This weekend, we cowered to think that major cities on the American east coast would be pummeled by Hurricane Irene. We watched CNN and Twitter to see how things were going. Geolocation tools like Foursquare could have been amazing during a natural disaster like Irene. Imagine if any check-in tagged with #Irene were pulled onto ...

I like Andy Sernovitz from GasPedal.com. Andy seemed completely straightforward when I spoke to him on the phone, and we both agree that the humanizing elements of social media allow us to break barriers of trust so necessary in sales and marketing. Andy and the crew at GasPedal help large companies leverage social media. As ...

Barack Obama finally made some mention in his State of the Union that hey, perhaps investing in math and sciences could be good for this country. I’ve been waiting for a speech challenging us to conquer both the energy problem and pushing innovation in computer sciences and biotechnology since Obama started office. When Kennedy declared ...

Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed the new Facebook format in a 60 Minutes interview. The new profile puts front and center 1.) a basic overview of who that person is 2.) pictures of them and 3.) the Likes that you, the viewer, have in common with that person: Apparently, Marshall Kirkpatrick and I both like “The ...

The other day, Jeremiah Owyang asked if people with high Klout scores should get preferential treatment by brands. Apparently the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas allows you to use your Klout score to get into certain special parts of their hotel. Umm… Let’s put this in perspective here. Social media guru and honorary member of ...

So Wired decided to publish this pair of breasts on their cover. After seeing it, Texas State’s Cindy Royal declared that after decades of reading Wired magazines and not seeing much about women who impress men with their brains and not their bods, she was breaking up with Wired. By the way, I hate seeing ...

Dear Gowalla, When I first met you at South by Southwest Interactive, I thought you looked pretty cute in your Mini Clubman. It was nice to crush out on a local social network instead of one from San Francisco or New York. As time goes by though, I am not sure I have it in ...

So I spent this past week at TechCrunch Disrupt. I must say, I had a great time and it reinvigorated my interest in technology and its benefit to people around the world. After seeing Eric Schmidt and Beth Comstock speak and just hearing the conversations in the hallways, I realize we are truly blessed to ...

What?!?! You have to BUY Facebook Fans? That’s preposterous. No it’s not. Consumers are lazy and often don’t care about you. You give them service, they give you money. The transaction has ended. They are under no obligation to fan you, friend you, or do anything beyond this. In some way, you will have to ...

Yesterday, Facebook launched Facebook Places. Not only can you broadcast your location to your Facebook friends, but your friends can tag your location for others to see unless you uncheck this setting. It’s strange how we lump so many of our contacts in one place. Some of my contacts on Facebook are professional. They are ...