People keeps comparing those services. I don’t get it. They’re completely different. Twitter is an open conversation and a place where you meet new friends. Facebook is a closed conversation and a place where you meet old friends.
I just did a quick count. On twitter I follow 299 people. And 37 of them are friends to the level that I would have said hello if I met them on the street. On Facebook 151 of my 200 friends are at the same level.
That said. Currently I rarely visit Facebook. And I use Twitter all day long.
I’m sharing a lot of my knowledge here at eirikso.com. I’m sharing images on flickr and SmugMug, quick thoughts on twitter and presentations on Slideshare.net. The internet is fantastic for sharing content and I think sharing is a very good idea. It’s simple - if you share, people share back. I learn a lot by structuring my thoughts enough to be able to communicate them. And I learn a lot by having an intelligent community out there that is ready to help me out by sharing their knowledge back.
But when you share information people can take it and use it without giving you credit!
Yes they can. And recently I got an email from a person that attended one of my presentations a couple of weeks ago. This person attended another conference with other people speaking the next week. One of them using content that was clearly borrowed from my presentations. And without giving any credit.
So should I stop sharing? Stop sending out PDF files of my presentations? I don’t think so. The value of sharing content is bigger than the problem of someone using your ideas without giving you credit. Such use is of course irritating. And not very polite. For the people in the audience that know where your content comes from you simply look like a jerk if you don’t give credit.
I remember an old interview with the photoshop guru Kai Krause. He was sharing all his knowledge in a series called Kai’s Power Tips. And he was asked why he shared all his knowledge. “You’re giving away your best asset”. He answered that he wasn’t. He was giving away yesterday’s knowledge. He was already working on something new. (And what’s he doing now? Living and working in a 1000 year old castle. With a priceless view and lots of space.)
Kai Krause’s statement is bold, arrogant and full of confidence. And I love it. So for me another important reason to share is the fact that I push myself forward. And that’s why you shouldn’t be afraid of people borrowing your thoughts. They’re borrowing old thoughts. Go ahead, use it. I’m on my way further down the road anyway.
All the laptops I have owned have had some degree of noise on the audio out. Not annoying for regular listening, but when doing presentations the noise can be quite disturbing. It is due to the fact that the conversion from digital to analog audio is done inside the computer. Together with all kinds of electronics that produce noise. After posting an article about a very cheap external volume control and audio switch I had some comments about replacing that one with an external USB based audio card.
The theory is that when doing the conversion from digital to analog outside of the laptop itself you would get rid of some of the noise. So a while ago I received my Creative Xmod. Now I’ve had the possibility to test it at some venues. And it works very well. In some cases I went from horrible noises when connecting the internal audio to no noise and crisp audio when switching to the Creative Xmod.
The Xmod has lots of stupid so called enhancement effects as well. The X-fi crystalizer is supposed to clean up some compression artifacts in MP3 audio and might actually clean up the sound a bit, but the fake 3D effect that you also can add is not my favorite.
Regardless of the effects, my conclusion so far is that this gadget now is nicely placed in my box of essential presentation equipment.
If you have been following this blog for a long time you know that I did an experiment snapping images out of my window for a year. I made a video that was hugely popular and my images have been used in several interesting projects.
At that point I snapped the images with a Sony compact camera. After buying a digital SLR I decided to do the same thing. But this time in better quality and not shooting the images through my window.
I still have a couple of months before the next year of images are captured, but I have enough to do some experiments. Mainly because I want some feedback. This time I’m shooting three exposures each time. Giving me the possibility of putting them together using HDR software.
The following video is a horrible rough cut of the images so far. The black levels are completely off, the HDR effect too strong and the video is way too long for this kind of viewing.
The audio is actual audio captured at the same spot that the images are taken, but not at all synced with the images.
Still, it would be valuable to get some feedback and ideas. That will make it easier for me to make the final video perfect when I have all the images at some point late this summer.
You’ve just returned home after a good day of work. You’re outside your house with two hungry kids and a horrible weather. When you’re about to unlock your door you don’t find your keys. And suddenly you remember where they are.
Safely placed at the back of a computer at work. Always remembering your USB key because it is placed on your key chain = a good idea. Forgetting your keys at work because they are securely fastened to your USB key = bad idea.
It’s in Norwegian, so it might be of limited use for my international readers. For the next couple of months I’m going to do several international presentations, so an English version will be up at some point as well. Read more…
Yes - completely off topic regarding the internet, media centers, marketing and new media. You know, the stuff I usually write about here on eirikso.com. But it has been easter holiday, cold and I’ve had several days off.
First, ensure you’ll have a couple of days with sub zero degrees. Preferably something below -5 degrees Celsius (23 F). Then fill a big bucket with water. Find a smaller bucket and place it in the water in the big one. Find something to put in the small bucket to make it submerge in the water in the big bucket. Don’t use water in the small bucket. Use small stones or something else. I found a part of wood.
The small bucket will float around in the big one, so you might want to tie it up to make it sit still in the middle of the big bucket. You need about 5 cm (2 inches) of water around and under the small bucket.
Now leave the bucket outside for a couple of hours. I needed about two days in -5 to -10 degrees Celsius (23 - 14 F).
When it is completely frozen remove the weight in the inner bucket and fill it with hot water. This will melt some of the ice to make it easy for you to remove the inner bucket.
Depending on the temperature you might need to pour some hot water outside on the big bucket as well. To be able to remove it.
When removed, make some holes along the end. When you place it on top of a candle you need some air to flow into it. When finished, light a small candle and place the block of ice on top of it.
Now wait for the evening to arrive and have fun watching these amazing lanterns.
But the heat from the candle will melt the top of the lantern! Yes, but it will keep looking cool.
The people working on concerts and music at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation just decided to put a lot of their images online on Flickr with a creative commons license. Some very nice images for non commercial use over there. Read more…
I just did a presentation for an organization that house a couple of truly fantastic hotels and restaurants in Norway. I was talking about new media, marketing opportunities and the future traveler. The fact that more people in general can reach out with their message can be a problem if you have a bad product or just a bad day. Before you know it horrible images and videos of your establishment is all over the internet.
But if you have a great product the amount of happy customers will outnumber the angry ones. I keep quoting Hugh MacLeod in my presentations and I still agree with this:
“The best way to control the conversation is by improving the conversation.”
And if you run remarkable hotels or restaurants like this group there is a great chance that a lot of people already want to help you improve the conversation. Here’s the result for a search on Flickr for one of the hotels in the organization. Pretty nice. A problem might be that most of the satisfied customers don’t publish their images and thoughts. The angry ones does.
That’s the reason you need to encourage people to give their opinions. Let them publish their images, their videos and thoughts. If you have a great product this shouldn’t be scary. If this sounds scary you need to improve your product.
But you want to find the stuff they’re publishing, so why don’t do like most technology conferences these days? Define a tag for your business? The next time I enter a hotel room I want to read on the TV: “Welcome Mr. Solheim, the official tag for this hotel is…”
Like “FOWA07″ was announced one of the the official tags for Future of Web apps 07. Like “DLD08″ was the tag for this years DLD conference in Münich. Those keywords make it easy for me to find images from DLD08 on Flickr and videos from DLD08 on youtube.
Put it in the information in the room or on the menu in your restaurant. On your web page. On your business cards. That’s utterly cheap and potentially very powerful marketing.
And by the way. That beautiful image at the top of this post is from one of the hotels in the organization. You find the rest of the images I snapped while staying at Kviknes in Balestrand last autumn over here.
This is Eirik Solheim's prize winning experiment. I use this page to share information about media, marketing, technology, photography and stuff I find important. I have been running this page since 2003. And since I started using Statcounter in 2005 more than 1.8 million people have visited my site.
Eirikso on the web: Follow me on Twitter - My images on Flickr - And images on SmugMug - Videos on YouTube
