New Focus

Today while taking a look around Facebook I came across a note (blog) from a guy I went to college with, Mike Germano. Mike is the CEO of Carrot Creative and will be doing work for Tuck Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. First off, Congratulations to Germano and the rest of the Carrot Crew.

I have been thinking about what I aspire to become. Tucker Max couldn’t beleive what Mike had accomplished in such a short period of time.

This got me thinking about what I aspire to do.

I have always loved television. Bob Barker got me hooked on it. My hard work has paid off working as an intern and then full time with GMA and now ESPN. I even have an Emmy Certificate for my “contributions”

Back to Mike… he said, “every blog should use these: Facebook Fanpage, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube channel, Tumblr site, Delicious, Digg, Disqus, BallHype and FanFeedr. Fanfeedr offers personalized real-time sports aggregation and it launched in public beta yesterday. If you run a niche sports blog, it could be the perfect way to stay on top of your team, region or league. All the tools I’ve listed are absolutely free, easy to use and they will allow you to have a presence in multiple communities. There is no reason your blog shouldn’t have just as much personality as the writer behind it…”

Well, today I am starting on my newest adventure where I hope to blog at least 5 times a week for the rest of the summer. It’s a tall order. I think I can do it.

I have a new focus. More on that in my later entry.

Jimmy Fallon crashes Twitter

Jimmy Fallon and his staff over at NBC have made Late Night very tech savvy. He has a MacBook on his desk and tonight (last night depending on when you read this) he had the guys from Digg Nation on. They decided to do an experiment with Twitter. For those who don’t know what Twitter is check it out… all the cool kids are doing it.

Fallon picked a “random” audience member to participate in this experiment. I am assuming before the show he asked if anyone was new to twitter and that is how he was chosen.

Anyway, the guy’s handle is http://www.twitter.com/bryanbrinkman. He asked everyone who was on twitter to start following him because he only had 6 or 7 followers. he now has over 18,000 followers.

Back in October, my ICM501 class became the hottest trend for the 2008 Election. My professor, Alex Halavais, had our class “Tweet” an event that we attended on the Election.  We used the hashtag #501 for the event. People who were not at the event freaked out trying to figure out why #501 was the hottest thing on Twitter that night.

Fallon suceeded in getting this guy Bryan a bunch of followers. Now let’s see if he has anything important to say.

The Future: In 1993

Thanks to Gawker for the video.

AT&T’s correct predictions in 1993: EZ Pass, GPS, text messages, Ticketmaster.com, webcams, video conferencing, movies on demand, online universities.
Incorrect: the prediction that these would be brought to you by AT&T.

Visit Gawker for what Microsoft sees for 2019.

Halflife: The Movie

 I was a very big fan of the first Halflife game. I played it through on Normal and then again with some cheat codes on extra hard back in college. I recently was given Halflife 2 Orange Box for my birthday. A pair of brothers made a spot on recreation of the first level on $500.

What I really love is the sound effects from the game, the music… really reminds me of that first level.

25 Random Things…

The New York Times picked up on a trend… Facebook “Notes” titled ’25 Random Things…”

Over the last 2 weeks, many of my Facebook friends posted the note and asked me to do the same. As my birthday came and went I decided to take the plunge.

The NY Times article is a good read. The question remains: have you posted your Note?

Juju Juggles on ABCNews.com

If you did not watch the inauguration of Barack Obama on television, most likely you watched online. Most major news sites like CNN, FOX News and ABC News streamed coverage live on their respective websites.

Webnewser reports that CNN.com was tops with over 11 million unique visitors and 94 million page views.

With more major news outlets heading to the web, ABC News took an interesting route on how to cover the inauguration.

ABC News corespondentJuju Chang took an iPhone and a Flipcam  out into the crowd of the National Mall to report “on the beaten path.”

“..they had to convince executives of their plan: cover the Inauguration with the Flip cams, laptops and smartphones. Chang went into a meeting with ABC News president David Westin, Flip cam in hand. He flipped, so to speak, in a good way, and gave them the green light.” explains Webnewser.

Being a fan and former colleagueof Juju, I followed her Twitter and Facebook updates and watched video that she posted to ABCNews.com/juju. I was a total geek watching the coverage on my HDTV at home while checking out different websites for pictures and blog posts.

Twitter was big with people making realtime comments on what they were watching. One of the hottest topics was, obviously…

AP Photo/Ron Edmonds

Yes, Aretha Franklin’s  hat was  one of the hottest tags on Twitter during the ceremony.

News media are trying different ways of covering events unlike what they have tried before because of the unlimited amount of time you can spend on a story or subject. How long you keep the audience’s attention is another post all together.

Note: I worked at ABC News from 2004-2007 and currently work for ESPN. Both are owned by The Walt Disney Company.  This blog does not reflect the views of ESPN, ABC News or The Walt Disney Company

2009 Spring Semester

It started!

I have a bunch of stuff planned… It’s an exciting time!

For those who are NOT in the ICM program here are the classes I am taking (aka Disney is paying for)

ICM 505 – Web Programming
(3 cr.) This course introduces the underlying structures, standards, and protocols of the web. Students learn to write code that can be interpreted by web browsers on various devices, and design and debug programs that allow web sites to integrate with databases to be more interactive. Students produce a series of websites of increasing sophistication during the semester.

ICM 502 – Visual Aesthetics
(3 cr.) This course covers the principles and practices associated with design as both a physical manifestation of an artistic idea and a practical expression for communicating messages through images, icons and other elements that form the information architecture structure common to interactive media. Students analyze the aesthetics of artistic expression and acquire basic interface design skills via application of Photoshop software to specific assignments.

I will be posting some of my course work here, as well as random thoughts.

DTV Conversion

Digital TV is coming!!! I have cable so I don’t really have to worry about getting a converter box.

Sleep in!

Happy New Year to all 7 of you reading!

New Years Eve, while at a party up in Springfield Mass, I jumped on a scale in the bathroom and to my horror realized that I have gained close to 20 pounds working this morning shift. Granted I have not been working out as much but, that all changed last week when I made it back into the gym.

Well, with the shift change that is coming up, I know that I will be back in the gym with more regularity. I had a great plan when i worked that shift a few months ago and was about 30lbs lighter!

I was reading Wired this week and saw a link that says Nightowls are more creative.

2 // Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon. In one study, “evening people” almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores

I am looking forward to getting back into that Creative Groove I had while working in NYC.

Cha-cha-cha-changes

I was lucky last semester that I had a shift that permitted me to take classes in person. I found out this week that my shift is changing to a late afternoon/night shift. Nothing like my overnight days at ABC News but enough to throw a wrinkle in taking classes in person.

I now have to figure out my Spring schedule of classes… maybe I can take all online ones. Blah