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If you look to your right, and down the page a bit you'll notice something called "sidebar". That's all the links I find around the web that I want to share with you. I'm doing this by posting a sub-feed from my del.icio.us account so that the whole thing is seemless seamless. Ooh, seemless seamless. Sweet.
I'm totally excited about the eventual release of Will Wright's Spore. This is going to be SO cool. The kids and I have had great fun with open ended video games and this looks like it will top everything else we've tried to date.
I'm also loving the way YouTube and Google Video allow you to embed their video on my site!
I've been blogging for a long time (well a long time for a new communication tool, not long time as in "the long now" long). My first "hello world post" was on July 4th, 2001.
Between then and last year about now I blogged on a semi-regular basis and managed to get about 430 posts online during that time.
Then I started One Degree and for all intents and purposes stopped my personal blog. Slowly the old schafer.com was falling apart as more of my attention went to One Degree. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I ripped the site down and replaced it with some minimalistic pages about me and what I do. But because my blog still used Blogger software for the back end it was just too much to contemplate a total overhaul given my infrequent posting.
Now that I've joined Tucows I really want to move schafer.com away from being a business site towards being my personal site.
So, here's how I'm hoping it will work out:
My guess is I'll also be running a Tucows blog of some sort - I can't imagine I wouldn't - but you'll have to wait to find out more about that.
Any thoughts on the mix of "official" and "personal" blogging?
The folks at 37signals posted this to their Flickr photostream a while ago and I wanted to capture it:
Widely seen as a pioneer of the Internet in Canada, Ken has tirelessly promoted the Net as a significant force in business and culture.
Ken conceived and oversaw Sony Music Canada's early online initiatives. From their first site in 1995, Ken's team built a global web presence for 25 Canadian artists, by pioneering viral and e-mail marketing, rich media, and community building long before they had become buzzwords.
In 1996 he co-founded (AIMS) where as President he helped it become Canada's largest organization for Internet decision-makers. In 1997 he co-authored the online portion of the Canadian Marketing Association's Code of Ethics.
Ken's volunteer work was recognized in 2002 when he was named a finalist for "Volunteer of the Year" at the Canadian New Media Awards.
More recently, Ken developed the curriculum and taught the 14-week CMA's Certificate in E-marketing program.
Today, he is VP, Marketing & Product Management for Tucows and a contributor to One Degree, Canada's leading web site for Internet marketing professionals.
Ken received his degree in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and lives outside Toronto with his wife, parenting expert Alyson Schafer, and their two children.
Gary Hamel: The Future of Management
I found this very inspiring. We're working through a lot of these issues at Tucows and a few of us have now read this book. Really thought provoking and more pragmatic than I was expecting.
James Surowiecki: The Wisdom of Crowds
I can't believe how long it too me to get to this "must read" for the social media cognoscenti but it didn't disappoint.
Walter Isaacson: Einstein
Isaacson provides a comprehensive study of the great man, intertwining his personal and scientific lives effortlessly.
Chip & Dan Heath: Made to Stick
A fantastic resource for anyone who needs to clearly communicate anything. Probably my top business book of 2007. A must read.
Steven Pinker: The Stuff of Thought
Getting through the grammar lessons in the early chapters was a bit of a challenge but the sections on why we swear where absolutely worth it!
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan
While Taleb's ideas are VERY important I have a hard time recommending the book to the average reader as it does delve pretty heavily into statistical and probabilistic thinking at times. If you don't mind a bit of hard work in the later chapters this will reward with some great insights into how much we are ruled by randomness.
Khaled Hosseini: A Thousand Splendid Suns
The history of Kabul Afghanistan disguised as the harrowing stories of two women as they deal with oppression and injustice while finding time to love and learn.
William Gibson: Spook Country
I enjoyed this far more than I was expecting. I tried Neuromancer ages ago and couldn't get into it, but Spook Country was very much a page turner - heavy on plot, set in a futuristic "near past" (2006). Highly recommended.
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
Getting around to reading classics I should have read much earlier in life is a big goal for 2008. Finally meeting Holden Caufield was a great start.
You can see why the book was radical in its time - in content and style, but it seems pretty darn quaint these days. Is it still banned anywhere?
Cormac Mccarthy: All the Pretty Horses
A cowboy gothic starting and ending with a funeral. In between we get minimalist dialogue, pages of apocalyptic odes to equines and Mexican desert landscapes. Brilliant.
Cormac McCarthy: The Road
Incredibly powerful - probably one of my all-time favourite books despite the relentless bleakness.
Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
Just wonderful. I've seen the movie many times but reading the book was a revelation.
