NorthStarNerd.Org

Marathon - Take 2

For those of you who know me well ... you will remember that I failed at Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota this past June. Even though I should have been inspired to run well in my home town on Lake Superior, the fact that I had returned from a business trip to China less than 40 hours prior to the race's start did not help (including getting sick).

Anyhow, this weekend is "Take 2" on Sunday.  I move one "great lake" over to the shores of Lake Michigan.  I will run the Milwaukee Marathon on Sunday. Wish me luck.

Random Tags and Links

I have noticed an increasing trend on the part of my fellow professional bloggers to include newly tagged or linked content as part of their RSS feed. Although on the surface this would seem to be ideal as it helps me understand the web content respected peers are monitoring, in fact the result is just the opposite.

I rely upon individual bloggers to help me harvest premium content and ideas. By adding one's daily tags and links to a feed, even with cryptic comments, the information presented explodes. I often have to scroll down the page in my RSS feed reader to see their actual posts. Remember, user interface studies indicate most people will not scroll down a web page.  Thus, you've failed in your attempt to communicate.

Understanding Wikipedia

What is Wikipedia? The obvious answer is an "online collaborative open access encyclopedia" (wow ... that's a mouthful).  However, what really is Wikipedia. Many folks in traditional academia bad mouth it, while others of us sing it's praises. Via Weblogg-Ed, here are some interesting classroom projects where college professors have tried to address this question.

• Wikipedia: School and University Projects

On a side note, I am down in rural Iowa this Sunday morning. It's family weekend at my middle boy's college, Wartburg. I just came back from a five mile run through the corn fields ... saw a red tail hawk attack a bald eagle.  Cool!

Intellectual Honesty

I've noticed that more and more of the personal, but professional blogs and web sites now include advertisements ... sometimes even in their RSS feeds.  I am resisting this trend. I moved my blog away from MSN for a number of reasons, among them the inability of me to remove advertisements. This blogging service through Typepad costs me money, but I believe it is important for me to not accept advertisements. I may be old fashioned, but this relates to my intellectual goals. I want this blog to represent the pursuit of knowledge, not money.

In addition there is the increasing issue of "click fraud". Business Week focused on this issue in a recent cover story and has an interesting podcast available on the subject:

• Business Week Click Fraud Podcast

Finally, I had a very interesting dinner conversation this week with the VP of Innovation from a large eLearning company. This firm is playing around with the concept of including advertisements in their eLearning. The knee jerk reaction is to say ... "no way!".  However, if they don't pursue this business model, their competition probably will. The answer is never easy. For the moment, this blog is advertisement free.

Listen to History

I've promoted Drivetime Podcasts via this blog, and most of that content's focus has been work related. However, if you are a bit of an amateur history buff like me, head on over to the American Rhetoric web service and download a podcast of:

• FDR's Pearl Harbor Address
• Huey Long's Every Man a King Speech
• Douglas MacArthur's Farewell to Congress (old soldiers just fade away)
• Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech

and much, much more ...