Go check out Blogo. It actually will make posting to your site SO much more fun. So check it out, and let me know what you think, and if you have another favorite blog editor, let me know that too.

Microsoft has their own tagging service called Microsoft Tag. At first glance, it looks just like any other QR code reader/creator. But on this page, it seems as if it has much greater “out-of-focus” scanning. This has been my problem thus far with QR codes. No two camera phones are alike, and each seems to take photos at different qualities. I would end up with a blurry, grainy photo that wouldn’t scan. This may solve that.

A couple potential issues:

1. Looks like it has to be in color. What infrastructure changes would have to be made, say for a retailer, to implement something like this? Most retailers are using thermal-type printers to print price tags, etc. and they are usually in black and white. Not sure about this though – just something to consider.
2. Is this another DVD+R vs DVD-R, HD-DVD vs. BluRay war? Are all these cool little codes interchangeable? If I go through the exercise of getting these things on all my price tags, and install readers, etc. – is it going to last?

Well, maybe sometime today I’ll get one of my Non-iPhone-Having friends download and try this software.

Apture is a pretty cool little script that you can install on your blog that allows you to link text to rich media elsewhere on the web. I haven’t played around with it a ton, but it seems to work well. From their website:

Apture provides the first rich communication platform that allows people to intuitively experience the web.

With just one line of code, publishers and bloggers can quickly and easily turn flat pages of text into a compelling multimedia experience. Apture gives content creators the power to find and incorporate relevant multimedia items directly into their pages.

Readers can then access these items without ever leaving the page, providing them with a deeper and more meaningful web experience.

I’m using it on a few links in this post. So if I were to say, be writing an article on 24 (which I’m watching right now), I could link videos, articles, etc. to any text I want. If I wanted to define a word maybe with Wikipedia, I could do that without having the user have to navigate away from my site.

I know I’m only scratching the surface here, so check it out.

Remember The Milk is my To-Do manager of choice. I have tried a few others, and found that the various places RTM finds placement is what pushes it over the edge. I see RTM tasks on it’s website, my gMail, and my iPhone. Sure, the Pro account (required for iPhone app) costs ya about $25/yr, but I think it’s worth it. It supports uploading tasks via eMail, and you can hook it up to a Jott account, and get your tasks into your account via voice. The iPhone app supports GPS-based location monitoring. Tasks can be sorted into user-created lists – you also have the ability to create smart lists based on search criteria. RTM has iCal feeds for both events and tasks.

First let me quote their About page:

Vimeo is a thriving community of people who love to make and share video. From simple moments to masterpieces, Vimeo is the perfect home for you to upload, store and share all the video you create. Your video’s quality and security is important to us, and that is why we’ve built advanced privacy options, sharing tools, and high quality video encoding. So whether you are an amateur filmmaker, proud mom, restaurant critic, or just a guy with a cellphone, connect with Vimeo today.

Let me add this: I think there are many communities of people who love to make and share video. Hmmm, so what makes Vimeo special? Let’s see…

1. Looks. Vimeo looks a lot better. It definitely has the “trendy” design style of all the new (and old) 2.0 sites out there. Sometimes, all those background colors kinda got in the way of content in my opinion (but what is this site, if not my opinion).
2. Seems to have better options for me posting vids for just my friends/family to see.
3. Groups. Vimeo lets you join/create groups of people with similar interests. Or I could create a group for just people in my extended family, and we could post home movies, etc. – and only people in my group (who I invite, by the way) can see the vids.
4. Looks. Let’s get back to looks – Pretty sweet, I was uploading a video, and very easily changing all the properties (privacy, credits, info, groups) while it was uploading…and it looked great. Very easy to use, and well organized info.

Bottom line: You may not get some of the traffic to your vids that other video sites get,  but sometimes, that’s exactly the point.

Mint.com is one of the best sites out there for managing your finances. It’s not like a checkbook register, but instead, focuses on linking up with your bank, loans, credit cards, investments, etc. It categorizes all of your transactions – which you can, of course change – and lets you see where your money is going. It was eye opening to me to see just how much I spend each month at Dunkin Donuts. They’ve got a great iPhone app that was a breeze to set up. My only complaint with the iPhone side of things is not having a way to set a passcode or something. I’ve seen enough people request that feature, that I’m sure you’ll see it implemented sometime. On a related note, if you lose your phone, you can just disable iPhone access from your Mint.com account. Pretty cool. It isn’t replacing my bank’s online access for me, since I can’t really pay bills, or see “pending” transactions, but it’s been awesome to be able to see ALL of my accounts at a glance.

Twitter…hmmm…who hasn’t heard of this thing? People have heard of it, but haven’t used it – much less could explain what in the world it is. I use it. But why? Honestly, I wanted to post to my Facebook account. This kinda did both, and I thought, hey why not post to Twitter too while I’m at it. And so it began. Now I’m on it all the time. I use TweetDeck to do most of my desktop posting, and Tweetie to post from my iPhone.

I’m even getting in the game at work. I’ll start posting from work in the next couple weeks, and I really believe that’ll be fun. There are several Fortune 500 Companies that use Twitter. Here’s a great post about why you really HAVE to Twitter. Who knows what this is really going to do in the future, just gonna hang on and see. It’s not like it’s wasting THAT much time!