Big news from the Twittersphere today: Disney is acquiring Marvel entertainment.
Spider-Mouseketeer
The main concern among Marvel fans appears to be the potential softening of some of Marvel’s beloved but rough around the edges characters. My fav quote on the subject this morning:
OH: First Narnia’s war was bloodless, now Qtips will pop out of Wolverine’s hands (Re: Disney buying Marvel) – AdeleMcAlear
On the Disney side, talk about broadening your audience! The Marvel fan base is huge and they come out in droves to Marvel themed films, even if a large percentage pan the results. The $4 billion acquisition will instantly add over 5000 new characters to the Disney cadre.
Personally, I can’t wait for the first Disney Main Street Parade after Marvel is fully integrated.
What impact do you think this acquisition will have on the Marvel universe?
Just saw this stat from Did You Know 3.0 on YouTube:
“It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century”
The New York Times is only one of thousands of newspapers viewable online. In fact, USA Today is even available on iTunes for free.
With this content and billions of other pages on the Internet individuals have more information available than they could ever hope to process. Financial tickers, how to guides, webinars, and tutorials on any conceivable subject, it’s not hard to see how Google went from a noun to a verb in such a short time. Then add the social media phenomenon to the mix – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, Ning, LinkedIn, Bebo, DeviantArt,…. ok this isn’t a contest, I’ll stop. Big list here.
What Do You Do With It?
In short, there is no shortage of information available. The question becomes, “What do we do with it”?
- You’re hungry, Google for restaurant picks.
- Want to pick a movie, IMDB.com for reviews.
- Want an opinion, toss out a TwitPoll.
- Have a report to write?
- You get the idea.
How much information do you need to actually make a decision? Is it easier now with 50,000 articles, 2000 Facebook friends, and 2 Wikipedia articles giving you expert insight? Is it faster?
Don’t misunderstand me. I love the great array of choices I have when I want to know something. It’s even fun to kick back and get a good overview of a subject from someone like Ethan Bloch at WSYK .
New sources are invented every minute! Plus mobile devices like the iPhone give us ubiquitous access. But what’s the next step?
Filter Me!
IMHO (“in my humble opinion” for newbies), filters are the inevitable and very much needed next breakthrough. Aggregate and rate the data for me Internet, please! Put all these sources together and tell me what actually makes the most sense. NOT what’s the most popular, but what’s the most relevant and hopefully TRUE.
A fun step in the right direction: TweetNews: “this service boosts Yahoo’s freshest news search results (which typically don’t have much relevance since they are ordered by timestamp and that’s it) based on how similar they are to the emerging topics found on Twitter for the same query”. Thanks Vik Singh
A development I foresee is a news reader that searches for all my favorite topics, weighs in some factors determined by my habits or predefined rules, and gives me the most relevant data. The best version wouldn’t need a lot of setup by me, instead it would save my most popular search topics. Even better it would have a work/productivity mode and a browse mode for fun topics.
Any fabulous innovators or startups want to chime in? Show me the product that addresses this and I’m first in line, cash in hand.
Warning: Don’t wait too long, some of my closest friends “code quick” 
Spring officially sprung March 20th. After a longish cold snap the gradual increase in daylight and temperature was most welcome.
The Magnetic Hill Zoo took advantage of the amazing Spring to raise money for their tiger fund.
You know what they say in the Maritimes: “If don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes”.
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Alpaca Maxing at Zoo
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Monday, sigh…
It wasn’t cold Monday but the roads were treacherous. C’est la vie. I went for coffee with no jacket so I’m still calling it Spring!
The Hippest Lama There Is
The Dalai Lama. Source of inspiration, font of patience, and according to tradition a manifestation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion and patron saint of Tibet.
“Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who have postponed their own nirvana and chosen to take rebirth in order to serve humanity.” – http://www.dalailama.com
A maven, certainly, but a social media maven? Apparently so. His holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, or more accurately, his office and representatives are now on Twitter.
Yep, that’s right check out – http://twitter.com/OHHDL. According to a tweet from earlier today:
“His Holiness thought it was prudent to make his office open and assessable to a more youth and technologically advancing audience.”
Presuming it’s not a fake account, I say well done. Forward thinking attempt to engage with a wider audience. I’m interested to see how it pans out. Just starting following @OHHDL, I wonder if they will actually engage their followers or just firehose tweets.
February 8th,2009
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A new year and a new batch of conferences.
VS
Conferences can be exciting, informative, and excellent opportunities to network. So far on the hot list:
RailsConf May 4-7
SXSW Interactive March 13-17
Gartner Portal Summit March 16-18
HOW Design Conference June 24-27
Introp May 17-21
Oracle OpenWorld Oct 11-15
I had a huge debate with several of my colleagues on the relative value of two of these as the dates overlap.
If you’re doing anything in the Enterprise Portal space it’s easy to see why you need to be at this conference. Just look at the top 5 topics of interest:
- Apply Web 2.0 concepts and technologies to improve interactions with customers and partners and internal operations
- Reduce operational costs/improve ROI
- Drive innovation and creativity with workplace technologies
- Improve organizational effectiveness
- Portal design best practices
If you have a Portal in your organization or if you service Portals for your clients like me, this is the kind of thing you eat, sleep, and breathe. You don’t find people who are able, or willing, to talk in depth on these subjects every day.
The end value for clients is immense. Not everyone has access to the aggregated research data Gartner collects.
Ok, this is a big one. Probably the coolest conference in the IT field today. Some of the biggest names and greatest names on the web will be here. Just check out the list of panels.
I have no doubt that there is enormous value to be taken from this conference. The breadth and depth of talent here is staggering. Not to mention examination of the incredible culture of the companies in attendance. To get decent coverage you would need a team in attendence.
The Big Question
Which one to attend?! There are points in favor of both of these conferences but the dates make it impossible to attend both.
On one hand, for my company’s Enterprise level client’s the most immediate value would seem to be realized from the Gartner conference. On the other, isn’t the Enterprise interested in what’s up and coming too?
Post your opinion. Given the option, where would you be in March?
If I missed an incredible conference in my list, throw that out there too.
There’s a new hook in the Twitter phisher’s tackle kit. A DM (direct message) with a booby trapped link.
Twitter has an official phishing warning posted on their status page. The linked page asks for your Twitter credentials but it’s actually twitter.access-logins.com!
This is actually a classic phishing technique, link manipulation, as described on Wikipedia.
This is certainly a shorter method than creating a realistic looking or working application to gather Twitter credentials. If you want someone’s credentials, just ask.
Have you gotten this DM or something similar? Let me know and I’ll add it to the growing list of Twitter phishing techniques.
Is Apple secretly cutting costs and disguising it as an innovation?
Last night Apple announced they would no longer be attending the Macworld conference and Expo. The explanation is that Apple is popular enough to no longer need the publicity. Apple retail stores draw 3.5 million people per week and Apple.com draws 100 million customers.
The consensus on this BNet poll is that the cost of trade shows are not worth the leads they generate. The example they list shows a single genuine lead costing $4500. That translates into a lot of iPhones per lead. Less than 2 Macbook Pros though.
Perhaps Apple simply realized this truth:
If you are attending MacWorld, you probably already like their products. Simple math says they don’t need the expense of a trade show to sell their gear.
What’s missing from this black and white view of trade show ROI? Is there any other potential value of showing up and showing off? What possible purpose could the droves of Apple fanboys and girls attendees serve besides shelling out cold cash to buy product?
One word: buzz!
Trade shows like Macworld do more than showcase to the crowd that attends. The majority of people there will be sharing their experience with everyone in earshot.
“Grandma, did you know I’ll be attending Macworld?”
“Hey co-worker, when I was at Macworld…”
Macworld Blog!
Twitpic – “Just Seen at Macworld!”
You get the idea.
People want the cred that goes with attending the big show. They want the connection that comes with hearing Steve Jobs in person. They love the opportunity to network with others who love their gadgets as much as they do. Ah well, there’s always SXSW I guess.
Apple is hot, hot, hot, there’s no doubt. But do they really have the momentum to drop one of the events that got them where they are today?
Having migrated from a PC to a MacBook over the summer, things have been progressing smoothly. Despite the relative ease of the transition, now and then I still discover utilities from my PC toolkit that I don’t have an immediate alternate for on my Mac.
Instant Eyedropper
One PC tool I always had running in my toolbar was Instant Eyedropper. Click the icon, and an info box shows the hex value for any pixel your mouse hovers over. Simple concept, but for a consultant jumping from system to system, a terrific timesaver.
So, a new day and a new client. Creating some quick content for them but I don’t have access to their systems yet, just a screenshot of a mockup. In the old days, I could gather the HTML colors I need in seconds and move on. Am I going to fire up my VM just to find out a couple of colors? I think not.
DigitalColor Meter
A quick Google search cleared this up. Turns out there’s a utility built into the Mac that does this exact thing, DigitalColor Meter. You can find it in Applications/Utilities. Try it out!
It’s capable of retrieving colors in 13 different formats, making it useful for more than just web development.
Now I’m wondering what other clever apps are hiding away in Mac OS Leopard.
What’s your favorite Native Mac App?
In response to my post on Twitter phishing, David Chan writes:
“I have only entered my Twitter credentials for tools which use it as single sign-on. A good example would be TwitPic, which skips the entire account creation process and uses all your Twitter info (name, avatar, description, location, etc.).”
Exactly what I would expect. I understand the usage, it makes perfect sense from a developer’s perspective. My fear is that we sometimes blindly give our credentials to third party applications just because a lot of other people are doing it.
I asked a group of people if they would give their email password to a third party application offering some service. Of course, they said they wouldn’t. The thing is, most of us have done so already!
If you use an multi-account IM tool like Pidgin or Adium, you must have entered your credentials for each account. I feel these clients are using the credentials in good faith (obviously or I wouldn’t use them) but what is to stop a very ambitious Phisher from creating a useful service to gather mass email accounts?
They could offer the service for a period to build up faith and then get on with their nefarious deeds.
Thoughts?
The Bait
If you are a die hard Twitter fan, you’ve probably already heard the controversy around TwitterRank. It’s a fairly basic concept, like a page rank for your Twitter account:
“As the name implies, Twitterank is sort of like Page Rank for twitter users. True to its namesake, it uses “back references” of sorts to determine how worthy of a person you are in Twitterverse.”
The Hook
Most of us have given our password to any number of clients in our search for the one that works for us: Twinkle, Twhirl, Twitterific, TweetDeck, etc. How can we be sure that any one of these is legit? TwitterRank has posted an official response to the phishing question. Basically it says, “I’m a good person, don’t worry about it”. I accept that. It’s not the developer’s job to assure people they are not malicious when offering free services. It’s really a case of buyer (read user) beware.
TwitterRank’s creator states the problem is the Twitter API is a closed system. You need to have a username and password to retrieve data. TwitterRank goes on to refer to sites like Yahoo and Facebook that allow you to retrieve data in other ways.
Fair enough, but it is possible to retrieve a lot of data from Twitter just by using the publicly available xml timelines, user and friend. I have an alpha version Twitter tool in the works that gives you the option to enter your password but operates just fine without it. You only need to enter your password if you want to access protected, i.e. private, data.
The Solution?
Hard to say. Perhaps Twitter could have an approved list of affiliate tools. Sort of like the iTunes approval process.
What do you think? Have you ever given a second thought to entering your Twitter password to a third party tool? If not, would you do the same with your email password?
