Here’s a site called World Names Profiler that lets you track your surname (family name, last name, etc.) around the world. I plugged in the name "Lowder" and found that the epicenter for Lowders is here in North Carolina. Interestingly, though North Carolina is the top region for Lowders the top two cities are in the UK, with the very top being Dinas Powys & Penarth, Wales. I don’t even know how to pronounce that.
The video below is the best explanation I’ve seen of RSS. It’s important to know because RSS really is the backbone of the "new" web, or Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it. You may be using RSS and not know it, but if you’re not you should watch this and learn how you can greatly expand your online horizons and save time in the process.
If you’re looking for a good place to find Hurricane Gustav related information online there’s a good repository here: http://gustav08.ning.com. A guy named Andy Carvin used the site Ning to create a social network for all things related to the hurricane.
This is the second example I’ve seen of someone making effective use of Ning. A few months ago I witnessed a social network being born on Ning that is related to the practice of competitive intelligence (CI). I used to work with the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals and while they had ample opportunity to build an online network they never got one off the ground, so in the absence of an "official" CI social network a grass roots network was created on Ning and it is by far the most successful online collaboration that the CI sector has seen to date.
When I first heard about Ning I dipped my toe in the water by joining a small business network that quickly devolved into a kind of lame online version of lead sharing networks endemic to coffee shops in every city in America, so I just kind of wrote it off. Now that I’ve seen Ning used effectively by a few folks I’m beginning to realize the power it places in ordinary folks’ hands. Honestly any group can use it effectively and it literally takes zero technical knowledge to use, so I have a feeling I’ll see more and more groups using it in the future.
Kevin Kelly is the Executive Editor of my favorite magazine, Wired. He’s also been at the forefront of the evolutionary media we call the web so when I heard he gave a talk at TED you can bet I listened. I’ve embedded it below, but the wildest part to me is that the web is 5,000 days old, a blink in time that has been about as disruptive to our everyday lives as anything you can imagine. Good stuff.
Google has set up a home page for all things related to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. There’s an applet you can use to track the results from your phone, er, mobile device. There’s YouTube videos. There’s medal results displayed on Google maps. Kinda cool.
For the longest time Google Maps’ "Street View" hadn’t been available in this area and then today I logged on and found it live…here on my own corner! That pic to the left (click to enlarge) is a screenshot of my monitor with the street view for my address shown. Kind of wild that it’s available here, and it’s cool being able to notice that the pictures had to be taken at least a few weeks ago due to some items that appear in my yard that are no longer there and to notice that the pictures had to be taken in the morning because of the angle of the sunlight and the shadows.
Actually street view is now available in a large swath of the Winston-Salem/Greensboro metro areas. The area of the map to the left that is in blue is where the street view is available. I’d love to know how Google does this…oh wait, here’s an article in Popular Mechanics with pictures of the camera they use at $45,000 a pop! Way cool.
OfficeMax has an interesting ad campaign online. It’s a video (see below) showing a guy paying for a steak dinner with pennies. The proprietors of the restaurant aren’t too happy with him and argue with him about why they should accept pennies. The video may or may not be staged, but it doesn’t matter because it’s funny. At the end of the video OfficeMax has a little "Power of the Penny" graphic promoting all the back-to-school items you can buy for a penny and the end screen has the www.officemax.com/penny URL.
I like this because although the video isn’t specifically about back to school items it’s a humorous look at the ongoing debate about the value of pennies. Lots of people think the penny should go the way of all flesh, but OfficeMax has found a way to use the debate to their advantage.
BTW, I found the video on video humor site Glumbert.com.
Cross-posted on LowderEnterprises.com
An interesting presentation titled Hyperpolitics, American Style given at Personal Democracy Forum on June 24, 2008, provides some interesting factoids about human networking, past, present and future. Full video below, but first some interesting data shared during the presentation:
Here’s the video:
The "new new thing" these days seems to be bar codes. Specifically customizable, two dimensional bar codes called QR (Quick Response) Codes that can be scanned by cell phones that have cameras and the QR Code reader software installed. I’d try to explain the concept, but since I barely understand it myself I’ll have to send you to a PDF that does have an explanation.
Ignorance has never slowed me down before so I won’t let it now. I’m happy to unveil the official QR Code for http://www.jonlowder.com:
Befuddled 