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Archive for January, 2009

The making of a road-trip mix tape…or how I hurt my plinky

22 Jan

Ok look, here’s the deal. I saw a new service on the web and decided to try it. The gimick of “plinky.com” is they ask you a question and you answer it. At first I dreaded the question, then rolled my eyes, 3 “road trip songs” how cliche, I thought. But as I answered, and realized how the site was drawing me in my autosearching for the cover, then asking “why?” it was kind of fun – hope you enjoy my answers:

On the road again by Willie Nelson

This is the definitive road trip song. I think it is actually required by law in some states including Texas that if you use the word “road trip” you must play this song. Willie’s other great road anthem – “City of New Orleans” – although it’s about trains and a little more contemplative in mood is also a good song, but the who tape can’t be Willie or it wouldn’t be a mix! So for quite contemplation we turn to another classic…

wonderful world by Louis Armstrong

When the mood settles down, and everyone is drawn into quite contemplation of the world beyond the window, this song reminds and reinforces the fact and the feeling that the world is a miracle. No song is better at conveying that sense of wonder that is necessary to truly be in the moment. Great conversation will follow.

Life is a highway by Rascal Flatts

Again, like Willie, this song might be required. The version for the Pixar movie cars made that movie great.

 
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Imagination, Web Software

 

Twitter: 140 reasons it’s worth your time

17 Jan

twitterrific-icon If someone at your company is not watching your brand on Twitter (website: Twitter.com wikipedia: Twitter) you could be missing out on valuable market intelligence and an opportunity to interact with your customers in a way that makes your brand more personal. Plugging into twitter a little each day is a good way to “listen” to what is happening: in the news; in your industry; and with your customers and to the web. The web is changing fast and changing society as it does. Ideas are generated in small sub-cultures and explode outward in viral waves that influence consumer behavior, innovation, even language.

If you have not heard of Twitter, heard of but never tried it, tried it but didn’t “get it”, or seen the value but weren’t sure how to extract it, then this article is written for you.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
7 Comments

Posted in All Blog Posts, Social Networks, Technology, Web Design, Web Marketing

 

What is the meaning of “semantic web”?

16 Jan

We all know that computers are stupid. They can’t tell the difference between "turning right" and "being right", or "this object is light" and "turn on the light". They just search for the word and if it appears, they show you where it is. They have no idea what it means. A better example is if I ask "who knows Ben Shoemate?" Google search can’t tell me, even though I have friends in facebook, connections in linkedin, followers on twitter, comments on my blog, and links to my website…it has all the dots, it just can’t connect them.

Once we teach computers how to understand the meaning of words in context, they can start to connect the dots and become a lot more useful to us.

 
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Posted in Web Design

 

Looking for hope or inspiration? This should do it for you…

15 Jan

Spend a few minutes watching this video. Like the magic ring given to King Solomon that had to the power to make a happy man sad, and a sad man happy with just the words – "this too shall pass" – this video has the same power.

 

 
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Posted in Web Design

 

Set up your own wordpress blog in 10 mins

13 Jan

I made a video to quickly (in 10 mins) set up your own blog. Below are steps with links to what you need.

Here is what you need:

  1. find a theme you like an download it – here are some resources:
  2. Find a place to host it – I use dreamhost and recommend it to all my clients. Why? Its dirt simple and getting better all the time. My previous nickel-and-dimed me for every little improvement. Sign-up here and use this coupon for $90 off (You save $90 and I save $7 on my own hosting when you use it :) Code = BENSHOEMATE
  3. Create or transfer a domain and get all your user names and passwords – your going to have at least 3 passwords: Dreamhost, FTP, and wordpress when your done.
  4. While your waiting for dreamhost to do its thing, install firefox and the extensions fireftp and scribefire.
  5. Ok, so you get your email from dreamhost, you login to the admin panel, then go to the goodies > one-click-installs. Select wordpress, your domain, enter a name for a new database (just call it wordpressDB it doesn’t matter), keep the defaults and install.
  6. go to your domain (in my case that’s benshoemate.com) and refresh – in a few minutes you’ll see a prompt to install. follow the instructions.
  7. Dreamhost gives you about 10 themes to play with by default but you will want to find and upload your own. Connect with fireftp (dreamhost sent you an email with ftp info) then and upload the theme you found earlier to the wp-content > themes folder. Make sure you extract it (i.e. don’t upload the zip)
  8. Go look at it in wordpress. WordPress creates a theme thumbnail – nice huh. click and apply.

 
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Posted in Web Design

 
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