Movin' Ahead

February 10, 2008February 10, 2008 kenekaplan KenEKaplan, Poetry

Melancholy and Inspiration

Today I really feel the seasons changing. Change is good, disruptive, rejuvenating, difficult. From simply having to move your desk at work to a new location…to loosing a loved one. Change is everywhere and ignites emotions, creating opportunities to pump our next moves with reflections, accounts that drive the best in us.

In addition to the warm sun, smell of cut grass and sounds of spring around the corner, I found two things today: 1) a poem my uncle read at my dad’s funeral service last month and 2) a poem I wrote 15 years ago, just out of college digging my North Beach beat life in San Francisco. Both have that mix of melancholy and inspiration stirring inside me today.

Death is nothing at all…

I have only slipped away into the next room.

I am I, and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still

Call me by my old familiar name,

Speak to me in the easy way you alwsys used.

Put no differnece into your tone

Wear no forced air of sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed

at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the housefold word that it always was

Let it be spoken without effort,

without the ghost of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was;

there is absolutely unbroken continuity…

Why should I be out of your mind because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an interval,

Somewhere very near, just around the corner.

All is well.

— Henry Scott Holland, English clergyman, First World War, slightly adapted

A Denizen’s Dream

We are all breeders sparing time for change

We seek destinations, resolutions

But memories are made from the travel between

Interludes of intra-interpersonal interpretations

So much passes with silence

Becoming habbits and addictions

Fixations that unveil the mask of true ignorance

Eyes drooping

Nostrils relaxed

and tongue hanging agape dry and white

I languish in the thought

The dank doldrums wherein we stay steeped so spiraling…

Licking lips to keep a head up

While knee deep in purposeless splendor

Like the unfathomable delight of a denizen’s drive

Dreaming of talks

We’ve had in teh future

Face forward

A jettison through the breeze

— Ken E Kaplan, North Beach in San Francisco, CA, October 12, 1993

February 8, 2008February 8, 2008 kenekaplan Fun, Italy, wine

Italian Bubbly

About.com’s Kyle Phillips recently went to a “presentation of sparkling wines in Viareggio, along the Tuscan coast….there was everything from light, spritzy Prosecco through much more serious, well aged Franciacorta and Champagne.” Below is the list, but here’s Kyle’s commentary.

clipped from italianfood.about.com

Secret to Sucess? It’s All in the New Media Family List

Saw this New Media Family List on Amy Webb’s MyDigiMedia blog and thought it was pretty cool. Highlights from her post, where you can download a bigger PDF file and take a closer look:

In the six months since I first created the chart, there are a handful of notable updates:

AOL’s list has grown tremendously, while Google, News Corp and IAC have remained relatively unchanged.

AOL is heading strong into behavioral targeting and various ad network options.

Yahoo’s buy early and large strategy toned down considerably in Q3 and Q4 of 2007.

Google’s last acquisition was Postini early last fall.

Though I’m not tracking this on the chart, News Corp has also been selling lots of assets – namely local television stations.

Here’s the new Who Owns What page at mydigimedia. Download the new chart (PDF) here. And if you want to read my original post and learn more about why I started tracking all this to begin with, have a look here.

February 8, 2008June 14, 2008 kenekaplan Culture, Intel, Photos, Travel

Alberobello…Trulli-magnificent

Alberobello, il paese dei trulli!, originally uploaded by mery mellivora.

I’ve visited Martina Franca a few times and see why Martina, Alberobello, Locorontondo (great wines) are treasures of the southern heel-region of Puglia. The mozzarella, roasted meats, white painted everythings and the Trulli.

In this picture I found on Flickr’s photo feed by Mery Mellivora you can see how the old round, coned Trulli houses blend with modern homes in Alberbello. There is a historic strip of Trulli lined with excellent restaurants.

I rang in the new year 2008 at Martin Franca. I’ll upload my photos and share on Flickr. If you go, check out the killer antique furnature store Bruni Arte

February 5, 2008 kenekaplan Jeremiah Owyang, Tech, Web 2.0

Pearls of Wisdom Come From Mind Crunching Reality

Lots of talk about Microsoft’s $44.6 Billion bid for Yahoo! Most of it focuses on search and online advertising. But I bet we’ll start hearing more about the social computing value of Yahoo! and how its people have been excerising their brains and buying plug and play social media assets for many years now. Flickr, Upcoming and del.icio.us are a few names in teh Yahoo! family of aquisitions. These tools help people interconnect their online activities form photo sharing to bookmarking articles to managing their calendar of fun community activities.

In a Forrester Research blog post by Jeremiah Owyang on this subject, I really liked this pearl of wisdom about the future of media companies:

A new definition of media. My colleague Charlene Li has written before about the transformation media companies are undertaking due to the rise of social computing. As syndication replaces aggregation, a media company becomes one which assembles an audience, not necessarily a firm which creates content (think Facebook v. CNN). In light of this acquisition, I’d add one more dimension to this observation. With Yahoo gone, the two remaining online media powerhouses: Google and Microsoft are both technology companies. These are firms who specialize in creating tools and innovations to facilitate the user experience of the Web and marketer access to customer data. I think this acquisition signals for both marketers and media firms that the trend of Left Brain Marketing – a data-driven approach to marketing – is irrevocably changing who we call a media firm. Tomorrow’s media companies are technology innovators who can connect audiences with marketing messages, not content creators.

Here’s Charlene Li’s Growndswell take on the bid.

February 4, 2008 kenekaplan Music

Declare Independence

This is a cool, trippy, Orwellian or Brazil-like music video from Bjork I saw on Cindy B’s Pownce site. I first heard Bjork in my musical depths of college at Chico, where I loved Bob Marley, Bauhaus, Sister’s of Mercy, U2, Cure, Mazzy Star, Clash, Circle Jerks, This Mortal Coil, Pixies, NWA, Public Enemy, P-Funk, Digital Underground, PIL… and yes, even The Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd.

February 4, 2008 kenekaplan Uncategorized

BlogTalkRadio Share Show Widget

February 4, 2008 kenekaplan Uncategorized

Social Media Guru Steps Up for Network Solutions

A Twitter king gets interviewed by Shel Israel. That’s the gracious, observant Shashi Bellamkonda.

clipped from redcouch.typepad.com

The very fact that Network Solutions realized that they need a social media person is a positive step toward joining the conversation. We got over the first milestone–getting people inside the company to understand the challenges and the power of social media presence. I have been part of discussions to open new ways for customer communication (blogs, forums).

We have been using Communispace as a social media tool for a few years and now we’re taking steps in mainstream social media.� In a very small way, I experimented using social media to spread the word about a product that I managed called BuildMyMobi. I wanted to let people know that it was an easy to use tool to create a website for mobile phones. I joined conversations in blogs and forums where the people might be looking for such tools. We asked people to try the product. This helped us understand that with the right approach social media can add a new dimension to our efforts to reach customers.

February 4, 2008February 4, 2008 kenekaplan Events, Jeremiah Owyang, Media, Social Media, TV, Twitter

Twitter Vote for Favorite Super Bowl TV Ads

Jeremiah Owyag ignited a Super Bowl Twitterthon and many are stepping in to use social media to engage more with the Super Bowl. Join the fun and Twitter your take on the TV ads hitting you on Super Bowl Sunday.

Instructions below and pre-game buzz here.

There’s just three steps:

1) Sign up: Get a twitter account, got that? Good.

2) Send your vote to @superbowlads: When we’re watching the game in real time, simply send a reply to superbowlads. I created this Twitter account just for this virtual event. Reply to the superbowlads account, name the commerical, and give it a rating of 1-5 stars, 5 being the best.

examples:

“@superbowlads That Pepsi commercial was funny 4 stars”

“@superbowlads The Hillary Clinton advertisement was bunko 2 stars”

“@superbowlads Bud-wise-er, that was so 10 years ago, weak. 1 star”

3) See what others rated: You can then see everyone who’s rated the ads by doing a search on any of the Twitter search tools, I like Terraminds. See this example, it’s showing all the people who have replied to superbowlads.

My friend Rohit also is rallying people to engage online in new ways with the Super Bowl.

February 3, 2008February 3, 2008 kenekaplan Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, Web 2.0

Connecting’s Getting Easier

When I joined Intel in 2000, many people were speaking in code. Not HTML, AJAX or C++, but using acronyms in between other English words. The English words…sure I got most of those, but BMK, FSB, SERP? WTF?!! One acronym I got immediately was that email from Andy Grove with these three letters: NFW. I think a simple no would’ve provide more brevity, yet surely less passion.

We’re all hearing about API and other social computing jargon (that’s what it is for many of us) about how we’ll be able to better interconnect our social media and social networking tools. For me, Facebook started the mad rush. Everyone’s creating applications that allow you to use things like Twitter, WordPress, Clipmarks, Flickr and other programs while you’re inside Facebook. It allows you to syndicate or unify the many Web 2.0 tools you use. I LOVE THIS STUFF!!

That’s why 2008 will be a year where we all find new reasons to use new socially juiced programs and fuse them together so we can aggregrate and feed content, but more importantly…so we can grow our social graph = connect to our friends and contacts through any social computing program we use. Unifying and empowering every tool you use at any particular time. Everything, everyone at your finger tips. Better connecting, feeding and growing our social graphs.

Here’s a geeky video from Google describing what’s going on under the hood, driving new possiblities thanks to Open Social and the wonders of API (sure, we’ll have to tackle the ethical/privacy issues over time):