odrakir.com

I’m attending Sapo Codebits 2008. Expect some major nonsense in today’s Lifestream 😀 If you’re there, twitt me!

I confess that I’m a little addicted to social networking. I often try new social networks and apps but sometimes I wish that there was only one or only one way to use them all. The ones I use the most are Twitter, Flickr, Jaiku, Digg and the usual gazillion RSS feeds if you can count them as social networking tools.

One of the blogs I follow about Mac applications is UsingMac and in today’s “daily fix” of posts I came across EventBox.

EventBox is like a dream come true for me. It gathers 7 of the most used social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, Pownce, Reddit and last but not least RSS aggregation all in one application.

The interface is bliss and pure integration with Leopard. Still in Beta, EventBox features high quality features for each social network service you use, like public and private replying in Twitter, section filtering on Digg, multiple file uploading on Flickr and everything gets to use Growl for notifications.

While very good, there’s still a lot of room for improvement in EventBox. A wide preview pane for RSS to better use widescreen space would be welcome as well as adding more social networks to the list like Jaiku. Adding search, groups and user profile information options in Twitter like Tweetdeck has would be very useful as well. EventBox is not free though, it costs $20 which is not much, specially when you can optimize your usage of social networks, getting rid of 5 or 6 different apps or browser tabs.

Recommended!

The dudes at Prt.Sc did it again! A new Alt.Prt.Sc episode 03 for your viewing pleasure. Keep up the good work guys, it’s getting pretty good!

Following the meme on Nuno’s blog…

Me!

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture. (should be super-easy with Photobooth)
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

Today, Google announced it’s new web browser. In merely 48 hours, the Internet was drenched in all the hype caused by leaked comic book scans and screenshots an plenty of rumors, that in the end became true.

An hour and a few minutes have passed since the beta version of Google Chrome and it’s probably one of the most downloaded browsers in launch day, I dare say, like or close to Mozilla Firefox 3. This only proves that people love everything that’s Google related and that they trust Google.

Google Chrome is like Google.com homepage page: simple and effective. The Chrome team mishmashed a few ideas from existing browsers, like Firefox and Opera, used Webkit (from Safari) and applied some ideas of their own for security and stability. I won’t go in details here, you can read a lot about that in the Google Chrome Comic. The result, from what I’ve tested, is a piece of software that will change the way that we’ll use the web. It’s easy to use for the common user, powerful, stable, very user friendly and fast.

But Google Chrome is not just a browser. It’s the cornerstone of a possible Google OS. I can imagine now a small linux distribution with a small footprint, loaded with Google apps like Google Earth, Picasa and a fully integrated Google Chrome, transforming all those webapps (Gmail, Google Tal, Calendar, etc…) we use into applications (through the Google Gears module in Chrome). Boot that from a USB pen drive and you have a portable OS, a thin client ready for the web, using the cloud for storage, etc… the applications are endless. You can already have this, with Firefox and few quirks, but I believe Google itself will create and optimize it’s own web OS.

After all, the web is Google’s business and, the more it can keep us online, the better.

Is this the result of today’s massive Twitter exodus?

…on a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet 😀

Geek Stuff, originally uploaded by Ricardo Saramago.

Cinco dias depois da encomenda na Apple Store Portugal, lá chegou a minha cópia do Leopard. Foi expedida ontem da Holanda e chegou hoje. A caixa e o manual têm a maioria dos textos em português e o mais curioso é já vir com a URL do novo site da Apple Portugal (www.apple.com/pt). Ah, e 5 Estrelas para os efeitos holográficos na caixa 🙂

No correio veio também a segunda remessa do Startup Schwag, desta vez com uma t-shirt da Reddit e mais uns stickers 🙂

I know, I know… I’m a geek…

[tags]Apple, Mac OS X, Leopard, Startup Schwag, Reddit[/tags]

I usually make a small balance when I grow a year older. One year after creating this blog I made the same for it, since it’s a part of my life, not a very significant part but it’s growing. One year ago, the balance was positive, still many changes happened. I put some ads here, mainly to cover domain related fees, the design has been improving slowly because I’m don’t want to spend much time improving it, I’m still using K2 has the main theme with a few modifications and it suits me just fine. But besides all the technical differences, I think the major difference is as always, the maturity. New projects came along and that meant new readers, but let me rant about the projects a little bit.

The Projects

In 2006 this blog was part of the Planeta Asterisco, a portuguese blog aggregator that after a few changes to it’s core and format was terminated. From it’s “ashes” the PrintScreen project was born, which soon become one of the best technology portals in Portugal. I had the opportunity to help in the early stages, being part of the organization but mainly giving a helping hand in the graphics department designing the logo and some other graphic ideas. Only recently I left the team due to the lack of time for working on the project and other personal reasons.

Another project that was featured in this blog was the OpenCoffee Club Lisbon. I took the initiative of bringing the OpenCoffee Club idea to Portugal, more specifically to Lisbon and used this blog to spread the word. Well, the experience wasn’t what I was expecting and a small summary of the project can be found here. The project evolved and it’s taking shape. In a few days I’ll write a post about it but for now, as a little glimpse, I’ll lift a little tip of the veil 😉

What Now?

Well, now the goal is to reach the 3 year old stage, using this blog as a platform to communicate, to create new opportunities for innovation, for more projects and as usual, more rants. But all this wasn’t possible without one fundamental person: you, the reader.

Thank you! 😉

[tags]Blog, Odrakir, Planeta Asterisco, PrintScreen, Prt.Sc, OpenCoffee Club Lisbon, Project Bit[/tags]