Einstein’s Corner – Must Read

Date: June 12, 2005 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Einstein’s Corner is the blog of New Media pro, conference speaker and writer Jeff Einstein.

Einstein’s Corner explores the spiritual, emotional, physical, and social effects of our obsessions with and addictions to technology and media on the quality of our lives and work in the Great Age of Addiction.

Some of the dotcom refugees in the NYC scene may remeber Jeff from the NY Times Magazine cover story about the unemployed new media types. Jeff has been writing a lot in the last year about media addiction, both on his blog and at mediapost.com. It dovetails with some of the recent discussions in the blogosphere about attention (thanks Steve Gillmore and Scoble) and the discussions Ace and I have had about information overload (unsubscribing from blogs, who you read, how much you read).

Are we addicted to the media? I might be. I follow over 100 blogs per day. 4 or 5 magazines a week. 3-4 books a week. I watch pretty much just the news, or a few select shows (Lost, the Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, House). I am definitely addicted to consuming media. I dont like quiet time, unless I need to think about something.

In the interest of full disclosure, Jeff was partners with J. Sandom (my old boss at OgilvyInteractive) in the first interactive agency Einstein and Sandom. He most recently worked at Rapp Digital with Jamie Corl (one of my favorite people in the world, and a kick-ass producer).

Einstein’s corner is definitely worth a look.

Get Vertical

Date: June 10, 2005 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

John Battelle, Search Guru, band manager of BoingBoing and Jedi Master blogger is talking about Vertical Search and a new conference Vertical Leap

My buddy John Ballestrieri runs IT.com, a vertical search engine for IT professionals. These guys recently nailed a relationship with Forbes.com to provide search services for IT searches on the site (click here for an article about the deal from searchenginewatch.com)

Why is Vert search so much better? Is it worth more than Google?

Obviously with Vert Search I am closer to the target. I can get better results thanks to targeting (restricting the parameters of the search) and I dont need to worry about getting nonsense hits – more relevant. This is niche searching instead of marketing. If I want to find out about disease management, google is OK for the layman, but it seems like the smart money is on a medical, or disease management vertical search.

See the whole article here:
John Battelle’s Searchblog: Get Vertical

Google Maps – media hacking defined

Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

CNN.com – Google tinkerers make data come alive – Jun 9, 2005

Love it. Love it. Love it.

Google is a company that is getting hit left and right with accolades and bronx cheers. Innovation is one of the thing they do REAL well.

They create google maps.
They put it out there (leaving some of the doors open).
And they watch what their users do with it.

This is another killer example of user generated content/media hacking/audience participation. Google saw a way to provide a service (maps) users would like. Instead of locking the doors and keeping the users from ‘playing in the sandbox’, Google opened it up. Gave users a platform to… do anything their imaginations can come up with.

Violate the EULA? YES. Fun for the mediahackers tweakin and changing and using googlemaps to do things the devs couldnt imagine? YES.

Fun for the users? YES YES YES YES YES

Seth’s Blog: On being alert

Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

From Seth Godin’s blog:
Seth’s Blog: On being alert

1. Seth writes a successful ebook(find it here)
2. BRANDPLAY writes a followup to Seth’s book
3. Seth announces it (being alert post above)
4. Seth has the biggest singe day of sales for KnockKnock EVER!
5. Rinse, Repeat

Seth’s mention of BRANDPLAYS book drives sales of his own, original work?
Cool.

The fact that someone wrote a followup to Seth’s book?
Priceless.

Gnomedex SOLD OUT

Date: June 9, 2005 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Chris Pirillo (Lockergnome) is reporting that Gnomedex is sold out this year. Glad I bought in a month ago.

I will be taking some vacation in 2 weeks to head out to Seattle to see what all the buzz is about. Dave Winer and Adam Curry will be keynoting, and a ton of other people who I have been following for the last few years are going to be there and I am really excited to see how it all plays out. This is another reason why I am ‘eating the dogfood’.

It will be interesting to see how Dave and Adam’s interaction works out. No doubt they will both be total professionals, but I am interested in seeing how their very different views are recieved by the crowd.

Check out Gnomedex here for the details.