20% more? Well that’s just a bonus.

Mark your calendars!  We will be taking Streamy live on March 19, 2009.  Our small team has been working hard for a long time, and we think we’ve got a great product for you.  You’ll hear more from us before then!

Can’t believe it’s happening.  First GrandCentral.com finally launching as Google Voice?  Now this?  Big changes coming in my web habits.

As we open up the new year, we will make new announcements regarding Streamy, its features, products, and, of course, the planned launch.  Check in regularly for news.

For right now, I’m using Google Reader.  The best part of Reader is the share option so that others can see your recommended rss feeds.  The ability to share and post from anywhere on the web via their javascript shortcut makes sharing easy.  The Google Reader blog has a great video for those that want to start using it.  Once you start using it, you won’t be able to live without it:

I don’t know if Streamy will be able to pull me away from Google Reader if/when it does decide to launch.  I think it’s expected right before Duke Nukem Forever goes gold.

So now you have to buy another $20 charger for the car.  Ridiculous.

My solution was to buy a charger that has a USB connector on the end.  So the current cord and any future cords will work because it’s USB.

Anyway, proceed at your own risk.  I take no responsibility for you getting fired or disciplined for messing around with someone else’s PC.  Your IT department or co-worker might not look so favorably upon it.  And you’ll also want to make sure to lock your PC when you leave your desk as revenge will almost certainly be on the victim’s mind.

The prank has to do with taking advantage of Outlook’s Rules.  This is where you can have have things done automatically with incoming/outgoing messages.  What we’re going to do it set up a rule that will run a task when a certain message is received.  It’s also helpful to test this on your own machine first so that you can do it quickly and without getting noticed.

1.  In Outlook, select Rules and Alerts from the Tools menu and you’ll be presented with this screen,

2.  After clicking on the New Rule button, you’ll want to select Check Messages After They Arrive and then click Next.

3.  The next option to select is ‘”with specific words in the subject.”  What this allows you to do is send the person an email with a key in the subject line that will trigger an action.  Choose something unique that won’t get triggered by something else.  Click on the blue specific words text to add your text.  Click OK,  then Next.

4.  This is where you can be as benign or as evil as you wish.  You have a ton of options here.  My favorites are redirect it (not forward), play a sound, start an application, run a script, or all of the above.  

Redirect works like a forward except it doesn’t have the fwd: in the subject line.  Could be very evil as it makes it look like it comes from the victim.

The application option allows you to select any file.  You just have to select All File Types from the drop down menu.  Then select an image, a URL link, and any Windows file that has an associated program.  Evil pictures, evil PowerPoints, etc. are all possibilities.

Sounds can also play.

And if you’re very evil, you can have it run a .bat script to do pretty much anything you want.

There are other things to do.  But those are the ones I use most.

The most important part is to select “and permanently delete it.”  This prevents the victim from even seeing the message.  It will be a long time, if ever, that he/she knows what’s going on.

5.  The last step is to send your email to your victim.  Remember to include your keyword or you’re just sending weird blank emails to them.  You’ll probably want to vary it up a bit as to when you send them.  You could also be really crafty and have the email delayed for some time when you’re not in the office.  But then you don’t get to see/hear the prank.

Above all, have fun with it and don’t be too evil

One of the images that Eve has reminded me of one from the Matrix.  Here, Trinity has a gun pulled on an agent and says her famous line, “Dodge this.”

Dodge This

So I played around with the wall-e image maker and a little Photoshop and came up with this (click on image for more sizes),

Eve from wall-e doing her best Trinity impression

Streamy Demo from Streamy on Vimeo.

UPDATE: 23 OCTOBER 2008

Looks like they have beta invitation sign-ups again,

What this means to you, finally, is that the vapor is clearing and we can deliver what many of you have gotten excited about over the last year. You’ll hear from us again this week.

I’ve been dying to use Streamy since I first read about it and since I saw their video.  I was even promised a beta invite last year via email, but it never came.

But I’m sure a lot has changed since the last update we got.  But if it takes them a year to get things working right and to release a polished product, I guess I can wait a bit longer.

A small screenshot of the latest Streamy release