Goodbye Missed Connections

Sometime around 2006, when I was in high school, I remember sitting at a Burger King with a friend of mine. We were enabling Bluetooth access on our phones so that we could share files when we noticed there were about five people near us who also had Bluetooth enabled on their devices. We tried to figure out which Bluetooth device names corresponded to which of the people that were sitting at Burger King with us. Then I said something along the lines of "Wouldn't it be funny if we send our files to those people instead? What would they say?" Followed by "It would be cool if we could, like, chat with the people around us via Bluetooth. It'd decrease Missed Connections on Craigslist by, like, half."

We don't hear much about sharing files with other phones/devices via Bluetooth these days because most of it's been replaced by Wi-Fi and apps. And the whole idea of knowing who is in the same room as you by looking at your phone has been replaced by check-in services, like Foursquare and Gowalla.

The third, -- chatting with people who are near you -- I just found out about today. There's an iPhone app called Yobongo, which allows you to do just that. I thought it was brilliant when I heard of it. It allows you to communicate with people around you, people you've talked to before, and people you already know. It's still in Beta and will be available for free in March. While I don't own an iPhone, I'm glad this idea has come into fruition. I'm a sucker for innovations in communication. And more of a sucker for services that allow us to talk to people when we find interesting if we don't want to embarrass ourselves in person first.

Slow Internet Speed + YouTube

In the spirit of LifeHacker, I thought I'd stop by and give you folk with slower internet speeds a tip for viewing videos on YouTube. Oh, wait. You mean, I'm the only person out there with internet too slow to load HD videos on the spot? Heh.

As you've probably noticed if you've read my blogs the past year or so, I have strong opinions about my internet experience. Ever since my internet was downgraded I've had trouble watching YouTube videos in a large size, both pixel-wise and file size ...wise. I've reached the point where I value speed over quality. If there is a way for me to watch a video in lower quality without having to wait a bit for it to buffer, I will take it.

I prefer watching videos in full screen, or have them take up more space than the standard 640x390 YouTube video. I noticed that every time I tried to make a video full screen, it would automatically switch my video from 360p to either 480p or 720p, which take a considerably longer amount of time to load.

Then I found a work-around that both kept my video at 360p and made my video size larger. It was so simple and so genius.


The trick: Zoom in on the page. (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+). This increases the size of the video and keeps it at 360p so that  you don't have to sit through the load.


Unfortunately, it doesn't work this way for all flash video players. I tested this method on others, and it only made text and images around the video larger while the video remained the same size.