Sending Large Files over the net with Web, Widgets and Facebook

Box.net



Transferring large files can be pretty tricky on the net. Although you can now send attachments up to 20 MB with Gmail, anyone that doesn’t have Gmail won’t be able to receive the files.

Box.net is a service that lets you store and share up to 1 GB of files for free. There are limits to the free service (such as limiting uploads to 10 MB), but you can upgrade to one of their Premium Services. Social Networking site, Facebook has opened up its code to software developers. Box.net has taken advantage of this, and you can share files with your friends over Facebook.

I’ve posted a promo track from Ulrich Schnauss, who I really like. The file is an example of the Box.net experience, so go ahead and download it from the widget, Facebook or this link.

Today’s Link source: Tod Maffin on Facebook

Yahoo Pipes tutorial - with NHL examples

How to Mash Up RSS Feeds with Yahoo Pipes - MacLife

About a month ago, Linkjockey published a story about Yahoo! Pipes. The link that day explained the Pipes really well, but today's link will hold your hand through the steps of creating your own RSS feed mashup with Pipes. The tutorial takes you through the steps.

It IS really easy to use the Pipes, and get start remixing content from the web.

My goal was to create an uber-RSS feed for sports teams. It would be an aggregation of news stories from around the world. As a proof of concept, I figured that I could pick the two hockey teams battling for the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup: the Ottawa Senators and the Anaheim Ducks. See the examples on the sidebar, or click the links below for full feeds.

Ottawa Senators RSS news feed
Anaheim Ducks RSS news feed

This could have a lot of value for drafting picks in hockey pools. Let me know what you think!

Today's Link source: MacLife magazine

The Police in Vancouver

I saw the first show of the new comeback tour by The Police in Vancouver last night (May 28, 2007) at GM Place, and thought it was great!

The Police have sooo many great hits!
I don't think there were any covers or new material, but they played all the hits and a few lesser known songs. There were some re-interpretations of a few songs, but it helped inject new energy into them and keep everything fresh.

There were ads shown pre-concert to join the official Police Fanclub.

The show was not too flashy, and kept the emphasis on the music. Wide-open stage, with good views even from behind the stage. There were video screens around the stage, which mostly featured the band. Some nice surprises in the staging, which I won't reveal here, other than a percussion set that rose up behind the drum set, including tympanies and a giant gong.

There were just the three band members on stage, and I noticed extra instrumentation on only one song. Lots of energy from Sting and Stewart Copeland, and everyone seemed happy to be there. The band's musicianship was great, and is really underappreciated, especially drummer Stewart Copeland. Their music has incredible pop sensibility, but the song composition is really unique for a rock, pop or reggae band.

There were two encores, and Sting thanked Vancouver and the Squamish Nation for hosting their concert practices. Great show!!!

12 Great Music Mashup Sites

It's Music Tuesday at Linkjockey HQ, and today we have a collection of mash-up links.

Mashups are a musical genre where unrelated songs are remixed together in new ways, often without the permission of the original artists. While music fans are growing increasingly frustrated with major labels, and the bland offerings on commercial radio, edgy mashups are pushing boundaries and generating excitement by breathing new life into old songs.

Here are 12 music mashup sites with free downloads.

General
The Hood Internet
Great Mashup artist that posts awesome new tracks every few days. Highlights include R.Kelly and Broken Social Scene, Justice and Destiny’s Child, and Ghostface Killah (from Wu Tang Clan) and Spoon.

Splice Music
A DIY community formed around mashups for artists, with sample exchanges, forums and finished remixes. Go, go remix culture!

Get Your Bootleg On
A forum with recommendations and links to mashups, compilations and DJ mixes. Registration required.

good blimey
Streaming audio site, with over 2,700 mashups available for listening and free download.

Danger Mouse – The Grey Album
Before he was Crazy in Gnarls Barkley, DJ Danger Mouse was creating a firestorm by “illegally” remixing the Beatles and Jay-Z in the Grey Album.

Q-Unit
Mashup of 50 Cent with operatic hair-rockers, Queen, repeating the successful theme of mixing current hiphop lyrics with classic rock instrumentation.

Mashup Town
A blog that tracks the latest mash-ups, big and small, with links to free downloads.


Mash-up artists
Party Ben
Mash-up artist, featuring The Police vs Snow Patrol in “Every Car You Chase”.

CCC mashups

DJ Earworm
Featuring Stairway to Bootleg Heaven.


The Godfathers of Mashups
Negativland
Negativland got banned and sued for their classic mashup of U2 with Casey Kasem.

John Oswald
Before Negativland, there was Canadian, John Oswald, who made Plunderphonics, which are really intricate mashup albums with bits of tape.

Today’s Link source: Metafilter

Random links for Memorial Day

kottke.org : home of fine hypertext products

If you're looking for ways to pass May 28, 2007 (or any other day), check out kottke's for an aggregation of great links to new, mindblowing stuff on the net.  Some might call it trivia, but I mind it more meaningful than seaching for people from elementary school.

You can look at people's life work in a way that you couldn't before the web, such as: 

36 Hours in Baltimore
Comparing salary vs. performance graph for the 2007 MLB season
Hair Portraits
Winners of the 2007 National Design Awards
Matt Haughey's seven tips on how to run a successful community
Food Design
Projected climate map of Europe in 2071

Kottke seems to focus on links that are odd, fascinating, educational, or ______, but are in some way remarkable .

Today's Link source:  OReilly Radar

Kitten War!!

Kittenwar! May The Cutest Kitten Win!

Kittens go head-to-head, and you vote for the cutest kitten in the pictures. It's perversely fun and addictive, even for dog-lovers.

Today's Link source: Some guy that doesn't like his neighbours stealing his wireless connection, and decides to mess with them by automatically routing their web browser to Kittenwar (with instructions)

20 Productive Ways to Use Your Free Time

20 Productive Ways to Use Your Free Time

Ahhhh, free time. I wish I had more of it, but then I'm always a little stunned when I have a few minutes for myself with "nothing to do". Maybe keeping this list handy will help me take care of those loose ends when there's a few minutes to spare.
Thanks LifeHack! You're always reliable.

Today's Link source: Amanda Congdon

Star Wars paper models

SF PaperCraftGallery

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars movie, today's link is a site that features templates for detailed Star Wars paper models that you can download, print and make at home for free. Build your own paper model versions of a TIE-Fighter, AT-AT, StarDestroyer, Millennium Falcon, or Sand crawler. Even if you're not a Star Wars fan, it's worth a look!

Today's Link source: Boing Boing

50 Tutorials for Logo Design

Top 50 Logo Design Tutorials E Logo Design

I'm always fascinated by good graphic design, and logos are one of the most compact forms of design. If you're at all interested in branding or becoming a better designer, today's link aggregates 50 different tutorials for logo design.

If you're looking for some logo-design practice, Linkjockey would LOVE a new logo. Design a Linkjockey logo in the next couple weeks, and email me your results. If I get a submission I like, I'll reward you with some kind of prize to make it worth your while.

Today's Link source: Furl

Top 100 chart for indie cds

RIAA Radar Charts: RIAA Radar Indie 100

RIAA Radar Indie 100 is the music chart of the top 100 most popular, non-RIAA cds on amazon.com, and it's updated daily.

Regular readers of Linkjockey (Hi Jake!) might know that I love music, but I'm not a fan of the Record Labels' mega consortium. I've made a personal choice not to purchase any music this year from the major labels because of their dirty tactics. Instead, I'm downloading music legally for free on the net, and supporting independent musicians and labels wherever I can. Today's link will help me in this quest.

Today's Link source: Reddit

Celebrating Victoria Day with Canadian Music

CBC Radio 3

Happy Victoria Day!

Victoria Day is a Canadian holiday that honors the birthday of Queen Victoria, who died 106 years ago. In some parts of Canada, Victoria Day holiday is colloquially known as May Two-Four. This phrase is for two reasons: the holiday falls on the Monday on, or before, May 24th, and a two-four is slang for a case of 24 cans of beer.

Celebrating Victoria Day with free independent Canadian Music from CBC Radio 3 or listen on your ipod by subscribing to their podcasts.

Today's Link source: CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

Inside Scientology : Unlocking the complex code of America's most mysterious religion

Rolling Stone - Inside Scientology : Unlocking the complex code of America's most mysterious religion

From 2006, today's link is an expose in Rolling Stone magazine of the Church of Scientology. Janet Reitman tries to seperate truth, rumours, and lies by interviewing the church's leaders, members, ex-members, and critics, and reveal some of its secrets.

Today's Link source: Amanda Congdon - Today's Top 5

DIY Canadian wine tour

Directory of Okanagan Wineries - Okanagan Wine Festivals

This weekend, I'm with my family in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley touring around some of the wineries. This is our third annual trip, and something that we all look forward to. For me, the best part is that each winery has a tasting room, and you can usually taste 3 to 5 different types of their wine before you buy. It's a fantastic way to get an introduction to wine, and to figure out what you like.

Today's link is a comprehensive listing of all the wineries in the Okanagan with all the contact information, including their addresses, phone numbers, websites, email addresses and their hours of operation. The best books on the subject are by John Schreiner, including The Wineries of British Columbia and John Scheiner's Okanagan Wine Tour Guide. Some of my favourite BC wineries from the past years are: Dirty Laundry, Golden Mile Cellars, Hester Creek Estate Winery, and Quails' Gate Estate Winery.

If you've never been to the Okanagan Valley, I urge you to go and enjoy the warm, arrid climate, the beautiful views and the fantastic wine!

Today's Link source: del.icio.us

Evil Mad Scientists Print Candy

Objects
Originally uploaded by oskay.

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - Solid freeform fabrication

3D fabrication is the new computer printer. Create a three dimensional design on your computer, then send it off to the fabricator to get it printed. For a cool intro to 3D printing, check out Clive Thompson's story in Wired about how he designed and printed a guitar.

For now, these Star Trek-like replicators have been confined to labs and manufacturers because fabricators are expensive, and their materials are not cheap either.

Now these Evil Mad Scientists (seriously! that's what they call themselves) have made their own fabricator on the cheap, and are using sugar as their material. That's right, they're printing CANDY! They've made a giant screw, a loopy coil, and a geometric block, all out of SUGAR!!!! Their website has step-by-step descriptions of the the entire process, and describes how they built their fabricator. The Evil Mad Scientists will be at the Maker Faire this weekend in the San Francisco area to show off their work

Aren't mad scientists just sooo cool?

Today's Link source: Buzzfeed

Why Squidoo rocks - "Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal"

Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal on Squidoo

They say that the web is infinitely wide, but only an inch deep. Squidoo is one of the exceptions. People pick a topic- let's say "Greece". Then they create a "Lens" that focuses on their topic in as much detail as they wish. Lenses can include text, photos, annotated lists of links or relevant books, etc. Some people abuse Squidoo for spammy purposes, but it should be judged on it's successes, rather than the abuses.

Today's link is a woman's travelogue of her visit to Greece, with gorgeous pictures and descriptions of her travels. Greek Geek relates her travels with Greek history and mythology, and makes it so easy to get caught up in the romance and the wonder of her journey. It'll be essential reading whenever I decide to make the voyage to Greece.

Today's Link source: Squidoo Lens of the Day daily email

Web 2.0 masses tackle English Football ownership

My Football Club – Own the club and pick the team

My Football Club is an online effort to sign-up 50,000 soccer (oops, I mean football) fans with the aims of buying an English football club.

When you sign up on the website for free, you will be asked to vote for the club that the group should attempt to purchase. After 50,000 people sign-up, everyone will be asked to pay £35 each (for a total of £1,375,000), and the organizers will start negotiations with the club at the top of the list.
Instead of having a manager, all decisions will be made by the 50,000 owners online, including the selection of the head coach, player transfers, player selection, team strategy and more. Of course, £1,375,000 will not be able to purchase a top tier team, but it's hoped that within 5 years, the myfootballclub.co.uk team could get promoted to the Premiership.

This is a really unique idea in professional sports, and I’m sure a lot of people will be watching on both sides of the Atlantic. If it works, co-operative ownership could be used by community leaders to acquire and resurrect struggling local sports franchises.

I'll do the free sign up, and we’ll see what happens. It’s hard to imagine a League Two team with 50,000 attentive owner/fans not succeeding. Because of the attention, it's easy to imagine that the club would at least be able to attract much larger sponsors than its peers.

Today’s Link source: Springwise newsletter

Download the Wu (215 free mp3s)

Wu-Tang Corp - media downloads

It's Music Tuesday, and we have a little hip hop for you. Actually, there's a lot of free mp3s to download.

Hip hop juggernauts, The Wu Tang Clan, have posted 215 classic tracks on their website. There's hits, album cuts, live performances, remixes, alternate versions, freestyles, demos, mixtape entries, and more from 2003 to 2005.

It gives the die hard Wu fans new material. It's also a great way for new fans to check out the Wu and all the members, like: Method Men, Raekwon, ODB, Ghostface, RZA, GZA, U-God, Inspecta Deck and the rest, without downloading random tracks from other places on the net.

I wish more artists and labels posted parts of their back catalogue and alternate tracks on the web for free. It's good for promoting goodwill, and gives new and old fans the best of the old material, that they probably wouldn't have purchased anyways. While the rest of the RIAA is a lost cause, but I hope musicians and those internet marketing bloggers gurus like Seth Godin, Jason Calcanis, Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel are listening. Preach the Way of the Wu, brothers!

Today's Link source: Wired : Listening Post

How to take great travel photos

How to Take Travel Pictures Like a Pro

Summer is coming, and lots of people will be taking time off to go traveling to exotic destinations. Fodor's has lots of great ideas and tips for taking pictures when you're traveling.
There are tips from choosing a camera, filters and planning your itinerary to composition, lighting, and taking pictures of people, city vistas and churches.

Of course, the tips just might come in handy for photography buffs, even when they're not on vacation.

Today's Link source: del.icio.us

Lessons from a Grandmother on Mothers' Day

On Mother's Day, lessons from 'gramma' - Yahoo! News

A touching story by Chelsea J. Carter about spending time with her gramma, and listening to her stories. The world has changed enormously in the lives of our mothers and grandmothers, and there's a lot we can learn about life and loving others from them.

Happy Mothers' Day!

Today's Link source: Yahoo! News

The Best Long Takes in Film History

The Long Take- The Greatest Long Tracking Shots in Cinema

One of the ways that film directors can show their prowess with the camera is to shoot a complicated scene using just one take of the camera, and to keep it rolling for several minutes.

Daily Film Dose has complied a list of the greatest long tracking shots. The usual suspects are here, such as Touch of Evil , Raging Bull and Godard's Week End. There are also a lot of obscure, foreign and new listings too, such as: Old Boy, Children of Men, Russian Ark and I Am Cuba.

Even better, there are links for most of these movies so you can watch these awesome shots in Youtube.

Today's Link source: Metafilter

Plays Football in high school- without legs

Legless Football Player 3
Originally uploaded by T-Bisqit.

The Biggest Man on the Field

Today's link is an article by sports photographer, Thomas E Witte, about an assignment covering high school football player, Bobby Martin of Colonel White High School in Dayton, Ohio. Bobby Martin is a unique football player because he was born without legs, and uses his hands to get around.

As a struggling photojournalist, Witte writes about the process of getting the assignment, his struggle over how to cover this story with respect and accuracy, and the resulting success of his images in Sports Illustrated and beyond.

I think that Witte succeeds because his pictures really demonstrate the incredible skill, athleticism and toughness that Bobby Martin exhibits. The article also sheds some light on the workings of the business side of photojournalism.

Today's Link source: popurls

Drunk City Of Montreal Worker Ruins Bar Mitzvah

Yesterday's news story about "Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo" was awesome. THIS story had me in stitches!



read more digg story

Annoying business jargon that won't die

Get It In Writing: Copywriting - Business Jargon
It's shocking how many words are on this list that I've only ever heard in the workplace, normally by people that are trying to impress everyone. What's even more amazing is that I've heard people using over 90% of these words.Whomever put this list together, they certainly leveraged their human capital and hammered out this scalable list, instead of just going after the low-hanging fruit. I could blather on, and try to use more of these words to describe it, but I won't. It's how many there are.

Alternately, this list could be valuable for ESL teachers/ students that wanted to cover more "Business English" vocabulary on the cheap.

Enough cyberslacking, already! Get back to work!!!

Today's Link source: Reddit

read more digg story

Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo

Yep, in today's news from the Associated Press, Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo .

It's probably the best news headline I've ever seen.

$200 for all the essential kitchen tools

A No-Frills Kitchen Still Cooks - New York Times (permalink)

Kitchen tools are expensive, right? In a great article in the Times by Mark Bittman, you find out how to get everything you need for less than $200.
Mark Bittman tells you which utensils, pots and pans are essential for your kitchen at home, and where you can buy them at an inexpensive price. Even though the chefs on TV have flashy, expensive tools, these are not what they use in their restaurants, and you don't need them to do be effective in the kitchen. You can also save by shopping in restaurant supply stores, rather than department stores and "cuisine" shops.

I absolutely love to cook and have plenty of professional cooking experience, but I wish I'd read this article when preparing the gift registry for my wedding.

Today's Link source: Reddit

Free concert downloads of great indie bands

NPR Live Concert Series



Wondering if that cool new band is any good live? Or are you an obsessive fan starved for anything by your favourite band?

Now there's even more free and legal mp3s to download from NPR to fill up your ipod.
The Live Concert Series has professionally-recorded, full length shows (often recorded at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C.) by the best indie bands on the circuit, including: Cat Power, hot Canadians The Arcade Fire, Damon Albarn's The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Belle & Sebastian, Vancouver's Neko Case, Bloc Party and tons more. My new favourites are Fujiya & Miyagi and Peter Björn and John, and there's a new show coming this week from Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie.

As a bonus, they also have other concerts available as streaming audio, including Bjork, Arctic Monkeys, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Lilly Allen, Wilco, The White Stripes, The New Pornographers, and more.

The audio quality is excellent, and did I mention that they're free?

Today's Link source: NPR All Songs Considered

Ultimate Color Resource for designers

COLOURlovers : Color Trends & Palettes

Colour is the currency of designers, and if you design for print or the web, COLOURlovers will help you find the right colors to go together for your project.

In true web 2.0 community fashion, you can search, submit new palettes, discuss and rate others' submissions. There are colour themes for every theme, style, and mood, so you can find your own personal rainbow for your project.

So umm... red, black and white. Pretty stylin' eh?

Today's Link Source: Webby Awards and Threadless

12 Ways to be a Great Dad

How to be a Great Dad - 12 Awesome Tips zen habits

What does our society need from it's men? How can I be a good Man?
It's not always easy to figure out our society's positive gender roles for men these days, and it's not something that's often discussed.

I have several friends and family members that are "expecting" at the moment. Being a great father is one way that we can have a really positive impact on our world, and perhaps these tips on How to be a Great Dad will help some of these guys to focus on what's important.

Today's Link source: popurls

How to make a ninja mask out of a t-shirt

Ninja Mask Lessons

When I taught English in Japan, sometimes my students would ask me why I came to Japan. I would often tell them that, "I came to Japan to meet ninjas." Unfortunately, I never met a single ninja in Japan. Perhaps it would serve them well to learn how to make a ninja mask from a t-shirt.

Today's link demonstrates this important skill in just 7 easy steps, including photographs. After completeing the steps, "Now you are a ninja."

I just think it's great that he took all the pictures with a Christmas tree in the background!

Today's Link source: Popurls (via del.icio.us)

Web's Top 25 Pranks and Hoaxes

Top 25 Web Hoaxes and Pranks - PC World

Yep, the classics are all here, including:
- the guy on the World Trade Centre with the jet approaching,
- Bill Gates will send you a check when you forward the email,
- the sick kid that wants to set a world record for greeting cards,
- Microsoft buys the Catholic church (and Firefox),
- Bert (from Sesame Street) hanging out with Osama bin Laden, and of course
- the Nigerian gentleman that needs your help with a wire transfer.

There are also lots of hoaxes that I hadn't heard before.
I think it's interesting that people are starting to write lists and histories of the culture and social events on the internet, rather than the history of technology and products.

Chuckles abound.
Today's Link source: Yahoo! News

Best Expo 86 site

Expo 86 (tribute site)

May 2, 2007 marked the 21st anniversary of Expo 86 in Vancouver. If you're interested in this historic event in Vancouver's past (or wondering about that Death Cab for Cutie song), this is the best Expo 86 site.

The site is lovingly put together with an Expo map, descriptions of the pavillions, trivia (Expo ended up attracting over 50 million people, but losing CDN$311 million!) , and so much more. It's obvious that so much love and hard work has gone into creating this very deep site.
Of course, people are drawing comparisons between Expo 86 and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. If you have fond memories of Expo, or are even curious, it's well worth a visit. Something's happening here!

There are additional Expo 86 pictures on Flickr.

Today's Link source: Brian Walks and the Google

Online Oscars for Best of the Web 2007

The 2007 Webby Awards
Yesterday, the Eleventh Annual Webby Awards were announced. This year the "Online Oscars" has winners in nearly 100 categories, divided amongst Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video and Mobile classificiations.

There lots of great examples of brilliant web design, interactivity, functionality and the coolest sites on the net. These are the giants of the web, as well as its cutting edge. As the web grows, the Webby winners represent the inspiration and the benchmarks of the future.

Webby Awards were selected by both critics and the people, and the nominees for each category are also listed.


Note: I'm often asked "Where do you find these random websites?" Starting today, I will list the cookie crumb that led me to the day's site. If you email me a link that is used, I will give you credit here.
Today's Link source: Wired

Free Daily Jazz mp3 download

Free Jazz Downloads - all about jazz

If you're like me (which you may or may not be), you like jazz, you respect it, but don't know much about modern jazz, other than those songs by Herbie Hancock and Bobby McFerrin, and wouldn't know where to begin to learn more.

One of the premier Jazz sites, all about jazz, lets you download a new track from their site everyday, for free after creating a barebones login with just an email address and password. Sure it could be easier to subscribe to a podcast, but where else are you going to get free jazz downloads.

all about jazz call themselves "The World's Largest Jass Music Website", and I'm not going to disagree. In addition to their DRM-free digital music store, they have great articles, podcasts, guides, links and reviews of new and old jazz albums. What? You know somewhere else that has comprehensive reviews of new jazz albums? Or jazz interviews and concert reviews? I didn't think so. Hurray for all about jazz!!!