Um, hi everyone. I’ve been using these ‘hosted applications’ for months now. My life revolves around hosted GMail and Calendar for devinreams.com. So, why are we all getting excited over this? Oh, right, becase it’s Google. Slow news day I guess.

I thought it was so cool to learn that I could simply take screenshots by pressing Command, Shift 3. Even better was Command, Shift 4 which allowed me to pick the section of the screen to save. But, what I didn’t realize, was the fact that these images are compressed in a super crazy Apple way. I can open them (they’re just a PNG) and see them. Then I even copy/paste them into a PowerPoint. But, and here’s the kicker, when you try to open that PowerPoint in Windows it basically says these pictures are compressed and can’t be shown. Neat. I have to go re-take 27 screenshots for a presentation on Tuesday. Neat.

I spent a few hours at the first BarCampDenver today. It was nice to sit down and have a conversation, include the term ‘WordPress’ and not be the only one to understand what the hell it is. But seriously, it was fun and interesting and I got to chat with some cool folks (ones I had only seen and heard about online). I look forward to future geek events around town…

chartreuse (BETA) is often a very insightful blog. “Char” is a pretty sharp guy with short, smart posts about the “new media”. Today he explores the MySpace phenom and suggests that maybe we aren’t looking for hundreds of friends and people to connect to: “Maybe all the kids on MySpace aren

Many weeks ago I got a new computer and in order to cut down on useless, bloated programs I vowed not to install AIM. This is like my vow to never touch MySpace. Unfortunately there are still people that I want to access on AIM… but I don’t want to ever use AIM. In fact, my screenname (since middle school) has been: devinhatesaim.

So, when I discovered Meebo a while back I was so excited! It’s a clean, simple, web-based instant message experience. Both of my buddy lists (GTalk, AIM) are combined and I have instant access to everyone. It’s great.

Meebo is a fun company, too. I love reading the blog and checking out the pictures from their events. This is certainly a fun, innovative group.

Which is why I was excited to see the meebo me widget this morning.

Load the widget onto your website (MySpace profile, blog, wherever) and visitors can instantly start chatting with you. Awesome! So, here’s mine for testing purposes, be sure to say hi.

People sometimes wonder what the motivation for blogging is. When I think about it, I’ve been doing this thing before ‘blogging’ was cool (on devdev.org, then BusinessBits) and I ask myself: Why keep doing it, Devin?

Money
I quickly snap back at myself “it’s all about the benjamins, baby!” I don’t mean to brag or anything but I just received my first TLA payment. It came to a grand total of $3.08. Now are things making more sense? I’m in it for the money…

Women
Oh, and the women. I’m convinced that Sara is my biggest fan (rightfully so). Joe visits sometimes too (yet never comments, jerk). Without all my adoring female fans out there I’d have little motivation to blog. Without that constant desire to impress them, you (the reader) would have missed out on so much. Like that one time I “broke” the story about Google’s SMS Terms of Service. Yeah, they can log your messages. Oh, or that one (actually 11) time I said MySpace sucks. Without my intellect and insight you may never have realized it…

Fame
Scrivs really put it best: “I’m fucking internet famous…” Seriously, I look at my number of subscribers and realize that 200 people have found this site a worthy read (every time I post I wonder why that number hasn’t yet dropped). Not to mention the hundreds of MySpace users that love me for writing about MySpace and thinking I can somehow fix their login. Oh, and the dozens of indians and O’Reilly employees that have visited my free FIRO-B tool and figured that reading my description of the scores is too much to grasp on their own. I’m really famous because these sample people decided to copy, paste their score, and leave a comment asking for my personal opinion. First, go take the assessment then come back and read on…

I’ve compiled all their questions and here it is: you all have personal needs including affection, control, and intimacy. Sometimes your numbers are high, signifying a high need. Sometimes they’re low, suggesting the opposite. Take the results with a grain of salt and then compare with friends, co-workers, peers. When you’ve done that go ahead and PayPal $5 to devin at devinreams dot com. That’s my consultancy fee. Thanks in advance!

Recognition
There’s nothing better than waking up one morning and seeing that someone has linked to you. I was especially excited when my little (but bigger) brother put me in his blog. Look, now the circle is complete. The internet is great at making circles. I’ve even made a circle with Tom Peters! I guess I just really like it when people give credit when it’s due… which it’s not in my case… so I guess I just really like credit. In fact, I was left a comment the other day recognizing my blog and how cool it is. The comment instructed me to email him with my name and email… no, recognition doesn’t mean you have to know my name.

So, why the hell do you blog? Or why do you read them? Or mine? Feel free to answer any of those questions in the comments.

Update: Within 10 minutes I was ‘BlogTipped’ by Diane. See? There’s two reasons I blog right there…

I swear, any time that I decide I want to check out MySpace (only means of communication with some in-duh-viduals) it’s broken. I click a page, it says “error, under maintainance” I say “liar” and refresh and, wow, page magically loads. For being one of the most popular websites ever how the fuck is this acceptable? If someone is making a MySpace killer, for goodness sakes, email me and let’s fix this? (Check out this picture from my account settings)

The dipthongs over at the world’s shittiest website, MySpace, have had the site inoperable/down since 6:30PST, it is now over 5 hours later and nothing is fixed. Needless to say, my site has received a lot of visits/comments on MySpace downtime from kids wondering whats up. Who’s going to make the MySpace killer? Just import people’s profile and friends (reserve a spot for them by email address until they make it over) and transfer all that information, it’d be genuis. MySpace doesn’t deserve a second (or 22nd for those of you keeping track) chance…

There was some shuffling of positions at work this week. I had to go in a few extra times. I really wasn’t anticipating it. I worked 74 hours. Fun. Time to sleep!

I was bored and I realized how much fun pictures are. Seriously, I love the vast amount of media (video, pictures, comics, audio) online. I decided I was going to try to post a new picture on Flickr every day (until I run out of bandwith (or stop being cheap)). I posted a few today and created corresponding groups. The first is a picture of my keys; I’m interested in what everyone elses’ key chain looks like. The second is a screengrab from my semi-secret Facebook friends photo mosaic. Yay pictures!