What was meant to be a quick weekend project turned into a month-long undertaking. TXT2LOL.com, is my pet project for converting regular speak to the grammatically incorrect and misspelled LOL. LOL became popular thanks to cat macros, or LOL cats, and I wanted an easy way to create authentic-sounding LOL captions. Think I’m going a bit overboard? Anil Dash from SixApart.com did an in-depth analysis of the LOL grammar.

At any rate, I just made a tool that hopes to make peoples lives a little bit easier so they can make many others smile with their ridiculous LOL captions.

Please take a look at the site and let me know of any translations I missed by using the ‘Submit a Word’ link.

Just keep clicking…

Phishing can be tricky stuff with only the smallest of details being out of place. Would you recognize a fake site when you visited one? McAfee lets you find the answer without putting yourself at risk with this 10 question quiz. Can you pick the authentic site?

I got 9 right out of 10 and you wouldn’t believe the site I got wrong.

Sometimes I just like to look for random domain names at DomainsBot.com. Here is what I came up with…

CyborgSuperHuman.com or SuperHumanCyborg.com – For those ultra powerful hybrid humans that probably blog. SuperHumanCyborg.org is pretty funny too.

GordPorn.com – For some hot gord on gord action.

SnowPow.com – Like snowplow but hipper!

OuterRouter.com – For those far out Internet switches.

Hunged.com or Hungd.com – Hunged sounds like a cool company name.

iWillVomit.com – Just so you know…

Dizmizz.com – Hipster version of dismiss.

Techsie.com – A tech site for girls.

Loooong.com – extra emphasis on the oooong.

733tr.com – Like Flickr for the leet.

PinkPoop.com – No one will easily forget you with this one.

Hooray! Everyones favorite open-source browser will keep on innovating with an overhaul to the bookmark feature, improved security awareness, and finally a consistent method to handle various MIME types.

See more at Techdo.com

Twitter is a site that consists of people sharing their thoughts in 160 characters or less over a wide variety of mediums. So what is the appeal of reading a bunch of short, random thoughts? Wired’s Clive Thompson describes it best as a 6th sense:

Individually, most Twitter messages are stupefyingly trivial. But the true value of Twitter — and the similarly mundane Dodgeball, a tool for reporting your real-time location to friends — is cumulative…

…It’s practically collectivist — you’re creating a shared understanding larger than yourself.

By following the short messages of my friends I can tell what they are up to without even asking. That way when we meet up in the physical world I know what they’ve been up to and I have something to start the conversation off with.

If you are still confused you will just have to try it out to get it. You can follow me at twitter.com/kingkool68.

Banner ads have been around on the web for ages but Tailgate wants to spruce these ancient advertisements. Utilizing AJAX, a user can purchase a product right inside the banner ad without clicking through to another site or leaving the page they are currently on. Take a look for yourself.

Tailgate benefits all parties involved…

• The customer gets what they want right away with little hassle.
• Advertisers make buying impulse items easier.
• The publisher retains their visitor while still profiting from the advertisement.

I think the publisher really benefits the most here because they can earn more money via this affiliate behavior which is more valuable than a simple click through. I hope there is still a good chunk of the web population that is not immune to banner ads since they easily can become invisible to repeat visitors.

There are also possibilities for security concerns as there is no way to ensure the credit card information entered is sent over a secure connection or if the company on the other end is even legitimate.

It is still nice to see some innovation in a space that has been dead to me for quite some time.

I just finished participating in the first Jason Calacanis and Friends live show on Operator 11. You’ve probably seen UStream.tv and Stickam.com for streaming live video and heard about Talkshoe.com for live audio casts; Well Operator 11 is like both of those things combined and it makes for a whole lot of fun.

If you ever wanted to have your own show live with user participation, than Operator 11 is the way to go. The Flash controls are intuitive and the quality isn’t too bad. As the director you can determine who is live and it lets you switch to different people with a click of the button. Participants can request they be put on camera via a simple button which shakes their video on the directors screen. Everyone in the live area can participate in the text chat that also gets displayed across the bottom of the video screen so people on the outside of the studio can see what the comments from the peanut gallery too. Other cool features include drag and drop video sources which let you switch to lpre-recorded clips and the whole show is recorded, saved and viewable to anyone who wasn’t there during the live recording.

Back to the CalacanisCast, things were going smooth at first and then Jason managed to crash the servers causing everyone to go into a spin-off room. After that, mayhem ensued and Jason began playing clips live off of YouTube and switching to shots of his dog Toro. Other highlights included Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg.com, and Robert Scoble who did a mighty fine Steve Ballmer impression (check the video at -21:15). I even got to say a few words but I was feeling shy in front of all the A-List bloggers; Afterall I am a nobody in the blogging world just like everyone else.

At the end of it all I had a lot of fun interacting with a bunch of different people from all over the world live and with video and sound. Operator 11 is sure to take off once more people start playing around with it. If you do go over and sign up add me as a friend and let’s get together and chat face to face sometime.

Check me out at -11:50, before the show ends.

Learn more about Operator 11.

I ordered RAM for my 12″ PowerBook from Crucial.com and I am tracking the package via iSnoot.net. The interface is dead simple with one field to enter your UPS, FedEx, USPS, or DHL/AirBorne tracking number. From there, iSnoot automatically determines the carrier and displays the past scans of your package, even displaying a Google map of where your package has traveled. To stay up to date on your shipment an RSS feed is automatically generated as well.

Hopefully my RAM will get here today or tomorrow so I can stop seeing the pin wheel of death every time I switch an application.

With so many sites video aggregation sites out there, wouldn’t it be nice if you could search for videos across all of them from one place? Chime.tv lets you do just that and throws on a clean user interface to top it off.

Blip TV, Break.com, Daily Motion, Google Video, MetaCafe, MySpace, Veoh, & YouTube are all used as sources for Chime.tv’s content. The killer feature of this video site is it creates dynamic playlists based on your search term letting you sit back and enjoy the fruits of your not-so-hard labor. The experience is on par with the popular video on-demand application Joost, from the founders of Skype and Kazaa. Chime.tv offers a far better experience, in my opinion, for a few reasons.

1) Chime.tv is in the browser. There is no application to download and you can access your saved videos from any Internet-connected computer that has Flash.

2) All the content on the Internet is available not just select partners. Joost provides a wide variety of content but once you have seen it all the only thing you can do is wait for Joost to add more shows. Meanwhile, the Internet will never run out of things for you to kill hours of time watching. This is also a plus for content providers to offer a new way to distribute content to an audience and not be shut out by the big wigs at Joost.

3) No annoying ads. The ads on Joost, while short, become bland and annoying very fast. Chime.tv offers only the stuff you want without interrupting you for something don’t give two hoots about.

The video quality on Chime.tv is on par with YouTube videos; heavily compressed with visible artifacts. Joost is slightly better but for all the other advantages Chime.tv offers it earns my recommendation over Joost.