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Posts Tagged ‘Good Friend’

Godfather of Video Blogging Tells All in New Book: Get Seen

Our good friend Steve Garfield is a terrific fellow and also happens to be one of the Web’s first video bloggers. As part of a series called The New Rules of Social Media, he’s just published a book that lays out a complete roadmap for online video success.

Essentially, Get Seen is a comprehensive field guide for how to produce, upload, distribute and publicize online video content.

For businesses using the social Web to grow, it’s particularly useful, as it contains a series of plans and tools for recording and editing video and building a community around that content.

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The book is detailed without being overly technical, perfect for total noobs as well as for more seasoned folks who simply need to improve their quality and/or visibility. It will guide the reader through every aspect of production, from interview techniques to camera selection.

It also contains a wealth of information on and interviews with some of the most talented and successful names and faces that make up this ecosystem, from Justine Ezarik to Chris Pirillo. Steve also gets into the many tech companies that make up the world of online video, from scrappy startups like Robo.to to the industry’s Goliath, YouTube.

Of course, there’s a video overview of the book here:

Basically, it’s required reading for anyone who wants to use online video for any purposes other than the most casual social interactions. If you’re producing content and looking for eyeballs, particularly if you’re using social media for business purposes, Get Seen is a must-read.

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Positively Social: Blogging & Tweeting with AIDS/HIV

Through the bravery and efforts of people such as our good friend Drew Olanoff and the LIVESTRONG campaign, many social media users are much more aware of cancer and what this disease does to the body, mind, soul and community.

Today, on World AIDS Day, we’d like to direct your attention to a few folks on the social web who are facing lives with HIV/AIDS and have made the same brave choice to share that experience with the rest of us. Read on for bits and pieces of their stories as well as feeds and lists that will keep their struggles and triumphs in your thoughts.

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Shawn Decker’s ShawnandGwenn.com

Decker, who is a public speaker educator and advocate, blogs with girlfriend Gwenn Barringer about his own struggles with the virus and the challenges of being in an HIV-asymmetrical couple.

With the success I’ve had keeping my numbers stable, I broached the topic of trying one week on, two weeks off meds…

My reason for wanting a longer break has been absent-mindedness and lethargy… It’s especially frustrating on the days when things just aren’t clicking in the old nugget; like when I wake up feeling exhausted instead of rested or, in the middle of a shower, I wonder if I’ve already washed my hair or not. This tends to happen after a couple of days on meds.

Steve Schalchlin’s Bonus Round

Schalchlin is one of the first HIV/AIDS bloggers, beginning his blog in 1996. Also a songwriter, Schalchlin put his story into music that his partner, playwright Jim Brochu, turned into The Last Session, a musical about a man’s struggle with AIDS.

In Flash Forward, some of the characters are saying, “The future saved me.”

I remember when I could see my future. And like this character, there was a certain comfort in knowing I had only just so much time and no more. I’m reminded of the old Chinese saying about how a child who dies has the longest life and an old man, the shortest.

I know that that state of mind, of perfect freedom, is available. I know it is because it’s only a state of mind. Having gone there, I know what it feels and tastes and smells like. The question is whether I have to know when I’m gonna die to get there again.

Kenn Chaplin’s My Journey With AIDS

Chaplin is a blogger who faces AIDS and is a survivor of childhood and adult trauma and adult-diagnosed mental illness.

When diagnosed with HIV in 1989, and AIDS a few years later, it was suggested that I probably had a maximum of ten years to live. In fact I did nearly die of cryptospoidiosis which my doctor still talks about with a sense of marvel. It only seemed logical that I should accept the reality, with countless friends dying around me, and try to live into death with as much grace as I could muster. What I asserted was realism some friends took to be pessimism. One I think of in particular eventually drifted away as, it seems to me, she could neither tolerate what I believed to be reasonable thoughts of dying nor the fact that my health was, to her, no longer of imminent concern.

James McLarty-Lopez’s Still Arriving

McLarty-Lopez is a young, recently married gay man. His blog references medications he takes, side effects he experiences and his general feelings about this part of his life.

Chad and I last night were discussing Justin’s passing. While very sad it was only a matter of time… I have been tired many times. I have been weak many times. However, through the times in the valley I have always said “I want to live.” In comparison, Justin too said he wanted to live, the difference being, he waited far too late to make that decision. He was only 24 and ravaged with HIV and AIDS defining illnesses. Who knows why Justin never really sought treatment? Perhaps the stigma of having HIV stopped him. Perhaps he just didn’t want to have to acknowledge the fact he had it. The only person who could have answered that is gone. Speculation will neither ease the pain nor bring him back. Now it’s about remembering his smile and moving on with the lesson of I want to live.

To subscribe to a 12-blog feed of blogs from folks living with and writing about HIV/AIDS, click here.

Also, we’ve put together a Twitter list of people who live with HIV/AIDS and people who medically treat, advocate for and work with HIV/AIDS sufferers.

What better way to observe World AIDS Day than by actually reading the words and understanding the challenges of those who actually live with AIDS or HIV and are unashamed and courageous enough to share those stories with us?

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Like Google Wave for Developers: Real-Time, Collaborative Code Editing

Our startup-minded readers may remember Mike Trotzke, our good friend who, with a little help from his good friends Marc Guyer and Brad Wisler, founded a startup incubator called SproutBox earlier this year.

One of the latest sprouts to emerge from the box is Squad, Trotzke’s gift to developers everywhere – and we mean everywhere! This web-based environment allows distributed teams to collaborate in real time, opening, editing and sharing code from anywhere with an Internet connection.

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It’s also beautifully portable – meaning you can work on projects from any location, whether it’s your home computer, your laptop, your mom’s vaccum tube-era model – any device with a browser can be your portal.

And because it’s collaborative, it’s great for conducting code reviews or paired programming. And it’s a perfect platform for noobs and the poor suckers who have to train them. It’s even got a built in chat module so you can discuss changes as they’re made.

Parts of this app dimly reminded us of Lowdown, a plain-text collaboration tool for developers to communicate to designers and managers, and even more so of How’s My Code, a resource for distributed teams to conduct code reviews and keep all the coders for a project on the same page. But those apps were relatively lightweight contraptions slapped together for the Rails Rumble a couple months ago. Trotzke offers a product of a different caliber altogether.

He wrote to us, “It has a unique approach to realtime interaction that even non-developer types would find interest in.

“Users follow each others actions (tab switching, scrolling, etc.) and then see each character they type. You kind of need to try it out to get the feel, but it’s pretty sexy for instructional or code review use cases.”

Sounds sexy indeed! Like a developers-only, less crowded, actually useful version of Google Wave.

Check out the screenshots:

Pricing is competitive and ranges from free to $40 per month for teams of up to 5 users, with additional user support available for $7 per user per month. And the first month is free for everyone on a trial basis.

Squad supports a variety of languages, including HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Python, SPARQL, Lua and XML. Squad works great as an HTML editor, a PHP editor or a plain text editor.

The startup also plans to add a Ruby syntax mode, enhanced search and replace functions, an offline sharing mode, a show/hide feature on the collaboration panel and project handling functions.

It looks like a great, exciting product, and we look forward to reading users’ reviews and seeing what else Trotzke and the Squad team come up with.

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Dear Aunt TUAW: Repurposing an old iPhone

Filed under: iPhone, Jailbreak/pwnage

Dear Auntie T,

My father-in-law (long time reader) has the old original iPhone. He finally made the jump and got himself a brand new shiny 3G S. My mother in law wanted the old phone, and promptly took her SIM card out and popped it in the old phone. It should have worked. It did not.

It prompted her to connect to iTunes and then tried to get her to choose a data plan, which she didn’t want. All she wants is the essential function of a cell phone with a nice iPod layered on top. Wifi would be nice. She couldn’t be less interested in a data plan.

This used to be possible. Is it now not possible? A good friend of mine, somewhat recently did this very thing and had no problem whatsoever. He is happily chugging along with a data-free iPhone 3G. ATT is giving them grief over the phone and won’t let her use the phone without a data plan, despite the fact that the iPhone, being the original one, is owned outright and is not subsidized in any way.

Love and kisses,

Lauren

Read on for Auntie’s response….

Continue reading Dear Aunt TUAW: Repurposing an old iPhone

TUAWDear Aunt TUAW: Repurposing an old iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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