JeffHester.net

Google Docs is making it really easy to share work and collaborate online, and they’ve just announced a new feature that seems like a no-brainer: embeddable presentations. You’ve been able to create or upload Powerpoint presentations to Google Docs for some time now, but embedding in a page (or a blog entry) makes so much sense, you wonder why this wasn’t done earlier!

Here’s an example:

To embed a presentation, you must first “publish” it, making it visible to anyone on the Internet. Now during the publish process, you’ll be given the direct link to the full presentation, as well as the embed code for this new, mini-view mode.

I will admit, I like Flickr a lot. I like the convenience, the tagging and the social nature of the comments. My enthusiasm for Flickr has rubbed off on a number of you, too.

But one of the things that has always been frustrating was the inability to upload large numbers of photos in a batch. That changed a few months ago when Flickr introduced their new Flash-based upload page, but I still prefer Flickr Uploadr. This handy desktop application let’s you drag-and-drop as many photos as you like and send them all en masse. For anyone sharing large number of files, the Uploadr is invaluable.

The current version of the Flickr Uploadr 2.5 is great, but it’s not without limitations. It let’s you edit titles and descriptions, but only after uploading, which isn’t really the best situation.

Fortunately, the new Flickr Uploadr 3.0 beta fixes those limitations. Now you can upload in batches, and still edit titles, descriptions and most of the other editable fields associated with a photo — all before you upload.

The new Flickr Uploadr is available for both Windows and OSX. I downloaded the Windows version on my XP machine, and gave it a try. In my initial tests, everything worked flawlessly. It is beta software, so it’s likely to have some bugs still, but if you’re a Flickr fan, give it a try!

For a more detailed review, check out Christina Warren’s notes over at Download Squad.  

One other quick note for Flickr fans: be sure to check out BigHugeLabs Flickr DNA webapp. It’s fun!

Tech investor Yossi Vardi spoke recently at TechCrunch40. Vardi is perhaps best known for being the original investor in instant messaging pioneer ICQ. Michael Arrington describes Yossi as someone who invests in people, not business plans.

To help make his point and establish his philosophy for investment, Vardi quoted Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 speech at the Sorbonne:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs and business provocateurs.

Scott Robbin has created a great little Twitter bot that lets you use Twitter to send you SMS reminders. Timer allows you to setup a reminder by sending a direct message to the bot, in the format:

d timer [# of minutes until reminder] [your message]

This is a clever and useful Twitter bot, but still leaves a few things to be desired. My main complaint is that the timer only understands minutes. Many times, I might want a reminder for days or weeks in the future.

I’d love to see Timer use a syntax similar to gootodo.com, which allows scheduling reminders for days, weeks or even months in advance. It would be simple enough to do; the format could be something like this:

d timer [# of units until reminder][m/d/w] [your message]

If the unit designator is left off, minutes could be implied (allowing backward compatibility).

via Lifehacker

Happy Fourth of July (for those of you stateside). In a couple weeks I’ll be heading to San Francisco for the second WordCamp. Yeah, it’s a geek-fest of sorts–a chance for low-profile bloggers like me rub elbows with some high profile bloggers like Om Malik, Matt Cutts and Dave Winer. If you’re lucky, maybe some of their blogging goodness will rub off on me.

I love San Francisco, and I’m going to use the opportunity to also stop by San Jose for a visit with Dave, a long-time BigBlueBall staffer who is currently an intern at IBM. And I get to visit my mom in North Beach. A good weekend all-around.

If you are heading to WordCamp, drop me a line.

The AOL Instant Messenger developers have had some fun with the AIM API, creating a network link for Google Earth that shows live AIM chat activity. It’s interesting to see where the AIM users are, and who they are chatting with.

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Have you noticed the search results in Google degrading? I find more and more garbage web sites in the results. Sure the top results are usually pretty decent, but some are way off the mark. The problem is, no matter how often the smart people at Google tweak their PR algorhythm, there is an entire army of SEO experts looking to game the system as they try to get on the first page of results. And many of the web sites playing the SEO game are unfortunately pretty lame.

Enter Mahalo. The Hawaiian word for “thank you,” Mahalo bills itself as a human-powered search engine. The value proposition? The search results have all been screened by human editors, ensuring you get just the really good web sites.

In their own words:

Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven’t yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.

Mahalo has only just launched their alpha today. According to CEO Jason Calacanis, they served 100,000 pages in the first hour of operation.

The idea is appealing, for sure. I took it for a quick spin, of course, testing to see if any of my web sites turned up. First I tried searching for instant messaging, only to be told ‘Oops! We haven’t hand-written a result page for “instant messaging” yet.’ Instead, I’m presented with the option to be notified when they do create their own results page, and a list of (what else?) Google’s search results. Back to square one.

Okay, next I tried “windows live messenger” with the same lack of of hand-crafted results. Hmmm…

They claim they are starting by going after the top terms. Obviously(?) I’m not hitting the top terms yet.

I try searching for the popular VoIP app Skype, and finally hit paydirt!

The results were decent. Without heavy analysis, they seemed to be a streamlined version of what you’d find on the first page of Google’s own search results for skype, plus a few recent Skype news stories (courtesy of Google News).

Each of their hand-written pages also includes a message board, allowing you to discuss what is or isn’t on the page. And you can see who at Mahalo wrote the page. The Skype page, for instance, was written by Dave from Los Angeles. He’s written a bunch of other Mahalo results pages, too. Sadly, Dave hasn’t included a link to BigBlueBall. Fortunately, I can recommend a link, too.

I checked the Skype results message board, but was promptly told that I had to login to participate on the message board. Ok, that means creating an account. So now, I’m User ID 342, a.k.a. Jeff.

What do you think of Mahalo, both in concept and execution? Could Mahalo, or something like it, supplant Google someday? And “Mahalo” for your comments!

UPDATE:  BigBlueBall is on Mahalo! The BigBlueBall AIM Center made The Mahalo Top 7 for AOL Instant Messenger.

What is Joost? It’s high-definition TV, streaming over the internet. Created by the founders of Skype and Kazaa, it uses similar technological concepts for boosting performance.

Right now, the channels are somewhat limited, but if you’ve got the hardware to support Joost, you might want to check it out. And if you want to check it out, I just so happen to have three invites to the private beta.

Leave me a comment if you’re interested (you’ll get extra points for creativity!).

Yeah, after thirty days, it’s not exactly new, but Justin.tv is still more fun that YouTube.

I know, I know. Some of you just don’t get it. I’m not sure anyone really does. Twitter may be nothing more than a cathartic release of pent up thoughts. Or a fad. Or maybe a complete waste of time.

Regardless of where you stand, Michael Agger has written an interesting little article at Slate titled What Are You Doing? The Allure of Twitter, the Latest Web Sensation. I still prefer Jaiku over Twitter, but the Twitter is where the people are.

Of course, if you check my Twitter archive, you’ll notice a downward participation trend. Maybe the wave has crested?