Community Manager / Evangelist at Strands Drew Olanoff likes his tats, and he has one of the more impressive geek collections I’ve ever seen.

But what if you could take Drew’s love of tats and raise money for charity?

That’s exactly what Drew is doing, auctioning off naming rights for his next Tattoo. His next tat will feature the Twitter address of the winning bidder, with all proceeds going to the Make a Wish Foundation.

Bonus: this tattoo won’t be hidden, but instead will appear on Drew’s left forearm, so you’ll have a walking billboard for your Twitter name for as long as Drew lives, or decides in 20 years time to remove it via laser surgery

Bidding ends Monday US time. To place a bid, contact @drew on Twitter. Bidding is up to $1800 at the time of writing. You can track the auction here, and details on Drew’s blog here.

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3. Chad Johnson Face Tattoos are Fakes, a Joke played on the Media

Lifestreaming service Strands continues to impress with its rapid growth in features, with a new mobile interface being launched targeted at iPhone users.

The site at m.strands.com, allows users to
- View recent activity from your friends
- Check and reply to your inbox messages
- Like and dislike things in peoples Strands
- Comment
- View images and click on links to blog posts and bookmarks
- Check out recommended posts
- Save things for later viewing once you get to your computer

Strand’s Drew Olanoff put together the follow video to demonstrate the new service.

Related posts:

1. Strands gets search
2. Strands gets a desktop client
3. Strands update offers fresher look

Lifestreaming service Strands has added search, allowing users to dig deep into the archival material listed on the site.

The new search function allows users to search their own streams (which can come in handy) or everyone on Strands, and then filter the search based on content type, such as blogs and notes, videos, movies, bookmarks, events, and music.

Drew Olanoff noted on the Strands Blog that “this is very early days for us and search, so please give it a whirl and as always, let us know what you think by emailing us at feedback.”

It’s another step forward for the newish lifestreaming service, and another feature of recent announcements of a fresh look, and desktop application. It’s a difficult space to break in to, but Strands continues to do all the right things.

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Lifestreaming come music recommendations service Strands has released their first desktop client.

The new client, available for the Mac only (it’s not written in AIR) brings streaming from Strands itself to the desktop, and can read data from iTunes to allow users to share songs, and get music recommendations.

The desktop client keeps within the fresh look delivered to the Strands webpage (see our last post September), offering a visually pleasing, modern look that is immediately easy to read, and a cut above a long list of AIR applications from other providers.

It is a first release, and no doubt that improvements will be forthcoming, but we’d be remiss not to note what it lacks. The biggest issue with the desktop client is a complete lack of interactivity on the stream; users can’t comment on streams, vote on them…do anything really other than open them. The secondary problem was mentioned towards the end of the last sentence: you can only open entries…Strands entries, not the original source entry, so you’re forced to use the Strands website every time you see something on the stream. I understand this from a traffic perspective, but it sucks from a user perspective. For example, if I’m in FriendFeed via Twhirl, I can click straight through to a shared post or FriendFeed, Strands doesn’t give that option, at least yet.

The music recommendations service naturally links back into MyStrands (the originating service of Strands, and the music recommendations service) where you get basic information about the recommended song, but you’re unable to play it on the site. You can click on a Napster affiliate link and play it there, but not on the site. I understand the business angle, but it’s not great for usability. There’s lots of services out there that offer music playback on site now, some of them legally. Grooveshark would be an ideal partner here.

Overall: Solid start, but the app needs work.

Related posts:

1. Strands gets search
2. Twitter desktop client Seesmic Desktop is worth another look
3. Utterli bad AIR desktop client

Included on the list (thanks to Drew)
* more prominent “strand” (center column) – fluid width
* cleaner UI
* larger avatar images (reupload your avatar image to get better quality at large size)
* less lightboxes
* new “share something” box
* more prominent play icons

Louis Gray sums it up this way: “Strands is quietly going about making a product on par with the market leaders, letting the community find new content and people, and enabling micro-conversations.”

It’s a great product that doesn’t get the attention it deserves, and I need to spend more time on it myself. A welcomed upgrade.

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