Archive for April, 2008|Monthly archive page
Turn Your Wii into a Digital Whiteboard
Leave a CommentJohnny Lee uses a Nintendo Wii to create an affordable digital whiteboard and more:
Video: Johnny Lee at TED
Safari Helps You Drop the Dot-Com
Rob suggested to Seth Godin that we can drop the dot-com when speaking about domain names just as many have dropped the www.
I checked, and Safari 3 does not require the dot-com. What a great feature! Unlike Firefox, which uses Google’s “I feel lucky” feature when you enter in a word without the dot-com, Safari just adds the dot-com for you. Give it a try.
For example, typing “safari” into the Safari address bar takes you to the african sightseeing site safari.com, not the web browser’s site apple.com/safari, even though the web broswer’s site is #1 on a Google Search for “safari”.
Seth suggests the dot-com will stick around as shorthand for “our website is.” I agree. Still, thank you to Apple for not requiring me to type “.com” every time I visit my usual sites (wikipedia, amazon, techmeme).
Use Google Reader to Get Into Your Customer’s World
One of the most important things to do when starting a new job is to learn the language and issues of your customer’s industry. The media are a great way to get acquainted. Any budding executive knows to reads the What’s News column of the Wall St. Journal every morning. When I started a job in advertising sales last year, I looked at my prospect’s desk to see what they were reading. I saw Advertising Age, Marketing News, the local NAIOP and Chamber of Commerce newsletters, and even our publication, the Las Vegas Business Press, so I started reading those. Now that I am in telecom, I read CIO and Networking Computing.
One of the best ways to quickly scan the headlines of any publication is with an RSS feed reader (short video about RSS). I currently use Google Reader, but there are many other great RSS feed readers available.
BONUS: Create a Google Alert to stay current with the latest news about your company and your customers. Type in the company name, and Google will alert you anytime there is a new article about that company on the web. You can make alerts for people, too. Unfortunately, you cannot get Google Alerts via RSS feeds yet.
Only 15% of U.S. Buildings Have Fiber
From Vertical Systems:
Fiber penetration now extends to 15.3% of U.S. commercial buildings with twenty or more employees, up from 10.2% in 2003. All remaining locations comprise the “Fiber Gap”, or business locations with no fiber access facilities. Optical fiber is a key enabler for the delivery of broadband network services at speeds up to Gigabit rates, including Business Ethernet, IP VPNs, VoIP and IP video.
Said Rosemary Cochran, Principal at Vertical Systems Group: “Fiber gaps are closing, but not rapidly enough to meet market demand across all customer segments.”
