“God hit the reset button!”
"God hit the reset button!" a brand manager friend of mine exclaimed loudly as we talked last week about the economy, about how social media was disrupting "damn near" everything he knows how to do and is doing with brand marketing, and he's struggling mightily with what to do next. Fortunately for him, a guy that works for the Chief Marketing Officer at a Fortune 1000 company, he has access to big thinkers and thought leaders (and highly paid consultants along with attending key conferences that cost big bucks) but they're still struggling with how to add value in a day ...
Flash is a Reality, is HTML5 Only a Promise?
There is a debate underway over the proprietary nature of Adobe's Flash vs. the open standard, HTML5 (see, "HTML5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight"). On the one side, Adobe has positioned their platform as being quite open and yet proprietary enough to "provide everything you need to create and deliver the most compelling applications, content, and video to the widest possible audience". HTML5 is an open standard that will, in part, deliver audio, video and interactivity and is a specification which promises to deliver the core functionality of Flash. Adobe's John Dowdell (JD) had an interesting post about this debate ...
Maybe I Will Upgrade, Maybe I Won’t
Was pumped tonight to see Mashable's post about Adobe offering a paid upgrade for their Acrobat.com service. There are things I enjoy about Adobe's service, none the least of which is the ConnectNow webconferencing capability which I use often. One thing I don't like is embedding a PDF in their viewer (see below) and having it's ugly branding slapped prominently on it. Knowing I'd upgrade if the embeddable PDF viewer could have it's branding removed, I reached out to their live chat tonight and the Phillipines call center person was sort of dumbfounded by my simple question (chat transcript after the ...
Is “The New York Twitter” the Future of News?
I've been in dozens of conversations over the last several weeks about how "blogging is dead" and "Twitter is the future of news" to "people only have time for the headlines" and the inevitable, "Of course newspapers are dying, whose got time to read an entire article?" Oh really? If that's the case, we've got really big problems kids (and they go beyond accelerating panic and fear about swine flu pandemics). If the objective with all of these new communications technologies is to be able to simply skim over the surface of news and information, then expect to see only the ...
Apple “iPad” (or “MacbookMini”) is it *Finally* Coming?
I own an Apple Newton (with the 2.0 software) and occasionally get it out to play with it. The Newton OS 2.0 software finally got the handwriting recognition down so that glaring and funny errors weren't there for the press to ridicule (Apple's Newton Reborn: Will it Still the Critics? by John Markoff for the New York Times, from 1994). For a loooong time I've believed that Apple was just moments away from a tablet. I've wanted one ever since the Newton was murdered discontinued and have been convinced we're right around the corner. Fortunately I'm not the only one ...
A Selection of Posts...
Uncle Sam is listening…but this time without a wiretap
When I wrote, “Lessons from Our First Social Media President” last November, it was clear then that this incoming Administration would probably fulfill their campaign pledges of transparency, continuing to engage the American people, and bring change to government. On January 21, 2009, his first full day in office, the President issued a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, in... [ Continue reading...]
Acrobat Labs: Presentations
Yesterday Adobe released Acrobat.com Presentations and I was alerted to it through a post by Ryan Stewart, Adobe evangelist and energetic geek who knows how to position it. There is a lot of competition in this space from delivery vehicles like Slideshare to what I believe is a better implementation of online presentation creation than what Adobe is offering in this beta release, 280Slides. The issue... [ Continue reading...]
Apple “iPad” (or “MacbookMini”) is it *Finally* Coming?
I own an Apple Newton (with the 2.0 software) and occasionally get it out to play with it. The Newton OS 2.0 software finally got the handwriting recognition down so that glaring and funny errors weren’t there for the press to ridicule (Apple’s Newton Reborn: Will it Still the Critics? by John Markoff for the New York Times, from 1994). For a loooong time I’ve believed that Apple... [ Continue reading...]
Facts About The Digital Economy
Having information and facts at-your-fingertips about the internet and web is absolutely critical whether you're a startup needing content for your pitch, a marketer needing to understand a 40,000 foot view of trends, a corporate user needing to understand mobile access to the 'net or international usage, or if you're just someone like me: an info-junkie who needs a constant data fix in... [ Continue reading...]
Why isn’t Dean Kamen on a Wheaties box?
Why do we pay so much attention to sports heroes and celebrities, when the people doing the work to advance humankind are virtually invisible? Over four years ago I wrote a similar post to this one about scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil. My son was 10 years old and had to choose a "hero" and write about what made them one. When I saw the list I was appalled and emailed his teacher to... [ Continue reading...]
TV is Toast: Mac Mini Media Center
My friends and family are sick of hearing me espouse the virtues of the Mac mini media center I built last weekend, but the experiences since have made me realize that TV as we know it is going to be toast much quicker than I thought even two years ago. Though I considered AppleTV as one solution, it's too limiting as it's Apple and iTunes-centric. Instead, I am using PlexApp, an open source... [ Continue reading...]
TV = Brain Off / Computer = Brain On
In 2004 Steve Jobs famously said about TV vs. computers, "We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on." It was one of those statements that seemed like a throwaway (and one most of us did the old head bobbing up-n-down about), but it's become more and more true since then. My wife and I often take our... [ Continue reading...]
Taking Risks: The Most Important Thing You Can Do
Though I watch little broadcast television, I was well aware of Steve Wozniak’s recent appearance on Dancing With the Stars on ABC, but the whole reality TV show genre is one I find revolting as “nasty” (or the possibility thereof) is the way the judges ensure they rile up the crowd and get people to tune in and turn their attention to their little program. Early this morning,... [ Continue reading...]
Are you clueless about your online privacy?
Back in the day when the internet was born and I leapt on it as this cool new thing, I read everything I could get my hands on from computer scientists and other thought leaders at the time. An area that was extensively explored in white papers and articles were the benefits of location and presence awareness and how profound it would be when both of these could be achieved. In these early internet... [ Continue reading...]
It’s the Value, Stupid
As social media continues to accelerate, many are discussing the "death of blogging" and the "rise of lifestreaming". Marc Canter has a proposal for a DiSO (Distributed Social Networking) which is well explained here at Read/Write Web. There is NO question that aggregating all we do online is a worthwhile effort, but I've got a position that is sort of a stunner for a guy... [ Continue reading...]
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