hResume plugin now available

Alex Muse et al have announced the availability of the hResume plugin for WordPress. This plugin will essentially allow you to publish your resume on your own blog using semantic microformatted content so that search engines (like Technorati and eventually other sites like Emurse) can index and offer your resume as a result.

Why is this better than going to Monster.com and others? Well, for one thing, you’re always in charge of your data, so instead of having to fill out forms on 40,000 different sites, you maintain your resume on your site and you update it once and then ping others to let them know that you’ve updated your resume. And, when people discover your resume, they come to you in a context that represents you and lets you stand out rather than blending into a sea of homogeneous-looking documents.

Finally, you’re free to share as much (or as little as you like) and if the data doesn’t fit in their predefined templates, you’ve got nothing to worry about because you’re in total control of your employed (or unemployed) destiny!

On the flip side, Emurse already outputs hResume so if you do want to use an external service to publish your resume (maybe you still don’t have a blog… heh) you feel free to do so. And yeah, it’ll look pretty darn good too.

Neat Mac apps that help you concentrate

Todos

I’ve found a couple apps recently that help you focus by removing your desktop clutter using various techniques. I’ve used Backdrop forever (and also for my screenshots) but there are some newcomers.

One is $15 Zazen, which sits in the menubar and helps you to “concentrate” on the foremost app by dimming the others. Doodim does pretty much the same thing, albeit less elegantly but for free.

WriteRoom offers “distraction free writing” and comes pretty close — closing off all other distractions and situating you in a black room where you can write Matrix letters to yourself. The autosave and autosession-restore really do make this one feel well thought out and don’t forget to participate in their user-powered software development methodology.

In the neat category is Italian-born Afloat — similar to Doodim in a sense, but in reverse. Rather than dimming everything else, Afloat lets you dim the current foremost window or set it to always be on top. Looks like the developer is looking for localization help, so if you’re game, drop him a note.

Finally, if you’re looking to take a power nap when your fingers are tired and your head ist kaput, check out the pricey (but worth it) Pzizz. They’ve added iPod integration lately, but the idea is simple: create an audio track to accompany you on your naps. Sounds fluffy but it’s not. I downloaded the demo, tried their 20 minute power-nap and literally was out for 20 solid minutes — resuscitated when the announcer dude mystically awoke me from me sleep. It was actually a little freaky. But it worked.

Oh, and the image for this post really has nothing to do with concentrating, but it was a great distraction earlier this week. Using the application Todos, I took a screenshot of my apps, uploaded it and something like 6 hours later there were already 200+ notes on the thing. How’s that for community collaboration? Anyway, I created a group for folks to do the same thing and to share the apps they use.

I’m sure there are more and I’ve barely begun to fill out my I Use This profile, so let me know — which ones do you use that I missed? Linux/Windows folks? Got suggestions?

SoylentGreenSpace v3 launches

Technorati Redesigns

My buddy Dave Sifry over at Technorati has launched v3 of Technorati, commemorating their three years as a company and as the interweb’s reigning whuffie tracker. However, the changes as I see them so far seem to represent a shift away from the Matrix-green-loving blog divas and digerati that have made Technorati their shrine towards a wider, and perchance less discerning, audience:

While we love expert bloggers, we’ve also spent a lot of time making Technorati understandable to normal people.

As long as normal doesn’t mean “mediocre” or “average” I guess I can see a need for this change — but my feeling already is that the new design is too Friendster-cum-MySpace than the good ol’ Technorati greenback of yore. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been anticipating this redesign for some time — my concern though is: did they identify their audience correctly? …or am I feeling a bit snubbed because I’m not part of a presumably profitable demographic (profitable for advertisers that is)?

To be more positive (since I’m trying to make an effort lately!): the things that I am excited about in this milestone are taking place either behind the scenes or will only show value over time. For example, getting more accurate link counts and stats (which lately have varied between Technorati Mobile and the main site)… Consider the expanded popular page (whose URL should really be renamed to /popular)… or take a look at your personal page — certainly a lot more cluttered and riddled with things of little use to me personally, but at the same time showing the promise for someday becoming my electrocardiograph on the web. Oh, and the Favorites feature is an interesting not-too-del.icio.us-like addition that unfortunately doesn’t do anything better than NetNewsWire, Flock, Bloglines or others already do (popups?!) — so why not just integrate with those and offer me a remote view of feeds in context? (Especially since NetNewsWire syncs with NewsGator and has an open API that would make this process fairly trivial).

But Dave et al — here’s my plea and my challenge to you: in your efforts to grow your business and maintain your position as top of mind for what’s going on in the blogosphere, don’t forsake those who have championed you for so long in exchange for what looks like an opportunity to go massive. The long tail is chunky and has a richness that Technorati can help us all make sense of. In that way, Technorati should endeavor to become (hold your groans) the Flickr of Blogs — in the truest sense. When I come to Technorati, I don’t want only what’s popular, I want what’s good. And sure, “good” is in the eye of the beholder but frankly, if you take my earlier suggestion, then you’ve already got the data that you need to help me understand just what is good and relevant to me, rather than a broad swath of what’s out there and being linked to.

So Dave, think about it this way: when I come to Technorati as a blogger and as a registered user, I want Technorati to reorient and rebuild itself around me at the center. And I’ll tell you, every other blogger feels the same way. For the longest time, this is what Technorati offered to the world. Forgive us for being self-absorbed and echoic, but blogging works when you know who’s talking about and to you, so that you can respond — and as our ears to the ground, you offer an essential piece of the conversation toolset. Essentially, you provided me an inbox for my blog and for my second ego. I hope that, in orienting towards “normal people”, you don’t end up diminish what it is that puts the rati in Technorati.

SuperHappyDevHouse 0xB this weekend

0xB promo

It’s the first DevHouse after DHX, so it should be a good one. I’ll be in North Carolina at BarCamp, so I won’t get to check out the new location, but I’m sure it’ll be oodles of geeky fun regardless — especially with the addition of construction gizmos like Legos, K’nex, Rokenbok. PT better make an appearance. 😉

Songbird on the Mac

Songbird on the Mac

They teased us at first, but it does seem that iTunes “inspired” music player Songbird is now available for the Mac as a nightly build (read: use at your own peril).

Built on the same guts as Flock, I’m eager to see what comes of this, though it really seems like Pandora is doing more to revolutionize music listening thus far (don’t miss Airfoil + PandoraMan for the best wireless listening experience).

Oh, and with other apps that add intelligence to your listening habits and enhance your playlists (see Last.fm, MusicIP, beaTunes and Soundflavor) the landscape in music consumption habits is surely going to change drastically in the next year. I’d love more than anything for Songbird to take a lead in that respect, but to do that, I think it needs to focus on the experience of listening to music, period; it needs to define what the Songbird listening experience is, and be able to answer clearly and concisely why anyone should care. It’s not just that it has a browser built in or that you can buy from 8,000 different music providers. I don’t care about any of that — I do care, however, about how good the music coming out of my speakers is and how much the tool I’m using to play that music has to do with it. The future’s not in featureware, it’s in experience.

When Flickr goes down, God kills a kitten

Flickr 9000

In case you didn’t notice (yeah, I’ll admit that there might actually be people in the world who didn’t flinch), Flickr went down for a considerable amount of time today (something about moving 20TB of photos).

Well, Flickr’s back up again (thank G*d, I was starting to fade holding my breath so long).

And I gotta tell ya, the genius of Flickr is that, during their downtime, they put out a colouring contest. A friggin’ colouring contest. I mean, some people shy away behind geekery and tomfoolery to explain away the inevitable. Flickr? Nawh. It’s like a snow day where the busses never come — stay home fools! A make snow angels!

So I made two entries.

Oh, and I think I also found housing for this weekend, so thanks! But Boston, well, I’m still looking!

—

Y’know what they should do? They (“they” being RIM, the Canadians who make the Crackberry I’m writing this post with) should add gyroscopic scensors to Crackberries so that I can just “roooollll” my Crackberry side to side to scroll sideways and up and down. Then, like an Etch-a-Sketch&trade, I should be able to shake it to clear the form field that I’m in.

Yup, they should.