So we’re on vacation, enjoying our first two week stint at the beach ever. A great family time, right? Maybe. I’ve just realized this is also our first vacation where everyone, children included, has their choice of multiple personal entertainment devices. And that makes a difference.
Twitter are notoriously guarded about user information and Twitter usage statistics. In August 2008 I wrote about the Twitter usage figures and Twitter demographics that were available – data from Hitwise and Compete.
As Twitter has grown there is more information available – yet still nothing from Twitter officially and statistics generally do not take account of usage of Twitter tools like Tweetdeck and Twhirl.
For all the panels, parties and networking, the best part of SXSW was meeting some truly amazing people. There was an A-List of the “who’s who” at the conference, and many of whom I had met – like Erin Kotecki Vest, Brian Solis, Stephanie Agresta, and the list goes on- and many I looked forward to meeting for the first time.
Here is my list of the top ten Social Media rockstars that I met at SXSW (in no particular order). I believe everyone should meet these influential folks in 2009:
747 Emergency Landing – Qantas jet
I read about the explosive decompression on the Qantas flight in the local paper this morning and it the article mentioned cell phone video. Within 10 seconds I was in the plane and could see things for myself. Cell phone video is now nothing really new but it still amazes me that people have the presence of mind to act as media agents and recorders of history even in the midst of catastrophe. This is the first time I’ve really been impressed by this type of footage. Of course it probably pays well to sell that video to Reuters….
Anyone interested in following my project process might be interested in some of the stuff I’m using along the way. If nothing else, it will be interesting, to me at least, to look back on this list at the end of the project to see what worked and what did not. This is the kind of post only a geek could love. Continue reading
I’ll tell you that WordPress is the best blogging engine out there, but the “blog by email” feature set sucks. What is even worse is that even the rudimentary features that are avilable to make a post via email are totally incompatible with GoDaddy.com web hosting. Something to do with their php config and remote access and whatnot. When I try to execute the wp-mail.php file I just get a server timed out message. I’ve been at it for hours and got nothing… similar to what others have discovered. If anyone out there comes across my message in a bottle about this one please comment.
BTW, I’m also looking for anyone that has any leads on a wordpress client for an MS Smartphone.
I’d like to say I’m a genius, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes…. and in my case the nut happens to be a wonderful free/shareware product called GPS Utility. After some forum searchs I came across this application as a way to go directly from my Magellan MAP330M GPS to an ArcMap shapefile format in one step.
It turns out the process is Continue reading
Who’d have thought there was so much technical knowledge and creativity tied up in shoelaces? Most people figure they learned all they needed to know about shoelaces in kindergarten! Ian’s Shoelace Site contains all sorts of shoelace information, some of it useful, some just for fun. If you wear shoes with laces (or anything else that does up with laces), you’re bound to find something here that they don’t teach in kindergarten.
If you’re a blogger, it could be very easy for you run afoul of the law, in the eyes of some anyway. Here’s a legal guide from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that gives you some common guidelines to follow and let’s you know what your rights are as well.
If you’re interested to know what some of those rights are, here is a quick synopsis:
Original Ontrack Press Release
The Ontrack 2005 Top Ten List of Data Disasters and Remarkable Recoveries
10. PhD Almost an F – A PhD candidate lost his entire dissertation when a bad power supply suddenly zapped his computer and damaged the USB Flash drive that stored the document. Had the data not been recovered, the student would not have graduated.
9. Suffering from Art – While rearranging her home office, a woman accidentally dropped a five pound piece of clay pottery on her laptop, directly onto the hard drive area that contained a book she’d been working on for five years and 150 year-old genealogy pictures that had not yet been printed.
8. Domestic Dilemma – A husband deleted all of his child’s baby pictures when he accidentally hit the wrong button on his computer. His wife hinted at divorce if he did not get the pictures back.
7. Bite Worse than Bark – A customer left his memory stick lying out and his dog mistook it for a chew toy. Ontrack was able to recover all of the data despite teeth marks all over the stick and a hole that went completely through.
6. Don’t Try this at Home – A man attempting to recover data from his computer on his own found the job too challenging mid-way through and ended up sending Ontrack his completely disassembled drive – with each of its parts in a separate baggie.
5. Out of Time – A clockmaker suffered a system meltdown, losing the digital designs for all of its clocks. Ontrack literally beat the clock recovering all their data just in time for an important international tradeshow.
4. Drilling for Data – During a multi-drive RAID recovery, engineers discovered one drive belonging in the set was missing. The customer found the missing drive in a dumpster, but in compliance with company policy for disposing of old drives, it had a hole drilled through it.
3. Safe at Home – After one of their executives experienced a laptop crash, the Minnesota Twins professional baseball team called on Ontrack to rescue crucial scouting information about their latest prospects. The team now relies on Ontrack for all data recoveries within its scouting and coaching ranks.
2. Hardware Problems – A frustrated writer attacked her computer with a hammer. When the engineers received the computer, the hammer imprint was clearly visible on the top cover.
And finally, the number one most bizarre data disaster of 2005…
1. La Cucaracha – In hopes of rescuing valuable company information, a customer pulled an old laptop out of a warehouse where it had been sitting unused for 10 years. When engineers opened the computer, it contained hundreds of husks of dead and decaying cockroaches.