Christopher had a wonderful birthday today. It actually started out yesterday at Golden Corral so that he could enjoy a buffet of whatever he wanted. Of course the other kids got to enjoy this as a fringe benefit of being a sibling.

This morning we set a nice breakfast table for him with cards and presents. He received a wireless controller he wanted for his PS2. He also received a nice basketball hoop stand for the driveway that I spent a number of hours assembling. He went to Best Buy where he spent a good portion of his birthday money on 2 games he was wanting.

Later on we enjoyed a nice birthday cake that Heike baked with vanilla ice cream. One of his friends, Kevin, came over to enjoy it as well. Then tonight we rented Astronaut Farmer from MovieLink.

Happy 15th Birthday son, we love you!

There are lots of Instant Messaging programs out there. They all have emoticons, timestamps, voice, webcam, and file transfer. So in a sense, they’re all the same, and it primarily depends on what you started with or what your friends are using that decides which one you use.

Oh, and of course, now there’s a number of services that are now allowing you to add friends from different networks. Then there are applications, that try and bring them under one umbrella.

But I’ve been searching everywhere for an instant messaging client that could perform similar to IBM’s Notesbuddy or Sametime IM application. These run on their Domino servers and of course, not everyone is privileged enough to have one, so this is mainly for businesses.

What do they have that I would like to see implemented in Y! Messenger, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, etc? It’s their screen capturing technology. Yes, you can purchase the Snagit application and it has some sort of ability to let you create a saved image file that you can transfer. But it doesn’t even come close to hitting the screen capture button, highlighting what you want to share, then hitting enter, and voila it’s sent to the other person’s screen.

Perhaps it hasn’t been in demand, because people don’t know what they’re missing. But once you get used to using it in a corporate environment that uses IBM’s sametime you get kind of hooked on that capability. Imagine, just sending your friend a quick shot of the error on your screen, the gizmo that your’e thinking of purchasing … not by sending them a link, but just a cut out portion of what you’re wanting to send.

By searching google, I found that I can register with IBM for an ID to use their demo client and demo domino server. I’ve already experimented using it with a friend and it works great. But I’m not sure how long it’ll be active, and how dependable it is. If only someone would create something of this sort for one of the major IM applications out there.

Anyways, the link to register for an ID and download the software is http://stdemo3.dfw.ibm.com/welcome.nsf?open . First you register for the ID … simple process. Then download the 70MB+ software. The messaging host server ID is stdemo3.dfw.ibm.com . Once you and your friend(s) are on it, you can easily instant message (like all the others), plus send screenshots. That’s really it’s greatest feature that differentiates it from the others in my opinion.

If you know of some other that has this feature, then please let me know.

- Tim

Ok, since my last posting, I’ve come across even more geek sites to share. It’s amazing how Web2.0 is now producing new technologies like the dot com era that unfortunately ‘popped’. I received an invite through Twitter to Google’s Grand Central which gives you a phone number in your city or whichever you choose. You then assign your cell and/or landlines to it. Grand Central advertises this as your permanent number that never needs to change since it basically masks your true numbers, even if they change.

This is probably true if you remain in the metro areas where you establish your number, but probably not if you move out of the area, unless it is your intention to keep the number local to your former location. Anyways, it has a ton of features like voicemail, call screening, recording, ability to switch to other phones during a phone conversation.

I also subscribed to the paid version of Last.FM . I used to use Yahoo Radio Plus, but this is less expensive and I think it’s better.

I recently purchased more advanced Web Editing Software, Microsoft’s Web Expressions. So it’s the new software I’m learning in order to produce even better websites for my customers.

So of course you know the above title could fit me well. Let me give you a few new Web2.0 ones I’ve been experimenting with besides Facebook and Twitter, which I think are keepers so far. The others…we’ll just have to see. In fact, Twitter has been responsible for introducing me to a number of new sites, including these below. That’s not to say, I couldn’t have discovered them in other ways, but I think that geeky Twitterer’s are really fast when it comes to learn the newest stuff. Also, I believe that they are privy to being quick at getting the newest beta invites for ‘closed testing’.

One is called Pownce, which I’m still trying to see the relevance of. I also finally received an invite to Joost, which seems pretty cool. I was able to watch a few videos and it works pretty smoothly.
There’s also Tumblr.

Can’t say much about those 3 though as it’s too new. In other news, the latest Second Life First Look Viewer supports voice on the live grid, but my wife and I have installed it, along with my mother-in-law. No luck in getting it to work. And for some reason when they released the First Look Viewer with voice, they removed the special lighting effects for the sky. So can you only have 1 or the other?

- Tim