Worst First Impression Ever: Here is the absolute worst possible way to start a Twitter relationship with me. This is an actual DM I received (picture, name and link removed to protect the mercenary).
Backwards Department: Here’s Guest Poster’s (what a serendipitous name) recipe for doing better on Twitter. There’s more strategy in that post than there is in Chess and Risk combined. What’s wrong with just saying something interesting and leaving it at that? Many, many, many people focus on the value they receive from a Twitter post and not on the value their readers get from the Twitter post.
SemiPhone: You too can turn your kid’s iPod Touch into almost a phone.
Private Cloud Department: Pogoplug helps you easily create a private cloud. I hope it is easier and more accessible than my private cloud has turned out to be. The lack of easier local access is probably a deal-stopper for me.
Take Yourself too Seriously Much: This is a fun video, and an interesting post in general. I completely agree with this quote: “I would rather start with ten people saying something nice about me, because I was good to them, than to have 100,000 people to shout my message at.” You would think one of Guy’s ghost writers could have taken a break from spamming Twitter long enough to give the little kids props for making a clever video. By all accounts, Guy (upper case) seems like a decent guy (lower case) in person, but for a so-called social networking expert, he does a bad job of projecting likeability online. Demi Moore is significantly more humble and much more interesting, and she’s a real celebrity who actually writes her own Twitter posts.
Terminator Terminated Department: Here is a really well done and concise run down of the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles story line leading into tomorrow’s finale. I like the show, but I don’t love it. Still, any science fiction that doesn’t start with Stargate is better than another stupid sitcom or reality show.
One Good Apple: Most productivity lists are 90% fluff, but here’s a reasonably good one.
Him Draw Pretty: For those who, like me, are bored to tears by the WSJ and the Economist, here’s a nifty visual guide to deflation.
More Boring Stuff from Andy: It’s bad enough that he keeps tossing out these operas and whatnot that someone may one day try to make me go see, now Andrew Lloyd Weber is crapping all over the internet. That’s about what I’d expect from a dude who goes by three names. I don’t trust any guy who goes by three names. I used to work with a guy who went by four names. I could write a novel on how messed up that is.
More Interesting Stuff from Jerry: I think Guns, Germs, and Steel is a very interesting book. Here’s a lecture from Jared Diamond on the evolution of religion.
Teach Your Children Well: Here’s a list of 10 Tech Skills Your Teen Needs Now. How about a little code writing? Hardware building?
Rockwell Department: HubSpot has a primer on monitoring your social media presence in 10 minutes a day. I agree that Google Alerts are great for monitoring relevant mentions, etc. I think a FriendFeed filter is another good way to monitor conversations.
Archaeology Department: I used to want to be an archeologist so I could dig up dinosaurs and such. Looks like I have to give up that idea. Good thing anthropology is still going strong, so we can find out that male chimps like hookers.
Poor Little Rich Guy Department: So the guy who co-wrote the Rickrolling theme says he is getting exploited by Google. He compares his treatment to the exploitation of migrant workers in the Middle East: “I feel like one of those workers, because I earned less for a year’s work off Google or YouTube than they did off the Bahrain government.” Nice. Some also exploited by Google newspaper estimated that this dude was worth $68,000,000.00 or so back in 2004. My heart breaks for him.
Navigation is at least somewhat more intuitive via the right hand column, which has settings, filters to selectively display data, subscriptions and some additional tools (see screencap below).
Newsome.Org 