Christopher Carfi

"Hashtags" are a simple way to make things you are writing (or photographing, or video-ing) more findable on the web.  There's no science to hashtags, they are simply keywords that one adds to a blog post or Twitter tweet (or photo, etc.) to make it more findable later.

Here is a quick primer on hashtags from Amy Gahran.  (And the patron of all all this organic tagging stuff, which is often called a "folksonomy," is Thomas Vander Wal, who you should be following if you're not.)

(click on the image to enlarge)

What was so interesting is that nine of the top ten searches currently trending on http://search.twitter.com are for hashtags, instead of "natural" words.  In fact, the only "natural" search right now is for "iPhone."

So What?

No big rocket science here, but an interesting bit for sure.  Individuals are starting to organically "tag" the things they are creating on the web so that others can find it.  And, apparently, people are starting to search on these tags in greater numbers, at least according to the trend that we're seeing right now.

If you are representing an organization…are you tagging things so that your customers can find them?

If you are running a conference…do you have an "agreed upon" hashtag that all who are chronicling it are using, so that those in the room (and on the web) can find all of the great things that are being created there?

If you are an individual…are you tagging your support issues with vendors that you are publicly documenting (you are doing that, right?) with tags so that vendors can find YOU, instead of you going to them?

Guitar Store
Originally uploaded by hey mr glen.

Absolutely brilliant. From the Flickr page where this was found:

“So, this picture has made it to the front page of Digg and Reddit so I thought I would add a little bit of extra information. The store is called The Guitar Store and it is on Commercial Road opposite Southampton Central railway station, Southampton, England.”

The take-away from this: being interesting — and therefore buzz-worthy — doesn’t need to be expensive.

Take a chance.

Act on the impulse.

Very cool morning.  The Tour of California professional bike race came screaming through Half Moon Bay this morning in the rain.  Grabbed a couple of quick vids.

There were two packs of riders.  The first was a group of about ten riders in the "break away" group, and then the rest was the "peloton" who came through a couple a minutes later.  (Lance Armstrong was in the peloton.)  This was before they went down through the rest of Half Moon Bay and then up the hill to Skyline, before coming back to Highway 1 for the sprint to the finish in Santa Cruz.  Three vids in this playlist: the set up just before the riders came through, the leaders, and the peloton.

(RSS readers click here to see the vids.)

There's some good tracking of the race going on at the live feed site.

Some great commentary from David Armano on the customer-filmed, customer-edited, customer-scored "Trader Joe's Ad."  David's thoughts are here.

The key takeaway:

Shot of the day from friend and San Francisco übershooter Chuck Revell. 

(Nice snap, Chuck!)

Kevin Kelly: "One Amish-man told me that the problem with phones, pagers, and PDAs
(yes he knew about them) was that 'you got messages rather than
conversations.' That's about as an accurate summation of our times as
any." [emphasis added]
link

Fave author Christopher Moore just came out with his new book, Fool. (Nutshell: King Lear told from the point of view from the court jester, in Moore's distinctive style.)  So, being the fanboys and fangirls that we are, we built a Ventana for the occasion.  Click on the pic to check it out.  (Works on the iPhone, as a widget, on other mobile devices, etc.)

(Also went to the book signing last night…it was packed.)

Does what you are delivering to your customers have personality?

Singapore hotel experiments with letting customers set their own price for rooms.  Neat.  (link)

"The new Ibis Singapore on Bencoolen hotel just last week launched a promotion that lets guests choose the rate they want to pay.

Rooms at the 538-room economy hotel, which opens this week in the
heart of Singapore, are typically priced starting at SGD138 per room
including free wifi. Through March 15, however, the pay-what-you-want
competition runs during a designated portion of each day, as announced
on the hotel's site. Interested consumers need only sign up as members
and make a bid for the price they'd like to pay during one of the
announced promotion times. If they're one of the first to bid, they can
win a night at the hotel at exactly the price they offered. Bids have
gone as high as SGD100, and the first promotional rooms sold out within
minutes of the contest's launch last Wednesday, according to a report
in the Sydney Morning Herald."

Hat tip: Judi

Just back from Atlanta, and the outstanding SoCon conference.  What a rush!

• Over 300 attendees
• Rampant, raucous live-Twittering all about #socon09
• Announcement of the $1.5MM grant to Kennesaw to develop "sustainable journalism models"

A number of folks asked for the slides from the keynote.  I've uploaded them here, and they are embedded below as well.

Others commenting on the event:

• Amber Rhea
• Jon Gatrell
• Dan Greenfield
• TechDrawl
• Sherry Heyl
  
• Leonard Witt
• Tessa
• GrabbingSand

And some great pictures here from Josh Hallett (including the one above).