CogBlogged from ‘July, 2009’

We today here in downtown Strawberry Arizona, as Mary McCann a DJ known as Bone Mama used to say, an outbreak of weather. It crashed just as I was about to enjoy a fine lunch of peanut butter and jelly, and it occurred to me this would be something worth trying to video with the HD capabilities of my new Canon T1i. This video was pretty much right from the camera uploaded to flickr (I deleted in QuickTime Pro the first minute which was not so exciting, to get it below the 500Mb flickr limit). Right after this my cable internet blinked out for about an hour, leaving me to suck the net through the straw of my mobile wireless card (which seems to like hanging up at random intervals of 1-4 minutes until you cuss it out). Of course, I should rewind back a few years, when my internet [...]

I admit it. I still regularly review content RSS feeds in that archaic, pre-twitter-is-all-i-need thing called a “Feed Reader”. Me and 3 other holdouts. Go ahead, call me a throw back. Recently, in using Google Reader, I am seeing signs that the Great Google is subtly slipping in more social network features, that have me wondering if Google is becoming more like Facebook is becoming more like Twitter? Is the bird wagging the Goog? Blog experimentation notice- I am trying the Lightbox 2 plugin switched to z-Lightview to embed images… clicking will load in an overlay to see full size… if it works. Oddly enough, we have the most unlikely technology prognosticator, Conan O’Brien, to credit for peeking ahead to YouTwitFace and oddly enough, despite the Google -YouTube Connection; the Big G is not part of the acronym. But they are doing things in the space, all of which may [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Llima I start this post with (a) an unsure direction where it is going and (b) I am 100% guilty of what I am about to describe. As we perhaps begin to unravel the implications of living in a networked world of connections through technology, devices, networks, there is no escaping the reality that we still access that through the singular focus of our own eyes, views, experiences. I observe, and see myself doing this thing of extrapolating my own singular experiences to some projection on others. Often this is expressed online as “_________ SUCKS!”. I;ve seen this in my work on the 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story — I included tools I was able to use and create with, some better than others. A few that did not work for me ended up in the cutting room floor. Yet, I’ve [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by lamont_cranston One of my primary uses of Google Search is locating URLs for web pages I am creating, blog posts, etc. The way Google outputs search results in a PITA as the links to the results are obfuscated in redirects through google (things they do to harvest our actions). In the old days, the search result was a link to the actual result. You could copy it and move on. They changed it back and forth a few times on 2005, but since then, that blue link is worthless as a copiable URL. Since then, I have been doing the tedious manual copy of the real URL that is written in green text below the results. Until recently. For long URLs, Google is now even strealing that as useful information, as it abbreviates long URLs with ellipses in the middle. As is the only [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by natebeaty I had a friend was a big dot com player back in the bubble He could throw that IPO by you Make you look like a fool boy Saw him the other night at this coffee bar I was walking in, he was walking out We went back inside sat down had a few lattes but all he kept talking about was Glory days well they’ll pass you by Glory days in the flash of Scoble’s eye Glory days, glory days It was not that long ago there was this new digital technology that came out that felt like it was going to revolutionize the way we connect and communicate. It was first in the hands of the geeks that invented it, and a few of their friends, and as it spread, slowly at first, then with downhill speed acceleration, it seemed like [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Today was the day seven years ago my grandmother passed away. When exactly she was born (sometime in 1905) is a matter of fuzzy record, as she herself told, as her birth into a family of 7 siblings raised by her father in Newark, New Jersey was certified more 50 years later through research into the census records, so it was celebrated on October 15. “Granny” as I kiddingly called her, was always special to me- she had lots of spirit, drove fast in her red Rambler (“I don’t want anyone behind me complaining about being stuck behind an old lady”), took me to see Johnny Unitas and the Colts play in Memorial Stadium, and was always keen to go jump the big waves at Ocean City, MD. I had also kidded her about she had to stick around til she was at [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Chris Owens I’ve gotten a good collection of Amazing Stories of Openness so far for my August presentation at the Open Ed Conference. But you know what? I want more. I’ve got a bunch of messages, sweet tweets about what a great idea it is, or “I’ll work on it”, but folks, c’mon, this is not all that hard? I’ve outlined examples. I made a comic version. I’ve put a call to respond on YouTube. What is so hard? Is it worrying about being “not Amazing” enough? All I need is a small story of how a time when you shared something online, a blog post, some media, that someone used it, connected with you, got you a visit or a job just as an unexpected outcome of sharing on the Open Web. I’ve been video recording people in Skype or with my Flip, [...]

big fish

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Slightlynorth My not so accurate radar is being tickled by some recent emerging technologies that some Big Shot may place as the next incremental digit following “Web”. Submitted for your approval, Mr Serling: A lot of talk of “real time search” The whole crazy growth of Twitter, Facebook, etc — built on answering the deep philosophical question– what are you doing NOW? Waiting for the Google Wave to land on shore — more promise of the web being not a pile of linked documents but a networked of linked flowing communications. One more today- I caught Joss Winn’s tweet about WordPress.com’s new experiment in Real Time Blogs: At im.wordpress.com we have been experimenting with instant delivery of blog posts and comments. Now you can subscribe to WordPress.com blogs in your Jabber IM client and receive posts and comments the instant they are published. It [...]

So the new book from Chris Anderson (a.k.a Dr Long Tail) entitled Free: The Future of a Radical Price is out in a number of FREE formats- FREE Sricbd eBook and FREE audio file downloads, plus Google Books, and maybe the comic book version is next. Or manga. Or the Numa Numa dance version. All the Big Boys are bantering abut it, be it Seth or Malcolm and the rest of the internet is in debate (or not, who can say). I’m not here to weigh in, at last not until I have read/listened to it. No matter which side of the fence you land, it ought to be a good thing to have people sussing out if this is a viable business model (for some businesses) or snake oil. Nope, I am adding one more bit of free- while you can download the MP3s of the audio book for [...]