Why You Should Be on Twitter

Social networking web sites have this odd affect on you, in that they make you want to sell them to your friends.  It is the classic "network effect," of course.    The site becomes more valuable to me as more of my friends use it.

Having made my self-interest clear, please allow me to explain why you should be on Twitter.

Twitter is fun.  It is this little river of gossip and news and personal status updates flowing past you.  Most of it is trivia, but I often hear about genuinely important things from Twitter first.    

Twitter allows you to broadcast short, durable, asynchronous messages to all of your friends, while allowing you to follow the messages that are sent by your friends.  You can send and receives messages from their web site, instant messenger, SMS text message, or via a desktop application that knows how to talk to them via an API.   

If all of this sounds interesting to you, check me out here.

How to make the perfect cup of coffee

A couple of years ago, my wife bought me an espresso maker, and I switched over to drinking espresso.  Lately, I had felt the yearning to make a nice cup of coffee, which led me to remember the steps for making the perfect cup of coffee.

Equipment

• French press
• Coffee grinder
• Kettle or pot
• Coffee
  
• Filtered water

Step 1:  Grind the coffee

You will need two tablespoons of ground coffee for every eight ounces of coffee you intend to brew.  For best results, you should grind the coffee on the day you intend to use it.  You may store the ground coffee in an air tight canister, but try to avoid this whenever possible.  For a french press, you'll want coarsely ground coffee.

Measure out the ground coffee into your french press.

Step 2:  Boil the water

Boil the water in a pot or kettle.  Use about twice as much water as  you'll need for the coffee.  The moment the water reaches the boiling point, take it off the heat.  

Step 3:  Brew the coffee.

First, pour an ounce of water into your french press and let it sit for a half minute.  If you smell the coffee during this time, it will have a bitter aroma.  Pre-brewing like this eliminates some of the bitterness of your coffee.  Be sure to leave the top off the french press.

While this is happening, fill your cup or mug with the boiling water to heat it.  This will warm it so that when you pour your coffee in, it won't be chilled by a cold mug.

After your coffee is done pre-brewing, add the rest of the water, put the top on the french press, and let it brew for a few minutes, until it reaches the strength that you prefer.

Step 4:  Enjoy

Slowly press the plunger on your french press.  Dump the water out of your nicely warmed mug.  Pour the coffee.  Enjoy!

My Tumble Log

A while back, I started a tumble log, called MicroBlog, which I thought I ought to mention here. I have been using it as a place to post videos and quotes. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here.

Editing Is Highly Overrated

I used to think it was important to keep all of my information in easily editable form. Lately, I find myself moving away from using electronic documents to ordinary paper. I have even stopped using pencils.

As I slowly accumulate pages of hand written notes and drawings in various journals and drawing books, kept in chronological order, yet indexed by topic, I find I can learn a lot about how an idea evolved over time by flipping back to earlier pages. I will often rediscover things that I had learned in the past, which take on new significance in light of what I know now.

You do not get any of this, when you store knowledge in a Word document or text file, that you edit over and over again.

I Use This!

I use this.

Bruce Campbell in "Old Spice" Commercial

I love this advertisement!

Neologisms and Domain Names

Google has become a verb. I wonder how long it will be before other domain names become words. Will "to flickr" someday mean "to share pictures?" Probably not.

I think you need the perfect collision of a web site, used for a single purpose, a domain name that sounds like something meaningful, and excellent branding.

So what will be the next word to be added to the English language?