Category: Technology

Great study on the alarming declines in reading by young adults and college educated adults from the National Endowment for the Arts:

The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming. Although there has been
measurable progress in recent years in reading ability at the elementary school level,
all progress appears to halt as children enter their teenage years. There is a general
decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans. Most alarming, both reading
ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates.
These negative trends have more than literary importance. As this report makes clear,
the declines have demonstrable social, economic, cultural, and civic implications.

To Read or Not to Read: NEA Study (pdf)

Dave Winer writes today regarding TinyURL’s recent downtime and what it means for the web:

Now that URL length has become an issue for users, it might be even better for designers to view URLs as part of site design. Look at the address for the page for the Wii at Amazon. Wouldn’t it be easier to find if the address were:

http://www.amazon.com/wii

Try clicking on it — it actually works!

Why should a user ever see the longer crappy url?

In other words, url-shortening isn’t just for Twitter users, it’s for everyone. Maybe most people don’t look at the urls, but some do, and maybe more would if they made more sense?

Imagine if web developers would start taking link optimization into account along with search engine optimization. As Winer points out, long link strands are increasingly becoming irrelevant as most people just go to Google if they need a link they can’t remember and click from there.

However, if you’re selling a product or a service, how valuable is it that the link to that product or service have an increasingly easy format and structure for users or customers to remember? Perhaps not valuable for all merchants or advertisers… but potentially very valuable for many.

Expect to hear more about link optimization as the web grows up and grows out to mobile.

We should be listening to what the kids are saying and watching what they are doing as we endeavor to create a better web. Otherwise, we’ll continue to fill the role of typical adults and muck the web up:

Rather than a teacher creating class blogs, and registering all the students one by one, and creating a single feed of their posts, it’s the students who are doing this around their friendship or collaborative work groups. Since the content and mechanism are in the hands of the students we see the same exponential growth in content and delivery that we have seen in the real world net, but have really struggled to harness for education. I’d argue that with increased flexibility in the means of delivery we’d also see increased content creation to mould around all these different media.

Imagine if Facebook took that to heart! There’s wisdom in youth.

Given eBooks or the real thing, I’ll gladly take my 1.0 paper books…

“If you would know how a man treats his wife and his children, see how he treats his books.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Having become a father just six weeks ago, I’m already recognizing the patterns of behavior that my daughter and I share.  While she’s not playing with Barbie’s yet, she’s becoming very tactile as she continues to try and figure out this strange new world that she’s joined.

I love my toys.  My toys these days are phones and laptops and all sorts of geeky gizmo’s.  This week, I got my first Macbook Pro and I’m using it for productivity reasons while also treating it like a toy.  I’m sure Mary Hudson will do the same as she grows and starts to put the toys she enjoys playing with to use as learning tools.

So, my question… is there a difference between toys and tools?  Can a hammer be both an instrument of creativity and enjoyment as well as a way to get things done?

Personally, I don’t see a difference between the two.  Hopefully my experience as a father will either confirm or prove wrong my theory.

Thought this was funny (and telling) for Valleywag readership (though Robert Scoble’s blog is at "Elementary School" level):

If you’re wondering, this site is at "Genius Level."  Whatever that means. 

The Blog Readability Test. What level of education is required to understand your blog?

Google recently socked PayPerPosters with a decrease of PageRank to 0.  Harsh, but needed in my opinion.  If you’re going to dance to Google’s music, you’ve got to be willing to pay the band.

Robert Scoble makes the point that:

Bloggers beware. If you just write great content and put the ads around the content like everyone else does you won’t be messing with Google and Google won’t mess with you.

VCDan writes in the comments to that post:

GOOG’s latest move isn’t about disclosure or search relevance. IZEA’s launch of http://www.SocialSpark.com (prior to this GOOG move) with mandatory disclosure, transparent RealRank, no-follow links, and face-based analytics positions IZEA to lead on transparency and convert even more bloggers from AdSense to sponsored social media.

Which got me thinking… one of the people that I listen to the most when it comes to all things web, Jim Kukral, has similar things to say about SocialSpark. 

In fact, Jim says that Izea should dump PPP as a brand and focus on SocialSpark.

So, the big question is can a con-man reform himself and can Ted Murphy rebrand Izea and SocialSpark as separate from the PayPerPost stigma?  I’m not so sure, but it will be fun to see how bloggers (and Google) handles SocialSpark’s upcoming release.

Google makes moves to protect organic relevancy « Scobleizer

For all of its noise, "user generated content" can sometime be a huge help.

Yahoo Answers, for example, is sometimes a great resource when you have a random question like when a new laptop will arrive…

Does FedEx Deliver on Saturdays, I mean regular ground delivery.?

Does FedEx Deliver on Saturdays, I mean regular ground delivery.? – Yahoo! Answers

This is why I went to Wofford College:

http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/271548489

I’ve updated the “Publications” page up in the menu bar to reflect some of the places I’ve spoken recently and how to get in touch with me if you’d like for me to speak at your meeting or show.

Sure it’s a little vain, but I’ve gotten more and more requests for this type of thing recently so I wanted to make it easier to find and see examples of my previous speaking engagements or publications:

I’m available to speak to groups interested in social media, affiliate marketing, performance marketing or web metrics. Contact me if you’d like to have me speak to your group.

Here are a few places where I’ve spoken and published:

Press and Speaking