r3fresh

I Stumbled Across Something Amazing!

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

Define "Web 3.0"

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.

Cuts: Commentary for the Rest of Us

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…