Mike Rowe celebrates dirty jobs | Video on TED.com

All-in-One

People like me don’t take pictures, don’t use Twitter often, don’t fill-in their Facebook updates to the let world know what we’re feeling at that given second – and flat out just don’t feel like sharing a whole lot with everybody.

However, it is not out of shyness or fear of acceptance. I feel tht this is an issue of useability.

With my current technology and financial status (a Nokia 6030 sans camera and $100), I have little incentive to go buy a camera or a beefed phone before the Gphone comes out. I only post this because I’m leaving for Austin tommorrow and have no camera but my sister’s which I’m borrowing.

This sucks, because I would take a million photos if I had an all-in-one device, a la iPhone or Gphone, where I could sync my physical and digital worlds in one place on the go.

So, the purpose of this post is to be a time-anchor as to the before and after effects of a smartphone on my digital social life. Will I take more photos, take the time to post them, engage in richer dialog, explore more ideas in this blog rather than on paper? Who knows, only time will tell.

Until then, I will hit the road in the morning to enjoy the Great American Southwest in all it’s splendor.

God speed.

Graphic Boredom

Inspired by boredom and caffeine at 1am last night.

Publishing Wikipedia to Turn a Profit?

A major German publisher is trying to do just that.

It seems a debate is brewing in the “Wikipedia-sphere” surrounding the commercialization and the soon-to-be-made profit from the voluntarily written and edited online encyclopedia web site. For the first time, a major publisher has made plans to print out and sell popular articles from the site, leaving many wondering if the content’s writers are being scammed out of royalties to which they are due.

People are debating whether authors of Wikipedia articles will get screwed out of royalties derived from sales of the publishings. I don’t think that should even be an issue. Publishing Wikipedia articles would give writers even more incentive to crank out better quality pages. Think about it.

Right now, Wikipedia provides authors who are intelligible on any given topic, a medium to teach the world. They [wikipedia] provide the service for free and in return, you provide quality information. For free. Nowhere in the business model is monetization discussed.

Now a publisher looks at making a profit off of a movement that began to “make information free.” Some think that this move may give writer’s less incentive to write.

I think that Wikipedia is all about accolade and recognition. Put your name out there and become the expert. People write on Wikipedia because it provides them a platform for recognition. Publish their work and now they can profit off of the information they post. This will give authors of good information great.

However, there will be a great correlary to this as well – as is anything that involves monetizing something that was never meant to be. When you bring money to Wikipedia, you bring idiots who start writing about anything to just make some money. All of a sudden, the self-policing of Wikipedia will become much harder as there are more and more articles which will need to get flagged and updated for accuracy of information.

It will be very interesting to see what happens with this proposal moving forward as Wikipedia continues to expand and increases in relevancy.

Why Your Doctor Should Have a Wiki.

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at the Health Populi blog recently published a report entitled “The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media.”The report addresses issues around the new social networking sites that focus on health issues, but also begins to take a look at “what’s next for social networks and health?

Think about the wealth of information being generated nowadays and how much emphasis the Web 2.0 model has placed on user input. Look at what Wikipedia has done for information or what Amazon has done for product reviews. The study states that nearly 59% of patients look on the internet first for health-related information before they see a doctor.

This isn’t surprising seeing that the internet is relatively anonymous in the sense of getting information on very personal issues. Think about how many HIV or STD patients don’t go see a doctor just out of sheer emberassment. I mean there are social taboos.

I like to think of my friend who has Crohns Disease and the number of doctors he has seen, many of them specialists but living in different parts of the U.S., if not the world – some as far away as Turkey.

How beneficial would it be to have a support group wiki specifically created for Crohn’s with all of the top doctors in the world contributing updated information, maintaining open dialog with patients across the world?

I think that open dialog between patients and doctors online in a research manner could be very beneficial. Patients could end up looking at articles posted by a doctor on the wiki and may end up proposing their own solutions. At least that is what my friend with Crohn’s hopes for. In some respects, he knows the symptoms of Crohn’s better than his doctors.

My friend spends hours a day looking for published articles on Google Scholar, only to find that most of the research is closed off to subscribers. Why?

I think about how much information a doctor can possibly give a patient if the average patient time in clinics nowadays is just under six minutes? Is that really enough time to discuss the intricacies of the patients dilemma?

I don’t think so. I do think that there is hope though. I’m just waiting for that Crohn’s specialist to put up a damn social network so they could actually communicate with their patients for more than six minutes.

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Side Link: Larry Page talks on advancing science through having scientists place an emphasis on marketing themselves.

A Change for Free

I’ve been using WriteRoom for the past few weeks and absolutely love it. One problem. My free 30-day trial period is over this week. Despite how awesome and simple WriteRoom is, I don’t want to shell out the $24.95 for it.

Well, in the mysterious ways of the world, I just stumbled upon DarkCopy, a web-based version of WriteRoom.

In an age of competition and ubiquity, free wins out.

On Brands

A brand is a commitment.

You have to show up everyday. People expect you to be there because whether you like it or not, you made a promise to them.

Your product, your service, your blog, yourself…whatever it is. Because the actions you take and the words that you speak create expectations.

For example, I get Starbucks because they make really good coffee (sorry to every independent roaster out there, they just make damn good coffee). I consistently get good coffee, so I expect it. Now, if Starbucks were to completely change their brewing method or focus on espresso drinks such as Machiatto’s and lose sight of making consistently amazing coffee, I would probably get up and go to the next coffee place. I might even get really angry and start threatening them (I’m addicted to caffeine but not that addicted), because good Lord, there are a lot of fanatics out there who have a lot of time and anger to spare.

This was exactly what happened nearly 20 years ago when Coke made their infamously bold/stupid (notice not stupid/bold because it was actually a ballsy move) to change recipes to the New Coke. What happened, national outrage. Coke had singlehandedly alienated its entire global customer base through this one move. Why? Because their traditional recipe was what they were synonomous with.

Now, let’s zoom to today, 2008. Nowadays, a move like this from Coke would spell imminent disaster. Back then, there were other options (Pepsi being the obvious), but not like today. If you even lose an inch of shoulder room, the newest sexiest product fills its place.

We’re in the age where Starbucks can easily be replaced with Peet’s, Coffee Bean, or any of the thirty or more local roasters every town is springing up these days. We have options, and the patience to to allow anybody else with a decent gimmick and a few bold promises to have our attention. So long as they carry through their promise and maintain and mature their brand as their user base hopefully grows up with them. And so the cycle never ends, perpetual motion.

Thus, your brand has to define it’s vision clearly and spell it out for the customer, otherwise they’ll stop listening and move onto one of the other 80,000 options.

Alltop v. Netvibes v. Too Much Information

I have been using Guy Kawasaki’s recently released Alltop.com for a few months now and absolutely love it. Some people have their qualms with Alltop, saying that it’s RSS for idiots.

Guy Kawaskai describes Alltop as an online magazine rack. The site basically breaks the web down into categories such as design, small business, finance, sports, etc., and takes the top 25 blogs from each subtopic in these genres. This creates a highly focused web experience.

Alttop sorts the information for me without input on what I think the top 25 blogs are, they [supposing they is the data aggregated over the internet and the top hits in the blogosphere....at least dear God I hope so] have chosen it for me.

Contrast this to Google Reader or Netvibes which I’ve been using for the past year. Netvibes and Reader were great for exposing me to new content daily from the top feeds I came across on the internet. However, accounting for all of this information over time and sorting through what was relevant and what wasn’t became, well, just like any other disappointing and unfocused experience on the internet. My feeds just became obese and a mental burden over time, I didn;t know what I was looking for anymore.

The problem with people like me, or another consumer for that matter, is that I don’t know what it is I like until somebody shows me. Alltop picks the top info for me and I do what I do, read.

Does your product make a consumer’s life easier or more cluttered?

The Death of the Resume

In the wake of the digital age, we’re still using the same old paper processes in the midst of adopting all these cool new technologies. The resume is a perfect example.

Why have we created all of these massive and complex databases when we stuff them with the same old resume?

Seth Godin had an awesome post the other day about resumes. Basically, if you’re looking for a job and just submit a word document resume with the same generic cover letter, chances are you’re going to get lumped in the same pile as all of the other bland candidates.

This is really why creating an online presence is necessary. When over 60% of employers “Google” prospective canfidates, you better hope that a decent portfolio of your ideas, designs, and work should be readily displayed…not the pictures from that night you and “the bro’s” went our for a drinks to go “shoot some birds.”

If you really want to become great; start by understanding that in the digital age, word of mouth travels MUCH faster and by MUCH more people than you may never know or meet.

Email, Your Boss, and Social Networks

Email is dead.
Why can’t I have a social page at work that shows my coworkers my research interests, articles read, interesting data/ideas generated, etc. I could actually be a person, an expert in some field that they had never taken the time to find out about before. All this rather than burying my messages in unread emails which require follow-up emails.

Listen to your employees and their interests, reward or nudge them accordingly. This way people have an identity and incentive to take pride in themselves and their work.

If anybody has a cool system which uses something like social networking at work, please share, because it could help a lot of organizations.