Some time ago, I had an idea for a digital photo backup device to use while traveling. My idea was to have two memory card slots so you could easily copy photos at the end of your day to another memory card. If your camera got stolen the next day, at least most of your precious memories would be safe.

Not surprisingly, someone had the same idea, but decided to use a hard drive for greater storage capacity and convenience. SmartDisk makes 40GB and 80GB PhotoBanks, with LCD screen and a copy button that can read most memory card formats. Seems perfect.

I bought two PhotoBanks for my upcoming trip to Greece (I leave tomorrow!). One for me and one for my parents. I’ll see how it works out and report back.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Technology

Google wants you to swim the Atlantic.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Web

Great article about how students are using informal Internet-lingo to truncate the English language even in term papers. This is a hard one for me. I’m a stickler for grammar, but also see great potential in all the burgeoning social media and networking platforms.

According to the study, 25% of teens have used and other emoticons in a term paper. That’s making me feel old, or just old-fashioned. Some standards shouldn’t be dropped, and many teachers are using this as an opportunity to teach the difference between proper and not.

“Teens who consider electronic communications with friends as ‘writing’ are more likely to carry the informal elements into school assignments than those who distinguish the two.”

Most surprising is that two-thirds of teens prefer to write papers by hand than to use a computer. Having grown up typing just about everything on a computer and thinking of it as a magical editing tool, I’m not sure what to make of this.

This remind me of the cell phone novels I read about a few weeks ago. A new genre is emerging for novels written and edited entirely and cell phones. One woman even drafts on the computer and then edits on the cell phone.

It seems to me that the most natural subject for this medium would be poetry, yet I don’t see anyone talking about emoticon-laced poetry. That could be considered a stylistic element if done well enough.

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

I just bought a spanky new lawn mower for my modest Chicago lawn. Human power seems the reasonable way to go for a small lawn in a big city.

Of course even the state-of-the-art of these things leaves a few trailing blades of grass. Instead of calling it mange, let’s celebrate lawns that clearly put the environment above the perfect cut.

Oh who am I kidding?

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Andy Swindler Categories: General, Green, Technology

The other day I was at a friend’s house and we were looking at some funny YouTube videos and whatnot. Then he put on a truly awful rap video. I can’t even recall what it was now, just completely uninspired and unoriginal–the kind of music that doesn’t advance the art at all.

I was sitting there wondering why exactly we were watching this. Why are people do fascinated with the awful? It’s the same phenomenon as rubber necking on the road. Everyone wants to see the train wreck. We can’t help ourselves. It’s a combination of fascination with the success and popularity of this thing, which speaks to other people’s poor taste or susceptibility to marketing, and a sense of relief and renewed appreciation for life that we were not the ones in that wreck or music video. Those who realize how easy it is for anyone to find themselves in an auto accident or rap video appreciate the favorable end of a close call.

This kind of intimate publicity is what word of mouth is all about. In this case, it wasn’t effective since I don’t remember what it was. But here I am talking about it. And there we were watching it. And not just the beginning for a taste. We watched the whole thing.

It harkens to the advice, “Be exceptional,” which finds its way into many marketing manuals. This is the way to get noticed, even if it’s only through being exceptionally bad.

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

This is fantastic. As an antidote to all the magazines who write lists to focus on the wealthy and famous, the U.K.’s Independent has come up with The Happy List that features people who have given back to the world in meaningful ways other than collecting wealth.

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Andy Swindler Categories: General, Web

Check out this list of ways you can use the Web and social media to help the planet and each other.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Green, Social Media

Did you think the sky was off limits for corporate advertising other than the trusty Goodyear Blimp?

Think again.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Green, Marketing, Technology

An incredible demonstration of the Mac to the tune of “Again & Again” by the Bird & the Bee.

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

Soon you will be able to send MySpace updates directly and automatically out through Twitter. Personally I find myself using MySpace less and less. Everyone is still exploring Twitter and its various purposes and uses, so it’s nice to see MySpace being progressive in this area. I still wonder how people who follow many more people than me keep up with it, though perhaps the point is you can never consume all the information out there, you just have to work with what time allows.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Social Media, Technology, Web