Archive for 2006-04

365 days ago today, to this very minute, davidblog.com was born. Weighing in at a whopping 5.39MB, the site was Geeklog-powered and was mostly viewed by personal friends and family. 173 posts and 410 comments later, the site lives on Wordpress, weighs significantly less and is tracked by people from all over the world.

It’s surreal that I’ve been blogging a full year. For one, I never expected to live this venture out. I didn’t fully realize the potential of this style of communication. I was more infatuated with the technology driving the blog platform. Today, I’ve come full circle seeing blogging for what it is, a powerful means of linear, open communication.

A month or two in, I began to think that anyone could blog. It just seemed so easy and so rewarding. After a year of seeing other bloggers come and go and then personally facing challenges maintaining this “beast”, I realize that blogging really isn’t for everyone. But I do think that for anyone who has an ounce of writing skill and the desire to make it happen, blogging will come as easy pie.

A year ago, I didn’t have a single friend that was blogging. Now, I have several friends, and even family, who have entered the blogosphere. Many of them really raise the standard and are developing some truly excellent content.

The other benefit I’ve seen is the number of friends I’ve gained in this process. It’s awesome to watch my network expand. I’m finding so many people who are excellent at the things I love. It’s great to have the opportunity to glean from their leadership and expertise. It’s e-mentorship.

Thanks to everyone for joining this conversation. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s absurd, but I also hope it’s helpful, informing and inspiring at times.

What a ride!

Technorati Tags: blogging, anniversary, communication, networking, wordpress

Back in my banking days, one of my buddies used to pull off this pen trick that was totally cool to me. Simple, but it caught my eye every time. This morning, while reading some of the commentary at SimpleBits, I stumbled upon a link to Pentrix, a site dedicated to exploring various hand tricks and spinning techniques involving pens.

The site comes with complete definitions and how-to videos showing various tricks and spins in action. Some of the combo tricks seem very challenging. This is one of those sites you can go completely through in about 10 minutes and be entertained or spend a few hours and learn to entertain. Even if you learned just one trick, your friends are sure to love you more for it.

Technorati Tags: pen, trick

On the way to lunch today, I saw an advertisement in an unlikely place: the Metro tunnel wall. The ad was for the Lincoln Zephyr and it looked surprisingly sharp. Not perfect, but for the medium in which it was presented it really hit the mark.

After a little digging, I found the company that supplies the WMATA with this novel approach to marketing. Submedia specializes in a rare form of motion picture advertising.

Submedia is the leading provider of motion picture displays, a revolutionary medium for reaching advertisers’ target audiences as they are being transported on subways, trains, escalators, moving walkways, roller coasters and amusement park rides, or just walking along sidewalks.

Catchy name to boot.

I’m not really sure what I think of this at the moment. The cool factor hasn’t worn off. If you’re asking whether or not this form of advertising gets attention, trust me when I say, it does. As the ads fly by the windows of the train, people are immediately pointing fingers, talking about it or, at the very least, admiring it. The question remains: how long will the admiration last and will this form of advertising become more white noise in the not-so-distant future? TV ads rarely get my attention anymore. In fact, I’m in the habit of muting them. It’s my retaliation against advertisers’ ever-increasing decibel levels. Radio ads might as well be silent for me. I never hear them. Web ads aren’t worth a look either. But perhaps it’s all to taste because I do enjoy reading some magazine ads.

It is most interesting to see such a creative form of advertising emerge. And yet, there isn’t anything inherently creative about the placement of these ads on the Metro. It’s the simple beauty of combining two old elements, a moving train and a flipbook, into one fresh idea. It also raises the question of whether outdated methods of advertising will retain their impact or whether media, design and marketing companies will have to dig deeper into the banks of creativity to grab the overly saturated senses of the consumer. And is there any place that will remain ad-free?

Washington Post Article

Video: CNN Press Coverage (WMV)

Technorati Tags: advertising, marketing, metro, dc, idea, tunnel, motion picture

The taste of bottled Coca-cola™ is difficult to describe. It’s one of those experiences that you have to live out. Now I get to live it out every day. Ebenezers, NCC’s coffeehouse, just started selling bottled Coke and Pepsi™. I’ll pass on the Pepsi, but the Coke™ has been a nice afternoon retreat for me. If you ask me what my favorite all-around soft drink is, I have to say Dr. Pepper™. But when it’s Coke in a bottle, I have to say, “Drink Coke.”

Technorati Tags: coca-cola, coke, bottled, technorati loves david

Milestone: The post marks a momentous milestone for davidblog.com. This is the most random blog entry ever to grace this stage. Congratulations “Bottled Coca-Cola” post. I salute you.

Life Magazine recently did a spread on Churches American Style. Quite interesting and a unique perspective on “church.” Some of the featured churches are fascinating. Love the beauty of the First Presbyterian “Fish” Church in Stamford, CT. Also featured in the article is a church in Alabama whose congregants ride up on their boats to worship. And the drive-thru prayer booth? Wow. Just read the article.

Technorati Tags: church, America, style, cool

A couple of days ago, Vitamin launched. With rich content designed to assist “web designers, developers and entrepreneuers,” Vitamin pulled together the best and brightest in the business to provide a solid content base. The articles are as diverse as the authors who pen them… key them.

This will be a great resource to keep an eye on.

Think Vitamin

Technorati Tags: vitamin, web, resource

A power supply replacement has me in the office late tonight. Sometime this morning, a large surge must have blown right by my consumer-grade surge protector. Didn’t know that could happen, but it’s all I can surmise. Everything else powers up, but not the PC.

After a run to the Pentagon City Best Buy in rush hour traffic (45 minutes each way, 5 miles each way), I returned with an Antec 430W PS and a Cyber Power 800AVR 450W, 85-minute SP/UPS and battery backup. Nice upgrade from where I was. But bummer to have to pull this off in the middle of the rush for Buzz Conference. It’s nice to have this laptop, but I still use my main box for designing, so I had to rush to get things running again. I hate rushing to get something for my PC. When it’s this bad I don’t get to use NewEgg. Sorry, NewEgg. This is one such event where I had to visit a storefront. But you know I love you. And you know I hate paying too much at Best Buy.

Technorati Tags: pc, repair, antec, cyber power, best buy, pentagon city

The past couple of weeks, we’ve enjoyed a few of our meetings by kicking off with a little rooftop football and then enjoying the sun while we discuss the Son. The outdoors helps my thinking process.

Thanks for the pic, Tim.

digg, since I first laid eyes on it, has been one of my favorite spaces on the web. I first heard of digg about this time last year. For the first several months, I used it just like I use Slashdot. Find the stories, read the articles, check out the commentary from time to time, but mostly just lurk. But around the same time, I was really discovering the social web, opting to bookmark with del.icio.us (now I use Ma.gnolia) and blog with WordPress. I realized that I needed to be apart of the digg community, not just by visiting but by digging in.

About a month or two after I joined digg, the founders landed sizable investment funds ($3MM) from VCs and investment groups. Nothing to do with my joining, just sheer coincidence. The digg development team grew. The site’s design improved. But more significantly, the Internet (and even broadcast) media coverage exploded. In so many ways, this new attention that digg was getting was phenomenal. But I noticed something changing on digg. It was quite subtle, but it did happen. The number of stories that appeared on digg’s front page went through the roof. The social aspect that is the cornerstone of the site began to have a multiplying effect on the content. From an end user standpoint, the amount of content that was pouring onto digg became unmanageable. And, worse, some content became sheerly irrelevant.

Today, digg is a powerhouse tech news site. There is no denying it. For most folks I know, it’s the place for the latest in tech news. However, I still find digg to be extraordinarily content-heavy. Personally, I need to have information delivered to me in a much purer form than digg’s front page allows. At first, I had hoped that referring to the RSS feed, rather than the front page itself, might help. It did not. While blogs I read might have two or three new articles, and forums I read might have five or six new threads, digg was constantly showing 40 unread headers in my RSS reader—40—sometimes even after updating my feeds within just a few hours. Even though I wasn’t browsing through multiple pages on the site, it was still too much to deal with sorting through what I didn’t want to find what I did want.

“There has to be some other way,” I thought to myself. One day, as I was perusing my dugg articles, it dawned on me. For the most part, I digg articles that are very popular. With only a few exceptions, most of the artlcles I digg are well over 1,000 total diggs. Without throwing the baby out with the bath water, I figured out a solution that works for me: watch the “Top stories” pages. Period. I give up on any article that doesn’t meet the overall interest of the g.p. and what I get in return is fantastic—noteworthy stories in a simple, concise list. In a way, it feels like the good old days again, when digg just put out the good stuff, article after article. Of course, the sad news is, that solution stared me in the face for months without any exploration on my part. And nope, it’s not some incredible hack or neat service brought on by some other company who has this tool or that. But I don’t care much anyway. I’m just digging it again.

If you are in need of a great technology news site, you’ll want to check out digg. For other tech news, I like to watch Slashdot and a smattering of good blogs like TechCrunch, Mashable, Engadget and Lifehacker. I also love listening to This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte and Diggnation, a weekly recap of digg’s top stories, with digg founder Kevin Rose and sidekick Alex Albrecht.

My digg.com profile

digg @ Wikipedia

Lifehacker: Getting Started with digg

Technorati Tags: digg, social, web 2.0, productivity

What an awesome day! We had an incredible weekend at NCC starting with our Good Friday service and culminating with the Easter services last night and this morning. We showed a video in all the services that really put an awesome touch on the weekend. I love how impacting media can be. And this media impacted!

Missy and I also spent some time with my family this weekend. A few of my cousins from Virginia came up to see the coffeehouse, enjoy the Saturday night service, and introduce me to Thai. That last thing was totally impromptu. I was hoping for a good American cheddar burger, but they didn’t have those. So, I had spicy Panang instead. It was actually really good. I might even go back.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend, worshipping and reflecting.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Technorati Tags: Easter, Good Friday, National Community Church, Thai