21July2008
Posted by Charley under: Mobile; Tech and design; Thoughts.
First, what is Twitter? Indeed it’s a micro-blogging platform. Quick updates can be sent to the service via a few different mediums (Text message, IM etc.). Subscribers can then consume the updates using their own medium of chose (RSS, API etc.). For most users the experience lands somewhere between a chat room and a blog. It’s often used to serve two separate purposes, 1) group communication and 2) personal publishing.
Here are some real world ‘group comunication‘ examples I’ve contributed:
- Comment (Describing my feelings to a specific person)
- Response (To a friend who had asked about my lunch plans)
And here are some ‘personal publishing‘ Tweets:
Remember that these two forms of communication aren’t by any means new to the internet (mIRC, BB’s etc.). By definition, there are shifts in trends and fads. This all makes me wonder as the spammers crawl in, will Twitter be used more for communities or publishing? My gut sense says the latter as it generally serves up higher grade content.
22April2008
Posted by Charley under: Life.
For the first time in my life I started experiencing good ol’ average back pain during college. My brother Kirt, who was then working at a running store, explained it might have something to do with my battered sk8 shoes. The summer of graduation I took some of my newly found cash and went on a hunt for the perfect pair of shoes.
They had to be…
- Very supportive as well as comfortable
- Work well for walking and/or running as needed
- Colorful and unique
- Cheap
Considering ‘cheap’ was at the bottom of the list, I chose the New Balance 991. Considering ‘colorful and unique’ was just above ‘cheap’, I selected the green ones. That day I ordered six pairs from an outlet store in Chicago and haven’t looked back since. Ever seen anyone else with these shoes? I love ‘em.
2March2008
Posted by Charley under: Life.
Somehow we got into hockey. Even though my family lived in a suburb near Nashville Tennessee we made the best of our situation and signed up with the local league.
All of a sudden our weekends were filled with long smelly car rides and frigid ice rinks. Of course there were benefits; lessons in teamwork and discipline etc. I think it was really smart of my parents to encourage the competition and camaraderie provided in the sport. I was really lucky.
Last week my father was celebrated for providing the same opportunity to other Tennessee youth. They named the local high school hockey trophy after him; I’m really proud. And who knows, maybe I’ll use ‘Hine Cup’ as my next band name.
Congrats pops!
18November2007
Posted by Charley under: Life; Tech and design.
I remember receiving a portable boom box for Christmas when I was six. It was bright red with blue speakers and a yellow handle. The front read ‘My First Sony’ in white. Even though dad’s big stereo in the living room sounded better, my little red one seemed more fun. The buttons were all big and it came with a cheapo mic for quick recording. It was simpler.
As of two weeks ago I became a Mac user. I’m starting to realize this machine really works for both basic and advanced users. The OS provides tools that my grandparents, my engineering buds and everyone in between would enjoy thoroughly. It’s just simpler.
Here’s a picture I took of myself and Greg Hine while showing off Photo Booth.
9November2007
Posted by Charley under: Entrepreneurship; Life; Music; Thoughts.
On Monday my picture was revealed in two different newspapers. One article brought a smile to my face, the other one actually hurt my feelings at first. In the morning the Washington Post wrote a glowing article covering Startup Weekend DC. Monday night the Westword, Denver’s prime music mag, wrote a not so nice review of a Dualistics performance.
When I’m in a good mood , I try keep in mind that ‘not so good times’ may be on the horizon.
As you may recall I attended the first Startup Weekend in Boulder just last July. A group of over 50 people created VoSnap, an application that allows friends to quickly vote on things. Even though the product didn’t launch on time, the weekend was great and I made friends. This time around, for whatever it’s worth, the Washington DC team was able to get their product launched by Sunday night.
HolaNeighbor.com allows neighbors to better organize their physical locale. Want to borrow a cup of sugar? Need to set the date for your next block party? Maybe it can help. The developers really did well considering the time constraint. Their code even looked clean. I was proud of the user experience team for not limiting their creativity around feature sets while properly monitoring feasibility. It can be tough working in an environment filled with Alpha personalities. DC seemed to somehow make it gel. Being published in the Washington Post was the cherry on top of an already excellent weekend.
The Westword on the other hand brought me down a bit. I’m not used to such harsh words. All in all I realized the writer doesn’t really bring up the music at all, and that’s what we’re all about. We throttle hard towards tight grooves, not so much towards stage antics. In the end, I’m still smiling.
8October2007
Posted by Charley under: Tech and design.
Over the past four of weeks I’ve been frequently visiting Mint.com. Although it took them the first two weeks to support my Frontier Airlines MasterCard, I feel they had me up and running fairly quickly considering they are hottest thing since Jose Canseco.
Mint.com allows everyday folk to connect to their personal banks, pull down their transaction information and see ways to save money. It also shows spending statistics just like Dad’s old Quicken 95. With over 3000 banks available for the pulling, Mint.com has already reported on over two billion dollars to 50,000 plus users.
It’s a good site. It looks great and the information is useful. Thanks to Mint I found out that I could be making (saving?) hundreds more in interest if I rolled my good ol’ savings account over to eTrade. Done. I’ve also found that I’m eating lunch out a lot less after staring at those web 2.0 pie graphs each morning. Man I spend a lot on lunch.
I wish Mint.com would send me an SMS when I hit a specified dollar amount for a certain category (such as restaurants) in a given month. They have something very close to this, but I want even more control.
UPDATE: I’m using Mint.com less and less. A bit time consuming to manually categorize each transaction.
30August2007
Posted by Charley under: Life.
My sister Anna gave birth to Eloise Durham last night. I’m very happy for her new family. The future duties of unclehood indeed will be enjoyable.
I purchased EloiseDurham.com in case her parents would like to blog about her early development. One day we will hand the domain name off to her.
19July2007
Posted by Charley under: Life.
My mother took up a new gig as VP of Hylant Group Nashville. Here’s a clip from the Tennessean.
“Cynthia Hine has joined The Hylant Group, a full-service insurance brokerage, as vice president in its new Nashville office. She is a member of the large accounts practice and the medical risk practice. Hine, a licensed attorney and nurse practitioner, has a strong legal background and extensive health-care experience. She is responsible for business development, strategic planning, and coordinating client service focusing on the health-care industry and medical service provider needs.”
Congrats moms!
16July2007
Posted by Charley under: Entrepreneurship.
I’ve been reading a bunch about the rise of a new term, “Enterprise 2.0″. What’s it all about?
I think that Enterprise 2.0 = Web 2.0 technologies used in business applications.
“Enterprise 2.0 refers to the concept of moving Web 2.0 tools and technologies into the enterprise to help your employees, partners, suppliers and customers work together to build networks of like-minded people and share information.” from cio.com
Anyone seen a AJAXed-out mashup internally used by their workplace?
15July2007
Posted by Charley under: Entrepreneurship; Life; Tech and design.
Startup Weekend really reinforced how strong the Denver/Boulder startup community is. It brought many of us together to meet, greet, laugh and play. I think Seth Levine wrote the best review.
Pictured below, Matt Galligan, myself and Alex King (a really cool guy and Wordpress dev).
Indeed it was the cat’s meow.
