Tag Archives: Digital Life

Gnomedex: Day One

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Gnomedex has to be one of the best covered events in that everyone in the audience is blogging, twittering, videoing and flickr’ing.

Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid” laughingsquid.com

300+ intense, passionate, creative people who all happen to be interested in media, communication and –to some greater or lesser degree– changing the world. Every one a blogger and many podcasters to boot.

Many have been blogging long enough –and hard enough– to have become bored or exhausted (or both) by its demands.

Web 2.0 is familiar and comfortable to these people. Passe for some. But these are the early adopters, the adept. The advance guard of the blogosphere.

Long Distance (Skype)

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Had a nice, leisurely chat with my brother tonight. We talked about 45 minutes. Regular readers know my brother lives on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia so we’ve always tried to keep our phone calls brief. Thanks to the miracle of Skype, we were able to really get caught up this evening (morning for him).

He recently got some kind of point-to-point, microwave Internet access. Not sure if it qualifies as “high speed,” but it’s a big improvement on the dial-up they’ve lived with since moving to Indonesia.

Skype_logo
Audio quality was pretty good. Waaay better than regular long distance connection. If he can boost his speed a little bit, we’re gonna try video. Stay tuned. And thank you, Skype.

Summer Interns

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Our summer interns are packing up and heading back to school. One of their final tasks was to prepare a presentation on what they learned working for Learfield. The interns working in our Dallas office created a Powerpoint presentation which was, I’m sure, very… nice.

The Jeff City crew asked my advice and I told them Powerpoint is for losers. I suggested they produce a video and loned them my camcorder. I forgot to give them a mic so the sound is not all that it might be but their creativity and humor comes through loud and clear. Ladies and gentlemen… Coleman, Corey and Tyler.

iDVD

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[Mac shields up!] I created my first DVD last night, using iDVD that ships with OS X. Now, I’ve burned files to DVD’s before but iDVD makes it fun and easy to create a more finished product. Pick a theme, drag over your video from iMovie, your still images form iPhoto, pull some music over from iTunes… hit the burn button and you’re done.

iDVD

This first effort looks like it. But the next one will be better. I haven’t done much with DVD’s because it seemed like a cumbersome way to share media. But this was fun and the resulting DVD looks pretty snazzy.

Riding the Email Short Bus (NRN)

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Email from Bill to Mary and 5 others on their project team:

“The meeting has been moved back to 10 a.m. on Friday”

Mary replies, “I’ll bring donuts,” and –of course- hits the REPLY ALL button.

Team member Mike cleverly chimes in (with REPLY ALL): “Make my chocolate!”

To which team member Betty responds, “I’m on a diet.” Again, REPLY ALL.

Team member smays (screaming at the top of his lungs!) REPLY ALL:

“I don’t have time to be part of your witty banter. My in-box if filled to overflowing. Chat amongst yourselves if you have the time (and it appears you do), but don’t include me with your clueless REPLY ALL to every dumb-ass email that comes your way. I’m sorry, I just don’t care. And –believe it or not– the only people that do, are the other morons keeping this inane ping-pong match going.”

NRNAnd while I’m on the subject, you don’t need to thank me every time I send you an email. I know you are grateful. I won’t think less of you if I don’t get a “Thanks!” reply to… every… email… I send. In fact, my opinion of you will jump up a few notches.

Let’s try this. If you see “NTN” (No Thanks Necessary) or “NRN” (No Reply Necessary) in the subject line of the email I send to you… you don’t have to thank me or reply. You just saved us both a few precious seconds.

I would open the comments on this post but I know many of you would not be able to resist saying, “Thanks!”

Running after the Cluetrain

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I spent a lot of energy in the late 90’s trying to convince people I worked with (and anyone I could get to listen) the Internet was a force to be reckoned with. Something that would touch and change every part of our lives and our business. There was plenty of eye-rolling and rib-nudging. Then, one day, I didn’t have to say another word. Anyone with a functioning cortex understood the Internet wasn’t just happening… it had happened.

Five years ago I started blogging and, a couple of years later, listening to podcasts. Again, I tugged at a few sleeves and suggested these tools would be/could be/should be part of what we do. The reactions were very similar.

As I swill Rocket Fuel and surf away another Saturday morning, I come across story after story about how people, company organizations are blogging and podcasting. Out of habit, I started to forward these to those who would (or should) want to know…and I stopped.

No need. If you don’t get it by now, you won’t. I’ll continue to post on these topics (until even that seems pointless), but I won’t spend every evening tip-toeing up and down the hall, sliding these links under co-worker’s doors.

Whew. Glad that’s over.

$1.6 million for Branson.com

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So says pal Morris James. “The most money ever paid for a dot-com address for a city was for Branson.com. Commercial real estate broker Larry Milton and his wife plunked down $1.6 million for the address last year.”

For that kind of money you’d expect to be at the top of the Google ranking and Branson.com is (the top of the non-paid results). The link reads: “Branson.com: The Official Website.”

Like Morris, I wonder what makes the site “official?” Would the local Chamber of Commerce have a better claim on that distinction?

Stories like this always remind me how fortunate we were to register (waaaay back when) our company names (Missourinet.com, RadioIowa.com, Learfield.com). But one of my favorites is Legislature.com.

No net access at home

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Despite 90 minutes of trouble-shooting by a very nice tech support lady at Embarq. This lady really gave it her all and was pleasant and supportive throughout. A new modem is one the way and we’l see if that solves the problem. But for those of you wondering whether I’d rather live without indoor plumbing or Internet access… I’d rather poop in the woods than be off-line. I’ve chosen to accept this as a sign that the Digital Supreme Conciousness wants me to spend a little more time with the dogs and… and… what the hell is her name? … Barb! More time with Barb.

Related story: Study finds US full of Internet addicts

Excellent customer service from Embarq (Sprint)

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Flipped open the MacBook last night and discovered I had no net access. No DSL light on the modem. No dial tone coming into the house. Called Sprint (now Embarq) DSL Tech Support because it was the only number I had. He transferred (nicely) me to the right number where Naomi gave me a couple of things to try. They didn’t work. This morning I called back and spoke with Ivan who determined the problem is inside the house and since I didn’t have the “inside the house service plan,” it would cost me $25 for every 15 minutes a tech was on site.

But then Ivan said, “Wait a minute. I can put you on a new pricing plan that will save you about ten dollars a months AND include free “inside” support.” Uh, yeah… let’s do that. The tech will be out Monday morning.

I don’t think I posted on this, but several months ago a nice lady at Sprint noticed that I was paying more for DSL service than I needed to, changed me to a package that gave me more features for less money.

I’m sure many of you have horror stories going the other direction but, for the record, the Embarq/Sprint folks have been making my life better.

PS: Weekends are usually when I do most of my blogging but w/o net access we’ll be dark for a couple of days.

Update – 9/11/06: Embarq said a repairman would show up between 9-11 a.m. so I was prepared to wait all morning. Steve arrived at 8:30 a.m….found the problem almost immediatley and was gone by 9:00 a.m.

Update – 9/12/06: Couldn’t get online last night. Had dail tone, but no connect to net. Called Earthlink (Sprint ISP) and talked to Jeremy. Polite, helpful and really new his shit. Quickly determined my account had be de-authorized (for some unknown reason) and got me going again. I hope I don’t have any great Embarq/Sprint/Earthlink customer service stories to share for a while.

Google Juice: Blogs

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Because of the way Google Page Rank works, blogs tend to rank higher than traditional websites (whatever that means in 2006). Most bloggers are well aware of this but it hit home for me this evening as I Googled “Learfield” …the company I work for. 105,000 search results. The corporate home page at the top, with the Learfield Sports “home” page (really a sub-page on the corporate site) at #2.

Coming in at #3 is the company blog, GrowLearfield.com. And it’s only been up for six months. Want more traffic for your business/association/organization? Make your home page a well-tended blog.

On a personal note, more and more of the people (from outside our company) with whom I come in contact, have found their way to smays.com. I confess that makes me a tad uncomfortable. If you drill down about three pages (nobody does) in that list of 105,000 “Learfield” results mentioned above, you’ll find smays.com.

Despite periodic disclaimers that this blog is in no way sanctioned by or officially connected to Learfield, I’m “out there” (just like George Costanza’s mother). Sort of like forgetting to remove your company windbreaker before getting the lap dance. You know nobody is looking at your jacket, but you’re aware you have it on.

PS: Yes, this post was prompted by the photograph of two (possibly) fornicating turtles.