The Mason Technologist

2008-09-24T20:33:00.001-04:00

My Favorite YouTube Videos

I've been playing with ways to embed YouTube videos onto a client website, here's some of my favorite videos :)

2008-08-13T14:20:00.004-04:00

Insane Rates for AT&T Cell Phone Calls In Romania!

Well I'm getting ready for my trip to Romania on Friday. I figured I would check on the per-minute rates for calls. Can you believe it's $3.49/minute to send and receive calls? Well obviously, that's just not going to work, so I had to come up with a 'plan-b'. The first thing I needed to do was to get the unlock code for my phone. I had heard horror stories from others trying to do this so I was ready for a fight. None needed! I just called customer service and asked for the subsidy unlock code and about 5 minutes later I had an unlocked AT&T phone that will except any SIM card. Step 1 completed!

Next, what service should I use when I am in Romania? I had heard of other people purchasing a SIM card in the airport to use. I bought a international SIM card several years ago from GoSim.com but never used it because my data plan didn't work (and still doesn't). My GoSIM card has an Estonian phone number. Not sure why, but it does... Step 2 done.

Next step How can I have people get in touch with me without having to dial Estonia to do it??? I was going to try using it with a skypein number relay calls to my European cell number, but my tests were less then impressive with both sound quality and reliability of the call being delivered. But good news! -- It turns out that GoSIM has gateway numbers for $0.35/minute people here in the states can call a toll free number and have it ring my international cell phone. Many countries have free incoming calls, Romania isn't one of them, they have a $0.10/min charge for in-coming calls. Not bad. So for $0.45/min I can receive calls anywhere in Romania and people here just have to dial a toll free number and then enter my new cell number. Three easy steps :)

I tried it and it seems to work like a charm! I put $50 on my card so that should last me the trip as long as I don't spend tons of time on the phone with work! :-) Off to the land of Dracula!

2008-08-12T18:35:00.002-04:00

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog
This Joss Whedon video staring Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser) is fantastic. It reminds me of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical episode. Check it out and let me know what you think :)

2008-08-08T09:29:00.002-04:00

Mike Nork Featured in the University of Connecticut Alumni Magazine

I'm proud of my brother Mike. He has been in the Peace Corps for over a year now.
My Mom, oldest son and I are going to visit him next week. Meeting in Budapest and then taking a train over to Romania.

2008-01-03T21:15:00.000-05:00

Benefit Show for Save Orphans of Tanzania

The big benefit show for Save Orphans of Tanzania is this Saturday January 5th at Cafe Nine.

The show received great coverage in this week's New Haven Advocate.

Kit at Kitscaboodle.net has been SUPER BUSY making jewelry for the show and has everything posted up on her website.

More news! Father Isaac now has an online donation link on his blog AND an online store where selected pieces from Kit's Caboodle are available with 100% of the proceeds going directly to the Orphans. Check it out!

Giulia Gouge and Shellye Valauskas were on Rob DeRosa's radio show on WESU today. Giulia did a great job of talking about Save Orphans of Tanzania and Shellye played two songs live in studio from her up coming album.

Here is Shellye singing her new song "Box It Up" live in studio:

boomp3.com

2007-12-22T13:26:00.000-05:00

How to Post a Podcast on Blogger.com

Both a friend of mine on Facebook and my brother asked me how to post MP3s on their blogs. I did a bit of research and think I came up with a good way to do it.

1. Set up a free blog at www.blogger.com
2. Record your podcast using Audacity audacity.sourceforge.net (free for windows or mac).
3. Edit your podcast using Audacity and then export it as an MP3 file.
4. Next, upload your MP3 file to www.boomp3.com. BOOMP3 offers free mp3 hosting. They give you the link code to have a streaming flash file on your blog.
5. Paste the link code in your blog. This puts a streaming flash player on your post.

I just helped my brother to do this on his blog this morning: norkinromania.blogspot.com. Have a listen to the beautiful Romanian Christmas carols.

The Mason Technologist

2007-12-15T03:43:00.001-05:00

Your Facebook Strategy: Opportunities of a Ready-Made Platform

From: jeremiah_owyang, 1 week ago

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Facebook, a ready-made Marketing platform, offers a vast toolset (with challenges) but brands must first develop a strategy

Link: SlideShare Link

2007-12-14T22:26:00.000-05:00

Great Graphic On The Evolution Of Social Media

In a previous post I was doing my best to explain Tim Berners-Lee recent post about the evolution of the Semantic Web. I found this graphic on socialmedia.com that sums it up perfectly!

1995 - AOL got people onto the Internet
1999 - Yahoo organized it
2003 - Google made is searchable
2007 - Facebook made it social

2007-12-10T15:09:00.000-05:00

Benefit Concert for The Orphans in Tanzania

My friend Giulia is organizing a concert to raise money for the orphans in Tanzania. The concert is going to be held at Cafe Nine in New Haven on Saturday January 5th. 100% of the admission price will go directly to help the orphans. I will post more information as it becomes available. In the mean time, you can read about Father Isaac's work on his blog fatherisaac.blogspot.com

Here is a note from Father Isaac:

SAVE ORPHANS OF TANZANIA
(Helping the most needy in the society)
Dear Friends"Save Orphans of Tanzania" is a project that is helping to save orphaned children in Tanzania. It has already managed to place 200 children in Good Samaritan families in the Southern part of Tanzania.Because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in astern Africa many parents have died leaving behind their children who fortunately are not infected. Due to this specific need, we felt it would be most beneficial to start a program in order to care for these orphans.

With help from a few individuals in Europe we have already been able to help 200 children providing them with their basic needs.Through the program we place the children in families of good Samaritans so that they can grow in a healthy and natural environment. We are very grateful to these families that have accepted the call to take in one of these children in need. They also meet once every three months in the parish center where they are provided with basic items including toothpaste, books, bed sheets, uniforms, and shoes. With help of local community leaders in each village, we are able to identify the neediest in each village and these are then accepted into our program.

Because the need greatly exceeds our means, needy orphans are in thousands, we are not able to help them all because of financial constraint. We would of course like to do more to alleviate the suffering of so many orphans.That is why we believe with your help many more orphans can be provided with a bright future. You can help give them life. You can stop them from going into the streets and being lost forever. Helping these orphans with their basic needs, especially the girls, will help them from falling into prostitution or being misused by those who would like to take advantage of their orphaned state.

Sometimes I think that these orphans are like that man who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and the robbers attacked him, leaving him half dead. A Good Samaritan is needed to pick them up, clean their wounds, bring them to an inn and yes, also produce two silver coins for their upkeep. You can become that Good Samaritan. We invite you to joins us.

Father Isaac Maina Kirigwi
fatherisaac.blogspot.com
mainakirigwi@yahoo.com

2007-12-04T23:20:00.000-05:00

I'm Becoming a Zune Fanboy

Well, thats not saying much since I've never given into the temptation to get any mp3 player, but this latest round of deep discounting on the first generation brown zunes got me interested. My son actually decided to take his birthday money and bought one off of buy.com for $90. OK the price is cool enough right there, but wait theres more. Microsoft enabled the first generation players to be updated so they have the version 2 software (yay). The install took FOREVER! But it eventually did install and everything is working great, all except for the fact that I tried (in vain) to get the zune to synch with the kids windows 2000 box. Well, ok, that thing is old as the hills, I know, so I'm not TOO upset about that one...

Now we have ripped a bunch of cds, subscribed to some pod casts and even dipped our toes in the zune market place. But here's the real bummer, the Zune software has no way to transfer movies onto itself and there really isn't anything worth watching in the market place. I searched around for some solutions and there are a bunch of programs that claim to transfer DVDs to the Zune. In fact there seems to be a blog dedicated to this pursuit www.zunevideoconverters.com.
But they all seem to cost anywhere from $40 to $60

Lucky for me, my friend Jill (a fellow buy.com sale zune owner) found a free alternative on one of the zune chat boards. She found a post that said to use DVDdecrypter to rip the DVD VOB files onto your hard drive and then use a piece of software called SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) to convert the movie file into a format that the Zune can use. Being in a festive holiday mood, I tried it with our copy of Charlie Brown Christmas on DVD. I eventually got it to work, but SUPER is anything but simplified. They should replace the 'S' with a 'C' for 'COMPLEX'. SUPER offers so many options and so details that it might be a bit daunting to the average person. But me being a geek, I was determined to figure this out. Unfortunately the option to go directly from VOB to Zune format failed every way that I tried (I even tried it on a brand new Sony Vaio just to be sure). I ended up getting it to work by selecting the VOB to MP4 option. I did it at 320x240 resolution and 25 frames per second. It converted a 1 gigabyte VOB file into a 150 mb MPG file, so you could fit quite a few hours on the Zune! One thing I didn't figure out was how to make the two VOB files that make up the 1 hour special into one single MP4 file. I'm sure there's a way, but it wasn't overly apparent to me.

Anyway, I thought this would be helpful to fellow Zunies.

2007-12-04T17:58:00.000-05:00

Social Networks - The Next Revolution on the Web

The Buzz is in the air, Facebook is being called the new Google and the social networking scene is growing by leaps and bounds. I have been reading A TON on this subject lately, and will try to post some links and other internal memos at some point, but in the mean time, two particular posts I think are worth highlighting.

The first is by Tim Berners-Lee, where he talks about the evolution of social networks as being the next phase. First, the important thing was connecting computers together, then Tim invented the web and showed that the important thing was connecting documents together not just computers. He says the next important development is happening right now where the content of the documents are what's important and that social networks are the means to extend that content and context for the information online. (Wikipedia, Amazon Comments, RSS feeds, Facebook and MySpace)

The second is by Shel Israel. He was commissioned by SAP to study social networks and compile a report. SAP has allowed him to publish his findings on his blog. The posting of his key findings are very interesting. He finds that social networks are growing, its way more then blogs now (that's so two years ago!). He also finds that few enterprises are paying attention to social media, but that will change very quickly. He goes into much more detail, so check it out!

2007-11-28T15:43:00.000-05:00

Have you Checked out maps.live.com yet?

Here's the office -

2007-11-28T15:05:00.000-05:00

Three Reasons Why Facebook Matters To Our Clients

The buzz is on about facebook being the 'new Google'. I started using Facebook about a month ago and I have to say its very compelling. I am looking forward to getting more of my friends signed up!

1. New Advertising system
Facebook announced a new marketing program on on November 6, 2007 on their blog:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=6972252130
The new system is called Beacon:
http://www.facebook.com/business/?beacon
It’s a bit controversial:
http://www.wcsh6.com/news/watercooler/article.aspx?storyid=75350

2. $240 Million Dollar Investment by M$
NYT article: http://tinyurl.com/yqddnt
M$ advertising page: http://advertising.microsoft.com/facebook

3. Application Development and Integration
This is a very interesting development announced at the Facebook F8 conference:
http://developers.facebook.com/videos.php
http://developers.facebook.com/get_started.php
Stanford U teaches a class on Facebook applications.
Developed a few that have over 1,000,000 installs!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/19/stanford-students-facebook-application-crosses-1-million-installs/

2007-11-27T21:32:00.001-05:00

Wanna Know What's Playing on My Son's Zune? Check it out...

2007-10-23T16:35:00.000-04:00

Pumpkin Palooza

The Fun Committee put together a great pumpkin carving contest.
Thanks guys!

Click Here for more pix

2007-10-20T01:31:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Video On The Current State of Advertising

The Belgen agency openhere.be worked with Geert Desager from Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions to put together this short video talking about how the relationship between the advertiser and the consumer has changed. Advertisers better change along with the times, or be left in the dust...

I think this would be an interesting video to show to clients to start a dialog on ways to open a dialog with their customers.

Here is an interesting posting on the making of the video
Bring the Love Back blog.

2007-08-17T05:50:00.000-04:00

Mason Interactive Looking for An Additional Web Designer

Mason, Inc. is looking for an experienced Interactive Designer with strong design skills. The right candidate has a passion for inventiveness, a great work ethic, thinks strategically and has a strong portfolio demonstrating a range of design skills. At Mason, you will be a member of a top interactive team that is rapidly becoming internationally known for solving complex challenges in design and functionality.

DUTIES & RESPONSBILITES:
--- Create Web graphics, animations, style sheets, CSS and layouts for use in projects, product development/implementation and maintenance-support.
--- Create sitemaps, wireframes and other architectural documents, as needed based on firm understanding of UI and navigation planning
--- Ensure site design integrity and quality control
--- Code web pages using standard web languages
--- Interact closely with director, developers, creative and account staff
--- Stay ahead of industry design standards and trends
--- Work with back-end programming staff to communicate design to technical implementation.

EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS:
--- Bachelors degree in graphic design or commensurate experience
--- 2 - 5 years experience in graphic design, coding and company branding
--- Thorough knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and HTML editors

Look forward to hearing from you!

2007-08-13T18:31:00.000-04:00

Help The Orphans in Tanzania Africa

As some of you may know, I recently met a priest named Father Isaac Manina Kirigwi. Father Isaac's main mission is to help orphans. Many of these children are orphans because their parents and most other relatives have died of HIV/AIDS. One of the most important things he is doing is educating the people about HIV/AIDS. He would like to get a digital camcorder so that he can make instructional films. He borrowed a camera to make a film and found it to be very affective way to get the message across. He gets very high attendance since many of the people in the villages have never seen a movie before!

I am reaching to my friends and family to see if we can raise the money to purchase a digital camcorder, batteries and extra tapes and cables. The total cost is around $500 or $600. This is a time where a little donation can really go a long way. He will be in the United States for another week and a half. I would like to be able to give him a camcorder before he leaves so he can continue to make movies when he gets back to Africa.

This is a simple straightforward way to really make a difference.

If you would like to help please let me know. I can take payments through Paypal by going here.

Or you can mail your payment to me at:

Jack Nork
290 Beacon Road
Bethany CT
06524

2007-07-14T00:22:00.000-04:00

Mobile Phones As Mass Media: The Upcoming Technological Revolution

I found an interesting article by Alan Moore on www.masternewmedia.org that talks about the mobile phones being the 7th mass media that will revolutionize media communications.

He states that an evolving historic technological revolution is under way, which is creating new industries, new products, new services and, unmercifully redefining or even destroying others. It is more powerful, with greater reach and is growing faster than any other media-ecology. It is the grass roots of the mobile mass media.

The story is in two parts

Part I - Mobile as the 7th Mass Media

Part II - Models For Content Distribution

2007-07-14T00:21:00.000-04:00

Kudos to Walgreens!

2007-05-18T11:06:00.000-04:00

Massive Ad Network Consolidation Is Occurring

The big boys are on a buying spree!

Microsoft just announced they are paying $6 billion for aQuantive, the parent company of Avenue A | Razorfish. The acquisition comes after recent big acquisitions by Google and Yahoo in this space. Google bought Doubleclick for $3.1 billion in April. Later that same month, Yahoo acquired competitor RightMedia for $680 million. Just yesterday, WPP Group acquired yet another company in this space, 24/7 Real Media, for $649 million.

2007-05-17T08:28:00.000-04:00

New Google Analytics Interface

Well, I tried taking a look at the new Google reporting options, but all I got was this:

I will try again later, I think Google is having a few roll out hiccups

2007-05-17T07:36:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Says Your Phone is Your Next PC

I just read an interesting article on physorg.com that talks about Microsoft's research on developing the cell phone to be the next 'PC' platform - a project they are calling 'Fone+'
I agree with this approach. People don't want to carry all kinds of devices with them, the cell phone is going to evolve into the 'communicator'
http://www.physorg.com/news98525702.html

2007-05-10T09:49:00.000-04:00

New Study from Pew Internet Project

Pew has just released an interesting study as a PDF that groups internet users into three categories
1. Elite Tech Users
2. Middle-of-the-road Tech Users
3. Few Tech Assets

Their study shows 51% of Americans utilizing some sort of internet technology (the first two groups above) and 49% with little or no usage. From studying the demographic data it looks like the largest divide was for older users, but lower income also played a large factor

2007-05-09T18:56:00.000-04:00

Google Announces New Version of Google Analytics

The Google Analytics Blog announced they are starting to roll out a new version of Google Analytics. A few of the new features include:

Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.

You can view a demo of the new service here.

Over the next several weeks, Google will be migrating all existing Analytics accounts to the new Google Analytics interface.