Does your corporate social site inadvertently lock out compelling contributors?

To me, the primary objective of any company blog site should be to tear down all communication roadblocks (firewalls, difficult tools, overly rigid policy, etc.) that stand between employees & the world to enable free flowing human to human conversation. The Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has done that with their blog site.

The content, in multiple formats (video, blog posts, etc.), as told through compelling stories by their employees is heartfelt — like this (they need a video embed feature).

Though the underlying recruiting objective of the site is obvious, the site’s design & functionality is super comprehensive & efficient to use — which is paramount considering the focus of the employees/medical practitioners is likely not blogging, editing HTML, etc.

When decision makers choose a new media platform for their employees, the employees’ skill set, work style & time available for blogging, is often not considered because the platform decision makers (usually in IT) are primarily focused on the technology — which can be just as important as considering the users capabilities to successfully utilize the tool. The level of effort involved with supporting less tech savvy, or time available individuals (CXOs, practitioners — as in doctors & nurses in this example, etc.) should not be under-estimated. Trust me on this one.

If the tool is too cumbersome & time-consuming to use (especially by the employees with the most compelling stories to tell), then what’s the point? And believe me, you want their contributions.

Have you ever drawn with your voice? Because you can.

This is crazy. Ze Frank, yeah that Ze Frank, created yet an other work of pure genius — a tool that enables you to draw with your voice. Seriously. Check it out. To the right is a drawing my little niece and I just made. Granted, it’s a bit more…uh…abstract than the museum quality pieces that Ze created, but that’s to be expected considering the man exudes awesomeness with everything he attempts. I still can’t stop watching his bagged sloth video:

Or, listening to his social network love song.

Sigh…[queue googly eyes]…

StockTwits

[Optional mood music] [End of optional mood music]

Needless to say, money is top-of-mind for many folks. Times like these make or break some people, but in either case, the extra awareness is a good thing. If you’re shopping around the stock sales and are into Twitter, be sure to check out Stocktwits — “…an open, community-powered investment idea and information service. You can think of it as Bloomberg for the little guy and gal. Eavesdrop on what traders and investors are talking about RIGHT NOW or contribute to the conversation…”

The following intro by StockTwits co-founder Howard Lindzon offers a bit more context. At the very least, the video’s mood music will make you feel like this is something great…or perhaps simply make you feel like hugging him.

What is StockTwits? from Jon Labes on Vimeo.

Become an AirBed & Breakfast Owner in just a few minutes

Via @jowyang, this is a really cool community site: AirBed&Breakfast.

“What is AirBed & Breakfast?

AirBed & Breakfast is an online marketplace for peer-to-peer traveling.

We enable people to earn money by renting out extra space, and offer travelers a viable alternative to hotels.”

With tens of thousands of people converging in Denver, CO next week for the Democratic National Convention, it appears that many residents are more than happy to open up their homes and earn a few bucks in the process.

As for me, it’s a little outside of my comfort zone, but Elaine C.’s “Museum” quality cleanliness does sound appealing.

Give back with a click or your mouse

Before my ten minutes of fame tick away, I figured now is a good time to parlay possible new blog traffic on a post I’ve had mentally queued up all week.

I love that giving back to reputable charities is just a mouse-click away. Following are a few examples that I’ve recently become aware of, if you know of more please chime in and I’ll update this post. In just a few short minutes, you could give back to all three without ever opening up your wallet (of course, if you wanted to open up your wallet…;-)).

Via @monkchips, Freerice.com: Play a word matching game and for each match you get, they donate 20 grains of rice via the UN World Food Program.

Via NASCAR (Kasey Kahne is my driver ), Help Chevy Help Autism: Take a virtual tour of the Chevy Malibu via a short video and Chevy will donate to Autism Speaks. I was hoping for information about autism in the video, but as ThinGuy reminds me, you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Via Mary, nothingbutnets.net: Play a short game and a malaria-preventing net will be sent to Africa on your behalf. More…

Update: Via John Bennett’s comment, AIDtoCHILDREN.com: Similar to freerice.com, it’s a word matching game. For each correct match, 1/4 of a cent is donated to children in need.

Plumbing Solving Graph

Via Crappy Graphs (where you can create your own), I dedicate this one to Mr. S for persevering through a plumbing battle with the koi pond.

Spoiler: In a not-so-surprising twist, Mr. S wins the battle — tho’ it hasn’t quite happened, just yet.

NEW diagramming tool on wikis.sun.com

A new diagramming tool, Gliffy, is now enabled on wikis.sun.com Simply login, navigate to the page where you’d like to create a diagram, click on “Add diagram” & away you go!

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The tool is capable of creating flow & architectural diagrams, user interface mock-ups, room layouts, etc. Check out this 2 minute tour for a bit more information:

Tip: To extend the page size for larger diagrams, adjust the width & height page properties on the right panel. Sounds obvious, but a room full of us were using the tool and neglected to notice it until Igor saved the day.

Lovin’ my Nike+ iPod Kit

I’ve never been the athletic type. The closest I came was being on the pom-pon squad in high school — and even that was due more to being well-liked by the faculty judges than any gift of physical coordination I may have possessed.

Thanks to my Nike+ iPod kit and a strong desire to not look 40 on my upcoming birthday, I’ve summoned the wannabe athlete within. The kit allows me to set, track, drive toward, and hopefully meet my running goals. It works with a little chip that fits in Nike+ shoes and an adapter that connects to your iPod Nano. Each time you connect your iPod to iTunes, it uploads your running data to the nikeplus site.

Following are where things stand with my goals. I’m pretty far behind and with the addition of a new bike (more on that later) & two solid weeks of upcoming biz travel, I’d have to say my goals are at risk, but I’m thankful for the motivation…

…and now have a better idea of reasonable goals.

Time to vote on The Crunchies 2007

The Crunchies 2007 nominations are posted and ready for your votes. By definition, The Crunchies is an “annual competition and award ceremony to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year.”

Lots of excellent start-ups are rightfully nominated. Twitter, of course, got my Best Mobile Start-up and Best Overall votes — as did SmugMug for Best Design. I’m sure your favorite sites and gadgets are nominated just waiting for your votes.

Voting ends January 10th.

Internet Archive Site: What did your website look like in the past?

Somehow, I managed to just find out about web.archive.org. I tried it out with sun.com and sure enough — there’s a plethora of archived pages. For example, here’s what the front page of sun.com looked like in October of 1996 (in the days where “turnkey” was the hot marketing buzz word).

Toy recall alerts via emails, feeds and podcasts

I feel for the parents of small children who are trying to stay on top of the daily toy recalls. The most recent recall, Aqua Dots, is due to terrifying reports of kids lapsing into unresponsive comas when they ingest the dots. Yikes!

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has setup a number of ways for parents to easily receive recall alerts via their:

• search page
• recall podcasts
• recall feed
• email announcements (which is also in Español)

Numbr.com: James Bond-ish or Tony Soprano-ish?

Also via geeksugar, here’s a cool website that enables one to alias their real phone number for up to a month: numbr.com. Basically, it assigns you a randomly generated (US) phone number, then you tell it your real number so it can forward calls to it for a duration you define. Once that duration comes to an end, the fake # no longer forwards calls to your real #.

I’m struggling with the use cases on this one for those of us who’s last name is not Bond or Soprano, but here’s one:

You meet a someone who seems “normal” and might want to sync up with them again later, but you aren’t quite sure because while mingling with them your freak-o-meter flickered once…or twice. Instead of giving them your real, permanent number, you give them a temporary # during what one may call a “friendly probationary period.”

Other suggested use cases?

Time-saving tips

Via geeksugar, check out waitless.org for some great time saving tips.

I liked the soothe a baby tip by enabling it to hear a running faucet — it allegedly reminds them of happy womb days.

The tip on how to peel a hard-boiled egg quickly is amazing too. Basically, remove a small piece of shell at the top and bottom then blow the rest out of the shell. It’s kind of gross though.

The car parking tip…well, I’ve already fully experienced that while carpooling with DiTucci — she’s a Bostonian driver.

24 hours in pictures

If you haven’t check out 24 hours in pictures, it’s well worth a look.

Always informative.
Sometimes beautiful.
Often heartbreaking.

All algorithm’d out…

The gory details regarding the ask.com algorithm.

You know how Blackle is suppose to save energy?

Not so, per the following comment left on my original Blackle post:

” If you use LCD monitor, you’ll end up wasting more energy by using Blackle. Not to mention that you’ll stress your eyes and suffer from eye problems. Blackle will save energy only for CRT displays (which . On an LCD monitor, it will waste more energy than normal Google. Almost all the modern monitors are LCD monitors, as CRT monitors are obsolete. The so-called “Save Energy” seems to be a ploy by Blackle to attract more traffic to their site, as they earn money for every search made on their site.”

Twitter maintenance page…

blogs.sun.com is out of the beta stage, so we don’t really have unexpected outages anymore, but I have to admit I rather enjoy witty outage pages like this one from Twitter — takes the angry user edge off. Tho’, I suppose if it were my stock trading site or something like it, the cute cat photo wouldn’t be so cute.

Blackle is the new Google…

…Geeksugar has the scoop.

IE Page Rendering Preview Site

Via the Devthought blog, I found the following site that let’s you plug in a URL to see how a page renders in IE.

http://www.ipinfo.info/netrenderer/

It doesn’t let you do functionality testing, of course, but could be a good tool for quick and easy viewing of an IE specific rendering issue.

‘Tis the season to give (wisely)…

Through Newsweek magazine, I found this great site to easily gather information about charities: charitynavigator.org.

According to the site “50% of all charitable giving by individuals is done between Thanksgiving and Christmas.” Aaaah…how the spirit of generosity is inflamed by the holidays (and oh…the necessity to scramble for year-end tax deductions!). The challenge is finding the time during this busy time of year to gather information about a charitable organization so you know your donation is really going to a good cause. Charity Navigator makes this rather simple.

The section of the site that I find most useful is the Holiday Giving Guide. It allows you to compare highest and lowest rated charities by cause, then provides a ton of data such as their mission, income statement, expense breakdown, history, leadership, etc.

The site also provides a Top Ten List which inlcudes charities to avoid.

And, if you’re missing a blog feed from a knowledgable blogger in this space, Charity Navigator President Trent Stamp’s blog may fill the gap.

Holiday gift ideas from Core77

Core77 has posted their Ultimate Gift Guide of gifts under $77.

Some of the items are simply strange suggestions for a holiday gift — like this spray mask, for example. I wouldn’t want one as a Christmas gift, but it sure would have come in handy that day in my childhood when my brother and I were held hostage on the side of our own home by “the kids down the street” pointing cans of Aqua Net hairspray at us. I think my bad @$$ brother, who became a Marine, eventually took a spray in the face just before taking them down with some sweet G.I. Joe moves. I don’t recall being held hostage with hair spray after that day.