January 31, 2007
We’ve all heard of the game “Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon.” It’s simple: start with a celebrity, say, Selma Hayek and connect her through movies to Kevin Bacon. Salma Hayek in Fools Rush in with Matthew Perry on Friends with Jennifer Aniston in Along Came Polly with Ben Stiller in...
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October 26, 2006
In my first few days at AOL, I highlighted AOL Gold Rush the innovative interactive game that offers players a shot to win $1 million in gold by leveraging their pop culture knowledge. I asked if people were playing AOL Gold Rush and according to a recent report I think...
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October 23, 2006
A few weeks ago I profiled The Washington Stock Exchange, a new site offering political junkies the opportunity to play in a special stock exchange dedicated to political probabilities. With just over two weeks remaining until election day, there have been a number of political sites emerging to better tell...
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October 21, 2006
The wonders of technology... At work, it can make us more efficient and it can even make us seem smarter. At home, it helps us navigate trips, stay in touch with friends, and opens up an unending mall right on the screen. On the field, it makes us faster, more...
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October 9, 2006
In more than enough time to catch the horse race, The Washington Stock Exchange (WSX for short) has appeared online. Although still in beta, the site offers users the ability to bet on future political events; things like whether the Republicans will retain control of the Senate come November, if...
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October 1, 2006
With my recent move to the Washington, DC area I have been exploring what the new city has to offer and I noticed that the White House has RSS syndication feeds and podcasts. Yes, it's true. It is great to see the government supporting the web 2.0 movement leveraging syndication...
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September 18, 2006
AOL launched the first ever, cross-platform reality game called Gold Rush this past week with the help of Mark Burnett and CBS. The game allows players to turn pop culture knowledge into gold. Yes, you could win real gold during one of the 12 rounds which are each worth $100,000....
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September 6, 2006
Facebook launched a redesign today (September 5, 2006) which changed the layout of the homepage and introduced a few new features. The Facebook redesign introduced, "News Feed" which on the surface appears to be an excellent feature. It leverages the users attention to show the most recent activity of the...
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September 2, 2006
Mark Warner, high-tech entrepreneur and former Virginia Governor, visited the online virtual gaming world, Second Life, yesterday (August 31, 2006). Mark Warner appeared as the Mark Warner avatar as shown to the right to speak to a number of other avatars that were attending the virtual world event. A full...
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August 15, 2006
With gas prices at a high and parking in small supply in larger cities it makes sense to not own your own car. Though there are several alternatives to driving (i.e. public transportation, biking, walking, etc.) sometimes you just need to to drive a car. I-GO Car Sharing, a not-for-profit...
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August 1, 2006
Inform was spotlighted recently (July 31, 2006) for its latest offering, a product that automatically adds related content links into the body of an article. This could be a very interesting time saver for content producers. You can see an example of the product in action here on the NewsOK.com...
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May 22, 2006
I have been hearing a lot about the new Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City and after further investigating I have concluded that it is worth of the buzz. The glass design of its new flagship store draws sharp comparisons to the Louvre in Paris, France which...
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April 4, 2006
I am a pretty heavy blogger therefore I have been using a news aggregator called memeorandum for quite sometime, to stay connected with the top stories of the day. Memeorandum recently has grown to offer Ballbug, which tracks the latest baseball happenings. Check out this post on Somewhat Frank to...
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March 20, 2006
Yahoo has launched Yahoo News for local area news. The product is still only a beta but is offered from the Yahoo News area. It allows users to select a city and then aggregates local news from a number of mainstream media sources from the local area. Since I am...
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March 14, 2006
Memeorandum, the aggregator site created by Gabe Rivera that tracks the most recent and prominent happenings on the web in technology and political news, has added celebrity and entertainment news to the list with WeSmirch. According to this post on the memeorandum blog the name WeSmirch was chosen for two...
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March 14, 2006
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.com, was interviewed by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, for the keynote today (March 13, 2006) at the South By Southwest Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. Due to the timing of the sale of Knight Ridder to McClatchy, Craig was questioned if he felt somewhat responsible...
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January 31, 2006
Exxon reported profits this year of $36.1 Billion, the highest in US history. $36.1 BILLION! This is difficult to fathom gas prices were skyrocketing out of control for most of 2005. Not to mention, it makes it fairly clear as to why there haven't been faster advances in alternate fuel...
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October 28, 2005
An article titled How to Fight Those Surging Splogs was written by Nicole Lee of Wired News and published online yesterday (October 27, 2005). I conducted the interview about a week ago and appreciate the mention of our splog efforts. I am also pleased to announce the creation of Freedom...
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October 19, 2005
David Kesmodel wrote a very comprehensive article in the Wall Street Journal today in regard to the current splog problem in the blogosphere. It appeared in the print version on page B1 and on the WSJ online on the front right widget titled Blog Clog. The article describes the splog...
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October 12, 2005
The line between professional and grassroots journalism continues to become more gray with the move by Yahoo yesterday (10/11/05) to include blog sources in its News results. With the official release of the Yahoo Blog Search, the News search results are now offering blog search results in the right rail....
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October 7, 2005
A ruling in favor of an anonymous blogger in Delaware will help to build case law to further protecting the freedom of speech. The ruling reversed a defamatory case Smyrna town councilman Patrick Cahill filed against bloggers from the by Independent Newspapers Inc., publisher of the Delaware State News. According...
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September 29, 2005
I was not to surprised this morning to read the news of Google and NASA joining forces in Silicon Valley at a new NASA facility. I have written a couple of posts recently that mentioned this reoccurring theme by Google to get involved in space information management. The first signs...
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September 28, 2005
According to a report titled "Firms in the dark over blog threat" by Guardian Media two-thirds of the businesses are totally in the dark of the power and influence of the blogosphere and its possible negative affects on their brand. They do not realize that bloggers could cause their business...
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September 11, 2005
It was a gorgeous September day with a fresh fall breeze as I departed for work near the Sears Tower in downtown Chicago. I remember getting a call that morning at work from one of my best friends who was driving to work and listening to the radio. He was...
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September 9, 2005
Hurricane Katrina survivor Bookman has been blogging from the Astrodome. He gives some valuable perspective on how his life has been affected by the devastation of Katrina. He says he has been doing a lot of walking. Check out his blog Note From The Book to get updated on location...
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September 8, 2005
After reading the BBC News report today which accused Internet and search giant Yahoo of supplying information to the Chinese government which led to the jailing of a journalist for "divulging state secrets" I wondered how this story could be true. Would Yahoo give up a user's personal information? The...
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September 7, 2005
Keith Oberman says he has kept silent long enough and recently expressed his editor opinion on the handling of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans by the United States government. It has been many years since his ESPN days of light hearted sports highlights but this is the most serious Keith...
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September 5, 2005
Google Maps is now offering not only the usual satellite images but now they are offering updated images of New Orleans. If you view a Google Map of New Orleans you will see a red Katrina button in the top right corner of the map. It allows you to toggle...
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August 31, 2005
Hurricane Katrina has devastated the Gulf coast area of the United States in the past two days leaving many people homeless and living in flooded, unsafe conditions. The McCormick Tribune Foundation has taken action in organizing a hurricane relief campaign to help the victims of the latest hurricane. They will...
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August 13, 2005
Rome recently joined New York and Philadelphia as cities that offer free public wireless or wi-fi networks. Robin Good details Rome's network specifics in this report. As a Chicago resident I wondered if I had free city run wi-fi networks available in my area. The City of Chicago does not...
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August 11, 2005
With the recent releases of the mapping software's Google Earth and MSN Virtual Earth users have been empowered to explore places they have never seen before. Many users are uncovering some interesting aerial shots of high security locations. This makes me wonder if the proper security measures were taken into...
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August 2, 2005
As I listened to The Today Show with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer while getting ready for work this morning Katie spoke of the Hollywood drama between Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie and I heard a term I had never heard before in reference to cheating in a...
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July 14, 2005
Mike Ditka recently spoke out against the City of Chicago's possible smoking ban in restaurants. Since Ditka is a restaurant owner and known cigar smoker, it makes sense he would be opposed to it. However, I also have been known to puff my share of cigars at weddings and other...
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July 13, 2005
As a follow-up to my earlier post on the Chicago Cell Phone Ban, 33 tickets have been handed out so far in Chicago for not using a headset while talking on a cell phone while operating an automobile. Make sure you get a headset if you are going to drive...
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July 8, 2005
If you plan on talking on your cell phone while driving your car anytime in the near future you had better think twice, since it is now illegal in Chicago to hold a cell phone to your ear while operating a motorized vehicle. For information on purchasing a headset read...
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July 5, 2005
Yes that's right, according to a report here by Silicon Beat venture capitalists are sinking $100 million into RSS.
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