Howto as a category morphed out of a few things. I learned about the power of helpful content from Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. A second aspect of it was my natural inclination to share useful hacks.
I started writing this blog to explore the media so that I could advise clients so its roots were in the howto mentality. Over time, I built up a certain amount of authority based on the content that I shared here. This resulted in work for Econsultancy, teaching MBA students at a private Spanish university and a number of agency jobs.
Howto content tends to come when I am sharing skills and I have been developing AND that these skills can be easily codified into an article or two. I have also shared my personal workflow that I use to try and make sense of the world through online resources.
Many of the skills that I developed doing that came from a pre-social platform dominated world. Before Instagram told us how to look and TikTok told us what to think. And back when Google was actually useful, well more useful than it seems to be now.
I even wrote a couple of guides on how to get the most out of Google, but most of the advice won’t work any more as the platform did away with many shortcuts in favour of telling you which is the nearest coffee shop with free wifi.
The reason why howto ended up being one word rather than how to was down to the early version of Wordpress that I started to blog on and my lack of expertise more than anything else.
Nintendo announces new version of DS gaming handheld: the DSi » VentureBeat – interesting new design on the DS with the Nintendo DSi. The Nintendo DSi features two digital cameras, supports internal and external content storage, and connects to a Nintendo DSi Shop. The Nintendo DSi supports ‘physical games’ in addition to DS games with DSi-specific features and standard DS titles. The only exceptions in backwards compatibility is any DS products that use a Gameboy Advance slot.
Facebook Redesign Succeeds: Widgets Are Dead – interesting article on how the Facebook redesign has killed the basic widget Facebook application. Clearing this clutter will hopefully make Facebook a more useful and rewarding platform to use. I still personally dislike it however.
Social media and brands in 2009 – Shiny Red’s vox pop survey; nicely done. Wouldn’t necessarily agree with some of the trends such as the semantic web, but otherwise good material. More related content here.
James Earl Jones has one of the most distinctive voices in the entertainment industry as you can hear in this Sesame Street clip. You might recognise from his appearance in Conan the Barbarian film, but James Earl Jones has a surprising variety in his career across film, television and stage performance. James Earl Jones has done voiceover work for everything from Disney’s The Lion King to CNN station idents.
Hollow Spy Coins – talk about niche businesses, this is definitely on the long tail. You have to admire their dedication to engineering this.
Economics
Boomtown of Dubai feels effects of global crisis – International Herald Tribune – Until recently, credit in Dubai was growing by 49 percent a year, according to the Emirates’ Central Bank — a rate almost double that of bank deposits’ growth. That unnerved some bankers here, who felt it could lead to a collapse. “In the U.S., the challenge is about keeping the banks going,” said Marios Maratheftis, chief economist for Standard Chartered Bank. “Here, the economy has been overheated, a correction is needed, and it’s about making sure the slowdown happens in a smooth, orderly manner.”
Klein Verzet: Freaking doomed – the premise is that the demand for shipping of raw materials like coal, bauxite and iron ore have ground to a stand still and soon even the factories of China will be a lot quieter – so the economic outlook is nothing short of ammegeddon
P&G to launch washing gel that cleans at 15 degrees – Brand Republic News – Brand Republic – “According to P&G, Ariel’s Cool Clean campaign encouraged more than five times as many customers than normal to switch to low-energy washing programmes, with Ariel customers twice as likely as the average consumer to wash at a lower 30 degrees temperature (28% of Ariel customers in 2007 versus 13% of those using other brands). P&G has a partnership with the Energy Saving Trust, which encourages people to use energy efficiently and reduce their carbon footprints.”
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Data Debasement | PBS – cloud computing versus DBMS, interesting reading, I need to go back and look at it a few more times to understand it fully. But initial take is that parallel computing as well as parallel processing changes how computing works and databases have to be adapted (like Oracle’s Grid database concept from the tail end of the dot com era and cloud computing. It’s the failings of Moore’s law rather than progress that is driving this change
Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman – while I have sympathy for some of what Mr Stallman says, his argument misses the point about the benefits of social software. Open formats and APIs allow you to move from one service to another as needs must.
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Collateral Damage | PBS – interesting take on the mobile market, not one that I necessarily agree with, but interesting none the less. Cringely expect that Microsoft Windows Mobile software will fail and has some interesting ideas around the why. I think Microsoft has everything to play for with enterprise users and can leverage items like security authentication and Outlook email access – they might not be dominant but they could still be in with a shout
Beginning of end of megapixel marathon – Pixel count gives phones and cameras the ‘Dixons Factor’ – being able to be sold easily by some pimple-faced oik; but doesn’t mean you will have better quality pictures. I have a digital SLR which takes pictures at 5.1 megapixels and a phone camera that will do the same – no prize for which one takes the better pictures.
Japanese Women Shy From Dual Mommy Role – washingtonpost.com – “The stakes are high here in the world’s second-largest economy, which now has the world’s highest proportion of people over 65 and lowest proportion of children under 15. According to a recent forecast, population loss will strip Japan of 70 percent of its workforce by 2050.”
Artificial DNA Could Become Savior Of Technology | PSFK – Trends, Ideas & Inspiration – PSFK isn’t normally the place I would go for futurism but their take on artificial DNA is interesting. Artificial DNA offers opportunity as a storage medium that could be much more compact than today’s flash storage or hard drives. Artificial DNA also offers opportunities in new classes of medicinal treatments that might be personalised.
Lost In Translation: Japanese Market Not Sold On iPhone Cool Factor – In Japan, like elsewhere, gadget fans lined up to be some of the first to buy the new iPhone last week. However, after the initial rush, it appears that consumers there aren’t completely sold on the device. Part of this is down to the high quality level of services that they have been used to on their flip phones with added carrier based services and even a social network called Mixi. The iPhone will need to provide a better experience optimised for Japanese consumers
EitaroSoft is an interesting Japanese WeeWorld style avatar competitor but it is much more focused on gaming. EitaroSoft developed Japan’s first 3D engine with application software. It then developed a 3D avatar system based on its self-developed 3D technology. EitaroSoft made Japan’s first 3D avatar system for a mobile phone browser by using Ajax running in the browser. More here
How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand – the vernacular of language changes all the time. English was spread around the world by a common culture but has been adapted in different ways. In addition, youth and minority cultures adapt it for their own use
How to
PR Skillsets of the Future – nice article by my old colleague Dan Young on how PR skillsets need to change in order to take account of technological and media industry changes
Feedtweeter – converted RSS to tweets for content syndication
Apple to .Mac Subscribers – Sync Bookmarks by Sunday – NYTimes.com – this is huge for Apple user experience. I use bookmarks to add functionality for my different Mac and iPhone accounts for instance my social bookmarklet, taking this away would hamper my productivity