I admit, the attraction of Twitter is still beyond me. But at least this video lays out its appeal to the ultra-connected, minutia-obsessed crowd that as made it a “killer app” in many eyes.

The best thing about this video is that it lead me to CommonCraft, a site that specializes in simple explanations of a variety of subjects. Lee LeFever narrates and explains everything from blogs to zombies. The presentations all use the same charming paper cut-out technique and take a couple of minutes. Here are a couple of examples…

Wikis in Plain English

Social Networking in Plain English

Adobe launched Photoshop Express Online today, and I’m impressed.

It offers just about everything you need for quick image manipulation and has a host of connections and ways to share, post, embed and generally move photos around. You can upload from your drive (2gb storage free) or connect to other photo storage sites like Facebook and Photo Bucket and manipulate those photos.

Give it a shot…if nothing else, it’s fun!

Photoshop Express Site

NY Times article

More and more are free for ALL their capabilities. Here’s the latest round-up from Mashable.

7 Great Online Image Editing Apps

Want to give all your computer communications that old-school hand-written touch? Fontifier can do it for you?

Just fill out their template with your handwriting, scan it and upload it to them. Pay your $9 by credit card and, if Webware’s experience holds, you’ll have your new personal font almost instantly.

Pretty cool…I’m going to try it as soon as I get off the road. I’ll post my new font then.

Fontifier on Webware

PERSONAL NOTE: Sorry about the long lag between posts…I’m in travel hell right now with limited time to post. I promise to get better!!

All About Ning (DIY social networking)

Flock’s Future (social browser)

LinkBunch (like TinyURL)

Picnik (free online photo editor)

Blippr (like Twitter for reviews)

Ever want to send somebody a big file? Video, photos, whatever? If email kicks it out (too big) and FTP isn’t your thing (too complicated) then here’s what you need.

Senduit is as simple as it gets. Simply select the file with the browse button (yes, there is a 100mb limit,) select when you want it to expire (30 minutes to a week and then it’s gone) and hit the upload button. Senduit posts the file and gives you a unique URL address where it can be downloaded. Send that to your intended recipient via email and that’s it. They click on the link and downloading goodness ensues.

Best of all? It’s free. I mean, totally free.

It should come as no surprise that this bit of elegant capability comes from some of the same guys that brought you the Tumblr blogging service. More on that soon.

Give it a try…makes sharing ridiculously easy.

That’s what you’ll hear if you can score one of these before next holiday season.

On Valentine’s Day, Fisher-Price introduced Elmo Live. His mouth opens and closes as he speaks, he waves his arms, sits, stands, laughs, sings, tells stories…he’s, well, Live! Watch the video…pretty amazing technology.

Supposedly available the middle of October, but we’ll see. In the video, you can see that he’s being run on a cable from a computer. So, there’s still a lot of chip work to be done. But if I were you, I’d start looking for pre-order opportunities.

You wouldn’t want those other grandparents to beat you to it, would you??

I’m conflicted. I can’t decide whether I’m a consumer who loves Europe’s approach to protecting me from new technology misuse or a realistic businessman who views them as luddites who just don’t get it. Whichever, you’ve got to respect their willingness to take on tough questions.

Now, Germany’s data protection commissioner is defining an IP address as “personal data.” That means adherence to EU privacy laws, and that means big trouble for just about every major internet service. It could cripple search engines’ basic worth of returning relevant information. Or any site that uses geographic IP info as a primary sort for relevancy.

Something to keep an eye on. Maybe over a glass of French Burgundy.

IP is personal: Yahoo

Your IP address is private: Next Web

Lifehacker has a nice list of their favorite free apps and online services. They have a list of 20 categories of common computing tasks, with links.

Check it out: Lifehacker’s 2007 Guide to Free Software and Webapps

Remember when 30 was the magic number for distrust? Now, for copyright holders, it seems the opposite is true.

David Pogue, NY Times technology guru, has a really interesting column today about copying CDs or DVDs and file-sharing. It appears there is a major generational divide between older consumers who believe it is only OK under certain circumstances and a younger group that thinks it is OK under, well, ANY circumstance.

Even when presented with a clear-case scenario of stealing via file-sharing, only two people out of 500 college students saw it as wrong. Call it further evidence of moral decline. Call it another manifestation of the “entitlement” generation. Or simply call it what it is: disturbing.

I almost feel sorry for the RIAA…no, not really. They’re a bunch of jerks. But for the artists and creative people who need protection of their work, the road ahead will only get more complicated and adversarial between creators and consumers.

Looks like, in the future, you can’t trust to commonsense morality.

The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality

UPDATE: Apparently it’s not just a generational divide. There’s also a major difference based on what computing platform you use. 50% of mac users paid for music, while only 16% of PC users paid. Here’s the report.