the best places to eat out with our family and save the most money. Tonight we were hungry for a little something out of our normal game plan and wasn’t sure what other restaurants may have some specials available where kids eat free.

Tonight I found out about a new website called KidsMealDeals.com where you can enter your zip code, a mileage radius and what day of the week you’re looking for and will return a list of restaurants with deals for kids.

The options for us tonight consisted of Golden Corral, which is not my wife’s favorite place to go by any means. If we were going out tomorrow night and looking for a deal, I’d know we could go to Denny’s and get two free kids meals with each adult entree purchase.

The KidsMealDeals.com website helps you find the best places to make your dollar go further when you just don’t feel like cooking something at home.

Soon the KidsMealDeals.com website will also allow you to pick the type of cuisine you’re interested in eating. Not sure about you, but I’m still trying to get my kids to try more Thai, Indian and Greek food. Right now I just need to make sure wherever we go has chicken tenders.

One of our most active posts ever was one where we introduced a website developed by OfficeMax called ElfYourself.com. Millions of people have visited the site and brought plenty of holiday cheer to the Internet.

Now the ElfYourself website is back and it’s powered by that folks at JibJab.com who know a thing or two about making funny, custom videos for sharing around the web.

The ElfYourself website and JibJab allow you to upload your own photos to their servers and mash them up against canned video sequences where they replace the face on the characters with your face and the faces of your friends.

They’ve also improved the editing capabilities after you upload your photos so you can really tweak and tune your image and adjust it as necessary. One of the more challenging tasks was getting the mouth movement right, and JibJab has improved how you can control that animation as it appears on your video card.

The ElfYourself website has also proven you’re really not paying attention these days if you’re not integrated into Facebook somehow. Now you can login via Facebook, grab photos from your Facebook albums and of course post your videos straight to your Facebook wall too.

When you make your own ElfYourself video, be sure and post a link to it in our comments section so we can all enjoy your handiwork.

I’ve had a Google Wave account for a little while now and have tried to use it more and more. The challenge has been that I haven’t had a lot of other people I know and work with on things regularly that also has a Google Wave account.

The broadest usage I’ve enjoyed has been as a friend and I have been collaborating on a website we’re both working on together. It’s really helped us as we’ve shared information and ideas with each other. Sure that could be done via other methods, but having everything there with history of what we’ve said to each other in a conversational string is nice.

I’ve now finally been given the ability to invite other people to begin using Google Wave for themselves.

I just used some of those invites to send to a group of friends of mine that work together with each other in a church ministry setting. With everything that goes on in a church related to communication, planning, organization and sharing of resources; I thought the use of Google Wave would be a definite plus for the team.

As I continue to use it more and more myself I still can’t believe I can’t share files in the system already. Am I missing something? It seems there should be many more plug-ins and functionality available already.

What’s been your experience using Google Wave so far? Let me know.

One of my favorite new groups over the past year or so is called "Straight No Chaser". They’re a men’s a capella group that got together while attending Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. Here’s a video of them performing one of my favorite songs, "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King.

This clip is from their performance in New York City that will be airing in a variety of markets on the local PBS station.

Straight No Chaser also just released their 2nd Christmas album titled "Christmas Cheers".

As I begin thinking more and more about the coming changes to the blogosphere, I begin to wonder if this is really what we need the government and Congress to be worried about in our lives.

I wrote awhile back about the CMP.LY website that allows bloggers to quickly link to an appropriate disclosure statement that describes how they may be connected or influenced to write their posts.

I begin to wonder exactly who these changes are protecting? One person commented on my cmp.ly post about he just wanted to post a link to the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution that says I have free speech and can say whatever I want?

Don’t most people expect that there could be some strings or the potential for a person to have received something at a discount or completely for free that might impact their opinion of a product? Is it also too far-fetched of an idea to think that an individual could still provide an honest opinion of a product regardless of their connections?

Do we really need regulations and government involvement to protect us from people who are potentially no different than some individual standing on a street corner spouting whatever information they wish without retribution or regulation?

I’ve been teaching myself computer stuff for almost two decades now. From computer applications to programming, to web design to any other coding needs. Part of that learning list was teaching myself some CSS.

I recently found the Stylizer application from the folks at Skybound. The Stylizer app allows you to design, manipulate and see the CSS functionality of what you’re working on as you’re working on it in a live display.

What’s interesting is that CSS is one of those things where seeing it for yourself and watching how the coding syntax changes initiates changes in the display you’re looking at in your application.

The ability to use a graphical interface, to build and edit the syntax of CSS (and see the changes as you make them), then to see the impact of those changes in the CSS on your live website is really reinforcing what you’re trying to learn.

There are other great features of Stylizer as well. It creates very nice and clean CSS code. It has a variety of tools to help you with all the great functionality and power of CSS, while keeping things very organized and processed cleanly.

Sometimes when you’re trying to learn a new computer program or specific feature within a computer application, what you need is a step-by-step visual presentation of what’s happening in front of you.

Screenr does that, but takes it one step further and integrates that functionality with twitter. The integration allows you to quickly record a video describing something, and then immediately share it with your followers on twitter.

There are times when you just can’t get your point across in 140 characters. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then video has got to be worth millions right?

Screenr makes sharing ideas super easy and the integration with twitter makes sharing almost anything easier. Screenr works with PC and Mac and can be seen on just about any device your audience may be using.

One of my favorite features is that it uses twitter oauth functionality, instead of just forcing you to enter your username and password on their site directly.

If you need to get your point across on how to do something on your computer, and your potential audience is on twitter, then give Screenr a try and expand your computing knowledge, expertise and resourcefulness for yourself and your followers.

I’d heard about the Foursquare website for awhile before it ever became available in my hometown of Indianapolis, IN. When it finally arrived here in Indianapolis and they added it to their city list, I immediately got more active on the site.

Prior to using Foursquare I was a fairly avid user of the similar website for geo-location updates with Brightkite. My initial thoughts were that these two sites were competitors of each other, but after using Foursquare for awhile, they’re really not, which I’ve written about earlier on this site.

Foursquare focuses more on what you’re doing and encouraging others to join you. Brightkite just makes it easier for people to know where you are and give you the potential opportunity for a random get together.

There are a few things I’m not so sure about with Foursquare‘s use. Oddly enough, the Foursquare service seems to be made and targeted more for the mobile user and those with smart phones. I still can’t figure out why I can’t actually checkin somewhere on the main Foursquare website.

I’m also not sure why they don’t have more automated and integrated mapping functionality. I can’t add a location to their database without knowing the address and phone number for the location myself.

They also don’t seem to be interested in anyone that may be a mobile worker that moves from a variety of locations throughout the normal hours of your workday.

It’s still a fun site, but I’m wondering what’s in store and how long it will keep going. I think it would be interesting to see a potential merger between Foursquare and Brightkite. They’d be a geo-location service master!

With the holidays approaching it could be time to reminisce down the halls of memory and see just how far we’ve come with our home video game entertainment systems. We have a come a LONG! way.

Most people remember Pong, or the Atari 2600 and even the original Nintendo Entertainment System. There are plenty more systems and variations of systems that hit store shelves over the last three decades and more.

I uncovered The Game Console website while I was trying to remember the name of a home game system we had when I was a child. I couldn’t remember if it was before of after the Pong system we had in the house.

It’s quite the trip down the retail history memory lane. How many of these devices did you have growing up? How many do you still have in your possession?

If I remember correctly, we had:

• Atari Pong
• Atari 2600
• Colecovision
• Nintendo Entertainment System (still own)
• Sega Genesis
• Sony PlayStation (still own)
• Nintendo 64 (still own)
• Sega Dreamcast (still own)
• Sony PlayStation 2
• Microsoft X-Box (still own)
• Microsoft X-Box 360 (still own)
• Nintendo Wii (still own)

Being entertained at home looks to have been pretty important for me growing up. Many of the systems we had I got used from someone else, but still enjoyed many hours of fun. I remember numerous marathon gaming efforts with my two older brothers playing Asteroids on the Atari 2600 for 9 hours straight. I think we flipped the scoreboard counter around a dozen times before we final quit or lost our lives.

Reminisce with your own gaming history at www.thegameconsole.com

There are two sounds effects in this world that are absolute classics! The problem is when you need them you just can’t figure out where to find them. These two websites have solved that for you and given you exactly what you’ve needed.

The first sound you always need in your arsenal is the sound you use when you somebody does something stupid or silly or makes the wrong choice. You’ll know it as soon as you hear it, and all you need to do is visit www.sadtrombone.com and just press the big, orange "play!" button.

The other website you need in your back pocket is going to be used when someone makes a funny comment or hits the nail on the head. It’s the classic rimshot sound on a drum set. It’s the sound you hear after a well timed and executed joke or witty remark.

Just send your browser over to www.instantrimshot.com and you’ll get what you need. Press the big, red button and you’ve got your sound effect.

Two great sounds. Two great websites dedicated to them. You can’t get much more specific than that!

Uncover www.sadtrombone.com and www.instantrimshot.com and you’re there!

The title may be a bit misleading. I’m currently a happy user of Mozilla Firefox as my primary web browser. I also have Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome installed on my machine as well.

The announcement of the next version of Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 9 has caused me to also stumble upon an article that talks about what we should all be looking for in the next version of the Microsoft Internet browser.

I’m a happy user of Mozilla Firefox, which is mainly due to the ability to extend the functionality of the browser with the various plugins and add-ons I’ve found over the years to help me get more out of my Internet experience.

I’d say the big thing that Microsoft should be sure and add to their next browser is much more opportunities for extending the features of the browser.

As I think about those options, I begin to wonder why all of these add-ons couldn’t be developed in an open XML architecture that would allow the same plug-in to run on various browsers. That would take away some of the advantage of what Firefox has available to it compared to the other major browsers.

The other items that should always be addressed with a browser include a collection of "S" items. New browsers should achieve a goal of speed, security, standards and social media.

The standards could be covered with an open architecture. The popularity of a variety of social media tools should be easily integrated into your web experience as well. We should always expect security as an absolute bare minimum.