Month: September 2012

Wii U = Reserved

With the US release date set for November 18th (as officially announced yesterday) we’ve secured our reservation for one of the Deluxe Wii U systems.

The basic/deluxe system decision was dead simple.  $50 more gets you a charging cradle, more memory (32GB vs 8GB), and a game (that retails for $59).

As far as games, aside from the freebie (Nintendo Land), we’ll be picking up the new Mario game, as well as Zombie U.  Lame name, but if you haven’t seen the trailer for Zombie U, check it out below.

Video is a little cheesy at the end, but it does a good job of showing the interaction between the new controller pad and the game.  Can’t wait!

The Decline of Posterous as my Blogging Platform

A year and a half ago, I was blogging about the Rise of Posterous as my Blogging Platform.  Yet here I am, I’ve just imported all of my posterous content to WordPress.  Why?  Simple.

Ever since Twitter bought Posterous in March of 2012, the service has seen little if any improvement in the service and platform.  Since then, there have been zero meaningful updates, a clear result of low prioritization for improvement.  Shortly after the acquisition, an Acquisition FAQ was posted.

  • Can I still Post? “[Yes.] We’ll give you ample notice before any changes or disruptions to the service” (there’s a good sign…)
  • How can I back up or export the contents of my spaces?  “We’ll share instructions on how you can backup the content of your Space soon” (soon, as in here we are 6 months later and there’s been no movement…)
  • Can I export my Space’s to WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, or another service? “We’ll share instructions on how you can backup the content of your Space soon” (Just as soon as you let people back up their site)

This came in the wake of the shift in direction from “Posterous” to “Posterous Spaces” in September  2011 (I wasn’t a huge fan of that) which marked a departure from being dead simple to post to.

Also, along the way the Posterous re-post functionality got super flakey, to the point where I gave up on it earlier this year.  Posterous used to automatically re-post your new blog posts to all/user-chosen sites like facebook, twitter, and the like.  When it worked, it was great.  I don’t spend many cycles on facebook, so it was nice for Posterous to take care of adding a few things to my wall (timeline now?).

The last straw was earlier today.  I tried to post a video.  I posted a link to the Vimeo URL where it’s located, expecting the Posterous formatting fairies to make it viewable in my blog.  No dice.  Which is pathetic since it does that for YouTube (and Vimeo isn’t exactly new…).  So I found a youtube version of the same video and updated the post.  From that point on, no matter what I did, I could not get the new version of the post to load.  Tried it from my iPad…no dice.  Tried it from another computer…same thing.  Reviewed the post manager window…which seemed to think I hadn’t posted anything at all.  

That was this morning before work.  The bad taste festered all day.  Fortunately for WordPress, they have a Posterous import utility.  Farewell Posterous.  It was fun while it lasted.

Robbie the stranded space robot

I love this!

Neil Harvey, the guy who made it put the movie together, did so from ten hours of NASA stock footage. Great work. Couldn’t help but feel proud of Robbie’s achievements.

Fair warning, this will be a tearjerker for many.  If your heart went out to Wall-E, I’m talking to you.

View the original video along with the creator’s comments at vimeo.