Do you watch live streams? They seem to be the new big thing online. With services live Ustream and Justin.tv, anyone can broadcast a live show directly from their desk. But how do we watch their streams? Yes, we can watch them on the streaming service’s website and sometimes on the streamer’s website. But what if you want to watch it on your desktop without opening up your web browser? That’s where StreamDesk comes in.

StreamDesk is a dead-simple application for both the Mac and PC which allows you to watch live streams from all the popular streaming services right on your desktop. StreamDesk is great, both simple and useful.

In my opinion, one of StreamDesk’s best features is that when watching Ustream streams, you do not see those commercials that stop the video and take up the whole screen. I really do not support advertisements like these, ones that stop you from reaching your content. However, Ustream has to make money somehow and I think it would be a lot better for the consumer if the ads were less intrusive.

Price:
Free!

Link:
http://streamdesk.ca/

As  newspapers and magazines get even more expensive and less popular, online news sites are thriving. First of all, online media is typically free to the reader. The reader does not have to pay to read the news. Instead, the advertisers pay the websites to host an ad on the site. Second, online media is usually easier to access than going over to your local bookstore or grocery store to pick up a newspaper or magazine.

Overall, both online and print media have their pros and cons. Today I’m going to be talking about how in my opinion, commenting has changed online media.

The option to comment on a news article, blog post, or video is commenting that you can’t do with a standard, old newspaper. Of course, you could write to the editor but only the editor will read your comment. Commenting can lead to discussion and can sometimes be more beneficial than the article itself.

Comments have also hurt social media. Giving anyone in the world a chance to say whatever they want to is not always going to turn out good. Let’s take YouTube for example. It seems like every day another account is closed because the person is sick and tired of haters, people leaving derogatory comments.

The @reply. It gives people a dead simple way to comment on people’s tweets. I think that the @reply is one of Twitter’a best features. Where would the world of Twitter be without it? Would you survive?

Without comments, where would the world of online media be? Do you think that comments are important?

OK, you just read about comments, why not leave one?

Have you ever wanted ot scare your Twitter followers? ShadyURL.com is a service which lets you do exaztly that. ShadyURL takes your URLs, then turns them into something that will scare the people who look at them. It’s like a URL shortener like Bit.ly or TinyURL, except not at all. ShadyURL makes your links longer, but most importantly, makes them scary.

ShadyURL doesn’t really do anything useful, unless you think making people not want to click on certain links is useful. It is a fun service but is deferentially not a service that you would need to use daily.

As you may already know, Google has recently launched something called Google Buzz. In this post I will be telling you more about Google Buzz and I will also be sharing my opinions on the service.

How is Google Buzz different?

In my opinion, Buzz is not a copy of Facebook, nor is it a copy of Twittr. Buzz is simply in-between. It is not as complicated as facebook, but is also not as simple as twitter. What makes it different than Twitter is the fact that Buzz lets you comment on other peoples updates and it also lets you upload photos. You man say that Twitter does let you upload photos, but it doesn’t. Twitter only lets you post links to photos and has no native way to attach photos. The only way to post a photo in Twitter is to use a service like Twitic or yfrog. Also, Twitter does not let you comment on other people’s updates. The closest thing to commenting on an update is @replying somebody.  The bad thing about an @reply is that it is not connected to a specific tweet, so things can get a little confusing when you are receiving many @replies.

What does Buzz do?

I think Google does it best when describing Google Buzz. Here’s a short video about Buzz:

What do I think about Buzz?

Buzz will not replace Facebook and is far from replacing Twitter. I look forward to seeing how the community uses Buzz and what future changes Google will make to it in the future. After taking some time to use Google Buzz and testing it out, one of its biggest flaws is the fact that whenever somebody comments on your update, Google automatically Emails you. I hope that in the future, Google will give you the option to turn the Email updates off because after a while they get annoying.

You can follow me on Buzz here. You can also read Google’s blog post on Google Buzz here.

What do you think?

What do you think about Google Buzz? Have you gotten the chance to try it out yet? If so, do you like it?

If you follow Chris Pirillo on Twitter or watch his live stream, you probably know about his new website, Lockergnome.net. Today I will be telling you what Lockergnome.net is and what I think about it.

What it is:

Lockrgnome.net is a site running WordPress MU with the BuddyPress plugin which adds a social layer for connecting with other people on the site. What the site does is it lets you create your own WordPress blog for free and have it get a ton of visitors through things like the “Recently active members” portion of the homepage and the “Recent Site Wide Posts” sidebar widget on the homepage.

Premium:

The basic bersion of Lockergnome.net is totally free but if you want to upgrade to the premium version of the site for about $13 a month you can get a free domain, automatic backups, automatic WordPress upgrades and much more.

My opinion:

I think that Chris Pirillo’s Lockergnome.net is a nice website that has kept me coming back to check on what’s new. I find it to be similar to his other site, geeks.pirillo.com which is powered by Ning whereas Lockergnome.net is powered by WordPress and BuddyPress. I think that Lockergnome.net sould definentally replace geeks.pirillo.com as they are pretty much the same except for the fact that Lockergnome.net is 5x better.

You can make an account on lockergnome.net by simply heading over to, well, Lockergnome.net of course! Also, don’t forget to add me as a friend!

Have you ever ran across a shortened URL on Twitter or any other social networking site and wanted to see what website it would lead you too if you clicked it? Realurl.org is a website that simply lets you take a short URL and see what website it would take you to if you clicked it. It is useful if you do not trust the person that is giving you a shortened link and want to see where the link is going to take you BEFORE you click it.

Update: Realurl.org seems to be down as of May 31st 2010. Hmm..

With yesterday’s release of Tweetie 2.1 for iPhone I decided to purchase Tweetie from the App Store. What do I think of Tweetie? I love it. In this post I am going to be giving you my thoughts on Tweetie (2.1) and telling you if you should buy it. However, I am not going to go in too deep on Tweetie 2.1 and all the new features.

The Good:

• Fast
• Retweet feature
• Twitter Lists
• URL shortening
• Geotagging
• Great UI
• Highly customizable

The Bad:

• $2.99 price tag

My rating:

5/5 stars

Price:

$2.99 from the Apple App Store.

The bottom line:

Before Tweetie, Twitterific was my main iPhone Twitter client but now I am considdering switching to Tweetie. That’s how good Tweetie is.

Should you buy this app?

If you tweet more than once a day, yes.

More info:

To visit the creator’s website, Click Here

To read more on Tweetie 2.1, Click Here

Twitter has recently launched a new feature called Project Retweet. Project Retweet is Twitter’s way of doing Retweets and is different from the way most people know retweets. Their has been another way to Retweet and it has become both popular and useful. So basically what twitter is doing is stepping in and telling everybody to use their way of Retweeting and to ditch the old (and in my opinion, better) way of Retweeting.

I do not like Twitter’s new Project Retweet for two reasons: it is hard to tell who Retweeted the tweet and it is not yet supported by most 3rd party Twitter clients. It would be nice if twitter would just go with the flow and instead of coming out with a new way of Retweeting just use the old way and add it to Twitter.com

What you can do:

Use the Hashtag: #SaveReTweets to spread the word about this and if you too have a blog write about this on your blog like I just did. Also, Don’t use Twitter’s new Retweet feature.

To read more about Project Retweet, Click Here

To #SaveReTweets, Click Here

To follow me on Twitter, Click Here

What do you think? Do you like Twitter’s new way of Retweeting? Comments welcome…

Twitter has just posted to its blog that they are beginning the rollout of a new feature called retweet. The new feature takes the retweet feature found in many 3rd party Twitter clients and adds it to Twitter.com. Currently, the retweet feature is only avaliable to a small group of Tweeters so that Twitter can, “see how it works in the wild”.

Twitter has posted to its Status blog advising people not to change their Twitter usernames, passwords or emails at this time. In the post they said that both new and old users may be affected by this.

What do you think? Have you had any problems with your Twitter account after changing your info?