Archives for October 2010

Spark Naked

Posted on October 28, 2010 Written by

You can’t start a fire, you can’t start a fire without a spark…

At times we grope and we strain against hope in “finding something to write about.”

That link leads to a Google search, which turns up more than a quarter of a billion entries.

You could read 100 of those links a day, every day, for the next 6,931 years, and still have 18,500 links left unread.

That’s a lot of reading to do, in order to find an inspiration.

Why not go outside and go for a walk?

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[Read more…]

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Drive By Disappointment

Posted on October 27, 2010 Written by

Be careful. You might be advertising an availability that you aren’t delivering upon, because public assumptions are changing.

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Dinner is Served

I was getting ready to roll out of Tuscaloosa after my Tuesday afternoon presentation at the University of Alabama when I realized that I was going to be getting back long after dinner. I decided to stop at Hardee’s and pick up a low-carb (bunless) cheeseburger on the way out of town.

As I pulled toward the drive-through lane to order, I saw a pickup truck parked next to the speaker, and a guy wearing a headset walking away. He saw me, jumped back in the truck, and pulled forward. [Read more…]

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War of Words

Posted on October 22, 2010 Written by

Our Bible study on Wednesday night started with a question:

What’s the difference between happiness and joy?

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I thought I knew, but didn’t really. I had my own ideas, but was curious to know how others stacked them up. So, being the diligent linguist, I posted the same question to my Twitter and Facebook. [Read more…]

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Scaring Up Some Action

Posted on October 21, 2010 Written by

It’s great when you can grow a community online, share ideas, and even inspire.

Yet most online communities (and connections, for that matter) don’t grow beyond “Accept” and “Like.”

So why build an engine for action without giving it some traction? [Read more…]

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Unlocked Locks

Posted on October 20, 2010 Written by

Electronic publishing, in all of its varied forms, has freed us from the tyranny of packaging. How much longer can the remaining tyrants hold on to their traditions?

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A Tangled Past

Keisa Sharpe and I have been professionally woven since 1996. We were part of the startup ABC affiliate in Birmingham, and worked together for nearly eight years. I left for the Red Cross, and three years later she joined me in the regional office, where we served five states with communications counsel. When those field offices were in danger of being wiped out in layoffs, I tipped Keisa off to a position with Alabama Power, and landed another one there for myself. We’ve been here together for two-and-a-half years, and it’s been a blast working with her. However well we got along, Keisa always kept some parts of her life very close.

Early in 2009, there was a problem, and I didn’t know about it for a long time. I just knew she was missing work. It was much later that I found out about The Accident. [Read more…]

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Predictions About Predictions

Posted on October 19, 2010 Written by

Three-and-a-half years ago, I wrote a spoof about how analysis of mood and syntax on Twitter could be used to predict a woman’s likely moment of ovulation.

A year-and-a-half ago, I wrote a piece about how Google was assembling a significant-enough chunk of content creation and distribution, it would have a prediction engine that could intelligently mine for patterns, and maybe even pick stocks. (All that Google lacked was a micro-blog style service, like Twitter.)

And now?

Twitter Mood Predicts The Stock Market

An analysis of almost 10 million tweets from 2008 shows how they can be used to predict stock market movements up to 6 days in advance.

Give it a read. Actually, give them all a read.

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The Cindy In Your Town

Posted on October 15, 2010 Written by

The fakes appear to have the shakes.

(This is a follow up to Friending Strangers on Fakebook. Please read it first. I’m told it is long, but that it doesn’t seem like it.)

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Based on the reports I’m getting from friends, it appears “Cindy Robertson” isn’t going anywhere. You’d think she’d pack up and leave Birmingham. Load up her loft-full of items, pack the toys for the six or seven kids she has, and skedaddle for better places. Maybe she can work for Intel in Yuma.

Some of my friends are still seeing her profile, others aren’t seeing anything at all. So she’s blocking some, but still has more than 4,600 friends as of this post.

Good riddance to bad marketing, but I fear this is going to be a never-ending whack-a-mole with fake headshots popping up. At least until enough people are smart about their connections that it’s not worth it.

I hinted there were others, and likely many more in other cities.

Here’s a little circumstantial evidence for your consideration. [Read more…]

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