The Tap Team has been sending questions to one another over the last week to put on their blogs and it looks like its my turn. These questions come from John Davey our programmer.

What are your favorite web 2.0 startups - Im a big fan of Revision3, Talkshoe, and other companies that are changing the way in which we use the internet.

Are you cool enough to receive hate mail yet? Hehe. Is this a sign of blog popularity? I receive emails now and then from disatisfied readers unhappy with my opinions or companies annoyed at replying to there emails (I receive lots guys give me a chance). But I dont think this is hate mail

Fav Blog? Hmm, I actually read a lot of blogs. I do enjoy Read/WriteWeb and EmilyChangs Blog

Who or What annoys you the most online? Recently its been our hosting company, and im sure John you can easily relate to me on that one.   And also Jason Calacanis for for bagging the hell out of any company who competes against one of his ventures while trying to look impartial.

MySpace or Facebook - MySpace has the numbers and Facebook has the features.  Im really starting to get over MySpace.

Technologies That Excite You - Anyhting that makes the internet something more than just webpages.  Im also excited about how the internet is getting more closely integrated with mobiles.

Companies We Should be Watching?  What am I some kind of expert?  Look out for the next major release of Firefox.  This could be ultra interesting.

Why don’t use your CEO title - Its on my personal blog John!  I hate adding it in emails etc.  Is too formal and Tap Media is the complete opposite.   And we all know whos boss anyway.  Lol

Favorite TV Show - The Office.  The God of all TV shows.

Finally, What do you think about paid blogging?  Im assuming you asked me this cos this blog has had sponsored posts before.  I think they are no different to other forms of advertising if disclosed properly.  all the paid posts I have done clearly have “Sponsored” in the title.  So they are pretty hard to miss.

Ok, John im done with that now get back to work.

Im not going to go about spilling all my secrets on a blog like this, because I know a lot of people read many of whom I know.  It seems that the days of the online journal - what the blog was intended to be, are numbered.

Yet, I came across an Australian startup that is putting the secrets back into blogging.  HiddenLives.com.au is allowing you once again to reveal your hidden self to the rest of the world….secretly.

They give you suggestions to help you reveal your inner thoughts like - “Before I Die I will” and you just fill in the rest.   Other members can give your inner thoughts “votes of appreciation”.

Hiddenlives wont blow you away but it is a nice take on traditional blogging.

Update: Many of the links in the original post are no longer valid. However, I found a free software application called Graboid that allows you watch most of these episodes for free. Just click here to get the software from our resources directory and download it. Once downloaded, go to the TV section in the software, search for the TV show (for example, The Office), and select play. I was able to watch all of the episodes with no delay in the video streaming.

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In this continuing week of nothingness I will show you where you can watch some of my favorite TV shows and movies online.

Note - If you came here from Digg or other social bookmarking sites you are likely on a cached page hosted somewhere other than our servers. Just click on the posts title to be taken to the non cached page.

Band of Brothers - This was an amazing 11 part series which followed a company of soldiers during WW2. Each episode (which is like a mini movie) was directed by a different director and the Executive Producers were Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Here are the episodes:

Ep1 Currahee - [1] [2]
Ep2 Days of Days - [1] [2]
Ep3 Carentan - [1] [2]
Ep4 Replacments - [1] [2]
Ep5 Crossroads - [1] [2]
Ep6 Bastogne - [1] [2]
Ep7 The Breaking Point - [1] [2]
Ep8 The Last Patrol - [1] [2]
Ep9 Why We Fight - [1] [2]
Ep10 Points - [1] [2]
Ep11 We Stand Alone Together - [1] [2]

The Office - As Im in Australia, I only discovered how great The Office was by watching it online. I have watched all three seaons online and have loved every single one of them. I will only post season three here and will update it as new episodes are screened.

Ep1 Gay Witch Hunt - [1]
Ep2 The Convention - [1]
Ep3 The Coup - [1]
Ep4 Grief Counseling - [1]
Ep5 Initiation - [1]
Ep6 Diwali - [1]
Ep7 Branch Closing - [1]
Ep8 The Merger - [1]
Ep9 The Convict - [1]
Ep10 A Benihana Christmas (1) - [1] (Still searching)
Ep11 A Benihana Christmas (2) - [2] (Still searching)
Ep12 Back From Vacation - [1]
Ep13 Traveling Salesman - [1]
Ep14 The Return - [1]
Ep15 Ben Franklin - [1]
Ep16 Phyllis’ Wedding - [1]
Ep17 Business School [1]
Ep18 Cocktails - [1]
Ep19 The Negotiation - [1]
Ep20 Safety Training - [1]

Prison Break - I got sucked into this series thinking that it was a 1 off series instead of something that would drag on and on like Lost. But it came out with a Second Series and you can watch them all online too. Here is that second series. I havnt finished watching it so don’t spoil it!

Ep1 Manhunt - [1]
Ep2 Otis - [1]
Ep3 Scan - [1]
Ep4 Firstdown -[1]
Ep5 Map - [1]
Ep6 Subdivision - [1]
Ep7 Buried - [1]
Ep8 Dead Fall - [1]
Ep9 Unearthed - [1]
Ep10 Rendezvous - [1]
Ep11 Bolshoi Breeze - [1]
Ep12 Disconnect - [1]
More coming soon

Saving Private Ryan - While I was watching Band of Brothers I remembered the epic Saving Private Ryan and so I decided to do a search for it online. You can watch the entire movie on YouTube. However, im betting that it will be taken down fairly soon.

Movie: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]

Hot Fuzz - This is one of my favorite movies. It is an extremely well directed film Unfortunately I was only able to find a link which has a bit at the beginning missing and the quality isnt amazing.

Movie: [1]

The Da Vinci Code - I actually thought this movie was pretty good, probably because I never read the book.

Movie: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

300 - This was a good movie but I didn’t find that I was able to really get involved with the characters. None the less, this was another example of a great Director.

Movie: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Casino Royale - I found this was a fresh new take on the bond franchise. The all new Bond, Daniel Craig is very talented and a great choice to fill the role.

Movie: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

I will continue to add more links over the coming days. Remember, if you liked any of these shows/movies go out and buy the DVD. I know I will be buying season 3 of The Office!

Although MyBlogLog has been reduced to a pile of Spam ( and not even the tasty kind), I have noticed that a few of the Tap Blog Community members are regular readers.  And so to say thanks (mainly not for spamming the hell of my MyBlogLog account) im giving them a free link.

KushCash - KushCash have always stopped by now and then and written a comment or two.  Plus they also did a great interview.  All I need for them to do now is sponsor my move to the U.S lol.  After writing about them I have also noticed hundreds of search queries coming in relating to them.

Ransackery - This guy likes The Amazing Race, Coffee and oh…he’s a doof!   Every now and then I see his “Jesus” avatar on the recent readers and it always catches my eye.

K illerStartups - These guys have a created a Digg like site for submitting a voting on startups.  I’m a regular visitor to there site and they seem to visit this site quite often as well.

Qureynoon - Thanks to this passionate blogger for stopping by in the past and posting some great comments.  Although I havn’t seen you here recently???

There are plenty of others that are regular readers and also community members and I’ll post about them at a later date.

Nothing big seems to be happening in the Web 2.0 world today.  I’ve received no major press releases and no other blogs seemed to have broken anything worth mentioning.  Of course you could prove me wrong by letting me know about your company or startup.

However, a couple of sites did catch my attention.

The first was LinkMyBox.com, which aggregates your social networking profiles, websites, blogs photos ect onto the one page.  Not as cool as iStalkr but still worthy of a mention.

The second site that caught my eye was WiFiTastic.  With this site just about anyone can create a commerical wifi hotspot.  Now you can start charging your scrounging neighbors for maxing out your downloads.  Its a cool concept but they just need to hire a web designer.

In other news, this site crashed yesterday thanks to Digg and me writing about how much MySpace news absolutely sucks.  I also received criticism from various people because they expected this blog to be Digg proof.  In fact it was far from it.  It apparently crashed after just 46 Diggs.  And yes I do think that was a pansy effort.  But dont worry all visits from Digg now go to a cached page.  (I couldn’t get wp-cache to work on this blog and surprise, surprise my host couldn’t help.)

Also regarding my doomed article on MySpace news.  I received a couple of emails saying I was a hypocrite because I myself have a MySpace account.   I can see where your coming from and yes I do agree, but many of my old school friends are using MySpace and I find it useful for connecting with other bloggers and readers.  I don’t however use MySpace news (for obvious reasons).

Apparently MySpace news is meant to be taking on Digg and after reading the countless news stories (many from Fox) I almost believed that my beloved Digg, maybe had a competitor.

Yet these evil thoughts were soon crushed when I actually decided to take a look at the site to do a review. Two words came to my head “This Blows”

The Myspace News service gets its stories from “trusted” sources. Yet the quality and range of stories left a lot to be desired. Maybe its just me. The “Top Stories” located on the front page included news on an “American Idol” getting a hair cut and two other stories, that surprise surprise were related to Fox.

MySpace news allows users to vote on stories. Now you would expect that a site that has millions of users would have no trouble with people voting on stories. Yet the top story on the frontpage had 9 votes (probably from Tom and Mr Murdoch) and with average of 2. Maybe the “bimbo” target demographic hasn’t quite figured out the complexities of submitting a vote.

So in conclusion, if youre after the latest news on a celebrity haircut or another child being “rescued” by Madonna then MySpace News if for you. However, if you like a like a little more….quality, you can’t go past Digg.

Technorati Tags: MySpace, News, Digg

I came across Sharade today, which provides a “digital face” for your stuff.  You use Sharade to show, organize, and sell real things.

For example you can put all your books or movies on a digital shelf for the rest of the world to see.

All this on its own seems pretty cool, but what really caught my eye was their barcode scanning feature.   You can use your webcam or digital camera to import items directly into your virtual shelves.

The site is still in Private Beta and im looking forward to taking a more thourough look through the app.

Finally!  I have been looking for something that would let me create a Digital Life Stream (a log of all my digital activities) for me and finally i’ve found a solution - iStalkr.com

This lets you take all your digital activities like Digg, Del.icio.us,  Last.fm or any Feed and aggregate it into one.  Now this could previously be done using something life xfruits or Yahoo Pipes, but whats different is how it organises the data and displays it.

Instead of just packing all the data into one ugly RSS feed, it creates a nice looking page with icons to differentiate the types of content.  For example, all of my Digg’s have a Digg.com icon next to it.  To see what im talking about have a look at this page 

I wrote about wanting to create a digital lifestream before and one of things I wanted was to place it on my website.  iStalkr does offer the ability to add the aggregated feed on your site, but it doesn’t keep the nice formatting and looks.  If they create this feature then they will have to be given the rare two thumbs up!

Im sure where going to see more startups taking on the Digital Life Stream concept in the following months.

After having utterly frustrating problems with ResellerZoom, I decided to search for another host and I found that Dreamhost was apparently reccomended by many bloggers.

There prices were great and they said that they accepted PayPal which meant this host would be perfect for me.  It also had larger bandwidth requirements which meant that I wouldnt have to face the issue of my account being suspended when it went over its bandwidth.  This happening quite often at the moment (thanks digg).

I was about to pay for my order when I found that I could only pay using Google Checkout or a Money Order/Cheque.  I read there FAQ’s and the knowledge base and it clearly said that you could Pay using PayPal.

So I emailed support assuming that PayPal payments wern’t automated.  The response I got was a shock!  Apparently I had triggered their “fraud” system and therefore could only pay through Google Checkout.  Now i could understand that this would be reasonable if I came from a country like South Korea where fraud rates are very high.  But I come from Australia and use a verified PayPal account.  Australia has lower fraud rates then the U.S! I emailed them saying just that but they replied saying there system was very sensitive.  Can anyone use PayPal?

I also did a bit more research on Dreamhost and found other bloggers complaining of increased downtime!

So Dreamhost is not added to the Damn Hosts list for having an illogical fraud detection system and bad customer support.  Another host to stay away from.

If you  have a “Damn Hosts” story let me know.  

I wouldn’t usually put a post like this one on this blog, but im angry. Grrr.

This blog is hosted through Hosting Zoom (Reseller Zoom).  There prices are reasonable and I was having no problems at all until about a month ago.    Every now and then, this site shows a 500 internal error.  It may last for a few seconds or it may stay like that for an hour until it suddenly vanishes and everything is fine again.  Now this “technically” means the site isnt down but it might as well be!

Now at first I thought this may be a problem with Wordpress but no, the same thing happens across all sites that are hosted on the same server.  It even happens on fresh script installs.

Now I can understand this happening due to a server misconfiguration and I wouldn’t worry if it was fixed.  Yet after emailing support multiple times and having them “supposedly” fix it, it keeps on happening.  I was even passed off two a “senior” technical support person, but I have heard nothing since.  I have know realized just how BAD their tech support is.   I would call them but they charge you for that.

I reccomend staying away from ResellerZoom and HostingZoom.  There reliability and  support is simply not up to par.