Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Web Secret #290: myCharge

Tomorrow, you'll be returning those unwanted gifts.

This is what you will get instead.

A couple of months ago, I was waiting to participate in a panel presentation, sitting at a table with one of my co-presenters, when she took out what looked like a palm sized greyish brick.

"What is that?" I asked.

"That," she said, "is something I cannot live without."

"That" turned out to be the "Hub 3000," one of a number of beautifully designed gadgets by the folks at myCharge.com aimed at helping us when our smartphones die.

The company makes a variety of ultra portable devices that provide emergency power for a variety of smartphones. The devices include the cables needed to connect your dead gadget and the built in plugs necessary to charge the devices in the first place. Confused?

Time to turn on the under 1 minute long explanatory video:

Dead electronic device?

Problem solved.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Web Secret #289: Google Zeitgeist

The end of the year is a time for reflection. Maybe even a time to consider its Zeitgeist - one of those German words, (coined in 1884,) that embodies an entire concept. It means the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

Until the 21st century, the Zeitgeist of a specific time frame was something gleaned retrospectively, over many years. For example, if you look back on the 20th century, you could argue that "the Zeitgeist of modernism typified and influenced architecture, art, and fashion during much of the 20th century."

In 2001, Google realized that with, (at that time,) more than 150 million queries per day, they had a unique window into what was happening in the world on any given day, as well as a fascinating retrospective on the peaks and valleys of popular culture during the course of a year.

Pulling that data together, Google began to publish their version of the Year-End Zeitgeist and reveal the collective focus of the online mind, highlighting the main events that drew the attention of a global audience. The Year-End Google Zeitgeist provides a glimpse at what captivated the world over the past 12 months, based on the most popular search terms on the world's most popular search engine. All of this information is featured in an under 5 minute video, and also broken down into charts.

In 2012, Google counted 1.2 trillion searches, in 146 different languages. Here is Google Zeigeist version 2012:



You can also look at search trends by country, by event, by film, by people, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

What is your guess about the soon to be revealed 2013 Zeitgeist?

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Web Secret #288: The Grommet

Right in time for the holiday season, I am going to tell you about "The Grommet," a curated shopping website.

I can hear your virtual yawns.

Pay attention, The Grommet makes the online shopping experience fresh and inspiring. And I think their approach can teach all of us something about marketing ourselves, our clinical practices and our EAPs too.

Grommet's unique marketing approach is to tell a story. They feature a daily innovative product, introduced via a very brief video. The video explains why the product is unique, how/why it was invented, and how it is manufactured.)

Here are three of my favorite Grommets:

FREEKey


ila Security



Quivvers



Warning: extremely addictive site.

Enter at your own risk.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Web Secret #287: Today I found out

Danger, Will Robinson!,” there is a website entirely devoted to useless information.

In my family, I am known as the queen of pointless factoids. I revel in this. So imagine how I reacted when I came across "Today I Found Out," founded in 2010, and based on the idea that it is always good to learn something new every day. TIFO aims to publish interesting facts that are highly researched by amazingly well credentialed authors.

Here is a sample TIFO story: "How One of the Most Beautiful Women in 1940s’ Hollywood Helped Make Certain Wireless Technologies Possible." Hedy Lamarr was not only the star of numerous movies, but a brilliant scientist and mathematician whose inventions earned her US patents. Fun fact: my mother once saw Hedy in a Paris hair salon shortly after WWII. She told me that the entire shop was staring, mesmerized by her beauty.

Here are some others:

The origin of the phrase "Close, but no cigar"

What started the "Cops eating donuts" stereotype

How about Fingers don't contain muscles?

Your welcome.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Web Secret #286: The first website

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I have a lot to be thankful for, and that includes the World Wide Web, which allows me to access the Internet.

In April 2013, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the day CERN published a statement making World Wide Web technology available on a royalty-free basis - forever.

Think back, what were you doing in 1993?

To mark the occasion, CERN brought the world's first website back to life. That was the start of a project to preserve as much about that first website, created by Tim Berners-Lee, as possible.

The project is called "The First Website" and its goals are not only to restore and preserve the hardware and software used to serve it up, but to also recreate the experience of visiting that first site twenty years ago.

For the record, the original IP address for the first web server was 128.141.201.74.

Geek out.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Web Secret #285: PivotPlanet

Since 2003, PivotPlanet,  has been pairing people interested in switching careers with mentors who can teach them how to start.

In an article in the New York Times, Brian Kurth explained that he got the idea for PivotPlanet in 2001, when he was 34, freshly downsized, and trying to figure out what to do with his life.  He realized “that there is value in test-driving your dream job before you do it.” Effectively,  he pioneered the concept of  turning “mentorship into a consumer product.”

PivotPlanet lists mentors in about 200 fields, from psychologist to pet therapist to television host. Mentors charge an hourly fee for their mentoring. Much of the mentoring is telephonic or video conferencing based.

Whether you want to give a leg up to a new clinician or you're ready to move on to your next career adventure, go get 'em!

A simple, but powerful idea.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Web Secret #284: We come from the future

I wish I was a futurist, one of those scientists who predict the future. But that is not going to happen. I am too analytical, too much in the box. You come up with the idea - and I will operationalize it - to perfection. Just don't ask me to generate the idea.

But I do understand the implication of new ideas when I see them. And I like to be exposed to new concepts, even if they terrify me. There is one website that does that (terrify me,) on a regular basis. It's called io9.com AKA "We come from the future."

Before I tell you more, here is an example of what you can find on io9:



The editor in chief of io9 does a good job of explaining the site.

There is no question that some of io9 is Entertainment Weekly style trash. But if you stick to the science topics, you will be rewarded. Take, for example, "What Will Human Cultures Be Like in 100 Years?"

io9 - it's like when you were a kid and you peeked under the bed at bedtime to see monsters.