Recounting ballots

Check out this article that provides examples of contested Senate ballots in Minnesota. I found it to be depressing on 3 levels...

1. Voters needed to fill out an oval by the name of the candidate they wanted to vote for. The ballots provide evidence that this process proved to be a steep "brain" teaser for some. Apparently Minnesota is Canada's Florida.

2. Each candidate pulled ballots that they feel show the "intent" to vote for them. Each candidate shows a remarkably broad definition of intent.

3. You can vote to say which way the ballot should be counted (for fun only... I hope). I tried to be 100% objective. Either I need to go back to intent school, or many of the other online voters are letting where they want the vote to go color their selection.

Adobe working to get Flash to work across multiple platforms

Please, please, please make one of those platforms iPhone/iTouch

SPAM

Bad news in the economy is apparently good news for Spam.

Product placement

OK, live TV viewing is dropping. TiVo and DVRs certainly put commericals at risk in the "watch when I want" world. I get that.

But is product placement the answer? Have you been compelled to try a soda just because Batman is drinking it -- hand twisted to fully reveal the logo?

I think a company's people are the best product placement in the social computing world. Make sure they know what your company is about, encourage them to play nice, and get back to the DVR.

Web 2.0 start ups

Here are a few web 2.0 start ups that are doing pretty well in a tough economic times. Most were new to me and nearly all had something interesting to offer.

TroopTube

I quasi-whined about the military shutting down some web 2.0 tools like YouTube awhile back. Well, now in an intriguing step forward - they introduce TroopTube.

It also seems to be driven by a sincere desire to connect those serving our country with friends and family. Good for them. They consider it a "retention tool". Corporations might want to take note.

On the geeky side, TroopTube uses Delve to make the magic happen. Seems like Delve introduces some interesting improvements to search across videos. Video has tended to be an opaque medium to search across - maybe this solution will make some inroads.

Semantic web and the market

Twine is an interesting approach to address parts of the whole web 3.o / semantic web thing. To me, the race is between people (web 2.0) or data/metadata (web 3.0) as the best method to survive the explosion of content and services.

Everyone is a content producer now, more can now be a developer as well. As the pile of all of this grows and grows we have to find better ways to store and search it. A hint for me that this is real - I have to go get a 500 gig hard drive to better support my back-up needs now. 500. Gig.

At a high level web 2.0 is people-centric, web 3.0 is data-centric. In economic(ish) terms, web 3.0 implies more authoritative involvement in the information marketplace. I remain a free market kinda guy and I am buying the hard drive to prove it.

Squidoo

I don't totally get it. I don't update my one lens very much because the interface is so painfully slow... but here is my Alice Cooper Squidoo Lens.

Election map

This is one cool map. I am talking about the interface -- will leave the assessment of what it resulted in to you.

I highly recommend the "bubble" view and the comparisons to past results. Great way to understand the data and trends.

I am cursed

So, fantasy football starts up and I score Tom Brady. I figure this dumb luck will make me look like a genius as the points roll in. Then Tom goes down week one and I lose to what will become a last place team.

I eventually pick up Kyle Orton. Surprisingly enough, Bears QBs are ALWAYS there to be picked up. Started him before the first Lions game, and again, dumb luck makes me look smart... for awhile.

This week I was worried the score keeping system might not keep up with my "Kyle points" as the Lions and Bears met once again. Then Kyle went down and I lost to a last last team again.

As the ancient Chinese proverb so aptly puts it..."Life is sad when Jeff Garica is your best option".

Handy websites

50 of 'em. Some more useful than others, but I found a nice free font source at least and a couple of decent graphics tools.

Now why I need more fonts??? Hmmmm, didn't think of that.

Unrelated, McCain was actually pretty good on SNL last night - where has that version of him been for the general election?