This thing is pretty slick.

Web 2.0 – much much easier that the 1.5-1.6 days.

And sure enough they had it on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Quotes-Leaders-Peggy-Anderson/dp/1564142868

pretty sweet. Figured I pay for the hosting space might as well play around with it.

Basically this blog posts articles about how to intergrate technology into your everyday life to make yourself more productive.  Among the coolest things I’ve found on this site is a link to mint.com. Security concerns aside, I took the plunge and it is freakin’ cool. I’ve come to not use any technology if it doesn’t do something for me that I wouldn’t want to do myself, and in this case its balance my check book and give me a clear picture of my finances across all my accounts and credit cards.

and

consumerist.com

This site has turned me into a customer service fiend. I came to the realization, i would estimate at over 2 years ago, that if you ever have an issue that requires a call to a customer service rep, be it for a cell phone bill, or other account issue you must have had some bad karma coming to you. A call to a comcast service rep is a pain in the ass I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. This site documents egregiously bad customer service incidents as well as puts an ever brightening spot light on corporate Americas “screw the consumer” attitudes.

Powered by ScribeFire.

    For the feint of heart or technologically less-inclined you can get a host such as dreamhost that has one-click installs to get you up and blogging with literally the push of a button. I’m contemplating moving on over there as the features seem unbeatable and the host is run and owned entirely by its employees which seem to have been making an honest effort to improve there service quality and avoid, well as much as possible, overselling space on there servers.

On a seperate note these blogs are good reads….

http://www.steve-olson.com — no idea how I came across this one but he has some very original ideas, a few of which but not all appeal to me.

http://www.blogmaverick.com — .Com billionaire Marc Cuban’s blog. His topic are wide ranging but he always seems to be one step ahead of the main stream of just about any business topic, be it marketing, advertising, sales, or technology. This ability to be ahead of the competition is likely what made him the majority of his fortune.

Score. First time I’ve had a cooler PC @ work than my rig at home.

And for those not in the know check out these links. Good Reading.

• The DailyWTF
• [H]Consumer

Lately I’ve been reading alot of forums. Mainly regarding two things I love. My car and my computer. And I’ve read both of these forums for a good time, but if I ever get bored I can go read up on just about anything and get what I would call semi-reliable, as in I would verify anything posted by these internet-know-it-alls/experts with at least three reliable sources not connected in anyway to the internet. But I digress..

Recently with the proliferation of photoshop and other basic photo editing software, image search engines , and digital cameras dropping into the price range of just about any body able to hold a minimum wage job the masses have started to create what I’ve come to know ,and usually derive a good chuckle out of, as thread bombs.

The Life Cycle of a thread on the internet usually goes as follows:

• Statement or question, usually of a technical manner at least in the forums I frequent. Another type of thread starter are the look at me’s, which usually just consist of stupid pictures of what someone has bought or done to what they purchased or them desperately seeking attention from faceless people that think alike on the internet.
• Replies. If the question or statement was well formed and in complete sentences once in a rare while useful information can change hands. However, those are the exceptions and not the norm. And if you read forums you know what I’m talking about, but heaven forbid you forget to read the stickies, because if so do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars, and proceed directly to receiving multiple replies along the lines of “can’t you read”, “are you retarded?”, or “use the search, jackass”.
• Counter point/example explaining why all the previous replies were stupid/and or wrong. This is the fuse of the thread bomb, so to speak. It usually goes down hill quickly after this.

These are by no means set in stone rules, but if you have ever followed or participated in a forum you can probably relate to at least a few of the points. Now thread bombs are the random gifs interspersed into threads, usually, but not always containing 4 letter words.

Here is a good source for a few examples —> http://www.ondmis.dk/forumpics1.htm

And lately my greatest joy has been including these pictures in my reply-to-all messages, as the images work just as well to the stupid mass e-mails that everyone’s friends usually send out. Don’t get me wrong I like getting them, but I like hitting reply-to-all and attaching a funny pic just knowing what some of the recipients faces/reactions are going to be when seeing them.

A Harvard Kennedy School of Government Study called “The Hype vs. Reality vs. What People Value: Emerging Collaborative News Models and the Future of News” analyzes why people participate in sites like Slashdot and Digg, and what they do there:

* mostly young and male, especially those who visit technology-related sites.
* very active in their use of the sites.
* looking for “a fix of unique, informative fun.”
* and “filling in the blanks” left by traditional news sources.
* sharing what they know.
* looking for and finding multiple perspectives.

LINK to the full paper

Check this out.

http://thelaststand.dell.com.edgesuite.net/sneakpeek/large.html