Squealing Rat: The Word

Blippy for the Browser

In this age of oversharing, what’s one more stream of data? I’m thinking you should be able to create a profile that keeps track of the websites you visit, and you can rack up a leader board for the sites you visit the most…

Radio Acting Company (Podcast)

A Prairie Home Companion has a radio acting company that is awesome. But is that the only one out there? Let’s create another, better one, that you can actually subscribe to in the form of a podcast. I’d be interested in writing and doing voice work for the team…

Online Bus Stop

Where are you going? Where would you like to go? Figuratively and literally. A simple, nice break from the day. Inspired by this Radiolab short.

An Online ‘Moth’

Everyone loves telling stories. The Moth is a great show. But it’s limited. An online ‘The Moth’ could let everyone submit and tell stories, and there could even be shows created live as people went on to waiting lists to become part of a night’s stream.

Help with Schools

An application that parses education information, school ratings, teacher news and ratings, testing results etc. per each school using public information (more information here)

Public Radio for Podcasts

Public radio for podcasts- one eternal publisher live stream, tune in for interested “syndicated” podcasts, could have ads.

Blogger meet Doodler

A network set up where doodlers team up with bloggers to create posts with awesome drawings attached. Bloggers put out a better post, and doodlers get recognition and press. (also posted here)

Tees for All

Some people come up with great tee-slogans and never get recognition, or the shirt made. The site could open up to all submissions, and people could run through lists and choose tees they like. If a certain number of people are interested, the shirt is printed, and shipped.

Shorts or Not

Website/iPhone app that answers the simple question shorts or not using the ‘real feel’ weather temperature… (also posted here)

Comics Only

The back 0f every newspaper with comics. An online place that simply pulls together a nice sheet on your iPad of comic strips for your daily enjoyment.

Project DIMP

A network for people who love to create apps, websites and services. The projects people come up with are built through crowd sourcing.

(like Quirky, but for internet ideas)

Key Features:
Project pages, with way to join/follow a particular project
Project pages must have a way to upload information, including designs and code
Profile pages with way to contact person and see what projects they’ve joined

Ideas for names:
DIMP (designers, idea-ers, marketers, programmers)
Thinkist
crtr (creator)
prtnr/partnr (domain is available for part.nr)
Buzzing Bees (bees work hard, and different bees have different jobs in one big hive)
root

Never ending music…

Very simple web application that basically creates 1 never ending, community created music playlist that anyone can add a song to. (Might have to limit # of songs added per day per IP.) The uniqueness of this idea would be based around not actually looking for similar music to what you like, but exposing visitors to a hugely diverse list of songs that would allow people to find new and completely different songs that they might not ordinarily listen to.

Bonuses:

• The Internet’s Infrastructure Needs a Revamp. Or At Least, Browsers Do.
• An Idea A Day #1: Crowd Sourced Novel Starter
• The Tech Hotel [Ideas]

 

Long before this post, many have argued that in fact the battle is not truly waged between Apple and Google, but truly Apple and Amazon, a dark horse in the race to the throne of the tech world.

Google, meaning however well, produces lackluster products (with a few exceptions granted). Apple produces arguably the most consumer-oriented products out there. Amazon is moving into place to compete.

But Amazon needs to be especially mindful of one key thing: software. Amazon Instant Video does a perfectly fine job of streaming video, but it has failed to placate its Mac users with an option to download video. Heck, the whole experience of purchasing more than one song on Amazon MP3 is less than ideal. Amazon needs to deliver on software if it wants to be a contender.

Amazon needs to buy doubleTwist. Imagine if it did. Amazon would be large enough to propel doubleTwist into the position oposite iTunes. An Amazon-backed doubleTwist would be strong enough to put up a fantastic fight against Apple and its prized iTunes.

But Amazon and doubleTwist could only pull this off if they truly integrated their products. doubleTwist would have to be able to sync music between computers, storing all the music in the cloud, as Amazon has done, but in addition, it must enable easy download and streaming through the program. That goes ditto for TV shows and movies purchased, or for that matter, rented on Amazon Instant Video (streaming is nice, but I want to be able to watch offline and without buffering).

What else… Well, since Amazon has already rolled out an Android app store, and a Mac app store, integrate those as well, like Apple has done. Oh, and what the hey: throw in a Kindle reader.

Amazon: you can take on Apple in this one move. You can make the fight a fair one. Please, for the sake of all of the consumers out there, do this.

I’m sixteen, and every year, for the past eleven years, I have raised money for the Jimmy Fund. Every year, it’s been a bit different.

A few years in the past, I have donned a costume (or three) and “performed”, raising money. A few more, I simply send out emails to all who I know. Last year, I auctioned off Google Wave invites to raise money.

This year, Google has not disappointed my faithful watch, announcing the much hyped Google Plus, which is still (thankfully) in the invite-only stages. Thus, I’m going to revert to a familiar approach.

For each person who donates here, and sends squealingrat [at sign- you know the squiggly thing?] gmail.com a request for a Google Plus invite (incredibly, some people are just donating because they want to feel good about helping the fight against cancer!), will receive one.*

Thank you. Donate here.

*I’m using a method that may be considered a hack, and eventually shut down to save Google Plus from the stampedes of people running to the service. If it is in fact shut down, I cannot guarantee the receipt of said invite, and you might just have to deal with the warm feelings of generosity pumping through your veins.

5by5- Most beautiful network out there. Favorites are Back to Work and The Pipeline.

TWiT- Most famous network out there. Favorites are TWiT and Macbreak Weekly.

ThisWeekIn- The only other network out there that I’ve heard of.

http://tracker.torrentbay.to:6969/announce

http://inferno.demonoid.com:3392/announce

http://tracker.openbittorrent.com/announce

http://tracker.publicbt.com/announce

http://opentracker.umunu.com:80/announce

http://222.171.190.184:7000/announce

http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce

Since the dawn of time, I’ve wanted to sync my Google Docs with my computer, and my Dropbox. Actually, the dawn of time would be around 2007, the beginning of Google Docs. It was a quaint idea with possibilities.

Back then, I had a crappy old Dell. I found DocSyncer (PC only), and began its use immediately. It died a year later. I plodded on. (Speaking of the deadpool, cloudseed tried to do the same and died as well.)

Then I got a Mac. My search became even harder.

Google announced something to sync Word with Docs. It wasn’t available for Mac, and it only did things created with Microsoft products. Lame.

People BEGGED. PLEADED.

Earlier this year, Dropbox announced they were working on Google Docs sync. That was six months ago.

There are programs for PCs, like Syncdocs.

Syncplicity does this, but often screws up badly. To be fair, so does the other major player in the Mac space, Insync, which I’ve tried, and stopped using because of the duplicates and lost files created.

A few Google Chrome extensions allow editing of Dropbox easily. SourceKit directly saves files to your Dropbox live, while cloudHQ integrates Google Docs and Dropbox.

(Oh- I only looked for free products. Here’s a paid one.)

So what am I doing now? Actually, through my research, I discovered a new product that I haven’t yet tested. So I’m going to try cloudHQ and see how it goes. In the meantime, please Google, make this an official product.

UPDATE: Joukuu Lets You Manage Files Across Google Docs, Dropbox And Box.net | TechCrunch

Ocean’s 11 is one of the best movies ever made. Which is why I purchased the film using Amazon Instant Video on October 31, 2010. Here’s the receipt:

 

 

 

Now, in my world, when you buy something, you generally keep it. Until you explicitly get rid of it. Or, the repo man comes. But even he gives notice. So imagine my surprise, when less than an hour ago, I go to rewatch the movie, (I bought it. I didn’t rent it.) and found it, to be, well, not there:

 

 

 

What. The. Duce.

A few hours later, my video returned to being watchable. Then it went back to unavailable. Then it went back to available. In short, the monkeys at Amazon need to stop pulling wires.

Shock the public. Make them wonder if it’s just an April Fool’s joke. Give each user 100 (one hundred) gigabytes and counting which they can use for Picasa Webs, Google Docs, Gmail, and the upcoming Google Music. Compile the data storage so that this fragmentation of file storage isn’t all over the place. Be generous. That’s how you win.

All my ideas are now going directly to SparkMuse. Wow. What a great community!