Internet Discoveries of the Week: 06-30-2009 to 07-07-2009

I think that Tuesdays will become a day where I will be sharing discoveries I’ve made throughout the week. I like reading other’s blogs, articles and items from various places on the Internet. FriendFeed friends often point out articles and blog entries that appeal to my interest. So I’m going to be using Tuesday’s to share with you some of the best stuff I’ve read during the week. Some of it’s current, some of it’s old, but all of it I’ve read sometime this last week. Here’s this week’s greatness:

Personal Growth and Effective Living

From Steve Pavlina . com:

• Keep Your Goals in Front of You — A good article on how to keep motivated and keep heading in the right direction.
• The Afternoon of Life — What worked for you earlier in your life might not work for you as you grow older. Here’s what you do about that.
• Living in Las Vegas — This is a personal one for me, as living in Las Vegas is something I intend to do in my near future. I’ve always loved the city and really want to go there. Steve’s comments helped motivate me to keep going toward that dream.

Politics & Liberty

From Taki’s Magazine

• Establishment Chick — What the political left “progressives” are really all about.
• National Holiday — Thomas Jefferson and the 4th of July. Good history and, unfortunately, a necessary reminder.

From the Objectivist Individualist

• The Government Problem — Some of the real reasons why things are so fouled up in America today.

From The American Thinker

• Sarah Palin: The Best is Yet to Come — Why I haven’t given up on this great lady just yet.
• Obama’s Demagoguery — Once again we are saddled with a weak “Jimmy Carter” and subject to more symbolism over substance. When will this kind of irrational, irritating lack of leadership end?
• In Defense of the Frail Elderly — If you are a baby boomer and you value any part of your life, you do not want Obamacare, believe me.
• No HAPI Ending — This is outrageous and should make every American’s blood boil.

From Mises Economics Blog

• Big Government and the 4th of July — We need to declare our independence from Big Government like the colonists did from England. Here’s why.
• Woods Tells the Story of the Meltdown — A good and thorough review of “Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. By Thomas E. Woods Jr.“

Blogging, Tech, Internet Business, Etc.

From Site Point

• Just Do It! 5 Ways to Get Over the Fear of Working for Yourself — Brief, but helpful article on overcoming a very common fear among entrepreneur types
• I Quit! Things To Think About Before Taking the Plunge — A good post that balances out the previous one. It’s good to take action, but getting prepared is also necessary. This is something I’m learning as I attempt to extricate myself from my over-night “day” job.
• 7 Freebies From SitePoint You May Not Know About — If you’re a web developer of just play around with HTML, CSS, AJAX, etc. This resource is for you.

From Web Designer Wall

• 20+ WordPress Recipes (Codes) — Some really great tricks you can do with WordPress using a bit of PHP code.
• Users Place More Weight on Design — Good article on what keeps users at your site.
• 30 Untypical WordPress Sites — This is why I like WordPress. Its versatility and its power.

Hope you enjoyed some of these. If you run across anything interesting let me know. Either drop me an email, or leave me a comment.

Picture by flicker user kevindooley under Creative Commons License. Use of this picture does not constitute an endorsement by kevindooley of the ideas in this post.

FriendFeed Discoveries

Nope. I haven’t abandoned FriendFeed. Not at all. I love how I can spend hours and hours exploring what others think is valuable. Unfortunately I can’t spend hours and hours doing that so my time on FriendFeed is a bit limited. Nevertheless I often find quite valuable blog posts and other articles that inform, motivate and entertain me. So I thought I’d share some with you today. I hope you enjoy, and if you get a chance, check out FriendFeed. It’s a great service.

Blogging:

The Ultimate Wordpress 2.8 Optimization Guide via Nilesh — Good advice on making your WordPress 2.8 site operate at the fastest speed possible.

An Audience is an Audience, Be it on FriendFeed or Anywhere Else via Jorge Escobar — An interesting commentary on FeedBurner’s inclusion of FriendFeed subscribers into your FeedBurner subscriber count.

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Unplugging and Boredom

Charlie Gilkey over at Productive Flourishing posted a interesting article entitled A Weekend Unplugged. I highly recommend that you check out his site and especially read that article. I like the way he thinks and many of his articles provoke thought (which is kinda what Tuesday Thoughts is all about).

Anyway, the article is an account of how he spent a recent weekend unplugged from his computer and all the other electronic distractions our culture so worships (cell phones, TV, Radio, CD & MP3 players, etc.). As I read the article, I was reminded about a while ago I lost power at the house for close to 48 hours. Apparently some squirrel had gnawed on some critical piece of equipment and blew out a transformer our great and wonderful technicians from PG & E took their sweet time getting things back to normal (We’re PG & E. We’re a government granted monopoly, we don’t have to care.)

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The Dilemma

I’m stuck and I’m not sure what to do about it. Not really stuck but kind of…well let me explain.

I’m fiddling with this blog. I’m beginning to find my passion and focus. When I first started I worked with a variety of topics from motivational to social media tutorials to jazz. I didn’t really know my voice and my passion. I liked all of these topics a lot, but as I’ve continued faithfully writing 4 posts a week, I’ve become more clear about what really grips my heart. I’m moving more and more toward writing about the philosophical principles that form the foundation of liberty.

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Twitter Competition?

If you’ve been breathing at all over the last few days (and I sincerely hope you have), you’ve probably heard about a new Google application called Google Wave.

If you haven’t, you can read about it on the Mashable site at this link: http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/. You can also see a demo of the application on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ. Be prepared. This app will blow your mind.

When I first heard about this I thought we were about to see serious competition for Twitter. Now that I’ve had a chance to learn more about Google Wave, I’m not so sure. It actually looks like it could be the enhancement that Twitter needs to really make it take off. I don’t know. I’d like to hear your thoughts about it.

One of my biggest complaints about Twitter is that if you engage in a conversation with another Twitter user or users, you can’t organize the responses into some kind of threaded display to make it easier to follow where the conversation is going.

Well, another article at Mashable shows that with Wave, this problem just might be resolved. You can read about Twave (Twitter integrated into Google Wave) here at this link: http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/twave/. If this Wave extension works the way I think it might, then Twitter will suddenly become much easier and nicer to use and TweetDeck just might take a back seat.

Currently, Google Wave is in alpha testing, so you won’t be seeing it released to the public real soon, but the developer did say that it will be released sometime later this year. I’m really excited by what I saw and think that Google has hit another one out of the park.

Take a look at the sites listed above and let me know what you think about it. It looks like it could be really handy as well as fun.

NOTE: Mashable, just yesterday got access to the alpha version of Wave and put it to the test. You can read their opinion here at this link: http://mashable.com/2009/05/31/google-wave-test/

What Kind of Impression Have You Left?

Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips posted an interesting article yesterday titled How Far Can We Go to Build Buzz?

Apparently a UK company specializing in home PC maintenance called “The Geek Squad” set up a bizarre PR campaign involving a 104 year old woman named Ivy. They set her up with a Twitter account and took some photos and then fed them to the news media as a way to promote their “Silver Surfer Day” campaign — an effort to “encourage more elderly people to get online.”

The issue is that the company promoted Ivy as a Twitter user, when she actually hadn’t used Twitter at all until the day before the PR campaign. There are those who believe that it was a set up. There’s even some suspicion about her Tweets and whether or not they truly are coming from her. I’m not saying they aren’t, but I am saying that some people suspect they aren’t.

Mr. Scocco writes the following:

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Review: Star Trek

Ok. This is gonna be a tough one, because I want to tell you all the gory details and I know in a good review you can’t do that.

But I want to, because the movie is unquestionably that good.

I’ve waited for the release of this film for over two years and it was well worth the wait.

For those of you who are not Star Trek fans, yet are fans of summer adventure movies, get ready. You are about to experience the summer action movie as it was meant to be.

Written by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman and directed by J.J. Abrams, the movie succeeds in capturing all the characteristics of the original series, while at the same time introducing elements that open the Star Trek universe up to a whole set of new stories.

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Review X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Well, it’s started. The season of the way-over-the-top action adventure movie is upon us once again. Ya gotta love it. Popcorn, soda and mind-numbing explosions for 2 hours out of your weekend. Who can’t appreciate that?

Unlike last year, the 2009 monstrously mindless summer movie season started with a bang (no pun intended — well, OK, maybe a little). May 2nd saw the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and boy-oh-boy what a movie it was. Everything you could possible want in a summer movie was packed into this 1 hour and 47 minute jaunt into fantasy land. Nothing, not even the kitchen — er, in this case, the bathroom — sink was left out of this fun and enjoyable movie.

First of all, I need to set the record straight. I’m not an X-Men fan-boy. I’ve always preferred Marvel comics to DC (except in the case of Superman, for whom the term fan-boy, could loosely be applied). However, I’ve not really followed the X-Men in detail. I’ve read some of the comics and am familiar enough with Wolverine to know he has his own set of fans. All that to say if you don’t know much about the X-Men or about Wolverine, don’t worry. The movie will still make sense — at least as much as these kind of movies ever do.

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