I’ve always been amazed at the artists who can make incredible imagery on the iPad using just their fingers. Rachel Smith, now with The Grove International posted a wonderful video on how to use tools on the iPad to make visual notes and diagrams. She then posts in amazing details how she took her notes into production to make the video on her blog. Definitely need to follow through after the video and check out her post.

Via {Ninmah Meets World}

Thanks to Katie Piatt for posting this on her blog as well.

Popplet is a great tool that I use, mostly for beta testing. However, if you had kept real data, chances are, you may be lost it. See their email below. Don’t let your guard down. Even backups can fail if the underlying system fails. Back up your data, especially if you’re using beta services.

Dear Popplet User,

As you know, Popplet’s servers went offline at 5:35 AM, Tuesday, February 1, 2011. We had been working hard on the problem when we received the first reports of missing data on the day before, but what we discovered was a much bigger issue than we had at first anticipated. As a result, we have kept Popplet offline until we could determine the scope of the data corruption in our system and, to our dismay, our backups as well.

Popplet has experienced a completely unanticipated database issue. Currently we are faced with the difficult proposition of either waiting longer to try to recover more data or bringing the system online with what we have recovered. We are doing everything we can to bring back all of your hard work, but we also want to bring the service online as soon as possible.

We do know this: data has been lost, and we apologize deeply for this.

We value your data and used best practices to preserve it and back it up, including using 3 persistent EC2 instances backed by EBS volumes, backed up every night to S3. In our worst case scenario, we imagined that we might lose 24 hours of data, but in this case, the corruption in our data was undetected and passed into our backup system.

We know that you have been relying on Popplet for your daily work, assignments and presentations. At Popplet, we use popplet ourselves for our own workflows, and we have lost our own data. Being in Beta, we knew we might run into some bumps in the road, but we truly didn’t expect to be putting our users in this situation. We wish more than anything to be able to retrieve everyone’s data and are working around the clock to find a solution. We want to be transparent about the severity of this issue and how hard we have been trying to get everything back.

We will send out a tweet when the system is back online. If you have lost data or are unable to log in to your account, email us at support@popplet.com by February 18 to report the issue. We will do what we can to make up for this serious incident.

Please accept our deepest apologies and we sincerely hope you stay with us and continue to use Popplet.

Sincerely,

The Popplet Team:
Jared, Albert, Phillip, Tom, Young, Steve and Asli

I get a lot of my ideas through reading and keeping up on a number of blogs. I checked my daily reads book marks and these are my top 10 (in no particular order):

1. Gizmodo/Lifehacker – Published by Gawker Media, this is the tech and productivity geek’s blog. A lot of the material is curated from other sites but they also publish a lot of good original content.
2. Jess3 – This is a young but kick ass awesome data visualization company ran by some really entrepreneurial geniuses. They make really amazing graphics and really make data fun.
3. Viz Think – This is the visual thinking community. Content is a little slow but when they post, it’s really valuable. The archives hold a lot of information on visual thinking and visual design.
4. xBlog - Now a part of the Dachis Group, this is the xplane blog. The visual thinking company ran by Dave Grey continues to publish invaluable thoughts on business modeling and change through visual language.
5. Duarte - Published by Nancy Duarte, author of Slide:ology. She posts some really useful information here.
6. Swiss Miss – Swiss designer living in NYC, Tina finds some of the neatest design examples and innovative products. She posts a lot which is good to keep entertained.
7. 99% – Published by Behance, they publish cutting edge ideas on a variety of topics. Very high quality.
8. Thinking for a Living – This is sort of a online web magazine with very well written content. The navigation of the site is amazing and a lot of work goes into generating their material.
9. Gamestorming - Another Dave Grey site, this blog/forum contains the collective knowledge of business gamers out there.
10. Change This – They curate some of the best presentations and documents on a variety of subjects. All the documents can be downloaded in either Power Point or PDF.

Any other sites you would recommend?

The data you post on Facebook is yours. You’re entitled to keep a copy of it for your reference. As an experiment, I was curious what and how much data I have on Facebook. Just in case I wanted to shut down my account, I wanted to keep a backup copy.

To download your data, go to Account and select Account Settings.

Under the settings tab, click on learn more in the Download Your Information section.

Facebook then gives you a long warning about what you’re about to do. This will download a lot of your information including posts, photos, and comments. For some people, it’s is a potential security risk. This data should be stored somewhere safe. Who knows what we have been posting over the years. Imagine when this data is subpoenaed. How much potential incriminating data could be stored. A very scary thought.

Click the green Download button when you’re done reading the warning.

Facebook will then have another warning. It’ll take a lot of heavy lifting on Facebook’s side to compile all the data. Click the green Download button when you’re done reading this warning again.

When you click the green download button, this message will appear.

According to Facebook, here is what is included in the file:

• Your profile information (e.g., your contact information, interests, groups)
• Wall posts and content that you and your friends have posted to your profile
• Photos and videos that you have uploaded to your account
• Your friend list
• Notes you have created
• Events to which you have RSVP’d
• Your sent and received messages
• Any comments that you and your friends have made on your Wall posts, photos, and other profile content

It took approximately 30 minutes for Facebook to process and package my data. I never received the email notification but was able to download the file by following the above steps. The file was 40MB for me, zipped. It contained an index file that neatly links all my photos, friends, notes, etc. It was very scary to scroll down and see notes and posts going back to 2005.

Out of curiosity, I tried this service to visualize my Linkedin network. Compared to other maps I’ve seen, it appears that first, I have a relatively small network. Second, my network is in discrete groups. The colors represents certain groups. For example, my Pepperdine colleagues. This discrete image also shows that most of my connections are not connected to each other. Maybe some introductions are in order.

Give yours a try at LinkedIn Labs.

Many people sign up for a free blog at WordPress.com or Blogger.com. They’ll typically have domains such as danielscoolpage.wordpress.com. While that’s fine, why not take the next step and host your blog yourself. It gives you more control and allows you to make custom modification. Additionally, your data is stored on your space instead of some company’s servers.

Consider this: pictures, videos, and text posted on Facebook and free blogs resides on someone else’s space. How easy can you take that data with you. Try it. It may be very difficult or impossible. With a self-hosted blog, you can back up your database, download it, and take it with you.

Here is a step by step on how do create your own blog. It’s not meant as a comprehensive guide to everything because that would be replicating tutorials that already exist. Google it.

Step 1. Choose a Web Host

There are thousands of different web hosts out there that will provide you with web disk space and access to your files. Some range from the very simplistic while others host hardware that you own. I personally recommend Dreamhost and have been a customer since 2004. They provide unlimited disk space (for web files), 50GB of personal backup space, automatic backups, great technical support, and one-click installs. The latter will come in handy when you’re trying to install WordPress. The Dreamhost one-click version allows you to follow a simple form to install WordPress. You can even choose to have Dreamhost update the software for you without manual intervention.

You’re free to choose whichever host you prefer. If you’d like to go the Dreamhost route, I’m offering a $59.40 discount coupon code 5BUCKS12. Just enter that when signing up and get one full year for only $60, that’s $5 a month. In full disclosure, I receive $97 from Dreamhost when you sign up. The coupon I’m offering takes $59.40 away from my revenues and gives it to you in the form of a coupon.

Step 2. Register for a Domain Name

Finding a domain name that’s available can be difficult. Almost any dictionary word out there has been already registered by someone. However, many are still available. Have a brainstorming session to figure out what you can register, then go to Domize for real time search. I don’t have a specific recommendation but there are a number of sites that specialize in helping you find domain names. Do a Google search. It’s usually easier to find a obscure domain name, something with numbers, or misspellings of common words.

Once you find your domain name, you’ll want to register it with your host. You can also register it with a number of other registrars out there such as GoDaddy.com. I recommend keeping your domain names registered with your host for ease of setup.

Step 3. Install WordPress

You can download WordPress by going to wordpress.org. Instead, I suggest you find a webhost that will install it for you. In this example, Dreamhost has WordPress as a “one-click” install. After filling in a short form, Dreamhost will automatically install WordPress and even automatically update for you as new updates come.

The form will ask you to create a new database. What is that? The database is a SQL (Structured Query Database) database. Don’t get too caught up on the technical aspects of that. It’s simply a repository for all the data you will be generating. Each post, each image, each category, title, etc. will be stored in that database.

Step 4. Creating Your First Blog

Once you follow the steps, that’s it. Your blog is live. It’ll start out with a first post of sorts. Play around with the themes, pick one that you find visually attractive. Don’t worry too much on making it pretty yet. Start thinking of the following:

• Structure – how do you want to organize your blog. Will you have categories of topics? Will you use tags to sort your posts? Will you use pages for static information? I suggest drafting a design before hand. For example, in my blog, I have a set of categories I use to organize my posts. I don’t use tags as a decision I made a long time ago. If I were to want to use tags today, I would have to either go back and tag all my posts, or choose to only tag going forward. That is why you should design your structure before going too far ahead. Changes down the road will be labor intensive.
• Layout – Do you want one column, two, or three? Do you need a sidebar?
• Comments – Will you allow people to post comments? Who can post? Do you want to moderate the comments before they’re published?

Step 5. Maintaining Your Blog

Maintaining your blog is a matter of creating a schedule and plan to write your articles or posts. How often do you want to write? Consider using a calendar to schedule your posts. On the matter of security, be careful with using plugins. Some can expose your site to risks. Update your WordPress often. Finally, use a secure password. Don’t let hackers break into your site and spam or destroy your site.

If you’re wondering how all these young people are always on and always connected, here are a few ways they do that.

• Using mobile devices – They use their smartphones that come with social media apps. This makes updating, uploading photos, and sharing much faster, especially on the go.
• By text message – They use text messages, a lot. Texting is forgiving of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Just mash the buttons and get the thing out.
• Using specialized software – They use software like TweetDeck to monitor tweets. They can slice their streams up into different subjects. Using software, they can also access multiple accounts and make updates.
• Multi-task – They can do more than one thing at a time. They rarely do only one activity at a time. Eating together means a mix conversation of live talking with interactions on their phones.
• Multiple windows - Windows and Macs allow more than one application open at a time. With a second monitor, it makes it even easier to keep an eye on things.
• Automation - Social media sites can be integrated. A post on one site can automatically send a post on another site. They’re not posting one account at a time.

Intersect is an up and coming social network. I’ve been beta testing the site with an invitation from @davidhoang and @moniguzman. Their biggest challenge will be getting people past the learning curve. It’s simple like Tumblr, or technically easy like Posterous. It’s not a blog. It’s not Facebook. It’s not a photosharing site. You don’t “friend” people and you don’t follow people.

Intersect is based on two things: Going to the intersection of Time and a Place.

Before I give you a little tour of the site, let me first mention that this is still in beta. The process, bugs, and kinks are still being worked out.

Below is an image of the timeline. Using the [+] and [-] buttons, you can zoom in or out of the timeline, down to 5 minute increments. Stories can be told using very specific timelines or approximations such as a year.

It’s not linear like a blog. It’s based on a timeline that you can zoom in and out. Think of Google Finance where you can view a stock price on various times frames. Your posts can be specific down to the minute, or broad and general like in a year. Each post can contain photos, video, time and date, place, participants, tags, and a text description. It’s more like telling a story. Unlike a blog, Intersect guides you through all the data that makes a good journalistic story.

What’s great about Intersect

• It’s about telling cohesive story and not randomly posting blurbs.
• It connects you closer to other people.
• Stories connect.
• It’s more than blogging and it’s more than other social networks.

What needs to improve

• There is a steep learning curve. It uses new terms and requires many more data fields.
• It requires work. It’s not twitter where you can make short posts during the day. This is a sit down and think about it journal.
• There aren’t many users yet due to the beta state. If this site gets adopted by users, it could be a really useful forum.

Conclusion

I really could see Intersect replacing my blog and other sites. It’s a journal that can be public, private, or both. More importantly, it’s a recollection of stories with meaning and purpose. It’s documenting what’s happening. Unlike a blog, it’s forcing you to really be a journalist, rather than a casual writer. You need to recollect the who’s and where’s and what’s and there are specific fields for capturing such information. The timeline also shows that stories are not linear like a blog. They connect with other stories. They exist in short and long frequencies.

Keep an eye out, sign up for the beta, or wait for the official release. Either way, this is going to be big.

Learning by example is one of the best ways to become good at something. It’s one thing to teach basic concepts and principles, it’s another to actually do it.

One of my newly favorite sites is note&point. It’s a wonderfully curated collection of powerful slides and presentations on a number of subjects. Not all suits my taste, but it gives me inspiration on new ways of presenting information.

Communication Patterns via {note&point}

My personal system relies heavily on Evernote. When I first heard of Springpad, my heart dropped. At first glance, they seem to be very similar services. However, as I play around more with Springpad, they are different but not necessarily complimentary services. First, both Evernote and Springpad requires an input point. They all use mobile devices to snap pictures, upload ideas and notes. If you plan on using both systems, you’ll have to enter data twice. As of now, there’s no integration points.

Below is an example of my Springpad. The “All My Stuff” notebook contains everything. There’s a “Friends Stuff” notebook for sharing things. Finally, I created two notebooks to test the service.

From a notebook, you can do three things:

1. Add  a Note
2. Add a Task
3. Look it up

In the notebook, it looks like a typical notebook style page with filters and search.

This is where Springpad differs from Evernote. Springpad is designed to be your personal assistant. As you input notes, documents, images, information, Springpad scans it, and develops updates customized to your data. They’re looking for good deals, price drops, news, useful links, etc. It also can integrate with your Google calendar and update your data as well. I haven’t put enough data into Springpad to see these types of results yet so I can vouch on the quality of the recommendations. Evernote seems to be a better document management system and designed to store your documents.

I don’t think I’ll be able to do a full blown comparison of Springpad vs Evernote (Google it). Instead, I’m going to keep trying it out, duel entry some info and see which product provides. In the end, I think I’ll need to commit to just one service.