ThinkHammer

Video: Running with the Bulls Presentation on Thursday

2009-07-03T10:17:00.001-04:00

It turns out that not everyone is on Facebook. (Who knew?) That means that there are some cool cats who have not yet seen the video that both introduces some of the guys who show up at Cigar Therapy and tells you that if you come on at 4PM on July 9th, you will get to see Keith Rodgers talking about his experience in running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. In this video you get to meet

Power Tip for News Junkies - Search Google News by Author

2009-07-01T08:11:00.002-04:00

Google News now lets you add "author:name" as a search term. This lets you more precisely search the news for all of the articles written by a particular author. Example Search: All News Items by Rudolph Bell Once you've done the search, you can then subscribe to the RSS feed in your favorite news reader or have email news alerts sent to you when new news articles match your search criteria.

Free or Cheap - Tools for Non-Profit Success

2009-06-22T11:16:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I led a panel discussion for the local alliance of non-profit organizations about the tools they could use to leverage membership, fund-raising, and engagement of their committee members. We had several requests for the handout, so I thought I'd post the handout in case others might find some of these sites or tools useful. If you run a non-profit, there are tools here that

Liz Coleman calls for a reinvention of liberal arts education

2009-06-08T14:46:00.000-04:00

Bennington president Liz Coleman delivers a call-to-arms for radical reform in higher education. Bucking the trend to push students toward increasingly narrow areas of study, she proposes a truly cross-disciplinary education -- one that dynamically combines all areas of study to address the great problems of our day.

What's new in the Blackberry Facebook App version 1.6

2009-06-08T10:30:00.001-04:00

Facebook for the Blackberry version 1.6 came out over the weekend and sports some pretty cool new features. Here's what they say: NEW! View your friends’ highlights like status updates, photo uploads, comments and wall posts. NEW! Check out your friends’ profiles with access to status updates, wall posts, friends and recently added pictures. NEW! Open recently added photos, entire albums, or tag

What if search could so some serious math? A Better Sneak Preview of Wolfram|Alpha

2009-05-01T06:20:00.001-04:00

What does LDL 140 mean for me? What is the GDP of my city? How has the weather changed over the past ten years in my town? Stephen Wolfram demonstrates Wolfram|Alpha, a search engine that can answer these questions in a graphical format. This is an improved video over the longer version we Twittered about earlier in the week. This ten minute extract shows what is on the computer screen while

In the absence of clearly-defined goals

2009-04-27T10:56:00.000-04:00

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. -Robert Heinlein Setting goals is difficult because it is almost exactly equivalent to determining what your life is about. The problem is that we tend to avoid hard things like figuring out what our life is about and fill our lives with easy things like

Stimulus funds are available to expand or train your workforce

2009-04-23T10:50:00.000-04:00

Got employees? Want to find stimulus funds to expand or train your workforce? There is a free workshop for qualified employers on May 12. Phil Yanov is speaking on one of the panels. Email [thinkhammer (at) gmail (dot) com] or call to ask for an invite.

A few simple rules to reduce lost time, increase personal effectiveness

2009-04-23T09:37:00.000-04:00

Thinking about everything all the time is one of the paths to madness. When you've not committed your tasks to paper, you loop them around in your head, madly rehearsing them like an actor having trouble remembering their lines. Your brain says "milk, eggs, detonator cord," over and over in a futile attempt to keep your shopping list from slipping away from you. One ring of your cell phone, and

Robots, Creativity, Phil Yanov, and Poached Pears -- all in just one hour

2009-04-22T06:05:00.001-04:00

Seems like today would be an especially good day to listen to Your Day, and not just because I'm on there. You've got Robots, a segment on creativity, my comments on Evernote, and then a recipe that sounds absolutely delicious. You can listen live or on the web at noon. THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2009 FIRST Foundation Palmetto Regional Robotics Competition. Donna London, director of the Jim Self

How does someone think it's ok to cheat or steal? It's easier than you think.

2009-04-22T00:18:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a public forum listening to people talk about the economy. As you might imagine, some of them were exceedingly upset. I came away a bit overwhelmed at how difficult it can be to help them make sense of the incredible injustices that they see in the economic fallout around them. They want punishment because they think there is some clearly identifiable enemy upon

What's new in FireFox 3.0.9?

2009-04-21T22:22:00.001-04:00

What's new in today's release of the new Firefox browser? It looks suspiciously like the stuff thats new in every version of Firefox. Here's the official list:Fixed several security issues. Fixed several stability issues. Many users experienced an issue where a corrupt local database caused Firefox to “lose” its stored cookies. (bug 470578) Fixed an issue where

Follow South Carolina's Twitter Top 50

2009-04-08T09:46:00.000-04:00

Once I got started, I just couldn't stop. My Obsessive Compulsions are your gain. How to follow the top 50 Twitterers in South Carolina in Two Easy Steps 1) Copy to your clipboard the following list of Twitter names to your clipboard. This really is easy, but if you need instructions, I have thoughtfully provided them: A triple click should select the list, then press Ctrl-C to copy.: @10best

How to follow the Top 50 Twitterers in Greenville, SC in just 2 steps.

2009-04-08T01:08:00.007-04:00

Inspired by, ahem, myself. That is, in the spirit of the post I put on the GSATC website which tells you How to Follow 100 Cool Twitterati from Tech After Five , I decided this was so easy, why not make it easy for you to follow the Top 50 Twitter types in Greenville, SC? Here you go. How to follow the top 50 Twitterers in Greenville SC in Two Easy Steps 1) Copy to your clipboard the

Video: The Network Bash

2009-04-04T07:26:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, Bobby Rettew invited me, John Warner, Trey Pennington, Olivier Blanchard and Steve Gonzales to participate in a panel discussion for a group of university students. The goal was to share with them how we use online and real world networking techniques to build a support structure for our professional goals. We talked about LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other techniques the

Engadget gets "Hotelicoptered," removes hoaxy post

2009-03-31T05:48:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, there was a post on Engadget hailing the maiden voyage of the Hotelicopter. Though not quite as extravagant as checking into a space motel, booking a stay in the Hotelicopter is pretty stupendous. Hailed as the world's first flying hotel, the Soviet-made Mil V-12 has been extended and completely renovated since being purchased in 2004...The post garnered over 80 comments but is

How to bring 200 times normal traffic to your blog

2009-03-23T13:19:00.000-04:00

TheBrandBuilder (aka Olivier Blanchard) just sent me a note thanking me for contributing to his post on on tweeting your way to unemployment. This really is a tribute to the power of collaborative storytelling. I saw a link on Twitter to the emerging story. I thought "What this needs is screen shots and pictures." I went hunting, pulled them together, and then posted my short item here.

How to tweet your way into unemployment

2009-03-18T10:25:00.001-04:00

This poor guy tweets that he's been offered a job at Cisco, but that he plans to hate the work: I guess he thought no one at Cisco looks at Twitter? He was wrong . The moral is obvious. Don't say anything on the web you wouldn't want to see everywhere on the web or in print. Yes, Elizabeth, you can Tweet yourself into the unemployment line.

Live at noon today and taking tech calls (webstream available)

2009-03-18T09:52:00.000-04:00

Eric Rodgers and I will host a live call-in show today at noon on most of the South Carolina Public Radio stations. It's a a live call-in hour on most anything technical. Eric Rodgers hosts Phil Yanov, founder and President of the GSA Technology Council. Listeners call in via the tollfree number 888-539-8859 to ask questions about using the internet, computers, new digital devices, and related

Five steps to finding and building your pack of wolves

2009-03-10T15:57:00.000-04:00

The list below is based on the presentation I gave at this morning's SMC event . Five steps to finding and building your pack of wolves Find Yourself - Honestly appraise your interests and goals Find Them - They may already be gathering and looking for a leader Be Yourself to Them - Build Trust & Align Goals Encourage the Pack - Listen / Reinforce / Ration Keep Howling - Consistency and

Crowdsource the annotation of your videos

2009-03-09T13:03:00.000-04:00

Now you can approach the annotation of YouTube videos as a team. I think this is a great idea, because I've got a lot of videos that I could use a bit of help with. As a caveat, the annotations remain, of course, outside of the video meaning that they are going to show up in Google searches but may not even appear with the video if it's embedded on another website. The YouTube team has just

A few tips that might help you focus

2009-03-06T09:44:00.000-05:00

Like lots of people in the bloggerverse (or Twitterverse) I sometimes need help keeping focus. Making lots of new connections is a great help in what I do, but it's not the only thing I get to do. I have a responsibility to deliver on a number of projects and am sometimes distracted by all of the other cool things I could be doing. I found a great post on Mario Sundar's blog that seems to have

Five important reasons you should be working LinkedIn harder

2009-03-04T10:16:00.004-05:00

I'm glad to see that I've been getting a lot of LinkedIn requests in the past few weeks. The downside is that it is probably an economic indicator. The upside is that it confirms my suspicions that I am surrounded by smart motivated people who like to take their futures into their own hands. If you are looking for work, looking for business, or think you may need to be looking for either in

So you wanna Watchmen?

2009-03-03T16:57:00.000-05:00

Watchmen is coming Friday. Anyone up for some professional networking and an early matinee? Watch the Trailer on Yahoo! Movies Drop me a note on Facebook or Twitter.

Follow ThinkHammer in 40 seconds

2009-03-03T15:35:00.000-05:00

Google has combined Friend Connect and the Follow function for blogs so you can now easily follow the blogs you want. Here's how: You can follow this blog by clicking the Follow box on the right sidebar of this page:http://blog.thinkhammer.com