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.

Inauguration

You can view the image on his blog or in fullscreen at
http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?id=15374

Zoom in and pan around. It’s lots of fun.

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.

Rick Burnes reminds us of the real reason for corporate blogs in a posting at ZDNet.

Blogs for Customers, Not About Companies

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.

Whole Foods is going beyond their blog and publishing recipes. American Express is publishing small-business advice. Indium Corporation is writing about thermal interface materials.

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.

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.

Source: Condition Critical

The website with more information and updates is http://www.condition-critical.org/

The blog has regular updates and photos from the village. Donations for the work in Nata can also be made on the site.

Here is his first post on the subject.

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.

I’m glad my car still uses a good old key.

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.

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.

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!

I think this is a great idea. The challenge for business will be to be ready to allow these students to make use of all the technologies they have been exposed to when they enter the workforce.

Sohela Ansari told friends that her husband Aftab had uttered the word “talaq,” or divorce, three times in his sleep, according to the report published in newspapers Monday.

When local Islamic leaders got to hear, they said Aftab’s words constituted a divorce under an Islamic procedure known as “triple talaq.” The couple, married for 11 years with three children, were told they had to split.

The religious leaders ruled that if the couple wanted to remarry they would have to wait at least 100 days. Sohela would also have to spend a night with another man and be divorced by him in turn.

I can not believe how some societies have twisted the sanctity of marriage.

Now RIM can get on with improving their technology to meet the challenge from Microsoft.

Support your teen and let them know about this website and that “It’s No Fun if Your Dead”.

There are prizes for youth who are residents of British Columbia.