Happy Birthday Mr Darwin

I really liked today’s Google UK logo in honour of Charles Darwin. Respect!

The Fall Will Probably Kill You – respect

For all of us on the planet it was sad news indeed to hear of Paul Newman’s passing. He was one of the truly great modern men. What can one say – respect! His legacy will live on in his movies, his legen and his Newman’s Own brand.




Respect – great posts on the US crisis

My mother country is in a bad place at the moment (well maybe its been in a bad spot for the last 7 years or so) and has a lot of crap to clean up both on Wall Street and in the White House… Instead of ranting about this myself and doing the issues justice, I will instead point you to these two great posts over on The Huffington Post:

• The Next President Has Unfinished Business
• Anybody Wanna Bail Out Some 401Ks?

Oh yeah and the author is my Dad. Nice ones ‘old man’ – total respect!

A Fuller View gets Blogged – rates 8 out of 10, nice

Just back from an awesome holiday in sunny Cornwall (yes it really was sunny!) and was happily surprise to see that good folks over at Blogged have rated A Fuller View. I got an 8 out 10 in the Technology/Internet category which seems pretty fair…

Blogged is new to me - it is a blog rating, search engine and directory site. I am guessing they are also moving into Technorati’s turf… It has a great look and feel and is easy to use. Here’s how they describe the site:

Blogged.com is about discovering what the best bloggers are blogging about right now, and about finding the blogs that will interest you the most. Blogged is updated throughout the day to bring you the latest and most interesting posts from our index of more than one million blogs.

Blogged.com is a place for both readers and bloggers.

For readers we provide tools to read the latest postings on topics that interest them, to discover and explore new blogs, and to communicate with blog authors.

The blogs in our database are reviewed, rated, and categorized by editors, so you won’t experience the frustration of filtering through blogs that are spam, outdated, or irrelevant. You’ll be able to find quality blogs that you would be unlikely to have found through a traditional blog search. We also offer time-based searching, bookmarking, sharing, and feedback functions. Anyone can review and rate a blog and help it rise in the rankings.

Blogged is a great place to start your day! You’ve already heard what the mainstream media has had to say, now see what top bloggers think.

For blog authors Blogged can provide fresh insight into how their site is perceived. With easy access to reader comments and ratings, authors can see opinions, suggestions, praises and criticisms. By being listed on Blogged, authors may increase the number of visitors to their blogs.

Happy 4th of July

 

 

Here is the full Declaration of Independence – pretty cool. I am taking a few days to chill out. Hope you are enjoying some summer sun and fun like the Beer Vikings… See you next week.

Watching Webb Gearing up for the Olympics

A friend sent me this link to a piece about Alan Webb – US middle distance star (Track & Field in the US and Athletics in Europe. You can see his profile here on the USAFT site. I am starting to get excited about the Olympics but there are still some great events between now and August – US and GB trials to name but a few. The US event is being held in Eugene, Oregon (‘08 US Trails site) this year – which is a great venue for the even… I may start posting up some thoughts on Athletics over the summer.

btw – respect awrad for Mr Webb who set a US record for the mile last year – a blistering 3:46.91!

BEAR GRYLLS – MISSION EVEREST

I’ve gotta watch this show – BEAR GRYLLS – MISSION EVEREST – if he makes it up over the top of Mt Everest with basically a large fan as a motor then total respect!

Tips to Improve Your Presentation Style

 

This piece on Business Week – Deliver a Presentation like Steve Jobs - is pretty cool and well worth a read if you want some good tips to help improve your presentation style. Even mere mortals like me should try to learn a thing or two from one of the master presenters of all time - the Apple CEO (and a master of spin). Don’t get me wrong, I am never going to present on such a scale (ie, no delusions of glory here on A Fuller View), but even if just to a handful of co-workers or 30 people at a trade show, it is always a good idea to try to improve the quality of any presentation. There are just so many boring presentation styles; my biggest goal is to at least “NOT be boring!” Here are the 10 tips, my faves are Nos 2, 4 & 7:

1. Set the theme
2. Demonstrate enthusiasm
3. Provide an outline
4. Make numbers meaningful
5. Try for an unforgettable moment
6. Create visual slides
7. Give ‘em a show
8. Don’t sweat the small stuff
9. Sell the benefit
10. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

Even FSJ almost agrees this is a good analysis of his style.

A Conversation with Craig Venter & Richard Dawkins – worth watching

This is over on the Edge website. I haven’t had time to digest it but its definately interesting if you are into to supoer high level genetics and evolution theory…

LIFE: A GENE-CENTRIC VIEW
A conversation with Craig Venter & Richard Dawkins
(Moderator: John Brockman)

It’s not everyday you have Richard Dawkins and Craig Venter on a stage talking for an hour about “Life: A Gene-Centric View”. That is occured in Germany, where the culture has been resistant to open discussion of genetics, and at a DLD (Digital Life Design), a high-level Munich conference for the digital elite — the movers and shakers of the Internet — was particularly interesting. Below is a video clip from the event followed by the transcript.

Update: this video clip is short (under 5 mins) and worth watching. It was taken at the Digital Life Design conference a couple of weeks ago. This conference is new to me but looks like a serious elite euro cognoscenti gathering (note to self: get an invite to this one next year). Dawkins has a couple of memorable quotes – one about how genetics has become an arm of information technology and that there could be unforeseen consequences of all this genetic technology. I am sure he’s right about the consequences.

The Consumer Divorces the Advertiser

This is a sweet post over on O’Reilly Radar – Web 2.0 and Advertising: Do We See Eye to Eye? – I found this piece to be very insightful. The big take always plus a little bit added on are that advertisers or people working in the ad/media space must:

1. respect the consumer
2. listen
3. engage in a conversation
4. focus on having a great (or at least a good) story to tell
5. focus on the storytelling, try to entertain
6. and make sure you have a good product, we don’t need more crap in our lives

This Microsoft (MDAS) video is great fun, so I had to put it here – enjoy!