I’ve been bombarded with questions like “Where did you get your avatar?” and “Did you draw that avatar?”.  And the answer is a resounding “Simpsonize Me!”.

Simpsonize Me was a campaign sponsored by Burger King to promote the Simpsons Movie (which wasn’t as bad as people would think).  Thankfully, the site is still up, and you can still go upload your picture and get Simpsonized!  You might need a bit of patience though, as the site needs to take a while to convert the picture.

And I can definitely say from firsthand experience that it is worth it!  You don’t have to worry about people knowing your true identity, but you can find something that really is unique and expresses yourself (I’ve been told I look very much like myself – I will neglect to mention all the others laughing at this avatar).

So check it out now…while you still can!  http://www.simpsonizeme.com 

Trillian is pretty famous for it’s useful client – named Trillian.  It’s portable, it’s useful, and it’s convenient – but it’s always seemed to be lacking that X-factor.  Trillian’s looking to resolve that with Astra – quite possibly the ultimate IM client.  By IM, I’m talking about Instant Messaging.

Although it looks promising, it’s still stuck in it’s Alpha stages – so undoubtedly, we’re going to have sit around for a while and wait for it to arrive.  Don’t worry, I think it’ll be well worth the wait.

Astra has a pretty dazzling blue GUI, which integrates a lot of popular chat clients into one program.  This means you can access your Yahoo! Messenger account while also chat with people through your Windows Live Passport.  This is not a new feature, but Astra seems to be taking it to the next level.

So sign up for the alpha (it’s public)!

For more information, visit: http://www.trillianastra.com/.  Give it a shot!

Guest post by Dan Schawbel, owner of the Personal Branding Blog and publisher of the Personal Branding Magazine.

There has been a heated debate as to which platform, either Myspace or Facebook, one should use to establish a Personal Brand. For those of you who are unaware as to what exactly Personal Branding is, it is how you are perceived in the minds of those around you. The elements that make up your brand are your appearance, personality, competencies and differentiation. By building your brand through social media, you are communicating your value proposition and networking with like-minded peers. Facebook and Myspace are two of the largest social networks on the internet, populated by millions of individuals who have objectives such as keeping in touch with old friends or finding work. There are many differences between these two platforms. Myspace is positioned more for bands to showcase their material, as well as having the ability to actually customize your “space.” Facebook, on the other hand, allows you to keep up to date with every facet of you’re friends lives, as well as identify who they know, but is restricted to a specific page format. This year, Facebook has updated their site with the ability to embed widgets and manipulate pieces of your standard Facebook page. What you’ve seen is a lot of social media integration that allows for more communication and connection between people. Myspace has remained stagnant and the search capabilities are quite poor. All things considered, if you’re looking for a social networking platform that delivers quite and seamless interaction and updates, you should use Facebook. This is also a great place for your Personal Brand, as you can upload a signature picture, use it as an avatar and then list your work experience and social interests at the same time. Myspace is a lot less formal, where you have more control over your page. Myspace should be used for bands that are looking to have people hear their sample music or maybe even for entrepreneurs that are looking to network. All things said, using these sites will allow you to communicate your brand to others and become more visible.

In my opinion, Youtube is losing the tubing race. The quality of their videos have been dipping for a long time, waiting times have growing, and the availability of the site can sometimes be erratic. Well then, you ask, who has taken the crown that Youtube once so proudly had?

Let’s take into consideration three sites; all with various levels of popularity. First up, we have Stage6, which is an online video service owned by DivX – a set of codecs and formats well known for their high quality videos. Stage6 is not particularly popular, yet. It’s videos do range in quality (as I can tell from watching an episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and comparing it to The Girl Next Door, also available on Stage6), but they have a much higher quality capacity when compared to Youtube. It had decent quality when being viewed full-screen on my 12.1″ monitor. View with discretion; there might be a few inappropriate advertisements.

Stage6, however, seems to be an infant when compared to Veoh and Daily Motion. However, I choose not to use Daily Motion for a variety of reasons; it’s GUI seems as though it could be categorized as a sketchy site, and its selection of videos are not what I would consider to be fun to watch (this is purely subjective, however). It’s layout is a bit similar to Veoh, coincidentally.

Speaking of Veoh, this seems to be the most obvious successor to Youtube. In contrast to Youtube’s simple white, Veoh has more of a glossy and glassy black going for it – a nice, sophisticated look that caught my favour almost instantly. The selection of videos is great, and it has similar video quality to Daily Motion, which are both much more impressive than Youtube. Veoh also has a downloadable player – however, under recommendation from friends, I have decided against downloading it . Perhaps you can prove us wrong, and give me your experience with the Veoh Player.

Youtube is definitely not the only tube out there – and Veoh is an uprising star (alright, I’ll say the same for Daily Motion too). But only time will tell who really takes the cake. And by the way – I think it’s the DivX player on Stage6 that makes Vista Aero revert back to Vista Basic.

Ever imagine that you would see an operating system available on the internet in your lifetime? Would you have thought it was free – and is accessible by practically anyone (including you!)?

When I first heard about YouOS (alright it was probably around half a year ago), I was just as shocked as you are right now. Yeah, not too shocked, actually. I mean, how useful can an online operating system be? It’s slow, it’s lacking in aesthetics, and it’ll always need another operating system equipped with internet in order for it to run, right?

Right. But it’s definitely a lot more portable than any other OS. Confused?

Scenario: you are in the library and suddenly are struck with the most amazing idea for a topic to write about on your blog. Darn, you don’t have your thumb drive with you – and your laptop’s sitting on your desk at home. What will you do now (besides send an e-mail to yourself)? Well, why not boot up YouOS (takes around five seconds – surprise!) and use it’s primitive word processing software – which can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection?

Okay, so there were a lot of solutions to that problem.  Fine, be that as it may, YouOS still has much potential to achieve.  And it looks very, very promising.

Alright – so you’ve had a song stuck in your head more than a couple of times. Perhaps you caught the tune on the radio, but you missed the title and artist of it. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?! So you hum it to all your friends and co-workers, and you get no positive results. But, don’t feel too down; introducing Midomi – the website that will be the cure to all your tune-humming problems!

Actually, I’m being a bit too optimistic. If you’re an excellent hummer – or if someone has contributed their rendition of the song on the database, then it will cure your tune-humming issues. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.

Granted, Midomi is still in its infant beta stages. Still, I’ve tried it – I’ve gotten a couple of my friends to try it – and we had no luck with it at all. The idea is to “hum” a song into a microphone plugged into your computer, and Midomi will bring up a list of results. Yeah, too bad it’s not that simple – Midomi isn’t as mainstream as one would think, so not too many people have heard of it or contributed to its databases. And there are way too many consumers like me who just enjoy using the end product. But, I can’t carry a tune if my life depended on it (my friends can attest to that).

I tried humming a tune to Usher’s “Yeah” – which in my opinion, has the catchiest tune ever (I mean, even my teachers got it stuck in their head after I started humming it at school). Unfortunately, the results were very, very disappointing. I’m not going to lie – they did sound awfully like my humming, so I guess I need improvement. But, computers need to realize that not everyone can sing like Usher. Or the instruments in the songs. Alright, I’ll admit it – I’m very bitter.

But breathe easy – you can do something about it! Midomi has studio features built-in, so you can contribute your own rendition of a song to their database. With a strategy like that, I think Midomi is destined for success (when it gets more popular, that is). And no one has to feel the pain you did when the computer didn’t recognize your tune, ever again (actually, that depends on how they hum).

I really have to say that Midomi is really cool. I think that the concept is great, and if it gets tweaked for improvements, I would definitely give it another shot – but for now I guess I’ll have to keep asking my friends for that tune.

Want to pay less for higher-quality? Sick of how iTunes is overcharging (what, we both know it)? If you haven’t heard of it already, Allofmp3.com is notorious for it’s services.

You might have established it by now – Allofmp3.com is a music store. It’s owned and operated in Russia, which explains why its prices are a fraction of North American ones. For example – right now you’re paying $0.99 to get Maroon 5′s new single. Oh, wait – why not surf over to Allofmp3.com and get it for $0.1 (or higher, depending on the quality)?

Allofmp3.com has been attacked with many a lawsuit from the RIAA (okay, so what else is new), but it’s actually survived. In fact, it’s planning to make it’s comeback very soon. See for yourself – surf over to Allofmp3.com right now!

So, do I use Allofmp3.com? In short answer, no. I do believe financially supporting my artists. And although Allofmp3.com claims to pay the recording labels (or actually, they have a sum of money waiting for them), the money doesn’t get accepted or just gets plain old ignored (same result, right?). Thus, the money still doesn’t get to the artists. I personally don’t think that’s right – so for the artists’ sake, I’m forced to use Spiral Frog (which has officially signed contracts with two major labels – something Allofmp3.com hasn’t accomplished) or buy off iTunes (signed contracts with all four major labels and a bunch of smaller ones).

What can I say – I believe in people getting recognized and rewarded for their hard work.

Now that I have your attention, I’d like to tell you about practically the only true legal way to get free music.

Wait a minute, how is this possible? If they’re not making money from selling the songs, then how will the green giant (I’m referring to the site’s colours, haha) be able to pay the artists and labels for the music?

Through advertising, of course! There are various ads placed around the site, and all you have to do is surf around while your song downloads through their download manager (more on this later in the article). The revenue made from the advertisements then go to the artists and recording labels – and that is basically how Spiral Frog works in a nutshell.

Of course, there is much more to it – you are required to renew your account every thirty days (around once a month). Renewing is an easy process – answer a few questions (a survey of around three short pages) and you’re practically done. Why the surveying? Well, due to the importance of the advertising, they have to choose and target the audiences carefully. The questions are straight-forward and are strictly opinion-based, so no worries. It’s not an IQ-test or anything.

The only cons I see; first, the songs don’t work with the IPOD. Now this is horrible news for around half the population; seeing as how the iPod is the most commercially-successful digital audio player, the majority of the users of digital audio players will not be able to listen to the Spiral Frog songs (which are in .wma format). Secondly, the jailing DRM – the song can only be downloaded once on a pc and put onto two digital audio players. And the DRM expires after sixty days, so the file won’t work if you don’t renew your account after sixty days. Horrible. But hey, you’re getting your money’s worth.

Bad news for the audiophiles; the files are encoded at 128kbps. Not the greatest quality – but comparable to iTunes songs (ignore iTunes plus for now)! In fact, Spiral Frog’s files are quite similar to iTunes – they are both heavily guarded by DRM and are encoded at 128kbps. Nothing for iTunes to be proud of; 99 cents per track as opposed to free – it’s yours to choose (it’s not a difficult decision, believe me…unless you have an iPod, haha).

Downloading the track itself is easy – Spiral Frog’s got a huge collection of popular mainstream music and has contracts with both EMI Music and Universal; two of the big four labels, not bad at all. Enjoy the rocky noises of Bon Jovi or the hardcore rap of Bone Thugs n Harmony! The only weird part is the download manager – which only ensures you don’t download more than one track at a time, as far as I can see (so you view more ads, which is kind of like paying for the music – seems fair). The downloaded song appears in the folder selected by Spiral Frog during the installation (default is the My Music folder). The only pain in the neck – Vista uses a folder called Music, as opposed to My Music – so due to my carelessness I took a while to find the songs.

Spiral Frog is a great concept – and even if it does not succeed (no matter how unlikely that sounds), I think that music companies can learn from the idea of free music. I just wish that the formats were iPod-compatible – and that the DRM wasn’t so darn strong. But I can’t complain; it’s a free service, and if I don’t like it, I should just buzz off (same goes for you, haha).

My main moose, Moose the Voki Avatar, has earned the spot of Voki of the Day at Voki!

I’m very pleased to have accomplished this achievement. I’d like to thank Hannah over at Voki for putting my dear Moosey up as the Voki of the Day.

I do hope to integrate Voki with my Blurbs Blog eventually, but I’m still taking into consideration many alternatives and am in the process of expanding; thank you for patience.

Have a nice day (hope you’re feeling as great as I’m feeling right now).

First, there was Myspace. Then came Facebook, a little while later. And now there is…Wallop?

Well, I know Wallop sounds like a pretty silly name; in fact, it doesn’t sound like a name for a social network site at all! But I remember the first time I saw it, and it’s all-exclusive invitation only service, I was already interested in it. After all, it looks a lot cooler than Facebook (let’s not even mention Myspace and it’s layout disasters).

In contrast to Facebook’s blue and white colour scheme, Wallop seems to be following Microsoft’s Windows Vista’s pattern – a pretty gothic, yet classy, glossy black. I like it! Reminds me of someone’s blurbs *wink*…

I’ve also noticed that there are no squares in Wallop – it all contributes to a very futuristic vibe. The avatars are circles, the friends list is a circle (which looks really cool, circled avatar arranged in a circle), and the page itself is surrounded by a menu that’s curved.

There are themes that you can change to make your page more “you”. Seems like a good thing; it’s not customizable to an HTML level like Myspace, but it’s a heck of a lot more customizable than, oh say, Facebook (not customizable at all, I’ll be happy to say). You can change your background wallpaper too – I just left mine a nice green gradient (I like black and green – looks like a pretty good combo, right?).

The coolest part of Wallop though, would have to be the uploads – you can upload pictures onto Wallop (yes, but Facebook and Myspace had that already); you can also upload MUSIC onto Wallop. Yes, your favourite music tracks can be uploaded onto Wallop and made available to the public audience or just your friends (or for you selfish people out there, you can make them available to just yourself). I’ve been listening to some songs that I haven’t acquired yet, and the quality isn’t too shabby, although you shouldn’t expect too much of it. It’s a very nice way to listen to a friend’s favourite music though; no more going to their house or borrowing their CD (or illegal downloading) required!

It’s GUI is actually pretty intuitive, and pretty natural. It is all flash-based (no HTML, which is a new concept in social networking sites), which makes it have a lot more eye-candy but take a bit longer to load as well (and you also need the Flash plug-in, which every one of you should already have). A lot more animation and effects (such as fading), which I can say are a definite plus in my book; it seems to be bringing the future of social networking.

Last, but not least – there is already a mod shop! A “mod” on Wallop is a little flash application that allows you to do various things; it can display a calendar on your page, or let you play some videos. Unfortunately, these mods do cost money (on Wallop, the currency is called “Wollars”); you do get 5 Wollars for free though, so you can invest in a couple of mods if you had to.

The only negative thing is that it’s kind of quiet; why? It has all these wonderful features, and it’s still quiet? What’s going on here?! Well, it’s invitation-only, so not everyone can just sign up when they want to. If you’re really interested in Wallop, you can e-mail me (check the contact page!), and I’ll do my best to get you an invitation as soon as I can.

Could Wallop be the future of social networking? It most certainly can; it’s definitely got a lot more potential going for it than oh, say, Facebook or Myspace. But don’t let me tell you about it – find out for yourself (how? read the preceding paragraph)!