Late Night Jabs
August 20, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
2comments Categories: Insider, Picture of the Day, Squirrels, TimeWaster, gnash-teeth
See also a previous post Einstein Chalk Poetry.
Favorite Munchkin Dethroned
August 16, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
add a comment Categories: Insider, Squirrels, gnash-teeth
It would seem that everyones favorite munchkin has been officially dethroned as the worlds tallest midget.
Other midget links that might be of interest:
Always Watching You
August 14, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
1 comment so far Categories: Picture of the Day, Squirrels
Moving On - Castle Leaves PRWeb / Vocus
August 10, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
4comments Categories: Castle, Insider, PRWeb, Puter Stuff, Web Design & Dev, gnash-teeth
Just this last month, I posted about my two year anniversary as the CIO of PRWeb. I’ve accomplished quite a bit with David, Kevin, Jed, Karl and Poem. Tons of new features, widgets and thousands of lines of code to make PRWeb what it is today. Too many feeds to count, the first to implement Trackbacks for press releases, the recently released Feature Video, the creation of EON for Business Wire, Billboard Publicity Wire, and IssuesWire. Many services have been built from the ground up — including 301url, PRWebPhotowire, PRWebPodcast, and RSSPAD. There’s so much more, it’s exhausting just thinking about it all.
David McInnis founded and built a great company, hired talented people (cough), nurturing a controversial vision and leading an industry. You’ll find a recent article on CNN about just that, confirmation of our ongoing success. With Business Wire embracing us as partners, countless copycat companies springing up like weeds, tremendous growth, and finally the sale to Vocus just last August.
This past week I was in Lanham, MD, to coordinate with several of my co-workers to prepare for a smooth transition as I have resigned from my post as the unofficial ‘creative thunderstorm’ and leader of the PRWeb development and network operations team. Mark Heys, the VP of Web Development for Vocus, will be taking over the reigns, and I have complete confidence that he and the team I built will continue to innovate and provide the tremendous quality of affordable service PRWeb is known for.
I also had the pleasure to partake in the festivities of the Vocus quarterly boat cruise in Annapolis and the highly energetic post cruise activities. It was a lot of fun and a great way to step aside for a new prosperous era of PRWeb/Vocus to begin.
To all those that I’ve met along the way and had the pleasure of working with at Vocus East, I shall miss you. To those in the Washington office, I shall be by to have lunch with you all from time to time. Be well my friends.
The Al Castle Room
August 8, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
3comments Categories: Castle, Insider
In June/July I traveled down to Austin, TX for the grand opening of the Engelbrecht House to be the first to stay in the Al Castle room.
A dormitory of sorts for the Wizard Academy school, each room required a sponsoring donor to fund it. David McInnis felt that I should have my own room (which is next to his) and we met up down there for a few days of fun.
The heat was tremendous and the spiders massive. If you ever get a chance to goto the Academy, request my room. I left my journal on the night stand and you can read about how I fought off the arachnid hordes…
Check out more pictures of my room.
Hold Onto Me If You Want To Fly
August 8, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
2comments Categories: Castle, Insider, PRWeb, Science
Recently my friend Michael Kipp was generous enough to take me and Kevin Nielsen flying while we were in Maryland last week. Just like my munchkin friend, I do cool things now. Yes, I’m actually in control of the aircraft in the picture. Scary huh? A Mexican with no sense of grammar flying over the seat of power for the mightiest nation on earth. Doo-dee-doo.
And yes, I did make sound effects and did all the requisite quips from Star Trek TNG.
JiveTalk iPhone Instant Messenger
August 7, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
3comments Categories: OSX, Puter Stuff, iPhone
Oh sweetness. I’ve been waiting for even this limited functionality for so long. A buddy of mine sent me an IM from his iPhone telling me to check out BeeJives JiveTalk instant messenger for the iPhone.
JiveTalk is a web based multi-protocol client which supports Yahoo, AIM, Jabber, ICQ, MSN and GoogleTalk. SSL encryption, buddy lists, and even emoticons. Since it’s web based there’s nothing to install, simple goto http://iphone.beejive.com and login.
While a Blackberry user I shelled out $40+ bucks for IM+ which worked great. One feature I miss right off the bat with the JiveTalk web based client is notification of new messages when I have the phone in my pocket or am otherwise not looking at the screen. Maybe we can get a <buzz></buzz> tag built into the RFC spec for XHTML. I wonder how Apple thinks 3rd party applications are supposed to kick ass when something as simple as a notification (audio/visual) can not be properly implemented.
Anyways, try out their alpha software, it’s currently free. The ajaxy notification along with the preference settings, the look at feel of the whole thing really makes it seem like an actual iPhone application. Well except that the ON/OFF settings don’t actually slide, but that aside, nicely done BeeJive.
