Chausse.org

I did not expect to stumble across thought-provoking political commentary while scouring Rhapsody for lullaby albums for my baby-to-be. Then I came across this, which stopped me dead in my tracks:

“Lullabies from the Axis of Evil” is a collection of 14 lullabies from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea, Cuba, and Palestine.

And they are beautiful.

With the birth of my first child about two months away, I’m starting to turn into emotional Jello thinking about the responsibility of keeping my son calm and safe in a stressful and dangerous world. Yet, as a suburban American, whatever stress and danger my son will encounter on a daily basis is less than nothing compared to what parents in war-ravaged nations have to suffer through. I have a newfound sympathy for those images of uncontrollably wailing parents whose children are victims of violent attacks in countries like Iraq.

This album is a reminder that countries are more than just lines on a map, or a collection of policies devised by dangerous dictators. Even in the most “evil” country, people love their babies, and wish peace and safety for them. I’m not saying the existence of this album precludes agressive foreign policy decisions, but it should make people think twice about who really suffers when we start bombing civilians.

Filed under Personal Notes 1 Comment »

(What follows is a message I just sent to The Tube regarding their unfortunate web strategy - or lack thereof)

I love The Tube, and watch it all the time. I finally got around to investigating your online presence, and I have to say it’s mighty confusing. I have no problem at all with your web site being primarily an e-commerce vehicle, but it’s nearly impossible to find general information about the actual channel. Even the links that say “More About the Tube” just redirect back to the store homepage.

Don’t change a thing about the channel, but please realize that you can’t build a community around a thinly branded generic storefront.

If you do happen to want actual information about the channel, you can find it at www.tubemediacorp.com, which - as far as I can tell - isn’t linked anywhere from their “consumer” site.

Update: My comment sent via their web form bounced back to me via email - It’s worse than I thought. This is why I like to mirror correspondence like this on my blog - at least SOMEONE can read it.

Update 2: OK… Even though I got an email failure message, someone wrote back to me to tell me that clicking “More About The Tube” goes to a different site called “www.TheTubeTvInfo.com” - which it does - but which it didn’t do when I wrote this post!

They say when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging… so I’m going to drop this subject now and get back to not blogging.

Filed under Cool Stuff, The Internet Biz No Comments »

I just discovered a very cool new application/service (”beta”, naturally) for managing and sharing photos, called Sharpcast. Seeing as I already use Picasa and Flickr, why would I need another one?

Well, here’s the thing. Web apps (like Flickr) are lousy for “managing” photos, and desktop apps are lousy at sharing photos (Picasa’s new so-so Web Albums notwithstanding).

Sharpcast straddles the two with aplomb. Here’s how it works: You download the Sharpcast web application (Windows-only for now), and you dump your photos in it - via a very clean, intuitive UI. Folders automatically become “albums” (which you can modify later, if you desire). So far, no big deal. Here’s where the magic comes in…

All your photos and albums are automatically synced with a web server, which you can then access online, to view/download/manage your picture - a la Flickr. Any edits you make there will then sync back to your desktop. Cool, huh? And, the really cool part is this: when you install the app on multiple computers, all your photos get synced there, too. So, load up your images at home, install Sharpcast at work, and suddenly you have full access to all your photos - everywhere! It’s all very (dare I say it?) groovy.

Then there’s the sharing aspect. When you create an album it starts out as a “private” album - a good thing. Two clicks and it becomes a public album, which anyone can view online if they know the URL. How do they get it? Welll, Sharpcast contains a very primitive but effective “contact” manager so you can very quickly spread the word about your new online album without having to re-type email addresses, or copy and paste URL’s into your email program.

Finally, there’s a very clever capability to share photos within the client application. If I add “foo@example.com” to my contact list, and he has a Sharpcast account, his public photos (as well as the semi-private ones he specifically chose to share with me) magically show up within the Sharpcast app on my computer for my perusal. Rather view them via RSS? They’ve got that too (as a Web 2.0 app, they’re obligated by law to have RSS feeds, you know.)

There’s also some features involving mobile phones, but they’re limited to Windows Mobile 5, which is a pretty limited audience. They also claim they will expand the whole system to include more than just photos. Of course, sharing audio files this way will lead to a legal death trap, but videos would be an incredibly cool feature. Documents? Hm…

This whole system is very, very nice. There are some obvious features missing (like the ability to sort photos by date - if they inadvertently get imported in the wrong order - a snag I hit in my first session), but it’s very solid for a beta application. A Mac version is allegedly in the works - I think Mac folks would eagerly embrace the clean UI and “it just works” functionality.

Filed under Cool Stuff, General Computing, The Internet Biz 3 Comments »