The_Blog@ChristopherMancuso.com

BannerZestTest

2008-04-05T22:32:00.000-07:00

Corny watermarks aside, this is probably a very good purchase. Check it out.

State Taekwondo Tourney

2008-03-17T21:04:00.000-07:00

Opinions puhlease...

2008-02-11T23:00:00.000-08:00

DRAFT KAT badges. Opinions welcome.

Play ball!

2008-01-23T22:06:00.001-08:00

We took our boys (5 year olds, mind you) to a winter baseball camp at Metropolitan State College of Denver. 4 days over two weekends. In the words of one of my boys, it was the "best day ever!"
Click on the slide show to see high-res version. Next up, why I am growing to love Picasa.

The blue box of DEATH.

2007-12-06T22:32:00.001-08:00

The blank blue box above bears some explanation, however suffice to say this is a perfect example of how lame some Web 2.0-ish software-as-service programs can be. Above is a relatively simple, 89k animated .gif that, well, doesn't animate. Not in Blogger or in my client's rather expensive customer relationship management suite. The original is available, however, in it's natural, working state as what you see above is simply an auto 'thumbnail' generated by Blogger. Click the box and you'll find the real thing.
Ok, a little to geeked out for you, but trust me.
Lame.

Badge of KAT-ness

2007-12-01T07:32:00.001-08:00

I'm working on a set of Web badges for the Korean Academy of Taekwondo, of which I am a proud, if rather slow and rather large member.
Here are two samples...

Notes for 15 minutes of my very own

2007-11-18T23:37:00.000-08:00

Begin with the now famous YouTube video

I am going to borrow liberally from We Are the Web by Kevin Kelly. Wired, August 2005
The term Web 2.0 was coined in 2004
Bart Decrem: Web 2.0 is the “participatory Web". Web-as-information-source is regarded as Web 1.0.
Digital Text is no longer just linking information. It’s about linking people.
2005: The total number of Web pages, including those that are dynamically created upon request and document files available through links, exceeds 600 billion. That's 100 pages per person alive.
2006 estimates puts Google at having indexed 20-30% of existing pages at 20+ billion.
What we all failed to see was how much of this new world would be manufactured by users, not corporate interests. Amazon.com customers rushed with surprising speed and intelligence to write the reviews that made the site's long-tail selection usable. E-Bay became a success thanks to 1.4 million people uploading photos, descriptions, rating buyers and sellers. The corporate E-Bay put in place a system. Users did the rest, for free.
Blogging: Near instantly 50 million blogs erupted, a new one created every 2 seconds. One more person doing what AOL and ABC - and almost everyone else - expected only AOL and ABC to be doing.
Each time we forge a link between words we teach an idea.
We are the Web, we are teaching the machine
100 billion times per day humans click on a Web page
The Machine is us, We are using the Machine.
Each device is a differently shaped window that peers into the global computer. Nothing converges. The Machine is an unbounded thing that will take a billion windows to glimpse even part of. It is what you'll see on the other side of any screen.

How does this relate to our job?

To paraphrase: Each word we write, each story we publish, each photograph we push out to the Web is a differently shaped window that peers into our College. Nothing converges. This institution is an unbound thing that will take a billion windows to glimpse even a part of.

Who will author this mass of communications? We all will. Anyone who the College has touched in any way; as an learner, as a parent, as an employer, as a litigator, as a son or daughter, as a displaced Aurarian, we will all contribute to the windows into this institution.

Certainly our efforts will continue to inform our publics. However, like Amazon and E-Bay, we need to put the system in place for our users to do there share.

Another interesting facet of the Machine:

According to Kevin Kelly “We already find it easier to Google something a second or third time rather than remember it ourselves. The more we teach this megacomputer, the more it will assume responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory.”

How do we respond to that? What is our role in providing our constituents their second memories? Do we make our services more easily available on line? Do we make information about our institution more accessible? In what forms? In as many ways as possible? Are we to become the Shepard of our institutional history?

Key Concept: Microcontent

Web 2.0 sections of the Web (blogs, RSS, feeds) break away from the page metaphor. Rather than following the notion of the Web as book, they are predicated on microcontent. Blogs are about posts, not pages. Wikis are streams of conversation, revision, amendment, and truncation. Podcasts are shuttled between Web sites, RSS feeds, and diverse players. These content blocks can be saved, summarized, addressed, copied, quoted, and built into new projects.

Enables collaborative information discovery.

One last thing (from that Kelly guy again)

"There is only one time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large Machine. Later that Machine may run faster, but there is only one time when it is born.

You and I are alive at this moment."

Go .mobl for 20 bucks

2007-09-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

Network Solutions Offers Mobile Web Site Builder
By Sean Gallagher
September 13, 2007

Network Solutions, the internet hosting and domain name service provider, has unveiled a new tool for businesses to rapidly develop and deploy Web sites intended for mobile device users in the .mobi top level domain (TLD). more>

Make your own Web 2.0 logo!

2007-07-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

Great name for a Web site. (another one, sigh...
like I have time to create another Web site)

(created with Web2.0 Logo Maker. It's a joke, people!)

A sample of Rock You. No, Rock YOU...

2007-07-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

Just have to share. From yet another photo sharing site called "Rock You!". Starring my niece and new nephew. Woah, I'm dizzy....

Create Your Own

Theremin comes of age: look ma, all hands!

2007-06-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

Leon Theremin getting crazy

Some thing different

2007-06-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

Linkin Park - Breakin the Habit

As you may know I am a fan of drawing and animation.
I especially love sketchy animation set to some good audio. It's time for a break anyway, right? Enjoy.

Video kills

2007-06-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

MTV, iconic, revolutionary, hip, imitated.
1981. I'm 15. IBM releases the personal computer, Henry Fonda wins an Oscar for his role in On Golden Pond, the two millionth Ford Fiesta comes off a Cologne assembly line. MTV launches promising to revolutionize, hippify, create, to kill the radio.
MTV didn't have to publish every one of it's top videos from the last almost quarter century on it's Web site, but they did.
Explore 24 years of MTV video history, 1981-05, one video at a time. Here.

Photo credit: MTV.com, A-Ha "Take On Me"

Web 2.0 in under 5 Minutes

2007-06-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

This is *so* March 8th. Don't know why I didn't think to share this much earlier. The reason I did think to add this video is I'm logging in to a webinar featuring it's creator tomorrow morning. Michael Wesch, is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology who teaches, among other courses, a Digital Ethnography class at Kansas State University.

Excellent and inspiring. Makes me proud to have been publishing since the Gopher days, which is like being around for the invention of the printing press. Really. Ok, suddenly, I feel old.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

Searching for Mr. Good Recipe

2007-06-03T08:41:00.001-07:00

I don't know about you, but sometimes I like to cook. The only cookbooks we have are old, battle scarred and have photos from like the 70's. So, being the Web head I am, I turn to Google and find just the right, easiest, quickest way to make whatever I have the ingredients for.

But these searchs are really for ideas: last night my wife thawed some great, hormone and anti-biotic free stew meat. But I didn't want stew, or chili. I wanted to eat within 30 minutes or so, and so did my two kids. Kids. They can get so impatient when their blood sugar plumets. Recipies are easy enough to find, but inkjet printouts don't often survive the culinery session in a readable format.

So, I am collecting here what are not really my favorite meals, but recipies that meet my immediate requirements which are usually: a. easy, b. I have what I need on hand, and most importantly c. takes under an hour from fridge to plate.

Good eating!

FRAGRANT BEEF CURRY WITH RICE
Bon Appétit, November 2000

2 pounds well-trimmed boneless beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large onions, sliced
6 whole cloves
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
2 cinnamon sticks
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 1/2 cups whole milk
3 large tomatoes, quartered
3 tablespoons Major Grey chutney (confession; no, I don't normally have chutney on hand. But I had EVERYTHING else! cm)
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
1 1/2 tablespoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Hot cooked rice

preparation
Sprinkle beef with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large pot over high heat. Working in batches, add beef to pot and brown on all sides, about 7 minutes per batch. Using slotted spoon, transfer to plate.
Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in same pot over medium-high heat. Add onions; sauté until tender and brown, about 7 minutes. Return beef to pot. Add cloves, garlic, cinnamon sticks, bay leaf and dried red pepper to pot; stir 1 minute. Stir in milk, tomatoes, chutney, lemon juice, ginger, curry powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt and bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until beef is tender, stirring occasionally, about 2 hours.
Uncover; increase heat to medium. Boil stew until juices are slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Serve over rice.
Bon Appétit, November 2000

Heroes withdrawal

2007-06-01T23:48:00.000-07:00

Can you friggin believe it's 114 days, 20 hours and 10 minutes till the next new episode of Heroes?
(Well, there is always 34 graphic novel chapters)

Dolls

2007-06-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

If you have the bandwidth, try playing these at the same time.

Misspent youth

2007-04-28T22:40:00.000-07:00

I'm creating what Blogger calls a new 'lable' (which is really a tag) called 'blog bling'. By which I mean cool little widgets you can plug into your blog to spice them up. Todays entry is from Spring Widgets, a development platform and repository for desktop and Web widgets. Enjoy: Asteroids! Anyone for a game?

Get this widget!

Web 2.0: stuff vs. fluff

2007-04-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

Bravo. Smart commentary on Web 1.9., er 1.7...or so.

Web 2.0? Not So Fast -- Say Hello to Web 1.9 (If That)
By Simon Dumenco
Advertising Age
Published: April 16, 2007

Lately I've been seriously, achingly nostalgic for Web 1.0.

Remember when everything didn't need to have a social-networking angle to it? When you didn't have to pretend that things only really got interesting if they morphed
... complete story >

Machinima as art form

2007-02-07T22:41:00.000-08:00

For those who have never heard of it, Machinima is film genre defined by the technique of using in-game 3D engines to create a short (or long) film. Machinima is an example of emergent game play, a process of putting game tools to unexpected ends, and of artistic computer game modification. (Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima)

This 6 minute film is one of the more sugary ones I have seen in the genre. It was created using the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion game engine for the xBox 360. And while the story goes soft towards the end, the skill exhibited by the creator shows us how an inventive amature, with tools readily, and often freely available, can squeeze cinematic life out of a game engine.

See what you think. And remember; this is no professional marketing piece (at least I don't think it is ;-). This was created by an amature using a game engine and some video and audio editing software.

(ed. note: if you don't see an image, the Game Spot Web site is down for maintenance. Try this link: http://www.gamespot.com/v/d3FhkzD65bkPszTe)

Blogger?

2007-01-13T23:17:00.000-08:00

Yes, I use Blogger for blogging. I've tried, and enjoyed WordPress, MovableType, Blogsome, and others, but I keep coming back to Blogger because a.) it's hosted and b.) I find the interface to my liking.

Do I wish Blogger offered more features? You bet. It kills me there is no pure category feature. I'm ok with giving the new beta labeling feature a whirl though, so keep watching this space. Anyway, Blogger keeps me loose, keeps me focused on content, rather than the tool. So Blogger for me I say.

Welcome to my latest blog site. Oh and ahem; "Hello world..."
;-)
cm