Vote to tell the world just how 2.0 you really are.

I’m in the camp that believes that techies are out in front on these trends and benefit from them in the early stages as much as our time is consumed by them. This takes it more into the realm of hobby and experimentation as we figure out intended and creative uses.

This reminds me of the Clay Shirky interview on The Colbert Report a couple weeks back when Shirky said, “Social tools aren’t interesting until the technology becomes boring.”

I completely agree with this. It’s just that techies find the technology itself interesting, so we use it first. But once it’s been fiddled with and tweaked sufficiently, the focus is no longer on the technology, but rather how we use it.

While the techie in me loves new technology, I always have my eye on the greater good and purpose all technology can provide. Not all technology is good and useful, so society needs this filter. Similarly, techies never know all the implications and uses of new technology, so it’s always fascinating to see where people take it.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Social Media, Web

I had originally titled this post, “You Are Your Tag Cloud.” I got to thinking about how revealing a person’s personal bookmarks can be about their interests, personality, and surfing habits. For social media, this is a good thing. These are the revelations we’re looking for. What are you into? What can you share with others in a meaningful way?

A tag cloud, in case you’re wondering, is a visual collection of all the words you associate with all your collected bookmarks on a social bookmarking site like Delicious. You can view my tag cloud here on the right side of the page. Over time it really grows into something as unique as a fingerprint. A webprint, perhaps?

I could see a dark cloud rolling in for public bookmarking. While it’s possible to retain some anonymity through craft user names, chances are there is some overlap for most people with other accounts that would be relatively easy to trace. With the information engines churning 24/7 it’s not hard to imagine systems that make fairly accurate assumptions about other sites we’re on. Since many people use only a couple of user names or passwords for all their Internet accounts, figuring out people’s real identities is only going to get easier the farther we can trace things back.

I’d be curious to know if much quantitative study has been done on bookmarks and how they correspond to behavior or personality. Mimicking these qualities will soon be as necessary a component to identify theft as ID and account numbers. Perhaps this our social media identity.

On a tamer level, I’m surprised marketers haven’t made more use of this. Or perhaps they do and we’re not aware. To some extent, good marketing depends on knowing as much as one can about the consumer’s interest. But where is the line drawn? And to what extent to social bookmarking sites and search engines who retain this data play a role in governing the future use or impact of the time-shifted monitoring of online behavior?

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

Worth a gander. Warning, this site includes annoying music and flashing icons.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Web

Check out the Solio portable charger. Basically it soaks up a charge from the sun or your wall outlet, so when you run out of juice on the road you’ll always have a little extra to make that one last call or listen the rest of that song. If I get one, I’ll let you know how well it works.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Green, Technology

Now this is thinking ahead: kids using a see-saw on a playground to generate power. I bet we could all easily think of ten things like this in our lives that could turn our physical efforts into electricity rather than let it evaporate. There is no silver bullet for our energy needs, no single technology that will make it all better. We can use what we’ve already got, and ideas like this are what we need. Thanks for the tip, Guy.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Green, Technology

I feel a little guilty for posting this, so I’m linking rather than embedding. I randomly clicked on it the other day and was shocked to see nearly 3.8 million views. What does this mean? Anything at all?

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Andy Swindler Categories: Social Media, Web

Two creepy Web sites keep you blogging long after you kick it:

http://www.justincaseidie.com/

https://www.postexpression.com/

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Andy Swindler Categories: Social Media, Technology, Web

Check out Predictify.com. This works a couple ways. First, people ask questions for free on the ad-free web site. Marketers can pay to ask premium questions, which people are more inclined to answer as they will get a cut of the pay. This is useful in a somewhat one-dimensional form of market research. The greatest pay-out to date is $13.75, which isn’t bad for one minute of your time on a web site.

Second, everyday people go to the site and answer questions. Some they just do for fun to see the results. Others they get paid for (the premium ones). It’s an interesting twist on social media for marketing purposes.

Probably the best aspect of this site is really as another form of marketing/exposure. Just seeing or answering the question gets people to think about your product. People have fun doing it and maybe make a little scratch on the side.

Also, here’s an unrelated prediction on the future of console gaming.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Web