Have Media Will Travel » Media

Droid Helps Country Bumpkin Find Her Way

Shelli — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:10:29 +0000

My family just returned from a week in Omaha, NE, where we visited my husband’s family.

Before departing for our trip, I upgraded from a Blackberry Storm to a Motorola Droid X. During my trip, I fell in love with my Droid X.

My Driod X is the droid I was expecting.

For one thing, as we traveled for hours across the wide state of Nebraska, the boys and I voice-commanded topics from which Google queried searches for us.

Our boys have inquiring minds. Among other things, they wanted to know if ghosts and/or UFOs had been reported in the vicinity, and also, how much blood a great white shark contains.

My Droid seemed happy to look these things up for us. It helped pass the time, and we gained new knowledge.

One of the most exciting things was when I, a small town girl — a country bumpkin — looked to my Droid to navigate and help me find my way to a Walgreen’s. It was rather exciting to hear my Droid voice her commands, left turns and right turns (and even u-turns when I made mistakes) and which exits to take.

And I found my way. The only beef I have is after such lengthy play-by-play navigation, the navigation’s voice should include a huge “Congratulations!” or “Nice Work!” Instead, all I got was “You have successfully arrived at your destination.” No duh. Oh well. Beggars can’t be choosers.

The funny thing is that in all the excitement, by the time I got to Walgreen’s, I totally forgot why I needed to go to Walgreen’s in the first place. So, I just bought some Gingko Biloba and was on my way.

I love my Droid. It is (more than) the droid I was expecting.

Advertising People: Read This Mashable Article

Shelli — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:07:39 +0000

I read so many articles, it’s a miracle I retain anything. There is just so much change going on when it comes to marketing, mostly due to social media, and I am trying my best to stay informed, which means I’m reading a ton.

My first go-to source for all things social media is Mashable. Four days ago, it brought us this article, How Social Media Has Radically Altered Advertising, by Hank Wasiak.

It is just so spot on, I have to write a post directing you to it.

There’s immediate credibility to the article given it’s written by Wasiak, a 67-year-old advertising veteran (whose career in advertising started right in the middle of the actual Mad Men era), is a partner at The Concept Farm, the author of the best-selling Asset-Based Thinking book series, a 3-time Emmy award-winning TV host, a keynote speaker and professor at USC’s Graduate School of Business.

The article is timely and relevant given the changing landscape we’re trying our best to navigate as marketing professionals and business managers. In addition to many valuable insights, he shares quotes and concepts from industry thought leaders that include most of my favorites: Jeff Pulver, Brian Solis, John Jantsch, Jim Farley,Seth Godin and Chris Brogan.

One of the most noticeable gems in the article is a quote he shares from Jeff Pulver: “The social media revolution is less about “we the people” and more about “me the people.”

Another good one: Bob MacDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble, sums up just how far a “me the people” movement can go: “What I would like to have is a one-on-one relationship with seven billion people in the world and be able to customize offerings for those seven billion people. Digital allows that relationship.”

It also includes the interesting graphic referred to as the “conversation prism“, provided by Brian Solis.

(Thanks, Hank, and Mashable, for this insightful article.)

Thoughts About The Facebook Effect

Shelli — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 03:09:32 +0000

Disclaimer: I LOVE Facebook. I just finished reading The Facebook Effect, by David Kirkpatrick, a veteran technology reporter who was for many years editor for technology and the internet at Fortune magazine. The book is phenomenal. In fact, for me it was a page-turner.

Me, trying to be clever by capturing my reflection in the cover image on The Facebook Effect.

Kirkpatrick provides readers with a pretty up-close and personal view into the mind and life of Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and provides a history of the most popular social network in the world, and the second-most visited site on the web.

Kirkpatrick writes near the beginning of the book: The Facebook Effect happens when the service puts people in touch with each other, often unexpectedly, about a common experience, interest, problem, or cause. This can happen at a small or large scale – from a group of two or three friends or a family, to millions…

Facebook is loaded with content that is generated constantly by its users. According to the book, each month, about 20 billion pieces of content are posted to Facebook by its users, including links, photos and stories. Kirkpatrick writes that company insiders estimate status updates alone that are made to Facebook amount to more than 10 times more words than all blogs worldwide. Facebook, not Flickr, is the largest photo sharing site right now. (According to Kirkpatrick’s book, by late 2009, Facebook was hosting 30 billion photos.)

We are also spending increasing amounts of our time on Facebook. Kirkpatrick writes that the Compete research firm reports than in January 2010, 11.6 percent of all online time in the U. S. was spent on Facebook, compared to 4.1 percent for Google. If these stats aren’t staggering enough, consider that more than 20 percent of the one billion internet users in the world use Facebook. Regularly. Specifically, Kirkpatrick reports that users spend 8 billion minutes every day on Facebook. (The average user spends about an hour each day on the social network.)

My Grandma in Colorado is 86 -- and on Facebook.

In other words, everybody’s doing it. Hell-fire, even my 86-year-old Grandma, in Colorado, is on Facebook! :>

Here are some things I got from the book that I deemed valuable enough to highlight:

• Given the aforementioned data, it’s clear Facebook hosts an astounding amount of valuable content of all forms. Interestingly, as Kirkpatrick writes in The Facebook Effect, Zuckerberg acknowledges this is not Facebook’s content. Rather, it’s the users’ content. Facebook just happens to be the platform on which we are able to contribute and share such content.

• Facebook operates in 75 languages, and 75 percent of Facebook’s users are outside of the U. S.

• Naysayers and those who may still be resisting Facebook often criticize Facebook for the many status updates that are simply reporting of small or trifling matters. Zuckerberg’s standard rebuttal to this, according to Kirkpatrick and the book, is: “Understanding people is not a waste of time.” Zuckerberg’s goal is “to help people understand the world around them.”

• Zuckerberg often refers to the “social graph,” meaning the web of relationships formed via friendship connected in the social network. That’s what Facebook aspires to be. Kirkpatrick writes that Facebook’s CEO/founder believes that the “core value of Facebook is in the set of friend connections.” He says Facebook has “the most powerful distribution mechanism that’s been created in a generation.”

• I’ve long described Facebook as being a vehicle for word of mouth that has scalability. Word of mouth has always been the most effective form of marketing. Now word of mouth isn’t limited to words. It’s also videos and photos. And the size of our networks are no longer limited by the number of colleagues we work with or friends we physically hang out with. As Kirkpatrick writes, Zuckerberg’s colleague at Facebook, Matt Cohler, described this as the “mechanism for distribution was the relationships between people.”

• On the subject of identity, Kirkpatrick writes that Zuckerberg designed Facebook so that each person has only one identity. Kirkpatrick writes that Zuckerberg said: “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.” Kirkpatrick writes that Zuckerberg argues that having two identities demonstrates a lack of integrity, and that “the level of transparency the world has now won’t support having two identities for a person.”

• Facebook has taken hits by actions related to changing its terms of service and privacy settings. But Kirkpatrick writes that in fact Zuckerberg says that privacy has not only not disappeared, “but become even easier to control — what I want to share I can share with everyone. What I want to keep private stays in my head.”

• Another form of new distribution for Facebook platform has come in the way of applications. Applications on Facebook now have a unique way of acquiring new users, which further expands Facebook’s reach and user base.

• Kirkpatrick writes an interesting segment while discussing Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s series of sessions with Facebook management to discuss strategy about the advertising opportunity. Kirkpatrick writes about how Facebook management differentiates Google and Facebook, and this section of the book provides key insights about what will surely be the future of advertising. When you search on something in Google, it presents you an ad that is a response to the world you typed into the search box… The ads you typically click on there are the ones that respond to what you already know you’re looking for. In advertising-speak, Google’s AdWords search advertising “fulfills demand.” Facebook’s, by contrast, would generate demand, the group concluded. Kirkpatrick writes that Sandberg’s researchers discovered that only 20 percent, at most, of the world’s $600 billion in annual advertising spending is spent on ads aimed at people who already know what they want. The remaining 80 percent, or $480 billion a year, was up for grabs as more and more ad spending shifted to the internet.

• Zuckerberg is not an enthusiast for advertising. In fact, his first priority at Facebook is to grow it, then to generate revenue. Kirkpatrick writes that Zuckerberg feels “The basic idea is that ads should be content…”

• Facebook contains the most targeted marketing potential of any medium in history due to the wealth of data is generates. Kirkpatrick writes that Josh James, CEO of Omniture, a major internet ad-targeted service, says “Facebook has the richest data set by a mile…It is the first place where consumers have ever said, ‘Here’s who I am and it’s okay for you to use it.’”

• Kirkpatrick says of traditional media organizations: if they are to most benefit from the Facebook environment they have to learn to function within it as if they were individuals. The playing field has been leveled by the site’s neutral way of treating all messages as similar. Any media company, newspaper or TV station can create it own page on Facebook. But then it faces the same mandate to generate interesting, relevant, and useful messages that an individual does.

• Facebook founder Zuckerberg wishes for a more transparent world. Kirkpatrick writes that one night over dinner with Zuckerberg, he asked the CEO about Facebook’s effects on society, including politics, culture, government, media and business. Zuckerberg responded by talking about the potlatch, which is a traditional celebration of indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest Coast. Each celebrant contributes what food and goods they can, and anyone takes what they want. The highest status goes to those who give the most away.
“Are you familiar with the concept of a gift economy?” Zuckerberg asks. “It’s an interesting alternative to the market economy in a lot of less developed cultures. I’ll contribute something and give it to someone, and then out of obligation or generosity that person will give something back to me. The whole culture works on this framework of mutual giving. The thing that binds those communities together and makes the potlatch work is the fact that the community is small enough that people can see each other’s contributions…”
Zuckerberg says Facebook and other forces on the Internet now create sufficient transparency for gift economies to operate at a large scale. “When there’s more openness, with everyone being able to express their opinion very quickly, more of the economy starts to operate like a gift economy. It puts the onus on companies and organizations to be more good, and more trustworthy.”
“… A more transparent world creates a better-governed world and a fairer world.” This is, for him, a core belief.

• Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and is a well-known entrepreneur and venture capitalist who is viewed by many as a financial genius, was an early investor in Facebook, and is among its board of directors. Thiel has offered expertise and advice to Zuckerberg and Facebook. In a chapter toward the end, called “The Future,” Kirkpatrick shares with us more differentiation between Google and Facebook when considering the future of the two iconic companies. “Google in many ways is an incredible company with an incredible founding vision,” says Thiel. “But a very profound difference is, I think, at its core Google believes that at the end of this globalization process the world will be centered on computers, and computers will be doing everything. That is probably one of the reasons Google has missed the boat on the social networking phenomenon. I don’t want to denigrate Google. The Google model is that information, organizing the world’s information, is the most important thing.
“The Facebook model is radically different. One of the things that is critical about good globalization in my mind is that in some sense humans maintain mastery over technology, rather than the other way around. The value of the company economically, politically, culturally – whatever – stems from the idea that people are the most important thing. Helping the world’s people self-organize is the most important thing.”

The Facebook Effect is fascinating and insightful. The way we communicate and share and document our lives as a people is dramatically changing, in very large part due to Facebook. Reading the story behind Facebook and its brief-but-significant-history is not only exciting, but important.

LINKS:

Buy the book.
Become a fan of The Facebook Effect.
Follow the author, David Kirkpatrick, on Twitter.

NOTE: I received permission from author David Kirkpatrick to excerpt portions of the book.

Why I Love Facebook

Shelli — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 02:31:17 +0000

I just finished reading The Facebook Effect, by David Kirkpatrick. It is a phenomenal book. In fact, it was a page turner for me.

Kirkpatrick provides readers an up-close and personal look into the mind and life of Facebook CEO/Founder Mark Zuckerberg, and provides a history of the most popular social network in the world and the second-most visited site on the internet.

Facebook enables a person like me, who lives out on the lonely frontier of Wyoming, to still have a pretty social life.

I’m working on a pretty in-depth review of the book, which I will post here before week’s end. Please check back here for it or subscribe to my blog feed so you get it in an email. This book was great, and I will share many excerpts and highlights from it in my upcoming review.

But for now, the many reasons I love Facebook:

It is a platform that enables me to communicate and keep abreast of my friends’ and family’s lives.

It is an easy-to-use “life streaming” tool that enables me to document and “journal” with words, photos and videos important and special moments in my life, and to share these moments.

It allows me to manage and correspond with more people than I could ever maintain relationships with offline. (In short, it makes it more manageable and practical to have, and enjoy, many different friendships.)

Its technology (the “like button”, link-adding features, etc.) makes it super easy for me to share information, both that which is generated by me, but also, and more importantly, the many articles or photos or other types of content I stumble upon, on Facebook, or off Facebook (via the “Like” or Facebook share buttons) and wish to share with my Facebook friends.

It makes it easy to discover common interests among my friends, family and acquaintances that would be otherwise difficult, impossible, or impractical for me to discover.

It tells me when a friend or family member has a birthday. I love this feature. I can share Happy Birthday wishes with my friends and family, including relatives and colleagues. Without Facebook’s Birthday reminders, many of these birthdays would be oblivious to me.

By the same token, Facebook provides a platform that enables me to become aware when a friend or relative or colleague is going through a hard time, be it a death in the family, a lost job, an illness. And, I get to learn when exciting things happen, such as the birth of a child, or a successful adoption, or a job promotion or new home.

And, I have really enjoyed reconnecting with old classmates, colleagues and friends.

I live in Wyoming. Much of my beloved state is still considered “frontier” and not even rural. It’s lonely. There are only a half a million people here — fewer people than animals. And, the country is big and expansive. Facebook allows me to lead a pretty social life despite the fact I live in a pretty remote place.

What Matters Now is Awesome

Shelli — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:10:48 +0000

What Matters Now is a brilliant compilation of thoughts and ideas from more than 70 big thinkers and visionaries. I’ve read only the first few and I’m telling you, the e-book is awesome.

Genius, thought leader and author Seth Godin created the e-book.

“Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around,” writes Godin in the blog post where he introduced and made available this fabulous ebook, which was a project that took him months to complete.

What you get are 80 pages of wisdom, presented in compelling, unique and useful ways. Download it here.

Among the thought leaders who participated and share their insights are Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Tim O’Reilly, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tom Peters, Dan Pink, Chris Anderson, Kevin Kelly, Jason Fried, Elizabeth Gilbert, Steve Pressfield, and more.

Don’t waste another moment. This is truly a GIFT. I’m going to start reading it right now and will not put it down until I’ve read all of its pages. It’s not very often we get, for free or otherwise, such a compilation of wisdom and first-hand insights from such a significant, brilliant collection of thought leaders.

What Matters Now comes at a perfect time, near the end of 2009. It will inspire our hearts and stimulate our minds as we enter a new year.

I’d love to hear what some of your favorites are in the e-book.

What Matters Now Contributors Cloud image from SethGodin.com

Facebook: Personal Lives Unveiled

Shelli — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:59:46 +0000

Compared to all other things technology, which I usually embrace early, I was a late adopter of Facebook. The reason is I don’t prefer to be very social. I’m busy and tend to be selfish with what free time I have.

But then one day I surmised that because of this very realization, Facebook could be ideal. I could be social without physically being social. With Facebook, I could be social without leaving home or even picking up the telephone.

That was a few months ago. Now I love it. It’s my favorite social network. And although I belong to Twitter, LinkedIn and Friendfeed, and utilize YouTube and have this blog, Facebook is, hands down, my platform of choice for “life-streaming.” It’s where I go to post all of my most meaningful updates, including simple thoughts or videos and photos related to my family, friends and travel.

This doesn’t make me special. Facebook is the most popular social network right now. For crying out loud, my parents are now on Facebook, as is one of my Grandmas, and she’s 85 years old! You know the saying, “Everybody’s doing it.”

My Grandma Sniffin is on Facebook. She's 85.

But, I digress. This post is about how our relationships can benefit from Facebook’s biggest strength: the personal profile. Sure, with Facebook we can learn about the personal side of our friends and family. But that’s not all. Now, we can also connect more personally to our business partners and colleagues.

I am Facebook friends with some of the tourism clients we work with.

For example, I know that John, the marketing director of my favorite ski resort, Grand Targhee, in Alta, WY, is a die-hard Red Sox fan and that he loves ice hockey. I know he has two kids who are about the same ages as two of our sons. I know he moved to the Idaho side of the Tetons to take the marketing helm at Grand Targhee following a similar position for Colorado ski resorts a little over a year ago. (BTW, I can’t help myself. I might mention here that Grand Targhee is my favorite place in the world to ski and snowboard. I learned to ski there, our kids learned to ski there and it has the best powder anywhere. But that’s another post.)

I am Facebook friends with Eric, the marketing director of the Salt Lake City Convention & Visitors Bureau. As a result of this connection, I know that he’s not only an avid cyclist, but a pretty darned high level one. I know he likes yoga, and I know a little bit about his familyincluding that his son has the same name as our youngest son. I have learned he’s into endurance biking and bike racing and has a good line on interesting events my husband, Jerry, and I will want to consider in the future.

Another long-time client I am Facebook friends with was diagnosed with cancer this past summer. Thankfully, he’s doing remarkably well following treatment, and his prognosis is good. But I’m grateful to my Facebook connection with him because it enabled me to keep updated on his health in a more personal way and enabled me to reach out in a more personal way to let him know he was in our thoughts, and to ask him if there was anything we could do to help. I also came to learn he recently got married. This is all stuff I felt lucky to know given this is a business customer I care about.

All of these insights help me shape a conversation that is no longer limited to “do you want to do business with us?” Thank goodness we may have more to talk about and form a relationship around than only the business at hand. We are people, after all, with meaningful lives. Certainly, we can serve our partners and customers better if we know them better personally, right? Plus, thanks to Facebook, I know when to wish a client Happy Birthday. That’s pretty cool.

Of course, this means we need to be on our best behavior. In the current social media landscape that we’re operating in, we don’t have the luxury of having two personas, one for our personal life and another for work. Our personal and work lives are increasingly blurred. As Erik Qualman so aptly reminds us in his great book, Socialnomics, when it comes to social media, one needs to “live your life as if your mother is watching.”

In the old days, if we were lucky, we’d get a face-to-face appointment with our prospective client. It was during this meeting, while seated in our client’s office, that we could take note of family photos, trophies, certificates, posters, artwork, or other items on display, in an effort to try and get a glimpse of the “person” we were dealing with. It wasn’t much, but it was valuable.

Today, Facebook provides that, and more.

Susan Boyle on YouTube

Shelli — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:11:07 +0000

I got goosebumps and ‘happy tears’ when I watched the YouTube clip that’s gone viral of Susan Boyle’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent.

But I take issue with the moral of the story that has been attached to the great viral video of her performance â€“ that is to say, “Don’t judge a book by the cover.”

What’s wrong with the cover? Susan Boyle looks like a happy, jovial, wonderfully warm and loving Grandma-type. (BTW, what is a great singer supposed to look like?) I just makes me a little sad when people say to/about her: “Wow, you’re a phenomenal singer even if you’re not much to look at.”

That said, what a fascinating voice and performance. It gives me inspiration and goosebumps every time I watch it and listen to Susan Boyle sing with such passion.

An Unsolicited Phone Call Can Be Perfect

Shelli — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:44:31 +0000

Seth Godin posted “Poisoning the Well” on his blog Friday morning, April 3.

And as usual, with his wisdom, Godin pretty much nailed it. Godin’s Permission Marketing remains one of my favorite business books, and was a pivotal one in our destination travel business.

Or I thought he had nailed it until later that day.

This is NOT an image of my To Do List, which was much longer.:<

You see, my mother-in-law has a birthday coming up on April 9. Since we are leaving town for a spring break trip and would be in some remote place on April 9 where there are no phones or cell reception, getting a gift ordered for her birthday had been on my “to do” list for over a week. By Friday afternoon there it was, still nagging at me and yet to be checked off the list. I still needed to order Theresa a lily bouquet to be delivered on April 9.

Right after a quick bite for lunch at home, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I ignored the call and let the answering machine do its job.

A friendly lady’s voice came over the machine.
Hi there. This is Janet from Gift Tree. I’m really sorry to call you. I know this is an unsolicited call. But I was looking at our records from this time last year and saw that you ordered Theresa Johnson a gift basket for her birthday. Is there anything we can do to help with her birthday this year?

As I heard this, I swiftly picked up the phone.

Why, yes, you certainly can help, I exclaimed. And before I knew it (in fewer than a couple of minutes), I had ordered a beautiful lily bouquet with gift card to be delivered on the morning of my mother-in-law’s birthday.

Whew. Now I don’t know how all the stars aligned just perfectly to make the above happen and be a good thing, but it was exactly perfect. Something important had the effect of checking itself off my list, almost with no effort, and all thanks to the great customer service and tact provided by a company eager for business and eager to please. A rare thing in today’s world.

Sure, timing had a lot to do with it. Talk about Gift Tree getting lucky and hitting me right at the time I had a need for them. But also, I think much of it had to do with the fact that Janet’s message started out with a sincere “I’m really sorry to call you.” It is nice when others show respect for your time.

For the record, we are among those who get the unwelcome unsolicited calls that come on a Friday or Saturday evening when our family is snuggled down for a great movie night or board game. Nothing is more inappropriate or annoying, or goes further to make us not want to do business with the company from which these callers are calling.

But for now: Gift Tree, I thank you. You reached out, and with tact, you helped make my life easier.

I’m a Media Multitasker

Shelli — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:27:46 +0000

I love to travel and I travel with lots of gadgets to capture it all in one form of media or another. And hence, the name of this blog… (Those closest to me probably realize that one of my shortfalls is that I tend to focus so much on capturing the moment that I likely miss out on fully enjoying the experience at hand. I’m working on this. But I digress…)

I love technology in general, and in particular, gadgets. Especially if they can somehow improve my life, make me more efficient, and help me capture my most unique and memorable moments.

I just returned from a hiking trip with a girlfriend to Zion National Park.
With me I took the following gadgets, each serving a very important and distinct purpose:

â€¢ Blackberry Storm
â€¢ iPod + noise-canceling headphones
â€¢ Nikon Coolpix600
â€¢ FlipVideo
â€¢ Macbook Pro Laptop
â€¢ Amazon Kindle
â€¢ Portable GPS
â€¢ Nike-Plus wristband

Once I boarded my flight in Riverton, WY, I used my blackberry to send a quick text to my husband, Jerry, letting him know I was boarded and on schedule. I then settled in for the 1-hour flight by watching a Jon Stewart Daily Show episode on my iTouch with my noise-cancelling headphones.

Kathy, from Omaha, and I linked up for the trip by flying into Las Vegas. From there we used my portable Tom-Tom to get us headed in the right direction and to our hotel near Zion National Park.

I had ordered and preloaded my Kindle with several hiking and guidebooks for the region so I only had to carry with us my (10 ounce) Kindle, vs. towing a trailer along to haul a bunch of heavy guidebooks.

I could quickly upload geotagged photos to my Facebook page, and also to Flickr from my phone while at the top of Zion National Park’s famous Angel’s Landing. I could also text my husband and sons a short video clip of the scary, exposed hike. I used my FlipVideo to capture short clips along the way to post on YouTube.

Awesome.

During the adventure Nikon Coolpix 6000 camera was logging GPS coordinates and seamlessly attaching them to all my images.

When I returned to the hotel room, I was able to upload my photos and video to my laptop. Thanks to iLife 09, the photo app I use (iPhoto) immediately assigned my photos in “Places” placing them on a map according to their gps coordinates. Next, it sorted my photos according to “Faces.” Since it was just Kathy and myself on this particular adventure, I chose one photo with both of us in and quickly assigned our names to our faces. From there iPhoto could sort all Kathy photos for me as well as all Shelli photos.

I was also able to log our miles for the day via my NikePlus.

Things were all going so slick and efficiently that I was downright giddy.

But then it came time to re-charge all of the gadgets for the next day’s adventures.

Which meant I had to untangle (at least) 7 separate power/charging cords and then figure out which one went with which device. Suffice it to say that this normally-cheerful (but unfortunately impatient) person had become a very frustrated and grumpy person. I bet it took me a (wasted) 30 minutes to get it all figured out, and when I did there weren’t enough available power outlets to plug them all in simultaneously so I had to charge them in sets. (Note to self: next time pack a power strip)

Not Awesome.

What I think would be the most valuable accessory for me, and other media folks, and technology junkies would be one charger cord that works for all of the above devices.

Please, I would pay lots of money for a simple, streamlined solution. BTW, thank you very much FlipVideo for simply using AA batteries, and offering a no-cord solution. Other gadgets would be wise to follow!

Some of my favorite books

Shelli — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:36:37 +0000

I love reading. I love a book or story that captivates me until I’ve reached the last page and that leaves me thinking about it for days and weeks following.

This post simply lists some of my favorite books.

The Solace of Open Spaces (Gretel Ehrlich)
Where Rivers Change Directions (Mark Spragg)
Undaunted Courage (Stephen Ambrose)
Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini)
Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)
Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier)
Ordinary Wolves (Seth Kantner)
Outliers (Anything by Malcolm Gladwell)
Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner)
The Worst Hard Time (Timothy Egan)
The Worst Journey in the World (Apsley Cherry-Garrard)
Endurance (Alfred Lansing)
The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch)
The Post American World (Fareed Zakaria)
The World is Flat (Thomas Friedman)
Three Cups of Tea (Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin)
Good to Great (Jim Collins)
Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer)
Into The Wild (Jon Krakauer)
Perfect Storm (Sebastian Junger)
The Bonfire of the Vanities (and all books by Tom Wolfe)
The Alienist (Caleb Carr)
Last Child in the Woods (Richard Louv)
Why Gender Matters (Leonard Sax)