November has arrived and NaNoWriMo came along with it. Like every year the 1st of November marks the beginning of the National Novel Writing Month – An event in which participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days during the month of November.

If you value creative writing, you will value NaNoWriMo. This is because the point of NanoWrimo is to get yourself to produce 50,000 words of coherent writing and not to author a best selling novel. The point is to prove (to yourself) the ability to write the required quantity without the inhibitions caused by striving to quality and excellence. This is the ultimate freewriting exercise, and can be a whole lot of fun if you have the time required.

One of the fun aspects of NaNoWriMo is the community feeling of it. In 2009, over 165,000 participated in the event, this year the number is expected to exceed 175,000. While going through tough breaks or fantastic bursts of writing, you can draw encouragement from the fact that all around the world, other participants are riding the same roller coaster trying to reach the final goal.

To participate in this years event, the first step is to register an account at NanoWrimo.org. Once you register, you will receive an email with a link allowing you the first login that will lead you to a page where you can fill in your password and other author details. That’s it! All you have to do is login periodically and update the number of words you’ve written so far and other details if you wish. Updating your totals will help you keep track of how well you’re doing, and it will allow you to share your progress with others. The site also allows you to share your progress and other information with fellow writers as well as participate in the available discussion forums on the site.

When taking this task it’s important to remember the great sacrifice involved. To reach the 50,000 word count, a participant must produce an average of 1,667 words each day during November, that includes weekends and holidays. If a day is missed, the 1,667 words should be added to the next day. This is the reason only about 20% of the participants in NaNoWriMo ever reach the goal.

The niche social networks are starting to thrive all over the internet. Students, sports, adults, you name it, every typical common interest has it’s own social network. Raptr is here for gamers.

Raptr which is launching today tries to be a central location for friends who want to play together, and for gamers to find new gaming partners. Raptr helps track games you want to play on your PC or on any of the three major game systems, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360.

Using their platform users can lets their friends know what they are playing or set up game sessions in advance. It will also publishes game skill levels or other game specific related information. Raptr uses available APIs to hookup other common social networks like Facebook or Twitter to send out alerts about current activities.

Aside from the social network itself, Raptr also has a desktop software client that keeps PC-based games up to date behind the scenes – patches and updates are downloaded automatically. Raptr intends to support about a thousand different games from all different developers.

Raptr business strategy is to generate income by selling ads and sponsorships. By owning a very focused niche advertisers can specifically target the network users. Founder Dennis Fong says the company will also be announcing some deals soon to bundle Raptr software with some PC games.

SoundCloud is a new online audio platform/social network for music professionals and enthusiasts. Any original music track can be shared with friends or everyone on the network.

SoundCloud is a community for music makers, people in the music industry or everyone looking for fresh music made by other members of the community. It’s a comfortable setup for sending around demo copies of a new album you just finished mastering, or sharing the yet to be hit single. The SoundCloud platform allows it’s members to share, promote and distribute their own original music while allowing all members to comment and review the tracks as they listen to them. The commenting system allows anyone to drop a note at any specific spot along the track and voice their opinion on that specific sound or on the track in general.

After uploading tracks, you can follow your stats closely to see how many people are listening to your music. But your music is not jailed in the SoundCloud universe, the platform allows you to embed your tracks on any other website and maintain your own look & feel (as much as possible) and customize it’s playlist to auto update.

Anyone looking for a SoundCloud invite, your welcome to contact me

Seems like everyone heard of Robert Scoble Google killers videos and the fire they are still drawing over the past few days. A post over at Wired Online pushed Robert over the edge and he had to defend himself, mind you, he doesn’t shoot back to defend his opinions, but wonders how come this matter of self opinion drew so much more attention than other interesting video interviews he posted over the last month.

But thats exactly like wondering why Britney Spears pantyless photos drew more attention than an Owen Wilson interview? Thats the nature of the beast. You have to take the good with the bad.

Anyhow, thumbs up Robert, for not mudslinging back and not getting sucked into it.

I’m no expert in graphics design or anything remotely close, but does anyone really like this logo? As far as I’ve seen around, people claim the animated version is adequate, but seriously, this is an Olympic’s logo?

If that logo has any meaning other than represent the year 2012, feature the Olympics emblem and the hosting city name, please do share, because I can’t see it. If the logo have to be explained, it’s no good!!!

So it’s all over the net, MySpace is acquiring Photobucket for $250 million in cash!!! Since Photobucket is both a photo (or more accurately an image) hosting service and a video hosting service the comparison to other recent similar deals is inevitable. So is it a steal compared to the Google/YouTube $1.65 billion deal or overpriced compared to the Yahoo/Flickr deal?

In reality it doesn’t matter. Unlike YouTube and Flickr, Photobucket doesn’t have it’s own community of users, Photobucket users are communicating on MySpace and other social networks and use Photobucket as a storage place only. Sure they may spend a lot of time on the site, but they do not spend time commenting on other people photos, albums and videos or sending private messages to each other as they would on Flickr, YouTube or other social network communities.

Photobucket was not acquired as a living community, but as a supplemental service to the existing community at MySpace. If nothing else, Flickr acquisition by Yahoo was the real steal.

So whos next? Panoramio? Zooomr?

I only have one question, is Jason Calacanis news?

Yesterday Jason Calacanis announced on his blog that he will be starting a new job at Sequoia Capital. It was covered on Techcrunch, Valleywag,
Search Engine Journal and a bunch of other high profile blogs. So I’ll ask again, is it really news? Are we moving from talking about technology to talk about technology media, or worse, technology media persons?

Airport terminal
12 people with laptops in their laps
10 browsing the web using the free wifi service
8 PCs
4 Macs
3 updating their blogs
1 is me

Just another airport terminal in our current day and age.

Steve Irwin, known as The Crocodile Hunter was killed by a stingray barb through the chest while shooting a documentary off Port Douglas at Australia’s northeast coast. The Queensland Police Service has confirmed Mr Irwin’s death. In a statement, it said Mr Irwin collapsed after being stung by a sting ray at Batt Reef, off Port Douglas, about 11am.

I am saddened to hear that this great exuberant man has died. This great advocate of the environment and wildlife will be greatly missed. I can only hope that his life and legacy will inspire people to follow and do more for slowly extincting world. Thank you Steve Irwin for the work you did to educate people about the importance of the environment and wild animals that inhabit our planet.

I always believed stingray’s are friendly animals and was quite surprised at this turn of events. The fatal stingray attack on Steve Irwin may have occurred because the animal was startled or frightened, an expert said after hearing the news. Victoria Brims, a marine life expert from Oceanworld in Sydney, said the stingray that killed Irwin was most likely provoked. “I am aware he was filming a documentary and his documentaries are usually very hands on. I can only assume that he had some kind of hands on or close contact with the animal who like us when we get afraid defended itself,” Ms Brims said. Brims also said that for a sting to result in death the person involved had to be stung close to the heart and also have a reaction to the sting.