Roman History and Google Earth

Amazing times we live in, folks.

And simply amazing for those of us called to teach…

Google LatLong: Roman history comes to life in Google Earth: “Were you someone who struggled to stay awake in ancient history class? If so, perhaps this was due to those uninspiring ‘artist renditions’ in your textbook. Reading countless pages that described how a monument, building or city may have appeared at the time can be pretty difficult to imagine.

Well, today we introduced a new approach to learning about ancient history: the ability to go back in time and explore Rome as it existed in 320 AD — in 3D!”

Amazing.

I love Google and the interwebs.

Tonight’s the Night


I listened to Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night again last night. Amazing.

A comment on Amazon likens the album to Robert Johnson’s rawness and the Wikipedia article hints at the personal nature of the artistry behind the songs:

Tonight’s the Night (album) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “Included with the vinyl release of Tonight’s the Night was a seemingly strange insert that added to Neil Young’s claim that Tonight’s the Night was the closest he ever came to art. Emphasising the personal nature of the album, the self-penned liner notes contained an apology: ‘I’m sorry. You don’t know these people. This means nothing to you.’ The original inserts/liner notes included in the vinyl release were quite cryptic in their conveyance.

On the front of the insert is a letter to the mysterious ‘Waterface’ character, no explanation is given to their identity, although in Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography by Jimmy McDonough, Young says that ‘Waterface is the person writing the letter. When I read the letter, I’m Waterface. It’s just a stupid thing – a suicide note without the suicide.'”

The album has actually crept into my “Top 5” list which goes something like (in no particular order):

Tonight’s the Night: Neil Young

Heartbreaker: Ryan Adams (even if it is named after a Mariah Carey song.)

The Beatles (The White Album): The Beatles (sure, Abbey Road is a/the masterpiece, but I’ve always loved the chaotic underbelly of the Beatles…for me, this is pure music perfection.)

Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan (if you haven’t listened to this album all the way through with headphones on, you haven’t lived.)

Nevermind: Nirvana (the album that made me like music and changed my life and my generation.)

It’s difficult to nail down a “Top 5” but it’s really difficult to nail down a Top 10 or a Top 25. We’ll do that another day.

That’s because today, It’s Neil Young’s birthday. So do him and yourself a favor and give “Tonight’s the Night” a listen today (or tonight).

Zoho and the Cloud Stability Question

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I’ve been a long time proponent of “cloud computing” and can’t imagine trading in my GMail or Google Docs on any machine I’m using for Outlook or Office tied to one machine or one OS.

Whether I’m on my Blackberry, Ubuntu laptop, Macbook Pro, Nokia N800, iPod Touch, Mac Mini, my wife’s Vista laptop, etc I can get to every piece of email, every document, every note (through Evernote) every task (through Remember The Milk) that I need.

It is beyond liberating and the type of freedom that any heavy user of computers should seek out. I simply cannot wrap my mind around people that continue to tie themselves to one desktop or laptop or even one operating system.

Firefox is my operating system.

However, the biggest concern I hear (and I have) about using “web apps” like GMail is whether or not they are stable and secure. What happens when their server goes down? What if you can’t get to your GMail because Google is doing maintenance? It’s a very good question and something I consider a cost for having the freedom of mobility.

This morning, Zoho is launching “Zoho Status” which monitors the health and stability of all the Zoho web apps (and they are numerous)…

Zoho-Status: “Today, we are adding a new section to our website – Zoho Status – which displays the health of all Zoho Applications. You can visit http://status.zoho.com to see if our applications are running and responding fine. The site provides you availability & response times for the past week along with downtime, if any. “

I find this highly important and relevant to web workers like affiliate marketers because many of us do use GMail or Google Docs on a daily, if not hourly or minute-ly, basis.

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Zoho is, yet again, pushing ahead past Google or other web app providers here just as they have done frequently in the past. If you’ll remember, Zoho was the first to integrate Google Gears with its word processor to allow for offline work that syncs to the server when you are back on the network. Google Docs now offers this. Just recently, Zoho released Zoho Mail. I honestly think it’s a superior product to GMail because it takes the best of GMail and melds it with the functionality of Outlook, all in a web interface, complete with Google Gears for offline mode. GMail doesn’t have Gears integration yet. I’m not switching just yet, but it is tempting given Zoho Mail’s range of functionalities that GMail is just starting to catch up to with its own Lab features.

So, as a web worker, if I’m looking for a stable suite of web apps to use in place of Outlook and Office, I’m looking closer at Zoho today. Much of what I do on the web is mission critical in one way or another, and having the peace of mind that Zoho Status provides (at least in a placebo effect way) is calming.

Jewish Temple’s Existence Questioned by Palestinian Negotiator

Whatever your persuasion on the question of the Jewish state and modern Near East politics, this is an interesting (disturbing) use of revisionism for political gain…

Jewish Temples never existed, says top Palestinian negotiator: “The Jewish Temples never existed and Israel has been working to ‘invent’ a Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem, the chief Palestinian negotiator asserted.

Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian Authority official leading all peace talks with the Jewish state, made the controversial statements in a small media briefing Wednesday attended by WND as well as by a Palestinian media outlet and an Arab affairs correspondent for a major Israeli newspaper.”

Let us all pray for more education rather than propaganda

FriendFeed via IM: Twitter Looking Stale

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Back in its glory (and most useful/valuable) days, Twitter had great IM support. Being able to interact with fellow tweeting friends via IM and follow conversations via Track was stupendous, revolutionary and real-time.

Sadly, that all went *poof* earlier this year.

However, FriendFeed is quickly stepping up to the bat. First, they released a live “real time” feature to follow conversations and posts that was pretty nifty.

Now, they’ve integrated the service with IM to provide the real time experience many of us miss from Twitter.

I’m not ready to give up Twitter for FriendFeed, but if FF keeps adding new innovations while Twitter keeps removing features, it could become an option for me and the other “power users” who value the real time flow of trackable information across platforms.

FriendFeed Blog: Instant FriendFeed – Notifications and Posting over IM

MTV Music Portal is Nostalgia Central and Good for Affiliates

Sure, you can find most of that ancient medium known as the “music video” on YouTube, but having all those great videos from the 80’s, 90’s and early ’00’s in a neat searchable place is handy.

BTW, here’s a vid for “New York New York” from my favorite singer/songwriter Ryan Adams that was shot just a few days before 9/11. I was living just an hour or so away from the city in Connecticut at the time, so the video had a big impact on me (and still does):

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:14102

Anyways, if you are doing anything music related on the affiliate side, this might be a site worth investigating considering the embedding options…

MTV MUSIC – Ryan Adams – New York, New York

Brian Littleton on SAS’ PPC Policy

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Brian Littleton, head of ShareASale, was in NYC for Ad:Tech and sat down with Shawn Collins, Missy Ward and Connie Berg to discuss a few topics including the network’s interesting “3 Strikes” PPC policy on AffiliateThing…

ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » Ad-Tech NYC, the Affiliate Thing Podcast, and the PPC “3 Strikes” policy: “I was also lucky to have the opportunity to speak with Shawn Collins on his ‘Affiliate Thing’ podcast at the Affiliate Summit booth. Also on board were co-Affiliate Summitter Missy Ward, and Connie Berg. We had a good time talking about some industry news, issues, and it gave me an opportunity to talk about our PPC ‘3 Strikes’ policy as well. Since September 1st when the policy became active, we’ve received a great amount of feedback and reports. I would also like to thank all of the affiliates who have really stepped up their efforts to make sure that they are in compliance with the rules at hand. I know how difficult it is to keep up with so many policies, and your effort is very much appreciated. We know there will always be mistakes, hiccups, etc… and will continue to do our best to determine the difference between an honest mistake and a continued violation. So thank you…. “

The show really is a good listen.

Here’s the mp3 or head over to GeekCast.fm for the streaming version.