Technology

Back when I was working for Microsoft, we loved to evangelize the folks who were the “innovators of technology.” These are the individuals who were very eager to try new ideas and new technology. They were less concerned about the downside of what happens if something goes wrong, than they were about experiencing the cutting-edge.

We wanted the innovators to try new stuff first, like it, and then tell “early adopters” about it. The early adopters were connected to broader communities than the innovators and became “influential end users” who would provide opinion leadership to the rest of the adopters. These remaining adopters could be categorized as “early majority,”  ”late majority,” and “laggards.” [click to continue...]

Britney Spears

By 2003, Britney Spears was the first artist in the history of Nielsen SoundScan to have four consecutive albums debut at number one, and she was one of the hottest celebrities in the world.

In 2004, Spears announced a career break in order to start a family. Because of this break and a variety of personal problems, her career was all but dead by 2006, and she was reduced from “super star” status to fodder for late night comics and tabloid magazines.

Americans love to give second chances. (We also love to destroy our heroes first, but that is a subject for another blog post.) So when the announcement was made that Spears would perform “Gimme More” at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, the anticipation was huge. This was to be her “come back” appearance when all was forgiven. She was [click to continue...]

Hello, my name is Mitch Canter, and I am an entrepreneur.  I own and operate a small design studio, studionashvegas, in Nashville, TN.  I’ve been doing this for nine months now on my own, and I know that it was the greatest decision of my life.

And I did it with $0 to fall back on.
[click to continue...]

Uber geek Steve “the Woz” Wozniak who co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs in 1976 is a vision caster. Check out his 10-minute interview with the BBC to find out why.

Even though the Woz has probably told this story a gazillion times, he talks about it with the same passion and enthusiasm as if it happened yesterday. You will never find a vision caster without this trait!

On Tuesday my blog entry was entitled “To Tweat or not to Tweat; That Is the Question”. I talked about Twitter and my thoughts surrounding it. I also quoted Thoreau regarding the new messaging breakthrough of his day.

He wrote, “We are in great haste to build a magnetic telegraph from Main to Texas; but Main and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” One of my readers (thanks Edna Marie) agreed with Thoreau. Additionally she didn’t think tweating was efficient nor productive. So she sent me the following video to prove it.

On May 14, 2005 the Tonight Show with Jay Leno had a demonstration where cell phone text messaging champions were put up against Morse code experts. The 170 year old technology won hands down. I of course find this funny because so often technology makes things more complicated rather than not.

But Twitter is not the same thing as text messaging because you can use your computer keyboard to send tweats so this doesn’t prove that Morse code is faster than Twitter. Although, I’d still wouldn’t bet against Morse code!

What is Twitter? The New York Times calls it “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.” Time Magazine says, “Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app.” And Newsweek wrote that “Suddenly, it seems as though all the world’s a-twitter.”

Twitter is like the text messaging of your cell phone adapted to your personal computer. While you’re sitting at work or playing Duke Nukem vs. The Sims, you can fire off a note to any and all of the folks on your friends list. Tweat is the new verb for creating the note, and a tweater is the individual who writes it, an individual who may or may not be what the Brits call a twit.

Like most technology of the post-modern era, Twitter is good, bad and ugly. It’s what the smart set do, and it can be pretty silly. But it builds community and forces people to articulate themselves concisely because you can use no more than 140 words per message. When you tweat, you get to use all your fingers, as opposed to clumsy-thumbing on a cell, and you can see what you’re doing on a big screen.

A heavyweight named Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing, would seem to be a mainstream sort of guy. His passionate blog post, “12 Reasons to Start Twittering” lays out the advantage of Twitter and is a must read for anyone interested in starting to tweat.

I have received 483 invites to be a Twitter friend. Until now, that’s more than all the friends I’ve made in a lifetime. I generally stand by my friends, so I tilt toward seeing the advantages posted by the CEO of the world’s biggest Christian publishing house.

But nothing is perfect. In the last month I began following three dozen randomly selected Twitter posts. Here are the highlights:

1. The majority of people let you know when they’re going to bed.

2. The weather where they are is worthy of note. I especially appreciate knowing the barometric pressure for the last 24 hours!

3. Runners tell you how far they ran and their time.

4. Many Twitter users are Sci Fi junkies and comic book readers and love to share thoughts on Dr. Who, Battlestar Galactica, and Spawn.

5. There are Lost fans in Twitterdom. They do not…repeat not…want any spoilers revealed.

6. Three people shared that they were going to the bathroom while tweating. One was doing #1 and two #2, in case you are keeping tabs.

7. One person tweated, “There’s a tone deaf, rhythmically challenged senior saint four rows in front of me. Father forgive me for letting his singing bother me,” while he was in church.

8. One guy tweated 27 times in one hour.

9. Large percentages tweat from work. Most do not like their jobs. One refers to his “f’ing boss” and employer by name.

10. One person said he and someone else were “making whoopee.” (Film to follow?)

11. A church recently held a Twitter service and found the results positive.

12. I now know the intimate details of the comings and goings of many folks, their friends and families. The particulars that people are putting out on Twitter are the same details that kidnapers, robbers, or stalkers would kill to know.

The above makes me wonder as Thoreau did regarding the new messaging breakthrough of his day: “We are in great haste to build a magnetic telegraph from Main to Texas; but Main and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”

On the positive side, over time you can see young Tweaters improve their writing. Some writing is better than none, and the constraints imposed by Twitter force them to get to the point of what little is on their mind.

As for me, the little on my mind that may be distilled in under 140 characters can be found at www.twitter.com/toddalbertson.

Sliderocket is an amazing new web-based presentation app which is getting lots of buzz right now. One very cool feature is that it has an offline client that lets you present without an Internet connection. Check out an interview with Robert Scoble (Fast Company TV) interview with Mitch Grasso of Sliderocket.

This is absolutely incredible and amazing technology from Cisco! It was billed as “World’s first Live Holographic Video Feed from California, USA to Bangalore, India.”

This will revolutionize the way we do business and communicate. I can hardly wait. I never need to leave town again (unless I want to).