Five years ago I came across a box of Harry Potter Jelly Bellies. I was taken back by these as they didn’t contain your standard bellies. In fact they included some very unsavory sounding flavors including booger, earthworm, dirt, grass, ear wax, soap and vomit. The first thing that came to mind was whether I could get my kids to eat them.

So I took these home and decided to film my kids eating them. In retrospect with the possibility of social services knocking on my door, this may not have been the best idea. But after all was said and done, the laughing, the crying, I decided to finally post the video for all to see.

I decided to have a little get together a few weeks ago. I invited an eclectic group made up of friends that included a cross-polynation of Techies, FriendFeeders, Tweeters, IRL friends, and X PRIZErs along with their kids.

I knew that many people I invited lived pretty far away and along with that I live in Chatsworth which is known to be one of the hottest places in the San Fernando Valley. So I felt I needed to do something to entice people. I remembered an episode of Entourage (Season 3 Episode 2) that really had fun with the valley heat and decided to chop it up and use it as part of a promo video. The result is what you see below:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

I remember last year when a torrent of tweets began to flood my stream about SXSW. I didn’t know much about the conference at the time but it sure seemed like an awful lot of the people I followed were over there. I later read many posts and watched video of the conference and knew I wanted to attend it.

This year I was excited and looking forward to what many call spring break for geeks. But I did however have some specific goals. I wanted to learn about concepts and technologies that were gaining steam and see what new services were being launched. Listen to case studies and get sage advice from peers. Meet many great folks IRL that I’ve become friends with virtually. Talk to people about the X PRIZE Foundation and our current and upcoming plans.

One of the features I’ve always wanted from a Lifestream is a calendar feature. What I’d like to see would be a standard calendar UI to be able to navigate and drill down through a Lifestream. This would offer the ability to easily find dates and ranges that I’d want to look for. This would be good for finding trips, birthdays, or to see what we documented for other milestones that occur in our lives.

So I decided to do a quick mockup of what this feature might look like if it was built for FriendFeed. I borrowed the Google calendar and then just dropped in some ways that you could navigate through it. I chose the full month view which would primarily offer text links, but perhaps the weekly view could offer some nice thumbnail visualizations of data.

My mockup of a possible FriendFeed Calendar UI

Today I was reading the latest issue of Wired. In it is an interview with Salon Cofounder Scott Rosenberg about his new book Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters.

Rosenberg’s book researched the origins of blogging and goes on to discuss how it has become a phenomenon. Wired asks him several questions which include why did he need to write a book when a blog post would do which could have been followed with a rimshot. Other questions include whether he believes blogs have peaked, what impact Twitter has had, and what does he see the future of blogging becoming.

It is this last question that piqued my interest. Here’s the excerpt:

Wired: So what will blogging look like in 2019?

At the end of last week, Steve Rubel (a popular PR blogger) made big waves when he announced that he was replacing his blog with a Lifestream. Steve is just the latest convert to come to this decision. There has been a  long line of folks proclaiming that the blog is dying in favor of the Lifestream. In my end of year roundup for 2008 I highlighted several of those that were predicting the transiton. This included ReadWriteWeb, Wired, and Yongfook who is the author of the popular SweetCron Lifestreaming software.

http://www.last.fm/music/Bill+Hicks

http://www.last.fm/music/Interpol

http://www.last.fm/music/Bananarama

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. All attendees should be prepared to give a demo, run a session, or help with one. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can't be present. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

The Los Angeles WordPress Users Group (LAWPUG) is all about bringing together passionate WordPress users. We aim to provide an environment where everyone from beginners to grizzled veterans are welcome to show up and join in the discourse. Meeting on the second Sunday of every month, we’re super informal and encourage folks to show up with their laptops and geek out. All we require is that you come with a desire to learn and/or share. Keep that in mind and you should have a great time. Update: We've pushed the April meeting back one week to accommodate the folks who celebrate easter. Sorry for any confusion!

author: David Gelernter name: Mark average rating: 2.33 book published: 1991 rating: 0 read at: date added: 04/01/09 shelves: currently-reading review:

author: Francisco Dao name: Mark average rating: 0.0 book published: 2008 rating: 0 read at: date added: 01/24/09 shelves: currently-reading review:

author: Charles Bukowski name: Mark average rating: 3.98 book published: 2000 rating: 0 read at: date added: 05/18/08 shelves: currently-reading review: