Beyond that, another web site which I had a substantial part in building (but that was done outside of Threshold) is now up and live. It’s for a toy company called Mighty World. You can get to it from my website as well.

Digsby is an internet messenger program comparable to MSN’s Live Messenger or AOL’s AIM. In fact, it’s not just comparable to these programs, but works as a replacement for them. Digsby allows you to sign into all the major messenger services (AOL, MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo, ICQ {for those of you who remember ICQ}, and Jabber). It can also be set up to give you e-mail notifications for your Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail, as well as any POP server based e-mail that you may specify. Finally, it allows you to sign into Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace and receive updates and notifications for those social network services.

These capabilities by themselves don’t necessarily set Digsby apart. A program called Trillian has been around for years that allowed you to have one contact list for all your messenger accounts. Another messenger called Pidgin later came on the scene with the basic same abilities, adding support for Google Talk and MySpace messenger. I don’t know if those programs ever let you check any POP server mail account, so Digsby has an edge there, but a couple of other functions that really set it apart.

For one, Digsby is the first free messenger through which you can access all your major messenger accounts that has web cam support. So for those of you out there that want to run a cam, but don’t want to have four different messengers running all the time, Digsby is the choice for you.

Second, and this is really cool, Digsby allows you to embed a widget on any webpage through which a visitor to that page can talk to you live. They don’t have to install a thing (well…they do have to have Adobe Shockwave running on their machine, but apparently 200 million users out there already have it installed). They just browse to the web page where the widget lives. They click on it and can start chatting with you live.

It opens up all sorts of new possibilities for web businesses working on a budget. Did you want to have a live assistance area on your website, where visitors can chat with you? Well, now you can just download and install Digsby, and then run through the simple process of building your widget and embedding the tiny chunk of code Digsby generates into your webage. If you want to add the Widget to Facebook, it’s even more simple. When you set up your Facebook service in Digsby’s preferences, it asks you if you want to add the widget to your profile. It then behaves like any other Facebook app.

Sound cool? You can try it out right now without any downloading. I’ve already installed the widget on my portfolio website at gurustump.com (check the right column under latest additions), and on my facebook profile (left column this time). All you have to do is click in the text-entry field and start typing. If I’m listed as online, it’s a good bet I’ll respond.

So there is a first introduction to Digsby. It is apparently getting a lot of buzz and users out there on the interwebs right now, even though it’s only been in public beta for a few days. It’s already very customizable, but look for it to get mroe features and updates as time goes on.

GuruStump.com – Web Design

Enjoy your visit, and also enjoy the other sites this page will take you to.

I invite you to go check it out. Of special interest to me is the movie “Release,” which features a younger, much skinnier me in the lead role. Feel free to watch it and then relentlessly mock me for it.

Be sure to check back in the future, as I’m sure Kevin will be posting more of his movies as well as some other interesting content to his site.

And hooray: someone is doing it. The name of the game is “Guitar Rising” (guitarrising.com). You’ll be able to plug any electric guitar into your PC with simple USB to 1/4 inch interface. You’ll get 30 rock songs to play along with, at five levels of difficulty, and even with variable tempos so you can learn at your own pace. The first release is due out in time for this Christmas, and I’m sure if it’s successful, you’ll see expansion packs with more and more songs.

So for all you guitar heroes who wish you could translate your gaming skills over to actually performing real songs for your friends, get excited. This game is for you.

I have just finished overhauling the look and feel of my website, adding a load of new content (especially video), and updating the bowels of the site to current XHTML standards. Feel free to visit it at:

www.gurustump.com

For anyone who has recently (or even not so recently) worked on a video with me, you may be especially interested by the Video section of my site. I’ve posted a number of movies there that I’ve helped make, and their quality and resolution are much higher than what you might get at YouTube or some similar video hosting webpage. Feel free to visit the page and refer your friends and family to it at this link: Video Section.

I hope you enjoy the site. Hugs and kisses, everyone.

For those of you who have heard of them but haven’t yet figured out what they are, podcasts are basically the internet version of Tivo. Most podcasts I am familiar with are very similar to radio talk shows: a group of people just talk about something interesting for an hour or hour and a half. The thing that makes them podcasts is that you don’t have to tune in at the time the show is broadcast. Instead, you use a program like Apple’s iTunes to “subscribe” to the podcast. When you turn on your iTunes, it simply downloads the latest episode of the show, and you can listen to or watch it whenever you want.

I have three recommendations for Podcasts available through iTunes.

ONE
This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte

If you’re a technology geek, but you get tired of having to read the trades to keep up with the latest news and gadgets, this is the podcast for you. Every week, Leo Laporte and a panel of select technology journalists get together and just yap about whatever has happened in technology during the week. They’re up to date on the latest new devices that are getting buzz in the industry, as well as the legal, social, and political issues that come up in internet and technology circles. Best of all, they keep it funny. Recommended for all ages, but if you didn’t really care about the release of the iPhone, this probably isn’t the podcast for you.

TWO
Diggnation

The founder of Digg.com, Kevin Rose, and his goofy actor friend, Alex Albrecht, spend an hour each week discussing the most interesting stories that have appeared on Digg since the previous show. They do it while consuming a very large amount of alcohol (which was generally donated to the show by fans or sponsors). If you don’t know what Digg is, see my earlier (Oct. 20) post about it. Kevin and Alex manage to keep it pretty funny, although sometimes they’re just dumb and somewhat poorly informed. This is a good podcast for those of you who can plug your earphones into your computer at work and need something to keep you awake while you execute the daily mindless process your job requires. Be forewarned: these guys know some harsh language and aren’t afraid to use it.

THREE
Keith and the Girl

If you were offended by the language in Diggnation, you’ll think Keith and the girl are the anti-christ and his girlfriend. Keith Malley is a New York area comedian who, with his girlfriend Chemda Khalili, discuss news, events, and just the vicissitudes of their own lives. Keith’s parents are devout Christians, while Chemda’s family are a mix of Persians and Israelis. Neither set of parents has ever heard the incredibly raunchy podcast their children currently produce, and Keith and Chemda often discuss their need to keep it that way. The two tend to wax very direct as they discuss their sex lives, use of controlled substances, violent altercations (though not with each other), crappy day jobs, and often poorly informed opinions.

Most episodes have a guest-host, such as gossip queen Patrice, aging (and often drunken) rocker Brother Love, or advice guru Dina (who is actually just a hick from upstate New York).

The charm of the shows are, in my opinion, Keith’s acerbic, poorly informed but often well thought out, Brooklyn-accented rants on whatever topic they happen to be discussing at the moment. These topics are not things your grandma would feel comfortable listening to (unless she used to be a fishnet-stalking wearing barker in front of an Atlantic City casino and carried a pool cue to discourage the gents who got too fresh), so don’t listen to Keith and the Girl unless you have thick skin and cynical sensibilities. Nevertheless, I generally think it’s a riot, and have very successfully used it to help me through the duldrums of repetitive labor in front of a computer.

A last note on iTunes
If you’re interested in trying out these, or any other podcasts, I recommend simply using iTunes. If you don’t have it on your computer already, go to http://www.apple.com/itunes/ to download it. Once it’s installed on your machine, turn it on and click on the podcasts section. Do a search for the name of the podcast or the subject that interests you. Click “subscribe” next to anything you want. From then on, whenever you open up iTunes, it will automatically download the most recent episode of the podcast that you don’t already have.

Every now and then someone asks me for advice on buying a camera or some other device or equipment for making art. I usually don’t flat out recommend one brand or product line over any other, because I think that different companies make better products depending on the specific needs of any particular consumer. So for some people, I might recommend a nice Canon Digital Rebel, where for others I might suggest a Panasonic FZ-50 or something else. It all depends on what they are going to use it for.

On the other hand, not all retailers are created equal. Buying cameras and camcorders can be a harrowing experience. You can go to your local Best Buy (or your local equivalent electronics shop), of course, and just slap down a huge pile of money on whatever device that the poorly informed, 19-year-old salesperson is trying to pass off on you. They’ll try to convince you to buy an extended warranty for your device that you will almost certainly never use, and that might not even coven your purchase if the thing does manage to break. I would not recommend this approach. You’re too prone to spend twice as much money as you should, and end up with a device you don’t really even like that much.

You can go to CNET (http://www.cnet.com) and look at some nice reviews of comparable products of the sort you want. The reviews might be a little skewed by the fact that CNET gets its sample devices donated by the manufacturer, and has to be kinda nice in what it says lest the manufacturer decide to stop sending samples. Nevertheless, it’s a good starting point. What’s more, once you choose the item you want, you can use CNET Shopper to hunt through all the various online stores that carry it, and find the very lowest price available.

Now this is where you might get into trouble. Some online stores are scams. Some of them sell “gray market” material, meaning that the camera you buy from them will be come in unofficial packaging, without a manual, and without a manufacturer’s warranty. If there is a problem with it, getting the store to replace it or refund your money could prove virtually impossible.

Other less seemly outfits will pull a “bait and switch” on you. You’ll visit their website, see the item you want for about 2/3 the cost you saw it at Best Buy, and you’ll click the buy now button and give them your credit card number. Instead of getting an e-mail with your tracking number the next day, as you would expect, you get a phone call. The person on the other end tells you that your order is being processed, and then asks you if you would like to add any accessories to it. The try to sell you a five-year extended warranty, extra batteries, a bag, straps, cleaning gear, etc…all at what sounds like reasonable prices. If you agree, well…fine, your order will ship, and hopefully it won’t be gray market. If you politely decline and ask that they just ship your camera, they may tell you then and there that they are afraid it isn’t in stock and it will be on back-order for a couple of weeks. The couple of weeks will stretch to months, at which point you will realize that the reason the price for the item was so low was that they needed to get you to buy all that extra stuff to turn any profit. In other words, your camera will be on backorder until you buy some accessories. The bait you with the low price, then switch to a different deal where you spend enough money to make it worth their while.

Reading all this, you might be tempted to just go to Best Buy. It’s close, there’s no wait, and you know you’re going to get the real version of the camera or camcorder you want, instead of some questionable gray-market one. Well…don’t do it. I have the solution for you.

It’s called B&H Photo Video. It’s a great big store in New York City, comparable to Samy’s Camera here in L.A. Where it really beats Samy’s out is in price. B&H will often appear in CNET searches as the lowest or second lowest price for any particular photographic or video device. Most of the competitors with such bargains are too good to be true, but B&H is the real deal. They service so many professionals and sell so much product that they can afford to keep their prices down in the basement without sacrificing efficiency and quality of service.

I’ve personally bought a number of items from B&H, some of which were rather expensive. I have found that they fill orders very rapidly, that they are careful to make sure your credit card information is in order (they won’t sell to someone who has stolen your identity), and they are very good about replacing (at no cost to you) any items that come damaged or with parts missing.

So the next time you want to buy a camera, or camcorder, or any other photographic/video production device, by all means, visit a Best Buy. Look up reviews on CNET or other internet review sites. Check out the going prices on the item. When you’ve done all that, drop by B&H. It’s your best bet as the final stop.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com

A note on “gray market” products:
Most manufacturers make several versions of the same item for export to different regions of the world. The Japanese version of a digital camera might be mechanically exactly the same as the American version. The difference is that it will come with documentation in Japanese, with its menus defaulting to Japanese language, and it will have a Japanese warranty. Now, say that Panasonic exports a version of a camera to Vietnam. Since that country isn’t quite as rich as those of Europe or the US, Panasonic might go ahead and mark up the price of the camera a little less. An enterprising businessman could buy up a shipment of these Vietnamese cameras at a low price, ship them to the US in the belly of his cousin Ernesto’s oil tanker, print up new manuals for them in English on the Xerox machine at the local public library, and still be able to sell them for less than Best Buy’s price. Effectively, the device is exactly the same as the one you would get at the Best Buy. The difference is that the Best Buy one has a one-year warranty that the manufacturer will actually honor, and it hasn’t spent 3 months in an oil tanker where Ernesto might not have treated it with as much care as you would like. It’s probably best to stay away from gray.

Pandora.com is one of the coolest websites I’ve run into on the internet. If you don’t know about it already, just go to the site and follow the instructions. Pandora has you name a song or artist you like. It then goes through a massive library of music to find other songs that are similar to what you have specified. Then it just starts playing them for you.

It’s like a radio station that you yourself get to program. You can even specify different “stations” for different moods you might be in (in other words, if you’re not in an Ozzy Ozbourne vibe, you can always make a new station and put in “Luther Vandross” as the artist that Pandora will find similar music to). When you hear a song you like, you can give it a thumb’s up, and it will be added to the station as an indicator to the system that it should find more music like that one. If you hate a song, you can thumb’s down it so it will not play again.

If you work in front of a computer all day, especially doing work that’s repetitive or mindless, this might be the website for you. Just plug in your earphones, and run Pandora in the background. You’ll hear old favorites as well as new stuff you’ve never run into before.

http://www.pandora.com

As a side note, Pandora’s days may be numbered. The US Copyright Royalty Board raised license fee rates recently to the degree that many online radio stations can’t make enough money to be able to pay for the songs they play. So far Pandora lives, but it may not last.