if there is ANY thing we do, it's EVERYthing
Social Media
Site Changes
0777 days
As you probably have already noticed, I have added some connections to my Flickr, FaceBook, Twitter, and Formspring sites. I also set up a plugin to send all of my new content to Tumblr as well.
Shoot me a comment or email if you feel the site’s getting a little cluttered. Oh, and I should probably start building the “corporate webpage” side of my site soon too… For those that didn’t pick up on it yet… I’m a DJ… and an entrepreneur… and a geek… and…
Web Content Filter Gives Everyone their own Social Networking Site
0778 days
At my full time job, I sell a product (one of many, may I add) called LightSpeed: Total Traffic Control. TTC is an awesome software package that is used by a large number of K-12 schools and businesses in my area to filter and monitor various forms of communication between the internal network, and the internet. Ever try logging into your GMail at work and get a big red no-no on your screen? There’s a good chance that LightSpeed was behind it.
Web Content, E-Mail, and IM filters have become a necessary evil of the business world these days. From employees slacking off, to inappropriate content showing up in schools, there is a whole great world of distractions out on the web these days, myself included… The problem is, many of these distractions could have the potential to enrich your work or learning experience in a MAJOR way. For instance, I do a lot of work with Symantec, who provides amazing product overview videos on their website. These videos are embedded Flash objects, which many filters are configured to block, because this is also how most browser based games work. When I send this demo to a potential customer, do they understand why the link was blocked, or are they going to put the blame on me for sending them a link that goes against their web policy? Or, how about that awesome motivational speaker my manager found on YouTube last night that she forwarded to the team to check out in the morning.
Enter into a modern age, and welcome My Big Campus into your life. Included for free with every LightSpeed TTC license, My Big Campus will provide each customer with their own, personalized social-networking site (based loosely on the look and feel of FaceBook) that is integrated directly into the filtering components of the server. Every student or employee is given an account to MBC, and groups are set up for each class or team. Then, based on the access rights granted in TTC, teachers or managers are able to post links to any web content (blocked or otherwise), and exceptions are automatically made to allow that content through the filter.
THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION WILL CHANGE BECAUSE OF THIS TECHNOLOGY!
Thanks to the accuracy of Moore’s Law, storage is cheap! Why not record every classroom session and upload a video for students that were out, or just for everyone to review? You could allow that student to tag the video with their questions, at the point in the video where they come up. Just one of many ways that technology can expand our educations and hopefully get us to use a little more than just 10% of our brain (capacity).
Nielson Ratings for Blogs?
0779 days
So apparently, I’ve been getting a little traffic from BlogPulse, so I decided to look into who they are. Nielson Media Research, the company most commonly known for surveying households and publishing TV Ratings, purchased BlogPulse as a way to keep up with a constantly changing world of media. They publish blog profiles and track topics, similar to the Twitter Trending Topics system, but across all blogs on the net. I’m not sure how Nielson discovers the plethora of new content, but from my experiences (and those of others) there are some reliability issues with their system.
Check out the live pulse viewer, which displays a graph of the top 5 topics in the blogosphere at that moment. Oddly enough, the most consistent #1 topic is diary entries… Aren’t all blogs a form of diary?
Kmart Coupon Fail
0784 days
Via The Consumerist, Kmart apparently has posted an online coupon (listed as being honored at all stores) that is only valid at select locations, causing an uproar in the blogosphere… Add them to the list of corporate social media fails!
Social Networking For Social Gaming?
0787 days
My good friend Tim is writing his own blog focused on the MMORPG Eve Online. In yesterday’s post, he talks about a new interface to the online world called Eve Gate, currently in alpha and tied to their test server. Eve Gate will allow players to communicate outside of the Eve game client. Those communications will synchronize to the Eve client where applicable as well as add additional features such as corporate calendars, twitter-style updates, and the ability to view your skill cue in a web browser.
It’s just not worth arguing, the web 2.0, social media revolution has taken over. Facebook & Twitter aren’t just fads anymore. If news outlets, search engines, video games, and the content filter keeping your kids OFF Facebook while they are at school are all into the concept of social networking, I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon.
For the players of Eve Online, myself included, Eve Gate will be a great enhancement to a community that at times can feel cold and lonely (I mean, your alone on a gigantic space craft, jumping from solar-system to solar-system in search of cosmic anomalies… It’s a big, lonely universe out there.) Hopefully the rest of the player community embraces it as strongly as I will.
Protect Your Copyright
0788 days
Here’s a nice, short article from my good friend Monty about securing the content of your webpages. If anyone blindly copies and pastes your content, this is a bullet-proof way of catching them. This method will not help, however; if they dig into the code or only use excerpts of your content (and depending on their excerpts, they may be protected under fair-use policies).
Why Bash the Sentowski Name?
1789 days
Well, first off, I am NOT in any way bashing the name, I have just recently become much more in tune with the importance of having a recognizable name. In the book Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shares his opinion that the resume, as we know it, is dead. And i wholeheartedly agree with him. Never before has the world been so opened up to archives of private information and conversations as they have been with the advent of web 2.0. Gone are the days of the Career Selection & Reading PSAs and in come the warnings about sexting and getting fat from inactivity, we can only expect that the people with the jobs and the money would catch on to what is clearly no longer a fad, and move in to the digital age along with us. People have already lost their jobs over FaceBook posts and any minute now, all companies are going to start screening employees by their online persona, rather than what that faked up list of achievements has to say.
At one time, I thought I had something to hide. I didn’t want our fans to know my real name, just in case my character became the bad guy (and I’ve seen more than a few fans take the story a bit too seriously.) I also wanted to protect myself from loosing job opportunities because of the stigma raised around professional wrestling and it being what some call a “low class” form of entertainment. (I personally don’t believe this, but there are plenty of people who do.)
Through Gary’s book, I have learned that I can’t afford to hide anymore, and if a potential employer or client can’t take me for who I am, maybe it’s not worth working with them. As I have always said, each person is responsible for their own personal level of happiness, and now it’s time for me to share what really makes me happy without hiding behind an alias name, or some bogus product that is “guaranteed” to make me money.
Sentowski was, is, and always will be, an important part of who I am, but it isn’t who I am. It was the introduction to a domino effect that changed my life. Without it, I would have never met Dave or my girlfriend. I never would have moved back to Green Bay, and found a better job.
To those that wonder what will happen if (or when for those that know the biz) I go back to the world of wrestling, don’t worry… I’ve been gone long enough and was obscure enough that the majority of our fans will have forgotten who I am, if they’ve ever even seen me at all.
