All you have to do to become an proud World Record holder is sign up on the URDB website, take a look through their brief “Rules & Principles” guide (which merely comes down to being honest and accurate; not hurting yourself, other people or the planet; and not wasting resources in your attempts), choose a record from URDB’s extensive database that you would like to have a crack at (or invent your own), then break the record in front of an appreciative gathering, meticulously documenting the attempt (with video etc) as you go. Simple as that.

You know how you sometimes get so engrossed in surfing around on YouTube to the point that hours of your life are lost, never to be returned? Well the URDB World Records site has the same kind of attentive pull – don’t say I didn’t warned you.

True, a lot of the content/records are pretty silly, but there’s no doubt that there’s some damn impressive achievements to be found throughout the site, like Dan Mackey’s “Most People Flipped Over While Performing A Front Aerial” record, or Mike Hedge’s “Most People Photographed In Mid-Air In A Single Photograph”.

If, rather than wasting precious minutes of your life perusing through the site’s record attempts, you’d like to just find out about the best and most creative record attempts, you can also keep an eye on the URDB Tumblr blog which you can find here: http://tumblelog.urdb.org/. Oh, and there’s an iPhone app too for those of you who are on the go. Enjoy!

With the massive clean up effort well under way in Queensland following last week’s devastating floods, there’s a huge number of people that require a helping hand and, as it turns out, there are thousands upon thousands of community-spirited Queenslanders, and indeed Australians willing to offer those helping hands. But how do you efficiently match up those in need with those willing to help out? You create an online, social-network-style, non-commercial, not-for-profit marketplace where these two parties can be matched, of course.

Enter www.floodaid.com.au.

If you know of anyone who needs a hand cleaning up, or you have some spare time on your hands this coming weekend and want to help out yourself, check out the site and find a match for you.

The blend of new music discovery through a kind of “game” is lethal! Combine that with the fact that it’s absolutely free to use and you can even, in some instances, download free new tracks that you find while exploring… oh God… I need therapy…

The site is presented using a stunning and free-flowing combination of AJAX and Flash (geek terms for “cool technology”), and while there is plenty of options and features to get your head around when you first get in there, navigation is intelligently done and it doesn’t take much effort to get to just about any part of the site that you want/need to go.

Before you jump in head first (and I highly suggest that you do), let me try and dissect some of the more common components that help you explore your way through the music, participate in the gaming aspect and reward the talented acts that bring you the continual, streaming entertainment.

I’m not going to cover EVERYTHING because that would take the fun out of exploring for you, but I will cover the basics – here we go:

Sign up for an account

In order to participate and get the full TheSixtyOne experience, you need to sign up for a free account. By signing up, you’ll be able to help vote music into positions of better exposure on the site, develop a reputation as a music guru with good taste, and unlock a wealth of other features throughout the site.

Go here to get started: www.thesixtyone.com

Explore the music

Exploring through the tunes is dead easy to do with little effort, but there are also some options available for you to hone in on the kind of tunes that you like!

The easiest way to find what’s hot is by simply going to TheSixtyOne’s home page where a playlist of random, top rated tracks that you can sift through using the green navigation arrows on each side of the screen.

If you’d rather stick to the really popular stuff, the really new stuff, the currently hot tracks, or even a particular genre or mood of music, you can get to your desired playlists using the easy navigational options at the top right of the site.

Band information

While listening to each song you come across, you have the option of viewing all sorts of information relating to the track such as bio information about the band or artist, song lyrics, tour dates, tweets from the band or artist, and view lists of other songs from the same artist or similar tracks from other artists. There’s plenty to see and do while listening – that’s for sure.

Make it fun – complete a quest!

The gaming aspect of the website, which I mentioned earlier, can be found when you check out the “Quests”

Each quest challenges you to listen to and discover new music in different ways by exploring different genres, listening to your favourite discovered tracks multiple times, listening to newly released songs, or by simply to use the service at a given time of day (eg. “The Night Owl” quest).

Currently, as at the time of writing this post, I have the following quests that I am attempting to complete:

• Pour Your Hearts Out
  Max out your hearts on five or more of your favorite songs. (Level 5 required).
• Night Owl
  Listen to the first five songs of posted between 10PM to 4AM (your local time). Why? Because songs that get posted at the weirdest hours deserve a little extra help.
• Creative Commons
  Listen to seven or more songs with the creative commons license.
• In The Mood
  Listen to four different moods on the home page. (At least five minutes for each mood.)
• Caution – Very Hot!!
  Listen to seven songs on the first pages of the hot tab of the home page under popular.

Completing a quest

So what happens when you complete a quest? Well first of all your quest list is where you’ll find out about whether or not you have reached the allocated level of participation, before the quest is considered to be complete. Take for instance the “A Reputable Listener” quest below. I completed this quest this afternoon as evidenced by the “20/20 reputation earned” indicator in green. Now all you have to do is click the “Finish” button at the bottom right of the panel and your “two hearts” (in this case) and reputation points are added to your profile.

Completing quests also unlocks new quests… hence the super addictive nature of the whole concept. And your reward during all of this? At the very least you’re getting the opportunity to listen to great new music from bands and artists you more than likely haven’t heard of before… for free!

What are “hearts”?

Hearts are like “votes” in TheSixtyOne world. You can use your awarded hearts to vote for songs in a bid to move them up the charts and closer to the top play position on the front page of the site.

What are “reputation points”?

Successful quests also earn you experience or “reputation” points. These reputation points, as they build in your profile, help you move up TheSixtyOne “levels”. The higher your level, the more powerful your votes through “hearts” become.

Achievements

So what is this all working towards? Well if you click on your profile link (bottom left of screen) and check out the “Achievements” panel in the information box (bottom right), you will get an idea of what you need to do to unlock new levels and get a sense of just how far you’ve made it in the total TheSixtyOne experience.

The screen shot on the right shows my “Achievements” panel as it stands right now and also indicates that I’ve so far unlocked 4% of the site. GO ME!

Share & get social

Like any modern website worth its salt these days, there’s a selection of tools available to help you let all of your friends know about the great tracks that you are discovering. Connect with Facebook, Twitter or simply email song links to your family and friends.

Finally, since you get your own profile when you sign up, there’s also the opportunity for you to start socially connecting with other TheSixtyOne users. The search feature isn’t all that useful for finding other users to communicate with, but reading through the comments left on songs you like by other users, helps you find new people to “follow”.

So there you have it, there should be enough introductory information there for you to get started. Make sure you come find me if you do sign-up. Not surprisingly, my user name is “masey” and you can find me here:

www.thesixtyone.com/listener/masey

I’m off to watch the rest of the Canucks game right now… then I’m going to have a crack at the “Night Owl” quest! Come join me and let’s start uncovering some great new music together!

See you in TheSixtyOne!

I’m really excited about this re-design as I firmly believe this is one that I’ll stick with for quite a long time going forward. There’s been a tonne of stuff added in on the back end to make things easier for me in terms of composing posts, and I’ve done my best to strip away a lot of the “bells and whistles” I used to employ on the front end, to make the viewing experience a lot clearer and more enjoyable for you!

The idea is to present you with a Blog that is easier to navigate and read (there’s now larger type for the oldies out there!) and that will enable a greater emphasis on imagery, in particular my photography. I’ve got some awesome plans for this year so there’s going to be plenty to see and read about.

Apologies if there’s any of your favourite posts or galleries that haven’t made the jump to the new design… yet. I’ve had to reformat every post in the archive one-by-one, so it’s going to take me a while to have them all back online. I’m working on it though!

So, if there’s anything you particularly like about the new design, or miss about the old one, please let me know in the comments section below. I welcome any feedback, no matter the nature of it.

Cheers and enjoy!

Google Chrome Beta for Mac

With the recent official Beta release of Google’s “Chrome” browser, I was quite excited to get my hands on the lightning quick browser that starts up without delay, is minimal in its appearance, and provides a really intuitive tabbed interface.

There was just a couple of things missing, however, that prevented me from making the switch 100% to Google’s offering. For starters there was no Xmarks plugin allowing me to sync my bookmarks with all the other browsers I use for website development testing (Mac) and at work (PC) and I was also lacking small aesthetic features that I consider important, such as thumbnail previews in Google searches etc.

Google Chrome Extensions Gallery

Well that all changed this evening too! I finally found (not sure why it took me so long) the Google Chrome Extension Gallery and have spent the best part of the last hour wading through 30+ pages of extensions trialling a bunch and settling on approximately 10 great extensions that I think you should ALL take a look at for enhancing your Chrome experience.

NOTE: Before I tackle the list, I’m sure a bunch of you are asking how I managed to install extensions on Google Chrome Beta for Mac when extensions are not yet supported? Well, Mac users, for the time being, need to download and install the developer version of Chrome, called “Chromium” which you can get here.

1. Xmarks for Chrome Beta
   Was top of my “must-have” list for an everyday browser, so this awesome tool obviously makes the list.
2. Xmarks Thumbnails
   This one adds site thumbnails next to Google search results.
3. Webmynd
   In Google Search adds a right hand column of collapsable results from other sources such as YouTube etc.
4. Del.icio.us Tools
   A single click button vital for Delicious users.
5. AniWeather
   One-click weather forecast. Simple. Needed.
6. Google Mail Checker Plus
   The best Gmail notifier I could find. View and delete emails directly from the preview window.
7. Speed Dial
   Just like the awesome Firefox version. A real time saver for regularly used sites.
8. Mini Google Maps
   I use maps a lot… so this is a dream!
9. Chromed Bird
   A great in-browser Twitter client. Monitor and post to your Twitter account while you browse.
10. Fittr Flickr
    Provides one click full image preview and EXIF data within Flickr. LOVE IT!

So there you go, just a few to get you started.

Well what do you know, I think I’ve found myself a winner! Sure, there’s the heavy hitting iLike that integrates nicely with Facebook profiles, but what I’ve really been after is a service that I can check quickly to see if there’s been any tour date announcements that I’ve missed… and if I miss those, receive emails that notify me of what I’ve missed.

BandsInTown.com, from what I have experienced from the service so far, does all of this for me with little effort. Sign up, specify your favourite artists (or even link into your last.fm account to have your favourite artists automatically imported), tweak a few account settings and “Bob’s your Uncle”.

The service introductory blurb suggests:

Bandsintown.com is an online community whose users can track their favorite artists, connect with other live music fans, and discover new shows based on their musical tastes. Bandsintown consolidates ticket prices, concert information, and live concert media all in one place.

One of the sweet features is the RSS feeds provided for each user, artist, and venue calendar. Just another convenient way to keep track of upcoming gigs.

For example, the Dave Matthews Band, one of my all-time favourites and definitely one of the hardest working touring bands on the planet today can be followed using their BandsInTown.com RSS feed:

http://www.bandsintown.com/DaveMatthewsBand/rss

I’m looking for a few friends to hook up with on BandsInTown.com, so if you do happen to sign up, scoot along to my profile and add me to your friends list.

At this moment in time, there’s still a lot of work to be done, the very least posting all the archived entries from the past, but I hope that I will hear back from all of you regarding what you like and don’t like about this new version.

Some of the new or changed features for you to keep your eyes open for include:

• The new feature post slide show on the home page. This will showcase my most recent feature articles over time.
• Clicking on the “Lifestream” item in the top menu will present you with a real time list of some of my online activities.
• For most posts, I’ll be posing a question or two to my readers which they can answer to in the comments section. It’s my hope that this will foster discussion and help develop a bit of a community surrounding my Blog.
• In the sidebar you’ll find a series of tabs that will feature my most popular entries, the latest entries, latest comments and the tag cloud for searching entries by keyword.
• Also in the sidebar you will find my latest Twitter post, links to various Blog subscription options, a real-time graphical list of the tunes I’m listening to and, of course, my latest images posted on Flickr.
• At the bottom of the home page, you’ll find an index of YouTube videos that I’ve found entertaining and subsequently want to share with you all.
• And there’s plenty more to come…

So have a look around, leave some comments and I look forward to getting back to Blogging like maniac for you all again!

Now you could argue forever as to what categories these sites are covered by, as all of us have distinctly different online habits and indeed personalities. As everyone knows, I’m a social, techno, blogging kind of user so my categories and associated sites would be something like this:

• NEWS: www.news.com.au
• TRAVEL: www.flightcentre.com.au or www.flightcentre.ca
• BANKING: my bank obviously
• SOCIAL: www.facebook.com
• ONLINE MANAGEMENT: www.netvibes.com
• EMAIL: www.gmail.com

Naturally, I’m yet another hopeless RSS addict so I have access to so many more websites via feeds I have loaded into my Netvibes page.

Finally, most of you will probably have “SHOPPING” as one of your 6 categories and no doubt “Amazon.com” will feature heavily. I don’t do a lot of shopping online so it doesn’t make the cut for me.

So now it’s your turn.

With my boys, the mighty “Brisbane Lions”, stitching together a stella pre-season this week securing a spot in the NAB Cup Final next week against those cretinous “Blues” from the south, I’m all pumped up to catch some of the action any way I can all thanks to the wonders of the Internet.

It certainly helps that the lions.com.au website has this year received a substantial cosmetic makeover which I don’t mind saying has been long overdue. It’s still by no means perfect as far as my layout and design tastes go, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. I’ll no doubt spend a good few hours in the coming weeks catching up with the player bios of all the young players the Lions have started introducing to the “big-time” this season.

In the meantime, I’m damn happy to see the improvements that have also been made to the AFL.com.au website’s LIVE online game day coverage. I’m not going to get into all the neat features that are available this year in the fantastic Flash panel that is available, but needless to say with slightly delayed animated visual commentary on the balls position on the field, coupled with a live streaming radio feed, all I need to do now is buy some beer and finally track down a decent meat pie in Vancouver and I’ll be all set!

I think the point I’m trying to make here is that there’s no need to despair this season if, like me, you find yourself a thousand miles and a considerable stretch of water away from home this coming AFL season. Visit www.afl.com.au to check out the “Toyota LIVE GAMEDAY” feature for yourself and caaaarn the Brissie Lions in 2007!!!

Everybody has a select few Blogs that they visit and read everyday (hopefully mine is one of yours *winks*), so please be the sharing caring kind and post your top 2 or 3 in the comments section below.

In the meantime, here’s a quick list of mine:

• Techcrunch – profiles the companies, products and events that are defining and transforming the new web. TechCrunch is written by Michael Arrington.
• BetaNews – Inside information and unreleased products with an emphasis on the world of Google and Microsoft.
• Lifehacker – recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time.
• Digg – one of the best resources for the most viewed (popular) websites on the web at any given time throughout the day.
• BuzzShout – one of the best resources for the most viewed (popular) websites on the web at any given time throughout the day.

Then of course there’s a whole number of my friend’s Blogs including Jordan’s “TellTenFriends.com” Blog that I glance over everyday. But I have to say (take note all of you, and you know who you are) you’re all being pretty slack in the Blogging department of late! Get your act together!

Anyway, share your “must-reads” in the comments section below! Cheers!