Wolfram Alpha

If you like to know stuff, you need to try Wolfram/Alpha. Here's a widget to try:



I'm just now trying out this beta widget for fun. If it doesn't work, try the link to the site. It's interesting.

Monetizing Social Media

I have followers who are obviously only following me in the hopes that I will follow them and then buy their product or service. They are using social media just to get people to buy their stuff. Others try to monetize social media by placing advertising on their content.Hopefully they have some content worth monetizing. I just read an article stating that some of the social media IPO's are down as much as 30-40% over their initial prices. The markets are, obviously, unsure of the profit potential of social media.

I find that promoted posts appearing in my stream irritate me much the same as SPAM does in e-mail. Only, this time, I can't avoid them by routing them to a SPAM folder. They are there for me to read -- like I'm really interested in the black friday specials from . . . or the weekly sales from . . . or getting my . . . adjusted. Nope, I'm not. We'll see how social media is monitized in the future as platforms like Facebook are utilized by more and more commercial enterprises.

Finding Friends -- Does it HAVE to be this Hard?

I don't have a lot of friends on Facebook. In fact, my kids laugh at me. But I tried to find a couple of people today and it was difficult. You can put their names into the search box, but, unless they have an extremely rare name, you get hundreds of returns and can't filter them by any other criteria. You can "Find Friends" and enter all sorts of criteria, except the most important one, their NAME. Hey Facebook. How about combining the two in to something really useful?

You shouldn't do everything just because it's available . . . (paraphrase from Louis CK on Conan)

I saw this and thought, "yeah, he's right" Louis hates Twitter. He has an account just so he can tell everyone how much, it seems. He's right about the fact that you shouldn't do everything just because it's available. The idea is to experience life. But it seems that more and more, recording life is experiencing life. Turn off your device and live.