The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

For more information visit http://www.amnh.org

Morgan Stanley’s 2009 report on trends in the mobile Internet marketplace makes for an important read for anyone doing business in 2010 and beyond. By anyone, I mean not only hardware, software, and wireless companies, but all small, medium, and large businesses including plumbers and dentists. They forecast that the Internet boom of the past 15 years will take a marked upward acceleration with the mobile web.

History suggests the mobile Internet has potential to create / destroy more wealth than prior computing cycles based on 10x user multiplier effect (from cycle to cycle, the number of users / units increases tenfold). Regarding pace of change, more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.

Here’s a Powerpoint of the 92-slide presentation from Slideshare.net

Download the full 2009 Mobile Internet Report directly from the Morgan Stanley web site.

As company’s grow, they tend to suck more. We see this happen every, single, day. Yet some companies continue to innovate and do the right thing. What principles set these companies apart?

We need to study the principles that keep good companies from turning into sucky ones. Here’s an internal NetFlix document that goes a long way to identifying key elements of successful organizations. Every college student should read this before entering the workforce.

Mastering the “three Rs” was essential for knowledge workers in the twentieth century. Today, knowledge workers need to master the “three Cs” in order to succeed in our connected economy. Learn about the “three Cs”, and learn how your blog, the search engines, and social networking sites cooperate to create and enhance your professional reputation. Discover the limitations of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter as publishing platforms, and learn the critical features of WordPress that make it the premier platform for sharing your talents with the world.

I recommend Marshall Kirkpatrick’s provocative piece on free and premium Twitter accounts. He’s a blogger successfully using Twitter for online journalism. Marshall writes:

Selective group creation, competitive intelligence, business development, sentiment tracking and data mining horizons are just starting to open up on Twitter. It’s a big, dynamic, public, programmatically accessible database of real-time conversation. Would I pay the same monthly fee to access that as I do for telephone service? Hell yeah, I would.

Like Marshall, I believe that competitive intelligence, business development, data mining, and other research-oriented activities can be effectively carried out on Twitter. So much so that forward-thinking companies will pay big bucks for enhanced accounts that peek into this global datastream.

Twitter is a modern-day Bloomberg terminal for conversations and market intelligence.

Marshall is a visionary pioneer who “gets it”. Follow him: @marshallk

Tony Hsieh gave this presentation at SXSW conference in Austin, March 14, 2009. Watch the videos to get the full experience. When it comes to customer service Tony not only “get’s it”, he “invents it”. Learn how to use outstanding customer service as the backbone of your business. My favorite meme from this presentation, “Zappos is a service company that happens to sell clothing…”

SXSWi 2009: Sketchnotes 15-16, originally uploaded by Mike Rohde.

Notes from Tony Hsieh’s SXSW 2009 Talk

WordPress is an Open Source Web Powerhouse

WordPress 2.7 Make it Easy To…

• post articles
• add media
• add sidebar widgets
• upgrade the core code
• add and upgrade plugins
• manage comments
• add and switch themes

Installing WordPress

Installing WordPress on your web site should take no longer than a few minutes. Some hosts provide one-click installations (GoDaddy, Dreamhost). Others provide the Fantastico installer within a CPanel hosting interface (Hostgator, Geekstorage).

After installation, your site will display the default WordPress theme and will have a sample “About” page and a sample “Hello World” blog post.

Choosing a WordPress Theme

Much of the user interface and visual appearance of the site is the responsibility of the Theme. A theme is a collection of program files, CSS text files, and images that are copied into a special directory called “themes”. The themes directory sites inside the “wp-content” directory. wp-content is where most of the site-specific files are placed. Outside of this directory most WordPress configurations are very similar.

The WordPress.org sites hosts GPL-licensed themes which are, by definition, open source and freely modifiable. You can also purchase a theme from a third-party like iThemes, Elegant Themes, Graph Paper Press. WordPress Remix has a unique theme package specialized for using WordPress to build regular websites that are not specifically blogs.

What to look for in a theme:

• SEO: designer should have tags and titles designed properly
• Widget-ready sidebars: a feature of all contemporary themes
• Valid XHTML + CSS: this means clean, lightweight code for your site
• configurable: options for color, header, and layout
• Gravatar ready: supports comment avatar images
• spam-free: some themes come preloaded with links to the designers AdSense account, or worse, links to pr0n or gambling sites. All themes in the WordPress.org repository have been checked for spam, but “in the wild” you’ll need to do your own hand-checking and validation.

Optimum WordPress Configuration Settings

“Out of the box”, WordPress works just fine, but it will be plain and not optimized for the search engines. We fixed the appearance by selecting and tweaking the theme. There are several other settings that we need to edit to make the site run optimally.

Title and Description

In the General settings you set the name of the site and the description. Be sure to include the most important keyphrases for your site as these words will probably be on every page. On this settings page you’ll also set the Timezone, and whether your site accepts new registrations of subscribers and authors.

Home Page Settings

In the Reading settings you select if the front page (home page) is a static page or a series of recent blog posts. You also set the number of posts per page that will display.

Permalinks

To get fancy search engine optimized URLs you need to set the Permalinks to something other than the default ?p=999. Permalinks should include realwords and descriptive keyphrases that tell the search engine what a page is about. I set my Permalinks to /%post_id%/%postname%/ this gives each post a unique ID number and adds an optimized version of the post title at the end.

Comment Settings

In the Discussion settings you select whether your site is open for comments and whether you will need to approve each comment before it gets posted.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress plugins add functionality to WordPress websites. The WordPress development team strives to keep WordPress as “lightweight” as possible, leaving specialized functionality to third parties. WordPress currently has over 4200 plugins in the official repository.

Some plugins interface with other platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Others handle media–making it easier to embed videos or podcasts into web pages.

Tony’s Favorite WordPress Plugins

• Akismet – comment spam assasination
• All in One SEO Pack – handles titles, descriptions, meta-tags
• Automatic Timezone – fixes a missing (as of WordPress 2.7) automatic timezone adjustment feature
• AZIndex – creates an easy-to-read index of posts
• Contact Form 7 – simple, but essential contact form
• CryptX – encrypts email addresses so simple SpamBots cannot read them
• Google Sitemap Generator – automatically creates a sitemap and posts it to Google, Yahoo, & MSN
• OIO Publisher – self-service advertising on your site – sell banners, text, links, and more
• Plugin Central – provides one-click upgrade of all plugins
• PodPress – handles audio file playback and submission to iTunes
• Register Plus – full-featured registration page with additional fields, password strength, and more
• Snazzy Archives – Gorgeous Thumbnailed Post Archives
• StatPressCN – simple blog statistics
• WordPress Database Backup – keep your database backed up, features auto backup scheduling
• WordTube – manage your videos, create playlists, embeds full-featured video player
• WP Super Cache – prepare for traffic surges with this full-featured caching system

WordPress developers have created some gorgeous websites that do not look like ordinary blogs, they look like, well, gorgeous websites. To see some showcased sites, see the WordPress.org showcase.

Technorati Tags: website, WordPress

RIE Meetup Talk outline:

First things first:
- what is blogging?
- types of blogs
– journals
– news commentary
– magazines
– special interest
– clubs and organizations

The Discipline of Writing
- how often?
- how long?
- scheduling your posts
- guest blogging
- guest bloggers

Single or multiple author?
- benefits of multiple authors

Growing an audience.
- you need a mailing list
- subscriptions
- ping services
- Google sitemaps
- register your blog (technorati.com)
– RSS / email
- viral content
- link bait

Measuring Your Audience
- Google Analytics
quantcast.com
compete.com

Monetizing Options
- affiliate (PPA)
- eBay, Commission Junction, LinkShare, PepperJam Network
- advertising networks
– PPC: AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network, Microsoft Ad Center (beta)
– PPM: FastClick, Casale
- direct advertisers
– OIOpublisher, AdRoll, OpenX Market

Profitable Blogs
dailycandy.com
engadget.com
johnchow.com

This is an example of an embedded movie using an open source flash player and plugins.

Click the “HD” button to toggle between Standard and Hi-Definition movie formats.