I know I’m a little late to the party on this one, but I love the SongBird media player.

From the SongBird site:

Songbird is a desktop media player mashed-up with the Web. Songbird is committed to playing the music you want, from the sites you want, on the devices you want, challenging the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet.

Songbird is a player and a platform. Like Firefox, Songbird is an open source, Open Web project built on the Mozilla platform. Songbird provides a public playground for Web media mash-ups by providing developers with both desktop and Web APIs, developer resources and fostering Open Web media standards, to wit, an Open Media Web.

LogMeIn is an awesome Remote Desktop App, very highly recommended and free! I’m not sure if it’s good or bad that I can now log into my Dad’s PC remotely to troubleshoot his problems. I can see his computer problem list growing out of control as we speak I type.

The long anticipated wait is finally over!

Introducing:

Meal Loop has been an ongoing pet project of mine that was conceived back in the fall of 2007. I created Meal Loop because I was tired of going to the grocery store on Sunday trying to think of everything I was going to need for the upcoming week. I was always to busy (or lazy) to create a list, and it would never fail that by mid week I would end up running back to the store for something that I had forgotten.

Enter Meal Loop — problem solved. Meal Loop takes ordinary recipe repository sites a HUGE step further. The magic of Meal Loop starts with custom meal generation. By choosing user specific preferences, Meal Loop will generate a meal plan for each meal of the day, and each day of the week. Meal Loop will also use the weekly generated meals and create a grocery list of all the ingredients that are needed for the upcoming week. These features compose the core functionality of Meal Loop, but is only just the start. There are many more features to be added to make Meal Loop even more helpful in all aspects of nutrition. I encourage everyone to go check out the site and give it a try. If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, or ideas please dont hesitate to drop me a line at admin@mealloop.com.

I read this article on Mashable today discussing Content Delivery Networks and how traffic across social networking sites supported by such networks have increased 5x over the the past year. Got me thinking (granted its pretty obvious) that this increase is just the tip of the iceberg, and that the whole web 2.0 movement, and increase in internet applications in general (think iPhone and mobile web potential, as well as delivery of TV/Movies over the web just to name a few), will cause companies such as Akamai that provide Content Delivery Networks to skyrocket in demand in the years to come.

I’ve been thinking for a while now that it would be nice to have a internet accessible mobile device that you could use as a media player in the car, at the gym, or just simply on the go. Not only could you access and listen to all the media that you store on the web, but you could also access and listen to all of your personalized internet radio sites. A main reason I like this idea is you don’t have to worry about the storage constraints of your device, or syncing your device with media library. With the introduction of the iPhone and other smartphones, this is starting to become more of a reality since browsing the web on mobile devices is becoming easier, and service plans for mobile web access is becoming more reasonably priced. My service plan with my cell phone provider is due to expire this year, and I am planning on upgrading to a phone and plan that will let me access the web. Verizon is now carrying the LG Voyager, which looks pretty nice. While it is no iPhone, it seems to have comparable features that make mobile web browsing easier. With its bluetooth technology you could use this device to listen all of your web media wirelessly through your car stereo with the accompaniment of a bluetooth adapter.

DownloadHelper is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to download videos and images from the web to your local hard drive. DownloadHelper works with many popular sites such as YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, DailyMotion, and others. Videos stored locally are more accessible and available. Nothing is worse than spending time digging through your bookmarks to find a video only to find the site hosting the video is down, or the video has been removed.

If you need a flash (flv) media player check out VLC.

I saw this post from Mashable today (one day after my WebOS post). It’s basically a list of sites offering applications that claim to offer an OS for the web. It seems that these sites have some good use, such as consolidating and organizing different web applications to give a more clearer appearance of an OS for the web, but when it comes down to it, I think they may be taking the whole concept of an OS for the web a little to literally.

Some people may not realize it, but each and everyday we are one day closer to a digital world where the web will be the Operating System of choice. An Operating System is defined as software that manages the sharing of resources of the computer. To associate this definition to the web, we must think of the computer as the entire web. Resources of the computer (or web) are individual web sites that you may choose to visit. The web loosely manages these resources by acting as the bridge between you and the resources (or web sites). When you type a web address in the browser, the web will map the address with a specific device (server), which will send a response back to you containing the data or page corresponding to that site.

So why will the web be the OS of choice you ask? First, let me ask a question of you. What is it exactly that you use your current OS (Windows/Linux/MacOS) for, other than to access the web? Most every answer you give can be countered with an example of web application that can perform the same task. Below are some examples correlating Windows/Linux/MacOS applications/features with web applications/features.

Standard OS: Desktop
Web OS: iGoogle, Live, NetVibes

Standard OS: Word, Excel, Powerpoint
Web OS: Google Docs, Zoho

Standard OS: Media Player, iTunes
Web OS: Pandora, Last.fm, LaLa, MediaMaster

Standard OS: Picasa, Powerpoint
Web OS: Flickr, SnipShot, Picnik

This is just a small example of comparisons between Standard and Web Operating Systems. Not to mention the web has many more advantages, namely, allowing you to have access anywhere there is an internet connection. While web applications aren’t quite up to par with standard desktop applications on every level, they are certainly close, and are closing the gap everyday.

Just to follow up my previous post on Billing Reminders, here is yet another web application, PingMe, to enter the digital reminder market.

[via Web Worker Daily]

Over the past year or so there has been evolution occurring in the blogging community. It seems as though that bloggers have caught onto the whole web 2.0 social networking scene. We are starting to see more and more blogs composed of a collaboration of individuals, rather than just a single person.

We have learned from social networking that empowering users to create content can produce massive results. While this can be a powerful resource, it can also result in chaotic content, even if the content is based on a rating or ranking. The problem with the traditional user driven content model is that content submission by users has no regulations. There are no requirements that must be met to become a user, nor are there any incentives or penalties for content submission. This results in a sort of quasi anonymous role for the users. Thus, users are not as motivated to make a conscious effort to submit quality content, instead, content is submitted without much discretion.

The solution to this problem is to limit user membership based on credentials. In addition, create more incentives for quality content submission, and penalties for poor content. This establishes users in a more prominent role and causes them to become more passionate for their contributions to the community.

Here are some specific examples of sites I have termed “Blogging 2.0″ sites:

Metafilter
LifeRemix
Wise Bread
Cluster Flock