Wordless Wednesday: April 21, 2010
Photo via Flickr under terms of Creative Commons License: via horizontal.integration
Earth Hour 2010
You probably have noticed the small banner across the top of my site recently. I have decided as part of Earth Hour 2010 - March 27, 2010 at 8:30PM EST - that my website will go dark during Earth Hour. On Earth Hour millions of people across the world join together in solidarity for climate change in one simple act, turning of their lights. This simple act shows that we can join together and have a positive impact on the climate.
Ironically, LCD monitors may require more power to generate a black pixel vs a white pixel. A comparison of 27 LCD monitors was done and confirmed that in most instance a small increase in wattage was required to display Blackle vs Google. You can find more information about the comparison performed by Darren Yates.
If you would like to support Earth Hour on your Wordpress blog you can get more information about the Earth Hour plugin at Brave New Code. For more information about Earth Hour and how you can show your support in your community you can check out MyEarthHour.org.
Regardless of your personal opinion about global warming, it can not be argued that we can be better stewards of our natural resources and the impact we have on our planet. There are plenty of things within our ability to leave this planet a better place for generations to come.
All Your URL are Belong to Us
Today's Lesson
Today, Google announced the launch of goo.gl, its own URL shortening service. It is currently in a "limited" release for users of its Google products such as Feedburner and the Google Toolbar. This was done in concert with Feedburner's new enhancement called Socialize, which will currently send your feed to the Twitter account you specify. In order for your feed to be socialized in near real-timte they suggest you leverage Feedburners "ping" feature whenever you publish a post. Overall, the Socialize feature of Feedburner is a nice enhancement and I hope that we will see additional services like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn included in the future.
However, the most important feature that was launched today was the URL shortening service. Why is this so important? Because several URL shortening services have come and gone over the past couple years. With the demise of these services comes the inability to redirect the user from the shortened URL to the target URL, also known as linkrot. Brent Ozar wrote about his suspicions of using free web services to shorten URLs for this very reason. With Google the chance that your shortened URL will rot is virtually nil given Google's appetite for data.
While Google has said it will protect users of its URL shortening from malware and phishing it would be nice to see a link preview feature enabled. The current version of TweetDeck (v0.32.1) simply opens your web browser with the resolved goo.gl link while for other services such as bit.ly a preview of the full URL is given in a pop-up window . This is either due to TweetDeck not understanding how to handle goo.gl's URL preview or because goo.gl has not exposed a URL previewing feature. Google would be doing its users a disservice if a URL previewing feature is not exposed sooner than later.
Finally, how long before the current crop of URL shortening services fade away or are bought by Google. With the adoption of bit.ly as the default URL shortening service by Twitter in 2009 combined with Twitter's explosive growth in 2009 the loss of bit.ly's URL resolution over time could be troubling for many.
Will goo.gl become the dominating URL shortening service or do you think services such as bit.ly and ow.ly can survive?
Who Pushed Me to the Edge…
What did it take for me to finally get serious about blogging?
After all, I have read plenty of blogs over the last few years about how blogging will expand the geographic reach of my network, how it is necessary for a good career, and a beginners guide to blogging my personal brand. I even experimented with a blog at Wordpress.com which is a great way to get your feet wet blogging with no out of pocket expense for domain registration or hosting fees. I had written a handful of blog entries on my blog at Wordpress.com but I never got the initiative to get serious about blogging or about my personal brand until recently.
It was a connection on Twitter that is pushing me to find my creative edge and to get serious about taking my personal brand serious. Shortly after signing up for Twitter I started following Brent Ozar. Brent is a SQL Server guru that is actively involved in the community.
A while back he put together a short blog series on setting up a tech blog. Including were many useful tips on not only getting Wordpress going but what plug-ins to use to get up an running quickly. He also included how to get Feedburner and Google Analytics going and why you should. This four post series virtually flattened the learning curve for setting up a Wordpress blog.
Where do we go from here?
From here on out the focus of this blog is to give back the the community and manage my online brand. I have been blogging for Baseline Consulting periodically since the beginning of the year and felt the time was right to establish another avenue to share my various tech related passions. Hopefully this will be a fulfilling experience for everyone involved.
My Tweets
Sweet! My books written by @rands and @williammcknight arrived! http://yfrog.com/0rlmwsxj - posted on 07/29/2010 18:08:49
@JAdP I prefer my tomatoes with salt on them. Will have to try them with sugar. - posted on 07/29/2010 16:32:01
Would be nice if Teradata BTEQ would resolve environment variables: .EXPORT REPORT FILE='$reporttmp/my_report.txt' Not just in .OS command - posted on 07/29/2010 15:28:51
"How should somebody teach themselves database and programming skills?" http://bit.ly/dot978 - Great suggestions! (via @CurtMonash) - posted on 07/29/2010 13:03:19
@peschkaj Would this do? http://bit.ly/btRuCy - posted on 07/29/2010 11:18:27
Recommended Reading
- You Know You Have Big Data When…(Humor)
- Data Quality and the Cupertino EffectBy: OCDQ Blog Feed
- Finding Data QualityBy: OCDQ Blog Feed
- The Root! The Root! The Root Cause is on Fire!
- Potato Chips and The Myth of the Data Warehouse
- Plugin by C. Murray Consulting
Friends
- Brent Ozar
- David Accampo
- Jill Dyche
- Jill Wanless
- Jim Harris
- Paul Boal
- Phil Simon
- Shawn Rogers
- Tim Ford
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