How we travel the world

About 30 years ago, When I was a boy, I saw the world through a globe. At the time, it was really great for learning where countries were and you could even feel the little mountain ranges with your fingers. My globe inspired many, many hours of wonder and imaginary travel.

Fast forward to this morning when my 3 year old son tries to figure out why he can’t zoom in and see down to the street level on this little spinning ball that looked like Earth.

Two frustrating minutes of twisting and turning, spinning and flipping later, he demands of me “How can I see the waterfall at the end of this river!?” I just kind of sat there for a minute, a little perplexed about how best to respond to this inquiry.

Then, all of a sudden, with an enthusiastic smile and a lunge toward my desk he grabbed up my android phone. Within seconds he had launched a voice search Assistant and asked of it, “Show me the waterfall and the river”.

“Here are some videos of the waterfall and the river“ replied my phone in a very cheerful feminine voice, as it promptly displayed several video clips from the web. Some of which had links to take you right to their location in Google Earth and Street level photographs. There were even Wikipedia entries with county populations and links to entire histories of local cultures (local to that particular waterfall).

So there in the blink of an eye my little pre-schooler had obtained seriously vast amounts of information in pictures, videos and text articles about some wonderful place on Earth. Much more information than I could have gotten from my little globe and a whole set of encyclopedias with a week to spend on it!

How fast our world is evolving! Such magnificent technologies are beginning to open up more and more of it’s secrets. How wonderful it is that our youngest generation can access this incredible world of hi-def and in-depth information.. as easily as asking a question.

Expert advice – Where to be seen

AJ Kohn at blindfiveyearold.com says …

” If you’re a plumber and you have a great post about how to save money on your bath remodel don’t seek out other plumbing blogs. Instead, seek out life hacking or money saving blogs. You want to stand out as an expert on a topic that isn’t fully covered by that site. You’re more likely to build your brand that way instead of giving all that expertise to a competing site. “

Once Upon a Web Site

… There was a guy who looked up a girl. Found out more than he wanted, made his head swirl.
She found out what her suitor had seen. Her stomach went queasy, her face turned quite green…

When was the last time you did an audit of your web presence?
If someone were to look you up right now, what would they find?

Today’s Social Media flings so many things by us so fast that it is just plain hard to keep up sometimes. Often, we will miss things here and there, we will forget things that might have been posted long ago, or we may get mentioned somewhere that we don’t want to be associated with. Sure you may have wanted the whole world to get really angry at CompanyXYZ that time when they did that bad thing to you, but is that really something you want your new boss to see all these years later?

It is a good idea to periodically go back through all those quick mobile pic uploads, drunken tweets, the occasional angry rant, etc.. and clean them up!

Crannell Web Services offers in-depth social media audits to find the dirt that’s been lost in the cracks. This service will allow you to be more aware of what is publicly available about you on the internet, as well as what some of your friends might be inadvertently sharing about you. Take advantage of this service a week or two before you go in for that big job interview, or get checked out by your future in-laws! You will feel much more confident knowing that you have taken care of that embarrassing photo or removed that I-hate-my-job post before it comes back to bite you.