A couple of links to external things I’ve blogged about recently:
- I blogged a link to Amazon’s Holiday Toy List on Geekdad earlier this week, including the must-have Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga game. Fun stuff. Check out the post here.
- Thanks to Ubiquitous Thoughts for including my Jan Chipchase post in Carnival of the Mobilists #99. Tip o’ the hat to Mark.
My latest Geekdad post: “Attire for Geeklings”
I also want to send a tip of the hat to Dan Olson for picking my “Stumped by a three year old” post to discuss on the Geekdad podcast. Thanks Dan!
Jan Chipchase conducts behavioral patterns research for Nokia, and TED has posted an excellent talk he gave earlier this year on his work on what we carry in our pockets and why delegation can be the solution for just about everything.
http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf
I wish I’d had the chance to meet Jan while I was at Nokia. Maybe we’ll cross paths on our travels. In any case, his talk is highly recommended.
The Nashville Business Journal published a piece last week on our plans in the electronic discovery, aka eDiscovery, market. Read the teaser here (paid subscription required to read the whole thing).
As Tim Estes, Digital Reasoning Systems’ CEO, notes in a quote in the article:
Search solves the problem for the user who knows what they’re looking for and generally knows the answer is out there. This is all about how do you really read, learn and understand data without knowing everything you need to understand about it in advance.
This is yet another way in which we are unleashing the meaning inherent in human language. Watch DigitalReasoning.com for more.
Read all about my three your old stumping me in my latest post at Geekdad.com.
Why was I stumped? Here’s a hint:
Russ Beattie’s excellent “Personal SMS Business Cards via TextMarks” post inspired me to create my own text-able biz card.
To get my contact info (email, cell, and Web), text the keyword ‘BILLDAY‘ to TextMarks at shortcode 41411. This service only works in the US at this point, but I’ll update my blog for other shortcodes if/when TextMark supports international marks.
As Russ notes in his post, there are a number of interesting viral possibilities with this service. Create your own mark and you can receive the cell number of anyone texting that mark to the service, and more importantly if the requester chooses to subscribe to your mark they’ll automatically receive any future mobile updates from you straight to their cell. Add a widget (see mine in the right gutter) and you can enable people to request info and subscribe to your mark via their Web browser. More information on using marks including commands and a simulator are available from the TextMarks Help page and if you want to dig deeper into integrating your mark into your own site and services, TextMarks even offers a developer API.
You also have the option of using TextMark’s Reactee to create a wearable teaser tee (see tshirt at right). Reactee even has an “Expose Me” Facebook application which you can use to share your mark and info with Facebook friends, too. (If you’re interested in ordering a Reactee tshirt, be sure you search for coupon codes; you can save as much as 20% depending on which ones are still valid as you read this.)
Great idea for a personal mobile business card, thanks Russ! Yet another tool to use as you build “The Brand Called You” (or a product brand, your company, a favorite cause, political position, etc.).
Wired Magazine‘s recent article “Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe” on recent Web War-style attacks on Estonia and its Internet infrastructure begat the interesting “World War 2.0” video piece on the new Wired Science program on PBS. Check out the video below, then read the full article (click here) for more details.
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/embed/83
The article contains an interesting sidebar titled “When Bots Attack” by John Robb on how a hypothetical botnet attack against the US might play out (John speculated earlier today that we might even see such an attack play out sooner rather than later). John’s always insightful analysis is also available on his personal blog, in his related Global Guerillas blog, and in his excellent new book, “Brave New War“. All highly recommended.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I am writing for Wired’s Geekdad.com blog from time to time and I know John. Nonetheless, all of the above are excellent whether I was involved with Wired and knew Mr. Robb or not.)
Google has introduced YouTube video ad units and I thought I’d try them out to see how well they target their content to my site.
Here’s my first video ad. To start with it appears that GooTube merely links to YouTube’s latest videos from the text “Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com”. It’ll be interesting to see how fast and how well this improves to properly target the content of my site.
Other changes I’m making while I’m at it:
- Changed my site search to use Google AdSense for Search and moved the search block up closer to top of page
- Simplified BillDay.com and Flickr feeds to one each
- Removed WAP support, Bloglines and My Yahoo subscribe feeds/buttons from blog sidebar (nobody’s using them, so they’re gone)
- Trying out Google Analytics to see if it adds enough beyond my current package to continue using it
Let me know what you think.
I’m very happy to report that I’ve joined Wired’s Geekdad.com blog-squad and made my first post this evening on “The Oklahoma Centennial for Geeklets“.
The idea of the site and my posts there is to find, discuss, hack, and play with geeky things, places, and ideas. It’s a free-time gig and I don’t know how often I’ll contribute, but I’m going to give it a go and have fun doing it.
To follow me and the other geek dads and a geek mom who contribute there, subscribe to Wired’s Geekdad blog feed. You may also be interested in the Geekdad podcast; click here for the podcast in iTunes or here to subscribe with your favorite podcatcher.
BillDay.com 