Thanks, Jenny!

A little exchange I had regarding privacy (which I do not really value as highly as I value transparency). I learned that not everyone shares my values, and that, for many, eschewing Google products is the most appropriate choice:

Thanks for allowing me to learn something new, Steve!

Opinion: Why I’m dropping Google: Google Buzz, blog deletions show the search giant doesn’t respect users’ privacy – Computer World

By connecting humans to one another, the internet has revolutionized communication, and by extension it has also revolutionized aspects of every other discipline. This can be seen quite clearly in the lightning-fast response to the post-earthquake humanitarian crisis in Haiti.

Within an hour of the quake, news reports were disseminated across the globe instantly. Those reports made mention of the quake, its location, and its severity. That put aid agencies on alert, and sparked hundreds of thousands of subsequent phone calls between consular officials, humanitarian/aid organizations, foreign militaries, airlines, medical staff, concerned families, et cetera. The fight to save Haiti became viral, and the virus’ method of delivery was undoubtedly the internet.

The internet has allowed for much more than quick dissemination and virality of news results. On Wednesday, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal posted image galleries online which effectively communicate the scale of the destruction to outsiders. The image galleries act as a crucial emotional appeal to humans’ nurturing instincts, and are most probably responsible for a surge in the size and quantity of charitable donations being made.

Already, Haitian-American recording artist Wyclef Jean has managed to raise more than $750,000 for his Haiti-focused charity, Yele, by soliciting donations via Twitter. His charity accepts donations via the internet, and through SMS shortcode (Anyone on an American wireless carrier who texts ‘YELE’ to the phone number 501 501 makes a donation of $5 to Yele which is charged to their mobile phone bill). Without the viral platform that Twitter offers, Wyclef Jean’s charity surely would have raised much less money.

The immediacy, virality, and rich media offered by our modern internet has surely helped save the lives of Haitians who would’ve perished without it.

If you’d like to make a donation to the relief effort, consider the following organizations:

Direct Relief International
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières
Yele

I’ve seen games in Excel before, but this is something else:

Spreadtweet is a Twitter client that makes a person’s incoming Twitter stream look like a typical Excel spreadsheet, giving the impression that an employee is working when they really are not.

Via The Type-A Way (Thanks, Marina!)

Thanks, Andrew.

I sat down with Gist CEO T.A. McCann last Friday and got a personalized introduction to their messaging application. I’m finally importing all my messaging, contacts, and social networking data into Gist so I can use it as my centralized messaging center day-to-day.

It’s fascinating what kinds of things Gist can tell you about your contacts:

Imagine I had a meeting scheduled with Marcelo Calbucci next week. I could look at his Gist profile and see which media organizations had mentioned him in the last week, and what they wrote about him. That way, I can be caught up on what’s going on in Marcelo’s world before even sitting down with him.

Gist functions in a very similar fashion to my BlackBerry’s Messages application, and by that I mean that it’s a centralized destination that gives a timeline of my communication with all my contacts no matter the platform (email, Facebook messaging, Twitter, et cetera). That kind of continuity and context is important in our modern, connected, busy world. And to top it off, you can reply using any and all platforms right from Gist. No need to open up Facebook or Gmail in a separate tab.

This thing is just going to blow Google Wave out of the water because it harnesses the power of context. It combines communication and contextual relationships into one, bringing a human element into messaging–something that Google could only wish they’d thought of building into Wave.

It seems like this product was purpose-built for me. If they made me pay monthly for it, I would–in a second.

I’m going to write about any new Gist features that strike my fancy each week, as I get to know the software better, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, try it out yourself: https://beta.gist.com/dashboard

At 8GB, my BlackBerry now matches (most) iPhones when it comes to storage, and still manages to weigh less, have a keyboard, and push email/contacts/calendar entries to the device. I’m throwing my 2GB iPod Nano out the window.

In my very scientific tests vetting newcomer search engine Wolfram Alpha against stalwart Google, Wolfram Alpha has failed:

Astronomy? Seriously? I know you’re in beta, but is that all you can come up with? Are you confused? Wait, are you…..oh no.

I mean, that’s fine and all. Wolfie, me and you are still cool. Just not that cool. Like, we can still play XBOX. You just can’t stay over anymore now that I know you’re not on my team. Not that I’m against people like you–I’m not. Really.

Long-time Man-staple Google, on the other hand, when searched for “hottest girl earth” comes up with a TON of great entries, including the top entry, a photo spread of Megan Fox (who is pretty much the hottest piece around) from Maxim.

Google 1, Wolfie 0 (or should I start calling you Bruce?) .

I’m a very effective Google searcher, and after meeting a new contact, it takes me less than a minute to find out everything I want to know about that contact using Google. I call it being well-informed, but it could seem a little stalker-ish, depending on if you’re the one being Googled, or the person Googling.

A new startup, Gist, is attempting to kill my information advantage over the Search Plebes. Their product rifles through your email inbox looking for names, and comes up with tidy little reports for you that will help you know your contacts better before your meeting with them. It’ll show you all your communication with that contact no matter the platform (email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs). It’ll tell you what is being said about them in blogs. It’ll tell you what they’ve been writing about in blogs. It can tell you so many things that, in reality, your future in-person meeting with them will be just a formality, because all your questions for them will already be answered by Gist in advance. Skynet will then hunt you down.

I love their idea. The inbox is the ultimate tool, and hasn’t seen much innovation. I think, ideally, Gist would be bought NOW by Google, who could integrate Gist into GMail, negating the need to use any other messaging platforms by way of integrating communication in one place. Google has already been doing that with their additions of GoogleChat, AIM, and GoogleTalk into GMail.

Foundry Group, Allen’s Vulcan inject $6.75 million into Gist – TechFlash

This is an amazing time to be alive, what with all the things that are changing, evolving, improving.

A major step was just taken that will revolutionize how video is produced and consumed. It’s called the Panasonic GH1.

It dispenses with the traditional SLR mirror and optical viewfinder, allowing a shorter lens-to-sensor distance; in turn enabling smaller, lighter, and quieter cameras. The platform, called ‘Micro Four Thirds’, maintains the same-size image sensor as a traditional DSLR, and uses similar (though smaller) interchangeable lenses that allow for shallow depth of field, which is one of the defining characteristics that DSLRs have long had a monopoly on versus point-and-shoot consumer cameras.

So it’s smaller. Why is this camera so revolutionary, then?

Well, size is not the revolution. HD video functionality is.

Though hardly the first digital camera to shoot HD video (notable examples include the Canon 5D Mark II and the Nikon D90) the GH1 manages to provide jaw-droppingly-good HD video (1080p) in a smaller and less-expensive package* than its predecessors and rivals. This means that any idiot with a thousand bucks, a subject, and a PC can become a movie producer.

Here’s the freshest example of HD video shot off a Panasonic GH1 (if you watch the HD version closely and notice the shallow depth of field and fantastic quality, you’ll understand how revolutionary this is!):

Panasonic Lumix GH1. First footage from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

What we’ve seen with print media–the replacement of the top-down newspaper/magazine model with a more democratic, user-generated model–is exactly what is going to happen with digital video. With the increased accessibility of cheap HD video recording, sites like Vimeo and FunnyOrDie are going to be swimming in quality user-generated content (if they’re not already). The losers are going to be the big studios, whose only advantages will be 1) bigger budgets for marketing/production, 2) star power, and 3) existing distribution channels (movie theaters, et cetera). The studios, however, will be at a massive disadvantage on the internet, coming up against small niche players who will be able to undercut them on production cost AND content pricing, providing the content for free (ad-supported). If the big studios eschew the free-content route, as print media did, and they’ll lose market share to the internet upstarts.

This is a MASSIVE opportunity for anybody with film-making experience. You have the opportunity to be involved in a revolution. Yes, the democratization of HD video will mean declining prestige, and an increasingly flooded content marketplace. But at the same time, it allows content creators to put more professional-looking creations on the web and garner maximum exposure before the big studios begin to adapt to the new platform.

If there is to be an internet video production star made, he/she will be made king very soon. As I said earlier, this is an amazing time to be alive.

*Note: the Panasonic GH1 may be priced similarly to the Nikon D90. We’ll have to see.

Kauai sunset: Lumix GH1 slow motion from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Too good not to post:

Thanks, Shyama!

This girl is a star.

Swine flu is within 140 miles (225km) of Seattle (my location), which means in all likelihood, somebody has it in Seattle but just hasn’t been diagnosed yet. F***. Check the constantly-updated Google Maps application to see when it gets close to you:

H1N1 Swine Flu on Google Maps:

View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map

It’s been identified in Israel, Australia, Colombia, and all over Spain! Holy s***!

Via The Big Picture.

Google is sitting on top of a goldmine.

People go to Google when they’re searching for something. Google gives it to them. And they can charge (advertisers) for the privilege (of appearing next to the results).

Likewise, Craigslist gives people what they want. Job seekers and potential room-renters flock to Craigslist. Human resources executives might starve without it. With it, they thrive.

Google and Craigslist are sitting atop of goldmines.

Facebook, on the other hand, doesn’t serve a direct need, and is not sitting atop a goldmine. It serves the consumer something they only peripherally desire. It does not serve a market necessity, but rather a compliment.

A good way to understand this is that, prior to Facebook, humans relied on direct human interaction and the Yearbook to catalogue their contacts and classmates. They paid little for the privelege. Now, they can keep track of their workmates and family in the same sphere as their classmates and friends (by using Facebook). So why pay? They’re not searching for anything specific (as with Google/Craigslist). Commerce is not implicit in Facebook usage.

That’s why Facebook will never see the same level of monetization as Google/Craigslist/Ebay. Commerce is not implicit. Once humans are used to paying for their Rolodexes, Facebook and LinkedIn will thrive. It’s human behavior that has to change.