glenn is going to be a dad
Read this essay describing the feelings of someone who will soon be a first time parent. It sounds like many of the things I was thinking when I was in the same boat. Check out this post from furia log:
[snip…] Nothing is ending. Or a thousand things are ending, both huge and trivial, like they do while you're waiting for anything new. It's weird that we're in charge of picking our daughter's name at all, weird that we're going to be making command decisions about another person's life, weird that it will be so long until she has the powers to which she's inalienably entitled. [snip…]
(from : The End of the Sky(e))
All the best, glenn!
Most memorable, interesting ETECH talk
I don't want to label myself as a fuddie-duddie. I keep thinking back to this talk at ETech. Quinn Norton is a engaging and funny speaker who talked about "body hacking" (click to see the slides)
I learned things like what "Furries" are, that people (including Quinn) have implanted rare earth magnets into their finger tips, literally trying to get a sixth sense, what provigil is, and lots of other wonders. As I said, a memorable talk.
I learned new things. If that makes me a fuddie-duddie, so be it 😉
Bush on TV, quoting two blogs
Is this a sign of the times? President Bush is on TV right now giving a speech about why he's right about Iraq. To bolster his case, he quotes two bloggers located in Baghdad! (Jokingly: "yeah, they have bloggers in Baghdad too, heh, heh") Of course he doesn't cite the sources or the links so I can't tell anything about where the flowery quotes come from. Still it's a sign of the stature that blogs are getting in the public discourse.
Use Google to enhance your conference experience
I'm at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, aka "ETech"… really interesting. One 'trick' that just occurred to me is working well. When confronted with a series of sessions in the same time slot, instead of just going by the title of the talk, a quick google on the speaker is a great way to select which session to go to.
For example, the next time slot has 5 presentations by people I didn't know: Gil Penchina, Peter Biddle, Richard Sprague, Simon Wardley and Adrian McDermott. (Yeah it's my failing that I didn't know you guys, if you find this post ego-surfing 🙂
But anyway, despite some very non-descriptive session titles, thanks to google, I now know what which one I want to go to.
See you at ETech! Also, BlogBridge 5.0 almost there
Look for our BlogBridge Release 5.0 in the next several days. You will get automatically updated, so just sit back and enjoy it. When we actually release it we will also post to this blog with some pointers to the highlights of the new release.
Also, I will be attending O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (aka "ETECH") in San Diego (USA) next week and will be getting together a meetup or BOF of BlogBridge users and others with an interest. If you want to join me in San Diego, please send me an email, and I will get in touch with the where and when.
Congratulations Antonio, Ned, and the rest of the Tabblo guys!
I just stumbled (get it?) across this:
"Hewlett-Packard announced Thursday that it plans to acquire start-up Tabblo, citing an interest in the photo-sharing site's technology that facilitates printing from the Web." (from C|Net News)
Nice going guys!
Interesting: Best Buy Still Using Its Secret Website
Check out this post from Consumerist:
uy has confirmed the existence of a second "secret" website that looks identical to BestBuy.com, but has different prices and is only available inside Best Buy stores. This misleading website has been shown to customers who come into Best Buy stores looking to price match a product seen on the website. Best Buy is currently under investigation in Connecticut, but it seems as if at least one store is still showing customers the "secret" website instead of the real one
Put Down Your #2 Pencils And Use Your .EDU Email To Get Free TimesSelect
Check out this post from Consumerist:
Use your .edu email to access TimesSelect, the subscription section of the New York Times. It's free for students and teachers. Yay!—MEGHANN MARCO
(from: Put Down Your #2 Pencils And Use Your .EDU Email To Get Free TimesSelect)
Note to you old folks: you probably have a .edu account from your Alma Mater's alumni office. Just go onto your university's web site and look for Alumni email. Of course you probably can afford to pay for a New York Times subscription 🙂
Interesting ideas about using iTunes more effectively
Check out this post from Apple Gazette:
TUAW points us toward a really cool iTunes plugin that does something very simple, and very well. This is really useful.
[GEEKY] The Most Popular Anchor Phrases for Your Site
Useful and interesting information from Google for Webmasters. Chec out this post from Google Operating System:
Google Webmaster Central shows the most popular 100 phrases used by other sites to link to your site. If you go to Statistics / Page analysis, you'll find a list of anchor phrases, obtained by removing punctuations. Google's algorithms use those keywords to understand a page better.