David Bergman used a Gigapan Imager to take a 200 photos of the inauguration. The Gigapan service stiches the images together to create an extremely large image (this one is 1,474 megapixels).
I made this Gigapan image from the north press platform during President Obama’s inaugural address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on January 20, 2009. It’s made up of 220 images and the final image size is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels.
Blogs are written for all sorts of reasons. Most are a labour of love viewed by a small band of readers. Corporate blogs on the other hand can and should have a much broader reach. They can be an important part of supporting an organization’s brand.
So what makes a successful corporate blog?
First and foremost is the realization that a blog is for the customer’s benefit – not for the company’s. It’s important to remember readers will only come back if there is value for them. That’s right value for them. Not value for the company. Readers don’t care if you are providing a nice, efficient press release site.
If you look closely at the search results you pull up every day (and even some of the Alltop corporate blogs), you’ll see that an alternative model of corporate blogging is beginning to emerge. Instead of writing about themselves, companies are following the lead of the other company blog in the Technorati Top 100 — Signal vs. Noise. They’re beginning to create content that’s not about their business, but that appeals to their buyer personas.
In each of these cases, the company is attracting a broad audience by focusing on content that is interesting to the demographic it serves rather than content about the products it sells.
Every company that is considering starting a corporate blog should spend some thinking about how this effort can support their brand. Otherwise publishing the blog could be wasted effort.
The war and terror has been ongoing in Africa for many years. Something must be done now. One of the horrible areas is the Democratic Republic of Congo.
FYI: This area is very close to the children’s villages being built and run by Watoto.ca. Our daughter Tanya is working for the Watoto Canadian office and is responsible for coordinating volunteer trips to Uganda.
Refugee camp in DRC
Child who grew up in refugee camp
Child soldiers
Condition: Critical
DRC and Uganda
This short video below highlights the plight of the people caught in this horrible situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Condition Critical is a short film that brings us the voices of those who are living there every day. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) – Doctors without Borders has been working in the DRC since 1992.
It has been over six months since I first heard about Nata Village. A vlog by world traveller and producer Jon Rawlison on Rocketboom first gave me notice about this village in Botswana that is struggling with AIDS. Jon setup a blog that allowed the AIDS education and prevention efforts in this small village to reach the global community. The Internet can be used for good and bad. This is one of many examples of good.
The blog has regular updates and photos from the village. Donations for the work in Nata can also be made on the site.
TechCrunch is reporting that Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft. What a loss for Microsoft. Robert has been key in rebuilding Microsoft’s relationship with IT professionals of all stripes.
Do you dread the airline boarding routine where passengers wait to be called to board in an orderly manner, yet inside the plane there are still multiple passenger interference points.
Wired News: Airlines Try Smarter Boarding reports on the analysis and implementation of various boarding systems that can reduce the interference among passengers and reduce turnaround time at the gate. With names such as reverse pyramid, “Wilma” and “rotating zone” these systems try to reduce the time it takes to get everyone onto the plane, bags stowed and underway.
Check out the graphic which has a visual animation of the various systems.
Leftlane News reports that all is not well in the world of high-tech gadgetary in cars. It looks like thieves are using laptops to crack the wireless code that controls the keyless entry systems for cars.
Three young film makers went to Uganda to make a documentary. They came back with a story to tell and a promise made to the “Invisible Children”.
Invisible Children is a grassroots effort to create awareness and provide help and education to the children in Uganda who are being kidnapped and forced into the rebel armies as child soldiers.
You can make a difference by joining the Global Night Commute on April 29, 2006 or by purchasing the Invisible Children DVD and showing it to everyone you know.
These two video clips will have an impact on your life and what you can do to help: Proof and 100 Percent.
Microsoft is finally accepting the reality that enterprises want to use Linux within their IT environment. CNET reports that Microsoft to ‘host’ Linux virtually.
It’s better to share in the pie and control how the pie is divided, than losing all the business to . We’ll have to wait and see what performance degradation comes with Windows being the host OS.
For those who need to take highly secure information with them, the new Kington Self-Destruct Privacy Flash Drive could be the ticket. After 25 failed passwords the USB drive “melts” the data.
This can be great for stopping unauthorized access, but, what if someone slips it into there pocked and does the 25 invalid attempts on purpose. There goes your data!
