Twitter 101
I've been playing around with twitter the past couple months, but haven't been able to move beyond the inane, "I'm on a plane, stuck on the tarmac" tweets. While there has been an explosion of twitter accounts, few people truly generate content. However slow, I've been starting to explore more and more of what Twitter provides value for me:
- Easier for me to follow people (Maybe I'm more a taker than a giver)
- Twitter is my social networking gateway (I sms twitter which will automatically update my facebook and friendfeed accounts)
I've also noticed that while I "follow" 50 people, I truly only follow 15 people. Those 15 people tend to be people I've had personal connections with (@bryantng, @mcurren, @xenlogic). The other people I follow closely are CXO superstars like @padmasree and @stevecase.
For those of you who want to get in on the action too, but have been a bit too timid to test the waters, Infinite Thinking Machine cites a couple places to get you started:
- Twitter in Plain English - a great video that explains Twitter in a nutshell
- 7 Things You Should Know about Twitter -Educause publishes a series of excellent articles detailing new and emerging technologies.
- Tweetdeck -Use this third party app to manage Twitter. It's much better than using the Twitter web interface.
- TwitThis -Install this tool into your browser's toolbar so that you can share web sites on the fly as you surf.
- Hootsuite -This is a great tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts. Try this out once you've mastered Twitter basics.
Legal Content for a Typically Illegal Channel [Legal Torrents]
BitTorrent, is a popular P2P protocol used to share a large amount of data. It's a great way to download and share data quickly and efficiently. Its primary usage is to share/download illegal content. With a judge recently found Piratebay, a huge index of BT content, guilty of copyright infringement,* and countries cracking down and making arrests,
This is very unfortunate because it's such a great channel. LegalTorrents, is one of the few places trying to turn the tide. Their content is open-license (Creative Commons) and the control over the torrents are held by the site. Check it out and see what legal content is available for your consumptive pleasure!
* Note, there's been some recent controversy over the case (namely the judge is a member ofthe Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for Industrial Legal Protection).
OLED [Technology]
You may have already seen Nokia's concept nano phone. Turns out that we may see something like that sooner than we think.
Check out the Youtube video of Sony's full-color OLED:
Source: JMG-galleries
The Mile High High Wi Fi Club [Southwest Wi-Fi]
I'm on my way down to San Diego, CA for a couple days. We originally had plans to check out a couple places on the border, but given the current flu concerns, my plans have shifted a bit.
What is exciting, is the fact that I'm currently at cruising altitude writing this. I'm pretty stoked. For an hour flight, that means that I can be connected to all of you for another 45 minutes or so.
I've posted a screenshot of the landing page immediately after connecting to wi-fi. It's a bit busy, but there are a couple gems above the fold.
- Updated Flight Information - The bar above the map shows your progress. Hovering over it allows you to read ETA, speed, and estimated time of arrival
- Weather @ Destination - 'Nuff said. Always important
- Trip Planner - The rest of the items are dedicated to helping you explore the city. From top recommendations to upcoming events.
I just learned how to perform a screenshot for a mac, but not sure how to add bubbles to highlight the image. Suggestions?
Now, if only they had an outlet for me to charge my laptop...
Update: As I start to descend, I wanted to provide a quick update on the speed. The speed is definitely a lot faster than I would've thought. Mind you, back in 2000 when I was working at a startup in Boston, we had 3 computers sharing a dialup connection. This is significantly faster. I was hoping to get in a hulu test. I was able to clock it via rietta and here are the results:
| Start Time: | 1240876274630 |
| End Time: | 1240876275271 |
| Download Time: | 0.641 |
| Data Size: | 508.466796875 |
| Raw Speed: | 793.2399327223088 |
| KBPS: | 6472.8 |
| K BYTES/s: | 793.2 |
Contact Solution [Contact List Management]
I'm a happy user of the HTC Touch PDA from Sprint. I was able to receive both my personal mail and my work mail. Unfortunately, right before my flight out to California this past Saturday, my phone decided to wipe all of its contacts along with it. Let me tell you, don't play with your contact list right before the plane takes off--You'll spend much of the flight wondering how to get your contact list back.
Luckily, I had exported my outlooks contact list in a CSV file. So began, over the last couple days, my journey to sync up all my contacts. I've tried plaxo but was never happy with it. It constantly crashed my outlook and create tons of duplicates. I found it unfriendly and inconvenient.
Add to the mix that K and I now have a MacBook... (We're supposed to share it, but since my vaio died on me, i'm the primary user...thanks k!).
I've been trying to figure out how to get the Outlook CSV file, Mac Address Book, Gmail, and my HTC phone to sync. If you know if an elegant solution, let me know.
At first, I found an interesting hack on lifehacker. At first it didn't work, but after I linked my ipod to the mac (the ipod syncs to my pc desktop). Course, as a new mac user, I'm not terribly crazy about editing my plist. I'm afraid of breaking things.
But then I cam across Soocial. It's still in beta right now, but so far, I'm a fan. Given how volatile these betas are, Soocial saves a back-up of your contact list and even sends you a copy via gmail. It even identifies doubles for you and allows your to merge them. Take that, plaxo!
The merge process is a bit slow, but I'm more than happy to give soocial some time to prove itself to me.
So one day later, how far have I come? My old CSV contact file that was synced to my phone is now living in my Mac addressbook and gmail. But my phone still has no numbers.
It's all about baby steps.
Lessons learned?
Windows XP desktop + Windows Mobile + macbook + iPod that can't decide if it wants to sync to a pc or mac = headache
Dalai Tweets [Dalai Lama]
His holiness, the dalai lama, joins twitter. Under @OHHDL, the office of his holiness the dalai lama has been posting for about 10 hours and has 3,293 followers at the time of the post.
HT: ReadWriteWeb
Moving my digital brain [evernote]
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However, all is not lost, Evernote now allows you to import your google notebook into one place. What also gives me confidence that evernote is going to be around is the latest round of funding they received--$4.5 million.
All Shoes Considered [Nike Considered]
Nike has launched a new initiative called Considered Design. When trying to develop a more sustainable product, Nike realized that instead of creating a new shoe, they came up with the idea of using old shoes to make new ones. Vanessa Farquharson writes:
It's a perfect example of "upcycling" -- a green trend in which an expired product is upgraded into a new, more superior product -- and it's just one aspect of Nike's new approach to sustainability, which the company calls Considered Design.
Some examples of Considered Design's objectives: - A closed-loop system, in which Nike designers and manufacturers use old material and scraps from the cutting room floor to make new shoes, in order to reduce excess waste at the outset and create less demand for virgin resources. - Mechanically locking soles, meaning no glue or solvents are required in the production process; plus, insertable booties, removable logos and other design features that make the shoes easy to dismantle for recycling. - Apparel made entirely from recycled polyester and organic cotton, with water-based adhesive techniques in place of toxic cement or VOCs. - Open-sourced technology, allowing other companies to share research and development and promote sustainability throughout the marketplace.
Read the article from National Post here.
Let’s get Photo Synth-ical, Synth-ical
Since Blaise Aguera y Arcas first presented a demo of Photosynth at a TED conference back in 2007, I've been salivating at the opportunity to play with the technology.
A couple weeks ago, when Tommy and Ashley came out from NY, I took the opportunity to grab my camera and get a couple shots in.
Bonus: Try to find the first image in this blog post in the photosynth walkthrough.
I like shiny pennies…where is google chrome?
I can't seem, for the life of me, to find a place to download Google Chrome. After much hoopla in their promotional strategy (read here). It was supposed to launch today and I can't seem to find it. WTF?
Was this on purpose? or servers overloaded? or just bad project management?
Update: Yeah, yeah, yeah....So google launched this afternoon. I didn't get a chance to look it up again until after I got home from work.