That is my jam!

Facebook Exporter for iPhoto.

Get this if you have a Mac. For all your iPhoto-to-Facebook needs.



I just used it to upload the wedding album. I needed to get the latest version of StuffIt (didn't work with 10.0, worked fine with 11.2), but after that things were pretty straightforward. Just select the images you want in your album and go to Share > Export and click on the Facebook tab. Then you can login so it will let you add to existing albums you have (or create a new one like I did) and tag your friends. Then you have to go onto Facebook and approve your additions (just hit Select All and go!) but I really like how everything is all done in one fell swoop.

Labels: albums, facebook, iphoto, photos, stuffit

Link.

posted by annie @ 11:51 AM 0 comments

New TV shows revisited.

Back in the summer I gave a preview of new shows on the networks. Most of them never went to air or are now defunct. Let's take a look, shall we? Thanks to the Futon Critic for status updates.

nbc:
looks like their m.o. this season is to gather as many stars as they can.

heroes.
an eclipse messes with some random people and they gain different powers, like teleportation. jess from gilmore girls is the main guy and he figures out he's supposed to save the world or something. i also caught sean from felicity (!) playing a cop, but he may have just been in the preview to help explain some of the backstory. it would rock though if he was in it for real. i mean, it was cool to see him in lost, but he was there for two seconds and then got eaten by the monster. long live sean!
CURRENT STATUS: rockin. 14 million users and part of the eternal debate "Heroes or 24?"

studio 60 on the sunset strip.
let's have matthew perry and the evil dude from billy madison (okay, after imdb i guess i should say "the guy from the west wing") play rebel t.v. producers who get another chance. they look freakin old.
CURRENT STATUS: "placed on hiatus after its 2/19/07 airing; no return date has been set." I watched this some because of its timeslot, but it wasn't all that impressive.

twenty good years.
john lithgow and some other old dude (haha, sorry. it's another famous guy but i don't remember who) are lifelong friends who have become bachelors again. this one looks pretty funny.
CURRENT STATUS: "on hiatus or fate to be determined." Taken off the schedule in November. I never watched it.

friday night lights.
you're kidding me, right? as i was watching this i kept thinking, "man, how is this going to last a whole season? it should be a movie.." lo and behold, they freakin made it from a movie. bad call. oh, the dude from early edition is the coach.
CURRENT STATUS: "currently airing." 5 million viewers vs. American Idol isn't too shabby.

30 rock.
despite this reunion of snl actors that could potentially be painful, this looks pretty good. tina fey is the producer of a show and alec baldwin comes in and takes over. tracy morgan and rachel dratch are also in it. i think tina and tracy will steal the show.
CURRENT STATUS: "currently airing." I like it. Makes me laugh out loud. Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan are money.

kidnapped.
some rich couple's kid gets kidnapped. the fbi takes the case on but some jack bauer type says they'll f it up and gets the couple to hire him or something. i say jack bauer type but i've never seen 24. so i'll just say this reminded me of it.
CURRENT STATUS: "confirmed as canceled on 10/31/06." pulled the plug in October.

TOTALS:
3 running
2 on hiatus
1 canceled

abc:
i think their m.o. is adding as many new shows as humanly possible.

six degrees.
lost, meet crash. j.j. abrams is making yet another show that will have people naming all the shows he's produced except felicity. boo. i'm sure it'll be popular. and probably good. i don't remember what happens...i think someone is supposed to kill someone else and they go through how they're connected.
CURRENT STATUS: "set to return on Friday, March 23." Had 9 million viewers back in October (being after LOST must not have hurt). I watched the first couple of episodes but it wasn't too compelling.

let's rob mick jagger.
the dad from grounded for life sees mick jagger on like cribs and decides to team up with his city worker friends and hatch a plan to rob mick jagger. who's actually on the show. meh.
CURRENT STATUS: "placed on hiatus after its 2/28/07 airing; no return date has been set." Turned into "The Knights of Prosperity"...sounded pretty lame to begin with.

the nine.
well, i guess scott wolf saw how popular matthew fox got after lost and decided to make a return of his own. nine people are held hostage in a bank for a couple days. i think he plays a cop.
CURRENT STATUS: "placed on hiatus after its 11/22/06 airing." This one I also watched for a couple of episodes. Oh well.

brothers and sisters. ally mcbeal is back! calista flockhart plays--you guessed it--a sister. they all have to deal with their dad dying.
CURRENT STATUS: "currently airing." I watch this one for inexplicable reasons.

in case of emergency.
david arquette, lori loughlin, and jonathan silverman (who looked more and more like will from will and grace as the reel went on). i really don't remember what this is about, except some cheesy line like "i never know who to put when it says 'in case of emergency, contact:' on a form."
CURRENT STATUS: "currently airing." On just before LOST. It just peaked at 6 million viewers. Hmm.

traveler.
some dude frames his roommates as bank robbers as he takes all the money. and they realize he's been lying to them the whole time. so they try to figure out who he really is and where he might be.
CURRENT STATUS: "new this summer (yet to premiere)." I guess we'll see about this.

help me help you.
ted danson. playing a psychologist. ted, ted, ted...did you learn nothing from becker?
CURRENT STATUS: "placed on hiatus after its 12/12/06 airing." Lame.

day break.
taye diggs is in this one. groundhog day. except taye diggs has to relive the day while he de-frames himself for murder.
CURRENT STATUS: "confirmed as canceled on 12/15/06." Canceled in December.

big day.
this looks bad. the trials and tribulations of a wedding day.
CURRENT STATUS: "completed airing its first season on 1/30/07; has yet to be renewed for a second season." Yeah, I didn't watch this one.

betty the ugly.
the girl from sisterhood of the traveling pants (!) and si se puede and a host of spanish-american movies/shows plays an awkward girl with a job in the fashion/modeling industry. i guess it's like the devil wears prada, only dealing with ethnicity. i like her but oh man, why would you willingly sign on to a show with that name? i bet they changed it on her at the last minute.

oops, i take it back. this is an image from the original columbian telenovela betty la fea. apparently she was ugly the whole time, moving her way up the ladder with her smarts, and somehow transforms into a beauty, much to the chagrin of her columbian viewers. the feminist show apparently became anti-feminist real fast. we'll see what happens in america!
CURRENT STATUS: "currently airing." Turned into "Ugly Betty"...I dug it but stopped watching it/Grey's when I started watching NBC on Thursday nights. It is online though so I may get back to watching it there. Good to see it's gotten some respect.


and then there's men in trees and under belly...neither of which i have any recollection of.
CURRENT STATUS: "placed on hiatus after its 3/8/07 airing; no return date has been set" for men in trees, and I couldn't find an entry for under belly. I actually watched a couple of men in trees eps. I dug the small towniness.

TOTALS:
4 running
5 on hiatus
1 canceled
1 to air
1 ?


cw: phew, at least this one won't take me 14 hours to write about. i finally learned what cw stands for. c for cbs (which owns upn) and w for warner brothers (wb, duh). i thought it was pretty funny how they didn't bother to highlight any of the wb's shows they're bringing over to cw, but they treated everybody hates chris like it was a brand new show.

runaway.
donnie wahlberg is old! so some girl accidentally dies in his house and he gets charged with murder. but he convinces his family to go on the run with him so he can be free. his son has a gf though and he eventually goes back to her. and apparently takes the cops with him back to his dad.
CURRENT STATUS: "confirmed as canceled on 10/18/06." I think I watched the first episode of this. Meh.

the game.
the untold story of the girlfriends of football players on an nfl team. starring one--not both--of the girls from sister sister. ouch.
CURRENT STATUS: "currently airing." Haha, I still think it's funny that just one of the twins made it on this show. What a dis.

hidden palms.
kevin williamson tries to relieve his glory days of dawson's creek. it's like, i don't know, the o.c. yawn.
CURRENT STATUS: "new this spring (yet to premiere)." Eh.

TOTALS:
1 running
1 canceled
1 to air


cbs:
the #1 network isn't adding too much.

the class.
so this couple met in third grade and for the 20-year anniversary of when they met, the guy decides to have a reunion. pretty funny concept...i mean, who has a third grade reunion? all i remember from third grade is writing "love, annie" on the valentine to my crush instead of "from annie" like i did for everyone else in class (and getting called out on it by my table) and being confused by two things my teacher said in one sentence. we were divying up duties for our charlotte's web class project and my teacher said "annie, do you not want to etch the door poster?" first of all, i didn't know what etch meant, and second, i didn't know how to answer since she stuck "not" in there. the first time i'd ever heard that. welcome to north carolina! okay, back on track. oh yeah, so at the party the gf runs out. and of course people get together.
CURRENT STATUS: "completed airing its first season on 3/5/07; has yet to be renewed for a second season." This was cute I guess. I watched an episode but that's it.

jericho.
skeet ulrich comes back to his hometown in bfe. and some nuclear bomb goes off or something. and he becomes the hero.
CURRENT STATUS: "currently airing." This one looked good but I haven't watched it.

smith.
ray liotta. that's all i remember.
CURRENT STATUS: "confirmed as canceled on 10/6/06."

shark.
james woods plays a defense lawyer turned prosecutor who takes young guns under his wing.
CURRENT STATUS: "currently airing."

TOTALS:
3 running
1 canceled

fox:
also not a lot new.

'til death.
brad garrett gets the lead this time. he and his wife are basically ray and debra. but i guess they don't have kids. and the dude who gets with stifler's mom and his new wife are newlyweds who move in next door. oh and the guys will both work at the same school. it looks okay.
CURRENT STATUS: "currently airing." This was okay the one time I saw it I guess.

justice.
jack from dawson's creek is on it. it's a lawyer show. all about shady jury-rigging and such.
CURRENT STATUS: "confirmed as canceled on 11/10/06." Aww, Jack.

happy hour, vanished, standoff...i've got nothing.
CURRENT STATUS: canceled, canceled, and on break until April. Hot.

TOTALS:
1 running
1 on hiatus
3 canceled

I guess that's it. Why I did this I don't really know. 12 running, 8 on hiatus, 7 canceled, 2 to air, and 1 question mark. Oh but I did learn from that site that Shonda Rhimes is making a Grey's Anatomy spinoff featuring Addison.

Labels: networks, television

Link.

posted by annie @ 1:40 AM 0 comments

Joost.

So Joost is the hottest new thing out there in terms of web TV. The other day I saw the report that MTV Networks is planning to create thousands of websites to showcase their content and let viewers repurpose it. And they're using this platform Joost to help develop this idea. I took a look at the Joost website and realized I had been a member of their mailing list since they were known as the Venice Project. And it turns out I got an email describing the partnership a few weeks ago:

Great news from the Joost Content Team. Today we're announcing a major partnership with Viacom. Which will bring programming and lots of channels from Viacom's key brands and properties available on Joost on our imminent launch.

MTV will offer popular shows, both past and present, including Laguna Beach, Beavis & Butthead, Real World, Punk'd and My Super Sweet Sixteen, while COMEDY CENTRAL will feature episodes from Stella, CCP's and Freak Show. Nickelodeon, CMT: Country Music Television, MTV2, Logo, Spike TV, mtvU, and Gametrailers.com will also provide content. VH1's offerings will include episodes of Flavor of Love, Surreal Life, and I Love New York. BET's Networks' offerings will include some of its biggest shows, including Beef, DMX: Soul of a Man, Comic View and recent smash hit American Gangster. Also, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage and Paramount Classics will be providing full-length feature films from its catalog of classics and recent releases.

This content isn't available yet. We're working hard on shipping, transcoding and feeding the P2P network (and no, despite malicious gossip to the contrary - engineering is not giving Star Trek or Ren&Stimpy top priority) it will all be there for our launch.

So on the website are a couple of screenshots of the beta.







So, I don't see any tagging, but it still would be very relevant and awesome to take a look at.

I didn't really anticipate this, but apparently Joost's invite-only method of distributing their beta, combined with its buzz, has caused it to be a hot commodity. Brent Roos' Window to the Universe describes it and is offering a coveted invite. His post was written a while ago, but you never know if he still has some invites left. :)

He also has a post about TweakVista which I'm sure will come in handy if/when I download my free version courtesy of GT :) I guess that would involve getting a PC though.

P.S. If you're not in your last semester of grad school, congratulations on not having to work on a thesis. If you are, I feel your pain.

posted by annie @ 9:24 PM 2 comments

Puzzles and Pools

I'm not sure how long this has been going on, but Facebook's presenting its users with programming puzzles. Like the development platform they established last summer, these puzzles help Facebook with things like application ideas or optimization enhancements as well as help find good programmers to hire.

No matter their motives, there's something kind of warm and fuzzy about the fact that Facebook is "reaching out" to its members and trusting their abilities. I know plenty of other companies do this (e.g. the NetFlix search optimization problem), but what seems a little different to me is that they're placing their trust in essentially a bunch of college kids, not professionals. Heck, I was intrigued enough to click on the sponsored link even though I knew it would be too much PHP for me to handle.

Also, the March Madness pools came out yesterday. Nice to see this - it has the potential to be really successful. It's leveraging the obvious collegiate ties and the fact that people who would want to join a pool together are already on Facebook.

Now, it's time to get off Facebook's jock and back on some of my own work!

Link.

posted by annie @ 9:46 PM 0 comments