Doriano Carta

I got tagged again. This time by Daniele Rossi whom I thought was a friend and paisan! Hmph. Just kidding. I don’t mind. It doesn’t seem to require as much work or input as some others so why not? So, here goes nothing.

Six random things about Pai?

1. Even though I’m a big computer geek, I love nature and the great outdoors. I especially love gazing at the tops of trees as they sway in the breeze. I blame John Travolta from the movie Phenomenon.

2. I’m a big time sports fan and a big sports trivia buff. I’ve won countless bar bets and big time prizes from sports radio call in shows. By the way, my on-air name is Paisano. I call 790 the zone AM on a regular basis.

3. I love writing all kinds of things. Fiction, non-fiction. Shortstories, poems, novels, screenplays, proverbs, etc.

4. Despite being a big macho Italian man I’m rather light on my feet as a dancer. I LOVE dancing and even enjoy watching those dance shows. My favorite being So You Think You Can Dance. Ssshhh!

5.  Really into cooking and enjoy learning new things from the Food Network! Love Rachel Ray and Giada! Anthony Bordane too!

6. Believe it or not, I love meeting new people more than finding cool new websites! GASP!

Here are the rules:

Okay, for those of you tagged, here (apparently) are the rules, as I was given:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

I will annoy, er I mean tag the following peeps:

MouseWords

HelenMosher

Chris Hebert

Cheryl Smith

Merlene

Jill Foster

In my latest piece for Mashable, “20+ Tools to Make Any Email Inbox More Social”, I shared ways you can enhance your email experience whether it’s Outlook, GMail, Thunderbird or Apple Mail. Some of the tools were covered in one of my posts about Outlook but most of them were new which made writing it interesting. It really is amazing how much you can do these days with your email client no matter which one it is.

I stumbled across this photo of Isaac Asimov, one my favorite authors of all-time and supposedly his first computer, Radio Shack’s TRS-80.
I don’t know how true all of this was but it’s such an interesting photo that I had to share it.

It’s important to note that Asimov was one of the most prolific writers in history.  However, can one assume that the very same technology that he wrote about actually helped him write faster and thus increase his body of work? If we are believe this ad then Isaac apparently ditched his trusty underwood typewriter for this new age machine which was released circa 1977. He was approximately 57 at that time and would go on to write for another 15 years until his passing in 1992 at age 72. He’s attributed to writing and/or editing over 500 books and some 9,000 letters! How many did he complete after getting introduced to the word processor and computer is anybody’s guess at this point.

Still, it makes you wonder how many more works we would all be blessed with if other great writers had the technology we take so much for granted these days. Of course, that’s assuming that technology actually does in fact increase a writer’s production volume. Some would argue that technology not only has impacted the quantity of writing but also the quality of writing thanks to grammar and spell checkers and all of the auto-insertion and auto-correction features available in word processors.

In any event, no matter what the real deal was behind this brilliant piece of marketing, I like the idea that Isaac Asimov, the man behind the I, Robot series actually used technology to create his masterpieces.

Note: Just for grins, here’s a clip from the major motion picture adaptation of Asimov’s "I, Robot" starring Will Smith.

I just discovered that hashtags have been dead since July 10, 2008 and hardly anyone even noticed it. I accidentally stumbled across the corpse when I tried to visit some of the recent hot hashtags that many people on twitter have been meticulously using such as #Gnomedex and #DNC08. At first, I thought they were down because there was just too much traffic. Then it kept failing days later. I decided to investigate further and wound up on their blog which explained what was happening.

In short, Twitter is the murderer. They made some major changes that impacted the way hashtags and many other third party services worked, in this case totally broke the connection and rendered hashtagging DOA. So the fine folks at DowntownCartel contacted Evan Williams and his twitter gang and politely asked if they could get an XMPP feed once again so they could fix hashtags once again for twitter’s members. They were told “sure thing, no problem” but here it is over a month later and still nothing. I contacted the hashtag crew and all they would say is that they are still waiting on Twitter and plan to resurrect hashtags once again as soon as they are given what they need from Twitter.

I understand that Twitter has many major problems to fix and hashtags are low on their priority list. However, from what I understand, enabling an XMPP feed is not that big a deal. Why wouldn’t they do this? It’s in Twitter’s best interest to allow people to use hashtags. It’s a tool that more and more members are using for big events especially.
This data would be useful and actually fun with the new features that hashtags have added like aggregated media which pulls images, videos, links and blog posts related to the hashtag into the same page with all of the tweets with that hashtag.

What Can We Do About it?
I’m writing this with the hope that it might get some attention and ultimately make its way to Evan Williams and his team at twitter. Maybe they’ll realize just how much their members want and need hashtags again and provide what’s needed in order to get this fixed once and for all. Let’s all let them know how much we want hashtags to come back from the dead. Tell Twitter how much you want hashtags back by posting your request on their GetSatisfaction feedback page. If enough of us speak up then they have to listen.

Note: Here’s a primer I did on twitter groups and hashtags