The Most Powerful Keyboard Shortcuts On Your Mac

Many keyboard shortcuts are frivolous and easy to forget because you can usually do the same thing with your mouse. There are some however, that you should be careful not to press, unless you know what they’ll do…

ctrl+shift+eject: turn of displays (make all screens go dark)
ctrl+option+eject: ?
cmd+option+eject: quick sleep (*not* safe sleep… great for stowing your laptop quickly when you have to move suddenly)
cmd+ctrl+eject: normal restart
cmd+ctrl+power: force restart

Oh, and a couple bonus keyboard shortcuts:
Option + one of the Brightness buttons: Takes you to the Displays pane in System Preferences.
Option + one of the Volume buttons: Takes you to the Sound preference pane.
etc..

So I just got another email from sportphoto.com, one of these companies that comes to sporting events, takes pictures of you, and then charges and arm and a leg for a small printed version of it. They’re trying to sell me This upsets me, because I don’t even want it printed… I’d be perfectly happy if they let me download a JPEG for like $10 or less. However, they don’t, so it inspired me to write down an idea…

Okay first, this is sportphoto.com, who took photos at this year’s Bay to Breakers in San Francisco, which I ran together with @ryderramona. And it turns out they do allow you to purchase the files… they _even_ have the option to purchase all the photos they detected of me for $60. Honestly, this isn’t nearly as ridiculous as I thought, still hear me out:

So there are alll these spectators that line the course, many of whom are taking photos of the runners passing by. Multiple people took photos of me, but I’ll probably never see those, although they’re probably just as good and more interesting than the “official” Sport-Photo ones. The solution? A web application of course…

Let’s call it “OpenSportPhoto” …
This site will allow anyone to upload photos from an event. The site will use some pattern recognition software to detect the numbers (bibs) people are wearing, and index them. Participants can later look up their photos by their bib number, or even subscribe beforehand. The site can be promoted by runners during the event, handing out a little flyer or info card to bystanders taking photos, asking them to upload.

The business model is quite simple.. Allow photographers to set a price for their photos, or give them for free and take donations. The site takes a small cut (like 10%). Hey look, we just open sourced a business! (All I ask is that you let me know if you build this!)

Update: So I bought a CD + instant downloads for $55. I was going to post the photos here, but the site says I can’t do that without explicit permission. LAME

Most of the stereotypically “Web 2.0″ sites… Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, etc, are largely focused on the general preferences of the masses… or at least, that’s how the “Popular” content seems to be sorted. I argue that this is a mistake. Instead, these web applications should focus more on trends within our own social group.

I’ll focus on just one example… YouTube. YouTube has some serious challenges. One of the most apparent is comments. For every video that hits the front page, you can expect hundreds of immature and often offensive messages. My solution would be to split up the comments into categories / tabs… “Friends”, “Top”, “All”, … where the default “Friends” tab would show any comments that any of your Gmail/gTalk friends left on that video. Also, you could leave comments publicly, or only for your friends to see.

If we start building websites like this, the web will be a much more personal experience, and welcoming to newcomers. Thanks for listening.

Ugh. Flixster is so annoying… all the advertisements and silly activities, it is reminiscent for pre-dot-com-bust era websites – in a bad way. And it kinda looks like MySpace. Normally, I’d like to think I wouldn’t rant here about a website I dislike like this, but in this case it’s not so simple. You see, Flixster could be so much better, and I need it to be. Case in point:

I want to keep track of my film watching habits. I want to log the movies I see, for personal reference and for sharing… this could include public or private notes about the films.

I want to keep a list of movies that I want to see. This can be public, and I could see which friends want to see the same movie and then we could watch together.

I want to keep a list of the movies I own… so that my friends can see what they can borrow from me. The site should also let me track who I’m lending my discs to.

I want to know what my friends think about movies… so aggregating their notes onto the movie’s page.

Sadly, Flixster probably won’t be able to become awesome like this unless someone were to buy it… whoever’s in charge seems to be pretty clueless about what they’re doing. So, someone, please steal the ideas listed above and give them some competition.

Oh and here’s my Flixster profile, lol.