Take a look at this screenshot:

That right there was done in about 20 seconds with a new feature Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 will have. Check out the screencast made by one of Adobe’s engineers. It feels to me so logical to be able to do it, yet we have never been able to do this. It makes me excited for the future of software development, considering the powerful computers we use.

immigration. it always is so complicated. migrating to costa rica is a pain for nicaraguans, as it is for ticos the other way around. migrating in central america is easier, they’re more open. mexico is hard, which is funny because of the issues they have going up north. i believe the system is broken and needs to be fixed, but for now all i can do is work my way around it.

there’s this whole other thing about immigration too; making a life somewhere else is fucking hard work, it requires dedication and lots of small talk… seriously, if you are bad with people, or find yourself not really giving a damn about what others think and do, stay where you are. you will need friends, and you’ll have to make them, go out, talk & listen and be cool.

anyway, i have found that there’s always nice people, but there’s something to be said about the latin culture, and the friendliness of it. back home, people go out of their way to be helpful to you whereas here they don’t give a shit.

there’s so many immigrants though, take a look at the united states, los angeles for example, a city where 50% of the population is foreign born, and look at how hard it is for immigrants to have fucking rights… which reminds me

the other day i was at an american apparel store and found out about a program (called legalize la) they have where the corporation as a whole advocates for immigrants and their rights within the US and call for a reform on the immigration law.

now that is something. it’s coming from a corporation with thousands of immigrants working in LA, and it’s a big feat. that they are speaking up.

let’s change this whole thing. our world as we know it, came to be by, -yah, you guessed it- immigrating.

have a good day, and think about going somewhere, move, or travel, and then, maybe, immigrate somewhere for the experience!

So I’m on the third day of the Ignite the Americas forum and wanted to share some thoughts.

It’s an amazing initiative backed by Canada Heritage and OAE. There are about 70 delegates from all latin american countries and all of us work in areas that revolve around youth and arts. It’s the first time a group this diverse gets together for a week to actually work on policies, toolkits and networks which will be then pitched to actual OEA members on a very special meeting happening tomorrow.

Youth are often neglected, but there is no doubt some people are out there trying to make things better and give us a voice, and it’s our job to actually make it count.

I’ll be doing my best to make a difference.

This one’s in spanish. Por qué no?. Es sobre Twitter.

Yo siempre he sido un mae muy involucrado con la tecnología y siempre he estado metido en internet. Tengo muchas amistades “virtuales” (que son más reales que muchas otras, pero me imagino que esto le pasa a más de uno), en fín, yo he escrito bastante sobre servicios en internet para varios blogs en “mis tiempos”, me acuerdo de servicios que ya ni existen, me acuerdo cuando otros estaban comenzando, y he visto otros crecer y crecer (vamos al punto).

Uno de esos es el famoso Twitter, que en este momento pasa por unos tiempos no tan buenos pero necesarios para seguir expandiendose. Nació hace como 2 años y resto, en su momento era algo así como un experimento, los tipos que lo hicieron fueron los mismos detras de Odeo (que si no se acuerdan, fue uno de los pioneros en el campo del podcasting, hasta que Apple incluyó la funcionalidad de podcasts en iTunes y les mató el negocio), ni se llamaba Twitter en ese entonces, era twittr, o algo así. En fín, apenas escuché del servicio me fui a probarlo.

En ese tiempo nadie estaba acostumbrado al concepto de microblogging, ese de publicar ideas en pocas palabras (forzadamente), los blogs eran todo, las personalidades de la web 2.0 (ese grupito, ya saben) atraían gente a sus blogs y eso era todo. Ahora todo esto ha cambiado, Twitter empezó a atraer a más y más gente y se convirtió en un medio de comunicación muy importante, tanto que muchos lo que hacen es tratar de tener bastantes seguidores, más gente esuchando, y en este medio eso ha probado ser hasta más valioso que lectores en un blog, en fín, los tipos que lo hacían le fueron dedicando más esfuerzo (hasta que ahora es una compañía aparte), me acuerdo el primer SXSW en el que twitter fue usado (creo que el año pasado), sus números se dispararon, y de ahi así siguió.

Personalmente lo que me llamó la atención fue esa facilidad de publicar tonteras, de comunicarme fácilmente con tanta gente, y ver lo que todos hacen. La verdad, no fue hasta este año que encontré a algún tico en Twitter, siempre estuve viendo como muchos en Twitter eran del mismo lugar y compartían más cosas, en general relacionadas a que estaban en el mismo país (discutiendo noticias locales, etc), lo que fuera. En especifico, amigos chilenos tomaron Twitter y lo hicieron suyo hace tiempo, la comunidad chilena es grande, y tienen muy buenas conversaciones, siempre estuve celoso, porque hablaban en español, porque estaban sacandole el jugo a Twitter.

Como sabemos todo ha cambiado y la comunidad Tica en Twitter crece cada día. Por eso escribo esto, porqué me denominaron pionero de Twitter en ticolandia, la verdad en el sentido de que fui el primer tico en usarlo, puede ser, pero nunca he hecho mucho por hablar de Twitter, y cuando lo he hecho y logro que abran cuentas, nunca lo terminan usando, nunca lo entienden.

En fín, al mejor estilo me despido en 140 letras, encantado con Twitter, igual que hace dos años. Y me imagino que se va a poner mucho mejor.

I spent some time today on Nacion.com, the website for the biggest local newspaper, and found out none of the videos they have can actually be played. If you go to the site the videos are at the bottom, and when I open them I get this message in the flash player window where the video is supposed to play:

Player can not detect browser cookies. Please, enable them and reload the page in order to show the content.

Using Safari 3, with cookies obviously enabled. But the truth is they should have tested their video solution on all platforms and browsers, putting the functionality on the site only to have it fail on users simply pisses them off, like it did to me.

It blows my mind that the guys running this site couldn’t get video right. I mean, video online in 2008 is not a difficult thing to do. Not at all. By any means. We’ll see if they get it right.

Busy day today, lot’s of work. I’m struggling to implement a feature to book a house online with paypal and it’s been a bitch to get it to work. But, I’ve always loved when I can’t get stuff to work, it’s a nice challenge, everytime. Anyway, in between all the projects I’m trying to make room for redesigning this site, one of the main things I’m focusing on is on getting a good logo for the site, but I have never been good at that, so we’ll see what happens.

On the news today is the 3G iPhone (just announced), it’s even better now, but I wonder how it’s going to be sold, it’s only $199 now but I believe you have to get a contract when you buy it, with the old one you could just buy without a contract, and then you could get it to work simply by jailbreaking/unlocking it (which is what I did with Lisa’s and to my ipod, took me 5 minutes with ipwnage), but I’m hearing that this one can’t be bought without the contract.. I’m sure there will be a work around though. I mean, Sweet Jesus Phone loves you and wants to be with you. I just wish they’d addressed the software issues there are with it -Colin has a good post about that so check it out- because there was no sign they did on today’s keynote. Of course it could be that they just didn’t address them now. I want one, but I’m good with my iPod, 3G and EDGE are useless down here in Costa Rica anyway, we’re still using GPRS (sigh).

So I’ve been trying to “come back online”, trying to get comfortable in this little web, in this space we have to be us. Now that I’m back home, in Costa Rica, it’s a good time. This means getting back into the social.

Twitter of course, is one the first things I’ve started to use again, I love it, even though it’s been having some hard times recently (many reasons why, but i don’t really care) it’s not something I can let go so easily, it lets me connect, it’s a cool app.

Flickr, Facebook, and all the other stuff, I’m in again. Not really doing videos, but Viddler is doing some really cool things, which reminds me that I just got a shirt from them with an awesome letter, it had Colin and Rob with cute little text bubbles, you should see it (note to self: take pictures), these guys are awesome. Gary Vee from WineLibrary is the man now, shit, did you see the Conan videos? Awesome. I got a Vayniacs wristband from Gary too, which fucking rocked (unfortunately i lost it).

Anyhow, there’s a new web app called FriendFeed that I find extremely addictive, because it lets me do cool things and makes keeping up so easy. Basically it aggregates content from anything you want, from you, and puts it all together in one page, then there’s all these other users that you can “follow” ala twitter, so you go on the friends page and there’s all you want to see about the people you follow, twits, flickr photos, blog posts, etc.. So yeah, check it out. I mean, it’s not like you have to, but since you read so far, well what else are you going to do?

It feels good, being back, I’m enjoying it. And I’m loving how important the web is for so many people now, how incredible it is, it really is magic.