Que es?
The Weblog of Brett Singer. Bringing the world what it needs most - a blog.
Note: Sorry about all of the 'hot deals' entries (someone referred to this blog as
CorporateShill.com).
The deals and things are being fed into Multineedia.com. We will
soon move the deals category over to Multineedia so you don't have to read it, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004
Lucas is talking about paid blogging; he is also being paid to blog about Marqui (I am not being paid to blog about them, and yet, there's the company name). The idea of paid blogging should be absolutely idiotic, but it's not. Here's why: advertising costs a fortune. If you can get someone with a readership, almost any readership, to write about your company/product for the pittance that this sort of thing is currently going for (under a grand a month, I believe, in Marqui's case) that's a bargain. More and more big-name advertisers are popping up on Webjay via BlogAds for the same reason - very cost-effective marketing. Webjay has had ads for Eminem, the new Wes Anderson movie, and today has an ad for the new Ludacris album. Those same ads on a larger commercial site would cost a pile of cash; on Webjay they cost 50 bucks a month. Plus you can at least get a sense of whether or not the ad was worthwhile because you can track click-throughs. If a company can get bang for their buck by advertising on a few smaller sites for such inexpensive rates, why won't they keep doing it? It's the same with paying bloggers. Blogging is, by it's very nature, somewhat disjointed, in that there are a variety of topics that sometimes follow a theme but sometimes they don't. As long as there is full disclosure, it's unlikely to hurt the company's public profile. Their Googlejuice will increase mightily, if for no other reason than because there are more pages out there mentioning their name and linking back to the site. The other version of this is the old 'viral marketing’; in this case it would involve creating websites that somehow point back to the site in question (ILoveMarqui.com, MarquiSavedMyAss.com or something like that). Some, like SubservientChicken.com don't necessarily sell any product, but they definitely get attention. They are, however, expensive and time consuming. Paying a few bloggers a few hundred bucks a month to guarantee some posts? Great idea.
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The Year In Swag
FRomThe Onion AV Club, The Year in Swag. Swag is a very important, and under-discussed, part of our culture.
Teeny Little Computers from Gumstix
From the "if I had nothing but time on my hands" file comes Gumstix, who make embedded computer systems and also some neat looking little computers called "Waysmall". For some reason they have MMC slots, which is the least popular memory card format (other than really stupid formats like xD). They run Linux and don't cost much. What to do with one? Well, I guess that's the point - it you have to ask, don't buy one.
How to erase a hard drive - KillDisk
KillDisk is a hard drive eraser that fits on a CD-ROM. They have a free version which will probably do the job for most people; the paid version gives you military-grade data destruction. Easier than a
sledgehammer.
For those who like Yes, here's a bunch of mp3s, and then there's videos of Jon Anderson - that's only if you REALLY like Yes.
Best Football Songs
A discussion of the best football songs ever.
Free Chaplin Films
Four Chaplin shorts from 1917: The Adventurer, The Cure, Easy Street and The Immigrant, presented with music and sound effects. From the Feature Films section of the Internet Archive.
Just Say Noel looks like a fun holiday CD. The enjoyment is increased by idiotic comments like this one:
1 out of 5 stars This is Christmas?, November 12, 1998
Reviewer: A music fan
This is some of the most ditastefull holiday music I have ever heard
How to play only part of a video (RealPlayer) using SMIL commands
Here is the syntax to play only part of a video clip in RealPlayer:
clipurl?start=min:sec.sec&end=min:sec.sec
A specific example:
rtsp://demand1cnn.stream.aol.com/cnn/politics/2004/11/24/johns.old.guard.democrats.affl.300k.rm?start=0:14.0&end=0:31.0
Cut and paste that into RealPlayer and you'll see the result.
For a live video feed that you only want to play for a specific period of time:
clipurl?end=3:00.0
And for basic start and end times:
rtsp:/66.150.15.112:554/webactive/demnow/dn20001108.ra?cloakport=80,554,7070&end=1:40.0
will end the clip after 1 min. and 40 seconds.
rtsp:/66.150.15.112:554/webactive/demnow/dn20001108.ra?cloakport=80,554,7070&start=1:40.0
will start the clip at the 1 min. 40 second mark.
Examples of the above can be found on Webjay:
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