Category: Uncategorized

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You’re The Man Now, Dog!

SeanTake three things:

  • An image file
  • A short sound clip
  • A line of text

Put them all together. Shaken, not stirred.

What you have is You’re The Man Now, Dog!, a great example of co-creation. (The name of the site comes from the Sean Connery line here.) From the site:

YTMND, an acronym for “You’re The Man Now, Dog!”, is a website community that centers around the creation of YTMNDs, which are pages featuring a juxtaposition of a single image, optionally animated or tiled, along with large zooming text and a looping sound file. YTMND is also the general term used to describe any such site.

That’s what it is. Here’s why it is:

“YTMND is a site created for the purpose of furthering the creativity of its users. It stems from an idea that, using sound, and image, and some text, the users can convey a point, funny, political, or otherwise, to the general media.”

Simple. And spot-on.

Bonus link: Axl Rose meets Finding Nemo (yes, you read that correctly)

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Social Networking Comes To Healthcare

Was just sent a pointer to a solid article from the Wall Street Journal, “Social Networking Comes To Healthcare.” The key ‘graph:

“The social-networking revolution is coming to health care, at the same time that new Internet technologies and software programs are making it easier than ever for consumers to find timely, personalized health information online. Patients who once connected mainly through email discussion groups and chat rooms are building more sophisticated virtual communities that enable them to share information about treatment and coping and build a personal network of friends.”

Interestingly, most of the social networking connections cited were of the patient-to-patient variety, with minimal mention of the patient-provider relationship. That is a definite opportunity area.

(Hat Tip: Charles Donovan)

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TypePad Menus (And Getting Rid Of That Annoying Border)

Have been doing some development work for a business blogging customer of ours, and again need to send out mad props (that’s what the kids these days say, right?) to John T. Unger and his Typepad Hacks site. A treasure trove!

One very useful bit…putting in active menus into the header. Here’s how to do it:

How to add a horizontal menu to a TypePad blog

And other thing…want to get rid of that annoying border around your TypePad blog’s header? One way to do it is to make the “background” of the header graphic a complementary color to the header graphic, like this. However, John pointed out a little trick that can just make the border simply go away. In the Design tab of your blog, you will see a link that says “Edit Custom CSS” (n.b. it looks like you need to be a Pro member to do this). In the Custom CSS frame, simply put this little chunk of code (“edit the height attribute and the background-image: url, of course,” John adds):

/* banner image */

#banner
{
height: 110px;
background-image:
url(“http://johntunger.typepad.com/typepadhacks/Typepadhackslogo.gif”);
background-position: 0px 0px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
text-align: left;
}

Poof! Border-be-gone.

Gracias, hermano!

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Mavericks: Tick…Tick…Tick…


originally uploaded by deborah lattimore.

Yes, that little speck in the shot is a surfer.

Half Moon Bay is the home of Mavericks, one of the most grueling big wave rides on the planet. The break is just up the coast from our place, about four miles or so.

Every year, the big wave contest “window” opens up on January 1st, and the 24 surfers who are going to compete go on call. What that means is the contest organizers watch the waves, and swell, and weather patterns, and when everything aligns just so, the contest goes live. At that point, the 24 chosen ones have just 24 hours to get to Half Moon Bay from wherever they are on the planet, get into their wetsuits, and ride the giants.

More on Mavericks here.