Star Wars Alphabet

For geeky parents, this is the best way to teach your children the alphabet (Click the picture to enlarge it).

Geeky License Plates

..and the geeks shall inherit the earth! Click here or the image to view some of the geekiest license plates.

Where Good Ideas Come From

With the current level of connectivity that we have, I think the incubation period of ideas will be or has already shortened. Because of this, I like what Steven mentioned in the last part of the video, "Chance favors the connected mind."

Top Editor's Picks From AddictiveTips

Kung Hei Fat Choi! Kiong Hee Huat Tsai! Kong Xi Fa Tsai! (If you are interested, please see the definitions here for each of these Chinese New Year greetings).

To start the New Year, I found these great lists from AddictiveTips covering what are considered to be the best Android to Windows applications. I hope you'll enjoy going through the lists as much as I did! (All images are from the corresponding AddictiveTips pages.)

Update: 
1/26/2012 - Added 60 Best Linux Applications


150 Best Android Applications of Year 2011


85 Best iPhone and iPad (iOS) Applications of Year 2011


100 Best Mac OSX Applications of Year 2011


150 Best Windows Applications of Year 2011


30 Best Windows Phone Applications of Year 2011


Top 150 Extensions and Web Applications of Year 2011


60 Best Linux applications of Year 2011

Daigo Umehara's Awesomeness

I have not been playing fighting games (at home or in the arcade) for almost a decade now. As a result, it was only now that I learned of Daigo Umehara and the famous Evolution 2004 championship match he fought with Justin Wong which he won via a dramatic comeback (an understatement really) and by a "hair or pixel" of life. Enough with the words and watch the video below to see Daigo's awesomeness in action.

O'Reilly Blogger Review Program

I learned about O'Reilly's Blogger Review Program through one of Scott Berkun's blog postings. He mentioned about getting a free copy of his book, Myths of Innovation through the Review Program and that got my full and undivided attention. I'm a sucker for anything that is free especially books!



How can you join this program? It's very simple actually.

1. First and foremost, you need to be a blogger of course! (Check!)
2. You like reviewing books or videos. (Double check!)
3. Once you are sure of 1 and 2, you can sign-up for your free account. (Done!)

After creating my O'Reilly account the other day, I received an email today informing me that my application for the program had been approved! Wow that was fast! I was so excited I immediately requested for a copy of ... The Myths of Innovation (of course!) for my first book review.

I had been an avid reader of O'Reilly's technical and business books. These books were instrumental to my growth as a programmer before and a project manager now. Now, I can get (I hope!) O'Reilly books for free and have a topic for my blog. Hitting two birds with one stone. How great is that!

Career Timeline

I got the idea of a "career timeline" from the resume of my former Director and with his permission, I also applied the same concept to my own resume and made some revisions and improvements along the way. Here's how it looked like.



It was a straightforward graphical representation of my resume but portrayed, in an easily understandable medium and in so few words, my work experiences, competencies and trainings.

Unfortunately, this has been put to shame when I saw the resume of Michael Anderson. His resume elevated the career timeline into a different level. It is better viewed than described so click here to view his career timeline / visual resume. Click here as well to understand his thought processes behind his resume. I think my career timeline needs a makeover.

Twitter Tools

Image from Geek and Poke

I mentioned in my last post that I am using TweetDeck as my primary Twitter client. Now, I would like to share the other Twitter tools that I frequently use.

URL Shortener and Tracker

tr.im has recently become my favorite URL shortener. I used TinyURL and is.gd before but my main concern was how to track the links I shared if they were being viewed. This is where tr.im shines because it tracks the number of visits to the trimmed URL and the visitor's location. I previously used Tweetburner but I find tr.im's interface more usable and friendly.

Twitter Statistics

I track my Twitter usage statistics through the following tools:

Twitter Grader: You can get here your overall "Twitter Grade" as well as learn the top 50 Filipino Twitterers.

Twitalyzer: This is the tool if you would like to know your relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity and clout to name a few.

Mr. Tweet: This tool acts as your personal networking agent by recommending relevant users to follow and improving your Twitter usage through relevant statistics.

Twitter Mobile

I own a Nokia e61i and I installed Twibble Mobile in it to track tweets when I am not in front of my PC. In my opinion, this is the best twitter client so far for S60-based phones.

If you want more tools, here are some links to illuminate your path towards Twitter nirvana.

7 Truly Useful Twitter Tools You Might Not Know About

Sanity check: 10 tools that will make you a Twitter power user

Twitter: Top 20 tools

And here are 4 insightful tips on how to use and not to use Twitter.

Ten Twitter Tips That’ll Take You To The Top

Be Careful What You Post

Branding Yourself with a Twitter Background

Finding the Right “Brand Voice” on Twitter

Twitter and TweetDeck

I started my Twitter account about 8 months when curiosity struck me based on the news and reviews I read about the service.  Within the first 2 months, I "lurked" my way through Twitter and found several great information about project management that I would not easily find in my normal blog searching process. Wow! I thought this could be a great source of information leads for my blogs.

On the third month, it suddenly dawned on me that I could evolve my Twitter usage from just a real-time "encyclopedia" to something more useful and relevant. With the new and profound sense of purpose, I started cranking the wheels so to speak and implemented my plans of using this great service more effectively.

Now, at this juncture of reaching more than a thousand contacts that I follow, I asked myself, how can I manage efficiently the sheer volume of real-time "Tweets" that I am getting from these contacts? I am bewildered to see some Twitter folks with 10,000+ following and followers and again asked myself how are they managing their's?

The answers to these questions lay on 2 great videos (which I embedded below) from Jesse Newhart where he shared his lessons learned on how to follow 15,000+ contacts in Twitter and on how to turn Twitter followers into friends. Great tips indeed! Another wonderful thing here is I have been using TweetDeck for 4 months now and it is only after watching Jesse's videos that I realized its full potential.

All The Books in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time

Image from 800ceoread

I found this list from the book's official site. Reviewing the list, I currently own 12% of the books. It is not much but it is a good start. Time to go the bookstore and start expanding library. Eventually, I will share my own list of books that I find to be the best based on my experiences.

--------------------
You (Improving your life, your person and your strengths.)
Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
Getting Things Done by David Allen
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
How to Be a Star at Work by Robert E. Kelley
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive by Harvey B. Mackay
The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein
What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson
Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss/Theodore Geisel
Chasing Daylight by Eugene O'Kelly

Leadership (Inspiration. Challenge. Courage. Change.)
On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem
The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree
The Radical Leap by Steve Farber
Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Tichy and Sherman
Leading Change by John P. Kotter
Questions of Character by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
The Story Factor by Annette Simmons
Never Give In! Speeches by Winston Churchill

Strategy (Eight organizational blueprints from which to draft your own.)
In Search of Excellence by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove
Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Discovering the Soul of Service by Leonard Berry
Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad

Sales and Marketing (Approaches and pitfalls in the ongoing process of creating customers.)
Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
A New Brand World by Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell
Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
Zag by Marty Neumeier
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar
How to Become a Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox
Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
The Experience Economyby B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Rules and Scorekeeping (The all-important numbers behind the game.)
Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight
The Balanced Scorecard by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

Management (Guiding and directing the people around you.)
The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming
Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno
Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy
The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
The Great Game of Businessby Jack Stack with Bo Burlingham
First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
Now, Discover Your Strengths by Buckingham and Clifton
The Knowing-Doing Gap by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono

Biographies (Seven lives. Unlimited lessons.)
Titan by Ron Chernow
My Years with General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
The HP Way by David Packard
Personal History by Katharine Graham
Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon
Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton with John Huey
Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson

Entrepreneurship (Seven guides to the passion and practicality necessary for any new venture.)
The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
The Republic of Tea ** by Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler, and Bill Rosenzweig
The Partnership Charter by David Gage
Growing a Business by Paul Hawken
Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson
The Monk and the Riddle Randy Komisar with Kent Lineback

Narratives (Six industry tales of both fortune and failure.)
McDonald’s: Behind the Arches by John F. Love
American Steel ** by Richard Preston
The Force by David Dorsey
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Innovation & Creativity (Insight into the process of developing new ideas.)
Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie
The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman
Jump Start Your Business Brain by Doug Hall
A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger Von Oech
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

Big Ideas (The future of business books lies here.)
The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy
Out of Control by Kevin Kelly
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Driven by Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria
To Engineer is Human by Henry Petroski
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Takeaways (What everyone is looking for.)
The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
Up the Organization by Robert Townsend
Beyond the Core by Chris Zook
Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan
The Team Handbook by Peter Scholtes, Brian Joiner, and Barbara Streibel
A Business and Its Belief by Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
Lucky or Smart?by Bo Peabody
The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman
Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko
More Than You Know by Michael J. Mauboussin

--------------------
** To buy The Republic of Tea, visit their site.
** American Steel is presently out-of-print. Your best bet is to head to your local library. 

Certified Bookworm

I had been on a blogging hiatus for the past 3 months since I had the privilege of being a part of a project team involved in defining and creating a global services solution. The project had very tight schedules, numerous deliverables and I need to be outside the country several times for more than a week. Now that the critical phase of the project has been completed, I can go back to my regular blogging schedules. 

I love books. I can stay in a bookstore the whole day wondering through the shelves and perusing all the books that interest me. I cannot help but be amazed sometimes because all these knowledge, experiences, lessons learned, best practices are right there, immediately available, and the only thing you have to do is open a book. Likewise, I find reading books as the most cost-effective, bang-for-the-buck way of not stagnating in your current job and further expanding your career horizons. How good is that!

As part of my weekly routine, I visit Powerbooks to browse its latest collections just in case the books from Amazon are already available locally. I also frequently visit Booksale, a local used books store. Through this store, I was able to find gems such as Code Complete by Steve McConnell, Managing by Harold Geneen and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig to name a few.

Image from 800ceoread

The latest business book to graze my radar is The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten. I learned about this book through Slacker Manager who gave it an excellent review. Quoting him, listed below are the 5 reasons why you need to buy the book.

1. It has reviews of 100 books so you know which books you should add to your library (or you can feel smart knowing which of the best books are already in your library).
   
2. It’s only $25.95 (or Php 1,795 from Powerbooks), which means you’re investing less than $.26 per book review.
   
3. It’s got a wonderful leadership section, so you’ll be able to talk to your manager a little bit more about what her/his favorite book is.
   
4. It’s got a management section, so you can be a better manager.
   
5. It’s easy to understand even if you haven’t read any other business/management books.

Twitter Visual Guide

Image by Applicant.com

If you are still wading through the thick muck of figuring out how to use Twitter, here is a great visual guide (from the folks at applicant.com) on how to use Twitter as a business management tool, a way to improve customer service or even as content trafficker between social media websites. Kudos to the folks at applicant.com! Click the image to view its original size.

Big Bad Beetle Mecha!

I think Gundams is well on its way to become a reality in Japan. They currently have the popular humanoid robot, Asimo, and it is constantly being improved and now this, a real mecha beetle developed by a Japanese engineer over the course of 11 years. Its design is based on a rhinocerous beetle and dubbed the Kabutom RX-03, an obvious tribute to the Gundam mobile suit RX-78. It has no practical use right now since it is still a prototype but its development can serve as small steps in ultimately building mobile suits in the future. I will be more than glad to see it have a fusion reactor and huge laser cannons on its back. LOL!

Check out the video above and click here for more details about the "Mushi Mecha."

TedTalks: Information Design and Statistics

Before, I see statistics as numbers, graphs and charts with boring imprinted all over it. But, when I saw Hans Rosling presentation at TED about third-world myths and how he debunked them, I was blown away on how he creatively presented (using Trendalyzer) the huge volume of data and statistics.

Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen

Free EBooks

Image screen capture from Hongkiat.com

I am very fond of books as you can see from the several posts I made in my Project Management blog. Thus when I found this site which compiled the sites where you can download ebooks for free, I am grinning from ear to ear and jumping for joy.

Without further ado, listed below are the two links.

20 Best Websites To Download Free EBooks Part 1

20 Best Websites To Download Free EBooks Part 2

Photoshop Text Effects

Image screen capture from Photoshop Roadmap

I have been scouring the Web in search for tutorials on how to create great-looking Photoshop text effects. I am planning to use this for the creation of headers for my four blogs. I have already created a header for my Handheld Video Gamer blog although I think it still needs some tweaking and additional pizzazz.

Listed below are the various tutorials I have found so far.

15 Amazing Photoshop Text Effects

The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web

30 Awesome Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials

6 Quick’n'Dirty Photoshop Text Effects From Scratch

Creative and Funny Bus Advertisements

Image from Toxel

Click here to be amused and amazed.

Stop-Motion Film: Building the Lego Millennium Falcon

Building the LEGO Millennium Falcon from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

This is an amazing, painstakingly-done work! Imagine 5,195 pieces(!) of the Lego Millenium Falcon being assembled by Lego Star Wars characters and machineries caught in a stop-motion video. To top it all, there are even side stories such as Darth Vader and Stormtroopers messing up the construction, complete with light saber and blaster effects. Great work indeed and a must-see for die-hard Star Wars (like me of course). 

FrancisM

Image from lyricskoto

To Francis Magalona. A great artist. A proud Filipino. A Free Man. Through your music and photographs, your memory will live on.

"Every color and every hue
is represented by me and you.
Take a slide in the slope.
Take a look in the kaleidoscope.
Spin it around and make a twirl
in this kaleidoscope world."

I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing

Another blast from the past Coca Cola ad that I vividly remember being shown during the Yuletide. The utter simplicity and innocence evoked by this ad made it such a classic, at least with my generation that is.

The first version of this ad came out around 1971 to spark good feelings in reaction to the pains and sufferings brought by the Vietnam War. This is the second version that came out around 1984.