Month: January 2009

Friday Five: Is it 2009 already?

I don’t know about you, but I’m still digging out from 2008, and 2009 is already kicking my butt. I’ve barely had time to skim my RSS feeds or play on Twitter. But this morning I found these year-end links of interest that I’d planned to post earlier just gathering dust in my RSS reader, so I thought I’d better share them with you before much more of the shiny newness wore off of them.

  • The world’s smallest snake, a prehistoric ant and microbes that may be 120,000 years old all made Wired’s list of the top 10 new organisms for 2008.
  • Econcierge, mapmania, luxyoury and three more consumer trends to watch in 2009, via Trendwatching.
  • 17 ways to find blogworthy topics, via Lois Kelly’s Bloghound. And here’s one more for you: Do a Friday Five or Thursday Three every once in a while. It’s salvation for the brain-dead blogger.
  • What [in tech] will sell in 2009? is GigaOM‘s summary of a Wall Street Journal discussion with some top tech people.
  • Steve Rubel’s pick for top website of 2008. Hint: It wasn’t this one.
  • Bonus link: Lifehacker’s most discussed posts of 2008.

    • Take this survey about Twitter usage (even if you don’t know what Twitter is)

    Andy Shaindlin of Alumni Futures is starting his new year with some research on how colleges and universities use Twitter, and he’s looking for our help. So, please take a few minutes to complete Andy’s short, anonymous survey about Twitter. It really doesn’t take much time at all.

    “Even if you don’t know what Twitter is – or you do know what it is, but you do not use it – I’d appreciate your participation (awareness is one of the things we’re trying to measure),” Andy writes. To that, I’d add: Even if you think Twitter is a complete waste of time, your insight will be valuable.

    The survey closes at 5 p.m. PST next Tuesday, Jan. 13, so don’t dawdle. He plans to incorporate the survey results “into a brief upcoming white paper about possible uses of Twitter in higher education advancement.”