I have found myself using more web 2.0 properties than ever before. I'm going to guess that one of the biggest reasons for my increased internet presence and reach is the iPhone.

Whatever the reason though, I have been thinking about how I use all of these web apps to communicate with all of my friends, and trying to define how I use each one. These thoughts were inspired after listening to some podcast, most likely a TWiT network offering, where the nature of web 2.0 was characterized as regurgitative. You know, people passing around the same picture from the flickr or video from the youtube around for a while until it gets passed around so much that you start handing out the "hello and welcome to last week" and "ring ring" comments to your fellow Internet patrons. Its not a bad thing, its just how things trickle down through users. The other push I had to think about this more came earlier this week in the form of an email. A long time blog follower was wondering what the deal was with the lack up updates as of late. I touched on this lightly in a previous post and put it on the usage of Twitter. But there is a reason for that happening, and it is that I have started using these properties more for what they are intended.

At one point in time I would have posted all that content onto my blog. Pictures, videos, links. Everything. But I have since found more appropriate mediums to regurgitate my findings on, and instead am reserving the blog for original content that can't be reduced to 140 characters or doesn't have a better place to be put. For instance, if I wanted to sell something online I would go to Amazon/Craigslist ect. As it is a community specifically built and branded for that; those eyeballs are there to buy. I too will brand this blog as a place for my thoughts and project updates, instead of the mess it once was.

That being said, I have decided to "focus" this effort a little bit, which means less content here. But thats what things like FriendFeed are for, to aggregate all of my activity and make it easy to follow. Speaking of which, I now have a summary list of the five most recent eventsbeing tracked by FriendFeed alongside the blog entries. I figured since I have mentioned it a few times now, it should at least have some presence on my own domain.

Some noticed the downtime the blog experienced in the past 24 hours as I went through the process up upgrading the CMS that powers this operation. I ran into a little snafu (first time I've used that word, don't know how much I like it) when upgrading the blog's database and had to revert back to my backups and do it again. Second time went a little more smoothly, though its not perfect yet. It seems the Image module that I use to post images on here is broken. Its a good thing I post most images to my flickr or facebook account anyway. But that will be sorted out in the near future hopefully. One plus of the upgrade is having the nice trigger system built into the drupal release code. So now when someone comments, I will get a notification that they have, instead of having to rely on random checking the site to see what is going on. And once I figure out how I want the navigation to be laid out on the page, authenticated users will have the same luxury.

So thats all very exciting, I know. But what is even more exciting, is a service called Dropbox that my beta invite just came for. I watched the video on Digg a while ago and thought it looked like a sweet web app, so now I am looking forward to giving it a spin. I will report back and let you know if it worths.

I thought it was interesting to see what my most used Terminal commands were.

rr-mpb:~rubenrodriguez$ history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s\n",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head

94 cd
65 ping
58 sudo
55 python
42 ls
40 exit
14 su
13 svn
9 svnadmin
8 ./configure

The top 6 do a good job of representing what I do in Terminal these days. Lately I have in there fixing python code that powers some iGTD syncing and archiving. Which I am pretty happy about because I now have a fully functioning web gtd app that adds a nice layer of ubiquity to my system for getting things done. Now I am trying to see where else I can get my data. Although sometimes I think about all of the time I have spent setting up a system to get things done, that it probably actually stops me from getting things done. But really, I enjoy the whole project of making my tasks available where ever I am.

Now back to my Sunday of cleaning up and getting ready for the week.

Lately I have been slacking on my blogging, and its because of the Twitter. And for those who do not know what Twitter is, or are still not sure how it should be used, this video that explains exactly what Twitter is, in plain english. I have found that I rather enjoy the transparent nature of the platform, as well as the pace at which it moves. And an interesting service that makes tracking movement on Twitter, and all of your friends social networks, is FriendFeed. FriendFeed basically aggregates all of your actions on various social networks, and creates on monster RSS feed so you can easily track your friends and what the are doing. So really, it is for other people's convinience that you might join in on something like FriendFeed. And of course, I have. You know, in case you are interested.

Enough about sweet communication tools on the internet. I am happy to say that I took a little time to make a home page that doesn't just say that the this site is under construction. It is just a place holder until I can come up with something better to take up the space (seems like that is always the case). But for now I don't mind using it as a directory for my personal brand.

On that note, I have been watching lots of Wine Library TV. Not that I have ever been super into wine or anything. But Gary Vaynerchuk is just sooo into it that I can't help but be curious. Maybe I will get some stuff that he speaks highly about. Who wants to get down on some sniffy sniff action?

Listening to TWiT I just found out that Steve Wozniak not only loves Segways, and plays Segway Polo, but he also TRAVELS with his Segway. Like, he flys with it.

"He's like Batman" - Leo Laporte.

Love the Woz.

This past weekend I did the same thing I usually do, except I was in Minneapolis. Andrew was shooting the Monster Energy AMA Supercross an FIM World Championship and I went along to have a culture walk of sorts. You know, check out a different city.

I decided to document the trip to some degree with the use of the camera app on the iPhone. I also tried to upload those pictures in as close to "real time" as possible, for a period of time. That way alllll of those people who watch my flickr feed could see approximately where I was at, and what I was up to while I was away. The only downside to this was the fact that it killed my battery relatively quickly, but it was alright.

Anyway, it was fun trip full of good food and good company. Although there were a few really strange things that happened. Including running into Shelby Murray in front of the Panera Bread downtown, and being propositioned by what I am thinking was a pedophile of sorts.

Again, here is the photo set on Flickr. Pictures tell most of the story.

AWESOME! But, having to wait until June for app to start being distributed, not so awesome.

Things that I found really exciting were the OpenGL applications that were shown, seems like games will become a big deal. I don't know how much I really care about it personally, but it is a sweeeet advancement. Another exciting advancement is AIM and the possibility of VoIP. Love that there will be lots of options in how I can communicate.

16gb iPhone came in tonight. Thanks to Tyson for hooking me up proper. And thanks to Apple for making such a sweet product.

I was surprised and excited about how incredibly easy it was to do everything from transfer my existing Qwest number to AT&T, to syncing my iPhone with gmail. Although my one hiccup so far has come with the google maps application and its inability to read in my "My Maps" data. I will have to figure something out for that, as I was hoping to have an easy way to load up a custom map with things I wanted to do in a foreign city and get around with ease.

Still, best phone/iPod ever.

My sister has been painting her condo, and I have been helping. And by helping I mean I get to do most of the painting. The only part we have left is the entry way and the hall leading to the kitchen.

Some pictures on the Flickr.

I just watched a BBC one hour special entitled Ricky Gervais Meets... Larry David and was I so happy the entire time I was watching it. It was just the two of them talking about comedy and their shows and that. Between the two of them, they are responsible for four of my five favorite comedy TV shows. If you are interested in watching it, it is on the YouTube. Or you can ask me for a link to it, as I will probably end up hosting it for a little while.