Doing More With Less Since 1972
Ankle is jacked up, so no running for the next 8 days. But I did start playing Ingress today…great chance to get on the mountain bike and ride around gobbling up territory.
I think someone at Google reads this blog. I had some very similar ideas to make Foursquare better a while back.
Grilled Cheese Academy – A real education
Financial Illiteracy Is Killing Us – Seriously, are there any non-profits focused on teaching financial literacy to kids? I will volunteer to help.
Tooth Regeneration Gel Could Replace Painful Fillings – Just ordered up some jelly beans to celebrate this news.
Facebook Places vs. Foursquare – Foursquare has a game/awards (kinda). The question with FB places is “why?”. Then again, you could probably ask that question about 90% of the content there.
Furman’s FIRST Running Program – No. Junk. Miles.
Lifehacker: Our List of the Best Android Apps – Already using most, so I’m linking to this mostly to validate my choices.
“I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb” –John Mellencamp – Sounds like Johnny Cougar doesn’t like having his cheese moved.
What Should I Do About My Virtual Life After Death? – Adding this to my list. It’s pretty far down, but on there nonetheless.
Real Estate’s Gold Rush Seems Gone for Good – hmph
Moving on – An early shot fired against book publishing. There will be more.
Fake Drink Spills save seats – Genius!
Lottery Ticket Art – Don’t throw away those scratch off tickets…you could still be a big winner!
But I may have some competition soon, because Foursquare is on the fast road to becoming the most boring, why-do-I-need-this app around. Ditto for every other location based check in app.
However, I have some ideas that would make these apps way better. I only do solution formulation, not implementation…
1) Allow custom groups
Example: The guys on my rugby team could start a group that allows people to check in to training sessions and matches at the different venues we use. You could even give bonus points for making both weekly training sessions, the match, and the after match social. Tie start times in as well. This would encourage people to not only show up to get their coveted attendance badge, but also to show up on time (big issue with rugby players).
2) Allow people to throw their support behind a mayoral candidate
Example: Let’s say I go to the gym four days a week, but I can’t oust the mayor of the local YMCA because he goes 11 times, five of those being just to shower before work in the morning so he doesn’t have to use his own hot water. It would be cool if I could rally The Missus and a workout partner to throw 1/2 of their check in points towards my campaign. This would encourage people who go to the same venues often to socialize with other people who attend a lot. It would also encourage competing factions, branded t-shirts, and eventually a #4sq civil war.
3) Custom badges
It’s 2010, and there still isn’t a “Mayor of Your Mom” badge. Where are our priorities? Put the community to work building new badges and throw them out on a badge marketplace. Let the usage of the users (they could give negative karma to a badge they don’t like/want) decide which badge getting missions are worthy of surviving.
Celebrity Rehab 3 – Take it day by day. If you can go the whole season without watching an episode, more power to you. But I'll bet you a cold cold beer you can't do it.
Mardi Gras 1956 – This is cool. I haven't been to New Orleans in 6 or 7 years. This makes me want to go back. Not for Mardi Gras, but I still want to go back.
Lost Fans Soon To Be More Annoying – I can't wait to hypothesize on Twitter. For hours.
Trees toppling in national park kills – Wow….this is really sad and such a freak accident. You don't think about things like this happening.
Lane Kiffin Dirt and Cover Up – I've heard for a while there is some of this type stuff out there, but haven't seen anything other than stuff on message boards. I run a message board and can attest that it's not much more than a bunch of monkeys banging on keyboards. But once a blogger takes the time to type it up…maybe there's something to it. Interesting!
Background Apps To The iPhone? – An Apple fan girl told me this already existed. I guess not. I have to say, I LOVE having the ability to stream Pandora and run a Cardio program simultaneously while I'm running. It works just like you'd think it would. Cardio lowers the volume of Pandora to give you distance and pace, and raises the volume back when it's finished.
Dysfunctional Leadership Quotes – It's funny to read this and know that somewhere out there, there are even worse examples of leadership than those described here. LOL!
Venues Can Display Foursquare Mayors – It will be awesome when I'm featured on the WalMart, Publix, Panera, and IKEA websites. You may already believe that's me on the Sea World site when you visit, but that's an actual whale.
15 Steps to Cultivate Lifelong Learning – Very nice article here. Even though I sort of know all of these things intuitively, I need to be more active in implementing some of them.
Facebook blocks ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine’ – All of your facebooks are belong to Facebook. Got it?
Photocheck.in for Foursquare – Since Orlando is so close, I've had a chance to mess with Foursquare some. Not that there's really anything huge going on in Melbourne, but it's close enough. Here, you get to be the Mayor of places like Publix and Panera (although I'm the current Long Doggers Mayor as well), and I don't think many other people in this little village are playing along. But photo checkin is a really cool idea for places like Sea World and IKEA, where I actually have taken some photos and almost forgot to 4S checkin.
WordPress 2.9.1 – This is supposed to fix some pingback issues. I've been using Delicious to auto-generate a lot of posts based on stuff I bookmark, and I've noticed that my posts don't seem to ping the other blogs I've linked to the same way they would if I wrote a post in the editor. Not sure why this would happen, since the ping is supposed to happen at publish time. Hopefully this was just a WordPress issue and is resolved.
Facebook Rolling Out Redesign To Some Users – I'm trying to quickly set the over/under on how long it will be until I see the first post in my FB feed of someone complaining about the new layout. Tentative line is 35 hours.
Some Google Wave Bots – I suspect lots of people got busy at the end of the year and the Google Wave hoopla died down. It may be coming back big this year, and here's a list of useful bots to add to your account. If you're on Wave, let's make an effort to communicate that way!
George F. Will – Catastrophe and survival – Read it. Again.
Do More, Buy Less – A huge positive from a recession. This goes hand in hand with the fact that people are saving more. I'm still amazed that people at the top continue to contend that the answer is to "get credit flowing again." Well, I'm not really shocked that they say it. That's what benefits them and their friends. But I am amazed that so many people buy it hook line and sinker.
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