nathanmanley.net

I am proud to announce a new blog to the world… RealityCrowd.com! At RealityCrowd.com we will be exploring a wide range of subjects, but the idea that ties them all together is that there is a knowable reality that exists around us and making choices based on that reality is the only hope for mankind. Some of the subjects that we will be covering include (but are not limited to) science, religion, ethics, technology, computers, video games, genetics, physics, and astronomy.

So stop on by if you are interested in expanding your mind! Also since the blog is so new we are still thinking about what direction we want to go with it, so any suggestions would be appreciated!

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These are the best! Check out more at xkcd.com

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If anyone is interested in trying out the new internet video service Joost I now have beta invites. Just post your email address in the comments section and I will send you an invite.

So what is Joost exactly? Joost is an internet TV service from the guy who created Kazaa and Skype.

From their website:

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

I’ll be back with a review later, but for now let me know if you want an invite!! Just post in the comments section with your email address:

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Anyone who has been to my apartment (and who hasn’t really) knows that there is one thing that we lack. One thing known as Cable TV. Now if I said that five years ago, you would think I was stuck hopelessly in the past. You would probably ask me “Hey Nathan, how’s that butter churning going?” or “Why are you stuck hopelessly in the past?”

But these days, what with the awesome raw power of the internet, my roommates and I can be seen for the trail blazers that we are. Lately we have been harnessing the beast that is the internet to fill the void in our lives that TV left (admittedly it is a pretty small void…more like a voidlet). So how do you do that? Well, you could be a sucker and buy one of those wacky Apple TV things and buy all your TV shows from Apple. We tried this for a bit… of course what ended up happening was we spent more on buying the Colbert Report and Daily Show than we would have had we just kept the cable in the first place.

You can go around to different sites like Youtube.com and Google Video, but your results are mixed at best. For every gem, you will have to sit through several duds. However, stumbleupon.com fixes that for you. You can watch video after video that have all been deemed “cool” by fellow stumbleupon users. But you can also specify exactly what type of video you want to watch. What ends up happening is you get a constant stream of really interesting videos that match your tastes. It also works for websites to… and can be pretty addicting. You stumble around the web finding cool sites that you would never have found on your own.

You can find click below to see some of the sites that I have given the thumbs up to in stumbleupon, or click the video banner above to see the videos.

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Well, as if there were not enough distractions in the day now you can make your own comic strip. Toondoo.com is a website where you can easily put together a strip in a couple minutes by dragging and dropping elements from a list. Here is my first attempt. Feel free to link to your own creations below!

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A couple days ago I posted about setting up my Feedburner account to help you, the loyal reader, keep tabs on my site. It does this by providing the RSS feed to my site, a feed which you can put in various applications to see the content of my site. In trying to explain RSS to people, I am finding that the best way to see how it works is to simply use it… and one of the easiest ways I have yet seen to use it is with the Google Reader. I have been using it for the past week or so, and now I’m not sure how I got by without it!

So what does the Google Reader do and why should you use it? Here is a case study (mine). Lets say there are several sites that I check on a regular basis. I like to read The Consumerist, Lifehacker, and postsecret. I could check each one individually by typing in their domain names in my address bar, or I could bookmark them all and look through my bookmarks, going to each site one by one and seeing what was new. Or (drum roll please), I could use a feed reader like Google Reader. Most sites have some sort of feed that you can subscribe to. On my site, you can see the bright orange icon in the sidebar… that is an RSS Feed subscription icon. When you click on it, your browser should ask you where you want to subscribe to the feed, and Google Reader should be one of the choices on the list. You need a Google account (easy to set up) and you are good to go!

Once you are subscribed to the feed in Google reader you will see any updates to the site on the reader home page. So now instead of going all over the net, I can go to one place and see any updates to the various sites that I read. Again, I could write about this forever and it would still be a tough concept to grasp… just try it out and you will see the magic that is RSS.

Of course that is just the beginning…once I have my feeds in Google Reader there is a lot I can do with them, even share the stories I like with you guys:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/02776214800859449102

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This is not me. However, if you were looking for me on the internet this is one of the people you would find. Has he stolen my identity? No, but we happen to have the same name.

Have you ever looked yourself up on Google and found your “Google Twins”? In other words, using Google to find people with the same name as you and finding out what they do, what they have accomplished, etc. I had done this a few times a while back before I had this website and I was usually nowhere to be found on the internet. Now I show up, but so do many, many other Nathan Manleys. I thought I would use today to investigate the global phenomenon that is Nathan Manley and see what some of my (evil?) twins are up to.

One of the interesting things that the internet does is that it removes a lot of the location based solutions by which we communicate. There have always been people with the same names (since, lets face it…we are not too creative with naming our kids). For the millions of people with a name like “Dan Smith” or “Robert Jones” you could always tell which one you were talking about by their location. “oh you are talking about the Dan Smith from Springfield! I was thinking of the one in Centersville!” or “No, not Katie Jones on Elm Street, the one who lives on Spring Street” etc, etc

However, as the internet makes physical location less and less important you start to run into new problems. Instead of location based identity I think you will see a switch to action and relationship based identity (”oh, you mean Nathan Manley who is friends with ____ and is really interested in solar power?”). However, what if there is another Nathan Manley who used to play soccer? (there is). How does our new ability to find anyone anywhere affect our identity? I think it will become more and more of an issue the more information we put on the net…so we are only at the beginning. For instance, I wonder how many people will be looking for their friend Nathan Manley and come across this website, only to be disappointed (or pleasantly surprised)?

With that said, lets take a look at some other Nathan Manleys out there on the net:

Here is me (Nathan Manley)…if you are on this site reading this that means you are reading about me with words written by me. Good job! But wait, what about:

Nathan Manley!! Nathan is the head coach of the Rapid Area YMCA Swimmers in Grand Rapids Michigan. He seems moved to Grand Rapids from California in 2003, where he formerly taught English and the boys and girls swim team. Seems like this Nathan is upholding the Nathan Manley name pretty well! Lets see who else we can find.

Uh oh… This Nathan Manley appears to be dead! Born: Jul 15 1896 in Bath Co., KY Died: Aug 5 1978 Buried: Longview Cemetery, Bethel, Bath Co., KY. This could make an interesting road trip. RIP Nathan Manley…hope everything went well! You seem to have lived to the ripe old age of 82. Also of note, this Nathan Manley died a year before I was born…coincidence?

Here are a couple super smart Nathan Manleys. Apparently they made it through AP Physics…I’m glad some of us did!

Here is a soccer playing Welsh Nathan Manley. Actually I have seen pictures of him before in googling myself, I actually used to play soccer back in middle school and high school, but I’m guessing this Nathan Manley is better than I am.

If you are looking for a Nathan Manley to sell you a ceiling or a Nathan Manley who is a pretty good golfer or one who is good at chess or races cars they (we?) are out there.

Rockclimbing? You bet!

Drinking? Of course (oh wait, that’s actually me…how embarrassing!)

So it seems like if there is something to be done out in the world, Nathan Manley has a representative on the job. Although I am sad that another one of us got the Gmail name, I got the domain name! But hey other Nathan Manleys…don’t be afraid! I plan on upholding the great tradition of excellence that we seem to be developing here. If you are one of us feel free to let me know! Post below fellow Nathan Manley!

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Some websites just make sense…while most are a mix of elements that only sort of work together. Postsecret is one of those sites that has one idea and executes it perfectly. Here is how it works (from their website):

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

That’s it.

The site is pretty amazing in the variety of responses people have submitted to that simple request. It is also pretty telling that postsecret is the largest non comercial blog on the web. According to Technorati it is currently the 9th most read blog on the internet…that is huge for a site that is not about technology, politics, or news (although it really is about all those things in a roundabout way).

Check out the site to see what I mean…it is fascinating.

They also have a set of three books that are filled with the postcards that they have received.

You can pick up the books from independent book stores or order them from Amazon. So if you are tired of reading about the latest gadget or what Brittany did today why not give postsecret a shot?

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Hey look, now you can chat with me in real time directly from this website! Just type a message into the meebo chat box in the sidebar and I’ll get it. As long as I am signed in to the meebo.com account page it will pop up on my screen. You can use Meebo to sign into all of your instant messenger programs at once (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber) from any computer with web access. It gets all of your buddy lists and everything from your different accounts and puts them all in one spot.

So far it seems like a pretty cool program, the only thing I would actually like is for them to have a stand alone program that I could use on my home computer so that I would not have to leave the Meebo page open. I’m sure someone must have made one somewhere, I have just yet to find it.

So give it a shot! Send me a message so I can test this thing out.

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