A hyper-interactive reading technique

On the bus yesterday, I noticed that one of my colleagues was ferociously scribbling on a printout that he was reading. As we walked to our next bus, I asked him about it.

He explained that he has a sort of hyper-interactive reading style. As soon as he comprehends and absorbs (or in his words, groks) a sentence, he jots a mark next it. He literally does this after each sentence. If he has any other connected thoughts, he'll write those anywhere -- not necessarily in the margin. He said that all of his reading material is heavily marked up afterwards, and basically unreadable by anyone else. But. He claims that this method does wonders for his retention of the matieral.  

I'm intrigued, and I'd like to give it a shot. I can see how the tactile element (moving your pen after you "grok") could be really helpful. I've wanted to improve my content retention, lately. Maybe I just haven't been interactive enough with my reading material.

Of course, you can't really do this with library books.

Tags: productivity reading memory

Your very own Web 2.0 logo

I discovered this site this morning via Micro Persuasion, and I just couldn't help myself. Don't worry, it's temporary. :)

8/17 update --> I changed back to my original plain "Fixing Foibles and Follies" title. But for posterity's sake, this was my title banner for one day:

Tags: blogging Web 2.0

Ford's new-fangled marketing campaign

Three Minds @ Organic posted a positive review of the Ford Bold Moves site, which, after browsing through for a bit, I tend to agree with. It's a fascinating ad campaign that incorporates a blog and online documentary videos (currently at episode 9). What interests me is how Ford is inviting customers (or anyone who's interested) to participate in a strategy dialog.

Today's media audiences favor reality TV. They prize authenticity and eschew an obvious PR spin. In light of these facts, I think Ford's got the right idea here.

I'll get really excited when Ford starts producing truly energy-efficient vehicles. In the meanwhile, they're using energy-efficient furnaces. It's a start.

You can read another take on the Ford Bold Moves site here.

Tags: marketing Ford reality TV

Quick facts: biodiesel vs. ethanol

41%  Total percentage energy gain (how much more total energy is produced than the total amount invested) for corn-distilled ethanol.

93%  Total percentage energy gain for soybean-derived biodiesel.

12%  Percentage fewer greenhouse gas emissions for corn-distilled ethanol, compared with fossil fuels.

41%  Percentage fewer greenhouse gas emissions for soybean-derived biodiesel, compared with fossil fuels.

Note that these figures compare normal ethanol with biodiesel. I'd like to see how cellulosic ethanol stacks up. It has the advantage of not competing with food sources, and may have greater overall environmental benefits.

Source: Scientific American, September 2006. Just got this (excellent) issue in the mail; it's not yet available online.

Tags: alternative energy ethanol biodiesel cellulosic ethanol

Web 2.0: is the frenzy peaking?

There is currently a mad profusion of services designated Web 2.0. They are accompanied by ever-increasing reviews, commentary, and general blogsophere attention.

A few days ago, for instance, "web 2.0," "web-20," and "web2.0" were all within the 30 most active tags on Technorati ("web2.0" is the only one showing up now; the other two have been bumped by "Windows Live Writer" and something else). Are we smack dab in the middle of the Web 2.0 revolution?

A recent Gartner report examines four Web 2.0 trends -- Social Network Analysis, Ajax, Collective intelligence, and Mashups -- and concludes that Web 2.0 is at the peak of a hype cycle. In other words, it's at the second of five stages, in which:

a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.

Certainly, there is plenty of Hollywood-style hype surrounding the Web 2.0 world. Valleywag tracks all the hoopla, covering events like the recent wild party for Web 2.0 company Yelp.

Amongst all this fanfare, Webby's World points out that it's still pretty difficult to pinpoint just what Web 2.0 means:

Some say it’s merely a buzzword used by new Internet start-ups, powered by venture capitalism, as a way to generate hype; some say it’s a new style of design; some say it’s the new style of web development, i.e. AJAX and Ruby on Rails; and some say it’s simply the next step towards a Semantic Web. I doubt there’ll ever be consensus until what Web 2.0 is until is is was.

Whatever it is or isn't, Web 2.0 is attached as a label to new services that look pretty fun and interesting:

• Take Kevo, for instance, which is a social network for fans of celebrities (Mashable describes it as "Wikipedia meets Paris Hilton"). Natalie Portman is currently winning a popularity battle with Jesus Christ, by a rather significant margin.
• Singshot, a service that mixes karaoke and social networking, also recently made a debut. You can learn more about it here.
• Check out Emurse, an online resume-building application.
• And there's SlimTimer, which provides online time-tracking from within your browser.

Social networking is a big part of the Web 2.0 pheonomenon, and social networks have an interesting way of immediately catapulting regular people into celebrity status. A 79-year old Englishman has acquired a huge YouTube following, as has the the 16-year old known as lonely girl.

Web 2.0 also isn't confined to a few countries: it's thoroughly international, as a map on B2DAy 2.0 shows.

It's difficult to see how Web 2.0 could get much bigger; it will certainly start slowing down soon. In the meanwhile, it's a lot of fun to keep track of.

Tags: Internet trends Web 2.0 social networking Yelp hype Gartner

Using Windows Live Writer with Blogger

An astounding amount of blog posts have appeared today that are dedicated to the new blogging authoring tool from Microsoft: Windows Live Writer. The reviews are resoundingly positive:

• PaulStamatiou.com admits to not being the biggest fan of Microsoft products, but finds much to praise with this one. "It’s not some little mini-app Microsoft put out as an afterthought, this is a full-blown… blogging processor?"
  
• GigaOm, also not the biggest Microsoft fan, is very impressed.
  
• Performancing is generally impressed, but they (unsurprisingly) prefer their own blog editor, Performancing for Firefox.
  
• Digital Inspiration is equally impressed, but points out that a strange phantom post ("Temporary Post Used For Style Detection") appears after you configure your blog with Windows Live Writer. Although I experienced my own problems (see below), this didn't happen to me.
  
• And apparently, conspiracy theories are already linking Windows Live Writer with the NSA and Satanists.

As for myself, I downloaded the software tonight after work tonight, and this is the second post that I've created with it. I definitely agree with the positive reviews. Windows Live Writer is very easy to install. Naturally, it features Windows Live Spaces as a blogging service, but it is also compatible with all other major blogging services, including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, and WordPress.

The UI is clean and uncluttered, and the word processing functionality feels just like Word (albeit a very limited version).

My favorite part is the View Mode menu options (Look how those handy keyboard shortcuts are listed in plain view...ahh). The default view, Web Layout, is similar to the default Print Layout view in Word: It's a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) interface. The Web Preview is the really handy bit: you can see exactly what your post will look like in your blog, nestled correctly into your current template. (Granted, a million bloggers have covered Windows Live Writer today, but maybe I'm the only one that has used the word "nestled.")

The Web Preview function in Windows Live Writer is much, much better than Blogger's terrible built-in preview function (maybe Blogger is improving this in its new beta). But I do like how the Blogger editor lets you change the time and date of your posts (didn't know about this? Look in the bottom left corner of the Blogger editing pane for the "Post and Comment Options" section). Unfortunately, Windows Live Writer doesn't include this feature.

I also make much use of Blogger's "Post Template" feature, which lets you add a chunk of HTML to every post: for me, the paragraph of Technorati tags of the bottom of most of my topics. So far, I haven't found anything like this yet in Windows Live Writer.

However, Windows Live Writer has developed an SDK to allow developers to easily add their own enhancements. So we should be seeing all sorts of nifty plug-ins soon.

Note: I didn't have any problems writing this post with Windows Live Writer, but I wasn't able to publish it (or post the draft) to Blogger. I got this server error message:

Server Error 0 Occurred
com.google.blogger.exceptions.PostNotFoundException

I'm not sure why this is; I was able to publish my last post fine with Windows Live Writer. Maybe a problem on Blogger's end?

So, I had to do it the old-fashioned way, and copy the HTML into Blogger and publish from there.

Anyone else using Windows Live Writer? What do you think? Are you having any problems posting to Blogger?

Tags: Windows Live Writer blogging tools blogging Blogger

Blogger categories (real ones) have arrived

Perhaps overshadowed by today's deluge of blog posts dedicated to Windows Live Writer (which I'm trying out for the first time, with this post) is Blogger's announcement of a new beta version that supports categories. Blogger will be gradually rolling out invitations to try out the beta, but you can create a new account by using your Google account.

Digital Inspiration has posted a great review, with screenshots.

I haven't tried it out yet; I'll wait -- with baited breath -- for an invitation. This is definitely a great development for Blogger users.

Tags: blogging Blogger Blogger Categories

Web site review: Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Web site reviewed
Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Should you visit this site?
If you're even the slightest bit geeky, then yes! Narration and sound effects are an essential part of this site, so you'll need speakers or headphones.

My review
10/10

Summary
A Flash-based tutorial that quickly and effectively explains how to envision dimenions beyond the third.

Review
Ever since I saw my abysmally low scores on the spatial reasoning portion of school standardized tests, I've known that this isn't really one of my strong areas. But I've always been fascinated by discussions of dimensions. I've vaguely understood that the 4th dimension is time, but beyond that, I usually get lost in the space-bending discussions of Möbius strips and the like.

And so, it was with great pleasure that I watched the Flash-based tutorial on the Imagining the Tenth Dimension site, which I came across via Bad Language. It's an amazing example of a succinct, well-designed tutorial that breaks down a complex (for me, anyway) topic into easily understandable information. As one StumbleUpon reviewer comments: "Great information and great design, combined. Now that's rare."

Anyone who has read Flatlandwill recognize parts of the descriptions of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd dimensions. The "zero-th" dimension is a point, the 1st is a line, the 2nd a plane, and the 3rd is space -- which is like one giant point. So in a sense, the 3rd dimension repeats the "zero-th."

The tutorial then builds up to subsequent dimensions by repeating this point-line-plane cycle. The 4th dimension is a line (time) that connects 3-dimensional "points." I loved how the tutorial describes the 4th dimension as a "long, undulating snake," replete with eerie sound effects. Imagine your embryonic self at one tip of the snake and your (hopefully) old self down at the other. This brought to mind the scenes from Donnie Darko that show the wormlike timelines stretching out of characters' chests.

The tutorial works up from there: the 5th dimension is a plane of time, with an infinity of possible futures stretching forth from the current moment. The 6th dimension adds "depth" to the 5th-dimensional plane by including all possible timelines that may have occurred at any point in the history of our universe. This infinity of possible timelines shrinks to a single "point" in the 7th dimension, which is a line of 6th dimensional points (different universes). I won't attempt to explain the 8th through the 10th dimensions -- check out the tutorial!

Also quite interesting is the fact that this site, designed by OH! Media, is essentially a marketing vehicle for a book of the same name. This type of marketing -- online destinations that are effective educational tools of their own merit -- is great stuff.

I'd like to see more such sites. If you know of any, please add a comment!

Tags: tutorial marketing dimensions dimensional theory educational tools

Blog of the week: Aidal Ad Reviews

This week, my blog tenant is Aidal Ad Reviews. This blog evaluates ads (some current, some historical) based on four characteristics (awareness, interest, desire, action) and bestows yearly "aidal" awards to the winning ad. It's all done in a very tongue-in-cheek way, and the posts are a lot of fun to read.

My anfractuous employment history

I have had many jobs. So many, in fact, that I've lost count. One might well refer to my employment history as an anfractuosity, and I wouldn't disagree.

Many of these jobs, such as picking strawberries in the summer of '86, and my stint as a Diary Queen employee (pictured, you can see me all ready to head off to Dairy Queen - circa 1990) were "character-building" experiences, to say the least.

But I'll stop right there. I wonder, from looking at my blog, what you, good reader, might infer about the many-chapter'd book that is my job history. Even if you know me in real life -- you don't know every job I've had (I can't even remember, myself).

Try giving the following poll a shot. I'll post the answer, along with some more information about my employment history, on Saturday, August 19.

Which job has Jonathan never worked?
	Security officer
	Nurse's assistant
	Delivery driver
	Paperboy
	Amazon.com customer service
	Newspaper technology reporter
	Desktop publisher
	Software tester
Free polls from Pollhost.com