I’m always interested in social media sites, so I registered and made a profile. I register for just about everything there is out there, to figure out what’s good and what’s not good.

So I entered my gmail info to check which of my OTHER FRIENDS were on Yamky. BUT – I didn’t read the text well enough.

The result: Yamky e-mailed over 800 people an invite in my name! Bad. Bad. Bad.

So for the ones who read my site here: Sorry.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Big mistake from me.

I never invite people to sites like this, except for an few other friends that are just as interested in stuff like this as I am.

Sorry!

(Kitten by Trang Vuong)

Sorry again.

The worst about this is that it e-mailed people I can’t imagine would use a site like Yamky.

It’s a very bad interface that just sends out so many invites without letting you check off which ones you want and which you don’t want.

And I should had read things better. My intention was never to invite anyone, just check if someone I know already was using Yamky.

Yamky seems to have quite a presence of people interested in… how do I say that… mating? So if that’s ok with you, go ahead.

It’s fun and quite addictive. I certainly can understand why the Facebook owners turned down a $750 million offer.

There are a few things that are a bit strange, but I’ll get used to them. Thanks to Fridtjof I now understand the “wall-to-wall” concept. But I still think the networks concept isn’t perfect. Especially if you live somewhere where few companies and schools are registered networks.

And if you think it’s just a fad, check out the Alexa graph showing the development the last year for Facebook.

I would have bought shares…

Screenshot: Joost video – Ministry of Sound music videos

The Joost FAQ says…

TV, the way you like it…

…Hundreds of shows from your favourite channels
…Full-screen, high-quality pictures and sound
…No fixed schedules – watch what you like, when you like, as often as you want

Well. Not yet, at least. I don’t think the quality is good enough yet, and the content are much like the channels you put at 30-99 on your TV remote. In other words: Not your favourites. Yet.

MTV is in with some content, so is some European broadcasters like DR (Danish Television). Ministry of Sound is a new channel this time, with the right content for young males (Let me guess: Football and girls will rate high on the Joost popular lists the next weeks…)

Screenshot: Joost video – Italy vs. Norway

I guess the big content producers are waiting too se how this goes. But even if I think there’s lots of room for improvement, Joost is going to be huge. When enough people join, the big names will too. The quality will go up, both for content and technical quality. Broadcasters and content makers should pay attention now, get their feet wet and try this out from the start.

If you want an invite, check out my little competition. Have fun, and see you on Joost.

how I keep in touch with (some of) my friends?,
originally uploaded by geirarne.

Brilliant table by Geir Arne. How would your chart look? Put up 10 of your friends, and check them off for e-mail, phone, sms etc.

Yoo get a Google map showing the location (and you can zoom out on the map to see other trusted places nearby). There’s a “People who liked this also liked…” function. You can add pictures and tags, put up your own review or send an invitation to friend to go to the restaurant with you.

It all works very nicely. The design is clean and simple, and speed is ok (I hope it scales with more users!)

The site mostly UK yet, but you can add other cities and even countries easily. One thing that doesn’t work outside UK, is the map function. You can enter the address of the restaurant, but TrustedPlaces only shows a UK Google map. I talked to Sue, one of the people behind TrustedPlaces about this:

…although the map function isn’t working correctly as yet for some locations outside the UK, people can still join up and load reviews and we will ensure that they are mapped correctly in the very near future.

Check out new features and other tidbits at the TrustedPlaces blog. One of the things you can read about is how TrustedPlaces members have started bumping into each other in bars.

If you know me, I’m Oyvind at TrustedPlaces. Feel free to invite me as your friend!

When the nice meal is finished, you’ve visited the trendy bar recommended, and you come back to hotel, do remember to hide a secret in the hotel room (yes, you can wait until the next day).

Post a link to brilliantdays.com or one of my articles on your blog/site. And put the link to your site in the comments below. I’ll pick out two next week. Hint: One of them will be for best post…

Update

Click through to the comments to see the details on the invites!

Update: E-mail

It’s no use to just put your name in a comment. Or just your name and your e-mail address. You will not get any Joost invites that way. One thing you will get, is spam. Spambots crawl websites looking for e-mail addresses, and if you put them in the open here, you will get more spam.

The rules for this little competition is simple: Put a link to this site on your blog or site. And I’ll pick some winners when I have more invites. At the moment, I don’t have any invites.

Nevermind! Go bananas! Just pust your name and e-mail here if you want an invite. I don’t have any, but others may have.

Just remember: If you post your e-mail here, you will get spam. Not from me, but from the spambots crawling the net.

And if you do have some extra invites, please post about it here too!

Update 3: More invites!

Just got some more invites, so the competition is on again. It works like this: Link to brilliantdays.com from your site or blog, and I’ll pas you a Joost invite. The four first will get an invite.

It’s also ok to ask others for an invite in the comments below, but I’m only giving away invites to people linking to brilliantdays.com.

Invites bonanza

Just about everyone who asked for an invite now has got one. And I still have A LOT left. So keep asking, and I’ll do my best mailing them for you. I guess Joost goes out of beta pretty soon, but it’s still cool to have it NOW.

Closing the comments

After 701 comments, I’m closing the comments on this post. I hope all of you have got invites. I certainly have sent about tons of them! Hope you enjoy Joost, and that we soon see some more quality content in there.

Then Matt Mullenweg wanted some advice on which dress his girlfriend should wear in an upcoming wedding:

(original Flickr posts here and here.) And the winner was the dress on the left. The jury is still out on Matt’s tie…

This is the new web: Communicating with others, and letting you decide. Just as Time Magazine have figured out too too:

In 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.

The “help me decide” tag

What if we tag all posts like this “helpmedecide” – in one word and no spaces? Tag your posts for Technorati (tag: helpmedecide), your bookmarks for Del.icio.us (tag: helpmedecide) and your pictures for Flickr (tag: helpmedecide) (and similar services).

I’ve created a Flickr group for this. So if you want the world to help you decide, just take pictures of the different choices you have, and make a new thread in the Flickr group. Buying a house? A car? A dress? Can’t decide on the christmas presents? We’ll help you decide!

And feel free to post links to posts and pics in the comments. I’ll promise to vote!

On your blog, personal webpage or e-sales site, you set up a Plugoo (very easy to do, by the way !). Visitors on your site can see the Plugoo and type a message in it to send it to you !

This Plugoo is directly connected to your Instant Messenger and forward you in real time all the messages your visitors send you. You answer to the visitor directly from your Instant Messenger, LIVE !

So if I’m online, you’ll see it in the box below. I’ll install it in the sidebar when it moves off the frontpage.

28 chapters is – or rather will be – a movie with 28 parts (“chapters”) that will be made by 28 different people or groups from around the world. The story is developed along the way, but will progress more or less in the same way as a regular short movie will, even though the actors and setting will change every 30-45 second. That is: Even though the actors and setting change every chapter, the story of the movie continues like nothing had changed.

28 chapters is one continious movie with 28 actors playing the same main caracter in 28 different locations around the world made by 28 different moviemakers.

As of today, six chapters are finished. So you can still have your 45 seconds of fame.

The promos will be judged on “…originality (30% of score), creativity (30% of score), and ability to generate interest in watching “The Office.” (40% of score)”. The winners will appear at the end of selected episodes of “The Office” and on NBC.com.

Drinking.

Both cork’d and Winelog let you register the wines you drink (or store), get recommendations and share your drinking habits with trusted friends. And total strangers.

Both look nice and web 2.0. And I’m sure quite a few will start logging their Cabernet Sauvignons and Tempranillos.

I wonder what’s next? The sexlog? “Check off what parts you…” Hm. Maybe not.

Niall Kennedy wonders who’s going to read all this, when your shoes, your shoes, iPod and car has it’s own feed.

The availability of this new data will cause us to rethink what we want to share with the world, and where we want to access this personal information. Our gadgets are talking, but who should be listening?

Anyone listening? Or are we all going to suffer from infoglut…

Reuben Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was a cofounder and first president of the National Cartoonists Society. He is one of the most famous cartoonists in history. He earned lasting fame for his “Rube Goldberg machines” – devices that are exceedingly complex and perform very simple tasks in a very indirect and convoluted way.

…

A Rube Goldberg machine or device is any exceedingly complex apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very indirect and convoluted way. Rube devised and drew several such pataphysical devices. The best examples of his machines have an anticipation factor. The fact that something so wacky is happening can only be topped by it happening in a suspenseful manner. A Rube Goldberg machine usually has at least ten steps.

So I learned something new today too. The Wikipedia article has lots of references to Rube Goldberg machines in movies and tv series: Wallace and Gromit, 4400, Final destination, Tom and Jerry, Looney tunes, Back to the future, Home alone, Delicatessen and The city of lost children.

The famous Honda ad (download) is an example of a Rube Goldberg machine.

And then you have this wonderful collection:

If you want to download it, use KeepVid, and paste this YouTube URL into KeepVid. There’s also a bookmarklet to directly download videos from most videosharing sites (Google video, YouTube, iFilm, MySpace, PutFile etc.)

So what is a “plog”? Amazon defines it as…

Your Amazon.com Plog is a personalized web log that appears on your customer home page. Every person’s Plog is different (hence the name) and just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. Each post also gives you the opportunity to provide feedback to the sender as to whether you liked the post or not. This feedback loop means your Plog becomes even more relevant and interesting over time. Your Plog will appear if you are logged into our web site and is visible only to you.

Authors with at least one book for sale on Amazon.com are eligible to participate in Amazon Connect.

In other words: Authors of books can make a special blog inside Amazon.com. Their posts will show up on your plog if you ever bought on of their books.

So here’s John Lithgow showing up on mine:

Now I can comments on John’s post, and rate it which will give him feedback if his post was worth it for his readers too.

I like this. It’s a good idea, and will…

1. Make Amazon sell more books
2. Make people want to log onto Amazon more often
3. Help authors connect with their readers in an easy way
4. And the opposite: Make readers connect with the authors

I hope more authors do this, and also start their own blogs outside of Amazon.

(The book I bought by John Lithgow was this)

Due to the power outage earlier in the week, we are dealing with a number of continued hiccups. We’ve taken everything offline to properly rebuild and restore everything. I apologize and hope to have this resolved as soon as possible. Thank you for your continued patience.

But that doesn’t seem to calm some people. In the post explaing the situation, there’s the usual Yahoo flaming as some people seem to think it’s Yahoo’s fault that the main power line to the building where Del.icio.us is hosted was cut. Come on!

Having said that, I think it’s strange that a site with so much traffic as Del.icio.us, doesn’t have an UPS system running. Not that an UPS can stop any power problem, but at least it could hold the power long enough for the engineers to shut down the systems in a nice way, preventing disk chrashes and corrupt data.

The servers that are down at the moment, can be seen here.

Update: After three days and 468 comments it’s back up again. Aaaahh… Don’t we love Del.icio.us? Yes, we do.

It scans through all your Safari bookmarks, and uploads them to Del.icio.us. To help you started with the tags for all your bookmarks, it will use the folder the bookmarks are located in, as tags. So if a bookmark is stored in a folder called webdesign, and a folder inside that one called CSS, the bookmark will get the both folder names as bookmarks; webdesign and CSS. Neat.

You still would have to add quite a few tags to your bookmarks, and a nice way to do that is to load them back to your Mac again with the software Cocoalicious. It helps you manage your Del.icio.us bookmarks and makes it a whole lot easier to add tags to bookmarks.

Benedikt Terhechte is the one who also make Tagbag, the way cool OS X widget that scans all your files, looking for Spotlight keywords. With Tagbag and a the instructions I wrote about how to use your Mac to get things done, you would have a very flexible and fast GTD system working in 5 minutes.

So who’s next? My bet: Amazon.com will buy Wists.com. Or maybe Yahoo shopping.

Why? It fits Amazon like a glove. They only need to add an extra “find this item on Amazon” under ever bookmarked item. Beacuse people will of course bookmark lots of stuff that’s NOT on Amazon. And being able to see what people bookmark at Wists all the time, would help them deciding which items to take into their store, which ones are popular outside Amazon, and what people in general wants. Some of the same reasons they bought 43things some time ago.

But for now, Wists isn’t owned by a big web company. But it’s still great!

If you haven’t used it, head over and make a new free account. Then drag the bookmarklet made for you to your browser bookmarks bar. Every time you see something on the net you would like to buy, click the Wists bookmark and Wists will show you a white page with all the pictures from the page you left. Click the picture of the object you want to buy (often there will be site icons, navigation arrows, ads and other pictures. But just choose the one that shows the object you wanted to bookmark).

When you have chosen your picture, the next page will ask you for tags. If you have bookmarked an iPod, you could tag it “ipod” and “christmas” and “Susan” (unless Susan knows about your Wists page and would discover that an iPod nano is heading for her christmas tree). To avoid that, you can mark items private. That way, only you can see them.

The items NOT marked private will show up on your Wists page, like these on my Wists page.

If you’re in a group, you could choose a tag that is special just for your group, like “ipod222albany”. You can see all items bookmarked with a certain tag by typing wists.com/everyone/ and then the tag. Like this: wists.com/everyone/ipod.

People use Wists for so much more than shopping: People bookmark Flickr pictures they like with the tag Flickr. And these are the items people have tagged “wishlist”. The most popular items on Wists are here.

There’s even whole sites based on Wists. Cribcandy labels itself “bookmarkable stuff for your home” and highlights cool stuff for your home. You can of course subscribe to the RSS feed of any user, like the Cribcandy Wists RSS or my Wists RSS). Or the RSS feed for a tag, like the iPod Wists RSS.

A few hacks:

1) Notice that when you are on Cribcandy or any page on Wists, you can copy any item you see to your Wists. There’s a link right under the picture (if your’e logged in).

2) Subscribe to all the Wists for a user by hitting “Add to my subscriptions” on a user page. So if you’re looking at my Wists page and want to subsribe to it, click Add (Oyvind) to my subscriptions.

3) If you want to make your won site, showing off cool things to boy or bookmark, just use Javascript to show your Wists on your site. Mine are here. Customize the settings first, then click “get code” in the lower left corner and copy the code to your site.

4) The Wists API lets you do all kinds of other neat stuff.

If you have more tips, add them in the comments below, or tip me! I would love to hear from you.

SO IS THE INTERNET TRULY CREATING CONNECTIONS AMONG PEOPLE? OR DIVIDING US AS WE HIDE INSIDE OUR PRIVATE SHELLS?

MOBY, pioneering electronic musician: I have a friend whose Swedish mother–she’s in her mid-60s–goes online to meet men. I was with my friend as he drove her to the Hilton to meet a Canadian doctor she’d encountered online, and I thought, How disconcerting. Because it was 10 at night and most likely she was going to meet this guy and stay in his hotel room. Go back 50 years, and she would have been in her Swedish village, depressed, a bit lonely and sad. Instead she’s in midtown Manhattan, preparing to spend the night with a doctor, and her son is driving her to the hotel!

Full article in Time.

I have also added my Upcoming events in the left sidebar on the main page (not on individual posts). Click on them to join me to the concerts etc. If you want to see all events tagged as concerts at Upcoming, see the “concert” tag list.