BlogCadre - blog

Thanks for Checking

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:35:52 -0500

Thanks for checking out my old blog site, but i have migrated to my own website. you can find newer content at
samsaccone.com and
blog.samsaccone.com

Best

How I Spent My Stimulus

Tue, 20 May 2008 22:54:39 -0500

We have yet to get our greedy little hands on our economic stimulus check, but it's been interesting reading about how others have been spending their checks over at How I Spent My Stimulus.

In January, Congress approved $152 billion in economic stimulus checks for millions of American households, intended to boost the economy and avert a recession. Just how this money will be spent remains to be seen. We hope this website helps shed some light on where the stimulus money is going.

Maggie spent $50 of her check on lottery tickets. Too bad she didn't win. How will you spend your check?

Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:37:16 -0500

For those of you who like history and also enjoy hairy upper lips then you will enjoy the daily blog Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century. So what will you find on the site? Lots and lots of hair.

Dear Gentle Reader,
Many of the following pages have graphic and clear images of the masculine mustache in all its forms, both sublime and grotesque. My intent is not to shock or titillate, but merely to inform on the subject. The Nineteenth Century gave us many things, but above all it was a hotbed of facial hair experimentation and this is but a poor sampling of those many lost forms.

I don't know if I can handle all of this facial hair masculinity.

[via delicious]

30 Days of Spam

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:27:15 -0500

To help promote the release of The Book of SPAM, the SPAMFAN will be eating SPAM for a consecutive 30 days -- July 30th to August 28th. Check out his blog. [via meshly]

I-Wei Huang interviews with Star Wars Blog

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:48:44 -0500

I-Wei Huang was recently interviewed by Bonnie Burton of the Star Wars blog and shared the low-down on his R2-S2 (R2 Steam Too). Read the full interview.

(Thanks, I-Wei!)

Previously:
Crabfu Steamworks happenings at Maker Faire 2007, Crabfu Steamworks, I-Wei Huang, Howto: Draw Steampunk Machines

History of Blogging, from Blogger to Twitter

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:43:00 -0500

[via The Presurfer]

Robot PaPeRo, your blogging robot

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 12:38:26 -0500

Chat with Robot PaPeRo throughout the day and it will assist you in creating your daily blog:

NEC Corporation announced development of a new system for automatically creating multi-media blogs. The new system has been developed on NEC's prototype robot PaPeRo, and is initialized when a user begins a conversation with PaPeRo about the events of their day, which the system then records and analyzes. Following this, PaPeRo searches for suitable multi-media contents on the internet, including images, illustrations and music, which are automatically uploaded and edited along with the video recording on the user's blog. This new system facilitates ease of multi-media-rich blog creation.The novel system has been realized by integrating (1) large-vocabulary, continuous speech recognition technology, which converts the speech content of the video message into text and extracts important keywords, and (2) natural language, text retrieval technology, which enables searching of contents on the internet.

Previously:
Just a Wine-Bot or an Expert Sommelier?

BlogCadre is stepping it up a notch!

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:02:13 -0500

Here's the skinny

The BlogCadre crew has decided to step it up a notch. We will begin posting 5 to 10 brand-spanking new posts per day and will only promote 3 of those posts to the frontpage.

This is where YOU come in.

If you think our other non-promoted posts are so awesome that they deserve to be on the frontpage do your part: create an account and vote for your favorite posts. OR, if you think our posts just plain suck, write-up your own posts that you think the 'Cadre community will enjoy and let us decide if you're worthy enough to be on the frontpage.

Check out the blogs of our most active users:

jessi | a person | samccone | noogz | robogeek | tubajon | Stella | Jason Striegel | justin | Mel | Mike T | washtub_bass

All shapes and sizes are welcome at BlogCadre and we strongly encourage our users to participate in discussions, blogging and voting.

Create your 'Cadre account and vote today! You can view new posts (unmoderated) here.

Want to know more about BlogCadre? Click here.

Rocketboom with Steve Rubel on the future of advertising

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 21:26:50 -0500

How do you think the open source, hacker, and citizen publisher movements will effect business, the power of consumers, and big media? Today Rocketboom interviewed Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion (he also works for the big PR company Edelman). He had some really interesting things to say about the future of advertising and the increasing importance of giving consumers a participatory role in everything from product design to marketing.

My personal opinion is that we're experiencing the genesis of 'Product 2.0' where the things we purchase are hackable, mashable, customizable, and shareable and consumers are empowered and encouraged to personalize and extend the functionality of all the things they own. Companies that don't get this will either fall by the wayside or they will need to resort to hocus pocus technology and regulatory devices such as DRM and Patent trolling in an anti-competative, anti-consumer manner. For everyone's benefit, let's really hope they start getting it.

It's also worth checking out the extra content they posted, including a discussion about small publishers building their brand and earning revenue without selling out. Oh, and the crack he takes at excessive product placement is priceless. I like to curl the bill a little more when I'm wearing my Brawny hat.

Pro-Life Blogger Believes an Abortion Article in "The Onion" is Real

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:32:00 -0500

Pro-Life blogger, Pete, obviously must believe in aliens and sasquatch if he believes everything he reads in the popular magazine, The Onion.

On his blog, Pete responds to The Onion article, "I'm Totally Psyched About This Abortion", by writing:

Miss Weber, you have killed your child, which you admit is a baby/human being, intentionally. That does make you an admitted murderer. I'm not going to "condemn you to hell", I'm going to pray for your forgiveness and for the suffering which you will endure when you realize what you have done. Every baby you see from that moment on is going to wake you up to the realization that you killed your child.

(You can read more of Pete's comments on his blog, March Together for Life: Murder with conscience.)

Here are some other abortion articles from The Onion:
Christ Kills Two, Injuires Seven In Abortion-Clinic Attack
Recreational-Abortion Enthusiasts Applaud Repeal Of Partial-Birth Ban

Rocketboom star, Amanda Congdon, has been "unboomed"

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 12:29:12 -0500

Amanda Congdon has been "unboomed". She was booted from Rocketboom by her former business partner, Andrew Baron.

Amanda put together her own vid to inform her fans of her departure.

Some School Districts crack down on inappropriate blogs

Tue, 23 May 2006 12:44:21 -0500

Some Schools Districts crack down on inappropriate blogs

"Maintaining or being identified on a blog site which depicts illegal or inappropriate behavior will be considered a violation of this code."

Now that sounds pretty benign, but can you really control what is posted on a blog? For example, I know we all hate it when Jason post's stuff about Evangeline Lilly. But is there really anything we can do about it? Except maybe help out the Bump Evangeline Lilly Contest?

Lovelines: Words and pictures of love and hate through personal blogs

Wed, 10 May 2006 16:33:10 -0500

Lovelines is an exploration of love, hate and everything in-between.

From the site:

Through large scale blog analysis, Lovelines illuminates the topography of the emotional landscape between love and hate, as experienced by countless normal humans keeping personal online journals.

Using a data collection engine created by the artists for their recent collaboration, We Feel Fine ( www.wefeelfine.org ), Lovelines examines thousands of blogs every few minutes to find expressions of love and hate, posted by all manner of people. When it can, Lovelines identifies and saves the age, gender, and geographical location of the person who wrote the post, and then presents that information along with the post. The entries range from frivolous to profound, offering a glimpse into the hearts and minds of people blogging about their wants and needs.

By adjusting the scale, you can view statements or pictures ranging from extreme love to extreme hate. This site is both touching and real.

Blogger Time: MC Hammer Has A Blog

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 14:12:23 -0600

What's this?!?! Look Look Look - Direct from his Sidekick: MC Hammer's got a blog!

Here's a little taste:

This week I 'm going to hit the weights some more and perfect a few new moves I've been working on. This is a good time of year to workout. The weather is warming up and summer is ninety days away... I like my muscles hard because it helps me execute my moves with more power.

My thoughts exactly!

Post your favorite Hammerisms in the comments.

Site Feedz: Cool RSS Screensaver For OS X Tiger

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:39:56 -0600

Since I'm the last person on earth to upgrade to Tiger, I figured I'd play around with some of the new features and make something cool for you guys. It turns out that there are a few nice hackability enhancements to the OS, including a nice little gui-based programming tool, Quartz Composer, which allows you to create interactive visual applications.

The interesting thing is that OS X has direct support for using Quartz files as screensavers. If you're a Tiger user, you may have seen the slick RSS Visualizer screensaver that's included. This is written in Quartz, and it's exactly the sort of cool stuff you can build too.

The downside of the built-in RSS screensaver is that it only supports a single feed. If you're a blog or news junkie, this is where you scream "boo!" If you're also a hacker, you follow that with "fine then, I'll roll my own."

So here's my own RSS screensaver, called Site Feedz, which can be configured to pull up to 4 feeds, and allows you to jump straight to the article by pressing the 'r' key. Cool, yes?