What happened to the design?

To know more about why styles are disabled on this website visit the

Annual CSS Naked Day website for more information.

One feature missing from the iPhone and iPod Touch is Flash support for MobileSafari. Go to a page with an embeded YouTube video on it and all you get is a broken plugin icon. iTransmogrify! is a browser bookmarklet that allows embedded YouTube videos to play in the native YouTube player on the iPhone and iPod Touch. You can see it in action in the video above. Until Flash is officially supported, this is the best way to view embedded YouTube videos.

2007 was the first year I used Twitter extensively. I started off heavy, lost interest then picked it back up in the middle of the year thanks to programs like Twitterrific and Twitterberry. Now thanks to Damon Cortesi, who hacked up a quick and dirt script, you can see a visualization of my Twitter activity for 2007 above.

Feel free to add me on Twitter – http://twitter.com/the8thsign

So Google gobbled up Finish microblogger Jaiku today. I’m a user of Twitter but I do have a Jaiku account and actually like what Jaiku is doing. They offer more of a Twitter+LIfestream experience that Im interested in but just like Pownce, all my friends are on Twitter so thats where I am. One of the more interesting features that Jaiku does is Jaiku Mobile, which offer integration into your cell phone. Only Nokia phones are supported at this time but here is an excert right from Jaiku about what Jaiku Mobile is:

Jaiku Mobile works like the phone’s regular phone book, and enhances the standard contact list with presence information. It displays the buddy icon, availability, latest Jaiku message, and location for you and your Jaiku contacts in your contact list. It enables you to

* Browse and post Jaikus
* Add comments
* Share your availability based on your ring profile (green light = ringing, yellow light = vibrate, red light = silent)
* Share your location (neighborhood, city, country) based on cellular network towers
* Share your calendar events (if you don’t want to share your calendar, Jaiku only displays your status as “busy” when an event is active)
* Share who you’re with based on nearby Bluetooth devices

Imagine that you pull up a contact on your iPhone and it shows the person is at work based on the cell tower they are on. But it also shows that their last update says “Lunch” so you know you can call. Or it reads their calendar and marks them as busy because they’re in a meeting. That’s epic. There has been a lot of take about a gPhone from Google and I can only wish something like this makes it into there. Even better would be Google and Apple getting together to make this work on the iPhone.

I’m going to wait and see what Google has in-store for Jaiku just like everyone else but if you are on Jaiku and would like to add me, my username is the8thsign. If you a Mac user, check out the Twitterific-esque client Juhu.

I currently have 10 Pownce invites to give away. Just leave a comment here with your email and I’ll send you an invite. Feel free to add me as a friend – http://pownce.com/the8thsign/

The folks from 123flickr have released a new service at host.123.flickr.com that takes your Flickr account and gives it a “dynamic, functional, cool interface”. All you need to do is go to host.123flickr.com, enter the URL to your Flickr account, then it will generate a page for you complete with a URL you can give out or link to. Its a great way to show off your Flickr photos as a gallery. You can see my page here. A few drawbacks I’ve seen so far is that it will only show the first 30 pictures from any of your sets, it will not show pictures that are not in sets and there is no way to go from one picture to another without going back to the main page. Otherwise its a nice way to show off your portfolio to friends, family or potential clients.

Remember the Milk is the first 3rd party web app to make use of Google Gears for offline access. RTM is the 2nd app I use on a daily basis to be given the offline treatment; the other being Google Reader. Since Google Gears was released, I’ve switched back to Firefox just so I could play around with it and now I’m back to a Firefox as my main browser. Firefox 3.0 plans to bring all web apps offline and I’m now seeing how this kinda access is going to change the web once again. My guess is the Google Gears code is going to be giving back to Mozilla to incorporate into Firefox. Now if they can just release Gmail and Google Doc and Spreadsheets as offline apps I think I’d be in my glory.

I’m a little late with this but last week CBS bought one of my favorite social networking sites Last.fm. Last.fm is based on audioscrobbler technology and tracks what the music you listen to setup a social network of friends, neighbors with similar tastes, and new music you might like based on what you listen too. They also offer streaming music based off all those criteria if you have a paid account. Not really sure were CBS is going to take the site but I’m interested to see what corporate backing is going to bring to the table. Since the site is based in the UK, they were one of the sites that missed a bullet with the recent FCC changes to streaming music. Either way I’m happy for the guys that run the site. The site is amazing and keeps getting updated every few months with new features and fixes. Lets just hope it only gets better now.