Intense Web Media

Over the last year I have wondered from the regular American Online Instant Messaging service, to Gaim, to Meebo, and finally to Trillian.

A friend turned me onto Trillian and I believe it blows Gaim out of the water. I am anxiously awaiting the release of the new Trillian which will not only house the basic yahoo, AIM, ICQ, and MSN messaging services, but also your myspace profile among other upgrades.

I switched to Trillian from Meebo because of the outside the browser usefulness. Now that Meebo incorporated the “pop-out” option, the two services seem like a toss up.

However, I still prefer Trillian because of its ease of use, speed, interface, and the many tools and mods possible. If you are looking for a new IM client, I suggest you give Trillian a try.

On another note, does anyone have any insight into how these services plan on making money other that getting acquired? Meebo recently took some VC money to expand its operation, but its plan for sustainability is somewhat cloudy. Trillian at least offers an upgradeable pay for performance version with extra features, but with so many features for free, why upgrade?
I am aware that users equal value, but they don’t equal cash flow. So, I am assuming these sites just plan to hold on and hope to get acquired. I’ll let the readers have the floor now.

Meet Kristen.

She seems innocent enough, but she is guilty of not allowing her husband (me) to bring a video game console into out house (She seems to think I wouldn’t pay any attention to her.)

Here is the plan: bring her to Best Buy and get her hooked on a Wii, Xbox 360, or PS3, I don’t care which. I will have to use some salesmanship and be tactful.

I can’t promise victory, but there is a slight chance. I will post pictures and explanations about the upcoming events for all to see.

Any advice?

Technorati Profile

There is a technology reason why Michael Richards’ racist statements are more vicious and will continue to be recounted. There was video and that video made it on YouTube.

It is very arguable that Richards may not have even made an apology had the video not been put on YouTube. After all, he made the comments on Friday and we didn’t hear an apology until Tuesday.

His apology, although remorseful, is quite disingenuous. For some reason he mentions Hurricane Katrina to cite blame for the fervor caused by his comments.

Let’s get back to the tech issue. If Mel Gibson’s drunken racist slurs were played on YouTube, would the outcome have been any different? Would an apology have come sooner. What YouTube has done is make people more accountable for their actions. Celebrities cannot get away with bad behavior or else it ends up on TMZ or YouTube or some other internet news outlet.

Digg

This isn’t news, but games of this scale aren’t usually for free. I am downloading it right now and will let you know how it is.

From the screenshots, it looks cool. Check it out here.

Instead of buying a new game console like normal cool people, I have to search the net for sweet free games that I hide from my wife.

For those interested, I will be taking my wife to Best Buy to test drive the new game consoles (if there are any to demo). I will be armed with my digital camera to capture her faces of detest and discontent. Then the world will see what I deal with.

Digg

I love video games and this week has been a great one for gamers.

Earlier this week the PS3 had a violent release with shootings, robberies, and riots.

This comes in direct contrast to the Wii launch today, which has been very peaceful.

This begs the hypothesis: Are Wii fans different than PS3 fans? Or is the relative peace because of the larger amount of Wii’s available?

One could argue that PS3′ers are are more violent because of the type of video games they play. The video games commonly played on PS3 are violent and realistic. While the anticipated Wii games are more animated and thus less real with a watered down sort of violence more appropriate for children.

The sad thing in all of this is that my wife won’t allow either system into our house. I tried to convince her to allow an Xbox 360 because it could double as a media center and an hd-dvd player. No dice.

So, today while all you new owners of PS3 and Wii play games all night, I have a list of honey-do’s. Bastards…enjoy your freedom while it lasts.

For more coverage, try here.

Digg

CNET published a story recently on their favorite Firefox extensions. Link.

So, following their lead, here are my favorites that I use religiously.

1. Delicious Add-On

This add-on will embed a delicious button and a tag button in your browser. The delicious button will take you to your delicious member page. The tag button should be used when you are visiting a site deserving of being included in your delicious bookmarks. If pressed, it will pop-up a form that lets you add a note and tags to your bookmark. Press okay and continue to surf.

2. Search Status 1.18

“Display the Google PageRank and Alexa popularity score anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other seo tools.”

What I love about this is that I don’t have to have a tab open with Alexa to check a site’s Alexa Rank. The page rank to is equally as valuable, although much is made as to it’s validity. For some reason I like seeing where other sites stack up.

For a comprehensive list of FF extensions visit Firefox.

I have created this site to stir up the technosphere.

Too much is made these days of products that do the same thing with a small interation. While other sites will report on the latest video uploading site or the latest myspace copycat, we’ll look for sites, tools, and software that break from established molds.

This is not to say we won’t write about social networking, and video uploading, we will. IWM will instead bring more diversity to your rss feeder by finding lesser known, but important sites that will affect the web later on.

To all you developers creating a new, exciting, and original product: submit your site to us. We’ll review it and at the very least place a link with a small review on our directory. If we deem your creation particularly important, we’ll write a longer review on the front page.