I am a fan of Michael Arrington’s blog, TechCrunch, and I had recently read that StumbleUpon was bought by eBay, I thought to myself, why would anyone want to buy them?

When I first downloaded Mozilla Firefox (some year to two years ago), I had added the StumbleUpon toolbar and my first thought was how incredibly stupid it was. Whenever I would press the “Stumble!” button it would take me to a site that I have seen before (that was when it would work). In a matter of minutes the StumbleUpon toolbar had been deleted from my computer, never to be used again…well until now.

Anyways, after reading the TechCrunch blog post I decided to try StumbleUpon one more time. After about two minutes of using the toolbar I was instantly addicted to it. I couldn’t wait to see what site, video, or photo it would bring up next. I have found so many useful sites from StumbleUpon and I hope to find even more.

Was eBay’s acquisition of StumbleUpon right? Oh yes it sure was. eBay could integrate the features into their site. Think about it StumbleUpon shopping, buying something that you would never think to look for (also a plus for eBay).

For all those who tried StumbleUpon a couple of years ago (and hated it), I would advise you to try it again. It is well built and you’ll find something new every day!

The crazy picture of that guy eating the chicken is from http://members.aol.com/rldes/private/Nutt/gradynutt.gif

Web 2.0: Myspace, YouTube, Digg, Virb, Last.fm, etc.

We have all seen it and heard of it Web 2.0 this and that, but what about web 3.0?

Web 3.0 in my opinion is the moving of applications (Photoshop, iTunes, Aim, Microsoft Office, etc) to the web. We have already begun to see it in sites like meebo (web based instant messaging), Google Docs and Spreadsheets (Word Processing and Spreadsheets), and Picnik (Photo Editing). Adobe has already hinted that they are in the process of making a web version of Photoshop (and it is suppose to be free).

In my opinion as the Internet gets even bigger, our hard drives will become even smaller. Web 3.0 is the beginning of the end for regular old double click applications. With applications on the Internet, OS compatibility will no longer be a problem. It will all depend on the browser you are using.

Web 3.0 is the beginning of the “new” application in which it’s all Internet based and requires no installation of any kind. Yes, it will take time (and bandwidth) to make this truly happen, but it will happen.

Are you tired of reading blogs? Are you tired of watching online videos? Well I’m not, but for those who are, Cuts will combine the opinion of a blog and the video of YouTube into one place.

What makes Cuts innovative is that you can pick (almost) any video from around the web and add your own text commentary, goofy sound clips (most…I mean all get annoying fast), and some very small video editing tools to the video. The video cut you created is completely embeddable and works just the same as any other online video.

Creating you own cut is as easy as dragging and dropping, but don’t expect to whip up a cut in a couple of minutes. Like video editing, it can take some time to get the timing just right on a video (if that makes any sense).

The design of Cuts is simple yet useful and for the most part is pretty quick in both loading and editing.

Cuts is not for the avid movie/video editor, but more for the avid YouTube watcher. If Cuts were to add more video editing tools, applications like iMovie might need to watch their backs. I believe Cuts is beginning of the “Web 3.0″ era. What is “Web 3.0″? It will soon be revealed…

I was recently invited to the Spotback beta rating system and I thought it was a cool idea. After incorporating a little snippet of code into my blog I had the rating system up. I have encountered some bugs (safari/cookie problems), which I expect to be extinguished in the near future.

Anyone can rate my blog posts so go and try it! (Grab the little circle at the bottom of this post to the left or right depending on how much you like/dislike this post)

To learn more about Spotback, click here.

Chumby? Yes a Chumby, and I have no clue of why it’s called that, but think of as a really nifty (who uses “nifty” anymore) alarm clock that does more than just wake you up in the morning. A Chumby is like mini computer that is always connected to the internet and is constantly “feeding” the owner information (pictures, weather, news, etc.), which sound like a great idea.

The Chumby looks like a pillow with a screen on it (kind of feminine looking). It also has a USB port, power port, and two other mysterious looking ports. Will this pillow look, attract the little kiddies too? Cause it sure will deter some of the older kiddies.

The biggest problem I believe Chumby Industries will have is releasing the Chumby to the general public. They keep moving the release date to a later time, which is a sign of a problem ($$$). The Chumby doesn’t look too complicated, it’s just a screen and a battery glued together (with some other components in the pillow).

If Chumby Industries does end up releasing this, how will they promote it? The really expensive (said to be in the $150-$200 price range) alarm clock/note pad or even the really cheap computer, might do the trick.

I really want the Chumby to become a hit because it’s a really innovative and cool idea, it just has a few kinks that need to be worked out. The Chumby is supposed to be released in “early 2007″ which should be any day know, right. If they ever come out I will be one of the first to get one.

Here is a glimpse of what the Chumby MIGHT look like and MIGHT do…
Here are some videos of Chumby in action…

…It looks like it can do more that I originally thought. Makes me want one even more!

Verizon for the most part has been a pretty good cellular phone provider and has offered good coverage and customer service, but there is one thing I truly cannot stand about Verizon Wireless…their website. I can’t stand it so much that I am not even going to link to it and here is why.

After you are done typing the incredibly long URL the site only loads about halfway. The pictures for the most part don’t show up for another twenty to thirty seconds, but they are nothing special anyways.

While clicking through the unintuitive site looking for the Vista driver for your KRZR, you encounter rollover buttons and banners all over the place and you end up confused. Should I click music? Oh no, why is this video playing. I’ll just go back. No, it’s not loading the page anymore…angry.

Yes I know this post sound very one sided and it is. I just wish they would put as much time as they do trying to get news customers, on their existing ones. Verizon has the most customers in the United States so shouldn’t they have a well designed and understandable site. Let’s hope we will see a site update before I go crazy.

L0R3N

What is Verizon doing with all of the text messaging money they get every month? Maybe they could put it toward a new website?

I never found that Vista driver, I guess its coming in April, not.

I have been busy expanding this site and a few other sites over the past week. My newest additions and re-releases are:

R3FRESH.com - An Internet Fads Blog

VIDEOVENDR.com - Popular videos of the web all in one place

LDMedia - A centralized location of all my new and old work

Over the next few weeks I will be testing and trying out some new ideas and hopefully will be updating each one as often as possible.