CNN Debuts "News To Me"

CNN debuted their new social media program today, "News To Me". At first it looked as though they were just going to show videos and stuff from the web without any commentary, but the program looked pretty good. It appears that some in the Main Stream Media are starting to realize the value, or at least the inevitability of the blogosphere and social media.

"News To Me" is the world as YOU see it. Your videos, pictures and stories showcased in an original, fast-paced and interactive show debuting on Headline News on Saturday, May 19. "News To Me" is your show, so send your videos and pictures.
Source : CNN - Send an I report

Note: It does not show up on the schedule as an independent program which is disappointing to us DVR/Tivo junkies.

Grocery Shopping in a Digital World

Do you take advantage of technology while grocery shopping?

Technology is not just for the Internet, and there are some real benefits to some of these shopping cards.

The Kroger chain has developed a very nice system. By signing up for their Plus card system customers receive several benefits.

• Daily savings on items.
• Accumulated annual savings posted on receipts.
• Targeted coupons based on your purchases.
• Fuel discounts at selected stores.

The one that really stands out now is the Fuel card. It is nice getting gas for 10 cents less than all the surrounding stations.

At stores located in Memphis, Little Rock, Jackson, TN and Jackson, MS you can earn 10 cents a gallon off of gas at our Kroger Fuel Stations by purchasing $100 or more of groceries. The more you purchase the more gas you can buy at 10 cents off. Please see the stores for complete details on how to reduce your gasoline price per gallon. Source : Kroger - Plus Card

schuhe online kaufen

CEA Surveys US Households

There's an interesting article from Media Center PC World, quoting a study by the Consumer Electronics Association. It says the average U.S. household owns 25 consumer electronics and the average adult spends $1,200 a year on these products. Gee, I spend that much on my cell phone alone!

The article continues with the top five most owned products; TV, DVD player or recorder, VCR, cordless phone and cellular phone.
Source: www.mediacenterpcworld.com

So do I fit the average profile? Let's count 'em up and see...
3 cell phones
2 TV's
2 PC's
2 monitors
2 external hard drives
2 flash drives
2 sets of external speakers for PC
telephone with digital answering machine
surround sound speaker system for TV
component stereo system
DVD player
DSL modem
Cisco router
scanner
printer
VCR
iPod
Total = 25
Yep, I'm just an average guy.

Yahoo Mail knows no limits

When I heard Yahoo is removing their limits on email, I did a CyberSearch on Yahoo Mail. Here's a sampling of those results:

Yahoo Mail With Infinite Storage?
Yahoo ups the ante and announced that Yahoo Mail will start offering unlimited storage starting May this year. Right now, you’ll get 1 GB for free at Yahoo, whereas Google’s Gmail has almost 3 GB. blog.outer-court.com

Coming soon: Yahoo Mail API, turns it into a platform
What it shows is that the company is beginning to think of Yahoo Mail as a platform, leveraging cheap storage and a mega audience. gigaom.com

Unlimited storage for Yahoo Mail confirmed
Yahoo scraps 1GB mail storage limit in preparation for the launch of the Apple iPhone and an expected spike in demand for IMAP server-side mail retention. www.itpro.co.uk/news

Dell Customer Service

I laughed out loud when I saw this. A Dell contest to win an XPS M1210 notebook autographed by Justin Timberlake? Why would anyone care if this laptop was signed? It's their ultra-portable four pounder with a built-in webcam, next generation wi-fi and WXGA display, powered by the Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Sounds like a nice little package for some lucky winners.

Read the details of this contest at Dell's Lounge website.

I just talked to a friend and co-worker today, who had to argue with a Dell tech for half an hour over his brand new warranty to get some defective speakers replaced. C'mon Dell! Focus on your customer service problems first; fix those issues and make your customers happy.

If you don't, you will continue to lose market share, but it will probably take years before your board of directors realize it. Now don't get me wrong; I use Dell computers at work and at home on a daily basis. Yes, I've had my issues with the company, mainly with their billing and customer service people, but they were corrected (on their timetable, not mine.)

I'd just like to see an improvement in customer service from really big companies that seem to forget how they got so big in the first place. From you and me, our friends and families, that have invested in their products and services.

10th Annual Web Awards

The winners of the 10th Annual Web Awards have been announced from Austin's South By SouthWest Interactive Conference. Adobe Systems, (Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver) presents the awards to who's considered to be the best new websites, developing on tomorrow's online trends.

Read more @ 2007.sxsw.com

Smithsonian Photography Initiative
Twitter
Resn 2B2
OwnYourC
The Horizontal Way
Computerlove
Squidoo
Vitamin
The Fallen Alternate Reality Game
Time Trumpet
Hungry Suitcase
Just for the F of It
Jonathan Yuen
How Do I Say This?
Stikkit
Social Saga
Exopolis Valentine's Day Mixtape

attendio.com

Attendio is a new social events service that automatically connects people to local events to match their interests. The user community continually adds relevant local events, reviews, and recommendations to their website and user's calendars.

The free Attendio service (still in beta) launched online on February 1st, beginning with local events for the San Francisco Bay Area. The service is rolling out to additional cities across the country throughout 2007. Coordinated with the launch of Microsoft's new version of Windows, Attendio is also featured in the new Windows Vista Calendar, and debuted at the DEMO 007 conference in Palm Desert, California.

The unique VIP "Recommenders" provide an insider's view on all the "hot" events across all categories at any time. Some early VIP's are Adam Duritz of the band Counting Crows and Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind.

"Attendio just sounded like a cool idea to me," said Adam Duritz, lead singer for the Counting Crows. "After all, there are so many great cultural events taking place all the time in the Bay Area and New York. It seems like I spend half the space on my own blogs recommending theatre and films and bands and events at Cal I think people should go out and see. Attendio seems an obvious way to get the news about that stuff out there so everyone can enjoy them as much as I do."

Users can also designate their friends as "Recommenders" to easily share information on interesting and worthwhile events. For example, music lovers can automatically see what albums or concerts their blogger friends recommend.

Within a few clicks, Attendio users set up their own personalized profile, and request that events automatically populate their personal calendar through popular programs, including Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, Windows Vista Calendar and Google Calendar.

Source:
www.demo.com
www.attendio.com
www.netvibes.com
media.prnewswire.com

Link Love

Thanks to Blog Bloke for the "link love." We couldn't agree more with your last post about building relationships.

The simplest way to build traffic on your blog is a link to those you read, and of course, that works both ways. It's always exciting to get linked on another blog, so why not share the "link love" and link back to them?

So with that idea in mind, we'd like to point out our BlogRoll, which is a few of our favorite blogs that get a daily reading...like InstaBLOKE, O'Reilly Radar and Scobleizer.

Comments are always welcome too. The key is to stay engaged in the conversation threads and reply to those who take the time to read your blog and write a comment. It's a community thing and we humans like to interact with each other.

Final point. I haven't used FeedBlendr yet, but the concept sounds cool, to create a single "blended" RSS feed from many different feeds. I started out using Bloglines and now use GoogleReader much more. Plus we're using the Shared Items feature in GoogleReader to put a "clip" on our home page. It's a great way to browse, read and share alot of the breaking news stories with our friends and visitors.

Found a few english papers for written essays - phd thesis turned out better.

Beginning a new Wiki wave

Recently Mark Cuban announced the formation of a new Wiki for his beloved Dallas Mavericks.

Is this the start of a new trend with Wiki's?

It just might be.

For a Wiki to work it takes a topic that is changing and evolving along with a base of people who are passionate about the subject matter. And that pretty much describes any professional sports team in the United States.

Only time will tell, but it just may be a wave we start seeing played out across the Internet.

The Best of CES 2007

cnet.com reviews the Best of this year's CES.

LG debuted the world’s first DVD player that supports both Blu-Ray and HD DVD! LG really does stand for "Life's Good!"Warner Brothers Studios announced it's own hybrid video disk, called Total HD, which will play on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray drives.

Harman Kardon rolls out their mobile media manager Drive + Play 2.

Sony Ericsson W950i Walkman Phone:
3G - advanced digital music player with music management software -
4GB internal memory - built-in FM radio - stereo headset - USB cable
2.6 inch touch screen display - send email with integrated Opera8.0 web browser.
http://www.sony.com/ces/index.php

Wired.com talks about how everything gets connected. It's the year for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Gadgets In Vegas: Hi-Tech Goes Wild @ CES

Cool. Wireless TV.
HP MediaSmart TV has 801.11a/b/g/n WiFi adaptors & Ethernet ports.

Here's a neat idea...HP's new PC design with a wide 19-inch flat screen that tilts up to allow access to the integrated printer in back. But the print out comes out in front. Very smart design, now where's the specs?

Motorola O ROKR Bluetooth enabled headset built-in to a pair of Oakley sunglasses.

Sling Media announces their Clip + Sling which uploads and shares video clips from TV. They've partnered with CBS to develop a video community like YouTube, but with a focus on legal high quality content.

Cisco and Apple argue over the iPhone name. Oh, c'mon, both companies stand to make a fortune over this new phone, if everything works the way it's hyped to do. Sign your agreement and get over it already.

Google Earth4 goes 3D.

Finally, a portable keyboard that goes anywhere! The i.Tech Virtual keyboard. Laser and infared technology combine to project a full size QWERTY keyboard onto any flat surface.

Best of Innovations Honored this year @ CES

Sources:
www.engadget.com
www.gizmodo.com
www.crunchgear.com
www.on10.net
scobleizer.com

Apple iPhone More Than Just iTalk

MacWorld & CES ~ New Technology For A New Year.

The Apple iPhone will finally ship this June and it's a beauty! It's thin, sleek, and simple to use, thanks to it's 3.5 inch screen with multi-touch display. It looks like you can just scroll right through the menus with just a point and tap, and no stylus or button wheel to mess with. Nice navigation. Bloggers are going nuts covering it, so there's plenty of reviews, photos and video.

It can also be called a widescreen iPod, but it does so much more than just play your music. iPhone’s multi-touch display and the OS X Safari web browser may just finally put the wireless web in our hands. It also includes built-in Google and Yahoo! Search so you can instantly search for information, just like on your computer. iPhone also includes Google’s useful and innovative Maps service, so you can view maps, satellite images, traffic information and get directions, all from iPhone’s amazing easy-to-use touch screen interface.

Apple Inc. has totally moved into mobile technology with the iPhone, which follows their market share of iPods and MacBooks. It's kinda pricey to start at $499, but this device may just tip the scales from Blackberry back toward the Apple. 4GB is $499 and the 8GB $599 available in June in the US, and later this year in Europe. Cingular Wireless is the ISP.

Good looking specs too:
3.5 inch screen with 320 x 480 @ 160 ppi resolution
GSM Quad-band Wi-Fi (802.11), Cingular EDGE & Bluetooth2.0
4.8 ounces at 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches
Battery Life up to 5 hours on talk, video, web browsing, and up to 16 hours on audio playback.

It was a busy day...

Microsoft Home on the Vista

Microsoft: A new Vista on every desktop

Sony K750i MP3 Phone

RealNetworks and TiVo combine to share access to the Rhapsody music services

AsusXG Station External PCI-Express Graphics - MacWorld Expo - Nokia MultiMedia Phones

Sources:
www.engadget.com
www.gizmodo.com
www.crunchgear.com
www.on10.net
scobleizer.com

CES 007 What would Bond use?

Browsing CES; Day One:
If James Bond was at CES this year, what would he be doing, and which cool gadgets would he be using? The SpyCam has come a long way, baby.

Apple & Cingular = iPhone.
We've heard about Apple's rumoured iPhone. Now the word is Cingular will be the official provider of Mac's new wireless service, although it may only be GSM. How cool would iChat mobile be?

Nokia N800 Internet Tablet puts the web in your hands with:
- Wifi & BT
- VGA (640×480) webcam
- 4.13 inch screen (same as the 770)
- Stereo Speakers (770 has mono)
- Microphone has moved to the top.
- Audio jack and mini usb port have moved to the right side.
- Requires mobile phone (with BT) for cell connection.
- Integrated Stand, the n800 comes with a sleeve, rather than the sliding shell on the 770. Blog & Flickr pictures!

XBOX360 plugs into IPTV with DVR & VOD - DigitalVideoRecorder & VideoOnDemand.
The "new and improved" XBOX360 sports a 120GB hard drive with available HDMI ports. IPTV services will be multi-channel, multiple picture-in-picture, video on demand, and broadcast television, with DVR functionality. Bond would have the VideoOnDemand on a monthly subscription and a SpyCam in the palm of his hand. This will be the first major hardware update to the XBOX360 in over a year and a half.

Finally, I can setup my home network with full backups, because Windows Home Server will be available this year. Microsoft's mass data storage solution is a software suite that automatically finds and backs up all of the data on all of the Windows PC's on your LAN. It can be used to manage data stored within user accounts, shared folders, and external storage devices.

WindowsHomeServer also has Zune Connectivity and a Web Component that lets you login and access your backup data from any connected computer on the planet. Wow, think of it! Wireless access to your personal online storage (Area51?) from any connected computer on the planet. Redundant Storage capacity is expandable; data is reorganized on the fly as you plug in more hard drives.

I've had my eye on Dell's XPS 410 Desktop PC since last year, but this latest configuration is the final winner, with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 Intel processor, nVidia's GeForce 7900GS graphics adapter with 256MB of VideoRAM, a 20-inch widescreen Dell 2007WFP flat-panel monitor, 2GB of DDR2-667 RAM Memory, two 320GB hard drives in a RAID configuration for a total 640GB of storage, 16X multiformat dual-layer DVD burner, and a second 16X DVD-ROM drive. Integrated audio can handle up to a 7.1 channel surround sound speaker system.

The midsize tower has four drive bays, two internal and two externally accessible, plus two PCI Express 1X and three PCI slots open, six USB and two FireWire ports on the rear, and a FireWire and two more USB2.0 ports up front, and retails for just over $2000.

Q would find plenty of gadgets to equip Bond with at CES this year. Even Moneypenny would approve.

Sources:
www.engadget.com
www.gizmodo.com
www.crunchgear.com
www.on10.net
scobleizer.com
blog.wired.com

Ford and Microsoft to Sync up?

I have to admit that my first thought was about the old GM and Microsoft joke when I heard that Ford Motors and Microsoft are going to work together on an in-car wireless phone and data system

There are several versions of this joke, but, some of the highlights are:

• For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.
• Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
• Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left-turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, and you would have to reinstall the engine.
• When your car died on the freeway for no reason, you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
• The airbag would say 'Are you sure?' before going off.
• Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.
• Every time they introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
• You would press the 'start' button to shut off the engine.

That Dodge Charger sure is a good looking car!

Year of the Cell Cam?

What does 2007 hold in store? It could be a big year for personal technology, like cell phones with cameras. That technology might just drive changes that businesses didn't see coming.

Dr. Martin Illsley, director of the European research labs for tech consultancy Accenture, says: "camera phones will allow customers to communicate with businesses via pictures in addition to phone and email. Consumers will be able to complain more easily by snapping the offending incident or object."

Greater documentation of faulty goods or bad service could be a downside for business, but a boon for consumers fed up with the lack of quality merchandise and customer service.

However, the smart companies will find new ways to harvest this new information and put it to good use. Businesses are already looking for ways to tap into net communities and online interest groups, to create recommendations consumers will trust.

Source: BBC News

Retail Research

If you do your research online before going into the stores, you already know more than the average sales person. I've found that to be true at services like Sprint and Cingular, and in general retail stores like WalMart.

Best Buy employees seem to have a little better knowledge of their product, but by and large, retail sales reps are just reading off the label like we do.

Does your SEO know about the SEI?

For 20 years I have been told to make it "idiot proof", and being a programmer I would invariably spend extra time on the error handling only to find out that this was not the same as "idiot proof". This is also where the phrase GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) came from.

Now there is a lot of talk (blogging) about what is wrong with the SE's, maybe it is more about the SEI (SE Idiot) and the SEU (SE User)?

Look at some of the top searches listed out there.

www.google.com
www.msn.com
www.yahoo.com

And if you run any type of site where a celebrity is part of your site you can be guaranteed that there are searches for www.personsnamehere.com, with all types of misspellings and character assassinations.

Some examples:

A common search for Britney Spears might look like this....

www.britneyspears.com
www.britney spears.com
britknee spears.com
britneys ears.com

Now, let's be real clear about this. People doing searches like this are NOT idiots, they are just a little ignorant on the way things work and ignorance is something we all have in common, we are just ignorant about different things.

Ignorant = lacking in knowledge or training

Did you learn how to read without training, how about writing?

So maybe we need to spend more time on SEE (SE Education) and work to turn the SEI and SEU into an SEP (SE Pro).

Legend:
SEI (SE Idiot)
SEU (SE User)
SEP (SE Pro)
SEE (SE Education)

Negative buzz, positive results?

There is an old saying "any publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right", and as much as you may think the way things work on the Internet are a far cry from the old brick and mortar ways of doing business, some things may never change.

In the last couple of weeks, there have been two cases of what may be considered bad press, giving good results.

1. Google Drops the SOAP - The negative aspect of Google deprecating their SOAP API has certainly drawn a lot of attention to their AJAX Search API.
   
2. Wikisaria - First there were the reports that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was partnering with Amazon to create a search engine to do battle with Google. Then we learn that this was being reported wrong. Now, how much traffic has been generated for Wikisaria and the rest of the story?

These reports may not have been produced for this purpose, but, there is no doubt that the negative sides are certainly driving positive results in each case.

Note : Is this the final stop on the Wikisaria romp around the blogosphere?