Keeping Up: Chronicling the Rapid Pace of Change Online

Apple Issues a Line of New Golf Clubs?

I saw a headline yesterday that caught my attention..." Apple launches social music network Ping".  I had to read because I was thinking that I misunderstood. Considering my terribly expensive golf habit, I was thinking the well established Ping golf clubs/putters that happens to be based here in the Phoenix area.  

But after reading, Apple did truly launch "Ping". Conceptually, a music oriented social network really is a great idea (and still slightly innovative several years into the social networking boom).  But come on Apple....Ping??!! With such an incredibly creative company, that's the best name you could come up with?  Not only is it non-descriptive, uh hello, that name is already taken by the well established Ping golf club brand and by Microsoft by changing the P to a B.  

This headline triggered a recurring thought in my mind about some of the dumbest social media and search names I have heard over the years. Way back in the day, I remember saying "Gooo-gul? What is that? At least its a name that you would recognize if you heard it again."  Google got away with a kitchy name because they were the first and it was memorable. Please please everyone else, stop naming your products and websites with dumb names. It is NOT a requirement to copy Google and have a double letter name or drop a vowel to be memorable, be a social media hipster, and get lots of VC funding.

This means you Flickr, Squidoo, Tumblr, Digg, Reddit, Sphinn, and numerous others. While I am at it, bit.ly, delicious, and orkut too. 

Another Great Use of Twitter: Lance Armstrong Finds Cycling Friends - LOTS OF EM

A good story worth sharing and posted for my old cycling friend at Virginia Tech who wasn't sure about the practicality of Twitter.  It seems that Lance was in Glasgow, Scotland and was looking for some riding partners. One Tweet and bam, 200+ people show up.  A great example of how technology/Twitter can enhance everyday life, especially when you are Lance Armstrong and EVERYONE wants to ride with you.  I don't think my friend at Va Tech and I share that trait with Lance!

Lance finds riding friends on Twitter: Scotland Herald

Want Breaking News? Try Twitter rather than CNN

  Although its quite hard to do, occasionally I pull myself away from this computer screen and have a non-wired life.  Most of my family/friends are NOT digital marketing/web professionals but instead have very normal offline lives.  These people are my test subjects to find out how skewed my life is towards the web.  My standard question these days is "Have you heard of Twitter?" Not surprisingly, I often get very strange looks.  Most of my non-digitized friends have no idea what Twitter is and when I try to explain it to them, they just dismiss me as Mr. Web Geek.

   I love Twitter because it has enabled a new way of instant communication and provides for an infinite number of applications.  Most of my personal Twitter usage up until now has been in my oriented around mass communicating with my very large family.  A few uses that I have found interesting beyond the obvious news applications are...

marriage proposals (this one says that first she thought Twitter was "ridiculous" which is exactly what I thought the first time as well)

organizing protests of the China Olympic Games torch relay,

Professors keeping in touch with students

   One of the coolest examples of Twitter that I have seen in action happened recently.  My brother-in-law John Sampson lives in San Francisco and lives a very connected life as well.  He was one of the creators of MyBlogLog (the widget on the right well of this blog), worked for Yahoo up until a few days ago (yes, another Yahoo defection), and is a big user of Twitter.  After spending the previous 25+ years in Florida dodging hurricanes, he moved to "earthquake central" about two years ago.  Recently, I received a one word Twitter from John....."EARTHQUAKE".   Being concerned that they were new residents to San Francisco, I went to the TV and turned on CNN to see what was up.  Of course, when I turned on the news, I saw a national weather map and a relatively mild-mannered anchor talking about gas prices or something similar.  After about a count of 30 seconds, the news cycle kicked in and CNN "broke the news" about an earthquake in San Francisco!  Umm, nope.  I knew 30 seconds before CNN did.  Take that Ted Turner! 

BlueTooth App from MyBlogLog

As some of you may know, I have a kinship to MyBlogLog - a social networking website/widget/app owned by Yahoo.  My geeky brother-in-law (yes you are John) and a few of his counterparts developed MyBlogLog a few years back and now work under the Yahoo umbrella optimizing it and enhancing its power.  MyBlogLog powers the "Recent Viewers" widget which you see across many of the largest blogs (ie. TechCrunch) on the Web today.  I have the widget in the right well below on this blog.  Its a neat feature because my face just popped up on TechCrunch's home page by going there.  It may cycle through in about 4 seconds with all of their traffic but it's still cool.

So what is MBL up to now?  Check this out m.mybloglog.com.  Now I am just getting started with it to test it out but here is the beginner's version of what it does....it scans with your Blue Tooth enabled device for other Blue Tooth enabled devices PHYSICALLY AROUND YOU with a MyBlogLog profile enabled.   You can find out if there is another MyBlogLog afficionado sitting near you at Starbucks cruising the web at the same time you are!  Being somewhat paranoid about technology invading the physical world, I am cautious.  This somewhat reminds me of some scenes in sci-fi movies like Minority Report. However, I know that mobile technology is where the next major move in the web industry is coming from so I am always one to try new things out.  This is definitely pushing technology a step further.  I will let you know how it goes. This should be interesting.  I can't wait to see my first alert come up.