Augmented Reality App of the Week. A rash of augmented reality-type apps seem to be surfacing, mostly mobile-based with intelligent overlays of people, places and things. Here’s an interesting video where a presenter uploads additional topic and contact information that can be viewed during the course of his presentation.
One Guy’s Guitar in a Social Media World. In an Albert Maruggi interview, “Social media is like the tectonic plates shifting to create mountains, valleys, earthquakes. It’s still land, but the way we traverse it is different. I suppose old-schoolers still look at numbers. One airline passenger out of millions? How much of a problem could one passenger possibly pose if a baggage handler unfortunately broke his guitar? Now in the old-schoolers’ perspective, if Eric Clapton sitting in first class had his guitar broken, that’s a different story. But Dave Carroll?”
What we have here, is a failure to create a Primary Web Hub. From a Duct Tape Marketing post, “Even though you may think you have one of the world’s coolest websites, if you aren’t constantly adding educational content, finding new ways to connect with your markets online, building community around your ideas, and ultimately using your website as a tool to convert “know, like and trust” into “try, buy, repeat, and refer” – then you stand little chance of competing in your chosen industry these days. What I’m talking about is the total integration of your online and offline activity through the use of a primary web hub.”
If you missed Learning JQuery with Firebug when it was in theaters. Dave Ward updated his excellent screencast on using Firebug with JQuery. I watched the original screencast a couple of times and look forward to the new digitally improved version.
Panic in the Aisles, an anecdote. Several lessons in this anecdote of airline passengers misinterpreting air conditioning condensation for smoke and how the crew fumbled the ball. For instance, “Even if you know you’re doing the right thing, if you don’t acknowledge a customer with a problem, they think you’re doing the wrong thing.”
Zune HD selling out in a pretty big way. According to Engadget, Amazon is listing a 1-3 week wait for the 32GB, Best Buy has the player listed as "backordered," and New Egg shows "sold out." A smartie-pants buddy of mine tweeted “Zune HD, Product of the Year for 2007!” Laugh it up, Fuzzball.
Nobody wants to read your sh**! Great title, eh? The photo accompanying this FutureNow article is perfect, too. “Prospective customers are task oriented – they have lives and they are not on your Website because they are interested in you or your company. Your online visitors have a problem and they are only interested in whether or not you have a viable solution.”
The iPhone 3.1 Poor Battery Life problem has legs. The last two things in the world I want to do is upgrade iTunes to 9.0 and my iPhone software to 3.1. If and when the battery problem with the 3.1 update is resolved I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet.
Human Enhancement. Regardless our religion or ideal of human purity, you know as well as I do that human enhancement is right around the corner.
We love algae. I blogged about the beauty of pond scum before. Here the world’s first algae-powered plug-in hybrid car named Algaeus is so efficient that it’s producer, Sapphire Energy, is claiming it could make an entire coast to coast cross country trip on as little as 25 gallons of fuel.
Facebook moves to eat Twitter’s Lunch. This ignite post describes seven smart moves Facebook is making to put the big hurt on Twitter. There’s beauty in Twitter’s simplicity and the interaction it enables throughout the day, but there’s also something to be said for life beyond 140 characters, with “likes,” comments and conversations.
The Toro is Rockin’ Ready. One of my late-summer, early-fall rituals is prepping my snow blower for the Vermont Winter ahead. It’s a Tuesday, but working at home I can keep priorities in place and defer typing coding to its proper place. Today was Snow Blower Day, so I drained the gas tank of the old gas, put fresh hi test in the tank, and mock snow-blowed the driveway. I only took two passes, but enough to know I am Rockin’ Ready for winter. Here’s a snapshot of my bad-boy Toro taken this morning before putting it in the bull-pen to await the first snow.