Charity

My good buddy Daniel left for China about a month ago, and asked me to design him a site so he could easily share his photos with his friends and family. Daniel and I go back to my year at UPS, when we were in photo services together (we took photos for the school paper). He had told me how much he liked my photos and wished he could get the same kind of look as mine. He had a Canon, and soon decided to scrap it for a Nikon D80.

The thing I don’t think he realized was that he’s an incredible photographer.

Anyway, I designed him a website as a very simplistic portal to his photographic adventure in Asia. So far, his photos have been nothing less than outstanding. What’s so incredible about them is they almost all look as though Daniel had sat there, waiting for the perfect opportunity to arise, and took them. Some of them are gorgeously colorful and vibrant, and others are perfectly neutral. Some have incredible detail, and some are wildly abstract.

Whatever the case is, take a look. You’ll be happy you checked him out.

Daniel Adler @ Adlerography

Of course you have all heard by now that Paris Hilton was arrested, charged, and put into jail after being caught twice driving while under the influence. After being in jail for a short period, they pulled her out and into house arrest, letting her hang out at home instead of jail.

Let me say, I was pissed. She, being the spoiled little Hilton heiress, got off easy with special treatment. Luckily, the judge was pissed too– he never said she could leave. So, the judge brought Paris back in, pulling from her house crying (see image above).

Now my friend Megan’s Facebook status says “Megan is feeling kind of bad for Paris.”

Megan, I love ya, but take a look at it this way: I feel bad for her, but in the way I may feel bad for my 5-year-old brother Ian if he were to get punished for destroying some precious family heirloom. But, in this situation, she’s some 20 years older, a ho, and instead of breaking a family item, she drove drunk. I mean, come on. She deserves it.

In other news, the Worldwide Developers Conference is on Monday for Apple. I’ve been Jonesin’ for an iPhone for a while now, and this will start to seal the deal a little more. However, more importantly, Leopard is probably going to be out for the occasion with a few new features.

All in all, I believe this post solidifies that I am a dorkilicious nerd.

Oh, and do me a favor. Keep a lookout here for me and see if you find anything worthwhile for about $1200 or so. Thanks.

The Nike+ sensor, safely hidden away in my shoe

If you haven’t noticed already through the post I’ve made or the new section on the right sidebar with the numbers, I’ve been running. Tonight (well, last night), was my third official run, and it’s been a blast.

However, something that’s really helped (besides running with Rachel), was this little gadget I picked up while at the mall the other day. I had to pick up some running shoes if I wanted to get into the hang of it and I already had an iPod nano which I got for free with a Mac for their back-to-school program, so I decided to go for the Nike + iPod dealie. Installation was a snap– put the little sensor in the shoe, plug the transmitter into the bottom of the iPod, put said iPod in the armband, and run.

My first run was without any music whatsoever. That run passed as follows:

• Ran for 3 minutes.
• Walked for 3 minutes.
• Ran for 3 1/2 minutes.
• Walked for 5 minutes.
• Ran for 5 minutes.
• Walked for 5 minutes.
• Ran for 10 minutes.

While it was indeed impressive for me, I think the most impressive part in the end was my improvement after I had the iPod gear on me. Here was my next run:

• Ran for 15 minutes (1.75 miles).
• Walked for 3 minutes.
• Ran for 15 minutes (1.7 miles).

Neat.

Once you’re done with your run, you plug your iPod in like you always would, and it automatically uploads the run data to the Nike+ website. Then, it gives you cool graphs, showing you how fast you ran and when. You can also add and join challenges with other people to try and race (or work together) to some goal you set. I’ll make a challenge for which to invite people to if there are people reading this who are interested. Leave a comment with your Nike+ username, and I’ll add you into it. I’m not really expecting anybody to bite, though.

This stuff makes a nerd like me more excited to run. Hell, I even have my run data embedded in the sidebar now.

Originally I thought that Rachel and I should get separate receivers/sensors, but then I thought of the ingenious plan to tether us together while running by using a splitter. That way, we could each listen to the same music and get super pumped up by the same stuff. So, a splitter hangs down from my armband, and two cords come out from there, one heading to me, and one crossing the space between us and into her ears. It works surprisingly well.

But, we’ve decided to run at night. We’d be… quite the site in daylight.

Note: the f8 features are actually online already, but you have to visit http://f8.facebook.com to see it.

While I might have thought that Facebook Gifts were going to be the end of the ‘book as we know it, something new and more threatening is on the horizon for the site famous for stalking. Actually, for most of you reading this, it’s probably too late.

In about 6 hours from the time I’ve posted this, Facebook will have released something they call “f8.” I was invited to the keynote in San Francisco where they announced it only a couple hours ago, but due to the circumstances (I don’t care that much), I didn’t attend.

But really, the question is, what is f8? Well, in a nutshell, f8 is a platform in which developers can make “widgets” of sorts for Facebook users’ profiles. This can include audio, video, images, and basically whatever else. Remind you of anything?

Well, I guess it’s not that bad. Unlike MySpace, developers for these products on Facebook have to go through their development process to output applications. So far, lots of companies have been jumping on board, and some of them seem pretty good and/or cool.

(Check out some captures: One, Two, Three, Four)

But, again, this could easily mean infiltration by extremely annoying sources (music players, video players embedded in users’ profiles just like Murdoch’s devilish lovechild). I can’t say yet whether or not this means Facebook is on its way out, but I sure hope they’ve made this development process clean for those not wanting much to do with it, because I very well might be one of those people.

For those interested, Facebook has already released a website for f8 development. Photos courtesy of Matt McNamara.