Randy Pausch

Today, Randy Pausch passed away. I blogged about his "Last Lecture" a couple months ago. In the final months of his life, he touched more people than most of us will ever touch in our entire lifetimes. He taught us how to live and how to look at life differently. Thank you, Randy.

Google Opens Up Knol

It's been a couple months since I have done a blog post (too busy starting a company) but today's announcement by Google on the general availability of Knol is one that I can't let slip by. Back in December when Google originally announced Knol, I did a blog post because I think it could be an enabler 0f what I have been calling "knowledge networking". It will be interesting to monitor how Knol is used and whether the author-centric nature of it leads to behavior that is different than how other services like Wikipedia are used.

The Mainstreaming of Micro-Blogging

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of talk in the tech blogosphere about when, if ever, Twitter will become mainstream. I added my two-cents worth to the conversation by saying there needs to be more purpose around the service before it goes mainstream (assuming they will fix their stability problems). As I think about this more, I believe the significant trend has less to do about Twitter and more to do about micro-blogging emerging as a mainstream concept.

The reasons I believe micro-blogging will become mainstream are similar to the reasons Twitter has become popular:

• It is easy for people to think and type/text in bite-sized (or in the case of Twitter, 140-character sized) chunks.
• The adoption of smartphones -- and the iPhone in particular -- has brought text-messaging to a new group of users (beyond the Gen Y'ers who grew up with text-messaging as a primary means of communications).

Twitter is not the only service out there that supports micro-blogging; most notably, Facebook and MySpace also do so with their status updates. I think we are just at the tip of the iceberg and I expect we will see many more services ride the micro-blogging trend in the future.

The Last Lecture

I just read a WSJ article about Randy Pausch's "last lecture" and I was reminded how wonderful it was. I thought I blogged about it previously but realized I didn't (I had sent an email about it to a bunch of my friends). It continues to be one of those things that rise "above the noise" in my mind so I would be remiss if I didn't write a post about it. The email I originally sent to my friends is below. If you haven't seen the lecture, it is time well spent.

Many of you may have heard about the “last lecture” given by Randy Pausch. For those of you who haven’t…

Randy is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Recently he was told that he has pancreatic cancer and only has months to live. He is 46 years old. He was asked by Carnegie Mellon to give his “last lecture”. The lecture is being viewed by many people over the Internet and the Wall Street Journal had a recent article on people’s reaction to his lecture.

If you want to view his lecture, it can be seen here.

The entire video is quite long – about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I recommend viewing at least some of the video. Randy shares some life lessons that we all can use, especially those of us who are parents. It is also impressive to see how he is dealing with “the cards he has been dealt”.

To help you “fast forward” through portions of the video, here’s a quick overview…

After an introduction given by a colleague and friend at Electronic Arts, Randy’s lecture is divided into three sections:

• His childhood dreams – He lists his childhood dreams and how he has “checked off” most of them.
• How he has enabled others to accomplish their dreams – This section is primarily the work he has done as a professor. Randy’s specialty is virtual reality. If you aren't interested in this stuff, this is one section you could skip.
• Lessons learned – In this section, he talks about the important people in his life and some of the lessons he has learned along the way. At the beginning of this section, he talks about his parents and the freedom they gave him to do the things he wanted to do. This section starts at about 1 hour and 3 minutes.

After the lecture, a few people pay tributes to Randy. Compared to a funeral, where people say wonderful things about a person after they have died, this is what I have always thought should happen instead – have people say wonderful things about a person while a person is still around and can feel the appreciation.

Enjoy…

Perry

A Purposeful - and Fun - Application of Twitter

Yesterday, I did a post where I argued that in order for Twitter to become mainstream, it needs to have a more clearly defined purpose. Well today, TechCrunch did a post on Project Vino, an Australian wine site focused on community recommendations, and their Twitter Wine Tasting.

Twelve prominent Australian Twitter users will take part in an evolutionary new twist on the the traditional wine tasting format. What separates this wine tasting is that the participants could be anywhere in the world. They could be in front of their computer at home or on their mobile phone in middle of the Sturt Desert. All will be connected in real-time however by the latest and greatest online communication tool - Twitter.

This is a step in the "purposeful" direction I discussed in my post yesterday. As I find other "purposeful" applications of Twitter, I will make posts about them.