If you want to know what my story is all about, you can view my profile page here: KwaS
You know of those rear-enders that you can see coming in your rear view mirror? I saw one coming in my rear view mirror this morning on The 101 freeway.
I saw a damaged off-white older Toyota pickup with a shell on the back approaching way too fast. The driver hadn't noticed that my lane had slowed to a stop for a few moments, even though all the other lanes were still moving. Next, I heard screeching tires and saw the smoke from the pressure applied to the brakes. I watched the car sort of veer from side to side in order to slow down but not enough to leave the lane. I remained calm and just prepared for impact.
Then it was quiet.
The car behind me stopped mere inches behind me and a couple seconds later, my lane started moving again. I drove on and watched my rear view mirror and I as drove away, untouched. The driver changed lanes and as the guy passed me (quickly) on my left, I was left with the smell of burnt rubber.
I am a defensive driver and I try to give cars, especially visibly-damaged ones, a wide berth on the road. Even this doesn't prevent all possible collisions. Sometimes I can't do anything but trust others' ability to either pay attention to where they are going or react in time if they don't. I can do that or I can figure out a way to get one of these for my next car.
Fully-loaded WITH the voice-activated Bat Shield.
You know you want one too.
First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!
The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.
A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.
Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.
On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.
And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!
~ daisy
As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.
The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.
When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.
It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.
Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.
As always, thanks for your patience.
First, I want to state that I have this lofty goal to eliminate my credit card dependency. However, my compulsion to support certain 'why-are-these-people-still-under-the-radar?' musicians @ established music venues makes it quite difficult.
Tuesday night when I saw Ari Hest play at the Hotel Cafe I knew the online ticket purchase was worth it-- as are all my purchases, of course. The opener from Ireland, Declan O'Rourke, told the audience that this was his first time playing (or first tour playing?) in America. He had a great sound and one novelty song stands out. It's about an old black crow and it was highly entertaining because there was a fun song introduction and then part of the chorus was him cawing. Not counting that particular song, to me, live, his style was like an Irish version of Ari's so it shouldn't be too surprising if he gains a large following here fairly quickly.
"I can make you move against your will. Don’t it make you sad to lose control?" Broken Voices by Ari Hest
Ari was fantastic with his band, and played a bunch of songs from his early material and CD The Break In, plus newer songs from his project, 52, which included my favorite song, Broken Voices. At some point Amy Kuney came up to sing Cranberry Lake which she co-wrote and sang in a duet with Ari. That was great because I've been wanting to see her live for a while now too.
Ari's vocal ability is amazing. His tone ranges in his songs from baritone to falsetto with impressively flawless lung control. It bowls me over me every time I see him live.
I ran into @KristinJuel during the evening which is always refreshing. Sitting with her I discovered my new favorite bass player, Rob Calder, who has an interesting way of dancing to the beat while he plays. Very entertaining to watch!
The only downer of the night is that there's a rule that non-flash photography is allowed in Hotel Cafe, but video recording is not. Kristin got busted for taking video with her digi cam at some point. That was too bad but at least they didn't confiscate her camera. She had also taken a bunch of still photos. Overall, it was a good night for live music.
"You're the song that I sing that I don't need to practice." from In the Creases by Amber Rubarth.
Tomorrow is Amber Rubarth's show @ The Mint-- http://themintla.com is their site. I refuse to hyperlink to it because it has music that auto-plays and defaults to the loudest volume setting. Way to facilitate an obnoxious user experience.
I love Amber's lyrical ambition and like Ari, she is now based in NY so I try to see her whenever she's playing here. Can't wait to hear her new songs and old ones again that I like. A lot.
Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
I received an invite this morning for Google Wave and with no idea what to do with it. So, I'm watching a Google video on what the intended use for Google Wave is. The video is an hour and twenty minutes long. *smh*
At first glance it seems like a glorified e-mail account, which is what I thought G-Mail was.
I don't know if I like the 'view text while typing' feature being a default setting. I'm a bit of a messy typist. I also wonder about the implications of data mining for users of this service. I am mostly concerned about how Google is planning to use, archive, catalog, and ultimately monetize this potential goldmine of user generated content (UGC) with a EULA (by using this product you consent to *anything the company wants to do*) agreement. I'm going to give it a chance and see what happens.
G-Wave users, what are your initial thoughts?
I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.
I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.
Cheers,
