Next of Search

At slideshare.net you can synchronize your powerpoint with your own audio file so that you can slidecast your presentation. And it’s absolutely free!! Powerpoint version of YouTube. This is a test done by a presentation guru, Garr Reynolds.

Sometimes we need more than podcast. With slideshare.net we can add presentation sides to a podcast. I think I can easily create tutorials for a new service or lectures using this service. Creating a flash tutorial was too much and too difficult for me.

I love the world when everything gets easy!

Update: There is Zentation, where you can easily sync your slides with *video*. Here’s a very good example done by Guy Kawasaki. I highly recommend to watch his keynote, “The Art of Innovation” at the 2007 Event Marketer Conference.

Wonder who are the fathers of Powerpoint? The answer is Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin. A recent article of Wall Street Journal covers their story, which is quite interesting.

I’ve just set up a new Skype contact.

There was more than a slight hassle when I was creating an account in Skype. It only asks user name and password for mandatory information and email address is optional. If you typed your email address, you can retrieve your password with user name and email address on Skype’s homepage. I guess it is for easy registration and Skype provides at least a way to retrieve your password by email. Seems reasonable??

Here’s my hassle:

At first I didn’t enter my email address and somehow mis-typed my password, so I couldn’t log in. But I could not retrieve my password since there is no way to verify it’s me!! I just had to create a new one and the user name that I wanted was already taken by *me*.

Second time, I mis-typed my email address and Skype told me it’s wrong email address and turned me down. But it didn’t give me a chance to correct my typo and again and I couldn’t log in with the new account name & password. Again, the user name I entered second time became taken by *me*.

Third time, I made it finally. So now I have 3 Skype accounts: 2 out of 3 unaccessible. I guess, they never made use case scenario with which they could easily prevent this hassle caused by a simple mistake that anybody can make.

Or am I the only one who makes these stupid mistakes??

update: I think my best solution to this matter is asking two email entries to check if it’s correctly inputed. Just like we type our password two times. Still email address can be optional like now.

Oh, only plugins can complete my world.

To end a WordPress hassle, I need more plugins. I found some of good articles recommending a dozen of plugins. Probably it will take a while to set them up properly, I guess.

The Top Ten WordPress Plugins
Must-have WordPress plugins

WordPress plugin directory
WordPress Plugin Database

Already I’ve spent several hours to accommodate some missing features of WordPress into my blog using plugins since Saturday but I haven’t reached to the point where I can get nirvana. Far from there yet.

Plugin model is a very good idea for software developers and 3rd party developers since they get most of benefits and it’s a win-win for each others. Also good for geeks, too. But for non-tech users, it’s just another heavy burden on their shoulders. Considering “Law of Conservation of Complexity” by Larry Tesler, there lies too much complexity on users’ hand. Someone should take the complexity from users’ hand to somewhere else. It’s a major barrier that we should get across in order to create a mass market. One way around can be a pre-configured package just like APM package (Apache, PHP, and MySQL.)

Will we see the day when people can use blogs with ease of a type writer? Let me enjoy the sunshine of the day.