Jennifer's blog

I was somewhat to disappointed to go on SnagIt's download page and find out the application was not supported for Mac OS X. However, I didn't have to go far to find Jing, created by the same company that brought you SnagIt, Techsmith.

And even better, Jing is free.

Techsmith launched Jing as a project back in July 2007, and it's no secret they might come out with a premium version. Currently, Jing uses screencast.com to host files and provides the user with 2GB of storage and 2GB of transfer sound. After capturing an image or video, the user can:

1) add text, arrows, or highlighted selected areas
2) instantly grab html code and imbed the image or video to their site
3) upload the file to screencast.com, flickr, ftp, or the user hard drive

Jing doesn't offer the same user functionality as SnagIt, and they explain this reason in the QA section on their website:

"...the key difference is about workflow. Jing is designed to be fast-visual communication shared with others in a variety of locations. Capture. Annotate. Share."

Opening doors to opinions and perceptions is the beautiful idea behind blogs. Instead of receiving information from a niche number of journalists, readers have access to millions of ideas from around the world. Blog Action Day supports just that, but on one issue. This year thousands of bloggers will participate on October 15th and write about an issue that affects everyone: Poverty. If we all gathered together and openly exchanged information and ideas, could we inspire change?

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

As of today, Blog Action Day has 3,775 participating sites and over 7.6Million readers. If you don’t have a blog, don’t worry! There are other ways to help this non-profit cause.

• Donate to The Global Fund thru Change.org
• Help with translation (over 17 languages)
• Promote Blog Action Day with a website banner or through word-of-mouth marketing

The first commercial starring Bill Gates, Jerry Seinfeld and the $10 million endorsement from Microsoft came out yesterday.

Bloggers, mostly confused and troubled by Bill Gates and his butt shake, have already started bashing the commercial. I was lost when the onlookers asked, "Is that The Conquistador?" What? Also, why is everyone in the commercial eating a Churro? Is Microsoft moving to Mexico in order to offer discount prices on computers?

It's not uncommon for me to download numerous tools over a period of time while I'm online. Today I had spent the last few hours reading blogs, checking twitter, downloading a few SEO tools, and so forth. All of a sudden I notice that all of my links are highlighted in red!

Annoyed, because it was happening on every page no matter where I went, I did a little research and found the answer: The SEO toolbar I downloaded defaulted the setting that had caused this highlighting occurrence. If this has happened to you, the fix is simple:

Go to Tools/SEO for Firefox/Options. The setting is 'nofollow links.' Click the box "enable/disable highlighting." Refresh your page, and the links should go back to normal.

"With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do."

Yesterday Mozilla Lab launched Ubiquity, an interactive search tool that takes web usability to another level.

Ubiquity is in version 0.1, so it's okay to be skeptical. Sometimes you want to wait until the Company knocks out all the bugs (i.e. iPhone), or until enough buzz is created around it that you have to see what's all about (i.e. Twitter), but you don't have to this time. Jump on the train before it leaves the platform.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo

It’s official. SXSW 2009 Interactive is open for registration!

If you didn’t go last year, I recommend you get in early and get ready because over the next 7 months you will receive announcements about keynote speakers that will move you out of your Herman Miller Aeron chair.

Sign up early to get the best deal on badges and hotel prices.

Also, this year we made our first panel submission for SXSW Interactive. Our topic, Social Networks That Change The World, is one that we are passionate about at LevelTen. Over the last few months, we have been working with Sejal Hathi, who started Sisters4Peace at the age of 16. Girls Helping Girls, the online social network, "facilitates one-on-one mentorship, distributes educational toolkits, and connects aspiring girl change-makers around the globe who are working independently to launch their own projects." Help us get the votes needed to move forward in the panel submission process by voting for our panel! You will need to create an account before making your vote. SXSW Interactive received over 1,200 panel submissions, and we need your help in getting us up there promoting change on the web!

We'll be posting more information about the fest and panels as it comes our way. Stay tuned!

SXSW starts the week of March 13th. Interactive streams the 13th-17th. Film runs from the 13th-21. Music plays the 18th-22nd.

We'll see you there!

Xobni is a new plugin for Outlook 2007 users and it kicks your email capabilities ass. That's right Brandon, even GMail.

Xobni's functionality includes:
Email search. Way faster than the current Outlook07 search. When I started typing in the first two or three letters in Xobni it immediately began pulling up emails with those letters used. It has been a time saver because Outlook takes forever to search through 2 years of emails. With Xobni, it's pulling them up in seconds.

Email Analytics. Fancy little graph showing you the frequency of email usage between you and your contact. Below the graph, it shows you the number of messages sent in and out and the contacts rank based on that number.

Click-to Functions. Click on their phone number, click to schedule time with person (creates a default email and pulls your availability from your calendar!), or click to email this person.

Linkedin. If your contact has a Linkedin profile, their information (Company & Title) is shown above the network. Click on the Linkedin logo and your browser will open and take you to that person's profile.

Shortcuts are essential if you want to make the most when you're working or browsing on the web. I have listed the basic, and a few advanced, shortcuts for Firefox users. Sure, you won't use all of them, but at least try a few throughout the next couple of days and see if one, two, or maybe three work for you. You'll start to see how productive being online can be without having to constantly reach for your mouse.

Where Social Media has been a community of people exchanging information endlessly over the last 12 years**, The New York Times is working its way into the network (within its own network of journalists). TimesPeople is an online community composed of those reading the Times and recommending their favorite arcticles to other friends/followers, who then recommend your articles to their friends/followers.

Time Out!

This is beginning to look like an endless cycle of a one-track mind. In a time when we should be seeking additional sources of information, TimesPeople has now taken Social Media one step back - limiting the user to only recommend articles within The Times network. Social Media is not a socialist community! Then again, that's just my opinion.

Download Day 2008 has been launched by Mozilla Firefox to beat the Guinness Book of Records for most downloads in one day. Their goal is to reach 5 million downloads. As of 4:08pm CST the total number of downloads is 2,623,432. There is even a map of total region downloads and a rollover feature for each country's total downloads. Sleek.

There are over 15,000 new features in Firefox 3, including:

• One-click bookmarking
• "Awesome Bar" which recommends sites that you have visited before
• Better security
• Easy to use password management
• Simplified add-on installation
• Improved performance of speed and memory usage

Mozilla's open source project started back in 1998. Today it's known as Mozilla Corporation. The Company has over 800 code contributors, supports 35 languages, and has 3 affiliates in China, Europe and Japan.