I recently wrote about a man who is using technology to catalog and file every single memory and experience he has had. A new CNN article continues along these lines, reminding us that our memories are not foolproof but that technology can help us overcome this blind spot by remembering things for us. "Archives of your blog, Facebook or Twitter feed -- both in text and in pictures -- might reveal exactly what you ate on important occasions, the papers you were proud of and the outfits you wore."

But can these tools actually hurt us? We've all heard the old adage, "Use it or lose it," and this can apply to memory as well. A psychology professor at Dartmouth says, "The sedentary brain, just like the sedentary body, is going to atrophy."

There are techniques you can learn, consisting primarily of mnemonic devices, to associate faces with name, to remember lists and numbers. Although some of these, like Megamemory, fell into disrepute due to overpromotion - they still work to some degree.

Curt is the founder & CEO of a timesheet software company in Austin, Texas.

I was watching Marc Benioff from Salesforce.com launch Chatter (the social networking app for Salesforce.com).

No surprises here. The video features a scruffy Benioff on a James Bond slick stage in front of a presentation screen the size of an IMax screen. He works the audience like a rock star while a carefully orchestrated multimedia demo of Chatter unfolds behind him.

This is nothing unusual. This is how high tech has been doing business for years (other industries are just as guilty. But, I feel like picking on high tech today.).

Steve Ballmer from Microsoft does it.

Steve Jobs does it in a turtle neck.

Here's my open plea to the tech industry.

STOP!

Find a new way to unveil your products.

You are not rock stars. Mick Jagger is a rock star. Bono is a rock star. The Boss is a rock star.

You guys are really bright brainiac captains of industry who have bought your way into pretending you're a rock star with a lot of industry toadies enabling your fantasy.

There's something that looks slightly this side of meglomania about the CEO- focused launch presentation in front of a hand picked over- enthusiastic audience.

Find another way.

Where's the woman with the sledgehammer when you really do need her?

You'd be surprised just how many small to midsize businesses still don't leverage their marketing materials online. It's easy to let this one fall through the cracks. For a startup, there are so many other priorities in play just to keep things going.

Here's why you need to make this a priority, too:

1. More eyeballs. You can only press the flesh with so many or even hit so many clients through print, mail outs and trade shows. Those are all important channels, as well. But online proliferation has no borders.

2. They want video. Why read it when you can watch it. For example, a recent Eccolo Media survey of executives who influence technology buying decisions found a dramatic jump in preference for video just within the past twelve months. The same survey conducted in 2008 showed 28% of the respondents had used an online video to gather purchasing information. The 2009 survey showed that figure at 49%.

3. Buyers do their homework online. Decision makers and influencers still use trade magazines. But make no mistake, the Internet is the first stop when it comes to gathering information. Tracking down information about your company, products or services is part of the pre-sales process. White papers, videos, informational articles online, blogs, case studies, online newsletters and podcasts are all breadcrumbs that will lead potential customers to your sales department.

4. Access to free information is appreciated. Your marketing materials, of course, need to be more than a commercial for your company. Sponsor surveys, studies, research on specific topics and give it away. It will give your company credibility and position it as an authority.

Gartner analysts recently presented at the IT Symposium in Orlando, Florida, asserting that “information technology departments are overloaded, missing the consumerization wave, and failing to use new developments to cut their budgets.” There is also the idea that the following 5 “amplifying developments” that will upset the balance of power between users and IT professionals:

1. Software as a service
2. Open source
3. Cloud computing
4. Web 2.0
5. Consumerization

The reason for this is that technology is moving too fast, while “ IT organizations typically spend six to eight years from initial conceptualization through selling, planning, testing and implementation of the first release.”

Is it the case that IT shops are trying to prevent users from bringing in their own iPhones, Netbooks, and SaaS applications? If they're trying they're methods are ineffective from my vantage point.

Curt's company has software that helps the accidental project manager.

The New Oxford American Dictionary has this quaint tradition of naming its "Word of the Year" from its list of new entries for the upcoming edition.

Nevermind your 300 million members, Facebook. You have arrived after inspiring this year's winner: unfriend.

That is, as in to "unfriend" someone from your Facebook list of friends.

It's actually more like a shunning. Facebook has it set up, of course, so you can drop a friend from your list quietly without notification to the new persona non grata. The hope is that they won't notice the sudden absence of your wall postings, etc. from their live feed.

Facebook has become enormously popular and for those 300 million folks, enormously mainstreamed into daily life, very quickly.

It remains to be seen how social networking and social life will ultimately sync up.

Lingering mysteries include:

1. Longterm effects of mixing business and personal contacts.

2. Figuring out how many "friends" are too much or too little. I think there's a been a rush to "friend" without thinking just to build up lists. I anticipate "friend" layoffs at some point, when enough sticky professional and personal situations arise.

3. Is the new transparency, interpersonal transparency? Keeping our private lives, private, is getting increasingly difficult. At what point do we all just say "screw it"? Employers will just have to understand that their employees sometimes get drunk in the Bahamas with their old college buddies, some have alternative lifestyles, some make inappropriate jokes (but they know not to do it at the office) and some occasionally complain about you among their friends. With 300 million blurring the lines and going strong on Facebook, it seems inevitable that weeding out people for any of the above will eventually leave you with a very small talent pool.

Last year's word of the year, by the way, was "hypermiling". Hypermiling is action taken to improve gas mileage; like inflating your tires or empyting your trunk to lighten up the vehicle.

WebWorkerDaily has published an interesting post on resistance to collaboration technology and how to overcome it. This kind of technology has made life easier for so many of us, especially those who are spread out across the globe, but you cannot reap the benefits without first taking the plunge. The blog writer lists the following as reasons why collaboration technology is worth it, to help you convince those who are unsure:

* Cost – Travel, when not impossible, is often more expensive than videoconferencing or IMs.
* Convenience – Technology allows you to communicate at any time through Twitter, text messaging, email, IMs or calls.
* Workplace pressure – The more your colleagues embrace this technology, the harder it will be for the others to stubbornly resist.
* Productivity benefits – Studies show that this type of technology helps you to get more done.
* Support – Offer support to colleagues who might be uncomfortable trying it out.
* Personalization – People think that face-to-face is essential, but the truth is that they can often be more informal via chat, tweets, etc.

When I was a kid people dreamed of videophones. Witness Dick Tracy as just one example. Now that everyone has the capability built into their computer, why is it that nobody seems to use it?

Curt helps people improve business execution.

It's two weeks until Cyber Monday. E-tailers are you ready?

Cyber Monday is, of course, what is touted to be the busiest day of the year for online sales. It comes the Monday after Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving that kicks off the holiday shopping season at bricks and mortar stores).

With a sour economy, retailers are bracing themselves for lackluster holiday sales.

Here's where, you, the online seller, have a distinct advantage over your storefront counterparts:

1. You don't have to worry about overstocking or understocking inventory, especially if you use drop shipping.

2. You don't have to worry about hiring up a bunch of college students to staff your stores that don't earn their keep if business is slower than you hoped.

3. You aren't limited to the economic limits of your locale. Some cities and towns are clearly more harder hit than others. A one company town that loses its one company; well, you get the idea... Selling online gives you access to markets allover the world.

4. You can use your site analytics to make you more nimble responding to what's moving and what isn't.

5. You have more ways to nudge shoppers to close the deal; online promotions, e-mail coupons, Facebook, MySpace, Google ads, mobile marketing, etc. It beats the hell out of the hometown Wednesday circular.

Feel encouraged? You should.

Facebook allows users to post photos of themselves and others, and some people are embarrassed by what their friends choose to share without their permission. TechNewsWorld recently published an article that focused on users who post very old photos from high school, for example, in which their friends are sporting bad hair and bad outfits. Some people can have a good laugh over such photos, but others do not share the humor, especially considering that a photo can hang around the internet long after it has been deleted. Facebook is not the only venue for such embarrassment – another site mentioned in the article is AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. However, the owner of the site recommends making sure all people involved consent before submitting any photos.

I have some examples of my own out there .... that I'm not going to show you.

Curt works for Journyx, which has solutions to help improve business execution.

The Apple faithful will never, never, never, never, never,

never,

let Microsoft live this one down.

One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics.

- Simon Aldous, Microsoft Group Manager

Thank you, Mr. Aldous, for saying out loud what we've known to be true for decades now.

A recent research study done in Taiwan has raised questions about internet addiction and its negative impact on children. The study sampled over 2,000 boys and girls in 7th grade and found a connection between mental health problems such as depression, ADHD, social phobia and aggression and internet addiction. Yet some people are unconvinced by the results, arguing that they are based on self-reported symptoms which are not always accurate. At the very least, it is opening up a dialogue about the paradigm shift this new generation is experiencing thanks to technology, and how to responsibly manage it.

There are programs available to help people get rid of drug addiction, but who's got predictable methodologies in place to eliminate online addiction (because sometimes I think I might need to give them a call myself.)

Curt works for Journyx, which has solutions for project management and execution.

Gadget Helpline took some 75,000 tech support calls between September 25th and October 23rd of this year. Typical numbers for them, no doubt. What they did with them is unique, however.

They analyzed (or should I write "analysed" since they are British) every call along gender lines breaking down trends.

Here's what they found:

Male callers: 64% didn't bother to read the instruction manual before calling for help.

Female callers: 24% didn't bother to read the instruction manual before calling for help.

Male callers: 12% just needed to plug in their gear to "resolve their issue".

Female callers: 7% ditto!

Female callers stayed on the phone with tech support 32% longer than male callers.

66% of tech support operators said they preferred dealing with female clients, anyway.

There are so many punchlines I could throw into this posting right about now. But, I'm going to take the high road. You can fill in your own.

Free WiFI! It's the new black, apparantly. Starting today, Google is offering free WiFI at 47 airports nationwide for the rest of the year.

Naturally there's a marketing angle to all of this.

The splash page when you sign on will come with two fever pitches:

1. A plea to give to three charities of Google's choosing (Engineers Without Borders, Climate Savers Computing Initiative and One Economy Corporation).

2. A "chance" to sign up for a plethora of Google services and to make Google your homepage.

While Google is schilling to air travelers without wings on the ground, EBay will be doing the same for Delta fliers (the splash page will take you to a special holiday shopping page on EBay - so much for the air mall magazine next to the barf bag in your seat pocket). As mentioned on this blog last month, Lexus just hosted a one week promotional for free WiFI on American Airlines.

Interesting! As traditional ad-based free content old media "dies" a little more each day, new media borrows a little more from their business model.

An article in ComputerWorld recently explored the effects a major tech project failure has on IT. Unfortunately, IT usually takes all of the blame for such failures, even if it is not all their fault. CIOs who put their name on a major project that then fails can even expect demotion. Chris Curran of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants says that “CIOs who enter into $200 million Oracle ERP projects know the stakes. These large programs- the multi-hundred-million-dollar, multiyear projects-they just create such a peak to fall from.”

The funny thing is that many of these companies can have their needs met by less complicated solutions that pose significantly lower risk in money and resources. Too many decision-makers rush straight into the arms of large vendors like Oracle, only to be disappointed and potentially put their jobs on the line.

Curt works for Journyx, a time and project management solutions company.

This is not about Republicans and Democrats (Thank Gawd!).

It's about Verizon and AT&T, actually.

Verizon has got AT&T mad as H-E-double toothpicks over its new "There's a map for that" ad campaign.

Just see for yourself below:

Take a good long look. This ad may have a short shelf life if AT&T has its way in court. Quicker than you can download an iPhone app, AT&T has already filed a lawsuit in an Atlanta, GA Federal District court complaining that its false advertising.

We'll see if a judge makes Verizon yank the ads.

In the meantime, here's an excerpt of a leaked memo from AT&T outlining talking points for employees.
How should I respond to customers who ask about the lawsuit?

While we cannot speculate on the complaint filed, it is a great opportunity to remind customers of AT&T’s many advantages that over 81 million customers enjoy, including:

Best Network The best coverage worldwide (More Bars in More PlacesTM). The nation’s fastest 3G network and the only national 3G carrier providing simultaneous voice and data usage. The most devices that work in the most places including Japan and South Korea (3G 2100 MHz device required). The nation’s largest wireless and wireline broadband provider. The nation’s largest company-owned and operated WiFi network with more than 20,000 hotspots, including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Barnes and Noble, as well as access to over 120,000 hotspots around the world. The leading provider of local and long distance voice services.

Greatest Value – The fairest value with Rollover® allowing customers to keep their unused minutes month to month.

Are we getting a little prickly, AT&T.

Memo to both Verizon and AT&T. Settle your differences about the truthiness (as Stephen Colbert would say) of the Verizon ads in court. But for the sake of a partisan weary public, please pick some other colors for your branding identification other than blue and red. Especially if you're going to use it to color code a U.S. map.

According to the Telegraph, researchers have designed the world's smallest motor, allowing a robot submarine the width of two human hairs to potentially enter a stroke victim's bloodstream and travel to sensitive parts of the body like the brain. A spokesperson from the Institute of Physics says this device could "save lives by reaching parts of the body, like a stroke-damaged cranial artery, that (other instruments) have previously been unable to reach ."

If robots are able to enter patient's bodies, what else could they potentially treat years from now?

My good buddy, Jim Tulenko, has been working for years on nuclear power sources for nano-bots and particularly the heat dissipation problems inherent in such devices. Good things are coming.

Related Links:

Robotice Surgical Assistants as Safe as Humans

Museum of American Heritage: Robots in Medicine

Curt is the founder & CEO of a timesheet software company in Austin, Texas.

It sounds like a well-intentioned bill. The U.S. House of Representatives has a piece of legislation making its way through (it passed the Financial Services Committee this week) that would make Internet Service Providers subject to fines for not blocking fraudulent web sites. Specifically, they are targeting bogus financial scams.

Well, who wouldn't want those kinds of sites blocked (besides the criminals committing actual scams)?

Once again, Washington looks like it is still living in the time of Washington.

Here's why this is a bad idea:

- When sites are blocked, it is inevitable that some sites get blocked that really don't fit the blocking criteria. What if it were your business's web site?

- If an ISP can be held responsible for giving access to rogue financial scam sites, then doesn't it open the door for it to be liable for any web site that inflects damages of any kind. A litigious minded ISP could end up blocking a whole lot of sites and content areas that you don't even realize is now off limits.

Discuss!

... Where No Man Has Gone Before

In June 2009, a remotely-operated robot submarine plunged 6.8 miles into the Pacific Ocean to film and collect samples of the Mariana Trench. (You can read about it in Discover Magazine.) You can even view these ocean depths yourself with the latest version of Google Earth.

Robots have also been to other planets. In fact, NASA has a Mars Exploration Program that uses robots called 'rovers' to scout out the planet. Two rovers were sent up in 2003 and you can track their location even to this day.

Related links:

Google Earth Version 5 goes underwater

NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission

Curt Finch writes for a project management blog as well.

Attention business travelers: Lexus is sponsoring free WiFI for American Airline passengers this week.

Here's the promo code: 2010LEXUSLS

You will have to sit through an advertisement for the new Lexus LS, however.

First time WiFi users on American can use the promo code: AATRYGOGO for free access one time only.

Air Trans is offering two-for-one WiFi sessions through the end of the year.

There's a hitch to that one, however.

Uh, you would have to fly Air Trans (Oops! Was that my outside voice?).

File this one under no strings attached:

Amtrak will be launching, next year, free WiFi service to Acela passengers on Northeast routes.

It was just as the creators of “The Jetsons” envisioned. In 2002, Helen Greiner invented the Roomba, a hands-off device that vacuums people's homes. While it can have the occasional glitch – namely, getting stuck under the couch or something – it is an ingenious invention that has become quite popular. Interestingly enough, some people have taken this technology to new levels by “hacking” the Roomba and allowing users to do a variety of things, including make it sing, drive it around, and connect it to the internet.

Not only is a robot in the home incredibly useful, but some people find it more endearing than other types of appliances. A 2007 MSNBC article stated that many people actually become emotionally attached to their Roombas, even going so far as to name them and to re-organize their homes to make them more Roomba-friendly (and avoid the couch problem). Does this mean that we are ready to embrace robots as a more integrated part of our lives in the future?

Curt Finch is the founder & CEO of a resource management software company.