I always appreciate it when a retailer can come up with a witty and humourous way of asking for the serious cooperation of its customers.
In a coffee bar down the street, there is a small sign right near where you get your sugar and cream.
The sign says:
“Any kids that are left alone will be given a double shot of expresso and given a free puppy.”
I forgot the actual wording, so I will need to return tomorrow and get it exactly right, but you can get it’s intending meaning, I’m sure.
I remember when the term Ajax was already about 8 months old or so, and I had no idea what it was, aside from the household cleaner. I asked someone on a forum, how Yahoo did this particular thing on their site, and someone answered: “it’s Ajax”, and then to my surprise found out that books were being written about it already.
Just found out that there is a term coined for certain web based apps, called “Mashups”. They’re basically a mixture of services - possibly Google maps mixed in with Amazon API - to accomplish a certain outcome, a certain type of result.
In this case, with Google maps and Amazon, you could combine the two to provide a way for users on their cell phone, let’s say, to find a third party seller’s location who is selling something you found.
OK, probably a bad example.
If you use an RSS reader, and you want to be notified about new mashups, use this feed link:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/programmableweb/mashup
.. because it can make you laugh your rear off pretty much, and so you got that whole mind-body connection going…
.. you know, the research on how your immune system is boosted when you laugh.
My favorite types of clips to look up on YouTube, which I’d recommend to anyone:
Crank Yankers (it looks lame at first.. cuz all you see are puppets, however this show (cancelled a while back) was my favorite on the comedy channel.. it’s basically short clips of real crank calls, really crazy funny ones.
Conan O’Brien (since I’m not up when his show is on at night, it’s perfect to be able to see some of his show on youtube, he’s beyond hilarious)
Animals - There’s some good ones.. especially one that I saw, where this cat was defending his food and swiping at this dog which wasn’t much bigger.. funny as heck
SouthPark - I saw an 30 min episode on YouTube. (I’m sure by now, it was yanked off). It was where the southpark kids were playing a role playing avatar type game. It was absolutely hysterical. In this episode, this loser kind of slob of a grown up man was completely killing everyone with his avatar character. And the kids decided that they didn’t have the life points to have the kind of arsenal, to stop him.
So they all decided to stay away, for the time being, from this killer character, until they gathered enough points to have advanced shielding, weaponry, etc.. and to do that, they all stayed at their computers, through dinner and overnight, to do repetitive tasks that got them just one or two points, but had low-risk. (such as kill wolves with their weapons) . Never thought I’d spend 30 min on South Park. I probably will never do that again, but I just couldn’t click Stop after 5 minutes of this particular episode.
Your favorite comedian, see if he’s on YouTube! I recommend: Mitch Hedburg, Kathleen Madigan, Craig Shoemaker, Brent Leek, Carlos Mencia(sp)
There’s more I can’t think up now, but you get the point.
(I’m glad Google bought them, because it gives me confidence that they will stick around, and won’t run out of disk space)
It seems like the trend toward actually having to provide real value for your web visitors, is gaining bigger wheels and travelling faster.
Between
seeing blog posts by Matt Cutts (Google search engineer) explaining Google’s steps towards ranking sites for honest to goodness value versus other manipulated link-attaining
and …
reading pdfs/emails from guys such as Ken Evoy concerning Google’s continual quest to render SEO techniques a lot less useful to spend time on,
.. I am really starting to see this trend taking shape.
A quote from a pdf emailed from Ken Evoy:
“Frankly, it’s the height of ego and self-delusion for any “outsider” [someone not at Google] to pretend that they know how any major search engine determines what a Web page is all about.
And yet, post after post in SEO forums are all about that. It’s really just speculation, a waste of time“
Marketing expert Michael Fortin has a blog entry concerning the importance and benefits of keeping a journal, including the benefits to business success:
Moleskin planners or books have gotten more and more people excited about
leaving behind the 21st Century writing tools.
However I will always need my Palm for Database-like necessity functionality, such as:
- Contacts
- My Account log-ins (web sites, bank acct log-ins, etc.)
- List of Books to read or Weekend End things to do
But when it comes down to where you are waiting for a friend at a restaurant, or you’re at the park/beach with a couple of hours off, and you need to write some plans, or a high level design for an Application/Web Site, or some “50,000 feet level” (GTD book) projects, my future consists of being a Moleskin book user for anything having to do with relaxed writing needs.
I would have one right now if the Borders down the street carried them, but they don’t. Think: “Modernized volkswagen, or the revamped new
2005 old-style Mustang”, but it’s a writing book, the kind that Hemingway or Picasso used.
And you can still inject some Modern-ness into it by getting a compact Space Pen
(I’ve always got to have a small pen
in my pocket.) This thing is definitely sweet. It makes me almost too giddy to talk about it though. Ok, I need some recovery time.
