What’s the deal with –dale?
With the news about microchip maker’s price wars, I can’t seem to miss the fact that a number of the new Intel chips are codenamed some very unique names: Conroe, Woodcrest, Montecito, Kentsfield, etc. Am I on a hiking trail or is this a function of the naming montage we see in planned communities?
To prove my point, see if you can add the word for a road to it. Examples: Kentsfield Street. Yep. Montecito Avenue. Yep. Woodcrest Trail. Woodcrest Drive. Double yep.
It doesn’t make much sense for Intel to use such nomenclature. A simple demarcation of a letter and number is enough for people to comprehend. Such a name can explain how powerful a chip is and of what rank it is within the company.
It is not like I am saying a company should not have a name for its product, but the Pentium chip only had a number with each new phase of its evolution. All in all, as the phrase goes “What’s in a name?” If new chips can prove themselves to be good it won’t matter what they are called.
Check Out Ze Frank’s The Show
The best video blog I’ve seen is The Show, which is produced every weekday by Ze Frank, a designer/performance artist who gained Internet fame a few years back with the Flash piece, How to Dance Properly. The Show is a weird blend of news commentary, personal observations and bathroom humor. I think it’s pretty fantastic and hilarious.
The Show also has some lessons to teach in how to use technology to build a community of users:
- A few episodes of The Show have been written entirely by viewers using a wiki, and then faithfully performed by Ze.
- Ze plays an ongoing chess match with viewers during his shows. Viewers use a wiki to discuss and reach consensus on their next move in the match.
- Ze launched an earth sandwich challenge and an ugly MySpace design contest to encourage participation by viewers (not going to try to explain here).
Anyway, The Show is worth checking out and is a great example of the kind of cool things people are doing with video blogs these days.
Friendster: Armed with Patents
I think I belong to nearly every social network out there now: Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut and, as of last Wednesday, Facebook. The network I used the most was Friendster, because most of my friends already had profiles on there. No one I know uses Orkut and my colleagues and I are listed on LinkedIn. But a fair number of people I know use MySpace, and given the kind of publicity it’s garnered lately, its userbase is growing by the day.
Podcast: The Internets Role in Political Campaigns
For the tens of people that are interested, we put together a podcast about the findings of our recent campaign study. In the podcast, Ajit Verghese interviews myself and Erin Teeling (who actually wrote the thing) about how 2006 Senate campaigns are using the Internet. We talk about which sites are good/bad, how candidates are using blogs and podcasts and what we expect to see from political campaigns in the future, among other things. Give it a listen if you’re interested or just a glutton for punishment.
New Media and the Florida Gubernatorial Race
Yesterday, the Herald Tribune out of Florida published an article on the use of blogs and podcasts by FL gubernatorial candidates. I was interviewed for the piece and it includes a mention of our study on the use of the Internet by 2006 Senate candidates.
Not being from Florida, I haven’t looked at any of the gubernatorial websites from down there specifically. But the story identifies an amusing tendency by folks to congratulate themselves for blogging or producing podcasts. Folks seem to think they’ve accomplished something simply by going through the simple process of setting up a blog. I understand the compulsion.
But it’s important to know that anyone can have a blog or record a podcast. Just like anyone can buy a guitar or a set of drums. The real question to ask is can they actually play the damn thing?