If you haven’t seen it, you should. If you are a twitter user or not TwittEarth is an amazing application built on Twitter.com, Papervision’s 3D engine, Yahoo’s local API for geolocalisation service, tinyurl.com for the short url API and fasticon for great looking icons representing each twitterer. I came across it thanks to an article by Emily Chang over the weekend and lo and behold I actually saw her Twitt (oh, I guess I should be careful how I say that) this evening when I logged on to get the screen images and write this post. Here’s a screen image from the actual web page:

I read Fast Company magazine. Well, I try to read it regularly anyways. Like Fast Company, most of the newer and popular magazines have little inset graphic images offering some kind of graphic insight to some interesting numbers. I believe these small images could be some of the best information in the magazines. Try this one for example from the May 2008 issue of Fast Company (page 48).

So companies are spending on average $1.8 million on banner advertising on web sites and a little over $300k on email advertising, yet look at the return!

So I can spend $6.53 to get an order from a client or up to $71.89? This makes me realize I need to focus more on cultivating email contacts and using those contacts more effectively.

That’s pretty easy to sell. What if I can help you reduce your cost to acquire an order? Spending less to make money is always enticing to business owners.

So here’s the killer app question. If I were find a way to help customers use email and video (ComScore estimates a 66% increase between Feb 2007 and Feb 2008 of videos watched online) in a reasonably simple fashion what are the chances I’d have a real winner? I think they are high. So, what do you think? As a consumer/customer, what marriage of email and web video would interest you?

YAY! Hats of to Zindus addon for Thunderbird. A few posts ago I touted the wonder of the Provider addon for Thunderbird which allowed you to sync a Google calendar with Thunderbird/Lightning. The only remaining missing piece of my Google app hosted personal email and Thunderbird/Lightning was my contacts. Thanks to Zindus now I have that also.

It was simple to install and after some deleting of what were considered duplicate emails during my first manual sync I now have a completely synced local address book and online address book through my webmail. YAY!

Final piece to attaining the holy grail and being 100% synced up will be when I can sync my iPhone to my Google app hosted domain/email/calendar. When oh when?

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/21apr_ducttape.htm?list39638

Amazing! MacGyver would be so proud. Seems Apollo 17 astronauts used duct tape to re-attach initial fender when it was damaged, and then again to create a new fender from laminated maps and duct tape per procedures from NASA. This modified version lasted the rest of the mission. Now there’s a great ad campaign for some duct tape company needing an idea.

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The holy grail (for me at this point anyways) for calendars has finally been solved. Hats off to Philipp Kewisch for his Provider Addon for Thunderbird/Lightning! And super hats off to bfish.xaedalus.net for the step by step instructions for enabling it. After over two years of wishing I had a way to sync my Google Calendar and my Thunderbird Lightning calendar I finally have it. Installed, tested, and working! Bravo!

Now, at my desk I can manage my calendar using Thunderbird and away I can use my iPhone to update my Google Calendar and the two stay in sync. YAY! Today’s tech post checked off… now off to be productive.

Here’s a great article which could be used if you are seeking the best sources for some great tech blogs to read.

They’ve been analyzing historical TechMeme data to dig a little deeper than the leaderboard information on the site that shows top blogs over the trailing 30 days. They’re slicing the data in a number of ways and plan to publish it shortly on CrunchBase.

It appears that TechCrunch holds top honors with three writers in the top ten accounting for almost 50% of the posts over the observation period, and I’m delighted to see Thomas Ricker of Engadget at position eight.

That’s a pretty broad, yet bold title. But, it gives me lots of latitude which I’ll try to use to point out or comment on the many amazing things happening in the media world these days. Here’s what I’m thinking for now, but like the ever and quickly changing horizon in media these day, I’m certain categories will be fluid, topics will be added, and what I’ll talk about will expand.

Web - Kendall Media Group originated in 2005 as a side business to my full time job allowing me to maintain some hands-on experience by developing or updating small web sites for folks whose budgets were shallow but had deep needs. Little did I know that KMG would expand in 2007 and become the full time gig. I’ll be monitoring and posting about trends I see in the ever diversifying areas surrounding web development.

Video - One of Kendall Media Group’s area of expertise is web and offline video. I’ll be monitoring what’s going on across the Web related to video for the web as well as video for offline use and posting things I find interesting or stuff I think readers should know about.

Internet Marketing - Art? Science? Maybe a little of both. I’ve had people tell me for years I am a marketer (but I’ve had people tell me for years I’m organized also… yeah, right). Nonetheless, you can’t be involved in new media and not at least be aware of and attempt to understand how marketing and the Internet collide. So, whether you consider me an expert or a novice I plan to point out stuff I see that falls in the category of marketing that relates to the Internet.

Terminology & Howtos - Because I have such broad interest in tech stuff, and because I am a teacher/helper at heart, I often find myself attempting to assist others in understanding technical stuff. There’s a wealth of help and tutorial content showing up on the Internet these days and I intend to point out stuff I think can be helpful for those of you looking for information.

Cool Gadgets - Having been tagged by others as a gadget geek, you can be sure I’ll be watching what’s going on in gadget world and when something peaks my interest I’ll post something about it.

Operating Systems - Okay, this one has potential to be interesting. I reserve the right not to pass judgment on what OS is the best or worst. I sometimes refer to myself as tri-puter. While I grew up computerwise on windows based PCs, I am fairly fluent in MAC/Apple as well as having some Linux experience. While I’m by no means an expert on the technical stuff behind the various OS’s out there I reserve the right to express my opinions on the usability and user experience of what’s out there.

Hardware & Software - This kind of goes with gadgets, but part of staying on top of what’s going on in the world of media also requires monitoring developments in hardware and software which are necessary to pull off the cool media stuff we all love or curse.

Web-based Productivity Tools - Call this an interest. As I said earlier, for some reason people think I’m organized. In actuality it’s a survival technique I’ve developed over the years. I have difficulty processing information and assimilating it to a point that it all makes sense together. Hence, I developed the ability to take a bunch of stuff, see patterns, and throw that stuff into buckets that seemed to help me make sense of that stuff. Along the way on that journey I discovered what I consider to be the holy grail of organization methodologies… David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Because of my fascination with those of you out there who are organized get things done-ers I tend to take notice of systems which help with this discipline. I’m sure some posts will details my thoughts and experiences with these tools.

I’m sure everything I’ve listed above will look different in a matter of weeks. Nonetheless, I thought it would help me to try to outline some of where I think the anything media blog is headed. Now, I intend to press on!