June 2011 Site Seekers

Robert Schulz, our illustrious treasurer is up for Site Seekers this month. He shares the following list of sites and videos you should check out!

• Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions
  http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/
• Welcome to RadioLovers.com - Where Old Radio Shows Live Again!
  http://www.radiolovers.com/
• Answer of the day
  http://www.answers.com/
• Interested in Art Museum anyone?
  http://www.googleartproject.com/
• Weird Lists having nothing to do with David Letterman
  http://www.cracked.com/
  
• How about Weird/Geek gifts?
  http://www.thinkgeek.com/
  
• A bunch of interesting YouTube presentations
  
  • Free Hugs! http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=hN8CKwdosjE
  • Rhapsody in Blue - George Gershwin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz6D-ABPWmI - Two of the guys on the Allen Organ sales team performed the entire 18 minute piece on a Kawai piano and an Allen organ.
  • Il Divo - Amazing Grace http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYMLMj-SibU
  • Most realistic use of computer graphics ever http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUdpFN4O4B0
• Linux on a USB drive
  http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/
  
• Astronomy Photo of the Day
  http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/
  
  • Start with a date list? - http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
  • Or a very interesting date
  • http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110516.html

Hope to see you all at the Central meeting on Saturday. Kathy has two great presentation set up to share:

• SmartPhones - What are they, what are the differences, and how do you choose
• Skype - What is it and why do I need it

May 2011 Site Seekers

Bruce Jacobs recommends the following sites for your viewing enjoyment:

• Silly animated GIFs how not to do animated GIFs version:
  http://www.textfiles.com/underconstruction/
• Silly animated GIFs fun picture blog version:
  http://fromme-toyou.tumblr.com/tagged/cinemagraph/page/1
  These images are also animated gifs. A little nicer that what you expect. Watch carefully:
• More animated GIFs some silly some not: http://www.gifs.net/gif/

And finally:

• Old TV shows and movies streaming for free: www.hulu.com

April to June Meetings - WoW will we have fun!

Wondering what wonders will be uncovered at the next few ASCIi meetings? Wonder no longer!
Meetings will be at the usual locations unless otherwise indicated:

• East side meetings are at Word of Life Lutheran Church in Surprise
• Central meetings are at the SCF Tower in Phoenix
• West side meetings are at UAT in Tempe 

ASCIi user group meetings are open to all who are interested. Membership has it benefits: you might just win one of the prizes we give out at meetings. All meetings start at 12:30 pm. 


Interested in getting more involved? Attend the Steering Committee meeting, held before each Central meeting (starting at 11:30 am).  We are always looking for speakers, site seekers presenters, and more.

April 23, 2011	East side meeting Gangplank Chandler AZ	Replacing Cable/Satellite TV with High Speed Internet – Bruce Jacobs Learn about using MediaCenter HuluPlus and Netflix instead of cable.
May 7, 2011	West side meeting	WOW - World of Warcraft – Bill Funk
May 14, 2011	Central meeting	WOW - World of Warcraft – Bill Funk
May 28, 2011	East side meeting	Prepping a disk drive for external use – Bill Funk
All May meetings	Site Seekers	Bruce Jacobs
June 4, 2011	West side meeting	Skype -  Kathy Jacobs Please note: We need someone at the West side meeting to be the other side of Skype
June 11, 2011	Central meeting	Smart Phones: Android, iPhone, Win 7 phone, or Blackberry – Kathy Jacobs Skype – Kathy Jacobs
June 25, 2011	East side meeting	Skype
All June meetings	Site Seekers	Unknown – Want to volunteer?

Cleveland in July - Just 97 days away

News of the day: APCUG is holding an conference and our 2011 annual meeting July 15-17 in Cleveland OH - home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!



We've got great speakers, great topics, and a great location.



We would love to see all of the Amplify community come over - Please join us!

Amplify’d from vitaminch.com

APCUG is heading to Cleveland!

Looking for a great weekend event to attend? Check out the APCUG regional conference and annual meeting to be held in Cleveland July 15-17.

We have a great slate of speakers lined up, including presentations by:

Bill Jelen Marie Vesta Kathy Jacobs Susie Sharp Don and Michelle Tillman Don Corbut

Topics are going to range from Office tips to Genealogy, from iPads and Ebooks to Drupal and Linux. Looking for ideas for your group? Check out the presentations on Skype, fundraising, and social media. We even have Q&A sessions scheduled with the members of both the Board of Directors and the Board of Advisors.

Be sure to check out the event. Let me know if you are going to be there! Read more at vitaminch.com

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gWAsms

Site Seekers for March 2011

These are the sites Kathy Jacobs showed during the meeting. Enjoy!



http://vanishingphoenix.com/ - Phoenix History, before it all disappears
http://www.acmeron.com/ - Phoenix Vintage Photos

http://gangplankhq.com/ - Co-working facility in Chandler (free space if you need it)
http://incohoots.com/ - Co-working facility in Phoenix with small fees
http://optinlearningcenter.com/ - Learning and more for small businesses

http://www.yelp.com/phoenix - Community reviews on business of all kinds

http://www.lighting-essentials.com/ - Lighting Essentials for Photographers

http://phoenix.twestival.com/ -  Local event to support Child Crisis Center
http://www.tequilazona.org/ - 2nd annual Tequilazona to support Public Radio AZ

http://childcrisis.org/ - Child Crisis Center - because that is the logical follow on to twestival's link :)

http://authoritylabs.com/blog/ - Blog for one of the best site monitoring SEO for sites

http://kwss.org/ - Independent radio - 106.7 fm

http://kjzz.org/ - NPR local station - 91.5

http://shwaag.com/ - Local company that gives away stuff for free.

http://page.ly/ -  Local WP hosting for anyone

http://podcampaz.org/ - Couldn't list Arizona sites without this one!

http://dillysdeli.com/ - Delis in Tempe, Chandler, and Scottsdale with great food

http://www.floridinos.net/ -  Great pizza and pasta in Chandler

http://www.wedgebottle.com/ - Cheese shop in the making, to open in Ahwatukee in April. Great Cheese Blog!

http://www.lagrandeorangegrocery.com/ - Brunch here rules!

xkcd: Good Code

http://xkcd.com/844/

xkcd from 1/6/2010 - As a former tester, I can verify that to the outside world this is what the loop of the code development cycle looks like!

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bku4u

Great idea: Create Twitter accounts to act like feed readers!Al

@allison_boyer from #BlogWorld shared an amazing idea this morning: Create a Twitter account that will be used just for feeds. She documents the whole process in the original article, as well as some great ideas for how to use the account for more than just your own interest.



The process she defines is pretty labor intensive, so I doubt I will end up putting it to full use. If someone would automate the process, that would be awesome.



I can see taking this another step further by putting a Twitter stream widget on your #Amplify page (not the one you watch, the one everyone goes to when they read your stuff). That would let you share the people you watch most closely with those who read your posts.



Thoughts?

Amplify’d from www.blogworld.com

How to Turn Twitter into a Feed Reader

I hate feed readers. Always have. Frankly, I just don’t have time to read every single post by every single blogger I like, not even close, so I only log into my feed reader once every day or two. Because I follow so many people, that means that every time I log in, my feed reader shows a billion unread posts. Some days, it looks so daunting to clear ‘em all out, that I just close my browser without reading anything.

I keep TweetDeck running all day though. I thought to myself recently, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could combine Twitter and feeds to make a column just for people’s new blog posts.

I mean, I know a lot  of bloggers out there tweet their links, but they often get lost in the shuffle of conversation. And not everyone has their Twitter account tied to Twitterfeed (or a related service). And some people tweet links to multiple sites, both their own and others, or tweet links from the archives, etc.

It gets confusing. Yet, somehow I don’t think it will work to contact every blogger I like and saying, “Hey, will you create a separate Twitter account JUST for your feed so I can follow that account and put it into a group just for feeds?”

But, duh…I can do this myself. Kind of. With a little hacking (and I use that term losely, because this involves no actual hacking, just ingenuity), you can turn Twitter into a Feed Reader! Read more at www.blogworld.com

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dHakZS