I’ve never seen something like this before. Watch the video of the zoetrope below…at first it looks like it’s just a bunch of Toy Story figurines spinning, but then add some strategically timed lights and they come to life. I think my brain just exploded…and I might have to see this in person.

Please take a minute to re-introduce yourself to the sidebar. I’ve pared down a lot of the “me elsewhere” links, and have quietly added in drop downs for the categories and archives. For the very observational folk, you’ve already noticed that the one major addition is also to the “me elsewhere” section where I’ve added my new photo blog. WordPress.com just released a new theme that adapts itself to the color makeup of the picture. This makes it look like the theme is customized for each picture. Here’s a little preview:

I’ve backlogged a few of my favorites, but will be sifting through my Flickr photostream for some old pics and throwing those in there a few times a week as well. To navigate, you just click on the right side of the picture to move backward and the left side to go forward through the photo posts. Head on over and check it out. Let me know what you think here, or leave a comment there. I’ve queued up three pictures per week for the next couple months, so visit often. Sorry, you’ll have to follow two sites now [jeffphoto.wordpress.com]

I went to my first Nationals game in the new stadium this weekend and I loved it. I liked the convenience of RFK being on the Orange line, but the amenities and architecture of the new stadium more than made up for it. The first thing you notice when you walk in, is that the stadium has a very open feel. When you’re walking around the concourse, you generally have a good view of the field. There are a ton of places to get food and some randomly placed bars around the stadium to hang out and grab drinks. There was a bit of a hiccup with the lighting though, and the game had a 15-20 minute delay at the top of the 4th inning. All in all, I was very impressed with the Nat’s new stadium, and I can’t wait to go to a ton more games this summer and get some Ben’s Chili Bowl. Time to invest in some Nat’s gear. More pictures on Flickr.

I just watched The Wizard last night. My first installment of “Missed Movies” turned out a disaster. Although now I can say definitively that “Yes, I have seen The Wizard starring Fred Savage from the ’80s”, I would have been totally fine without ever seeing it this late in life. There wasn’t nearly enough Nintendo as I thought there’d be, and way too much Christian Slater.

Some movies should be left as being thought of as awesome and never be re-watched or seen for the first time 18 years after it’s release. For me, The Wizard was one of them. Likewise, to avoid spoiling my glorious image of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie, I should probably never watch it again.

A quick look at my Netflix queue reveals that the next installment of Missed Movies should be pretty far away. There have been so many jokes with my friends that I didn’t fully understand because I didn’t see the Nicholas Cage/John Travolta thriller Face/Off. I know, it’s crazy I haven’t seen it! But I intend to remedy that. Currently Face/Off is #29.

This will probably be a recurring post theme because I am terrible at seeing movies when they come out. Usually if I miss seeing a movie within about a month or so of its release, I’ll never see it. I just joined Netflix a bit ago, so I can now easily go back and see all those movies without searching through the non-New Release-wall-middle of my local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video.

This week’s movie is The Wizard. I am so excited. I never had an original Nintendo, but always played at my friends and neighbor’s houses. The Wizard came out in 1989, and was near the pinnacle of Fred Savage’s
Wonder Year’s fame. I remember wanting to see it, but just never got around to it (aka: my parents didn’t take me to see it or there there no birthday parties around this release date).

I am not going to read the synopsis so that I can be surprised by the awesome plot. I do know/kinda remember that it has something to do with a video game skills competition, the release of Mario Bros. and there’s the Power Glove in there as well. Also, Jenny Lewis stars in it, who is the lead singer for one of my favorite bands Rilo Kiley.

“Requires little to no attention, light, water.” Perfect.

I threw this together real quick to show how super loud and red the Verizon Center was yesterday. Unfortunately, the Caps came out flat and got shutout in game two. On Vimeo.

Thanks for inviting me to the game, and the ticket Chris. More pictures on Flickr.

I especially like the guy spitting in disbelief at 0:36 in. On Vimeo. [via]

[edit: Vimeo removed the vid. Here's the same one from YouTube:]

http://fuckingrad.muxtape.com/

Check mine out if you haven’t yet. New mix coming soon.

I signed up for Photojojo’s Flickr Time Capsule to have them send me my most interesting photos twice a month from a year ago. It’s crazy how much has changed over time. We rarely ever play Mariokart anymore - it’s almost strictly Guitar Hero 3 lately. The picture is of one of me and Don’s many battlemode marathons. Unfortunately I lost 48-52. Here’s my time capsule for last year at this time.

Finding new interesting music can be hard if you don’t know where to look. I stand by the statement that I went to college during the best four years for discovering new music. Everyone was using Napster to discover songs from people across the country as well as finding MP3s out on our school’s network. Times have changed, and widely available free paths to music have been shut down for the most part. The common person is limited to the 15 songs that are in rotation on the local terrestrial radio stations, paying for satellite radio, or whatever song is featured on the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy. The internet has really opened up a lot of opportunities for a more interactive way to find music such as Pandora, or LastFM. I prefer Pandora because of it’s super simple interface.

There is a new interesting site that just hit the streets called MuxTape. It’s a site where you can upload songs out of your personal collection (up to 12 tracks, each <10MB) to share as an online mixtape. This has potential to take off, because while you can personalize and share “stations” with Pandora and LastFM, you can’t share a specific group of songs. The interface is simple and huge and very easy to use, but I would like more ability to customize the mix. Like giving it a name (Summer Mix ‘96, or something else cheesy like that), uploading an image, or a directory of muxtapes to discover. Bands can use this as a simple place to send people to listen to their new releases. I’ve already found a sweet band called MGMT from this muxtape that I never would have found otherwise.

Check out my muxtape @ jeffchin21.muxtape.com. Leave me a comment to your muxtape if you end up making one.

I need TWX to do better within the next 30 days so that I can take advantage of my stock options before they expire! It hasn’t done too hot since I quit (or the past year for that matter)…I should probably just pull the trigger before it gets any lower. The picture below also makes me sad. TWX was the only stock that’s down of the few that I follow. Even the pathetic Blockbuster was trending with the market.

Oh boy, my most favorite website ever, Netvibes, has gone social. While only a couple of my friends actually use Netvibes, I wish that everyone did. It really would change the way that you interact with the internet. I’ve said it before (here) and I’ll say it again - Netvibes will change your life. If you’re stuck using iGoogle, MyYahoo, or MyAOL, you’re really missing out.

new drop-down menu bar

Your customized interface stays the same, but now there’s an added toolbar at the top with links to see your public universe (here’s mine), your contacts, your contact’s recent activities (links from their feeds that they star), your profile, and finally a not yet activated link to your new Netvibes drive. A little digging around and it looks like we’ll all get a more integrated 2GB online filing system provided by Steek (from Steek blog). This alone will be great for sharing files and having files accessible anywhere you have an internet connection. Currently I use Box.net intermittently because it was a recommended widget with Netvibes, but with this more integrated solution, I will definitely be switching to this.

All the other familiar features are still available but with a more glossy finish. I for one am a fan of the new interface. There are a few features I would like to see still - the ability to directly share a starred story directly with a friend/contact rather than sending it to your public universe and also e-mail notifications if anyone signs your wall. I don’t expect anyone to write on mine, but I figure eventually these might get spammed. I’ve snapped a few screenshots in case you wanted to see what I’m talking about. Anyways, add me as a contact or start following my activity and favorite widgets on my public universe. For a few more details, check out Chris’ post here.

new widget selector

More Ginger coverage:
ginger.netvibes.com
netvibes blog announcement
Mashable: First Look at Netvibes Ginger

I’ve poured a lot of time and money into this house, but it’s that time again.

See:
MLS Listing
Zillow Listing

I frequent digg.com fairly often, but just happened to notice that they were going to have a live broadcast via uStream.tv to address users issues and questions. This is something that I have never seen before from any (albeit a startup) company. Before the townhall meeting, they collected comments and questions from users on this Digg story and went through the top 20 questions.

This townhall meeting could be viewed as very successful in my eyes, because it achieved two things:

1. Allowed users to submit issues to the creators of Digg.com about usability and features that are/aren’t working for them - and have them addressed.
2. Allowed the creators of Digg to collect opinions about the site and have them essentially ranked in order of importance by the avid user base.

Now, as a web analyst, one thing pops into my mind about the value of this type of forum. The goal of being a web analyst is not just to to learn what the user is doing, but to understand why the users are at your site and how they are using it. It is rare that you will have a very clear cut survey telling you exactly what users are concerned about. Currently I am working with my main web developer at my new job to create event tags on main functions of one of our sites to find out if they are actually using certain features or not. This requires man-hours, testing, implementation, and this method is not scalable for a massive site (we’re only measuring clicks on the home page) - and that’s just to measure a behavior, not to add a new feature/functionality/content! In the townhall format, they ended up with a much more dynamic and democratic version of a user survey from real users. (extra reading: Kaushik.net - the importance of surveys) They also appear to be more open to the public (in addition to diggnation) which builds trust from the user base that they are actually doing it for “us”.

Anyways, that’s enough nerdy web analytics talk for one post. I also wanted to point out that while having Digg.com CEO Jay Adelson answer some of the questions was good, he comes off as a huge dork, and definitely needs more time on camera before stepping up to another live Town Hall broadcast. Kevin Rose should not let him talk as much as possible. Don’t believe me? Watch the archived live broadcast for yourself on Mashable or Digg.com/Townhall. Jay’s the one on the left.

In web analytics news, I will be attending the Web Managers Roundtable tomorrow in DC…see you there!

I finally took the time to scan in the bulk of the remainder of my obsessively collected movie ticket stubs. Thankfully my scanner can detect multiple items and automatically splits the images apart. I added about 75 or so scans of movie tickets to my “Scanned Tickets” set on Flickr, as well as two concert tickets that will forever be burnt into my mind. Weezer’s comeback concert at the 9:30 Club after being dormant for many years, and Phish @ Meriweather when Don and I drove to and from all the way from JMU almost passing out countless times while driving on the way back.

These tickets date all the way back to 1997, when I was still in highschool and saw an average of a movie a week, and usually paid for none of them. The recent scans also reveal movies I’m embarrassed to have seen like Dude, Where’s My Car?, the worst movie ever made Deep Impact, and Rob Schneider’s Deuce Bigalow. Anyways, this archival process is mostly for me, but you might find it interesting…

Scanned Tickets Set on Flickr.

This past Christmas, my parents really scored with a random gift that I never asked for, didn’t realize I wanted, but turned out to be something that I really like. It has now been a couple months with my Garmin Nüvi 650 GPS navigation system and it’s awesome. I will start out with some of the positives and then dwell on some of the negatives that really bug me.

Positives

A few years ago, for me it was both unpractical to get a navigation system stock in a car or as an add on accessory because they cost too much. I still think that they’re a little unnecessary because I usually know when I’m going. These units have come down significantly in price and I believe improved their usability, screen size and features. I haven’t followed this segment of the market too closely because I wasn’t in the market for one.

Some features that I really like are the turn by turn voice directions, that tell you to turn or stay straight at the right time based on the distance and your speed, saving of favorite locations, searching for nearby landmarks such as restaurants, gas stations or parking garages, the large 4.3″ touch screen and of course the many stats that you can get about your current trip like max speed, average moving speed, average overall speed, time idle, etc. There are also many features that I will probably never use, like the ability to load audio books onto the onboard memory or SD card slot and the (painfully slow) picture viewer.

Most of all, the Garmin is super easy to use. In fact, it doesn’t even come with an instruction manual (but for those technologically challenged, the manual is available for viewing online). Once you fire it up for the first time, you answer a few setup questions and then you’re ready to go. The main menu has many quick options that are handy like, go home, go to favorites, find food/gas/lodging, etc. This becomes useful when you’re in an area (like MD!) where you don’t know where the hell anything is. I’ve used it a couple times around my new office building and on the way to work. But unfortunately like all or most map systems (online map or GPS unit), it might not give you the best directions. When you manually type in an address, it will pick up the street name, state, or city within the first three letters. This reduces the time to type in the whole street name. You can search by intersection, street name, or business name, so if you don’t know any of these - just get off the road and ask someone please.

Negatives

Of course there are negatives to every product, and this one is no different. The good news is that while they are annoying, for the amount that I use it, they are tolerable.

The first negative is the way that it’s charged and mounted. In order for you to suction cup the unit to your windshield, you need to lift the GPS antenna, then clip in a mount that has the charging port. For some reason, even if the unit is off, and the GPS antenna is up, the battery is still being used. This means that you have to remove the clip/charging unit to put down the antenna. So essentially mounting and un-mounting the GPS is a three step process and requires you to find places in your car to store all the random pieces. Quite annoying.

The battery lasts a decent time. It’s rated at 7-8 hours, but I find that it dies a couple hours sooner than that. And annoyingly, it doesn’t tell you that the battery is about to die, it just shuts off leaving you wondering when to take that next turn. Some features that I wish it had, but are available on more expensive models are live traffic updates (available with an expensive add-on), and bluetooth calling. With the traffic feature, I would probably tend to use this unit almost every day.

Conclusions

I would recommend this Garmin but with caution. If you’re lost all the time, and anticipate being a heavy user, opt for a more feature laden unit with traffic and bluetooth. I’m not sure if all the models have the same mount/charging issue, but it’s something else to look in to, or at least be aware of the nuisance. For the more casual user, this should be fine, and can find it for <$300 at Costco. I use mine probably about once every couple weeks, so it’s not too much of a pain to fire up whenever I need to find something.

Any questions?  Please leave a comment, or send me a message…

Garmin 650 Site

On Vimeo

After editing this video together, I realized that I’m not even in it. Think of it as supplementary to Dave’s video - his video proves I was really there!  And as a side-note, I’m kinda disappointed with iMovie 08’s lack of video editing.  Apparently that’s going to be addressed in future updates.

Dave just compiled a video of our trip to San Fran from a few months ago. Beware, it’s random, strange, extreme and contains a lot of slow motion videos! I guess that’s what happens when you get together with your old band from college. I can’t wait to get out there again soon. (on Vimeo)