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.

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

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

This is why the Huffington Post succeeds so beautifully, it is because of all of the little things they do, like suggesting I install their Google Chrome extension, that makes them such a force to be reckoned with.

My question is, why don’t tech blogs such as @Mashable, @TechCrunch, @TheNextWeb and ReadWriteWeb (@RWW), pursuing such context with their readers?

I, for one, would be totally into it.

There are freelancers that are struggling for work, and then there are freelancers with too much work. Based on the little experience I have in this up and down industry, you’re either getting a lot of work requests on a very regular basis or very little work requests on a sporadic basis.

One of my favorite bloggers and respected web designer, Sam Brown, wants to solve this problem with his new project Endor.se. While I do not have access to Endor.se yet (closed beta) and cannot do a review, you can still learn a lot about the project over on Sam’s blog. The post details what Endor.se is, and what it is not. From what I am reading and seeing, I don’t think anyone will be disappointed, and I am looking forward to doing an in-depth review in the near future.

Endorse – What it is and what it is not. – Sam.Brown.tc

Fuck You, Leave Mark Alone – AlexWilhelm.com

We all need to calm the fuck down. Really, it’s getting to be a daily occurrence that some person in tech, be it a blogger, an idiot, a CEO of a company in an unrelated space, lays into Zuck for one reason or the other. Mark is too immature! Mark needs to have a Carol Bartz moment! Mark needs to step aside! Mark is melting down! Resign! Fired! Mark is, is, is, is, is blah blah blah. Shut the fuck up.

He cusses a bit more than I usually do, but I agree with every word.

If there exists one great thing about living in a no name town as a tech blogger, it’s the fact that I am not surrounded by tech geeks like me at all times. I am forced to deal with people who basically know how to open up Internet Explorer, go to Facebook.com, then play some games such as FarmVille. The people I regularly talk to don’t give a damn about their privacy settings, lists, API’s and what have you.

I am dealing with the mainstream user on a daily basis.

Some things I have learned from the mainstream users:

1. While I think most games are a waste of time, mainstream users OBSESS over them.
2. They don’t like complexity, but they like knowing the options EXIST.
3. They don’t care how it works, they care how it LOOKS.

These are all things that Apple understands beautifully about their customers, and that is why I was mostly excited to hear that FarmVille was coming to the iPhone. While I may hate the game, my friends do not, and it is another reason for them to hop on the iPhone train. So while many of us nerds laughed about FarmVille being on the iPhone,  just look at your friends who are considered mainstream on your Facebook account, then tell me how silly it is.

Steve Jobs and his team are not stupid, and whether you like to admit it or not, games as popular (and IMO, as stupid) as FarmVille are a bigger deal to consumers than the silver band around the iPhone 4 acting as an antenna.

Android and other competitors should be taking note.

The iPhone 4 has been announced today, and while I was not shocked by what was announced by the beloved Steve Jobs, I was pleased by what was released. As Louis Gray said, the iPhone 4 is nice, and IMO, really nice, but it isn’t going to slow down Android.

And that is just O.K. with me.

I am no longer looking at smartphone market with a bunch of crappy devices and a few outliers that are really great. I am now looking at smartphone market with a bunch of comparably great phones that fill basically all of my needs. What it really comes down, and what really makes me happy to say, is that the market has now come down to preference. Not one phone manufacturer/company and/or OS is better than one or the other when it comes down to the battle between Android and the iPhone.

My preference today? The iPhone.

Google Smarts Up in Security – Layers Of Tech

Many people are applauding the reports of Google ditching Windows in favor of OS X and Linux in the name of  ”security”. Besides the fact that I have little patience with people labeling OS X and Linux more secure than Windows, my main problem is the culture that Google is creating with this new policy.

Google has always promoted choice and being open. It is two of their favorite buzzwords to use, and used oh so lovingly at Google I/O to insult the fruit-that-must-not-be-named. So why isn’t Google taking their own advice they are spewing to the tech world and their competitors?

Whether Google likes it or not, people do like Windows, and while Google is already an Apple/Linux centric community, IMO, Google needs to let their employees embrace their competitors by letting their employees choose what OS they want to use. If Google continues to restrict what their employees can use, they are going to create an environment that is not supportive of one of their favorite buzzwords, choice. This will eventually lead to ignorance to what their competitors are doing, and also create an air of superiority that no company should have.

While I am not worried about that happening quite yet, I hope the Google of the future is nothing like this, and that these restrictions are kept to a minimum. If they continue to dictate what their employees use in more extreme ways, don’t be surprised if this attitude carries over to consumers as well. Microsoft has already done that once, and we just dug ourselves out of that hole. Let’s not do it again.