One of my friends from that time is Kami Kinard, who is now a published author. (Check out her book, The Boy Project).  She also has a blog called Nerdy Chicks Rule. I was surprised and honored when she asked me to be interviewed on her blog. So, I got to share some of my techy-feelyness with other folks around the world!

And, I got to share my love for Song Charts one more time!

From a T-F perspective, these entries caught my eye:

BYOD – Bring Your Own Device. I actually have been using this phrase for a while now at my work because we have been experimenting with checking out iPads to faculty and students and my take on the results is that they are truly “personal” computers and don’t share well with others. We need to expect to bring our own devices, customized as we want, to all kinds of locations and get the cloud based services we are using.

Social Media in the Olympics: I am a HUGE Olympics fan (yes, I braved the crowds in Atlanta!) and with the IOC now allowing athletes to use social media during the event, we are primed to see the Games in all kinds of new ways and at new levels of access.

Online Living in Print and Your Public Story: This is fascinating to me. We archive our lives online and on our phones at this point. The only hard copy pictures I get are from older relatives who still print all of their photos. But, there is also (according to the JWT) a growing appreciation for physical objects like stationery and personal postcards from digital photos. This takes it one more step with services like Social Memories that can pull out your digital archives from Facebook and put them into a book format and IBM’s Museum of Me that builds a virtual museum from your Facebook activity. Or, get more professional and use about.me (Check out my about.me profile!)or Storyvite to pull from all of the different sources and create a collated record of your online professional life.

Split Personality Smartphones: I have had this conversation with folks at work several times. While I don’t carry two devices, I do know people who do – one for work and one for personal. This prediction, that kinda mirrors what Apple tries to do with Spaces

Check out the whole thing. What grabs your attention?

Hauschka at NPR: Random Gifts on Vimeo

Visit CheerLights for the details. And, if you don’t have a strand of the CheerLights (like me), then get the Android App! (I will soon)

Maybe I need to learn how to build one of the actual strands…..

I have really only cried when two celebrities died: Roberto Clemente and Jim Croce. I was much younger then, of course, but while I have been saddened by the loss of a favorite singer, actor or other celebrity, I have not really been moved to tears in a long time until I heard this morning about the death of Steve Jobs.

I am an unabashed Apple fangirl and I have been since my first experiences with the Apple II during undergraduate school and the time that a friend brought over this new computer called a Macintosh..it was cute. Small. “Portable”. And this mouse thing was really something else. I was hooked and have been ever since.

Several models later, a few iPods, iPads and so on (except for the iPhone – never had that), I remain brand loyal and a big Steve fan. Yes, he has an ego. Yes, he sometimes pushes things that I don’t think are the best move but by golly, his vision wins and then all of the sudden we realize that we didn’t know we needed (fill in the technology here) but we certainly cannot live with out it now!

His vision of technology is one of beauty, simplicity, power, creativity and fun. How can you not love that?

Some things to share about Steve Jobs:

A nice video tribute from Gizmodo using the text from the Think Different campaign

Lovely tribute photo and text

An oral history interview from the Smithsonian.

11 Best Steve Quotes (via Huffington Post)

His Stanford commencement speech:

Image via Tom Davenport

I was intrigued. In a nutshell, Free-Range Social Media encourages you to share yourself openly, use others for inspiration but not for wholesale copying and not to hide behind the easy to use anonymity that many social media/networking sites allow you to do. You can read more at her FRSM page.

I have shared her TED talk earlier here and I just re-watched it yesterday. It really speaks to me and I think I need to watch it a few times a year just to remind myself of how I need to work on being open and honest. At the first part of her talk, she states that we are all hard-wired for connection. This is the same conclusion that the author of the common book we all read last year at my college drew in his book: The Geography of Bliss. It is all about relationships and connecting.

In this hypertexted/hashtagged world of social networking, I began thinking about how we connect beyond just the basic communication tools like texting, comments, email (oh so 2009) and so on. We also link to each other’s work, pass along URLs via Twitter, post YouTube videos on Facebook, etc.

Brene Brown also links to another person’s badge called Link with Love, which has this badge:

This reminded me of Alan Levine’s definition of “linktribution“, which I latched onto right away, of course, this approach’s definition is much more “feely” so it works on a different level, I suppose. It is about accepting responsibility for what you do online, respecting the intellectual property of others and yourself and protecting those rights.

And, it also seems to ring more true for the connections and relationships. If you choose to link to something, it makes sense to share it in the world appropriately and with respect to whoever created it. You would expect the same from someone else.

I think I have always tried to follow the precepts of the Free-Range Social Media but I will be aware even more.

The sentiment by the main person profiled in the story really struck me:

“There’s always someone who’s got something to say about how thin someone is made or how flawless someone’s skin is and the effect it has on young women,” says Manson. “So when I set up the project, it was nice to think we could actually do something to help someone.”

As I work with technology and try to find ways it can help those I work with teach, work, live more efficiently and effectively, it can be easy to lose sight of how truly helpful a specialized skill like photo restoration can be and how truly magical the experience of gaining back something like a photograph that was considered lost can also be.

I know I will continue to work with technology and I know it will always be changing. What I hope will not change is my drive to find ways for it to help others make their lives better, provide happiness and simply feel good.

I haven’t had/taken the time to work on my contemplative photography but this view struck me walking into work yesterday morning so I tried to catch the morning sun shining while the moon was still there.