Posts Tagged ‘year’

You might remember the products. You might remember the hype. Then, you are tooling down highway 41 years later and all of a sudden you think to yourself – “Hey, whatever happened to…”

Failed ideas. Maybe it was a great idea, but wasn’t made right, or design errors brought it down. Maybe it was just a bad product. Well, let’s take a stroll down memory lane and see if we cannot repeat these errors again.

Oh yeah, why 16? Well because we could.

The Computer Watch: Whether it was the Ruputer, the MSN Direct ‘Smart’ Watches, the Timex Data Link Watch or another gadget watch – BTW – I remember having a “Transformers watch”. It was awesome!

Still, the Dick Tracey style communication watches, the “Computer on a wrist”, never really hit it off. I even remember a watch that gave you directions. You would put in the paper tape and turn a little dial to indicate where you are and where you are going.

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I use Twitter a lot. I wanted to stay informed, especially from friends. I decided to port all direct messages to my cell phone. That way I didn’t have to install a Twitter client. At first that was great – I could respond to people I need to talk to.

That has all changed with the Twitterbot.

Now, if I “Follow” the wrong person, I get a direct message:

Thanks for following me. I hope to talk to you, but in the meantime: here is a free gift hllp://i.am.spamming/you.

I am not impressed – In fact, I am downright annoyed. You want to get unfollowed by me? Then all you have to do is send me a bot like that. I’ll unfollow you in a heartbeat.

I don’t mind @replies. But the direct replies are the ones that go to the cell phone too. I am glad someone is trying to open communication, but this is redicuous.

So what can be done to change this?

Twitter could block directly direct messages – Maybe set up a blocker to direct messages until the two have conversed or a 30 day grace period has passed. Maybe even an

“Allow this person to DM you” option. Just because I want to follow them doesn’t mean I want them to spam me.

DM Karma – If your Karma is below a certain level, you cannot DM anyone.

In the meantime, I am going to have to turn off the option to SMS me for direct messages. I guess what was a good thing last year might not be so much this.

It was a Double Whammy this week. Earlier, one of my favorite play websites – Bitstrips – celebrated a 1 year anniversary. At the same time, Thomas – author over at Dorkazine – celebrated a birthday. It was a lot more than a year and we won’t say how old he is, only that he achieved the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything (If you ever read Hitchhiker, you’ll know).

For a while I have been wondering what I should do with my old Podcasts – After all, they should be somewhere for access, but where? Today I decided to put up Episode 1 on the Internet Archive; a collective for archiving the World Wide Web.

It’s not a be-all/end-all for where my older shows are going to go. For now I will still have the old Podcasts in the exact same area as before. However, it’s always good to have another spot if you want to check out how the show has progressed. For now I will be putting up the first few shows on the site.

If you listen to the 1st show, you will notice it is called “The Show”. I didn’t have “Geekazine” just yet. It also contains the intro of my previous Podcast – “The Independant Music Podcast”. It’s a good meter of where the show has gone since October 2007.

Internet Archive is also responsible for the Wayback Machine – a website that Archives your website. I have a few websites archived there. You can see how a web site was like up to 10 years ago. This is great for figuring out if your website had a previous life.

Thanks to all involved for having a great outlet in the Internet Archive.

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You’ve been working at your job for years. You’ve made lots of money for the company and are the most loyal employee they know of. Yet, tough times are ahead and the company decides you are one of the 10% they have to let go to stay afloat. It’s a frustrating thing to have happen, but what are you gonna do?

Now let’s flip that: You are at your job and survive the cut, but now you are in the position to take up a part of that person who was laid off.

As companies like Intel and Google are looking at trimming the fat, it makes the average consumer wonder – what will our customer experience be without 10% of the workforce?

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…For 2008 that is…

Finally feeling Normal – Las Vegas – New Years – More Panelists on the LIVE Show

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All Show Notes are also on Delicious

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Wow. It was about a year ago I asked for people to send in thoughts as to what to expect in 2008. I also made some Technology predictions. But the real question was – How far off was I?

This is actually part 1 of a 2-part story. This first part reviews the predictions I made last year and how far off I was. Part 2 will have this years predictions, including predictions from CEO’s CTO’s TechPodcasters and even a Psychic.

So without any further ado, let’s pick apart my idiocy from last year:

OLPC will have some growing pains. The first part of OLPC will be the easiest. Maintaining the machines will be the trick. Microsoft coming onboard will muddy the water, but they might be able to do things like offer a better support network to third world countries.

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OK. It’s 4:51 AM and I am still up in front of the computer. I spent a lot of time on the site today doing major fixes and finishing the move of all the media. At 4 AM this morning, I completed the task. All 153 Podcasts are now on a new server. You should be able to get to any of the content over the last year.

Since I was up, I decided to commemerate with a Bitstrip. I call it an esoteric look at re-coding. Now I am going to sleep. Good night. ZZZZZ……….

Well, it was 366 days ago that the first posts for Geekazine surfaced (Leap Year, ya know). It’s been a little longer for the podcasts. Nonetheless, this site went live on November 7th 2007.

Since then we’ve had over 175 podcasts and video casts, over 400 posts, a few posts and some people got some great swag. We’ve talked with some great names in the last year – from Bryce Whittey from Technibble, Josh Chandler, to Jeri Ellsworth.

I would first like to thank everyone for a great first year. I would like to thank the sponsors: Gotomeeting.com, Careersaver.com are the two main ones. I would also like to thank all who have sent donations to the site.

Thanks to Norbert Davis from TCTPodcast.com for all the Cool Tech Corner episodes. Thanks to the cast at Techpodcasts, Blubrry and Raw Voice for making a great community. Thank you to uStream for giving me a facet to do the LIVE Show every Monday. Thanks to Vocalo – I haven’t made an episode there in a while simply because I just run out of time, but I am still appreciative for all they did.

I am going to make the next year even better. We have a good stream of people going to Geekazine and to the sister site: Dorkazine. I have some great news. I have signed up some more web sites and we are going to incorporate them into the family. More in future ramblings.

We survived the election. We survived the MicroYugo. We survived Steve Jobs health. We are Survivors – The Eye of the Tiger.

Once again, feel free to email me @ geekazine@gmail.com or call me at 608-205-4378 and say hi. Give me some ideas. Submit an article for use on the site. Let’s make next year better than ever!!

As a consultant, I use my own equipment all the time. When I get to a specific client, sometimes I am asked to sign a waiver that states I will not take company data. I sign it because I am not going to ruin any relationship by walking out with secrets or customer lists.

Data nowadays can be controlled. We at the Quickcast have talked about how that can happen many a time. However, the most important thing in a work environment is to make sure the data stays within the company – even after a person has left. Citrix Systems has given  Employees a bonus payment to buy their own laptop for corporate use. While it does give advantage, could the company lose control of the data?

Brought to you by CareerSaver – Download Free Certification Tests.

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It’s the Podcasts’ 1 YEAR Anniversary -GeekKon – CES – Interview with Walt Ribeiro – Future Segment – Paythefan – TechPodcast Roundtable

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Nominate Geekazine for a Peoples Choice Podcast Award
Give to the Salvation Army

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