Archive for the ‘Geeky Stuff’ Category
Feb
9
As a web marketing and messaging company we love it when things go as planned, the ends meet in the middle and the message goes from sender to receiver without a hitch. But as with the evolution of life, it’s the mutations that change things. The random screwups that end up inspiring new ideas, new directions and new life.
Photo by reVerse
Such was the case a few weeks ago when I got a taste of “excellentsalmon” and a random connection over chat…
I was working remote when a chat window from “excellentsalmon” popped up posing the question, “wouldn’t it be cool to play with a kitten the size of an elephant?” I thought for a minute. I had a couple other chat windows open a phone call pending, other people in the room and an event to get to in the next half hour. But I responded with, “Think of the size of the cat box!”
The conversation started a little rocky. Each of us figuring out slowly that an unknown third party had somehow connected us, that i was in pacific time and he was in Central Time and that neither of us was a spammer or malicious weirdo. At first i thought it might be a cosmic connection to the future, but being only a few hours different that wasn’t a significant finding.
I did a twitter and google search on “excellentsalmon” and found one tweet and blog post about a previous incident. In both cases the person assumed it was spam and the conversation didn’t end well. Then I got followed by @caylorb. My chat buddy was on twitter! How cool is that! So we ended the conversation, i saved screen grabs of the chat and we went about our lives.
But here’s the interesting thing. I’ve actually found value in @caylorb on twitter. We’ve pinged back and forth several times. He’s recommended music that I’ve ended up downloading and liking. He’s funny and seems to think i’m funny, he does a video podcast on tech and social media and is into web video. So through a random mischievous chat hack, I’ve made valuable social media contact.
In my mind, and this won’t surprise people who know me, this shows the power of randomness, the usefulness of mischief and, most importantly, the value in taking each conversation at something other than face value. In business and in life, you can loose out on good opportunities by judging situations and people on what they seem to be at first.
This was a small simple event that has continued to inspire me. The connections we have with people are usually so linear. I know bob, who knows Ryan, who knows Martin from another job who i know from an interview 10 years ago… That’s great. They always say that it’s not so much what you know, but who you know.
But how often does the line jump so far outside your sphere? How do you get outside your network and find ideas and people you never would have seen? Just another example of Twitter providing value in meaningful exchange of ideas and social media tools acting as communication hubs and facilitating connections.
And all you have to do is take the time to answer the question…
-M
Read the whole chat.
Chat client: Digsby
Email account: gmail or yahoo
Username: excellentsalmon, ignorantsalmon (more than once?)
Other: i have the digsby chat widget on facebook.
Related links: http://groups.diigo.com/groups/salmon-chat
Posted in Geeky Stuff
Oct
9
In this episode of Horsepower I get to talk to a software developer who helped to change the way communication,
interaction and sharing is accomplished over the web. Some might argue that blogging isn’t fundamentally
different now than it was 15 years ago. While you could have built your own blog with html or php,
the cool thing is that I can go to wordpress.com (or blogspot.com, typepad.com or moveabletype.com)
and sign up and get a blog in less time than it takes to pick a title and a tagline. No credit card
necessary.
Though that has been around for a number of years, the impressive thing about wordpress is the open source
model and the cool features and updates that keep coming out, incorporating the best of what the community
comes up with.
The cool thing that open source paradigm allows guy like Mullenweg to do is, exactly what they want to
do, for their own reasons and scope. They innovate in creative ways and create products that inspire
culture, are widely popular, and are in the end profitable for the creators and the community. My own
introduction to blogging came from my love of writing and my need to have a format that would allow me
to think in small chunks. Blogs are fairly freeing. They let you focus on the craft of creating content,
not the grit of navigating the digital landscape. As such, the Wordpress motto, “code is poetry” is both
representative and prophetic. Matt, Joseph and the Wordpress team won’t become the Steve Jobs or Bill
Gates of their generation, because what they created and will create will be as much ours as theirs.
The intellectual property is their vision, and their spirit of cooperation to create community driven
software with the end user in mind. Hope you enjoy the video from Matt’s Keynote Address to the group
and the interesting info below about WordPress…
Interesting wordpress facts:
- blogs get 50 to 60 % of traffic from search
- 11.1 million downloads so far in 2008
- 35million new posts this year on wordpress.com
- 4 million per month
- 6.5 billion pageviews
- 230 million unique visitors
- 5 billion spasm were blocked by Akismet and it is 99.925% accurate.
Top Ten Wordpress Plugins:
- cforms
- wp-polls
- WP automatic upgrade
- wp-cache
- wp-db-backuo
- wp.com stats
- nextgen-gallery
- google sitemap generator
- all in one seo pack
- akismet
Great to meet you Matt and see all my SLC peeps, @libel_vox, @Thomallen, @bradbaldwin, @ashbuckles, @cspencer, @thedruidxpawx, @whyisjake, @lauramoncur & @robertmerrill. -Mike
Posted in Geeky Stuff, Horse Power Podcast, Podcast, Salt Lake City, Social, Uncategorized, Web & SEO
Aug
15
David and I are at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas this week. I got a chance to talk with Rob Sandie of the popular video sharing site, Viddler. We like viddler for some of the public and private video sharing options and features like the private url and customizable embed style. They are one of the few media businesses really sinking their teeth into the social sphere that is actively open and collaborative who is more concerned about YOUR brand than their own. They have some cool features and more on the way. He said i couldn’t tell anyone about them unless they watch the video, so watch the video. More to follow…
I also got a TubeMogul t-shirt!
-Mike
Posted in Geeky Stuff, Las Vegas, Podcast, Social, Web & SEO
Apr
8
There’s nothing we @ Twelve Horses love more than sun, snow and gadgets! So this was the perfect event for us. Earl and I got out and shot some video, played around with the Nokia n95, Zune, JBL headphones and got a chance to chat with Brian Lam, Editor at Gizmodo.
(click on the pop-ups in the video then select “more info” to see the product demos.)
Bob Starks from Alpine Meadows was stoked to get a hand’s on demo of the Nokia n95. He wants to be able to post up photos to Flickr right from the Summit 6 chair! I almost smashed mine attempting a 360 @ the Kangaroo Park.
Thanks for bringing out the goods Brian! Can’t wait to do it again!
-M
Posted in Geeky Stuff, Lake Tahoe, Mobile, Reno-Tahoe, Social, Travel & Tourism
