Is the Real Time Web killing Time Shifting? Man, I was just starting to enjoy time shifting with TiVo, watching a show with the family a day or two after it airs at a time convenient for us. But this Real Time Web thing is starting to bust up something great. I was looking forward to watching the finale of Top Chef Masters from last night, for instance, when today in my Twitter stream Chef Michael Chiarello congrats Rick Bayless on his win. It’s getting really hard to not accidently discover popular culture events as they happen. I don’t like it.
While on the Real Time Web. If Real Time Search is such a big deal, why does Bing not even support date filtering (I haven’t found it) and Google make you work so hard for it (select advanced search, then the “date filtering” pop out, then enter date.) I guess “Real Time” and “Current” are two different things.
Zune HD on the Big Screen. Our best TV in the house is a 35” Sony Trinitron that weighs over 200 pounds, so we couldn’t benefit by a Zune HD plugged into our family TV as demonstrated in this Gizmodo video. Pretty darn sexy. To complete your Zune HD viewing experience, go to the Zune.net home page and click on the “HD video out” slide to see the Zune plugged into a big screen TV. Powerful little MP3 players they’re making these days.
Howard Dean? There’s an app for that. Uh, yeah, Microsoft should build an app store with the HD. New apps for the iPhone are coming out every day, including a new Wikipedia app, an upgraded Facebook app getting rave reviews, and now an ebook app from Howard Dean. Speaking of my man Howard Dean, loved his quote this week on health care reform, "I hate to see the Democratic Party backslide into this appeasement routine." That is SO Howard Dean.
Microsoft on Mobile. Zune, iPhone apps, now let’s touch on Mobile. Loved this Om Malik title, “Microsoft’s Mobile Strategy: Irrelevance.” The most interesting statement on Microsoft’s Mobile efforts I’ve seen, however, was the lead to this CNET News post, "Microsoft says ’There's plenty of innovation in the pipeline’ for Windows Mobile. For those of us who haven't considered a Windows-based phone since the iPAQ's decline, the real question is, ‘If Microsoft has an innovative Windows Mobile experience, why is the company keeping it such a secret?’” Good points on the face of it, plus conjuring up images of the iPAQ. Wow, the iPAQ wasn’t all that long ago, a great product in its time, yet now completely out of mind.
This garbage can is cooler than the Zune and iPhone combined. Exciting video showing the new Big Belly trash cans being installed throughout Philadelphia. The units compact the trash to drastically reduce pickups. They are solar powered, thus off the grid, and they have wi-fi to automatically notify Garbage HQ they need emptied.
Who makes $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program? Apparently this guy.
Free Soup Strategy. I love hearing about innovative yet simple examples like this “Free Soup To Go” incident that makes customers love your company. “When our server brought the check she also brought a pint of soup in a go container and told us to let them know what we thought of it.” Brilliant.
Freelance Productivity Secret. This is one of the best “How Freelancers can boost productivity” articles I’ve seen. Then again, it’s Smashing Magazine and they don’t do anything small. From my experience I’d say the article could have stopped with the single instruction of “Set [and meet Daily] Objectives.” You know what you need to do. By the end of the day make sure it’s done. You then write up a progress report for your client and how many hours you billed. They see what they paid for. Then you do it again tomorrow. And one of the biggest secrets to meeting daily objectives? Install a window air conditioner in your home office window and whenever it gets over 70 crank that bad boy up to High Cool. There you have it. All of my secrets on successful freelancing. At least it was more than 140 characters.
Social Media Strategy Elevator Pitch. We learned about Social Media Optimization on our last episode, so tonight it’s Social Media Strategy. I don’t really want to talk about Media Strategy tonight, but I liked what Jason Baer here wrote on your pitch. “The elevator pitch is dead. Can you describe what your company does in 120 characters or less?” And when you invoke Curly’s “One Thing” you’ll always get a link from Everyman.
Benefits of Blogging. Things about blogging that bloggers who no longer blog have forgotten. The author of the book "Web Analytics: An Hour A Day" describes how blogging has benefited him over the course of the last two years.
Benefits of Julie Blogging. If you still blog you may be tempted to watch the movie Julie and Julia to be inspired by a solitary blogger in Queens making it big. Don’t bother. BORING! You still have to see the movie, but only to marvel at Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Julia Child.