Micro-blogging with Tumblr

Tumblr. & Linkjockey Tumblr

What's micro-blogging?
Some people cave under the pressure of rigours of creating quality blog posts all the time, so micro-blogging seems to be an attempt to streamline the process.

How does Tumblr fare?
Tumblr is really easy to use. I was up and running in about 2 minutes, and could see myself keeping track of cool links there, kind of like an annotated version of del.icio.us, instead of using Tags. You can embed images, links, chat, text, and video, so it has all the bells and whistles. It would also be good for live-blogging events.

I started the Linkjockey Tumblr site with some other great links sent to me by Richard Belotte (aka the world's greatest magician), namely: Tumblr.com, Freeindie.com, Musicovery.com, Liveplasma.com and Virb.com. Drop me a comment here, or a line on the chat page and let me know what you think of Tumblr.

Today's Link source: Richard Belotte

Tracking free iTunes downloads

itsfreedownloads - Free iTunes Downloads List

It's bonus music Wednesday.

Every week, the iTunes Store offers free weekly goodies. Normally in Canada and most other countries, it's a Song of the Week, but every country has something different. The
free iTunes downloads in the US are more plentiful, and often include music videos, TV pilots, audiobooks and more.

There are also sometimes bonus promotional deals, where companies offer a free song. At the moment, Subpop is offering a free sampler album to download through the Facebook.

Keep track of the free iTunes downloads with the itsfreedownloads site or their RSS feed.

Today's Link source: The Google


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

Where can I get great new music free?

Ummm, how about Today's Blog Music/ The Hype Machine?

This site is AWESOME!!!
What's the deal? People have blogs, and they post links to free mp3 music files. Hype Machine aggregates the links together, and links to, and streams, music from a huge range of these music blogs. I've heard stuff recently on Hype Machine from the Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Bloc Party, Bjork, Timbaland, LCD Soundsystem, Chemical Brothers and more, so the music ranges from mainstream to obscure. There are some dj mixes as well.

Presumably, all the files are all legal, and are used by the labels and musicians to promote their work. Hype Machine offers you several ways to purchase more work by each artist if you like them, but otherwise it's gloriously free.

I subscribe their podcast feed, but they also do several streaming options and RSS feeds too.

It's not Napster, but at the moment, I think it's the best source of great new music for free on the web.

What's the deal with Yahoo! Pipes?

YouTunes: An Example Yahoo! Pipe

There are lots of nooks and crannies on the internet powerhouse, Yahoo. Their latest invention, Yahoo Pipes, is getting a lot of attention. Essentially, it lets you mash-up web-based RSS feeds (from Flickr, blogs, news sites, podcasts, Twitter, Linkjockey, YouTube, etc), and blend them, filter them, remix them, and have them cross-reference each other.

Today's link is the one that really showed me what Yahoo Pipes are all about. Nick Bradbury created a simple pipe (RSS feed) that took the Top 10 from the iTunes store, and got the music videos for them from YouTube.

There are some great write-ups about it that go into more detail, like the introduction from Tom Johnson, the one from Australia's Computerworld about how to build your own Pipe, and the Pipes Tutorial from zdnet.

I'm hoping to have a few to show off over the next week.

Independent BC news

The Tyee

It's tough to get different opinions in the news in Vancouver, as the 2 local daily newspapers, one of the national papers, and the most popular TV newscast are all owned by the same company. As documented elsewhere, there are problems that come with the concentration of media ownership.

Thank goodness for The Tyee. The Tyee is an online-only newspaper that brings well-written, solid journalism to British Columbia. They do local, provincial, national and international news, as well as Editorials, Art and Culture, and the occasional sports column. Their most famous columnist is ex-politician and ex-talk show host, Rafe Mair (thank you Vancouver Radio Museum), who exhibits a surprising amount of non-partisan common sense despite his credentials.

They have RSS feeds and a weekly email newsletter to keep you up to date.