THE DREAM IN ACTION

Professional sports, MLB, NBA, and the NFL once followed what could be termed “the code”. It was nothing official or scribed, but it was closely followed. The code was this:

“That out of fairness to all teams involved in a championship competition, any team opposing one of them shall extend itself to the fullest.”

A game that was once quite noble, is now tainted with the importance of the playoffs and gaining the most favorable position within them. “Playoffs!” Now that the Dallas Cowboys have secured they’re spot they will no doubts rest Romo, T.O., and others who are slightly injured. Nobody would think twice about Beli”cheat” sitting Brady in the second half this week versus the “I hate Eli Manning” Giants. They definitely have the undefeated thing going for them (which is nice) and I believe they will play hard to reach this goal, but in any other circumstance, Moss, Brady and the crew would sit and rest.

My argument is not that the Patriots should sit there stars, it is that the integrity of giving your all, giving 100% until the last week of the season is almost non-existent. Especially for teams that have secured a play-off spot. The San Diego Chargers have a 3rd seed to play for so they will undoubtedly come out firing against their rival Raiders but, for teams that don’t need a victory like Indianapolis, will you give it your all? Will you treat these last weeks as if they were your first? I would doubt it. It is sad because any gambling man would put his money on the Colts when playing the Tennessee Titans but now the same Vegas gambler has to take into consideration how much Dungy and the Colts want to “preserve” themselves for the playoffs. Isn’t this a mans game? Another miserable position is if you are a Browns fan, who need the Colts to win against the Titans in order to gain a playoff birth. You can only hope a half-ass Colts team can claim a victory over a 110%, season on the line, Titans squad. Good luck.

Peyton, when you take the field Sunday, try for one second not the think about your first round bye or the Patriots secondary, think for a second about your competitive integrity, think for one second about your “love of the game”.

Debt is a interesting thing. Ownership is a great thing.
Today I purchased my first car, a 2003 Nissan Pathfinder, and put myself in some serious debt. However, it doesn’t upset me at all. Even though I locked myself to “the man“ for roughly 60 months, ownership is awesome. Ownership gives you a sense of pride, accomplishment and appreciation for the ability to provide for yourself. I definitely look forward to the experience of buying a home, compared to the ownership of an automobile, those feelings must be enormous.

Check out the ride.

2 nights ago I played Guitar Hero for the first time and let me say, it is worth the hype. I know I’m a little behind the “gamer” trend here and I know that it has been out for a while. However, this game is FUN! I felt a little Asian because I was pretty good at it right away. It’s a game that you can have fun with because you don’t have to be awesome in order to have fun, but if you are awesome (RW) then you can up the level and make it really challenging with bridges, power chords and the like.

For all the parents out there looking for a good Christmas gift for someone between the ages of 8 and 40, look no further. Mom, if you are reading this…I want one! I played the game on NintendoWii with the wireless guitar and I felt like I was on stage. When it comes to choosing your character I recommend the chick with the black bra and torn jeans. If you play guitar hero let me know where you are in the game and your thoughts…

This video does a pretty good job of showing the rediculousness of the Web 2.0, Silicon Valley, craze…and the effects it can have on a 23 year olds wallet…which is nice.

watch video here.

Forbes.com release its second annual top 25 Web celebs recently and the list is interesting. Although I would consider myself pretty knowledgeable as far as what is going on on the web with start-ups and other Web 2.0 topics there are some bloggers and other web celebs in this list that I wasn’t familiar with. There are the obvious, Michael Arrington, Matt Drudge, and sadly, Perez Hilton, but others are not as obvious.

Here’s the list. Read them over make your judgements and let us know what you think.

The Web Celeb 25

1. Perez Hilton
2. Michael Arrington
3. Mark Frauenfelder
4. Seth Godin
5. Cory Doctorow

check out the rest here…

lanjut →

This morning, I needed to access my Google Docs to find a password that I had saved. After trying to open my Google Docs page to access the folder I needed I was unable to access it. It read that it was loading for over 20 minutes…

If Google allows these types of error that limit or deny peoples access to there saved data it will ruin peoples trust in using Google docs. I’m usually a huge supporter of Google but access to ones data is a huge issue that I hope they get worked out.

Have you had problems with Google or Google docs? Leave comments!

As you can tell, if you are a return reader, ActionsTalk has gone through some cosmetic changes. This layout gives us more options on features to offer our readers such as the new translations courtesy of Google (more to come). I hope you enjoy ActionsTalk 2.0. Please leave comments concerns and feedback. Thanks.

“A solid working knowledge of productivity software and other IT tools has become a basic foundation for success in virtually any career… Beyond that, however, I don’t think you can overemphasise the importance of having a good background in maths and science… Communication skills and the ability to work well with different types of people are very important too. ” -Bill Gates

(read the rest of this article here.)

I think Bill nails it on the head here. It is extremely important for our (the US) undergraduates and high school students to put more of a focus on math and science. If the United States is going to be able to compete with the students from China and India we are going to have to stress these fields of study more. We have set ourselves apart from the rest of the world because of the quality of education that we provide but that competitive advantages is dwindling away. The margin of superior education that the United States once had is quickly disappearing and it is because of the types of educations we are offering. Although communication and PR skills may be very important, I believe that these majors will not provide us with the competitive workforce we will need in the future. As an economics major I definitely believe that a good understanding of the global economy and general business is very important but more and more it needs to be backed up by a more applicable discipline such as math or science. Bill later states:

“If you look at the most interesting things that have emerged in the last decade – whether it is cool things like portable music devices and video games or more practical things like smart phones and medical technology – they all come from the realm of science and engineering. ”

Whether it is an industry revolutionizing iPod or and industry revolutionizing ultrasound machine a well educated core of math, science, and engineering students are A MUST to reach these heights and a must to remain globally competitive.

Reading is the only way to get enough experience in one life time.  A few months ago I read A Long Way Gone – memoirs of a boy soldier  by Ismael Beah and it is one of those books that really makes you thankful for the life you’ve had.  Whether you were raised in upper, middle, or lower class you probably had a better childhood that Ismael. He retells the stories of being separated from his family at the age of 9 and fleeing the attacks of rebels at the age of 12.  He fought for the government army and describes the experiences of being totally drugged and committing acts of violence that he never thought possible.  Eventually he was set free to a UNICEF rehab center and was put into contact with his uncle’s family.  He describes the process of re-entering society and trying to deal with the horrible memories of war.

A Long Way Gone  is a story of hope and encouragement. Ismael overcomes huge challenges and shows the journey to hell and back.  I highly recommend reading this book for a change of perspective on you upbringing. It will  make you feel lucky.

Here they are. These are the best and brightest web sites out there right now. What do they win? Nothing… but maybe they’ll get a few new visitors when this hits the presses. Check them out, and leave comments!

Netvibes has become my homepage of choice as of late. It competes with iGoogle and PageFlakes in the personalized homepage space. Netvibes wins out because it looks cooler (I’m into visuals) and it has a ton of useful widgets to choose from. Some of my favorites are Google Calendar, Facebook, Weather, Twitter, and Gmail. You will begin to see that everything is connected on the web these days… netvibes does a pretty good job of pulling it all together.

Facebook is a major game changer. Never has a social network been so useful or prolific. Everyone shook their heads in amazement (including me) when Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly turning down $2 Billion offers to sell. Now the company has a valuation of $15 Billion!! It’s worth so much because it has so many users. It has so many users because it’s so addicting and useful. Yes, it will waste your time – a lot of your time. But it will also allow you to stay connected (even if minimally) with many, many people (which can be bad too). It’s become a one stop shop for checking in on everyone, and letting your friends see what you’ve been up to.

Say what you will about Wikipedia. It’s an encyclopedia that literally anyone can edit. The results could be disastrous right? Poor information could get spread all over the web… I look at it like this. Even though there’s a high probability that everything on there isn’t correct, it gets me a hell of a lot closer to the truth than I’d be without it (and quickly too). If nothing else, it points me in the right direction. One thing I always keep in mind when searching Wikipedia is how polarizing is the topic? If you’re looking up Hillary Clinton, or the Iraq War for example, who the heck knows what you’re going to get… This is a case where you’ve got passionate people on two sides of a topic (conservative and liberal), and they’ll be constantly overwriting each other on Wikipedia.

I’ve been a huge fan of Flickr for about two years now. I use Flickr so much, that some of my friends even call me Flickr. There are plenty of photo sharing sites out there and people often ask me what makes Flickr the best. I think if you love, photography (and I do), the community is what makes Flickr so good. You get to see amazing photos by people from all around the world. You can ask them what they did to get the shot. You can even see what camera they took the picture with in most cases. Flickr is the gold standard right now if you’re interested in photography.

Google knows what’s up when it comes to web applications. They either build the best or buy the best. I’m pretty sure they built Gmail from the ground up. Gmail is so smooth and easy to use, I almost hate using it because I have to use an alternative at work. It’s easy to search (Google is pretty good at that by now), and it’s easy to set up automatic rules. Even though it’s the best, they are still rolling out improvements. Google probably knows everything about me by now (since their computers are crawling my email)…should I be worried? I’m not.

Meebo is a problem solver. I’ve got friends that use multiple instant messaging clients, and it would be a huge pain to sign into all of them at once. That’s where Meebo comes in. It let’s me sign into Google Talk, AIM, and MSN all from one spot. It’s also completely web based, which means I don’t need to download anything to use it. They’ve even announced video chat for up to 6 people at once. I’ll probably never use that…but I could.

Popurls is where I go daily to find Interesting stuff on the web. I used to go to Digg for this, but I’m not impressed with the quality of info on Digg lately. Popurls (think popular urls) brings in the top stories from a ton of sources (like Google New, Del.icio.us, Digg…). I get to see it all in one place and the interface is very clean.

I wasn’t sold on the value of del.icio.us when it first came out a couple years ago. It’s a website that lets you store your bookmarks online. Now I use it as my repository for anything new and interesting. Every time I find a new site that I like, I plug it into del.icio.us and tag it with meaningful key words — this makes it easy to find later with a simple search. I’m also a big fan of the way it can separate your tags into different RSS feeds/pages. For example, here are all of my bookmarks that have been tagged “Belgium”

Simple GTD is all about Getting Things Done. And that’s what I like. It’s an online To-do list tool with everything you need and nothing you don’t. You can easily create multiple lists and drag items from list to list. I usually have this open all day at work and it keeps me on track. If you want something a little more robust, try basecamp. If you want something a little less robust, try pen and paper.

Google Reader is, hands-down the best RSS reader I’ve ever used. If you don’t know what RSS is, or why it’s important, click here for an explanation. Google reader lets me quickly browse top stories from all of my favorite sites in one place. If I find something good, I can “star it” and it becomes easy to find at a later date. It also has a slick e-mail sharing feature that lets me send stories to people quickly. The interface with my Gmail account automatically brings in my contacts, so I only need to type the first few letters of someone’s name and it finds their email address. I also really like the shared RSS feed feature. This allows me to share my favorite stories with whoever wants to subscribe to them.

Honorable Mention:
Mint is a great tool for managing your finances in one place. It would be a top site if it was better at categorizing my expenditures.

Deezer let’s you make music playlists that you can post all over the web (like this one).

Meetup is a great tool for finding people with common interests around you. It helps you find events in your area, and it will even export the even calendar automatically to Google Calendar, iCal, etc.

Mango offers a ton of free foreign language courses on the Internet. Nothing beats learning a language one on one with another person, but this is about as good as it gets on the web.

Geni is a great Family tree building site. It let’s you post photos of family members and will send you email reminders when someone’s birthday is coming up.

Sketchcast is a tool that let’s you draw out diagrams and record your voice at the same time. It’s great for creating lessons on something, or explaining material over the web. After you create a sketchcast, you can post it on your blog, etc.

see more of Blake’s post here.

People misuse phrases in the English language all the time.  For example when people mean to say that they don’t care, they say, “I could care less”. If you could care less than you are saying that you do care, not that you don’t. 

If you have trouble with this saying here is a little image given to me by a co-worker that will help you out.  My recommendation: Pay attention to the image so you don’t sound like an idiot.

In a press conference in Amsterdam today, CEO of Nokia Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo highlighted Nokia’s commitment to driving the mobile internet trend.  “We are at the dawn of a new era in mobile communications driven by the rapid convergence of the internet and mobility, and Nokia is setting the pace of change. But with market leadership in an industry of this scale also comes responsibility,” he said. “We are committed to taking a leading role in increasing environmental awareness and performance right across the industry, creating further products and services that help people make more sustainable choices. It is both the responsible thing to do and it makes good business sense.” 

Further they have something that will definitely challenge the iPhone’s unique combination of mobile phone and music player.  Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Multimedia, Nokia, said this: “We set out to create the music experience that people are telling us they are looking for – all the music they want in the form of unlimited downloads to their mobile device and PC.” Vanjoki also said, “Even if you listened to music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you would still only scratch the surface of the music that we’re making available. Comes with Music fulfils our dream to give consumers all the music they want, wherever they want it, while rewarding the artists who create it.” Ovi a new internet service environment for Nokia mobile will also be released. Ovi meaning ‘door’ in Finnish, lets people have access to Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or other social networks. Vanjoki boldly calls this service a “dashboard to a person’s life”!

 ”Ovi combines the mobile, PC and web environments into an easy to use experience with common user interface elements that provide consistency and simplicity,” said Vanjoki. “We started the Ovi services rollout with the individual services in navigation, music and games, and the next step is to provide an integrated experience. The complete Ovi environment and new services will be rolled out continuously throughout 2008.” 

It sounds to me like Nokia has some pretty powerful offerings to the mobile web on their horizon.  As Apple’s iPhone is dominating UI for mobile devices it will be interesting to see what competitors present to the tech hungry market.  I would very much welcome a competitor to the iPhone. Just think what Steve Jobs and gang would create with a little competition!

I finished reading Leaving Microsoft to Save the World by John Wood, about a week ago and now that I’ve had time to digest the book I’d like to comment.

John Wood has lived a very exciting life. He was a Director of Business Development for Microsoft Asia for years and had achieved all his financial goals. All of his expenses were paid for as an ex-pat and was thoroughly enjoying the business challenges that he was faced with at Microsoft. He worked closely with Steve Ballmer (now CEO of Microsoft) on mulitple occasions and as a single man had many exciting opportunities to travel and see the world. What changed all of that was a trekking trip in Nepal where he met a school administrator in Nepals struggling school system. His story started with a small request from a Nepali teacher, “Can you please bring us books?”

That small request led to the creation of one of the strongest, most influential, non-profit organizations around. Room to Read started with one shipment of about 3,000 books to the Nepali school and now Room to Read works in over 12 counties around the world, mostly in Asia. Room to Read was there to help out with the tsunami victims of 2004 and has built roughly 5,000 libraries around the world year-to-date.

I strongly recommend this read for anyone in the business world who needs inspiration towards starting or working for a non-profit. John faces some very natural struggles of a businessman in his journey to create this strong organization. Well done John, thank you for sharing your inspirational story.

IdeaCV is a “social brainstorming” site co-founded by (future ActionsTalk guest) Dan Ackerman Greenberg.  Dan is the head class assistant for the Stanford Facebook class. I’ve recently begun using IdeaCV to document, share, and collaborate on new start-up ideas.  If you’re like me ideas seem to come to you at very inconvenient times and rarely in one piece.  I may have one “idea theme” for a week or several weeks that I eventually piece together to see its full potential. IdeaCV lets me do that piecing together in an organized way while benefiting from the insights and comments of my like-minded peers.

 IdeaCV is a community for entrepreneurs, innovators and thinkers. Your IdeaCV is an online portfolio of your ideas. Share it with your friends, partners, potential employers & receive feedback from other thinkers like you!