Category Archives: Technology

Adoption, Technology

Testing E-mail Posting

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We’re furiously trying to get ready for our trip to Ethiopia next week. While I’m quite the tech-addict in my day-to-day life, I’m not a very good techie when I travel. I didn’t get a cell phone until 2006 and while I bring my laptop when I travel, I use it primarily for watching movies on the plane.

For our trip to Ethiopia I think I’ll be even less of a techie. Our laptop has no battery life left, so it’s useless on the plane (plus I’m not sure 3 hours of movie for 18 hours of flying justifies the extra baggage). My iPod battery is also toast, so it’s useless (though I think Abby’s may be good). On the plus side, we are delivering a laptop to the care center, so we might be able to use it en route. Which might work out really nice. Something tells me we won’t have time to watch movies on the flight home.

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Business & Marketing, Internet

Nothing is a Secret

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There are no secrets in the Internet age. Everything you’ve ever done can come to the glaring light of day.

That can either be a blessing or a curse.

Marketing guru Seth Godin describes a friend who googled the applicants for a housekeeping job, and those Google results made nixing applicants easy. Pictures of binge-drinking, your police shoplifting record or a blog post about how you’ll quit this menial job as soon as you can aren’t encouraging to potential employers.

Of course not showing up in Google at all (unless you’re cursed with a common name) can be just as worrisome.

And if you’re an employer, imagine the potential harm in not Googling. That quick search could reveal that your perspective rock star employee was fired from their last job for indescretions, a detail they carefully evaded in the interview. Oops.

Godin sums up the solution:

“Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.”

Internet

25 Things About Billy Graham

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The ’25 Things’ note has been spreading on Facebook like a computer virus. Or one of those lame forwards from 1998 about Microsoft charging a fee for every e-mail sent. An estimated five million people have taken part, and it’s made some people more than a little annoyed and they show their determination not to take part in it by taking part in it (in mockery, of course).

I find the whole thing kind of funny.

Unlike an annoying e-mail forward, the notes in Facebook are much easier to ignore and they don’t gum up my inbox. Nobody is forcing you to read them. I can understand annoyance if people are harassing or threatening you to list your own ’25 Things,’ but that’s just stupid.

Who cares if people want to tell their friends 25 random things? It it narcissistic? Yeah, but blogging and twittering can be just as narcissistic. In many ways the general Facebook crowd is made up of relative web newbies who don’t have blogs or Twitter accounts. This is a new platform for them to talk about themselves. In that sense it’s like explaining to people what blogging is all over again and as always you get people who whine and complain.

Live and let live, people. I’ve completely ignored some ’25 Things’ lists and others I’ve read with curiosity and interest. Some were insightful, others were stupid. It’s just like anything else in life.

I’ve decided to deal with it (aside from blogging about it) by writing my own list of 25 Things—about Billy Graham. I think that’d be an awesome new trend. Let’s all write 25 things about someone else.

Politics, Technology

Enjoying the Inauguration with Twitter

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I watched bits and pieces of the Inauguration today and caught much of Obama’s speech on NPR. But I really enjoyed much of the festivities through Twitter and the various reactions, comments and snippets. Apparently I wasn’t the only one enjoying Twitter: Traffic was up five fold.

The breadth of opinions was hilarious. One person would be euphoric about an Obama presidency and the next person would be taking potshots at hope and change. One person loved the inaugural poem and the very next tweet called it a flaming failure.

It was also great to see people’s personal reactions, what lines of speeches/prayers/poems stuck with them, what made them laugh, what made them cry (quite literally).

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Blogging

Billyspot!: The Billy Graham Blog

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Billyspot: The Unofficial Billy Graham BlogI finally did it: I started a Billy Graham blog. I’ve talked about this idea years ago, but I’m finally doing it.

It’s called Billyspot and it covers all things Billy Graham. It got started just before Christmas, so it’s definitely still in the infancy stage and has a long way to go. But for now the basics are there.

Why a Billy Graham Blog?
The big question, of course, is why write a blog exclusively about Billy Graham? There’s something engaging about Billy Graham that I find fascinating. He’s a world famous and highly respected evangelist. Consider the potential paradox of that statement for a moment: In a politically correct world he tells you that Jesus it the only way to salvation, and yet he’s still one of the most respected men in the world, a counselor to presidents.

It’s kind of amazing that a religious man can have that kind of near-universal acclaim. And I want to know how he does it. I want to know the behind-the-scenes stories. I want to know the theological questions that arise. I want to see the goofy things that inevitably come up around a man like that.

Hence, the Billyspot. I’ve talked a lot about Billy Graham in the past, I worked for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for two years, and I have a pile of Billy-o-bilia to serve as fodder. Here we go.

Internet

Updating My Squidoo Lenses

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I’m not exactly the lensmaster I used to be, but I’ve been working on some of my Squidoo lenses lately (what’s a Squidoo lens?). It’s kind of a weird little distraction, but I’ve got a few fun lenses going:

And there are more. I’m still not exactly sure what the point is, but it’s kind of fun, especially when you pick a topic narrow enough to be interesting and not covered elsewhere (like, um, Anne Lamott, who doesn’t have a web site).

Blogging, Business & Marketing

Seth Godin Defines Blogging: Drip, Drip, Drip

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I love how Seth Godin explains blogging in this little nugget from an interview earlier this year:

“Blogging lets you drip ideas, bit by bit, to people who want to hear them. There are two crucial ideas in that sentence, so let’s unpack them.

“The dripping matters because that’s how people learn. Not in one hour chunks, but one little idea at a time. Do it for five years or more, every single day (as I’ve done on my blog) and you build trust and credibility and a body of work. The permission (“want to hear them”) is important because if no one is reading your blog, you’ll know. And then you can change it. And over time, you can earn the right to talk to a thousand and then ten thousand and then a million people.

“And isn’t that your mission?”

That drip, drip, drip of ideas is how the best of focused blogs work (which probably means this blog isn’t very focused). If you want to succeed at blogging you have to understand the importance of that tiny, consistent process of dripping.

Blogging

10 Years of Blogging: Read Mike, The Cat

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On Dec. 5, 1998 I started blogging with these inspiring words:

So I’ve decided to cement my daily thoughts in immortal type, and plaster them here on the world wide web for all to read. What kind of an idiot am I?

Ten years later, I’m still an idiot. In that time:

  • I’ve written 2,537 posts, which works out to an entry every one and a half days.
  • I’ve received approximately 2,700 comments. My banana allergy post is still the all-time winner with 263 comments. (And to be fair, I’ve only had commenting for five years.)
  • The blog has been hosted on five separate sites: Bethel, ReAL Magazine, Blogger, Monkey Outta Nowhere and now KevinDHendricks.com.
  • The blog has had four different names: Daily Ponderings, ReAL Thoughts, Thoughts and whatever the heck you want to call it now (Kevin D. Hendricks? Worst name yet.)
  • The blog has been powered by five different platforms: NotePad with straight HTML (shudder), Dreamweaver, Blogger, Movable Type and now WordPress.

To celebrate one decade of blogging I was going to comb through the archives and pull out some gems. But that’s a lot of work. Besides, nobody wants to read the introspective and completely incoherent ramblings of the early years, or sift through the years when I used only Simpsons quotes as entry titles, or have to struggle with the countless typos, botched em dashes and half-missing entries that come from switching platforms multiple times.

Mike the CatMike, The Cat
Instead I thought it might be fun to share my first ever book: Mike, The Cat. I’ve talked about the book before, but now I’ve made it available in PDF in all its terrible glory.

I wrote it in 1986, nearly 22 years ago, as a first grader at Scotch Elementary School. I hope you’ll forgive me for reveling in the past like this, but it seemed more entertaining than just digging up old entries.

Thanks
Thanks for reading my blog. I should give a shout out to Ben Tramm who inspired me to start blogging in the first place. Yes, you can blame him. I should also give a shout out to anyone who’s been brave enough to read along since the very beginning (fess up in the comments—we’ll get you some therapy).

It’s been a fun ride. Let’s see if this thing can survive another decade.

Technology

The Guy Kawasaki Bump

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My stats

On Tuesday I picked a fight with marketing guru Guy Kawasaki on Twitter. I called him out on what I considered to be a questionable marketing practice and he engaged in a little debate. I blogged about it in order to fully explain my position and Kawasaki linked to it, drawing even more attention.

In the end my traffic increased six-fold. For one day. You can see the lovely bump in the graph above. I’m sure there might be some residual folks—so thanks for sticking around. On Twitter I saw more than 100 followers in 24 hours (and they haven’t un-followed … yet). Wow. Kind of a wild ride. Not what I expected (or intended) from trying to point out a flawed idea. And thanks to the many, many people who agreed with me. The marketing guru isn’t always right (though he’d claim otherwise).

And for the record, I saw no corresponding increase in my Google Adsense earnings. The crap ads on the Kawasaki post didn’t help. Starting to rethink Adsense.

Society, Technology

You Can Change the World: Invisible People

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Mark is unemployed, his home is in foreclosure and he’s six weeks from homelessness. Again. Sixteen years ago Mark was homeless in Hollywood. And now on the brink of homeless again, Mark is telling the story of the homeless. Armed with a small video camera and a slow laptop, Mark is talking to homeless people, capturing their story, and sharing the unedited footage on his vlog, Invisible People.

Mark is an example that homelessness can happen to anyone. I’ve talked before about homelessness being on the rise, and as the economy tanks it’s only going to get worse. Watch Mark’s videos and start seeing the homeless as people. Remember the words of Jesus: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,” (Matthew 25:40 NIV). And take some action. Support a local shelter. Donate to a food bank.

And somebody hire Mark. Or better yet, somebody fund Invisible People so Mark can continue to share these stories.