Netflix app for iPhone and iPod Touch launched.

God, I love Netflix. The app is basically flawless on the touch, and Netflix is even better experienced on a Touch than the Xbox 360. Hopefully an Android app is due to follow in the near future, but Netflix seems to be much like Apple one way, they will release a product when they see fit that it is a great product for all to use. If I were a betting man, I would have to say the Netflix Android app will be the cue for other Android developers to get their butts in gear and make some truly great apps for the platform.

If you have been watching my Twitter feed or if you’re a friend of mine on Facebook you are probably well aware I have been posting to DailyBooth every day for approx. the past week. It is slowly turning into on of my favorite, albeit nearly pointless, website that I visit nearly daily.

Here are a few reason why I like DailyBooth.

Active Community

Low Barrier of Entry

Great UI

Publish to both Twitter and Facebook

Becomes a sort of fun habit

If you are on DailyBooth, feel free to follow me here. If not, join!

scr.im « Share your email in a safe way. Get less spam..

Saw @jeffbajayo using this. Interesting, but a tad bit annoying. If you are using Gmail/Google Apps I say just say give spam the bird and post your e-mail everywhere. That’s what I do.

I’ve been experimenting with how to effectively use Letter.ly on my blog for a while now. While I am doing that, I suggest you check them out yourselves. It’s a neat product, and based off the latest e-mail I got from the Letter.ly team (copy and pasted below), it seems like development is in full swing. If you are into paid subscribers, I have no problem encouraging you to give Letter.ly a spin.

–

Writers,

I hope this note finds you well… just a quick update about some exciting new letter.ly action.  A small cadre of people got together to push the letter.ly project forward, so you should see stability and new development pick up.

features that are in production as of today…

*1.  attachments:  *most requested feature, now live… so you can now do photos, video, docs, audio, whatever attaches you can ‘sell’

*2.  comments:  *in earliest form, now when users ‘reply’ to your letter you get an approval notice… if you approve the letter it goes out to your subscribers and the commenter shows up on your letter.ly page… this is V1 of this — more coming

*3.  password reminders:  *yah, you probably needed that

*4.  new subscribers automatically get your most recent letter…  *a good feature that people wanted… because it is annoying to sign up for something and not get any gifts until the writer next writes!

*5.  robustness*  we had some issues with HTML emails in, and the like – you may have seen blank emails go out.  these are fixed now, things should be swimming along

*next up: design, better comment flow, and some treats worth waiting for

*If you want to follow updates, there is now a twitter account http://twitter.com/letter_ly

Regards,

The Letter.ly Team

Thanks to HTML 5 enabled browsers and mobile back-up service Dashwire, there now exists a quick and painless way to transfer files using your Android phone without wires called Awesome Drop.

Check it out

Thanks @dmonzel

“Foursquare is fun because it makes all the meaningless shit in my life seem worth something”

Michael Kersey – Best Friend, Roommate, and WoW addict

While Facebook Places has the mainstream audience, they still don’t have the greatest aspect of the check in “experience”, which is making checking into places fun. Foursquare really does do a great job of making the most boring aspects of your life worthwhile by validating yourself through badges and by making you feel cool with features such as being a Mayor.

I think that quote from my friend sums it up quite nicely, and if Foursquare keeps making people like my friend Michael happy, they might have a shot at competing with Facebook and their 500+ million strong army.

It is widely believed that laptops in the classroom are beneficial. Well, let me clarify that statement a little. It is widely believed by college students (my peers) that laptops are beneficial to our educational success. Professors on the other hand, beg to differ.

Par for the course in my life, I disagree with my fellow peers, and surprisingly agree with the older and supposedly much wiser professors. Yes, laptops are a distraction in whatever lecture hall you happen to be sitting in. I know this from many of my college aged friends personal experiences on the subject, which lead to some hard learned lessons of failure.

Now, that is not to say that some of my peers aren’t capable of self control and can’t handle the potential distraction at their fingertips. Those people do exist, but if I am going to be honest with myself, if it comes down to fiddling with my computer or listening to my professors latest lecture, I am not one of those people.

I think I have accepted this about myself.

Still, I can’t just go to class with a notepad and a piece of paper. The nerd in me will not allow such nonsense in a room filled with PC’s, and I’m sure an iPad or two for the richer students amongst us. That is why I have been looking into the Pulse Smartpen from LiveScribe these past few months, and after some internal debate between getting a new phone and the Pulse Smartpen for a grad gift from the ‘rents, I chose the Smartpen (see, I do have my priorities in line ;D).

I haven’t regretted my choice.

1. Usage

I love my G1, it surfs the web, has GPS navigation and integrates beautifully with Google services. The one thing it really sucks at though? Making phone calls. It would be nice if a smartphone was smart and worked great as a telephone. I thought this might be the same problem with the Livescribe pen. Sure, the software might work beautifully, but does it feel good to write with?

Yes it does.

The Pulse Smartpen was meant to be held. It is perfectly balanced, weighty, large enough so that you know it exists in your hand, but not large enough to be cumbersome, and beautifully made with a solid metal body. I feel very cliche saying this, but the design and the seemingly minute attention to detail was very reminiscent of nearly every device Apple has made.

2. Software

The Livescribe Desktop software is just as beautiful. It is ridiculously easy to upload and manage your documents, as well as share those documents with friends. As for the handwriting recognition? It is no better or worse than Evernote. In other words, I am accepting of the technology, but I believe it can be much better.

3. Accessories

I won’t lie, it bugs me a little how much the special dot paper costs, but, I took the costs into consideration when purchasing the pen. At least it’s not like the ridiculous cheap printer = expensive ink situation that we all hate. It seems that Livescribe charges a fair price for the necessary dot paper, ink refills, and other accessories. You can even print the special dot paper in the Livescripe application if you are in a bind.

Final Thought

I love the pen and have very little to complain about. I think it will strike the necessary balance of usefulness that I will need during class while keeping my attention on the professor I am paying a pretty penny for their thoughts.

TechCrunch recently covered that Aviary now offers a version of their powerful online image, vector and audio editors for educators.

All I can say is, smart move.

Aviary, by creating a safe, cheap and powerful environment for both teachers and students to work in, are making an investment in future users. If students are taught to use Aviary over Adobe or other major editing platforms in school, then it would make sense that these students would continue to use Aviary in the future.

This move, while not a huge benefit today, will be tomorrow. Trust me.

As you might have noticed, I have been rather quiet this past week. This is not due to working too much (even though the 40+ hours a week are starting to get a lil’ bit old), but it is rather due to a strategic realignment involving my blog and what I want to do with it.

First big change I am going to make is I am no longer going to focus specifically on tech/social media. It’s too large of a niche, and I feel like I am this tiny voice amongst so many that my opinion really doesn’t matter, and to be fair to myself, I have a much larger voice than many. Another problem is that I don’t feel the passion that many people do about the topic, I am merely interested and enjoy keeping up while throwing in the occasional opinion.

So what will my new focus be?

Since I still thoroughly enjoy reading, participating, and commenting on technology, especially social media, I am going to integrate technology and my career path of choice which is to be a teacher into my writing. Basically, PAS is going to become an EDUTech blog. I am pretty excited about this, and it is an area that I can’t wait to dig into more. I have a passion for education and a deep interest in tech, I can’t see where I could possibly go wrong here.

My second big change I am going to make is disabling comments. It goes against every social fiber in my body, trust me, but I can’t manage the spam/rude/unintelligent comments anymore, and I have decided since I can’t dedicate the proper time to manage it, why bother with it? Instead, I am replacing the comments area with basically a big button that says “e-mail me”. I live and breathe e-mail, and it is something I can efficiently manage. E-mail is also a lot more personal, which makes me that much more inclined to respond to someone. Plus, my content is syndicated on nearly every major platform, many of which allow you to comment, and I know many of my current, and probably future readers are active on. I have no problem jumping into these conversations.

Monday is when this all starts happening. I’m pumped

The past few days, I have really been hyping up Endor.se, even before I used it. In short, I think it is an awesome service, and I think this tweet from me proves it.

There are two reasons why I think Endor.se will be more popular to use than LinkedIn for people like me, and many of my readers, in the next coming months.

1. Twitter Integration Done Right

The problem with Twitter integration on LinkedIn is that it is just a lot of noise that does not serve much purpose. Chris Brogran explains the problem beautifully. Endor.se on the other hand leverages Twitter beautifully. To log into Endor.se, all you have to do is connect to Twitter. From their, Endor.se uses Twitter for your profile picture (thank god, I hate uploading profile pictures) and links your Twitter account on your Endor.se page. Endor.se also leverages Twitter when adding endorsements as shown below.

My only problem with the Twitter integration is how dependent Endor.se is on Twitter. If Twitter crashes, Endor.se is rendered pretty unusable, as demonstrated just a few days ago. I really do hope Sam Brown and the other people behind this project have something in the works to address this dependency.

2. It Is Beautifully Simple

It takes literally one minute or less from signup to endorse someone or have someone endorse you. To endorse someone, all you do is click the plus button once logged in, enter their Twitter handle and fill in three tags you are endorsing them for. If the person you’re endorsing already has an account, that data will be populated with the tags they have already chosen.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do not think that Endor.se will replace LinkedIn, or even overtake it, simply because it does not have the features that many have come to expect from a robust business networking tool. But I do think Endor.se will become the Twitter of business networking, more popular in just a completely different way.

If you want to, feel free to endor.se me, or check out my page at endor.se/holdenpage