A recent Cinchcast really got me thinking about why the Internet is great.  Imagine the days before Facebook, before the 14.4kbps modem, heck before the consumer Internet existed.  There were no cell phones, Zuckerberg wasn’t even a thought yet and many phones still had rotary dials. 

Can you imagine running a home business with no access to a cell phone?  You can’t leave the house because you don’t want customers hearing your cheesy answering machine message.  You want to be there and responsive.  That person was stuck at home all day!  Now, you carry your phone around all day and be “in the office” when you’re out buying groceries at Whole Foods.  I can sit on an airplane toilet and tweet and get hoards of people replying on whatever was on my mind at 30,000 feet.  That is pure insanity.  The amount we’re connected as a society using new technologies like cell phones, laptops and services like Twitter and text messaging is mind boggling. 

These kind of technologies have really provided lots of freedom and democracy to small business owners and the average Joe alike.  Many bloggers talk about how tech overload can cause us to sit indoors and tweeting, facebooking etc.  An almost counter-productive effect.  I would disagree.  There has to be balance to anything in life.  I love that I carry my network in my pocket and can access them instantly with text, audio or even video.  Don’t you?

I love these times…

I recently gave a presentation to some UW-Stout administrators about new technologies they might consider leveraging.  One of these technologies was QR codes.  QR codes are nothing more than peculiar looking bar-codes.  QR codes are popular in Japan and China.  These codes are slowly spreading into Europe, and now just taking off in the United States. 

These little codes contain all kinds of information.  The user decides what the code will do once scanned.  Maybe it’s a text message, perhaps a URL or a photo pops up.  Want to try it?  Scan this code below which will take you to my resume.

UW-Stout University Recreation has decided to begin using QR Codes on their marketing materials on-campus.  This will allow students and visitors to scan their codes and get access to hours, schedules and other relevant information on their mobile phone.  I’m so pumped about URec attaching digital content to their reality-based materials.  This is how technology is transforming how we access information.  I’m glad they believe like I do that this could be huge in the future. Yes Urec!  Yes!!!!

It’s getting to be that time of the year again.  Many students will be arriving on-campus sporting a new cell phone to keep in touch with their parents back home.  Most of these phones will be smart-phones with the ability to download applications.  There are some great apps that are a must for any college scholar to keep in his repertoire.  Here are my picks I feel are “must downloads”

RateMyProfessor (Free)

RateMyProfessoris a must have for any college student.  I use this site to schedule my classes every single semester.  RateMyProfessor allows students to rate their professors in multiple categories, just as the name implies.  Students rate professors for helpfulness, clarity and easiness.  These ratings are averaged for an overall score on a 5-point scale.  Students can also indciate the professor is “hot” and provides some eye-candy to get you through lecture. 

Some reports on professors may be biased and just simply not true, more of a personal attack from some bad apples.  However, with a sizeable sample of reviews the numbers should give a good indication on the quality of a professor. 

Download it, and live by it!  You’ll thank yourself later.

iStudiez Pro ($2.99)

iStudiez might be the best $2.99 you ever spend in college.  Well maybe not considering those late night $2.50 slices from Jeff’s Pizza or Teddy’s Tubesteaks. iStudiez turns your smart-phone into a mega organizer built specifically for students like you and I.  iStudiez keeps track of your class schedule, homework assignments, test dates and dates with that hot new guy or cute girl in your class.  It also allows you to keep track of your grades so you know where you stand at all times.  This app is a must because any veteran college student will tell you, the key to success is keeping organized. Your life is a tornado and you have a million things going on: homework, classes, social time, video games sessions, working two jobs.  You need this app!  Learn to use it and make it habit and you’re home free!

If iStudiez is a bit too much to spend, which I urge you it’s not, there are other options.  If you want to experiment with a free option check out MyHomework.  It’s free and does almost the same things as iStudiez, however it’s not as good.

iFlipr Flashcards ($4.99)

 iFlipr makes studying for that next exam so much easier!  Create your own custom flashcards or even download card packs for iFlipr’s huge online repository.  This allows you to study from anywhere, anytime.!  No Internet access is needed to flip through your flashcards. 

Don’t fret over the $4.99 price tag.  Go buy two packs of flashcards from Wal-Mart and I guarantee you spend just as much.  Buy this and have it for four years.  It will actually save you money over your college career and your cards will be with you 24/7. 

Other Sites You MUST Check Out!

Here are a few websites you need to check out if your enrolling in college this fall.  They can be a huge help! (These are NOT apps)

DesignYourDorm – http://www.designyourdorm.com

iTunes U – http://www.itunesu.com

How to survive your freshmen year – http://www.campusgrotto.com/how-to-survive-your-freshman-year.html

Have fun, these are the best years of your life!  But not too much!

Recently my hometown newspaper ran a short story about how Wausau, Wisconsin can attract and retain young professionals.  Wausau is a nice city in central Wisconsin of about 80,000 residents living in the immediate metro area.  It’s home to numerous biking/walking trails, one of the states most scenic state parks and a world-class whitewater kayak course.  These are just some of the attributes, but is that enough to attract young & talented job seekers?

White-Collar Industry

I think bringing in high-tech industry is the biggest factor in attracting young talent to any city.  The job sectors have to be cutting edge and white collar.  The industrial sector is slowly grinding to a halt in this country. I am not against heavy industry; the fact is that society is switching from a manufacturing-based economy to a information-based economy.  Information is what will drive our economy into the future.

Wausau is a city heavily built around manufacturing.  It was a natural heavy-industry hub ever since the days of its inception with the Wisconsin River that runs through town providing an ideal logging route.

Eau Claire, which is located 85 miles west of Wausau, is adding jobs in the IT field.  They will add over 200 jobs by attracting a New York based company by the name of Genesis10.  That’s just one firm they have lured in with more to surely follow suit.  Eau Claire is a popular place for young professionals and it really isn’t that far off in culture and feel from Wausau.

Bottom line?  Add well paying high-tech jobs.

After Hours Recreation

Young professionals are very active.  They are either newly married or on the prowl for a partner.  They like to get out and explore what their new city has to offer.  They would be looking for up-scale wine/cocktail bars, clubs, coffee shops, gyms, cultural events and live music.  There should be an adequate selection of these kinds activities.  Having these events in a “downtown district” is even more attractive to young professionals as it provides a “closeness” to their community of peers.

Getting “Networked”

Young professionals want to feel connected to their community and their fellow peers as I hinted above.  They like networking with others their age to find opportunities they feel could allow them to advance their career.  This links back to having recreational areas like bars and nightlife downtown.  Having events sponsored by businesses and/or the city will fuel networking.  Have tweet-ups and wine tastings, conferences and seminars focused around the new tech jobs in your area.  Young professionals want to advance their professional lives in addition to their personal lives.

In The End

I’m in this very situation myself.  I graduate in less than 12 months from the University of Wisconsin-Stout with a very strong resume and super-relevant experience.  From launching social media platforms on-campus, being appointed to numerous committees to shape the future of the university, and being featured in books about digital crisis communications and social media. I feel I can compete in large markets like New York City, Austin and San Francisco. However, I don’t mind my hometown one bit.  My family is here, and some of my longest friends.  The real question is; does Wausau have the desire and position to lure a talented “hometown kid” to stay put?  I just don’t know yet.

You can learn more about my young professional background, including my resume, here.

I feel compelled to remind my readers the importance of thank you.  So often in this new self-centric world that social media fuels, we often forget about others. Services like Facebook, Twitter etc. are teaching us to be narcissistic to a point.  Aggregating your presence is important, but remember if you want to thrive in a community, you have to be a part of that community.  Sharing and conversing is where the best value lies of any content.

Don’t be afraid to converse.  So many times I tweet to someone I don’t know and it doesn’t garner a response.  Connect, share, talk and get to know your peers within your community.  That community could be social media or storm chasing (like me), or maybe it’s dogs & cats or world traveling.  Whatever your niche, there are communities out there.  Get in the game!  ”Social media”, as much as I hate that coined phrase is suppose to be just that; social!

Most importantly, say thank you!  The power of these two words is immense, whether in the digital realm or face-to-face.  It is underused so much in our culture.  Just be thankful, you’ll never go wrong!

Most of you know I’m a college undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.  I have worked for the university for nearly three years consulting about technology and trying to shape the culture around new media technologies.  Like any college student I have almost no free time and work hard to pay for rent, bills etc.

What most of you don’t know is my fiance, Jessica, has been struggling with medical bills as of lately.  This has put some extra financial strain on us and used up much of our discretionary income.  However, taking care of your loved ones  is important, more important than nearly anything else actually.  I want her to feel secure and safe knowing I’m there for her instead of having extra money to spend.

I love technology and work hard both in the classroom and at my job.  I have come to be a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk.  For those who don’t know Gary, check out his site and learn more about him, such an awesome dude!  Gary, in conjunction with his company VaynerMedia, is putting on an amazing conference in Tahoe at the end of September.  I’m drooling over the idea of going.  The conference will feature some of the best in the technology industry and I would do almost anything to go.

So where do you come in?  I need your help.  I’m turning to the tech community and my friends to support me in attending my first ever technology conference, and meeting Gary Vaynerchuk and Kevin Rose.  I watch every single Vaynerchuk video and have followed Kevin Rose ever since his days on TechTV when I was a kid.

Yes!  You can propel me into digital geek greatness by supporting my learning and expertise by helping me get to TahoeTechConf.

To those who decide to support me, I love and cherish you all.  Thank you for supporting me and my quest to be the biggest and best technology geek on planet earth!  What I’ll learn will be so powerful and so important, you have no idea.

You can donate/sponsor easily, securely online with GoFundMe.  I have partnered with them to make the donation process painless and easy.

HELP ME OUT

Click above to donate

If you haven’t heard this meme yet, you might want to check your pulse: “He’s climbin’ in yo windows, he’s snatchin’ yo people up” or “So you can run and tell dat, homeboy”.   These are the words of Antoine Dodson of Huntsville, Alabama.  His sister was recently attacked in a attempted rape and WAFF-TV covered the story like any other.  Reports are now sprouting that some local African American residents are upset that this story even made it to air.  They believe it contained some kind of racial undertones that really smeared their local community to the country, and even the world.

Antoine is allowed the right to speak out, and media coverage could help catch his sisters attacker.  Media is a tool often employed by law enforcement when they want the communities help in catching an offender.  Why should it matter what color skin the victim has or what neighborhood it’s located in?

The news story was such a viral hit, it even has an autotune remix version that is tearing up the YouTube charts.

So how is the meme trending?  Let’s examine.

• On Google.com, searching for “Antoine Dodson” brings up 2.3 million results (Monday, 2:00 p.m. CT)
• “Antoine Dodson” reached as high as .04% of all Twitter posts on Sunday August 1st, 2010.
• The original video garnered over 3.5 millions views in just 4 days on YouTube.com
• The “autotune remix” of the video gained over 1.3 million views in just 3 days.

The point of the story is you can’t control the media, especially how it reflects on your community.  The media has a journalistic responsibility to cover stories, no matter how damaging they can possibly be.  However, journalistic integrity and sensitivity should reflect the story in the best way possible, but this can sometimes be clouded in the pursuit of ratings in competitive markets.

This story was a valid one with a purpose, to raise awareness about the crime and bring a criminal to justice.  Could WAFF-TV edited the footage to portray Antoine in a more favorable light?  Could they have had the reporter focus him more and get his point across in a slightly less animated fashion?  Perhaps.  You have to take the good with the bad when it comes to mainstream media.  It was a traumatic event and if it was your sister,  I bed your “Antoine” side would come out as well.  So, run and tell dat, HOMEBOY!

Everyone has probably sent an e-mail they regretted right after clicking the send button.  It’s natural to want to include emotion and tone in your e-mails, it’s how we naturally communicate.  Without this tone, our communication would be uninteresting and robotic.  However, without facial expression and non-verbal communication cues included in the transmission, our words can often be taken out of context.  A new Internet tool helps with this problem and it’s way cool!

The service is called ToneCheck.  ToneCheck reports that studies show e-mail is misinterpreted 50% of the time.  That’s a pretty high statistic, don’t you think?  Don’t fear, ToneCheck is here!

ToneCheck flags sentences with words or phrases that may convey unintended emotion or tone, then helps you re-write them. Just like Spell Check… but for Tone.   – ToneCheck.com

It currently only works with Outlook.  However, they will soon be launching support for web-based e-mail like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc.  I highly recommend for anyone in the business environment who deals with a lot of e-mail, especially human resources and managerial positions.   This service could really save you a boat load of office hassle, believe me!  It would also be useful for college students who often communicate with professors via e-mail.  Check it out and let me know what you think of it by commenting!

Happy e-mailing!

Many readers aren’t aware that I’m an avid weather enthusiast.  I’ve loved mother nature’s fury ever since our home was struck by a tornado when I was a child.  I’ve been chasing/spotting severe storms for 10 years total, and 8 years on my own with various chase partners.  I’ve chased all over the upper-plains from Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and into the Dakotas.  In addition to this life-long obsession,  I’ve been an amateur radio operator, or “ham”, for four years.  However, I’ve been involved in two-way radio communications and electronics since I was a child.  Now I have premised my experience, let me get to the point of this blog!

This evening, a large area of severe weather struck Minnesota, eventually making its way into the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.  The Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro SKYWARN swung into action taking check-ins from all over the twin cities metro.  What sounded like an older female was acting as net control.  This operator is my primary, but not only, criticism.

Coming into this evening, I’ve respected the professionalism and coordination the metro SKYWARN group has.  However, now my confidence is shaken. The net control seemed to be lacking the skill set needed for this position.  She couldn’t even keep the difference between watch and warning straight.  I hope she understood the difference at least and was simply mixing them up.  She often repeated “warnings” that did not exist, instead telling operators in outlying counties they had “tornado warnings” when really they were under a “tornado watch”.  This happened at least seven times in a one and a half hour span.  One time she was corrected by another operator on-air, just once.  Otherwise stations simply ask for clarification because what she is saying doesn’t even make sense.

“Washington county under a tornado warning till 11 p.m.”   She stated this at 9:15 p.m. for a squall line racing through.

Wait, an hour and forty-five minute tornado warning!?

Then she’d come back on the air 2 minutes later and say a list of counties like, “Washington, Hennepin, Chisago etc. under a tornado watch till 11 p.m.”

2 minutes later…

“The NWS out of Chanhassen has extended the tornado warning until 3 a.m.”

You can see how confusion can then add up and discredit much of the net.

In all this confusion, a local camp ground manager came on the net and asked for clarification.  I don’t blame him one bit.  He had obviously been tuned in listening to the net and was so twisted by listening to this female net controller, he had no idea what was occurring anymore.  He informed net control he had over 100 campers piled into a safe area and wanted to know if a particular tornado warning had expired so he could release his campground from shelter.  Instead of an answer, another net control station, possibly an emergency manager, told him in a very condescending and direct way to tune into his “AM/FM radio” for the answer.  Are you kidding me?  Is this how you treat a completely understandable request?  Your net control can’t say hardly anything properly and this guy is overseeing the shelter and campers and your giving him a hard time?  There was obvious tension on-air between the campground manager and the net controllers after this spat on the air.  I side 110% with the campground manager.  If your net controller is announcing watches and warnings over the net, reading statements, then they should be held accountable to provide clarification, and not snarky either.

Later into the evening, a station asked the female net control station where the area of interest was and if she had heard of any rotation in a particular storm.  She replied,

“I’m looking at radar now and don’t see any rotation.”

You may ask, what’ s wrong with that?  If she can’t distinguish between a watch and warning correctly, do I really trust her to interpret radar?  I sure wouldn’t.  Is she qualified in the least even as an “amateur radar observer” to know what she’s looking at, and what kind of software is she using?

Then the highlight of the evening.  A station ID’d and checked into the net with a report of UFO’s over the metro.   I laughed quite hard as this man described lights flying in unison across the sky.  He was quite excited and perhaps even a bit liquored up, it was hard to tell.  The net controller instructed this station to dial 911 and report the UFO phenomena.  This led to another operator coming on-air repeatedly cursing the other operator out calling him a “stupid fuc*” and to “have another fuc*ing drink”.  You can see how when your net isn’t properly controlled, things can get out of hand quickly.  You can stop anyone from interrupting a net, but you can deter those by having a clean and well executed net.

So what have we learned?  It is imperative you have the right person “behind the controls” when you need it most.  Tonight’s net controller was obviously not that person and their net was really quite poor.  From constant “repeating” of simple information that took up time and created extra traffic, to false information about warnings and watches and everything in-between, the net was a borderline disaster.  The bright spot was collecting damage reports.  Aside from some problems not being able to transcribe fast enough, most damage reports were handled quite well.  One problem spot on damage reports I heard went like this…

“9463 damage…” operator

45 seconds go by

“9463 damage…” operator

“standing water…” net controller

10 seconds go by

“9463 DAMAGEEEEE”

“station all I heard was standing water over roadway”

I ask how in the world do you get “standing water” when the station is clearly stating his SKYWARN ID number and that he has a damage report. I’m not sure what in the world was going on here.  Again, confusion.

I’m sorry Metro SKYWARN, I thought you were better than this.  I heard bright spots of good, but a wholeeee lot of bad in there tonight.  You and I provide a valuable service to the community and there needs to be professionalism through out the process.  I know you mean well and I know were all volunteers. I hope you choose to do a debriefing on this net and find where the hiccups are and correct them.  I might add a suggestion, look at net control from tonight first and go from there.

A report published I read this week really surprised me, or did it?!  When I think about Internet privacy I imagine my parents who are too afraid to use Facebook or do heavy amounts of online banking or shopping.  They don’t have any kind of presence on the Internet, and they want to keep it that way.  However, some new research has led to some intriguing results.

Mary Madden and Aaron Smith of Pew Internet and American Life Project published a very interesting report, Reputation Management and Social Media, that really put my mind into a spin.

• 44% of young adult Internet users say they take steps to limit the amount of information available about them, compared to 33% of users ages 30 to 49 and 25% of those ages 50 to 64.
• 71% of younger social networking site users actively change their privacy settings to limit what they share with others online, compared to 55% of those 50 to 64.
• 41% have removed their names from photos of them posted by others, compared to just 18% of those 50 to 64.

So what does this say about the state of privacy?  I believe the younger generation is more willing to share their life online and engage in socialmedia.  However, they want to know their in control of the information.  They want the say in what is streamed out, and what is not.  Rightfully so I might add.  A larger portion of the younger generation have an online presence because it truly is “norm” for them.  So even the privacy conscious feel compelled to be on these social platforms; however they really take note of their privacy trying their best to lock it down tight.

Older generations are either with it, or they are completely against it.  If they feel okay with having their information online, they are generally very “open” type people.  They have nothing to hide and don’t fear what others may know about them.  These types of people are much less likely to be overly concerned about privacy.  They don’t change privacy settings and they don’t un-tag photos of themselves.  Those in the older generation didn’t grow up with it so they could take it or leave it, it’s not viewed as a “necessity”, like it is to some of our younger generation.  In essence, the adopters of technology in the old generation are truly comfortable with having their indentity online.

These reasons are why Mary and Aaron received the results they did.  I wouldn’t call them overly surprising, but more so highlighting the generational divide in technology adoption and the varying principles between the two.