I love winter sports and I’m currently in love with all events on the 2006 Winter Olympic Games@Torino, Italy.

Sandra Behne / Getty Images

This happened a few days ago (February 17th, to be precise) during the final of the women’s snowboard cross competition:
American Lindsey Jacobellis was leading the run from the very first meters when on the second-to-last jump she pulled off a method grab and landed on her heels. Well, was more like on her back but whatever
Result: she came in second. Tanja Frieden took the Gold to Switzerland.

Ironically, she’s called Lucky Lindsey.

Extra style can cause you ‘The Gold’.

Watch the full run:

Check out more videos ahead.
Read the rest of this entry »

I should adopt a new slogan for my blog: often neglected but never forgotten.
Today I decided to add a bit more flava (read: flavour ~ you moron) to it.

I had a javascript link sitting in my bookmarks for a while and today I was bored (again) and started to see old stuff in my browser. Not really old stuff, just stuff I bookmark to check later. Anyway…!
This script is called Lightbox JS

What’s Lightbox?

It’s a very small script that allows you to show images/pictures/photos in any web page (overlayed) in a cool, non-obtrusive way, without the need of opening and closing windows, no pop-ups no nothing.
And the best thing is that cross-browser compatible!
It’s composed by 5 files (basic imagery included) and it’s so easy to install. I love simple software!

By the way, if you want to install this script in a WordPress blog it’s even easier. Just download this file and unpack it to your wp-content/plugins folder.
All you gotta do now is to activate the plugin in your administrative area and then add the following parameter to your posts’ image links: rel=”lightbox”. There, how simple is that!

The best way for you to see what it’s like is to click any image in this post, go ahead and try it.

It snowed in my hometown, Évora.

There are a few more plugins and modifications in the official site, being the most exciting flickrbox which allows you - while running Greasemoney for Firefox - to see flickr photos in this cool and simple way.

And stay tuned for news on Lightshow another script by Lokesh Dhakar that basically is Lightbox but with added features being the most relevant the ability to create a ’set’ (or gallery) with this script.

I’m getting addicted to web applications and take the best out of them. Web 2.0 is definitely a nice concept with much to offer in the near future.

That said, Flickr is my most recent ‘field’ of exploration. I signed up last April (2005, of course) when it was new but never paid too much attention to it…until a couple months ago.

Until then I was pretty sunken up on deviantART (dA) for some reasons: I had an old account back in 2002, I made a new account and with this latter I started to build up some reputation by uploading photos, digital work and some illustrations. Photos were the most meaningful, though.
I then started to get addicted to it, I spent lots of time just looking at the page and hitting ‘refresh’ to see if there were new comments or favourites notices. It pretty much owned me. And all that is too much becomes negative. I eventually got sick of it. Not just because of this…

Let’s take a look at both concepts:

What is deviantART?
deviantART is an online art community for artists and art lovers to interact in a variety of ways, ranging from the submission of art to conversations on a number of topics. In its purest form, deviantART is a means for expressing yourself in a variety of ways.

What is Flickr?
Flickr is the best way to store, sort, search and share your photos online. There is a huge mass of photos in the world, and Flickr provides a way to organize yours, and for you and your friends and family to tell your stories about them.

Art is by definition a subjective appreciation of several pieces.
With dA all became even more subjective because people submit pieces that are clearly all but art.
Nowadays dA is such a known place that everyone ends up uploading all of their photos and start making a ‘photoblog’ (and a bad one, for that matter) out of it. And that’s not against the rules, don’t get me wrong… You’re allowed to do that. But simply it ain’t my type of thing… At least not on dA. At least that wasn’t my vision of the concept. I always saw dA as a premier place to show some work.
Besides that, you can’t get any decently fundamented critique in dA despite the efforts that the developers put into that field adding specific options for the effect.

On the other hand, flickr is pretty much a laid back site. People use it to upload both professional type photos (such as portfolio work) and casual photos. This mix of content works on flickr because of three main reasons:

1. It has great logarithms to resize pictures: all pictures instantly look good when displayed. The default sizes are: 500px wide in horizontal photos and 500px tall in vertical ones. Flickr generates different image files from your original picture with this resizing method: square (75×75px), thumbnail (100×75px), small (240×180px), medium (500×375px), large (1024×768) and original (your original sized photo) - (considering the average sized horizontal photography)
2. You can group your photos by sets: You can create sets (groups of photos), rename them, order them, etc. - unlimited sets to Pro users
3. It has a much simpler design and user approach

Other than that, and still comparing it to dA, flickr has got much more advantages:

• Search function: much more efficient that dA’s
• Groups: you can search specific content (pictures, that is) by groups. These groups can be of a camera brand, to a certain lens, to a technique (e.g.: macro) to a general idea (e.g.: colours)
  Additionally, you can share your photos with these different groups and create your own groups.
• Tags: tags are very (and by that I mean extremely) important because allows you to tag your photos with words that can later be searched within all the flickr user universe. Can be very handy. Great advantage!
• Notes: OK, this one is very exciting! You can add notes (and so can your contacts and others - depending on your definitions) on top of your photos! Very useful when you want to point something out. Check this example.
• RSS Feeds: need I say more?
• Sharing photos: as opposed to dA, flickr actually lets you ‘hotlink’ your photos to external websites!
• Open system: deviantART is pretty much a closed system while flickr has many third party tools and applications. Check these two links: Flickr Toys and Great Flickr Tools Collection.
• Discussions: flickr has much deeper discussions and everyone respects one another
• Much lighter design: both in aesthetics and in size
• And much more…

I get much fewer comments on flickr and I don’t care…
It’s a nice place to be and to share your vision of the world and experiences.

Now signup and get the most out of it!

Digg.com. I’ve been using this (now very popular) website for some time now. Since March 03, 2005 to be more precise. A lot has changed and a lot *should* effectively change.

What’s Digg.com?

Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

So, let’s brake it down:
Social bookmarking: it means social bookmarks sharing. You add your own links and you can bookmark others’. It works as a bookmarks virtual folder.

Blogging:
It allows users to blog stories directly from the website.

RSS Feed:
As a Web 2.0 application that Digg.com is, it supports RSS feeds for stories, comments, etc.

Non-hierarchical editorial control:
This is definitely the most exciting feature about Digg.com. Means that there are no editors, just users. Each user has in his hands the control over stories. You can add stories, promote them and get them off the front page, to name a few examples. All of this is controlled by an advanced back-end with multiple algorithms that calculate the importance of a headline by the number of Diggs, who reported a story, why was that story reported, etc.

My opinion: I remember when it was not required to be a registered user to be able to digg stories… Digg.com came up very discreetely but soon gave proof that was an inovative web application that’s here to stay. Some even call it Slashdot.org killer. Slashdot.org is not going anywhere but it sure did lost some bandwidth to Digg.com.
In fact, Digg.com grew so fast and exponencially that it inevitably brought also some negative aspects.

• The one thing that bugs me the most is blogging through Digg.com. Not that it’s bad for itself but all the people blogging about some story always put the same text on their blogs (the description text from Diggs articles).
  If you have a blog, write something original and unique, don’t just copy and paste please. So we end up with, for example, 100 blogs with the same text.
  Some people even have blogs only with these little descriptions, no articles, no opinions, no content, no other contents.
• Another thing is that in every front page story you’ve got always a few users commenting ‘how did this get to the front page??’. If you ask this question either you haven’t read how Digg.com works or you’re a very dumb person.
  Digg’s algorithms calculate Diggs/time and that’s how stories get to the frontpage, now stop questioning.
• Digg brought along with it the Digg-effect. Adapted from the original Slashdot-effect, this is when hits on a page, provenient from Digg.com slows the site down or even temporarily disables it due to overwelming bandwidth.
  Read more about it on Wikipedia.
• Digg is mainly a technology news website but I think it should embrace all subjects more generally. Word!

Conclusion: Digg.com is here to stay for a long, long time. It is changing web everyday and the way we get information.
Now go and Digg it!