I sat down next to the professor, who is a brilliant and talented man. He is also internationally renowned, our new dean and on my committee. I did pretty well in that choice. I opened that freshly packed binder and he said “Is all of that for this class?”
Those 100 pages of reading, it turns out, wasn’t even the entire assignment. Seems we were missing one chapter, which we discussed at length in my media effects class this morning.
I like that class. We talk about a great many interesting things and I usually feel as if I almost have it all figured out. I don’t, of course, but it is nice to dream.
Spent the rest of the day on the phone, fielding calls for next week’s high school journalism workshop. That’s not entirely true. When I wasn’t on the phone I was writing Emails about the workshop.
It never ceases to amaze me how much time goes into that workshop each year. it takes up about the first three weeks of the term for me, and I don’t even have all the heavy lifting assignments in bringing all of the parts together. We’ll have about 200 students, though, for the all day event. And they always enjoy themselves and learn a great deal.
Check out Google Instant yet? I wrote on Twitter yesterday that this is a search engine that has no time for your fingers, but rather searches your brain.
As “this changes everything” developments go, this on the surface seems to be a subtle one. Everyone’s web is now different. And now better. This only makes Search Engine Optimization even more important, because it is going to change SEO techniques. And that’s where the change here is anything but subtle.
Since you’ll see results now as you type — eliminating that tedious task of hitting “Enter” — you’ll react to the options in front of you. That stimulus is a feedback that will change your search. So SEO will necessarily have to improve, too, if there’s an analytics package on the back end of Instant that shows key strokes and improvements. Google will note what you are searching but, more importantly, what you are refining. That’s going into the great big Google brain and will impact the next person that searches along those same lines. Keystrokes are now key. When users adjust to that the organic experience will probably mutate out of control. Maybe this is how Skynet gets started …
Remember, too, Google also has a social circle feature in their traditional searches on that first page of returns. You can see what your friends and colleagues are saying about the topic you’re presently searching. When that gets tied into Instant you’ll really have something immensely powerful to enhance your personal experience.
Now, if only Google would dabble in providing cell phone signals. I’m driving through the middle of nowhere, trying to speak with a friend who is driving through a place called “50 miles out of Hattiesburg” which is the sort of place with which Nowhere is unfamiliar. Why we bothered, I’m not sure. Every three sentences there is a disconnection.
One day someone in the middle of nowhere might not drop calls. The next day that will become routine and taken for granted. The day after that people will think of us, today, as Lewis and Clark.
Big game tonight. Here’s a little Auburn to get us ready. What is important about The Auburn Creed is what it aspires to be, and what it inspires others to be.
Or, at least, that’s what I thought until I saw this version. When they get to the section on country and home, from Afghanistan, it holds an altogether more important meaning:
War Eagle, beat State. I’ll post the Twitter feed for posterity later.
