Open Source Blogging

Hey, I’ve learned you gotta write a catchy headline to even have a chance to get attention. Even then, this one will probably barely get noticed in the river of Tweets and other noise rushing by. (UPDATE: I changed the headline, cause many people complained about it).

But there’s a point here, over on Building43 we’ve been getting around and Adobe showed us Flash running on a set top box with full glorious HDTV. Did you catch that video? Probably not. How will you see sex in the future? HDTV, so the headline sorta fits. And, if you’re here for … Continue Reading

For me, few things are more compelling than biographies of compelling people who led exceptional lives. In their lives and decisions, we can all find things to think about and perhaps to emulate in our own lives.

Recently, I’ve been enjoying the first volume of Edmund Morris’s biography of Theodore Roosevelt, entitled The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy led an extremely exceptional life - his presidency just scratches the surface. Beyond his political career, Roosevelt was also a professional historian, a naturalist, an author, and … Continue Reading

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead; follow him on twitter.

The future of the workplace is definitely shifting. There are a lot of new rules of work that are changing the game.

Social media sites like twitter and facebook are changing the way we interact in life and business. Searching “the conversation” on twitter, and access to tools like google trends, are transforming marketing.

There also seems to be an awakening in the way people and businesses are seeing the way they work. I see more and more people learning about passive income and how silly it is to … Continue Reading

The following is a guest post courtesy of Jackie Ross.

Content marketing just received a healthy dose of girl
power.

The beloved spreader of good deeds and great cookies, the Girl Scouts, has
expanded the conversation beyond the community center and campfire and into new
arenas like chat rooms and blogs. It’s all part of a recent brand
makeover that uses content to reach the hearts and minds of American girls.

Old-school pastimes like cookouts and sing-alongs haven’t
disappeared from the Girl Scout lexicon, but the … Continue Reading

Is the Real-Time Web a threat to Google? Rackspace executive Lew Moorman sure thinks so.

He’s right. Fewer and fewer of my search behaviors have been on Google lately.

And last week friendfeed did something very important: made it a lot more possible to do powerful real-time web searches.

First, the problem with friendfeed is it is too geeky. But ignore that problem for a moment, because if they don’t get it right, or make it something that the mainstream wants, well, you’ll see the same kind of search show up on Facebook (which has been making moves lately to … Continue Reading

A few days ago, I was giving a phone interview about The Simple Dollar and general frugality and personal finance topics when the interviewer threw me a bit of a curveball. After hearing me talk about frugality for a bit, he pauses for a second, then asks if he can be honest with me. He then tells me that from his perspective, the things that I do are cheap. He would view me as a cheapskate and he wouldn’t think of me as a fun person to hang out with.

I was caught off guard by this, because … Continue Reading

My friend Gavin Heaton put together this very funny video regarding the book Age of Conversation 2. First, take a look at this video (frankly, a good example of a low-cost way to make a point that's worth passing on). Second, buy the book. Mine arrived a few weeks ago and it's worth the read…especially if you are trying to figure this whole "social media" thing out, or you need to convince upper management about what is going on in social media and content marketing (and why you need to … Continue Reading

This past Saturday, I was a dinner guest at the home of a family friend of my wife’s parents. Over dinner, the conversation was lively and, as is often the case with my wife’s family, refreshingly frank.

One major topic of discussion was one individual’s (a person we’ll call Reggie) balance of several different aspects of his life as he approached retirement age. Reggie lives in a small apartment and has a very well-paying job, but he also has a taste for expensive vacations, taking … Continue Reading

Yesterday I filmed a video about the half-life of conversations. When I started blogging back in 2000 a blog conversation could go for a week or more. Those days are long gone. In this video I cover why, and show you some ways that tools can be used to lengthen the conversation’s half life (which, on Twitter, can be as short as five minutes).

This video caused a conversation to break out on FriendFeed.

       … Continue Reading

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or entrepreneurship book.

This book attracted me from the title alone - The Myth of Multitasking is something I’ve observed over and over again in my own life. In fact, I’m observing it right now - I can write better and faster if I shut down all distractions: my email program, my web browser, my instant messaging programs, my phone, and my office door.

Whenever I start trying to juggle multiple things - like writing while on the phone with … Continue Reading