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Stephen Pickering

Author: Stephen Pickering

  • Most Useful Firefox Extensions

    FireFox 3.5 just came out yesterday




    • Feedly – The Ultimate Home Page. Feedly weaves your favorite content into a fun, magazine-like start page.

    • Xmarks – Synchronizes your Bookmarks and Passwords across all platforms
    • NoScript – Provides the most powerful security available in a browser

    Courtesy of Net @ Night Episode 107 with @ambermac and @leolaporte

  • Arkansas Wine Is Absolutely Outstanding!

    Well, of course, I will emphasize that he said, “Some of it” not “All of It,” but I’ll take that!

    I was listening to TWIT, and John C. Dvorak, who is a wine Conasieur, said this about Arkansas Wine. Well, being from Arkansas, I was taken aback. Right here in my own “back yard” is a source or outstanding wine. And I can buy it at the Grocery Store! Amazing the little tidbits you pick up from podcasts which you don’t expect.

    I Twittered John to see specifically which brand of Arkansas Wine was the best and he Twittered back to me The Post Familie brand, which I am familiar with and will have to check out now.

  • How to Put a Cool, Interactive, Real-Time FriendFeed Widget on Your Website

    I got this idea when I first saw Scoble's website and his subsequent Building43 site where in each case the FriendFeed widget is much cooler than the one they give you at FriendFeed (even the Java one) in the sense that it behaves just like the site does, inline videos play within the widget, comments stream in real time to the widget and can be made inside the widget. With the generic widget they give you at FriendFeed, it is static. In other words you have to refresh the page to get the updated content, and when you click content, be it a comment or a video, it takes you away from your blog or page and to the FriendFeed page. No Fun. This is Fun. This is interactive and "breathes" "pulsates" which is one of the main themes we are hitting on for Web 2010. No matter what business you are in, you want a site that encourages people to not only be there but to interact with you. Basically it comes down to this: They've got the same stuff down the street. The customer has 4 or 5 choices. The business that is more FUN, the nicest, that Woos and Schmoozes is usually, all things being equal, going to get a greater share of the business. Is a more interactive, "cooler" FriendFeed widget woooing and schmoozing? Not really. But its better than thte static one. It shows that you are trying. And customers can sense that, and sense that you are "into" what you are doing, and will tend to gravitate towards you. <iframe src="http://friendfeed.com/stephenpickering/embed?css=http://stephenpickering.com/wp-content/themes/ocean-mist-2_0/friendfeed-styles.css%3fv=17" frameborder="0" height="1400" width="310" style="border:1px solid #aaa"></iframe> Obviously change the credentials to your own (these are mine showing), and if you are a WordPress user don't forget to add the specific CSS theme you are using so it will look right. And obviously the size to fit your sidebar or whatever.

  • Zuckerberg Interview from Building43.com

    Building43.com is a great site, maybe the best site, if you are interested in Social Media in general and specifically the nexus of Social Media and Main Street, “everyday” businesses. In other words how to use the web and all these great tools to enhance and build your existing brick and mortar type business, to bring it into 2009 and engage and benefit from the new “Trust” economy.

    They just launched last Friday with 7 new videos that I all highly recommend watching, but the premier one is this one with, of course, the co-founder and chief of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

  • Sonnet #1

    "Untitled" by Ruza Bagaric
    "Untitled" by Ruza Bagaric

    (*I figured if Shakespeare can write a hundred than I can too.)

    Sonnet #1

    I loved the girl who lived next door to me.
    Her eyes were blue and clear and sang with joy.
    She was the sun, the grass, the trees, and stream.
    Her hair was blond and bobbed just like a boy.
    Then something happened or was it just fate?
    The summer ended and the snow began to fall.
    The Garden froze and ice locked up her gate.
    Kid’s icy jeers piled up the labyrinth’s wall.
    The schools and churches crammed our time of play.
    We boys formed clubs; girls spoke in secret codes.
    The flowers froze; exuberant dancing went away,
    And natural feelings morphed to vaudeville shows.

    The dragon stole the treasures of our life.
    Until you lift her veil, her love will die.

    © 2008 Stephen Pickering

  • The Best Netbook on the Market Today

    Asus Eee PC 1008HA Seashell