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February 28, 2010 | Lee Schwartz: Sports Are Now “Must-Tweet TV”

Today is the day the gold medal hockey game (USA vs. Canada) is being played. There’s also a NASCAR race on about that same time, and many college and basketball games being played across the country.

Actually attending these events is still considered the pinnacle experience for the sports fan. Beyond that, HDTV has made sports bars (and Best Buy) a lot of money.

But for many, the combination of their own HDTV and Twitter is their new favorite way to watch the “big game.” Now—sitting alone in your favorite chair—you can discuss the game with dozens of sports fans, just like you were at the game or sharing a beer at your favorite sports bar.

January 29, 2010 | Greg Ness: You Are No Longer In Control And That’s OK

I’ll let Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, explain in this short, 4-minute TED Talk…

January 14, 2010 | Lee Schwartz: The Mayor of You: Managing Your Social Networks

Most of us are experienced social network users by now. But I’m finding that what was once a terrific way to keep in touch with colleagues, friends, and relatives has grown into something that’s almost unmanageable itself.

“Serenity now.”

January 04, 2010 | Lee Schwartz: School Alumni Foundations vs. Facebook

Alumni foundations used to have it good. Sure, it wasn’t always easy keeping track of alumni through their various moves and careers, but for a long time foundations were able to control their “brand” and messages through the traditional vehicles: newsletters, school magazines, email newsletters, and direct mail. The only source of information (and the only way to contact their former classmates) was through the school itself.

Then along came Facebook.

December 14, 2009 | Lee Schwartz: Does a Casino Gamble by Being Social?

(And yes, I HAD to include an obvious analogy in the title, just to be clever.)

Facebook and Twitter and the multitude of other social networks are now mainstream enough to reach well into older demographics (which really happened about the same time your Mom became your Facebook friend). Since casino’s typically have much older-than-average demographics than typical businesses, they’ve been a little slower to the gate in setting up fan pages and becoming interactive with their players.

October 01, 2009 | Lee Schwartz: The Down-Low About Hi5

I’m guessing the list of what you don’t know about the social networking site Hi5 is long?

September 18, 2009 | Greg Ness: Top Web Trends

If you had any interest in the Tim Berners-Lee TED Talk post a couple of weeks ago (Where The Web Is Headed), you should find this new presentation from Tim McManus of ReadWriteWeb to be helpful and certainly supportive of Berners-Lee’s predictions.

August 31, 2009 | Greg Ness: Where The Web Is Headed

Tim Berners-Lee is credited as one of the main inventors of the World Wide Web. With an accomplishment like that on your resume, people tend to sit up and take notice when you have something to say – notably when that something is about The Next Web. In this compelling TED talk, Tim discusses what will be the next evolution of the Web: linked data. As the TED video summary says, “open, linked data…could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.”

June 30, 2009 | Jason Gibb: Firefox 3.5 Released Today

Here is some great news to wrap up your June: Firefox 3.5 was released today. This new version of the popular browser from the Mozilla team includes a host of slick features…

June 01, 2009 | Greg Ness: Britain’s Got Talent Floods YouTube

People in America didn’t have to despair they would be unable to watch the finals of Britain’s Got Talent TV show to see if Susan Boyle would walk off with the big prize. Shortly after the competition was completed, dozens of videos were on YouTube showing Susan Boyle’s final performance along with many more videos featuring the other finalists. At one point this evening 22 of the top 25 most viewed videos on YouTube were about that show. This video was number one.

If you do the math, it looks like those top 22 videos had nearly 10 million views. Not bad for a show that is broadcast abroad. Local/Regional television takes on a whole new meaning with the Web.

May 18, 2009 | Greg Ness: Disruption: From Last Week’s Google Talk

Fred Wilson, venture capitalist, blogger, and Twitter investor (also a Tweeter), spoke at Google’s Mountain View campus last week. His topic was Disruption and his excellent slide deck from the talk is reproduced above.

Fred’s talk demonstrates why the media and entertainment businesses have been severely disrupted by the internet and technology. According to Fred, the industries that look likely for continuing disruption include consumer finance, education, energy and health care.

May 05, 2009 | Ben Hamilton: Top 5 Firefox Plugins for Web Developers

You just woke up from a 7 year bender with a shiny college degree sprawled across your chest and a job as a web developer at some hipster firm in uptown. So after you pop a couple tic-tacs to remove the smell of stale beer from your breath, you realize that your degree only covered web related topics from the late 90’s and none of that stuff is still in anyway applicable.