I have finished setting my Out of Office message on the work email, vacation is officially here!  Now I have some time to cleanup my blog site a bit and work on some projects around the house.

Google Wave and Voice Invites:

As I was going through my account on Google, I noticed that I have 3 Google Voice invites and 11 Google Wave invites. I have already handed out quite a few invites for Wave before, but I haven’t noticed any Voice invites until recently.  The Wave invites will go out to the first 11 people that send me a direct message on Twitter or Facebook.  The Voice invites will go out to 3 people chosen on Christmas day.  If you are interested in being included in the voice invites send me a direct message on Twitter or Facebook.

Site Updates:

I have moved my live shack feed to the NE4RD page of my blog.  This is not on all the time, but I try to have something up there when I’m operating on the ham radio equipment.  I have also updated my About page to include an updated look at my resume.

Recently I’ve seen more and more marketing people getting involved in twitter as if this is something where they can spam, and I do mean spam in a derogatory sense, non-sense in the hopes of getting reach through following everyone and trying to get everyone to follow them.  Is the real value in watching or publishing only to your follower’s list?

I believe the power of twitter is not watching your followers list getting spammed with “@noonespecial I really like to chat with you, DM me sometime for hugs and kisses.”  Maybe I’m a bit too cynical with this, but come on.  You’re there to find people interested in your services or providing a service to others.  In this economy, I realize that spam and reach may be your only way to feel like you have some sort of false value.  I do sympathize, but is it worth the cost of turning Twitter into a spam haven?

Now onto what I find to be the most powerful usage of Twitter, or at least one of the tools that makes Twitter an invaluable tool.  Search API.  For those of you that have a Twitter client on your desktop like TweetDeck, I would highly recommend adding a window for search.  The most recent version allows you to combine search terms with OR and AND for those that want to aggregate multiple topics.  You can use this to find useful information and people that are possibly interested in your services or company.  I use it now to track programming and local area stuff.  I’ve almost gone to ignoring what’s in my follower’s list since it’s been a bit too chatty.

In summary, I think if you’re on Twitter to make money or bring value to your business then consider every tweet before you hit the send button.  Does this tweet add value to my brand?  Should this be a Direct Message?  Do I sound like a 13 year-old?  Am I only tweeting because I watched some savvy presentation at a(n) (un)conference of (un)employed marketing people?  Twitter can be a useful tool if your not a tool while using it.

In the sidebar you’ll find my Twitter feed as well as my Google Reader shared items. I’ll add relevant information and links as I have time. I hope to also add a project portal page to my personal projects.

I have already slacked on my post for every other day. I apologize for that. Not like people actually read this. I need to write my own blog software or just install wordpress and be done with it. Anyways, I have updated my desktop at home to the latest Ubuntu 8.10. I had some issues with upgrading my UbuntuStudio, so I decided to scrap it and install a fresh copy of 8.10. Here’s what my desktop looks like now:

I’m going to keep tweaking and get all my software installed. I’ll keep you posted.

UbuntuStudio 8.04 to 8.10 Upgrade

I updated my desktop machine at home to the latest 8.10 from Ubuntu. Everything looks like it has successfully upgraded properly minus the ATI x1950 Pro drivers. I don’t seem to be able to enable the restricted driver set. I’m going to be looking into this today and see if I can get the fancy compiz effects turned back on. Other than that, the updates to the UbuntuStudio theme is nice. I like the new minimize, maximize and close buttons. I’ll have to submit some screenshots later in an edit.

Election 2008

Vote your heart and your mind. Vote for life and the rights of those that can’t choose. Use the Internet to do some searching for truth. Home values started the beginning to the end in 1975. Regulation on building, zoning and “open area” laws have created the false economy that is home values by government control over supply and demand. 1993 began the sub-prime mortgage mess. Warnings were presented to congress in 1998 by the FTC. Stop listening to the talking heads and show your intelligence by making your own decision by looking at the facts. Stop the expansion of government.