Amazon, y’all already had me at $39 free shipping.

photo credit: Brian Forbes

I’m not going to hide it, I’m something of a self-improvement junkie. For the worse, I decided. I’ve become so into self-improvement that it’s getting in the way of…well…my self-improvement. I find these books enticing because they offer hope, a solution to do things so much faster or happier. But either way, I’ve read a bunch of self-improvement books — a lot from my library, and the rest I ordered from Amazon.

If you haven’t ordered from Amazon before, it’s really something you need to try; prices are much cheaper than a retail store like Chapters would be (although Chapters’ website tries to match Amazon’s prices…weird how that price doesn’t translate to a similar one in store).

photo credit: xmacex

I’ll never look back though; sure, I still drop into Chapters and pick up magazines on occasion — and browse through new kinds of books. (I really like exploring new genres on bookshelves, call me old-fashioned.) However, the convenience of ordering the same book for cheaper and having your package shipped free to your door is just too alluring! The free shipping does take probably around two weeks to get to your door, but I personally think that the savings are still worth it.

(Plus Amazon has a wider collection overall because it sells second-hand, but that’s opening an entire different can of worms because those don’t come with free shipping…I already feel the confusion brewing so I’ll stop there; I do realize I didn’t explain myself too clearly — perhaps another day.)

So, I was surfing around the Web today when I found a very interesting video on the TED.com homepage. “How to Live to be 100“. Basically, we have a speaker that’s explored several ‘blue zones’, and noticed patterns for longevity in healthy human living.

Dan Buettner (born 1960 in St. Paul, Minnesota) is an American explorer, educator, author, public speaker and co-producer of an Emmy Award-winning documentary who also holds three world records for endurance bicycling.^[1][2][3] He is the founder of the online Quest Network, Inc., which provides opportunities for students to interactively engage with explorers on expedition.^[3] In February 2007, an expedition led by Buettner to Nicoya, Costa Rica uncovered the longest-lived people known in the Western Hemisphere

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Buettner

There are a couple of ideas that jumped out at me:

A vegetable-based diet.

One of my best friends is a vegetarian, so I notice the differences in diet — and I can’t imagine myself going through it! Giving up chicken, and beef (I’ve generally given up pork) seems to be a huge step. With that said, if there were progress made in vegetarian substitutes for traditional food, and if this progress were widely available and convenient, then I might consider trying it. “Easy vegetarianism.” For now, this is my train of thought.

A close group of friends.

The Japanese woman that Buettner mentions has a ring of five women that she’s known for 97 years. That’s a long time — with bonds so tight, it’s like an amplified family — when one gets rich, the bounty is shared, and when one gets poor, the poor is helped out. I really like this idea, but I find it hard to imagine, especially in the modern world. Not to say I don’t have close friends, but to the extent where we share our fortunes and misfortunes? Can this even be applied to the developed world?

A reason to wake up.

The most prominent characteristic of these golden-aged people was the reason to wake up in the mornings. I don’t think I have one yet. But I think that it’s important for me to find one, real soon. This is, in many ways, similar to a ‘purpose of life’, which I believe to be very important to a human being.

Check the video out, if you haven’t already. 20 minutes well spent.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100.html

Image: Soylentgreen23

Ever go on YouTube to find a piece of music? You know, that song you want to hear every so-often, but not often enough to download it onto your hard drive. Or maybe just new music. Or stuff you can’t buy on iTunes or obtain by other means.

Face it – YouTube’s really convenient to hear indie, live, or underground music. Now by no means do I consider myself an ‘indie’ or ‘underground’ fan, but I do like many offerings of YouTube; for example, John Frusciante’s cover of the BeeGees’ “How Deep is Your Love” brings much joy to me. Similarly, the Klasix instrumental “I Can’t Help it” really helps me. I don’t carry my laptop everywhere, and it’s impossible to put YouTube on repeat (or is it?) so I decided to download it.

My friend Rohan (at www.yourworldwired.com) introduced me to VidtoMP3.com – and ever since then, I’ve been a fan. Sure, the website looks a tad sketchy, but it saves any video as an MP3 file on your hard drive, all processed online. Granted, it won’t have the best sound quality (actually I don’t mind it, it’s not as bad as I thought it would’ve been – definitely audible), but it’s a great way to get music you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

www.vidtomp3.com

Torrenting is an excellent method of file distribution. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ll probably have heard of torrenting at least once — whether it be associated with legitimate releases (such as certain podcasts, indie movies, etc) or more shady usage (downloading music, games, movies, programs, etc), you’re bound to have at least thought of torrenting at least once.

photo credit: Viernest

I’m not a lawyer. Thus, I don’t counsel you on what to torrent — you’re an adult, so I leave that responsibility with you. What I am here to advise you on is how to torrent effectively and efficiently.

I apologize in advance if there’s no actual verb known as ‘torrent’-ing. If it really bothers you, just replace ‘torrenting’ with ‘downloading using a torrent client’.

How do Torrents Work?

Although this is a relevant question, I find it unnecessary to answer this. From my (very) minor understanding about Torrents, they are simply another method to share files peer-to-peer — meaning a piece of a file gets uploaded from one comptuer, transferred, and downloaded to another computer. The interesting part is that if there is a reasonable amount of uploaders (aka seeders) with excellent upload speeds, downloads will be beautifully quick.

I’m not sure I explained that correctly, but again, I don’t think that’s too important. If you insist, however, I suggest reading the following: http://lifehacker.com/285489/a-beginners-guide-to-bittorrent

Let it be known I take care of my followers. Now, to the juicy stuff.

How do I speed up my Torrents?

Firstly, you’ll need a good source — a Torrent with a good ratio of uploaders to downloaders (the greater the uploader-downloader ratio, the better; 80 uploaders and 10 downloaders will be better than 750 uploaders and 100 downloaders, from my experience). I like using Torrent aggregating websites (I prefer ScrapeTorrent.com) because they sort in order of greatest uploader count (not the same as ratio, but it’s usually good enough for me) and they sort trackers from all sorts of websites. I don’t even know what the hell a tracker is.

But, trackers are important. I’ve noticed that updating trackers speed up the torrent download consistently — so if you’re thinking download speeds can be improved, then right click your torrent and select update tracker (in some cases, this might be under Advanced — it’s not that advanced, really).

I’ll tell you something; a good torrent can hit download speeds of up to 700kb/s (again, this could be higher for some people — it all really depends on Internet download speed and whether or not your provider is throttling you — in this case, I suggest checking your client and I recommend Vuze, which notified me and performed the necessary adjustments). However, typically, torrents hit probably 75kb/s — which is respectable, I suppose. Simply leave your computer on for a night, and it’ll be done by the morning’s time (downloads are faster at night too, I figure maybe because people turn computers off — but wouldn’t this affect both uploaders and downloaders and thus cancel it out? Anyway, ignore that if it gets confusing).

Lastly, if for some reason you limited your download speed, remember to set it as “unlimited”. Haha.

Get your Engines Ready

I know that summer’s almost over, but it’s never too late to start torrenting. Whether you’re interested in new technology or distribution methods, torrenting is absolutely essential to explore and provide an interesting service — one definitely worth keeping an eye on.

I’ve been reading a bunch of articles on how to get more traffic.  And it all starts with the headlines.  And then it hits me — how the heck do I make HostedFTP.com sound interesting?  No offense meant to the guys at HostedFTP.com; they’ve got an interesting product, and a cool name.  But it’s storage — for goodness’ sakes!  So I tried out a rhetorical question — in hopes that if people needed file storage for their business, they’d have a look at HostedFTP.com.  By business, I’m choosing to encompass the entire meaning of the word; so whether you’re a Small-B owner (that’s small business, fyi), or a huge corporation owner, you can have a look at HostedFTP.com’s solutions.

Design

It’s very…clean.  And I like that.  I was told it ran on the Amazon Cloud OS (alright, you got me — I had no idea what it was, but it sounded really cool), which sort of explains how it stays so clean.  The background is white, and the logo can be customized (I’m saying this for those big companies out there — corporate branding, yay!).  The home page is still, despite its cleanliness, very comfortable and warm thanks to HostedFTP.com’s use of graphics.  And there’s a series of tabs located at the top for navigation, and also just six options ot choose from.  Very un-intimidating.  In fact, it’s downright charming.  I think that a customizable background would have been an interesting feature, though — but nonetheless, it’s still an interesting, “clean” design.

What’s it do?

HostedFTP.com hosts files.  Moreover, it allows a user to send files to contacts (bye-bye, slow e-mail attachments), and receive files from the public.  HostedFTP.com offers various options for both — including file limit sizes from the public.  They also warn you that you never know who’s really trying to send you that file — so buyer beware.

I was kind of disappointed with its previewing though — thumbnails didn’t work for my .doc files, nor did my media stream when I uploaded a .mp3 file.  I expected Amazon’s Cloud OS to be able to do more — but perhaps I overestimated it (it sounded really darn promising).

For slower connections (like my own — hey, I’m not particularly slow, its just that corporations can afford faster Internet), HostedFTP.com offers a “stripped-down” HTML version — and for the speed demons, you can run the Java applet.  I had a bit of trouble with the Java applet, so I tended to stick with HTML.

Speed

A 29-page Word 2003 .doc file, uploaded.  Just like that.  Probably in…two seconds.  No joke.  I was impressed, alright.  I was tempted to upload a Windows 7 beta .iso file on there, but I decided against it (I hear rumours of Rogers limiting uploading/downloading, so I’ve grown a bit paranoid — I think it’s just a phase though).

This is a pleasant change from the pain that attaching files can bring — even in Gmail, my favourite e-mail service, uploading files can take a while (again, depends on the connection).  HostedFTP.com manages to speed things up and remove the storage limit — huzzah!

But would I pay for it?

Hm, if I were a corporate business owner, I would.  If I were a small-business owner, I might not.

The fees aren’t outrageously expensive, but these services — although great — are still a bit on the “luxury” side.  If I were a small-business owner (heck, I am — anyone heard of CutEdge.org?), I’d be trying to reduce my fees, and so I’d learn to live with the slow attachments of free e-mail.  But with big businesses, every second counts — so I’d feel that the trade-off is worth it.  Plus, when I’m in big business, I can afford it (hopefully).

I just got three packages of Energizer Advanced Lithium batteries, which Energizer claims lasts 4x longer in digital cameras vs. Energizer MAX batteries.  Now initially, I was hoping to give these batteries a test — against Energizer MAX AA batteries.  Both single-use, but very different science-wise (boy, don’t get me started).

You might be wondering why I’d get three sets of batteries in the mail — it’s actually because Energizer is running a campaign to promote the new discussion forums it has set up on Pandora (ya know, revolutionary Internet radio site).  Now, I don’t want people thinking that they bought me over with the batteries (hm, they kind of did, didn’t they?) — I was initially planning to test the batteries, but because their promotion is ending in a couple of weeks I wanted to throw it out there.

Why didn’t I post a review with this short post?  Thing is, I don’t expect the Energizer MAX or Energizer Advanced Lithium batteries to die any time soon.  Matter of fact, I’ve been using the same couple of AA Energizer MAX batteries in my Canon SD750 (the one I take my review photos with) for a couple of months already.  I’ll estimate that’s been around 200-300 photos (a bit modest of an estimate, 350 would be generous).  If this is true, then the AA Energizer Advanced Lithium batteries should last me for more than 1,000 photos.  I haven’t even shot 1,000 photos yet.

And so, in order to take it slow like I prefer to (while remaining in good conscience), I will suggest you guys have a look at Energizer’s Pandora Forum.  Although I’m not allowed into Pandora, technically-speaking (I’m Canadian), I have been on (when I visited an uncle and aunt in the States, but also using Hotspot Shield) and I can say that it’s quite the interesting tool to use.

This does officially commence the beginning of a long trial of tests though.  Let the Energizer MAX vs. Energizer Advanced Lithium battle of the batteries begin!

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it nearly impossible to decide on a profile picture.  Nowadays, it’s important to convey just enough to give other people a sense of who you are, without overdoing it on those special effects.  I’m a big fan of Photoshop, but even I think that’s overkill — especially just for a profile picture.  So how do we make it interesting, yet personal, enough to capture other users — or at least make them double-take?

An important piece of the puzzle is personality.  These tools I offer are all free, and offer either a way to create your own character (I suggest creating them in your likeness), or tweak your photos to make them more interesting.

1. Simpsonize Me!

Originally designed as a promotional tool for The Simpsons Movie, Burger King launched Simpsonize Me as a tool to “Simpsonize” photos of yourself.  The process, theoretically, should be simple — just upload and modify, right?

…mostly.  I only got to finish the upload on my fourth try — on my first three attempts, I actually gave up (put the computer to Sleep) or had the connection time out on me.  So, I offer an alternative to Simpsonize me, which is called “The Simpsomaker“.  Not as simple as just uploading, but I would argue a whole bunch more fun.

2. South Park Studio

Out of all five of these tools, I would say that South Park Studio’s definitely been the most famous amongst my friends.  I don’t usually endorse South Park, but I felt obligated to mention South Park Studio for their own sakes.  Maybe I’m just too darn conservative for this world.

3. Face Your Manga

Face Your Manga was a shocker — because it wasn’t as fully based on manga as one would expect.  I actually enjoyed using Face Your Manga — of course, I am an avid fan of Naruto and Bleach — but I usually don’t tend to enjoy those “manga”-y drawings.  A pleasant surprise, Face Your Manga is definitely one to consider.  Er, might want to take a half-hour out of your day before you get started on this one.

…oh, and don’t get too hopeful about the apparel.  In fact, none of these really offer much apparel customization, sadly.

4. Joystiq Mii

Mii’s have been arguably one of the most interesting and amusing features of the Wii (I feel guilty making funny-looking Mii’s — I’m not superficial, really!).  I figured it was just a matter of time before either Nintendo or another company pushed its Mii capabilities online in an avatar form.  It’s pretty precise, too — the flash app actually mimics the Wii’s own customization of the Mii very realistically.  And it turns your cursor into a Wii hand.

…er, I’m not exactly sure how to download the file though.  Print Screen comes in handy, I suppose.

5. Photofunia

I’ve saved the best for last — Photofunia, as I discovered through Lifehacker, allows you to upload your photos and then substitute it into various hilarious or famous pictures, some even using face detection technology (Mona Lisa, anyone?).  A perfect blend of amusement, customization, while not taking up too much time, I would suggest using Photofunia for those looking for a quick upgrade from a bland picture into an eye-busting double-taker.

Be Creative!

That’s probably not all the customizers out there, but they’re the ones that require least baggage (no sign-ups, no fees, no downloads!).  I think that these will be timeless classics for any user out there that wants a unique, yet interesting profile picture — hopefully, you have as much fun with them as I did.

Why would you want to use any other search engine besides Google?

That’s the first issue that popped up in my mind too.  Google is the King of search, no doubt about it — and it’s used on a daily basis.  We’ve grown familiar with it.  We’ve even…befriended it.  We use Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Documents on a daily basis.  And I get that, because I’m in the same boat as you are — in essence, a Google lover.

However, there are certain aspects in which a search engine dedicated towards searching through forums would surpass Google.  For example, if you were looking for more variety when it came to opinion, who would you look towards?  Sure, Google — right?  And usually, Google would lead you to a review site — perhaps like CNet or Ars Technica, and that would be fine.  But what if you wanted more opinions?  Real people that have encountered real technical issues?

I’m not saying that reviewers aren’t real people, but we only get a certain amount of time to test our products before judging them, and to be honest, in such a short timeframe, there’s hardly any chance the product will have any issues.  Nor will we be able to thoroughly test it out as well as a real consumer who uses it.  And besides, variety would give you more of an idea of what to expect.  One reviewer telling you something is one thing, but a majority of members on a forum screaming the same thing is a whole new level.

I give you Twing

Twing is a search engine that is directed strictly towards forums.  Twing was actually brought to my attention just a week ago, and I’ve really gotten to enjoy using it.

The feature that I really loved was the option to search by post, topic, or even the entire forum.

The results satisfied my thirst for knowledge and I am pleased to say that I will be using Twing in the future to have a look at other people’s opinions on certain subjects or products.

Visit:

http://twing.com

Yep, I hopped onto the Twitter bandwagon. There were many reasons I didn’t do this earlier – I didn’t know what the heck it was, I didn’t feel up to trying something new, I’m already a part of a ton of other social networks, etc. But, I felt as though Twitter was something definitely unavoidable, so I joined Saturday morning.

Image by: dpade1337

What is Twitter?

The idea’s simple – you get 140 characters to update your status on what you’re doing. We’re not talking about your job or your biography, but just your task at hand (i.e. boiling an egg, hunting deer, etc). You can choose to follow other people to have their 140 characters show up on your feed every time they update it. You will also end up having fellow Twitterers following you.

…but why?

1. It’s a great way to network.

I’ve started following my regulars – Darren Rowse of Problogger, Cali Lewis of Geekbrief.tv, et al. I’ve also started reciprocating followers following me. I realize that my 8-2 following-follower ratio isn’t that hot for now, but I’m still just getting warmed up to Twitter. Hopefully, I meet more people and find more people to flock to CutEdge and my other blog, Digital Media Break.

2. It’s a great way to share.

Sharing content, news, and thoughts/dialog, links, and ideas are just part of the norm at Twitter. When I feel idea-drained, I can figure I can simply log on to Twitter and get the juices flowing. The exchange of such sharing really helps.

3. It’s a great way to meet readers!

Believe it or not, this is the third reason I got Twitter. I love meeting people, and I’d definitely be interested in meeting my readers! And you can pretty much bet that I’ll be following you, just as you follow me (it’s common courtesy, but also because you are my beloved readers).

Find me at http://twitter.com/HerbertLui and follow already! If you’re not signed up with Twitter yet, what are you waiting for? Hop on board right now!

Image by: dpade1337

After acquiring some information from Dailytech, I’ve learned that Sony BMG is developing an all-you-can-download buffet style subscription program.   The files will be DRM-free, possibly even after the subscription has canceled.  That’s the absolutely galling part – could someone march right in there for a month and download all the songs from the Sony BMG catalog, and then cancel and never pay another dime.  …Right?

Source: http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/7696_large_Rolf%20Schmidt-Holtz.jpg

I think that it’s definitely a shame we’ve underestimated CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz and the entire Sony team to such an extent.  If they ever plan to use such a service, I highly doubt that the downloads per month (or day) would be unlimited – perhaps they will adopt a similar pricing scheme as eMusic’s.  Basically, you pay a certain price for 25 downloads per month, a higher price for a higher number.  Not a bad idea, to be honest.

The only question is if this is going to be implemented into the MusicPass program.  And to this, I really have no idea – on one hand, MusicPass looked as though it was an alternative to just CDs, but now I think it’ll be easy to spread the branding to an online store.  I hope that they have success with this DRM-free idea, as it’s going to be the way of the future.  No strings attached.