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SXSW 2009 in Austin is the place to be, at least virtually via Twitter and the Web for me this year

SXSW '09

This weekend was a busy one for us at home, otherwise I would have found a way to travel to Austin with several of my friends to attend South by Southwest 2009 Conference in Austin, Texas.

For those of you who don’t know, a good summary is offered here on SXSW from the local paper:

"South by Southwest is a music lover’s heaven. But wait — it’s also a film lover’s dream. And, yes, it’s a techie’s delight. What started as a small Austin music festival 22 years ago is now a full-blown music, film and interactive jamboree known worldwide.

Welcome, SXSW. You’re grown up and spectacular but still very much a genuine Austin experience.

Starting Friday, Austin’s downtown will swell with people and events as SXSW kicks off. Bring on traffic and people congestion. Austin is ready and thrilled to host this year’s 10-day happening that is expected to draw 100,000 attendees. This is just the kind of festive event the city needs to shake off the blues of a slumping economy. The Austin Convention and Visitor’s Bureau estimates that the SXSW jamboree will generate about $103 million for the Austin-area economy."

The SXSW conference also offers a music fest offering nearly 2,000 musical acts from around the world on over eighty stages. Although I’ve never been to one in the 23 years it’s been going on, I have always resolved that I would when I made it back to the music business I left so long ago. Now more than ever at is a destination for media, technology, music and art. (I went to my fair share of New Music conferences in New York, which offered dozens and dozens of bands, but that was pre-Internet, and when I had a Compuserve address that ran up a hefty monthly bill that eclipsed even the most precocious teen texter today.)

Next year.

But this year, I decided to spend time after the family drifted off to sleep this weekend to catch up on the goings-on over the filmmaking, music and technology.

Articles from around the Web

Here’s a collection of articles I queued up to read today from the web.

louisgray.com: The Word on SXSW 2009 is at SXSWerds.com March 10, 2009, By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed) — "Need to get the word on South by Southwest 2009? Get SXSWerds.com, a targeted social media platform, brought to you by BlogWerds Media, dedicated to the niche content vertical of SXSW to deliver what’s happened, what’s happening, and what’s happening next. "Co-founder Eric Berlin, who also writes here on louisgray.com, has positioned the Werds-brand as a highly-targeted content aggregation coupled with social media tools for what’s coming next."

Thrive Selected as Finalist for Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW – "Thrive (www.justthrive.com), a free personal financial advisory website, has been named a finalist in the Innovative Web Technology category for the inaugural Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW, where early stage technology companies will demo their creations in front of judges and a live audience. Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, Moontoast, Mosso | The Rackspace Cloud, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, more than 200 companies submitted to present at the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW, and 20 were chosen as finalists in four different categories: online video-related technologies, online music-related technologies, social networking, and innovative web applications."

Navigating SXSW the social way, March 13, 2009, 11:20 AM — ITworld — by Joe Doherty — "If you happen to be perusing any sort of website talking about the South By Southwest Conference (SXSW), you’ll probably see three names you and the popular media have come to know well: Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Without a doubt, you will be able to view many new video uploads on YouTube documenting the day and night’s events within minutes of the actual event commencing. Flickr images will be posted and shared to those who give a care. Twitter, though, is fascinating."

Now, this is just plain silly, as my grandfather would say: Suicide girls get sizzling bacon ‘bro’ tattoos at SXSW (courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2009) – "Talk about bringing home the bacon. At Saturday night’s Bigg Digg party at Stubb’s BBQ in Austin, Texas, I ran across two young ladies from the tech world who were sporting brand-new, hot-off-the-grill bacon tattoos. Lynn LaVallee, a.k.a. @poshy, and her friend Jessica Zollman, a.k.a. @jayzombie, in town for the South by Southwest music and media conference, consummated their roommate-ship early. The two San Francisco-based women, both Suicide Girls (that’s the Web’s "enlightened" erotic-photo site), are moving in together next month, and they both love bacon. Hence the decision to get their "bro tatts." Bacon is, of course, one of the Web’s silliest memes."

Where to eat in Austin – Entertainment News, SXSW News, Media – Variety – "Full disclosure: It’s been a long time since I lived in Texas and when I did, it wasn’t in Austin. However, over my 23 years in that state, the city became my kinda-Mecca. (Sacred, yes. Holy, no.) "All of which is not a bad way to describe the perspective of the tens of thousands who converge on SXSW every year. If you’re among them, you deserve to eat well. Or to put it another way: You’re a fool if you don’t. The best breakfasts in any city/state/country. Fantastic Tex-Mex. And, of course, the barbecue. With that in mind, I’ve assembled a top-10-plus-five list: Ten places I know, love and can vouch for; five that I don’t know but hope to based on recommendations from Those Who Know. Some, but not all of these places are within or walking distance from Austin’s downtown. For the closest-to-definitive list of SXSW-accessible restaurants, go to SXSW Baby!, the terrific and utterly unofficial SXSW blog. There you’ll find a fairly exhaustive rundown, complete with Google Map."

Interactive revolt at SXSW – Entertainment News, Technology News, Media – Variety by LIZ SHANNON MILLER — "Over the five days of the SXSW Interactive conference, there are some 120 panels that discuss and dissect Web 2.0 with topics ranging from "Pimp My Film’s Website" to "Digital Cinema for Indies." However, the biggest news to come out of the event was, appropriately enough, virtual. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a reputation for being a poor public speaker, so those attending his Sunday keynote discussion hoped moderator Sarah Lacy would steer the conversation. However, Lacy, a columnist for Business Week and writer of an upcoming book on Zuckerberg and Web 2.0, ended up steering the conversation directly into oncoming traffic."

SXSW: Web Video Isn’t Killing TV by Jessica E. Vascellaro at the WSJ blog notes that "While the popularity of online video skyrockets, a panel of comedians and technology executives cautioned that the content is still a long way a way from destroying traditional TV. "That’s not to say that Web video isn’t changing the way TV actors and writers think about their jobs… The panel — which highlighted the role comedy plays in driving Web hits — quickly expanded to assess the success and influence of online-only content in general. B.J. Novak, a producer of “The Office” who also plays temp worker Ryan Howard, said NBC’s hit show spends reasonably big bucks investing in shorter online-only “webisodes”, in part to experiment with what works and what doesn’t online. “Everyone is still trying to figure them out,” he said, adding that he thinks the term “webisode” will disappear in the future as people watch more TV content online and vice versa."

PressHerald.com | NXT: Next Generation: SXSW: Zappos.com – Talking about shoes, saving newspapers? – Justin Ellis over at the Maine Sunday Telegram writes (March 15, 2009) that "I am not much of a shoes guy. I have shoes. I like certain pairs more than others, but they’re more of a utility than a fashion accessory. "So when someone mentions Zappos.com, my brain starts to nod off. This could have meant double jeopardy Saturday afternoon at SXSW Interactive. After traveling for more than six hours and jumping time zones, the first thing I attended was the keynote talk from Zapppos.com CEO Tony Hsieh. "But something odd happened. As Stephen Colbert might say, Hsieh "just blew my mind." "Hsieh didn’t come to SXSW Interactive to talk about shoes or even the selling of shoes. Instead he decided to talk about customer service and how it wins the day for companies. If you’re like me, when you hear the phrase "customer service" you get visions of a dingy desk at back of a department store staffed by a kid who’s filing in for someone on their break."

On the http://sxsw.com/home page you’ll find links to many interesting items, including this one offering a graphic recording of Tony Hsieh opening remarks…

         Tony-Hsieh_SXSW-09_Sunni-Brown-sm.jpg

If you missed yesterday’s Opening Remarks with Tony Hsieh of Zappos, then check out the graphic recordings from Sunni Brown and Marilyn Martin to get some of the main points from his speech. Also, be sure to catch the Keynote Interview today from 2:00-3:00 pm with Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com and veteran journalist Stephen Baker. The keynote interview runs from 2:00 to 3:00 in Ballroom A, with simulcasting in Ballroom B, Ballroom C, Room 9 and the Day Stage. We expect a big crowd for Nate Silver, so be sure to get to Ballroom A early if you want to get a seat.

SXSW: Digg’s Party Brings Rude Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘Tude to SXSWi | The Underwire from Wired.com – Who says parties are dead at SXSW? Michael Calore has this article noting how "Diggnation hosts Alex Albrecht, left, and Kevin Rose kick off a live-on-stage version of their podcast with a ceremonial shot at Stubb’s. AUSTIN, Texas — It was an unlikely scene for a dot-com party. Drunken revelers raising their fists to offer a devil’s horns salute to a stage flooded with bright flashing lights, kids shouting and clamoring over one another to get closer to the fray, and guitar solos cranked up a few decibels too many. "The Bigg Digg Shindigg was more like a rock concert than a party at a tech conference. It was hosted by social news website Digg and web video site Revision3 here at the South by Southwest Interactive conference Saturday night."

PR Newser (also tweeting the SXSW conference on twitter) has several posts on SXSW, along with these SXSW Odds and Ends from the PR Newser feed today (March 15):

ZDNet blogger Andrew Mager gives props to Porter Novelli: "As a member of the press I’ve gotten great information, offers to setup interviews, and many VIP party passes. These guys know what they are doing."

Blogger Tim Street catches up with Brian Solis to talk TechSet and how it is "changing what advertisers, marketers and public relations agencies are changing because of social media."

Steve Rubel (who is not at SXSW) points out "A Twitter visualization tool from PepsiCo with tweets about SXSW."

CNET’s own Buzz Out Loud 930: Live from SXSW has a report from Day Two by Jason Howell ‘tho hit with a SNAFU of sorts…

Blasted XP didn’t warn me that my hard drive was full! Therefore, half of the podcast didn’t record. Thankfully, I was able to salvage yesterday’s episode from the Ustream recording, so here it is! Special guests include ZDNet’s Andrew Mager, SXSW Event Director Hugh Forrest and Blogger’s Rick Klau.

As noted on the 2009 SXSW Interactive Cheat Sheet (found here) the full 2009 panel schedule is available online.

"As you contemplate what daytime programming that you want to attend at this year’s event, please remember that we will make audio recordings of all this content. In other words, if you miss the panel during the event, then you can listen to it online after SXSW concludes."

You may also find notes posted to http://jess3.com/SXSW09/categories.php from the various SXSW sessions, ‘though nothing is there as of yet.

Variety has a number of articles (old and new) available on variety.com for the SXSW hot topic, with links to interviews, articles and more.

 

Twitter lets you be there in real time… virtually.

It was a good thing that AT&T boosted their network to support SXSW, which allowed the attendees to tweet their thoughts to the masses not in Austin this weekend, along with more Twitpics and live videos than you can shake a stick at (another Texan saying). As noted here on VentureBeat, "Can’t make SXSW? Visualize it in tweets"…

"Me and my fellow VentureBeatnik Eric Eldon are here on the ground in Austin, Texas for this year’s SXSW conference. Right now, nothing too exciting is going on, as we’re sitting alone in a cafe writing, but tomorrow the conference starts. For those not at the conference, there’s an interesting, visual way to follow along.

"Pepsi has teamed up with the teams behind two great Twitter apps, Twistori and Twennis, to bring us PepsiCoZeitgeist, a new Twitter visualization tool that showcases tweets about SXSW. For those familiar with Twistori, it looks similar, but rather than focus on the words “love,” “hate,” “think,” “believe,” “feel,” and “wish,” it focuses on more SXSW-appropriate terms: “arriving,” “registering,” “eating,” “connecting,” and perhaps most importantly, “partying” and “drinking.” But those evolve as the conference goes on, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone notes in a post about the feature today."

I thought that this tweet kinda sums it up:

alexinmadison: @nerdist The nerdiest thing going on right now is sxsw – especially since @jonathancoulton and @paulandstorm are playing there tonight.

Here’s a collection of what you can find yourself via Twitter’s search engine for SXSW tweets, this just a sample of favourite tweets over a 30 minute period. I’ll leave it to you to find yourown favourites (and LMK if you have good links to attendee coverage):

shanewilliamson: Pepsi created a Twitter visualiser for the SXSW event – Clever way of watching tweets from the event – http://pepsicozeitgeist.com/

scnn: SXSW, the Conference for Julia Allison and Other People Lacking Real Jobs [Party Report] : What recession? More .. http://tinyurl.com/cm2mpn

arielwaldman: One of my favorite panels the first year I went to SXSW was Sex & Computational Technology w/ @qdot & @violetblue on it (be4 i knew them)

sukhjit: @garyvee says videoblogging success comes from content, transparency and authenticity. #sxsw Do you have a question for gary? I’ll ask it!

SHHHE: Facebook new hompage (+open feeds) is going to replace Twitter @briansolis #SXSW

@kevinmarks "the internet is the largest group of people who care about reading and writing ever assembled in history" @shirky #sxsw

joshua_thomas: At another packed #Sxsw session. McGyver meets design. http://twitpic.com/24y8b

@jmoriarty: In How Social Media is killing the Revolution with @strebler @penguin and @oddboy #sxsw – don’t just follow ppl who agree

Skud: "the amount of privacy that could’ve happened if apache hadn’t shipped with logging enabled by default is enormous" – #sxsw not being evil

MomCentral: PR firms beware: social media simply offers the ability to screw up with a much larger audience in a much shorter time. #pr2 #sxsw

carmenb: This quote from @garyvee is for @lizcobb: Content is king & marketing is queen. And the queen runs the house. #sxsw

epodcaster: "…if you have an amazing product that could change the world and nobody knows about it that’s no doing you any good either." #sxsw

cheeky_geeky: Gary @garyvee has a good product, works his ass off, and knows his stuff. Forget new marketing until you have those three. #sxsw

adamehrheart: http://tiny.cc/css754 CSS3 presenters were full of it. Why on Gods green earth would Marquee updates be a "Hight Priority" item??? #sxsw

CouchSurfingOri: #sxsw #pr2 @skydiver Twitter is like your 7million person focus group.

hober: I encourage everybody at @ToddHuffman‘s #sxsw panel to check out http://www.overcomingbias.com/

@jmacofearth: Unofficial Mac vs “Other” Count at #SXSW Interactive 2009 (UPDATED with PICS) http://ff.im/-1x4Hk UPDATED!

KellyDanielCNN: vaynurchuk: you could have the best marketing campaign in the world, and if your bottled water tastes like ass, you’re not gonna win #sxsw

CouchSurfingOri: #sxsw #pr2 @skydiver PR Press releases will be dead in 24-36 months. It’s all social media now. Any1 can get in touch w/ the press now.

gaeyia: "Here’s where the difference is: do you have the chops? Is your product GOOD?" #garyvee #sxsw

epodcaster: If you have a great marketing campaign and bad product, Social Media isn’t going to do you any good. By the same token… #sxsw

lesliehatfield: loving yourself the key to success,a common theme here at #sxsw, i guess it’s true, as long as you don’t suck, which is what gary’s saying

@pk2004: The http://sxsw2009.sched.org is busy self scaling to cope with a surge in demand. Cool. #sxsw http://twitpic.com/24y20

MegaJustice: More booth zombies from Atozmedia at #sxsw. Yes, I walk the show floors an record what I see for R&D. Zombies can easily be fixed. Just ask.

christine: Lane Becker’s Therapy for the Under-employed at SXSW: What are you going to do with yourself, now that the econo.. http://tinyurl.com/cnb23n

CindyRoyal: Embrace your dna, people lie to themselves. Love yourself. Be who you are, "cause you can monetize that sh*t" @garyvee #sxsw #sxtxstate

jmaver: @ggroovin why not just rss feed as broadcast vs twitter. because 1% of people understand RSS, but follow me on twitter is simple. #sxsw

RT @unmarketing: At SXSW, attendees confront Twitter saturation http://ub0.cc/5c/24

jeffreynolds: Panels today seem like they were awkwardly organized – can’t get into anything because popular topics are in tiny rooms. #sxsw

omarg: Just did a lengthy video interview with @feliciaday, who was an amazingly good sport (delightful!). Video to come on austin360.com #sxsw

hesnow: As PR person, don’t share what ur eating for lunch. U are the brand u represent, but connect as a person. Say something interesting. #sxsw

For those geeks heading home and will miss the SXSW Music festival, you can find a preview of the event from this story on npr.org last week:

All Songs Considered, March 9, 2009 – NPR Music and All Songs Considered will be in Austin, Tex. next week, blogging, broadcasting and webcasting nearly a dozen live concerts from some of the year’s most exciting bands, at this year’s South by Southwest festival. You’ll hear The Decemberists debut their entire new album, The Hazards of Love, along with performances by K’Naan, The Heartless Bastards and many more, all webcast live on NPR.org.

On this edition of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen chats with NPR Monitor Mix blogger Carrie Brownstein, producer and Second Stage host Robin Hilton, and Song of the Day editor Stephen Thompson about some of the bands they’re most looking forward to seeing at this year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Tex. Hear music from some great unknown bands, like Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned, Passion Pit, and The Weird Weeds, plus Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, Mirah, and Ponytail.

More news on SXSW at Windows Live Search News.

Tags: articles, what I read, blogs, SXSW.

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The Road to Windows 7 Beta to RC, booting from a VHD using Windows 7 and more of what I’ve read this week

A quick update on articles in the reading pile as I upgrade the machines in my office to the latest build of Windows 7 (running one machine on the public beta 7000). I’ve been bad about blogging as this is a busy time of year… especially with Windows 7. As several folks have commented, I’ve been busy on Twitter (discovering the joys of microblogging) more for the benefit of updating my social connection sites like FaceBook, LinkedIn and Windows Live.

So first is this post from the Windows team over in WEX on a few more changes from Beta to RC… 

"Hey folks, just wanted to provide another update (building on the recent post on some changes since Beta) on some of the changes you will see in the Release Candidate. Again, there are many and this is not an exhaustive list. Of course we continue to gather telemetry from the large number of people running the Beta full time. Just a reminder, the Beta is the only official build from Microsoft. Chaitanya compiled this list from a broad set of feature teams focused on visible changes based on feedback that go beyond “bug fixes”, though we included some of the more widely reported bugs on this list as well. –Steven"

Although I’m also looking at Erdős numbers with a new found interest, my favourite video of the week after the Microsoft 2019 video is certainly the Sesame Street Explains The Madoff Scandal (VIDEO)

"No doubt the Madoff scandal is complicated, especially for children. To make it easier to understand Jimmy Kimmel commissioned Ernie and Cookie Monster from Sesame Street to reenact the scheme. Ernie becomes a victim of Madoff, and, unfortunately, Madoff becomes a victim of Ernie."

I’ve also received a number of comments on the Engineering Windows 7 blog post about Application Compatibility Testing – International…

"In the previous blog post "Application Compatibility Testing for Windows 7" we talked about the importance of Application Compatibility and work we are doing to engineer this in Windows 7. In this post we will examine the challenge that emerges as we consider the world wide audience that Windows serves. For Windows 7 we have made significant investment in application compatibility, ensuring applications that worked on Vista, continue to work on Windows 7 and we’ve also rescued some applications that were broken in Vista to work on Windows 7 (more on that later). As we’ve talked about, there are some applications that are OS version specific by design (utilities, firewalls, security, etc.) and those are not included in this discussion."

Ina Fried referred to this as Microsoft wants to ‘rescue’ apps for Windows 7…

"The rule of thumb is that if a program runs in Vista, it will run in Windows 7. Conversely, in general, programs that won’t run in Vista also won’t work with Windows 7.

"At least in a few cases, though, even applications that didn’t run in Vista will run in Windows 7. That’s because of some work that Microsoft has done to "rescue" certain types of programs that were rendered incompatible by the move to Vista.

"Along with the core tenet of ensuring that any application that worked on Windows Vista also works on Windows 7, we have a stretch goal to ‘raise the bar’ and make applications work on Windows 7 that never worked on Windows Vista," Microsoft said in a blog posting this week."

Microsoft Future Pro Photographer Contest – Take Your Best Shot at a $20,000 Grand Prize and an amazing digital prize package! The Microsoft Future Pro Photographers Photography Contest is the most lucrative contest of its kind and provides a unique opportunity for college and university student photographers from around the world to showcase their artistic talent and photographic style. For student photographers, this is an opportunity to Kick Start Your Career as a future professional photographer. The exciting prize packages include a Grand Prize of US$20,000 cash and a digital workflow prize package. There will also be three First Place winners in the following categories: Nature & Landscape; People & Portraits; and Sports & Photojournalism who will each win US$3000 cash and a digital workflow prize package as well. The submission period is March 1st through April 30th, 2009.

Boot from VHD using Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit – Strategic Developer Martin Heller writes about booting from VHD using Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit March 09, 2009– "In Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you can native boot from a virtual hard disk without a hypervisor. In response to my posts about managing multiboot with Windows 7 and Linux, Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist Keith Combs sent me this e-mail: "I just read your article and wanted to give you a heads up on an interesting new feature called "Boot from VHD" in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. See a demo here. "I stopped trying to run the various OSes in different partitions long ago when virtualization became viable. With boot from VHD, the performance gets even better."

Separable Security In U.S. – STBs Now Mainstream By Craig Kuhl, Contributing Editor, CedMagazine.com – March 01, 2009 — "While the vast majority of set-top boxes (STBs) in the U.S. are now in compliance with the FCC’s separable security mandate implemented in 2007, the international STB market is expected to carry on deploying the more traditional embedded security boxes. "There is concern among non-U.S. operators, however, that set-top makers will eventually decide they can no longer justify making embedded security boxes when the highest volume, by far, is with separable security units. "The two dominant U.S. STB manufacturers, Cisco and Motorola, with approximately 90 percent of their boxes now being produced with separable security for the U.S. market, will continue producing embedded security STBs – but with a realistic view of the changing global STB market."

Cracking The Content Security Conundrum By Mike Robuck, Senior Editor, CedMagazine.com — "The proliferation of content and devices moves content security beyond traditional set-top boxes, but the playing field is cluttered."

comScore Releases February 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings March 13, 2009 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. Americans conducted 13.1 billion core searches in February 2009, down 3 percent versus January – a decline that is primarily the result of the shortened month."

The Rules Apply To Everyone by Michael Arrington on March 13, 2009 — "The Elliot Spitzer phenomenon is part of being human. For whatever reason, people who obtain power can convince themselves that the very rules they create and enforce don’t apply to them. Elliot Spitzer and his prostitutes. Al Gore flying carbon-spewing private jets. Countless others. Whether the transgressions are large or small, something clicks inside the brain of some people or entities who’ve obtained power and they convince themselves they are above the rules. "I’ve seen this in our world, too. When I questioned a New York Times reporter on why they felt they didn’t need to make disclosures in (very occasional) stories where they were conflicted (here and here, for example), he said the newspaper was above suspicion and, therefore, disclosures weren’t necessary (yes, he actually said this)."

Federal CIO on leave following FBI sting at DC offices — ZDNet.com Posted by Sam Diaz @ 11:16 am, March 13, 2009 — "The U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, appointed by President Obama last week, has been placed on leave, following an FBI raid yesterday at the District of Columbia’s IT offices. (Techmeme) Kundra, who was previously the District’s Chief Technology Officer and worked in the offices, has not been linked to the raid, which stemmed from a bribery investigation involving employees and technology vendors."

Microsoft’s R&D chief: the people problem with innovation • The Register – "iPhone’s secret father speaks By Gavin Clarke • Get more from this author Posted in Software, 13th March 2009 00:17 GMT Whitepaper download – Eight CRM essentials Rick Rashid, leader of Microsoft’s vast, multi-billion dollar R&D operation, said he could foresee cloud computing some years back. The challenge as a technologist, though, has been in anticipating the finer details of how the cloud and its related technologies – the data center, replication, and synchronization – will be adopted by people and organizations. Sure, Microsoft was heading in that direction in the labs, but Amazon, eBay, and Google got there first in their businesses, and Microsoft is now fast trying to catch up."

Huske & Associates: More Twitter Tools – Twitter Grader: Learn your Twitter grade, your local Twitter Elite, and find new people to follow through Twitter Grader. Twitterholic: Check out the top Twitter users and find out your Twitter stats on Twitterholic. TweetStats: TweetStats offers a graphical analysis of your Twitter stats. Twitter Friends: Carefully measure your Twitter conversations using Twitter Friends. Twinfluence: Twinfluence will measure your Twitter influence based on reach, velocity, and social capital. Tweetwasters: Find out how much time you and other users waste on Twitter. Retweetrank: Find out how many retweets you and other Twitter users have through this service. Information Gathering

Also see this on Selective Twitter: "If you don’t want EVERY tweet to show up on your faceBook account, try Selective twitter. Selective Twitter Status lets you update your Facebook status from Twitter – BUT you can choose which tweets you want – just end a tweet with #fb when you want to post it as your Facebook status – simple!"

EU extends Microsoft’s antitrust deadline over IE March 11, 2009 (Computerworld) – "Europe’s antitrust regulators have extended Microsoft Corp.’s deadline to reply to accusations that the company "shields" Internet Explorer (IE) from competition by bundling the browser with Windows. Microsoft will now have an additional six weeks to deliver its response, said Linda Cain, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, the European Union’s antitrust agency. The new deadline is April 21. The company’s original deadline was tomorrow, eight weeks after the commission served Microsoft’s with a list of charges, called a Statement of Objections, over its practice of including IE with Windows. According to the commission, bundling IE "shields" the browser from head-to-head competition with other browsers and "distorts competition" by giving it an unfair distribution advantage."

Y&R’s hammer-happy campaign just smashing | National Business Review (NBR) New Zealand – Business, News, Arts, Media, Share Market and More by Hazel Phillips, March 11 2009 – "Some time ago, I was warned by NBR reception that what looked like a concrete block had arrived with my name on it. Now, I’ve had some interesting PR gimmicks in my time – houses of jellybeans, boxes empty save for a question mark, and last week, even a solitary fork. But a concrete block? Turns out it was all in a bid to let me in on Y&R’s new direct campaign for Microsoft. "Life’s better without walls," the concrete block exhorted me. "So grab a hammer and smash this one to pieces."

Functionality Versus Security – Who Wins? (VERT)

twendz : Exploring Twitter Conversations and Sentiment

Microsoft, Intel to back Cisco’s "Unified Computing" launch By Jim Duffy, Network World, March 11, 2009 — "Contrary to previous reports, Cisco’s datacenter vision does not seem to be a largely solo effort. Microsoft, Intel, BMC, EMC Smarts, and VMware are expected to endorse Cisco’s "Unified Computing" datacenter strategy at next Monday’s launch in New York. "Sources say these companies will be on the roster of partners Cisco is lining up for its strategy, which is also expected to include the introduction of the company’s ‘California’ blade servers. Blade server stalwarts IBM and HP are — or were — longtime partners of Cisco’s in datacenter applications, but California is expected to strain those relationships and keep those companies off Cisco’s partner list this time around. "IBM is uniting with Juniper for Project Stratus; and HP is expected to tightly link its blade server and ProCurve networking operations for next-generation datacenter opportunities."

House politicians cast about for DHS ‘cybersecurity’ fix | Politics and Law – CNET News by Declan McCullagh – It’s easy to criticize government failures. But as the U.S. Congress is learning in the case of the executive branch’s cybersecurity efforts, fixing problems and crafting improvements is a little more difficult. "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm has been under fire practically since its inception, flunking tests by outside auditors and receiving letter grades of "F" from congressional overseers. That invited speculation last year about whether the National Security Agency or the White House should take over responsibility for cybersecurity tasks. "Both ideas met with a lukewarm reception during a congressional hearing on Tuesday. "The mission should not reside in NSA," said Microsoft Vice President Scott Charney, a onetime Justice Department computer crime chief. Charney said if you want the public to trust its government, "it’s really important to empower DHS to take the necessary operational role."

Are Blogs Losing Their Authority To The Statusphere? – washingtonpost.com – Brian Solis, March 10, 2009; "Depending on which numbers you source or believe, all reports agree that the blogosphere continues to expand globally. "As the leading blog directory and search engine, Technorati maintains a coveted Authority Index which is considered amongst bloggers as the benchmark for measuring their rank and selling their position within the blogosphere. (At least until recently). Authority in the index is defined as the number of blogs linking to a website within the last six months. The higher the number, the greater the level of Authority a blog earns. "However, a disruptive trend is already at play. While blogs are increasing in quantity, their authority¿as currently measured by Technorati¿is collectively losing influence. For instance, just last November, Technorati counted 32,493 links towards gadget blog Engadget’s "authority." Today, it counts half that amount (16,326)."

Try a Little Tenderness – NY Times OpEd By STEVEN KLEINMAN and MATTHEW ALEXANDER Published: March 10, 2009 – "On Jan. 22, President Obama signed an executive order banning torture and establishing a panel to examine America’s interrogation methods. The ban on torture is a major step toward reclaiming our heritage as a nation of laws and a people of character. And it will enhance the country’s security by undermining Al Qaeda’s most effective recruiting theme — its portrayal of the United States as a dishonorable superpower that sanctions the type of abuses so graphically captured in the images from Abu Ghraib."

Method to the Mayhem: Free Business Forms – When starting out in your business, it’s very important having your logo, business cards or stationery looking professional. It’s equally important having forms that help in organizing and running of your business, like a contract or creative brief, which I have talked about in previous posts. A few resources of free forms to use for your business…

Caravaggio used ‘photography’ to create dramatic masterpieces – Telegraph – looking up from my work, I found today that Renaissance Caravaggio used ‘photography’ to create masterpieces, or more accurately "an early form of photography to project images of his subjects onto a canvas using a noxious concoction of crushed fireflies and white lead." By Nick Squires in Rome, 10 Mar 2009, http://bit.ly/U6GHd 

Get your head in the cloud – Telegraph – "Get your to-do list in order: rememberthemilk.com Claudine Beaumont picks the 10 best web apps to help you stay connected, wherever you are. October 2008 "In London this week, the great and the good from the world of technology gathered to discuss the future of the internet. The focus of these discussions was the next generation of web services, and how online tools can be used to help improve our digital lives. "Thanks to the ready availability of fast, reliable internet connections, we’ve become used to living in an always-on, hyperconnected world. Wherever we are, we expect to be able to check the news, pick up our emails and stay in touch with friends, as well as sharing photos, videos and random thoughts with the wider world through blogs and websites."

Oh, this is nice: a Periodic Table of Typefaces.

Ari Herzog: Why 83% of U.S. Government Managers Agree Their Agencies are Ineffective – "If the term "Government 2.0" is new to you, think about: the next generation of government that leverages technology to enable two-way communication with the public, improve management practices, and prepare the leaders of the future. "Such is the lead-in to a Reuters-carried press release in September 2008 about Primavera Systems’ second annual government management study. Other than assorted wire services, a summary in Federal Computer Week, and a blurb by the Federal Managers Association, few have covered this survey. "Surveying 3,868 American citizens last July and 382 federal web managers in August, "Government 2.0: The Performance Opportunity" found a mere 17% of managers graded their agencies with an "A" for effectiveness."

Inside the Expression team: Kirupa Chinnathambi

Flickr Photos Become Stock Photography at Getty Images March 11th, 2009 | by Jennifer Van Grove –  "Many of us use online stock photography when we’re looking for images to spice up a presentation or blog post. A lot of us also love to scour Flickr for the same purpose, since with a little digging we can typically find truly beautiful and captivating photos to express what our words can’t."

Conversation Agent: How to Create an Action Plan this TED talk [18:08"], Ed Ulbrich, the digital-effects guru from Digital Domain, explains the Oscar-winning technology that allowed his team to digitally create the older versions of Brad Pitt’s face for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Incidentally, I loved Brad Pitt’s performance, especially the hour or so in the movie when it was embedded in the animated head. Once you view the talk and see how it was created, you will want to go see the movie. Promise. This video is an amazing example of tenacity, innovation, and problem solving. The type of execution that led to the final product made me think about the difference between traditional marketing communications and where marketing communications needs to be next.

Enjoy your weekend – now on to installing Windows 7 on my notebook…

 

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The Microsoft 2019 video, good presentation skills, and NASA junkie Kevin Schofield speaks at Convergence

Today I saw that NASA junkie Kevin Schofield, GM at Microsoft Research, spoke at Convergence 2009 this week and showed the now infamous view from MSR of the future in 2019 video…

“So let me bring this close to home because, you know, this is kind of ethereal a little bit. And we talked about exploration, we talked about science, a lot about science. Talked a little bit about how this applies to how we live and work.

“I actually look at this and say this has a lot of application to how we live and work. And, you know, we really need to think harder about that. In fact, within Microsoft, the Microsoft Business Division, Dynamics is part of that, has really been thinking about what the next generation of business productivity looks like. Not just Office productivity, but business productivity as a whole.

“And in fact, they asked us at Microsoft Research to work with them to put together some scenarios about what this would look like ten years from now, in the year 2019. And we worked with them and put together a video, just a few minutes long, really sort of exploring what those scenarios would look like.”.

To view the video, you can view it from Stephen Elop’s speech and fast forward to the 15:00 mark and available here (tip of the hat to Steve Clayton):

<a href=”http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo” target=”_new” title=”Future Vision Montage”>Video: Future Vision Montage</a>

 

As Steve Clayton noted in his post…

Predicting the future of technology is notoriously hard – but it didn’t stop our Business Division from coming up with a montage of how technology could be playing an even greater part in our lives in 2019. It was shown today for the first time when Stephen Elop presented at the Wharton Business Technology Conference.

You can also check out Stephen’s PowerPoint slides which are a welcome departure from the bullet point riddled slides you often see from Microsoft. Bravo Stephen.

I love these types of videos – all very Minority Report. When I look at some of the technology on display at Microsoft Research’s TechFest this week it makes me feel that this stuff is much closer than many of us expect and it’s great to see Microsoft continuing to invest in this type of research to build the future of technology.

 

Agree with Steve whole heartedly: good to see more human presentations and demos rather than the standard, boring PowerPoint presentation.  Microsoft UK has a helpful article on successful presentation skills.

As Seth Godin notes in his provocative post on really bad PowerPoint presentations, the hope was that with improved education and the effort to call out horrific presentations, we would see a dramatic reduction in dull presentations. (This post was the origin of Seth’s famous line, “Bullets Are For the NRA”.)  But they’re still a challenge, and I’m aware of the hours I’ll never get back sitting through these boring PowerPoint presentations, slides filled with bullet after bullet, each painfully read aloud by the presenter…

“I wrote this [post] about four years ago, originally as an ebook. I figured the idea might spread and then the problem would go away–we’d no longer see thousands of hours wasted, every single day, by boring PowerPoint presentations filled with bullets.

“Not only has it not gone away, it’s gotten a lot worse. Last week I got a template from a conference organizer. It seems they want every single presenter to not only use bullets for their presentations, but for all of us to use the same format! Shudder.

“So, for posterity, and in the vain hope it might work, here we go again…”

Note the following, and visit Seth’s post for his Four Components To A Great Presentation:

    1. Make yourself cue cards.
    2. Make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them.
    3. Create a written document.
    4. Create a feedback cycle.

“If your presentation is for a project approval, hand people a project approval form and get them to approve it, so there’s no ambiguity at all about what you’ve all agreed to. 

At Microsoft, we use RACI and OARPi (the ‘i’ stands for ‘inform’) to clearly define accountabilities.

And if you can get a kicker video like the one above, more power to you. 😉

 

 

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John Dvorak’s Second Opinion on Microsoft’s business model needs a third opinion: Yours

Today I saw in John Dvorak’s Second Opinion column, John says Microsoft’s business model is done and that "the age of expensive office software may be near its end". (Also the story is available via http://tinyurl.com/cm8fzn.)

"Until now, the average computer user has been ignoring this trend. But the economic conditions and the emergence of powerful inexpensive computing has to make people rethink the Microsoft proposition.

"If Intel can provide users with powerful little systems for $99 and has been pushing prices lower and lower over the years, why can’t Microsoft? Intel makes elaborate hardware in billion-dollar factories. Microsoft stamps out a disk."

That’s like saying Hollywood studios ship out celluloid, HBO fills bandwidth or Amazon ships paper and bubble wrap.

C’mon, John…

Go ahead: leave him your comments on his post, pro or con.

 

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What do Carol Bartz and Roddy Piper have in common? A no nonsense attitude towards getting things done, and more of what I’ve read

How fitting that my reference to this blog post was my 1,000 tweet on Twitter… 😉

 

Clip art from Office OnlineA few years ago I worked at Autodesk and had the pleasure to be there when Carol Bartz was our CEO. She’s now the CEO at Yahoo!, and each day it seems that more and more people notice.

Case in point, the post on John Battelle’s Searchblog, Carol Bartz Speaks.  

"I’m enjoying her blog posts on Yahoo Anecdotal. Check this one out, in which she talks about "cleaning house" and restructuring Yahoo (yet again, honestly, it’s like the tenth time in as many quarters, feels like):

"Finally, a note about our brand. It’s one of our biggest assets. Mention Yahoo! practically anywhere in the world, and people yodel. But in the past few years, we haven’t been as clear in showing the world what the Yahoo! brand stands for. We’re going to change that. Look for this company’s brand to kick ass again."

Honesty and frank talk from Carol? I’d expect nothing less. See this article (also available at http://tinyurl.com/cbartz01) as an example.

This reminds me of the infamous line delivered by Roddy Piper. I love her new blog. Good luck, Carol.

Also this from Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, One Last Yahoo Reorg Missive: Bartz Tells Employees What She Already Said. Again. (February 26, 2009): "Goodness gracious, make it stop! You must know by now how much BoomTown loves internal Yahoo (YHOO) memos. But this is getting ridiculous. It’s been like a flash flood after a long drought at Sunnyvale HQ today, as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz turns on the fire hose of a whole lot of communicating. A lot. A real lot."

Also, a shout out to Rob Pegoraro from the Washington Post for his Tweet today about my past post, My Labour Day Best Buy and Apple Store Customer Experiences. You should also read my follow up to this post, "Best Buy Revisited: Buying a PC at retail isn’t as bad as I first found". In this economy retail needs to shine. See more in my Apple Store experience post, Not just planners: what you can learn at Apple Stores.

Enjoy your weekend!

Microsoft Vs. Amazon: A Battle Is Brewing – Plug Into The Cloud – InformationWeek — Posted by John Foley @ 03:41:PM | Mar, 6, 2009 — "Amazon Web Services has established itself as a leader in the cloud computing market, and Microsoft has been playing catch up. However, as Microsoft’s Azure cloud strategy falls into place, it’s sounding more like these would-be partners are on a collision path. Microsoft and Amazon aren’t talking like competitors; in fact, the opposite is true. When InformationWeek’s Charles Babcock talked to Steven Martin, Microsoft’s senior director of developer platform product management, earlier this week, Martin had this to say about Amazon offering Windows Server as a cloud service: "We’re rooting for them. We want them to be successful."

Marissa Mayer On Charlie Rose: The Future Of Google, Future Of Search by Michael Arrington on March 6, 2009 — "Charlie Rose, who’s been focusing lately on Silicon Valley personalities, interviewed Google Vice President Marissa Mayer last night. In a long and broad ranging discussion, Marissa talks about the product development cycle at Google as well as the future of search and other key areas of technology."

How I Edit My Interviews. –Featuring Steve Wozniak’s Joke About Steve Jobs : Mixergy.com Featuring Steve Wozniak’s Joke About Steve Jobs Watch me edit, step-by-step

Doodling increases your recall – "Andrade’s findings, published Thursday in Applied Cognitive Psychology, are an interesting wrinkle on cognitive load theory: The mind has a limited amount of attention to give and, once occupied, stops processing other stimuli. Cognitive load is exploited by magicians, whose verbal and physical flourishes distract from sleight-of-hand. It also explains why driving while talking on a hands-free headset is no safer than driving while holding a phone. And it could be the reason why doodling is so much better than daydreaming."

Build and organize a better desk — "My old desk was some ikea piece of crap pressboard thing. Looked like this: "Feel free to peruse that dir for more photos of what my desk has looked like. "I decided to build a desk using two solid maple filing cabinets we had purchased and a solid maple tabletop I bought from a local hardwood supplier. "Here’s how that went." 

TwitteReader – Mark Twitter messages as read and unread Keep track of what you have already read from who you follow

Want something to worry about? Just look up |Notes from the Field | Robert X. Cringely® | InfoWorld – March 06, 2009 — "Forget the economy, your job, or your computer. Space is the place where the real scary stuff happens. Time to pay attention to what’s going on overhead. "And yet, those problems are miniscule compared to what almost happened earlier this week, when a 100-foot-wide hunk of rock whizzed past Earth, coming within 48,000 miles (or roughly 1/5th of the way to the moon) before passing on. "It’s like God threw a snowball at us and missed, but just barely." http://tinyurl.com/av8ygw

Also see this post from the PLANETARY SOCIETY, INDIA: 2009 DD45 – New Asteroid Discovered on 27th Feb – Flyby 63,500 km 2nd March, 09 – "Will miss earth by 63,500 K.m. : Whats interesting is that this object will pass close from earth at 63,500 km at 19:14 p.m.(13.44 UTC) today (2nd March,09) evening. So it also means that we dont need to worry because its not going to impact. Can you spot this object ? Kelly Beatty says Even though it’s small, likely no more than 100 feet (30 meters) across, it’ll brighten to magnitude 10½ at its closest — easily within reach of an 8-inch backyard telescope Further he says this isn’t the closest "near-miss" asteroidal fragment on record. According to the MPC, tiny 2004 FU162 skirted just 4,000 miles from us on March 31, 2004."

Jan Muehlfeit, Chairman of Microsoft Europe, interview: Baltic Business News – Jan responds to readers’ questions for the Baltic Business News. Muehlfeit provides detailed and interesting answers to the wide variety of questions provided which cover topics such as cyber crime, technology helping companies through the recession and the future for Microsoft in Europe, giving readers an insight into Microsoft’s strategy and plans for the Central and Eastern European region. Mar 4, 2009

Yahoo CEO Talks Microsoft, Google Maps By Nicholas Kolakowski 2009-03-03 – "Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz discussed a variety of topics at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco, including potential negotiations with Microsoft, the amount of e-mail that Yahoo deals with on a daily basis, and her own preference for using Google Maps over Yahoo’s."

Writings on the wall: Diamond TIP: Word completion annoyance – Tuesday, July 1, 2008 Diamond TIP: Word completion annoyance – "It is nice of HTC to add a couple of its own SIP (i.e. Compact QWERTY, Full QWERTY and Phone Keypad) in the Diamond that even comes with word completion feature. But it isn’t nice of them to do this at the expense of the built-in ones – Have you noticed that the word completion feature in the built-in SIPs (like keyboard and block recognizer) now no longer works? What ticks me off most is that the settings for word completion for these stock SIPs still exist in the options screen hence giving the false impression that it must be something I did which caused it not to work. (That’s a -1 for you HTC)"

Ballmer’s take on the economy, investment and innovation – TechFlash: Seattle’s Technology News Source By Todd Bishop on March 4, 2009 at 8:36 PST "Speaking to technology chiefs from big public agencies today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he believes continued investment in technology will be critical for jump-starting the economy after it goes through a "reset." He acknowledged investors’ concerns about Microsoft’s $9 billion research-and-development budget but reiterated that he considers the spending key for the company’s long-term growth."

Tell me more about Windows Live Movie Maker beta – "Windows Live Movie Maker (beta) is a first generation product. That is, instead of adding new features to the original Windows Movie Maker, we started over and have been building the all new Windows Live Movie Maker from the ground up to meet the changing needs of working with digital photos and videos today. If you haven’t tried it yet, we hope you’ll download Windows Live Movie Maker beta. We’d love it if you’d let us know what you think about our work so far, and what else you’d like to see in the final release. We’ll share more information about the final release of Windows Live Movie Maker as soon as it becomes available."

Recession takes its emotional toll on cities – MSN Real Estate – "To get a sense of where the pain points are greatest, BusinessWeek.com came up with a list of the 20 unhappiest cities. These are major cities that were ranked based on their rates of suicide, depression, divorce, unemployment, job loss, population loss, crime, amount of green space and cloudy days. BusinessWeek.com gave most emphasis to suicide and depression rates, crime and economic factors. The city with the highest overall score in our index was Portland, the beautiful Oregon city that also has very high depression and suicide rates. St. Louis, New Orleans and Detroit were high on the list, largely because of their rates of crime, unemployment and population loss. Other cities such as Las Vegas and Jacksonville, Fla., ranked high because of their suicide rates and difficult economic conditions."

Microsoft Not Hurting Creative Suite, Adobe CTO Says – CIO.com – Business Technology Leadership By Elizabeth Montalbano and Chris Kanaracus March 04, 2009 — IDG News Service — "Adobe Systems may be feeling the pinch from the recession, but it insists that it isn’t losing business to Microsoft. Microsoft’s Expression suite of tools for graphic and Web designers has had no impact on its chief target, Adobe Systems’ Creative Suite, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch said in an interview this week. “We haven’t seen any impact, really, from Expression on our business," Lynch said."

Tapping The Tech Hive – Weekly Q&A feat. Tim O’Reilly – PressDemocrat.com Bio: Tim O’Reilly generates Internet ideas and analysis like others exhale. Since before O’Reilly Media published The Whole Internet User’s Guide in 1992, Tim O’Reilly has been an advocate and prognosticator of the emerging digital world. He shares with the DailyGeek what technologies get him through the week.

YouTube Surpasses 100 Million U.S. Viewers for the First Time – "Americans’ Time Spent Viewing Jumps 15 Percent versus Previous Month RESTON, VA, March 4, 2009 – comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released January 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that U.S. Internet users viewed 14.8 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 4 percent versus December 2008.YouTube led the growth charge, accounting for 91 percent of the incremental gain in the number of videos viewed versus December, as it surpassed 100 million viewers for the first time."

Mods: The Great Pyramid PC Would Make Tutankhamun Jealous

10 best companies for customer service – MSN Money – In tough times, it’s harder and more important to keep your customers happy. BusinessWeek picked the companies that are doing the best. BusinessWeek Feb 24, 2009

David Pogue’s Gadget List of 2008 – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com – August 7, 2008, 4:22 pm David Pogue’s Gadget List of 2008 Two years ago, totally strapped for a column idea, I resorted to raiding my own e-mail Inbox. There I found a reader request: “I would love to see a feature where you list what you personally use. Call it Pogue’s List or something. It would be great to see what someone as plugged in as you uses personally. Everything tech — watch, laptop, TV, car, digital camera, film camera, like that.” What’s really surprising to me is how many readers have written to request an update of that list, especially lately. Actually, the time is probably right. This year alone, I’ve bought several of the products that I reviewed in my column. So here it is: Pogue’s List 2008."

Randy Gage :: Randy’s Blog – Dying to Live or Living to Die – By Randy Gage February 7th, 2009 I’m doing something unusual today, in that I’m going to post the “Randy’s Rants” newsletter that went out today. I have been deluged with messages on the impact it has had on people. And I realize that not all of you blog readers gets the Rants. And I think the message is an important one for success and prosperity. I wish it was a happier message, but that’s not how all life lessons come."

Bre Pettis | I Make Things – Bre Pettis Blog – The Cult of Done Manifesto – Mar 3, 2009 "Dear Members of the Cult of Done. I present to you a manifesto of done. This was written in collaboration with Kio Stark in 20 minutes because we only had 20 minutes to get it done."

Richard Sprague WebLog : eComm 09 virtually – "Last year’s eComm was a wonderful way to see the latest cool stuff going on in the field of new communications technology and (more importantly) meet the people who are behind it all. The conference site, unfortunately, had poor internet coverage and many of us were unable to blog about it. And if you can’t blog in real time, it loses a lot of the fun. (That’s one reason Twitter is becoming so popular)."

From Small Tech Show, New Ideas – WSJ.com – "As Demo Gathering Shrinks, Emphasis Grows on Saving Time or Money, By DON CLARK, March 2, 2009 A twice-yearly technology showcase has attracted a smaller group of entrepreneurs, but demonstrators this week are plowing ahead with new products and services — most aimed at saving people time and money."

How I cut my television bill in half – Smart Spending Blog – MSN Money – Posted Feb 23 2009, 08:27 AM by Karen Datko – "I’ve had several requests lately to update my two-year quest to find cheap alternatives to cable television. In March of 2007, Kris and I were paying $65.82 for a deluxe digital cable package that we rarely used. I wrote at that time that "$65.82 a month isn’t a fortune, but it’s a lot of money to pay for something that doesn’t get used. If we were big TV watchers, maybe the cost could be justified. But we aren’t. And it can’t." To save money, we cut our cable to just the basic channels, which reduced our bill to $11.30 a month. We also began to use the iTunes Music Store to subscribe to the shows that we wanted to watch. And over the past year, I’ve become a fan of Hulu, an online service that allows users to watch many past and current shows for free. Here’s an overview of the tools we use, and how much money we’ve managed to save."

Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner: Tony Perkins, AlwaysOn – Tim Draper, Draper Fisher Jurvetson – What is the Next Big Thing? – "Three Silicon Valley dealmakers – Tony Perkins, CEO of AlwaysOn; Tim Draper, Founder and Managing Director of Draper, Fisher Jurvetson; and Michael Moe, Founding Partner of ThinkEquity – discuss the evolutions in online media, the power of partnerships, and other next-generation opportunities for the global marketplace."

I wonder how brands like Zappos and JetBlue keep track of their brands on social networks like Twitter and Facebook? Tools? Techniques? – FriendFeed

Richard Sprague: Write like me, Sunday, February 15, 2009 — "I’ve hate handwriting. I’ve been using keyboards since I learned to write and my fingers just don’t want to use a pen. But there are too many occasions when people expect the “personal” touch of a handwritten document, so I couldn’t get out of it completely. Until now. Using the free font-generation software at http://www.yourfonts.com, I have a whole collection of handwriting fonts that let me give a personalized touch to computer-generated greeting cards and other documents I used to have to break out the pen for. I even made a “handwritten” CD label for a Valentines present. "The process couldn’t be simpler. The site is completely free; you don’t even need to register. Just print a one-sheet template (don’t bother printing the second page, unless you care about special foreign characters). Scan it and upload to the site. Double-check that it looks right, and download to your hard drive. Presto – you have a font you can now use."

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/the-nearer-future-according-to-cisco/ – March 1, 2009 "If you want to hear about the pending 4G mobile technology future, Cisco has a special site dedicated to talking about it, plus a snazzy video"

Circuit City Can’t Locate Any Help January 16th, 2009 "Circuit City announced today that it will be going out of business. According to the Associated Press, America’s second-largest electronics retailer will be closing 567 stores and laying off over 30,000 employees. The company was unable to reach a deal with a new buyer or secure debt refinancing. Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, had been named as a potential buyer of the troubled retailer, but an agreement was not reached."

Seth’s Blog: Raising money for charity – "Squidoo is giving $2 per vote (up to $80,000 total) to charity. Visit this page, pick your charity and you’re done. There is no catch. One vote per person, feel free to organize mass group voting. Thanks to every single person who helped us raise this money. More than 300,000 lensmasters and more than 80,000,000 visitors to the site contributed to our ability to make such a substantial contribution. A nickel, a dollar, a dime… it adds up, drip, drip, drip. If the real world is about big wins, the web is about a long tail of little victories. PS If you visit the Squidblog, you’ll see this post from Megan: People online are real people."

Seattle-area PC builder goes it alone with Windows 7 upgrade – TechFlash: Seattle’s Technology News Source By Todd Bishop on February 27, 2009 at 4:28 PST — "With Microsoft’s Windows 7 preview getting positive reviews, and Windows Vista riding into the sunset, the computer industry is enduring a lame-duck period — that moment in time when people wait to buy for fear of missing out on the next big thing. And the economy isn’t exactly helping, either. Microsoft and PC makers are expected to juice up the market later this year with offers of free or discounted upgrades to Windows 7 for people who buy Windows Vista machines in advance of the new operating system’s release. But in the meantime, one Seattle-area computer builder is taking matters into its own hands."

unlimited magazine – coming and going with four global professionals by Benjamin Leszcz Friday, 13 February 2009, TARA HUNT Co-founder of Citizen Agency "Hunt, who lives in San Francisco, promotes her vision for the future of marketing through the internet consulting firm Citizen Agency, which she co-founded in 2006; in public speaking appearances; on her Twitter feed; in her upcoming book, The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business; and, of course, on her blog, horsepigcow.com."

Don’t Be a Marketing Loser – Read This Book | Clix Marketing PPC Blog – January 10th, 2008 David Szetela "Hey, all you young online marketing turks and turkettes: think you know it all? Think PPC/SEO/SEM stuff is so brand new that you have nothing to learn from the past? Well, the truth is that online marketing/advertising is mainly just plain ol’ direct response advertising – the art and science of using words to persuade a “reader” to take an action. Direct response advertising was invented over a century ago. Even modern-seeming concepts like testing creative, measuring response and refining ad copy are documented in hoary old nuggets like one of the direct marketing bibles, Claude Hopkins’ Scientific Advertising. But I like you. You’ve got gumption and spunk. So I’ve got a gift for you – a PDF file with the full text of Hopkins’ book, now in the public domain, downloadable here."

Being a Personal Brand – Posted On Feb 26, 2009 — "Groundswell can be positive or negative for any organization, or for that matter an individual. This is what makes social media so unique, and in my opinion so special. Over the past few weeks I have seen a swell of discussion regarding my friend Scott Monty. There were some critical of Scott, but to me it was a good chance to have further conversation on the topic. First of all we all represent our employers whether we are at work at the time or on Twitter. If you were a sales person, and you made a comment that was questionable, and a client saw it, do you think anyone would say oh he was on twitter at home so that is ok? Another aspect to this discussion, as David Armano pointed out in his post, is the fact that Scott Monty already had a personal brand prior to joining the Ford team. It is probably part of the reason why they selected him to lead their social media effort."

 

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