From the category archives:

Neck Deep in the Zeitgeist

A day in the life, via Twitter

10.14.2011

Last week, Jamie Sandford began the day with what I’ll call a “metatweet.” I responded. It took off. Here’s how our conversation evolved throughout the course of the day: @jsandford: <something about coffee> @davidbthomas: <something about Mondays> @jsandford: <inspirational way-too-much vim and vigor tackling-the-week tweet> @davidbthomas: <excessive use of motivational hashtags> @jsandford: <ending of day [...]

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Why own content?

07.24.2011

I’ve seen quite a few discussions lately about the Spotify online music service. A few people said they didn’t get it; they wanted to own their music, not rent it. I saw a similar comment about the Amazon Kindle e-reader. That person was concerned that Amazon could take the content back at any time; he [...]

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I am not formal; I am mobile.

08.11.2010

I find I’m not using contractions as much anymore. I just wrote “he had been ready” when I’m sure I would ordinarily have written “he’d been.” (Of course, now that my mind is on it I’m using contractions in this post, so this is not a good test case.) I blame the iPhone. It is [...]

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Let’s create our own business jargon

08.09.2010

I have a love/hate relationship with bizspeak. I’m fascinated by the way phrases enter our lexicon, become popular, then die off. But I also get annoyed by hackneyed writing and lazy speech. Smart people usually fall back on cliches because they don’t have time to think of an original way to illustrate an idea, and that’s [...]

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Subaru announces in-car WiFi

07.19.2010

I was just perusing Facebook, as part of my getting-ready-to-write ritual. (It’s also part of my taking-a-break-from-writing ritual and my winding-down-from-writing ritual. Essentially, if it weren’t for Facebook, I could have finished this book in an afternoon.) I came across a link to an article at PCMag.com entitled Suburu Slaps In-Car Wi-Fi into its 2011 [...]

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Five key lessons of the Old Spice campaign for enterprise social media marketers

07.17.2010

Last night The Mrs looked over my shoulder at Tweetdeck and said, “Everybody’s talking about Old Spice.” It’s the hottest topic in social media, marketing and advertising right now. Built on the success of the video embedded above, which now has more than 13 million views on YouTube, the integrated social media campaign features shirtless [...]

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Connecting your computer to your TV for streaming video

07.14.2010

This isn’t the kind of thing I normally write about, and this post is far from comprehensive, but I got into a conversation with two colleagues recently about how to connect a computer to a TV and stream your shows without needing a cable box. I wrote them a long email with my experiences, and, [...]

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Social media advice from the Dalai Lama

07.14.2010

Posted via email from David B. Thomas

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Helicopters and bad news

07.12.2010

I’m working at home today, having returned to meet the HVAC guy and finding out we need a new air conditioner. I was upstairs (since the upstairs AC unit is still okay, touch wood) and kept hearing what sounded like helicopters overhead. I went outside to look but didn’t see any. After a while I [...]

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Little did I know when I asked the laundry to fold my shirts…

05.01.2010

… that I was buying into the lifestyle of a busy executive on the go, the kind of executive who might, at a moment’s notice, jet off to Baltimore – first class!

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