A Year From Now

A Year From Now

A Year From Now
I will be better
A Year From Now
I will be fine
A Year From Now
I will write
In somewhat poetic lines

A Year From Now
I will know more
A Year From Now
I will know less
About the world
About myself
About the unequivocal guess

Oh yeah, and a year from now, I'll have better hair.

I am thankful for this year, for kind people, for learning, for health, for so much.

May this be a great year for all.

The Continuing Adventures of a Leopard Convert

Gosh, a late night last night, watching the Leopard install. Leopard started to look like Leopold, Mozart's father. My wife said this was a spotty installation. My eyes. Do I have eyes? My friend Thom Bresh was raving about this latest version of OS X, so I had to give it a whirl I'm going to iChat it up with the man.

What a phenomenal interface--but it's slower. Investigate. The plans here are to go with virtualization, bootcamp, maybe vmware. Shucks, I'm going Mac and not going back. But I have a rear-view mirror with thousands of $ in PC software. Before I fork over another 4 figures for it on the new platform, why not use it in BootCamp if possible?

Another great component here is access to Darwin, the guts of OS X. A BSD implementation/variant that shreds. Unix/Linux will be in this virtualization scheme. So I'll be in hiding with thousands of physical and virtual manual pages, sifting through for answers. Will I have enough hard drive space?

There will be answers. I will settle for nothing less.

David Meerman Scott and The New Rules

A friend recently recommended a book to me: The New Rules of Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott. It's one heck of a readable read. There's an enthusiastic style here, with straightforward comments and insights on how the web has altered how businesses reach customers.

There's the old way and there's right now. Get on board with your blogs, podcasts, and other means of communicating. The book is rich with case studies and pointers on strategy for the new paradigm. Good stuff. In print. What a concept.

The Things You Learn

One of the things you learn is that there's always more to learn!

Can you do it all? Can someone do it for you at a reasonable price? What's applicable--or not? Is there a formula for this? Is there a page on youtube? What does a google search yield?

Can you memorize php.net? Are control structures ringing in your head?

Ahhh, some things to do and/or ponder for 2008....

Let The Good Times Knol Over Wikipedia?

What will become of Knol? Hearing about it certainly sparked curiosity and speculation. Google does no wrong, right? I recall just a bit ago seeing a story concerning Knol, along with an assertion or two that it will overtake wikipedia, seemingly overnight.

At the source, it seems that there may be a little bit more control built into the content, with credit being given to authors. The official Google blog intro seems to be where this all started, and the wikipedia page sheds a good deal of light on this. Interesting descriptions of the project include "private beta", i.e. invitation only, and there is the idea that it actually may not ever be released.

Then there's the idea of the conflict, concept of organizer of info vs. provider. Hey, you can be all things for all people, all of the time, especially when you're Google. More to come I am sure.

Web 3.0, Widgets, API's

Is what you're looking at on your computer local, or is it the web, or is it both? You may not know unless you look under the hood (oh yeah, and make sure you're connected--unless you've already done some work on REMEMBERTHEMILK.COM, as it, should you give it permission to do so, will keep your tasks offline, let you work on them, and then sync them up on the web once you log back in and decide to go ahead with sync).

On initial look at what Web 3.0 is referring to, the hallmark of the next gen is the blurring of these offline/online distinctions. It seems to me to be old news--but perhaps the fact that it may become the norm vs. the exception is what may make this a key characteristic.

In working as a developer a few years ago, discussing MS Interdev, the object explorer revealed browser embeds within a standard client server GUI. I don't remember what the class name was, or Method/Property combinations, but I did enough to realize that it could happen relatively quickly, via controls or quick instantiations.

It's become much more slick, however. The integration will be getting tighter, more sophisticated. Active content, Flash, widget embeds for great presentation. Real thorough incorporation of RSS feeds, mashups, conglomerated from who knows where. I'm looking at SpringWidgets, there appears to be a claim of desktop/site embeddibility. Google Gears, same thing. Springing up, like virtual flowers.

We'll see how it shakes out....

Map Your Mind -- No Charge

FreeMind is a terrific brainstorming tool. As its name implies, you can get it for no charge. The software falls into the category of mind-mapping, i.e., getting concepts, essays, songs, web site structures, marketing campaigns, anything you can think of into a graphical, flexible, easily modifiable form. OK, you might just be happy with a pencil or pen and paper--but this application allows you to drag branches/nodes of your mind map from one to another instantly, including all sub-branches/nodes. No eraser required!

Among other things, you can embed hyperlinks in these nodes and assign styles and graphics to them. You can link to files on your own computer as well. I recently used FreeMind in a cowriting session (my cowriter's willingness to try working this way is much appreciated), and we both found it to be quite useful in our quest to get to the bottom of a hook we liked. The icing here is that you can save your files in outline and/or picture form, right to a web page of your choice--so your map is structured with collapsible/expandable branches or categories.

You can download FreeMind here: http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Happy mind mapping!

NanoIndependents

I'm one of the nanoindependents. Trying nanomarketing. Let's bring it all to the subatomic particle level, okay?

The power of small. Coming to a pinhead near you.

del.icio.usly Digging BlinkList

I'm del.icio.usly Digging my blinklist feed.

As if enough time isn't already spent checking out the syndication sites, software, social bookmarking and more. It's a quest though--see which page, which tool works the best. It requires time to do this, but the effort seems worthwhile. Who will come out on top with the best centralization of all of this? How does one choose the champion? Seems like there's great opportunity here. The ultimate one stop shop, whether it's desktop/web.

I'm really not stoned. Just enthusiastic about this technology and all of the brilliant folks assembling it, debugging it, attempting to make it profitable. There's a win-win here.

RadioHead, MP3's, Music Is Dead

At the top left in my IGoogle is the SEOBook blog. Search Engine Optimization interests me. How we are in this electronic jungle, and the primates have to come up with the tool to end all tools, to gain some form of dominance.

It entertains, it frustrates, it challenges. What can we do technically to build the advantage and keep it?

So in my looking at this top blog, I discover these potent comments on our musical world: Aaron Wall spoke of RadioHead's offering of a free download--it looks like the entire album. I also saw a great take on it in the Lefsetz letter. Not sure why it has to be news, but it is. Members vying for attention, position. TIME writes, people react, servers get overloaded, and the name gets memed. Stickiness achieved.

Round here, it seems like music is dead, or dying, or just flat out being victimized. But what's new? I hope my own music will be listened to at some point without my having to pay people to listen to it. All this woogydeedoo is inspiring me.

Mashups - So Now, So Future, So Yesterday?

I've been blown away by web software mashups. Just getting my feet wet at this point with Yahoo Pipes, Microsoft PopFly, others. I'm curious what folks will be coming up with. It seems that FeedBurner's one mashup example. The possibilities seem to be endless, creating remixed content, all dynamic.

wikipidia's got a killer page on them.

A whole new dimension to our fair cyberworld is taking further hold. Can't wait to dig in more here. The quest continues...

Get Your Keyword Feet Wet Now

What a difference keywords make in the songs we write, in our conversations and stories, and in our efforts to discover and be discovered on the web.

Here's a pretty easy way to get your keyword feet wet: go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com. This is a "lite" version of a subscription-based keyword suggestion tool (there are many of them), but in just seconds you can catch some insight on what people are searching for on the web. Results are sorted from most popular search on down ("nashville music" showed some healthy results). Focus on where you fit in. What do you do? How are you known? How do you want to be known? Have at it and see how many searches are done daily on what you do. Use these numbers as a springboard to clarifying your marketing message. If you have Internet Explorer 7 or FireFox, you can also click http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/plugin/freekeywords.xml to get the keyword search tool added right to your browser। Have Big Fun!

Pundits, Spongemongers

Would it be real to assume the tendencies of the milieu?

Soggy afterthoughts dominating the landscape of our shaky subtleties.

Welcome to Late at Night, Obfuscating Cerebralosity

This is definitely way too late at night, way tooooo late. It's beyond late at night.

Late at night
Causing a stir in the washroom
With the agnostic chair listening intently.

Welcome to Late at Night