awesome webamagig from GE at http://ping.fm/nq6Da
check it out! Print and play with Flash 10.

Just archived 45GB off my hard drive...found several forgotten examples of good motion graphics and viral video - one of the older but goodies can be seen here http://ping.fm/cDC7Q

almost ready to debug the new Santana Row Blog - great articles, features and inside scoopage for SR Shoppers!

just set up ping.fm "not slow on the uptake, just has been lower on the priority list", he says defensively

Just goes to show, you don't have to be a genius.

Alright, I commented earlier this week on my buddy Dave's blog that we can look forward to the Obama Administration using the web as a direct-to-the-people communications platform. Today the Associated Press released an article with the same point  of view. I'm not crowing here, just pointing to the wonderful Change that is happening. This change in particular is the web effect finally getting to the political and governmental process.

The promise of the web from it's earliest public application has been the "democratization of content and information, and the power that goes with it." Ironically, nearly twenty years later, we have the literal Democratization of the political process and the ultimate in political power given to the man who was smart enough to embrace the web.

Read the referenced article. I love the quote about how Republicans will be watching for "White House web outreach that appears overly political." Gang, you know the beauty of the web is that you can build your own audience and reach out directly to them too. Better yet, look for a bipartisan approach that directly involves every American, regardless of political party to engage in the political process, and see just what is being done to move our great country into the better economic and world standing. Another irony that it takes a "community organizer" rather than an "Experienced Executive" to leverage the web to organize us into a nationwide community. Gee Rudy, I guess that's what they do!

Social Media and Business transparency

I can't help but wonder if social media can have a tempering effect on business and social practices. Your social circle wields a lot of influence. Apply social media and you have an even greater reach and frequency. Those of us who look at Social Media as a business tool embrace it to inform, influence and, in the best cases, generate new products and profit for our companies. In a very real sense, smart companies are letting themselves be influenced by their customers to great mutual benefit.

Can wider adoption of social media empower the public to be the non-governmental regulators? Can't an active and vocal customer and public constituency also create a dampening effect on poor policies and practices? I'm no financial pundit by any means (ask my wife), however it seems like now there are all sorts of experts who have come forward to deride the kind of financial derivatives that have contributed to the current financial meltdown. Where were these guys while these "bets on bets of bets" were being created? There must have been a lot of folks watching, talking, playing, predicting within the financial industry. If these industry people were blogging, tweeting, discussing the pros and cons, would it have effected the direction of the market or the creation of these products?

Hobbes (yeah, remember your college Political Science?) held that the government needed to exist to help keep the "leviathan" of man's true nature in line. I wonder if a more connected, social society would be an effective way to temper man's true nature, one component of which is greed.

Look at it this way. Most people try to be reasonable about cause and effect. We recycle, reuse, reduce for good reason. And we do so because it's easy, but, and let's be honest, right now there is a significant social component to recycling. What would you think of someone who completely shunned recycling?

Well, would we feel the same about unfettered, more public, greed?

Would widespread adoption of social media create a similar effect on greed and the creation of financial instruments that are so esoteric as to really only be understood by and benefit the few?

If the voice and reason of the many were expressed, would the same financial products have been created, or would the consumer constituents have informed a better product line for these companies?

I just wonder.

Too much access!

Facebook, Netvibes, Flickr, YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, Blogs, Twitter...and the list goes on and the list changes. But what doesn't change are my needs to easily monitor, then step in and out of the right conversations. I use Netvibes for this, although I have colleagues who use Google Sites, iGoogle, Friendfeed and increasingly Facebook.

I guess my big issue is that I want to separate my business info and connections from the purely social. When I'm at work, I want to track the media, marketing, pertinent industry news, agency work, etc. without being distracted by the ongoing purely social interactions.

Of course, that may make me a poor social media expert, but maybe the big idea here is that we all need effective strategies for separation of work networking (workNetting?) and "neighborhood/home" social networking. Otherwise "Social Media" becomes a distraction rather than an asset.

I don't expect that there is one approach that fits all, but I'm going to set up a business related feed on Netvibes (with a public version as well) and run my social consolidation through Facebook with a Friendfeed app.

How do you monitor and separate/filter your feeds so you can be productive at work?