Sue-Point-Oh!

You may have noticed that I changed the name of my blog from “the art of eating a pomegranate” to “Sue Point oh!”. I had to make the name change because I was looking at my Google Analytics and noticed that most of my Google visitors arrived by searching for “pomegranate eating” and I felt like I was being misleading. So now I’ve adopted this cheezy new title - my name does rhyme with “two” and I felt that I had the moral obligation to do it. If people start complaining of feeling sick to their stomach by the cheesiness of it all then I will find something a bit less cutesie.

Now, back to those pomegranates - November is national pomegranate month and pomegranates are all the rage right now for their health benefits. Here is a link to the instructional website I made with tips on how to open, juice, and eat a pomegranate.

No, that ‘J’ is not for “Jesus”, its for “Jacob Nielsen”.

Read what JN has to say regarding the 1:9:90 rule termed “participatory inequality”. I love that the 90% group is tagged “lurkers”!

Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs Contributers on Online Communities.

So apparently the 80:20 rule is dead (20% of your customers provide 80% of your business of some version of that).  The new ruler is the 1:9:90 rule that is specifically applicable to the new web 2.0 sites.

1% of users are actual producers (like uploading pictures to YouTube/FlickR)

9% of users are highly involved participators (tagging, commenting, creating favorites)

90% are just your good old-fashioned voyeurs who just review the content but don’t add any of their own or participate in the tagging.

I think this rule has serious implications for businesses who decide they will start a new social network system or user-created content area for their customers.  If they expect a majority of their customers to hop onboard and start adding content they will be very disappointed.

So the real question here is what motivates those 10% who are heavy contributers?  How can we get more people on board?   Is it a lack of time?  Is it the technological hurdle of using the system?  Fear or being exposed?  Lack of confidence?

What are you thoughts?

CraigStats!

I’m in the process of looking for a new apartment in San Francisco and feeling quite forlorn because there are very vacant apartments and tons of qualified tenants at Open House. Apparently the market now is similar to how it was during the dot-com boom where one-bedrooms in lowest low of Lower Haight are renting for $1800.00.

Thanks to CraigStats I can now put graphs and visuals to the depression that is searching for an apartment in San Francisco. This site uses apartment listing data from CraigsList and the Google Maps API technology. One of the best features of this site are the heat maps overlaid on the city showing density for high rents, vacancies, postings, etc. Apparently NYC, LA and Seattle are next on the list to receive the CraigStats treatment.

On another note - what’s up with the “I crotch San Francisco” logo at the top right of this page? What does that mean? I’m willing to accept “heart” as a verb because it sounds cute, like a puppy, “I heart NYC” but I’m not sold on this crotch business.

A great visual demonstration of how wikis work by Common Craft. They have a series of web 2.0 terms in “plain english”. This little three minute video is very engaging and great way to give people a quick introduction to wikis.

Best parts: The humming and snapping!

If you are using IE you are out of luck but you Firefox users reading my blog now have the chance to choose the color theme for this blog by clicking on the small color squares in the upper-right. Feeling down, go for the blue! Trying to get in the mood for the environmental theme of this year’s Burning Man, go ahead and choose green! This is a really great skittles candy inspired theme that also includes the possibility to make it fixed or fluid width. Can’t quite seem to figure out how to get over the IE hurdle but I shall persevere because it’s important for me to provide my blog readers with color choices.

I can’t explain why but I absolutely love those eHarmony commercials. I guess it’s because can uplift the spirits, make you believe in love again, and reaffirm that it’s OK to spend so much time on the Internet in just a 30 second spot. I guess that’s why I found thie Facebook Parody done in the eHarmony so funny! Since traveling I’ve started using this site a lot more to connect with people I’ve met while traveling and some of my early adopters/still in school friends back home. After logging on for a twenty minute session of poking, wall writing, status changing, iLiking and gift giving I logoff and feel a big silly about the way I just spent my time. This little video showed me that I’m not alone in realizing how it’s a little bit ridiculous but we love it anyways!

First of all, I aplogise for using the cliche “2.0″ to follow a post about the latest technology.  Forgive me!  So I am traveling in Greece and Turkey right now (blog: susancline.wordpress.com) and I’m dying to talk to some of my nerds about the tech world of backpacking.  I did the western European thing back in 2001 and some or eastern Europe in 2003 and my oh my, some things have changed.  Here are some of the things I’ve noted from staying in hostels around Greece and meeting other backpackers:

• Tired: “We have internet at this hostel” Wired: “We have wireless.
  The new must have features for hostels and internet cafes is to offer wireless.  A lot of backpackers are traveling with their laptops these days.  That’s right, they are carting them around from hostel, to train, to hostel, to ferry, etc.  I wonder how they feel about the whole security thing but perhaps the cost of a laptop is somewhat negligible these days.
• “What myspace?  Tag me on facebook”.  Perhaps it’s just because I’ve been meeting a lot of university students but even the older generation is hip to Facebook and no one is talking MySpace.  A common line when someone is snapping a photo - “Please don’t tag me on Facebook”. 
• I don’t know how they all exist but there seem to be about 250 different websites that book hostels.  It’s a really great way to easily find a hostel, reserve and pay online.  A lot of these websites also employ the 2.0 aspect of having other users rate the hostels and suggest local activities.   My favorites are hostelworld.com, hostels.com and hostelz.com

I like random facts, random food and random quotes so naturally I am drawn to the “Random Article” page in Wikipedia. You never know what you are gonna get and it may expand your mind a bit. Please reply with a comment to this blog if you find a particularly “random” article. I was told that most random articles lead you to pages about Japanese cartoon characters but most of what I found were song titles.

Give it a whirl! Visit a Random Wikipedia Article

What else would I do with an Instructional Technology degree, duh!!