For years now, the publishing industry has been having problems. From Magazines to Newspapers, readers are leaving in droves to the web.
So, what is the obsession with having an newspaper delivered to your door every morning? Why does it matter if the same content is delivered via email, on a phone, or on a browser? Why are so many people so upset about having their local newspaper shut down?
This may be old news, but it’s a great example of how technology is moving forward.
It’s a picture of the President Barack Obama’s inaguration. What makes it unique is that it’s an extremely EXTREMELY high resolution picture, which allows you to zoom in to the entire picture.
What I find most fascinating is looking into the crowd at some of the people’s expressions and faces. They have no idea they’re being watched.
The picture first provides you with a panoramic shot of the inaguration and it’s attendees. Then, the controls on the left – similar to Google Map’s controls – allow you to zoom in, out and pan in all directions.
As some of you may have noticed, Pepsi recently redesigned their logo with a fresh new twist on their old design.
Now, this may not be something most people would comment about, but a recently leaked document on the design process, attributed to the Arnell Group, shows the process behind the remaking of this iconic brand identity.
If you’re into design or branding, I recommend you take a look at this pdf.
Here’s a small excerpt from this document: (more…)
Earlier this month I wrote about a new type of lending and investing service called “Micro Finance” which enables anyone to make a small investment and help end poverty. The blog post I wrote about was an eBay organization called MicroPlace.
Today, a similar service called Kiva.org released an interesting API that allows outside developers to connect to their database and build applications around their data.
Web Services and API’s are nothing new… companies like Google, Amazon, and eBay have been integrating them into their services for years. However, this is the first time I’ve seen a non-profit organization open up their data for outside developers.
Here’s a few examples of the types of data available through this service: (more…)
We’ve all been there before… accidentally hit the “reply-all” at an innappropriate time, do the time zone conversion wrong and don’t show up for the big meeting, forget to do a 3rd spell check before an email newsletter gets blasted out to 2 million subscribers.
Most of the time, these types of mistakes are either brushed off or overlooked because, hey… they happen.
However, as you may have heard this weekend… a simple mistake by a Google employee essentially banned the entire internet for about an hour.
To coincide with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, an effort is being made to transform MLK Day into a day of service.
To take part of this program, I’m pledging to create one post per day this week highlighting various charities, organizations, and efforts both within the United States and across the world.
In addition to my blog posts, I’ll also be pushing this across various social applications and profiles I belong to, including Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, delicious.com, myspace, and other profiles.
I encourage you to take part in this transformation and spread the word, serve, or donate to honor this great man.
Google today announced a new reseller program that allows “qualified” individuals and businesses to resell Google Apps.
What I find interesting about this move, is that it’s one of the first steps Google has taken to move it’s marketing and business outside of the automated route it normally takes with applications like Google Adsense and Adwords.
As I had mentioned in a previous post, Google seems to be working it’s way to becoming a major player in net based operating systems. Obviously, this can’t be successful without the support of business clients as well as personal accounts. Since most real business is still handled face to face, this is a natural move.
Well Well Well… I logged in to Twitter this afternoon to go on a little rant about the new McCain campaign ads and got a nice little suprise… Twitter updated it’s interface.
Most of the changes in the interface center around the navigation elements, and I have to say they are definately an improvement. I especially like the Following, Followers, and Updates section on the top right hand side. Because, if you’re like me… that’s the first thing you look at when you log on. It’s always a nice little ego boost (or killer) when it changes.
They also added a few back-end performancing enhancements in the form of AJAX additions. While this isn’t a big improvement, every little addition counts.
In addition to the AJAX and navigation additions, they also included some improved design customizations as well. Aside from the normal “add your own background images” (which never worked well), they added a few pre-made background designs to help liven up your profile. (more…)