Mike Flacy

I’ve had a Wi-Fi iPad for nearly two months now, certainly long enough to gauge how its been integrated into my life.  It’s become my go-to email device at home and at work; primarily for quick responses, quick mass deletion or targeting the important messages for viewing later.  It’s also the first device in my hand when I wake up in the morning, a position formally held by the iPhone.  I can digest all my email, Facebook updates and daily news much quicker than shuffling over to my laptop and booting it up in the morning.  Pulse News for the iPad has streamlined my RSS consumption as well, specifically due to a slick UI and excellent speed.   (I even gave it a coveted spot on my 6-slot taskbar)

I love infographics.  Part of the reason that I adore The Oatmeal’s comic style is that much of it is in infographic form.  Infographics are a brilliant way of communicating ideas and I envy the graphic designers that have the creativity to make them.  While the majority of infographics are created for fairly dry topics, there are a few designers applying this form of creation to more entertaining topics; many pop culture related.

I’m a fan of new social networks; I really am.  I’m the first to jump on the bandwagon of an innovative social network.   About 6 months ago, I played around with FourSquare.  (For those that are unaware of FourSquare, it’s a social network designed around geo-location; basically informing your friends where you are at all times.)   Beyond geo-location, FourSquare is loosely based around Microsoft’s achievement system for the Xbox 360.  The more times you check in, the more badges you earn.  About 6 days after I downloaded it, I deleted it from my iPhone.

Part of my job is to manage a handful of company brand pages, some more successful than others due to the demographic of the readership.  As I work with Facebook brand pages all day, it has become very obvious to me that the majority of brand / fan pages are clueless when it comes to attracting more fans effectively and efficiently.  Here are 5 reasons why those pages aren’t as successful as they could be.

Growing up, there were very few cartoons in the newspaper that I made sure to catch on a regular basis.  The only one that seems worth the time was The Far Side (created by Gary Larson).   Its twisted sense of humor was appealing and seemed miles above the other scribblings in the paper.  Fast forward 15 years and there are tons of web-comics populating the web; many of which inspired directly from the same type of humor from the Far Side.  Here are my top 4 picks:

I’ve heard numerous explanations on why the current season of Lost seems to be operating on two different timelines.  The most popular scenario seems to be that there are two distinct, separate timelines in play; one being the new 2004 timeline where the Losties landed safely in LAX and the other being the current 2007 Losties still fighting the good fight on the island.  The cause of these two distinct timelines was the H-bomb that was detonated at the end of season 5.

I use a handful of tech oriented websites on a daily basis (for my job).  Outside of the realm of strictly tech, here are some lesser known, but extremely useful sites that I utilize constantly during my day.

I’ve been living in Los Angeles for a little over a year now.  You can read a bit more about my exodus from South Carolina out here in this post, but here are 8 things that I’ve come to understand since I arrived:

As I sat in the dim room at the Cornerstone hospice watching my mother cope with the continuous stream of brutal pain from her final bout of cancer, I can’t see my mother anymore.  She’s frail, tired and wisps in and out of consciousness.  She sees us and hear us, but has lost the ability to respond to our questions due to lack of brain function.  The combination of chemotherapy and radiation treatments have destroyed her bone marrow and slowly disintegrated her resistance to the tumors growing all over the insides of her body.  Neurophy has spread from her feet upwards to make her skin ache to the touch and she moans in pain every time someone has to move her.  She’s my mother, cruelly trapped in a dying body.

I manage six different Twitter accounts.  While that may seem like an overload of tweets, it’s actually quite simple.  Five are related to the websites I help manage.  (In all fairness, I can’t lay claim to the nickname inception of Twitmaster General.  It was coined by a couple guys at work in jest to all the Twitter accounts.)

So I’m in Vegas yet again in 2009, this time for PMA.  That’s the Photographer’s Marketing Association, for those that have never heard of it.  (Similar to me approximately 2 months ago.)  So far it has been much more chill than CES, an absolutely insane madhouse of electronic gadgetry.  It’s probably about a fourth of the size, if that.  I’m here because the company I work for purchased a digital camera review site and we want the transition to go smoothly.   Another two days of shaking hands and kissing babies.

Are you familiar with Ping.fm?  It’s a service that allows you to update all your social networks with one click of a mouse.  I thought this was a brilliant idea when I signed up a year ago, but it’s becoming more evident each day that my “lifestream” is molded differently for every social network I belong to.  Occasionally there’s a smidgen of overlap, but I’m typically writing to very different audiences.

Let’s see…

- Working my ass off.  I’m officially a workaholic in training.

-  Threw an insanely large Christmas party with the roommates.  We rented heat lamps, chairs, tables, the works.  Even had a bartender so we wouldn’t have to serve drinks.  Met several new people and basically hung out with some friends.

Wow, I’m incredibly lax at the updates these days.

The house I moved into last month is absolutely ridiculous.  I have a room on the first floor with my own private bathroom.  The door from the bathroom leads outside and the in-ground swimming pool is but a single leap from the door.  The bedroom has hardwood floors and was previously painted a beige color.  I’m gave it some color over the Thanksgiving holiday.  It’s now a light sea green.  I also rearranged the furniture to open up the room.  I really want to create a place to chill out rather than a office / bedroom.   I’ve been perusing www.apartmenttherapy.com over the past week for ideas.

More later, bed for now.

• 30 days ago, I was driving from South Carolina to Los Angeles without a full time job.
• 20 days ago, I was on my first interview at a social networking company in Westwood.
• 10 days ago, I was on my third callback interview with a tech company in El Segundo.
• 5 days ago, I had three different job offers in my lap.