Do you remember that video back in 1988 when Michael Jackson shocked us all with a humanly impossible 45-degree lean in the Smooth Criminal video? For the video MJ & dancers were supported by wires etc...BUT what about when he performed the same move on tour in concert? It was too much work and too clumsy of an operation to do harnesses etc... So he turned to technology in hopes of creating a unique pair of shoes that would support the gravity-defying move. MJ filed this patent back in 1992, could you imagine the amount of dancers and MJ music fans that would have purchased a pair of shoes that could help you lean way past the center of gravity? I wonder what happens to the patent since he has exclusive rights to it for 20 years, 2012 is around the corner. The title of his patent is: "Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion." It's a system that consists of a special shoe that has a hitch designed to attach to a projection in a stage. When the shoe engages with the component in the stage, the performer can lean forward beyond his or her center of gravity. See more detail about his patent here: http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5255452

Take a look at this recent demographic data from the Pew Internet non-
profit research group. This image is from a recent survey they just
released this week. The most startling stastistic to me was that
African-Americans are trending behind the average when it comes to
broadband use. The numbers are going backwards as other ethnicities
are going upwards. Why?, Where is the disconnect? The survey
interviewed over 2,200 ppl from different races & economic status. I
have a meeting scheduled with the author Mr. Horrigan & will have him
on one of my shows to help uncover the reasons for the disparity. What
are your thoughts? Cultural differences? Economic barriers? & should
the Gov't be doing more to increase broadband adoption? Share your
thoughts in the comments I want to hear from you.

Hi all, this year I'm MC'ing the Member Welcome at the NECC '09 in D.C. (Natl. Educational Computing Conference). This conference brings over 18,000 educators and technologists under on e roof with over 5 football fields of exhibits! For more details go here:  http://www.iste.org/content/Navigationmenu/membership/member_welcom...

I wanted to take a quick second to share some of my recommended tech you should bring to NECC:

#1. Laptop with wifi - wifi will be everywhere throughout the convention center so come ready to tweet & take notes

#2. An extra laptop battery - well, cause you just never know or maybe bring an extension cord so you can always connect to an outlet :-)

#3. Ill have my XANTREX backup power solution it costs like $99 but it's worth it when your battery runs dead and you have no immediate access to a wall outlet, this little backup power solution holds a charge for months and gives my laptop an extra 3 hours of battery life

#4. Flip or some other type of video camera - there will be so much to see from innovative exhibits to incredible people - capture it all to take back to your classroom or administration and make a short video presentation of what you witnessed and what solutions may be perfect for your environment. In other words use this opportunity to capture the positive impact you see and bring that back to your school to educate others.

#5. A Twitter account - yes, I'm telling you to get on the bandwagon. Hey, if Oprah can tweet so can you ! But seriously twitter is a great way to connect and make new relationships with those that have similar interests. For example if you want to follow all of what's being tweeted about NECC just head to: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23NECC Here you'll get to see a snapshot of twitter users who are actively talking about the NECC conference. Get you FREE username and start posting your 140 characters - head to twitter.com for registration AND MAKE SURE whenever you post something you use the #NECC hastag somewhere in your message so others can read it.

#6. For my note takers who prefer to use pen and paper and not a laptop the tech you should have is called "The Pulse Pen" made by Livescribe. It is a ball point pen that is also a mini computer. The pen records audio it hears and links it to what you write on paper. For example, lets say you are in a NECC session, the pen is capturing all the audio and you are writing notes - 5 days later when you return to your school you simply touch the notes with your Livescribe pen and sit back and listen to the audio that was captured at the time. This is a true advancement in note-taking technology.

#7. If you do step #5 and join Twitter then you should get yourself a really cool Tweetup badge - goto http://tweetupbadges.com/ Tweetup Badges are a really unique way to differentiate yourself from everyone and a way for everyone to easily identify your twitter name. I've ordered my Tweetupbadge.com for the NECC, its about the same size and thickness as credit cards and they come with lanyards, ohh and you get to choose any color combination (maybe your school colors might be neat) These ID badges are made to last so you can use them over and over again and they cost under $10 but hurry shipping can be a bit slow.

BONUS PRIZE: The first person that finds me at NECC '09 (read top of post for a clue of where to find me) and shows me their TweetupBadge will win a cool tech prize. I'm known to carry a stash of awesome tech giveaways so be prepared!

Mark today's date, actually yesterdays date as a moment in Baltimore tech history! Why? Because we finally have a REAL "tech news" presence on The Baltimore Sun website, something I've been wanting to see happen for a while & so excited it's here! Well, the wait is over & the man in charge is Gus Sentementes, @gussent or @balttech to you Twitter heads. Gus has been with the Sun since 2000 covering everything from biz to real estate to crime & grime - he was one of the 1st at the Sun to use multimedia tools for reporting - certainly the 1st Baltimore reporter I know to use 12seconds for breaking news.

On his 2nd day on the job I had a chance to sit down with Gus and discuss the new blog appropriately titled "BaltTech".

Tune into his NPR interview tonite 5:30pm on The Digital Cafe' 88.1fm or WYPR.org & come back here for the archive!

The whole team here at The Digital Spin HQ's is excited for Gus, we got have your back! Let us know if there is anything we can do to help, just yell or email or call or tweet! Tell us what would you like to see come of this new tech blog for Baltimore, huh?

We can't wait to shoot a video interview with Gus for the coming Baltimore-Washington Tech video show www.BWTechShow.com  We will ask him to reveal the secrets of how to get your business covered in the paper or the blog!

Gus Sentementes Balt Tech blog interview

Awesome! I just received several copies (yes, several as Ill be giving away a few on Techtechboom.com, BWTechShow.com and radio listeners) of the new book from O'Reilly titled "The Geek Atlas" 128 places where science and technology come alive, the author is John Graham-Cumming. At first glance the book seems pretty comprehensive. It has over 500 pages and covers places
across the globe not just the US. The context for the places I have read so far is great offering a bit of historical context so you can further appreciate the technology or innovation that was being used at the time. The book is an easy read and has an awesome index with solid explanations. I also love how for each of the 128 places, identifies whether it's free or a cost and they even give you the GPS coordinates, really cool for you geocachers :-)

I loved reading about Bletchley Park in Bletchley, England where I
learned about how the braniacs there, skilled in mathematics were able
to break the code being used for almost all Nazi German communications: (the Enigma) to reading about my state of MD where the Gaithersburg International Latitude Observatory exists. It's a little innocous white building that is 1 of only 6 observatories in the world that were setup in 1899 to (get this) determine how the Earth "wobbles" not spins!

I only wish the photos were in color, but hey that would have made the book more expensive than it's $29 US price tag.

If I go missing or am not tweeting the next few days look for me with a blanket & a cup of decaf tea/coffee snuggled up somewhere reading and plotting about my next techie vacation now that I have 128 places
to go visist! This book is total awesomeness!

Tech Titans from Washingtonian.com on Vimeo.

Today on NPR's Morning Edition Renee' Montagne asked me about the new pricing changes Apple iTunes made earlier this month for downloading music and what impact that might have on artists, labels, distributors and consumers.

Listen to the segment

The NPR music group also did an awesome blog post on this segment. I addition to their blog they have extensive coverage, rock solid analysis and reporting on this issue as well. Read up more from their blog!

What do you make of all these pricing changes? Will you shop around for music? And how do you feel this may impact independent artists?

Photo courtesy of HypebotMany of you may have heard iTunes new music download pricing changes to something called "variable pricing". Variable pricing as defined on wikipedia: characterized by individual bargaining and negotiation, and typically used for highly product differentiation high value items (like real estate). Simply put, variable pricing means NOT having a fixed cost. iTunes started offering music downloads like 7 years ago and has been the market leader in the selling of digital music. They originated the $.99 cents per song pricing standard that many (not all) other online music distributors followed. With this current change iTunes songs will vary from $.69, $.99 or $1.29 (a 30% increase). Most songs are still expected to be at the $.99 level, whereas the cheaper prices will be for older music and the higher price for most popular music. Personally, I think this is a bad idea for consumers especially in this economy. Many college students I have spoken to are contemplating going back to stealing music and not paying or looking to other sources like Amazon and Walmart for competitive pricing. One thing about this story that many people are overlooking is the fact that Apple iTunes has decided to go "DRM-Free". DRM (Digital Rights Management) in a nutshell made it difficult for the average person to buy music on iTunes and play that music on non-apple devices. This too me is more the story than the pricing changes. To go DRM-free now means iTunes music can be heard on so many other devices, players and platforms. It is certainly a blow to competitor Amazon.com. Amazon had DRM-free music a long time ago, well now they are going to lose that competitive advantage.

Many of you that know me personally, you know I look at the glass half-full, so I'm hoping that maybe having higher prices for the pop-Top-100-type music might just have music lovers and buyers experiment more with independent artists and those artists who don't always get the deserved attention they should have.

There is alot of speculation about why the price change was made. Was it Apples idea & market dominance? Was it the labels pressure due to lack luster cd sales? Was it an exchange for going DRM-free?

What are your thoughts?

I don’t know about you but I have way to many photos sitting on my iPhone. I just don’t seem to find the time to print them that often. Well now that’s really changed. Yesterday, we had a family & friends party at my house and I was taking photos with my iPhone of various family members having a great time. Typically, I would have these photos on my phone and just email them on the spot but that always felt a little empty. Well, everything changed because for the first time I was able to print photos on the spot wirelessly from my iPhone. So as I was taking photos, I would instantly open the free HP iPhone/iTouch application and send my phones photos right to the printer. No computer, no syncing, no leaving the action I stayed right there in the thick of the fun and printed. The app works as advertised and I’m hopeful we will see more printing apps become available for our mobile devices so we can print out emails, word docs, .pdfs etc… The application was created by HP and is called HP iPrint. It’s a free download from the iTune App store. The catch? You have to use a wireless HP printer and connect to it over your wifi network. It automatically prints from your photo tray and prints 4×6 sized photos. HP iPrint Photo application leverages Apple’s Bonjour technology to automatically identify HP wireless printers or other supported HP printers available on your network. Luckily, I just happened to have a HP 3000 series all-in-one printer and had the chance to test the application during the party. You’ll get major cool points for doing this but it is also pretty effective. At least now I don’t have as much as an excuse to print photos. I was pretty psyched by the results.

See it in action — watch the HP iPrint wireless printing process without edits in this video.

J. Howard "Jim" Kucher, M.B.A. '01, former managing partner of a city-based marketing and strategic advisory company for start-up service firms, was named the executive director of the Entrepreneurial Opportunity Center in late 2005.

The University of Baltimore Entrepreneurial Opportunity Center kicks off its amazing business series with today's event titled "Net Impact: Marketing in the Digital Era" at the William H. Thummel, Sr. Business Center. It was great to hear 1st hand accounts from attendees about their expectations and the fact that they are attending sessions like these even in tough entrepreneurial times. Which I think is awesome! Many people are currently sitting on the sideline waiting for comfortability and I personally think now is the best time to get advanced skills training, attend sessions and be more innovative and creative. The crowd was vibrant, networking and seemed really ready to absorb some great info from the 2 speakers Hollis Thomases, CEO of Web Ad.vantage & Chris from Millenial Media. 

I'm headed to Florida to speak at a conference. Along the way I
noticed this odd looking machine - after closer inspection it's a
machine that enables you to charge your devices. They have all sorts
of connetions for different types of devices. This was perfect my
iPhone needed some juice & I was delighted to see such a thoughtful
idea. Until I realized of was for a fee!

Pay for power to charge my devices?

Wow, that's pretty crazy especially when there were power outlets at
the terminal about 50 feet away! And besides i carry my Xantrex
portable backup power device whenever i travel anyway. Good luck with
that business model.

Would you pay to charge your devices at an airport?

CONTENT IS KING: The panel has Oscar Joyner, Taz EP of Rickey Smiley Show, Gary Bernstein of Syndication One and MC Shelly Winter of USTalkNetwork.com.

Some of the highlights of this panel are:

-Mentioned how back in the 60's radio was the organizer of the movement - this generation is utilizing technology in awesome ways

-Gary says the passion of the people LOVE your radio station - the music is great but that doesnt do it, you have to have personalities that are different, riveting and exciting that gets listeners to LOVE the station.

This morning I'm on a panel with several media folks. Lee Michaels of
USTalkNetwork.com (green shirt), Marty Raab, VP Marketing Reach Media
(white shirt), Shelly Winter (blue vest), Kevin Ross of 3BAAS Media &
me (empty seat on right with MacBook). I'll post more details once I'm
off the air.

Internet technologies like social networking, user-generated content, blogging, message boards and online communities have changed the way people communicate and how government, institutions and non-profits need to communicate with their constituencies. The successful adoption of these technologies by Barack Obama’s campaign serves notice as a turning point in the mainstream use and validation that times have changed.  

Join a group of the internet industry’s leading experts and practitioners at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C, as they share their insights and real world experiences. During this complimentary seminar you will learn how to prepare your agency or institution to harness the power of social media.

Social Media Seminar: Understanding and Leveraging the Power of Social Media in Government and Public Interest Groups Willard Hotel, Washington, D.C. December 11, 2008 11:30AM to 3:00PM
Cost: Complimentary

REGISTER FAST - THERE IS LIMITED SPACE to create an intimate experience for attendees:
Register here to save your seat: http://www.clickability.com/company/contact/register/Clickability_and_KickApps__Registration_Page_Social_Media_Seminar.html

Discussion topics include:
- What it will mean for government agencies and how to embrace this successfully             
- How institutions and non-profits harness the power of the groundswell to further their cause 
- Practical tips, best practices and things to avoid

Preliminary Agenda:
- State of Social Media
- Change and Social Media - A Primer
- Social Media and Education
- Voice of America - Case Study
- Panel Discussion - Best practices & Tips

Presenters include:
Mario Armstrong, Technology Show Host & Contributor, National Public Radio Morning Edition & Cofounder of the STEM Social network
Rebecca McMenamin, Voice of America 
Sandy Carter, Vice President, IBM and author of The New Language of Marketing 2.0
Alan Wolk, Creative Strategist, The Toad Stool
Craig Stoltz, Former section editor at the Washington Post and Principal, Stolz Digital Strategy Group
Todd Marks, President, Mindgrub
Alex Blum, CEO, KickApps
 
Sponsors: Clickability and KickApps
Selected by BusinessWeek readers as Best of the Web 2008, KickApps is an on-demand social media, online video and widget platform which enables websites to grow their online audiences, generate new revenue opportunities and drive deeper relationships with customers and partners. KickApps powers social media experiences for over 45,000 websites, including John McCain’s official social network, McCainSpace, NPR, Voice of America and National Geographic. 

Clickability is the global leader in on-demand web content management, enabling customers to take content from any source and publish to any device, managing their entire content repository of digital assets more effectively in “the cloud.” Clickability garnered the Software and Information Industry Association’s 2008 CODiE Award for best content management solution. 

Presenting at Georgetown University Top "new media" and tech highlights of the 2008 election. This seminar was presented to members of the media. I also included a sub-workshop of the proper digital tools for today's journalist. I demonstrated everything from twitter to the new livescribe smart pen to backup power solutions to keep you effective in the field like portable power from Xantrex to Broadband cards to WiMax and a bunch of good stuff in-between. 

President-elect Barack Obama is poised to serve the technology industry and to use technology to solve a wide array of problems, according to technology leaders interviewed Wednesday.

Tech leaders celebrated Obama's victory and expressed hope for the future of their industry during the next administration. Most pointed to Obama's extensive use of technology for campaigning and the fact that he was the first presidential candidate to unveil a wide-reaching and in-depth technology agenda. (read more from Information Week)

What are your thoughts about the role of technology in an Obama-led administration?

Ok, so the President-elect hasn't quite made a decision of his Tech Czar BUT he has made a pledge that he would create the 1st ever Technology position within the White House. This alone is a great sign for technology and science companies, organizations and entrepreneurs. I have personal experience with this at the local level. When then Mayor (now Governor) Martin O'Malley appointed me his technology advocate for the City of Baltimore back in 2002. We were one of only a handful of cities who created that type of position and (although I'm biased) I'd like to think the position was effective and necessary to cut through red tape and give a direct link from City Hall to local technology stakeholders. In terms of new hires Obama has made an interesting transition-team tech choice in Julius Genachowski, a former executive of Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp who knows tech and has political experience. Genachowski, has been the chief counsel at the FCC and has worked closely with former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, who was recently speaking on behalf of the Obama campaign at a DC tech event. By having Genachowski involved early bodes well for tech stakeholders. 

Here's a video of Obama's recent highlights of his tech plan - this is edited down from a lengthy speech he gave earlier this year while at Google. 

Here's a link to a pdf you can download to view his positions and ideas on technology. 

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/technology/Fact_Sheet_Innovation_and_Technology.pdf

Wow, just when u think you've seen it all you walk into a Starbucks
and see a laptop, books, pen & paper and... (wait for it, wait, wait)
A 15inch DESKTOP MONITOR - what the???

Couldn't resist capturing & sharing. One employee told me "yeah it
takes him like 20mins & 2 trips to the car to get setup" she jokingly
said they are installing a phone line specifically for him. Tell me
this is an isolated case, right? What's the worst you've seen?

Yes I called you a "droid". If you are from the real deal, the first images that should come to mind are C3PO or R2D2! But that's all changed now! Thanks to Google, my Star Wars memories are getting competition from Googles new mobile operating system called "Android". How many of you even know the dictionary definition of an android? Well, according to Merriam-Webster it's a mobile robot usually with a human form. Call it whatever you want just don't say Mario didn't tell ya! I'm telling ya for the 2nd time, remember the 1st alert I gave you months upon months ago about the Apple iPhone 70% developer rev share well now Android is giving you the same opportunity except this time your application will get noticed for sure! You see unlike Apple Android is taking all apps – at least that's what they told me on my radio show (listen to audio below). Bottom line the Google Android marketplace doesn't have many apps right now BUT that window of opportunity will be closing - hurry up, we just learned coming on Monday their app store opens up for ANY app. They too are giving 70% revenue share for your application so STOP playing around sharpen your JAVA programming skills and make some apps.

Start with a very simple and quick app and use that as leverage to get you additional funding for more apps, oh yeah and don't rule out advertising in your app or take it even further, make an edutainment-app and apply for some grant funding from places like NIH, NSF – whatever you do don't miss out, currently T-mobile has the only android-powered phone the "G1" but rest assured many more will be coming soon. Entrepreneurs find some developers and invest in them.

For more inside scoop from Google listen to today's Digital Spin interview with Google Android Engineer Steve Harrowit

UPDATE: Audio file is corrupt - re-editing it now check back later this afternoon for the audio interview about 5pm EDT.