Posts made in July, 2009
OReilly Webcast: YQL: Select * from Internet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs7PWduOtFU
Very cool way to make mashups with minimum effort
Read MoreTrailer for ‘Ovo’ at Cirque du Soleil
On Wednesday Alex and I celebrated our second anniversary by going to see “Ovo”, the insect-themed show which Cirque du Soleil are currently performing in their home town of Montréal. It was absolutely breathtaking.. Incredible feats of human skill, outlandish costumes and wonderful sets and lighting. The video barely does it justice – I recommend you see it if you can!
An example of how the Internet is shifting the balance of power in society
This video has just “gone viral” on Twitter and elsewhere. Everyone is forwarding the link around.
All you need to do these days in tell your story, and if it’s sticky enough, the world will spread it, far more effectively than any company’s PR department can.
As social networks online grow, consumer power grows. Companies that treat their customers badly need to wake up and listen, or this will happen to them too.
You can read the full story at Dave Carroll‘s site. Whatever he lost in the value of that guitar, he will soon gain back in getting his music to new audiences.
Oh, and the best bit? There’s another two songs still to come…!
An example of how society’s values are all screwed up
The doorbell rang, a delivery man was there. “Sign here”, he said, and handed me a cardboard box. “Thanks,” I said, noticing how light the box was. I knew I’d recently ordered two new hard drives and a SATA card (to connect them into our server). This was too light to be either.
You can see from the photos below what was inside – a box the size of two shoeboxes, stuffed with brown paper, containing 2 tiny red SATA cables (which could at a pinch fit in a normal paper envelope if you wanted to). I had ordered these from http://newegg.ca/ as part of the order for the SATA card. I was shocked that they would ship these individually and in such a wasteful way. A jiffy bag would have been more appropriate, and why on earth do the cables needed to be shipped separately.
This got me thinking, people talk about how we should have an economical model where we take into account the real environmental cost, not to mention the money cost. I can’t think of a better illustration than this.
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