I got to meet and hang out with Brian Solis at this week’s BlogWorldExpo. Brian is one of my favorite bloggers and a heck of a photographer.
I liked this shot of me that he took at the ShareASale / Conversation Group party on Wednesday night at the Wynn Hotel in Vegas.
I’m imagining a future 3,000 years from now when scholars and archaeologists attempt to put together the scattered fragments of our digital cuneiforms like we attempt to do today with the scant remains of Mesopotamian cultures from the past that were just as vibrant as ours.
I wonder how far Google will get before the barbarians invade and the library is burned?
As early as the third millennium B.C., Mesopotamian scribes began to catalogue the clay tablets in their collections. For ease of reference, they appended content descriptions to the edges of tablets, and they adopted systematic shelving for quick identification of related texts. The greatest and most famous of the ancient collections, the Library of Alexandria, had, in its ambitions and its methods, a good deal in common with Google’s book projects. It was founded around 300 B.C. by Ptolemy I, who had inherited Alexandria, a brand-new city, from Alexander the Great. A historian with a taste for poetry, Ptolemy decided to amass a comprehensive collection of Greek works. Like Google, the library developed an efficient procedure for capturing and reproducing texts.
Onward and Upward with the Arts: Future Reading: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. Richard Feynman US educator & physicist (1918 – 1988)
Quote Details: Richard Feynman: There are 10^11 stars… – The Quotations Page
David was my cousin, but functioned more as a brother. While growing up, there wasn’t a week that went by when we didn’t see each other. We spent countless hours reading comics, drawing comics, watching Beavis and Butthead, playing with GI Joe’s and re-enacting our Transformers scenes in the backyards. He was always Superman and I was always Batman.
My favorite memory of David? The day we decided to walk to the comic shop a few miles from his house without telling anyone when we were 12 or so. To make matters worse, he had just had surgery on his toe, so he was on crutches. My dad finally found us walking the streets (we made it to the comic shop!) a few hours later and drove us home.
I love you, David… can’t tell you how much we’ll miss you.
A Marion soldier serving in Afghanistan has died in action, his family confirmed Tuesday.
Staff Sgt. James David Bullard, 28, was serving with the Army National Guard 1st Battalion 263rd Cavalry (Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition) S.C. National Guard Unit B Company based in Dillon, his brother-in-law Harold Caldwell said.
Marion soldier killed in Afghanistan – News – South Carolina Now (SCNow.com)
Blogged with Flock
Blogged with Flock
I’m seeing a few subtle and not so subtle changes in GMail tonight.
1) Quicker message loading
2) New graphics (the yellow type found in Google Reader) at the top of the screen for loading messages
3) New contacts manager which is very slick and a great upgrade
4) The ability to add an event invitation when composing or replying to messages.
Nothing revolutionary, but pretty neat tweaks given last week’s big inclusion of IMAP in GMail. After a couple of years of stagnation, it’s nice to see a few new additions to the interface.
MORE: Evidently Google is rolling this out to all users (whew, I’m not crazy). Thanks to Andy Beal for the pointer!
My pal Jim Kukral has just launched ScratchBack after a long period of development and testing. I’ve blogged about all of the specifics on ReveNews.
If you have a blog and are looking for a way to make a few extra bucks via a tipjar system (the links are “nofollow” which means Google won’t punish you for selling them), this is a easy way to do so. Plus, Jim has built in a little social flavor since you can encourage people to outbid each other for the top spot via snarky political messages or your momma jokes (ok, not really… but it could be done).
You can see an example (or tip me if you’d like!) over in the sidebar –>
