b03

Foursquare Footprint /  by Geoff Kim

People ask me all the time why I even bother checking in to places. There are several reasons why but the most compelling one is perhaps the really cool things you could do with all the rich data collected. And when guys like my good friend Mike can show me how to create videos of all the checkins in an amazingly clever way, the question soon becomes - why aren't others doing the same?

Last year, I went on an epic 9 week trip to the States and here you can see every single checkin from it. The video starts from 18 February and the last few days in Sydney before I fly out to Texas for SXSW and it ends at 24 June. The soundtrack switches every time I visit a new city.

If you want to have a go of it yourself, all the info is provided by Mike here: https://github.com/3px/Foursquare-Footprint

How to be Baratunde /  by Geoff Kim

You might know by now that Baratunde Thurston, a tech-loving comedian is now a New York Times best-selling author with his book 'How To Be Black'. He is also the opening keynote speaker at SXSW 2012 which I'm quite excited about.

I came across this youtube of him presenting to a bunch of Googlers at Mountainview (the Black Googler network in fact) - he speaks of how the book came about, the processes in going from an amusing idea to becoming his life story. It's an hour long, but worthwhile if you want to get a good sense of who he is and what he is about.

#b03: March Madness /  by Geoff Kim

​So I've been challenged to write a blog post every day, once a day, for the month of March.

In a previous life this would not have meant anything special, but folks - we are in 2012 and quite frankly, the idea of "blogging", seems kinda quaint.

Fairly certain I'll be regretting this come day 4 or 5 but am going to give it a hot go and see where it takes me. Some of you would know that I'm off to Austin TX again, for that annual mind-frak otherwise known as 'South by South West' - and in theory, sounds like the perfect time to start blogging again, no?

Contrary to popular belief, I have in fact been blogging all this time - just on a platform that is not very well known as a blogging platform - yep, you guessed it: Google+.

Exhibits A / B / C / D / E / F

For a time this afternoon, I considered asking Steve whether doing #b03 on G+ would be allowed but decided on this semi-dormant Blogger platform. (I later discovered that there is loose G+ integration now, which probably means they will eventually fully merge to become one thing.)

So what will I write about?

Remains to be seen of course, but for those following at home, I will most likely sound just as schizophrenic as I do on twitter or tumblr or pinterest or wherever it is I try to make a dent on the interwebs.

Ok. Let's get blogging.