As a weary web traveler, Techlife’s journey is to uncover the small stuff and review the larger stuff, but how about the things in between. MinnPost is rare gem, a non-profit web startup with a local focus that is ready to expand past their roots. I recently had a chance to sit down with Joel Kramer, editor and founder of MinnPost.com. Joel and his band of writers, akin to Robin Hood and his band of merry men, are forming the next wave of journalism. No filters, they are the company. They believe in bringing good journalism to the reader without corporate oversight.

This unfiltered experience has the feel of a well written newspaper but the flavor Techlife readers will enjoy. Their roster of experienced writers might not be globally known, or even nationally known, but their local flavor of delivering quality reporting to Minnesotans gives them credibility in their local community. As a syndicated columnist who covers technology and life, maybe Joel will consider adding another budding journalist to his crew. Joel’s balance of digitizing the newspaper is something many publishers around the country are watching closely.

Techlife: What is MinnPost.com?

Joel Kramer: MinnPost.com is a high-quality news site for news-intensive people who care about Minnesota . We publish ambitious stories and shorter posts five days a week. The work is done by top-notch professional journalists, many of them with decades of experience.

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For new readers, welcome your feedback is appreciated.  For long time readers, 2007 was a great year for learning and expanding.  I suspect 2008 will be even better, keep reading and sending in your questions and comments.  As a marketing and technology proven “venture strategist” I want to meet businesses and organizations, all it takes is an invitation. Contact me, it’s easy: techlife [at] dkworldwide [dot] com.

(part of the syndicated print column’s writing process exposed to online readers)

Thanksgiving means saying thanks.  Thanks to all the wonderful readers, business owners and referals.  I have met so many interesting people. This month alone a a few include a Judge, an Inventor, and  a Startup owner.   You listened and referred and I thank you all.  As a marketing and technology proven “venture strategist” I want to meet businesses and organizations, all it takes is an invitation. Contact me, it’s easy: techlife [at] dkworldwide [dot] com.

(part of the syndicated print column’s writing process exposed to online readers)

Our readers are really the best. Where else would we get Penguin Baseball? A reader sent in this flash game gem, where you take batting practice, except replace Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez or Prince Fielder with your favorite abominable snowman, the Yeti. Cute lovable penguins jump from a cliff (pitch themselves) and you take aim.

From what I can see there are two types of power hits. The moon shot gets you at most 490. The more line drive takes the svelte penguin aerodynamics and really can increase your score. Our reader said, “It took awhile and I think I am still missing something, but beat 593!” My best was 587. What can you do?

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It’s always great to hear from readers of the column. Lately we have been picking up steam in that department. Lots of comments in various articles. Another feather in the cap is when a fellow writer references work you have done or asks for a quote, as an expert.

Recently, an uncredited employee of Google wrote on “The Official Google Docs Blog: News and Notes from the Google Docs Team” a post about how s/he helped their fantasy football commissioner and league use Google Docs. They assisted in streamlining the league’s fantasy draft and other management. It is a great article and certainly makes a lot of sense for anyone in fantasy sports, especially those of you who have trouble getting in one place at one time for the draft. At the end the writer added this nice little tip for those preparing for the draft.

(Docs & Spreadsheets user Dave Kaufman also shared his experience with the draft.)

Shortly after that I was contacted by Kimberly Maul from “The Book Standard“, who was writing an article on Techlife favorite Daily Lit. Kimberly wrote a great piece about the history of Daily Lit and a bit more about where they are going with a pay for content model. It seems exciting. She also was nice of enough to include this quote I made about Daily Lit.

“Daily Lit is one of those services that is game-changing, but on the surface appears very simple,” said Dave Kaufman, a blogger who writes the TechLife blog, about Daily Lit. “Think of all the countries where Internet access is limited in time, bandwidth and speed. Imagine how easy it would be for a teacher to incorporate classic literature into the curriculum. Its simplicity could allow global access to information and education.”

It is always nice to hear from readers, writers and business owners. Feel free to email or comment.

Techlife always welcomes letters from our readers. As most readers know we run a consulting business, DK Worldwide, so we get lots of questions from business owners. Recently a potential client had this to say {excerpt}.

Dear Techlife,
I have a business where I publish writing and activities for professionals. I have been writing eBooks, and selling them with great success.

I have built up a mailing list and started to really see the future of my business. I have built my own website and self-publish my own books. I am not sure if I am doing everything the “best I can.” But I really am encouraged by the recent success and would like to see my business reach $XX,XXX by Christmas this year and $XXX,XXX by next year.

Do you think you can help me?
Sincerely,
Writing for Pleasure (and now profit)

Dear Writing for Pleasure (and now profit),

Congratulations! Your success certainly has you excited. We got excited just reading about it. We really like working with clients who have goals. We often help them write them, so we are certainly thinking from the same place. I also read your email a few times and think that we can help you grow your business.

DK Worldwide provides clients business consulting focusing on marketing and technology. We leverage experience from Fortune 50 clients and apply it to smaller companies. Some of my comments stray away from the web, such as setting goals, making a plan, focusing on your “art direction” etc.

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Most Techlife readers know I use Trillian for instant messaging because we have covered them before. I have also mentioned AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) bots when I wrote about FeedCrier. An AIM bot is a buddy you add to your buddy list but instead of a real person the bot is a computer that can answer questions, usually with a tight focus. AIM Bots are available wherever you can IM including the iPhone.

A great example of this is AOLYellowPages, a bot that lets you pull up nationwide (USA) listings with a few quick pecks to the keyboard. People love this bot, which was recently in retirement refinement and not-delivering any results. I am happy to report it is back.

We recently caught up with Bill Herred who is the guy-behind-the-guy of Prof Gilzot, a new AIM bot for SAT Prep, targeted towards high school students. He is also behind IM Street a stock focused AIM Bot.

Techlife meets Bill Herred

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Did I detect a little spark in David Berlind‘s eye? Maybe a hope that he could see his content on a featured Channel? Watch this video where Techlife TV gets the nod in Taylor McKnight’s talk with David Berlind of ZD Net.

Congratulations to Chime.tv winner of the best Mashup at MashupCamp. Taylor, now a two-time winner, sat down and showed David (Berlind) Chime.tv, even mentioning our channel and me by name at the 1:05 minute mark. (Thanks Taylor!)

What’s a Mashup? I will leave it to David to explain that in his video which of course is also on the Techlife TV Channel.

Note to David: Got more vidoes? Let me know and I will add them to Techlife TV.
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Sometimes at Techlife we cover technology in gadgets or the web, or even just computers. But technology is driven by people, and some people drive technology based on their past to make the future better. As long time readers of this column know I am not an evangelist for Apple, Inc., but I give Apple plenty of kudos for their success and that starts from the top. Steve Jobs has all sorts of stories surrounding him. He is a rock star, movie star and super star all rolled into one. His value as a person in our society is widely debated but for the 14 minutes and 30 seconds he spoke to the Stanford University graduating class of 2005 he imparted a bit of his story which in turn really became his-tory. Watch, listen and learn on Techlife TV.
Thanks to super fan reader Dave S. for his continued great links. Do you have a great link? Tell us in the comments.

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When you take a photo you resign yourself to the fact that you captured the photo at a certain place in both time and space. (Already to deep, just skip to Techlife TV’s video.) Basically you click and shoot capturing at the moment in time and from your angle. Combining photo collages, photo stitching, massive amounts of visual data Blaise Aguera y Arcas recently demoed SeaDragon, a Microsoft Labs project at TED, a conference on new ideas.

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Blaise presents the fact that our current interactions with visual data is very limited. He feels the future of data will allow quicker navigation and more complete views. I like the way he shows off an entire Charles Dicken’s novel and is easily able to zoom into a single letter from the whole book. This type of data interaction is clearly what Professor Wesch meant with Digital Ethnography. But clearly the demo’s pinnacle is the Notre Dame Cathedral shown from any angle using only images from Flickr.

Thanks to Techlife reader and contributor Dave for sending this in, and his comment “looks like this guy built ‘Minority Report’ is spot on.” If you have something interesting send it to reviewme [at] dkworldwide [dot] com.

Note: The video is incorrectly titled “Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth”, the first thing he says is, “This is SeaDragon.”

Note 2:  Techlife TV is part of Chime.tv and they have a whole TED series.

As a new television channel owner we are experimenting with our programming, and our promos. We are excited to share Star Wars Robot Chicken on Techlife TV. This is the full 26 minutes, including some pre-roll with Seth Green and his team, as they introduce each segment. We had recently covered Star Wars news that George Lucas is thinking about some new Star Wars movies. I am glad he not only put his weight behind the Robot Chicken project but was willing to appear as himself in it.

After you watch the show, there is a lot chatter to read about the show on review sites like Hot Air, The Movie Blog and even Crunch Gear getting in a review. But The Force.net had the best scoop, commentary from the producers about every skit in Robot Chicken Star Wars show. Well worth watching if you liked the show.

Overall: If you like Star Wars as much as these writers do, then all the jokes from Admiral Ackbar cereal to Yo Mama throwdown to the Cantina are really well done. Robot Chicken is a stop-motion, comedy sketch show with reference to many nostalgic toys and shows and airs on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. It is in its third season. Did you like it? What was your favorite sketch? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to our reader Dan for sending this. If you find something email us at reviewme [at] dkworldwide [dot] com.

Thanks to all our entrants in the Techlife contest. Congratulations to Richard, Linda and Caroline for winning Techlife’s Un-official: Who’s your daddy? Geni Contest. Thanks to Geni for supplying the prizes for our winners. Keep reading and commenting. Your comments make it more interesting for everybody. Will we have another contest soon? Keep reading to find out.

Thinking about a contest? Got some neat product or swag? Techlife is always interested, contact us at contests [at] dkworldwide [dot] com.

Just a quick reminder to fire up your bat computer and enter Techlife’s current “un-official” contest.

Never used Geni? That’s ok. Hate Geni? We’re happy for ya, tell us why. Have a huge family tree? A tree thats a straight line? Whatever.

They gave us some swag and we want to give it to you.
Enter the contest here.

The rules are uber-simple. Your dad’s name and would he use Geni. That’s it.

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I know Skye Boyes and his team at XGen Studios are hard at work on Stick Arena Ballistick.  But after reading this article on Microsoft taking a hard stance against hackers on Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, I think Skye might devote some resources to the current generation of Stick Arena, a great game that people love to play.

I am a big fan and had been busy lately. I was looking forward to spending a break from reality in a quick multi-player browser game. Stick Arena is of course the best. I spent maybe all of 2 minutes in each arena, and constantly was dealing with hackers popping in and ruining my time. Eventually I just left, which is sad. We all want the next generation of gaming to get here soon from XGen, but not at the risk of losing gamers with the current product.

Skye and his team make their money from serving me ads, and I can tell you that I am less likely to sit and watch ads and play Stick Arena with the recent increase in hacking. It used to be tolerable, you report the hacker, leave the arena and move on to the next arena. Now the hackers seem to outnumber the non-hackers. Inmates running the asylum? I don’t think so. What do you think? Join the discussion.

Thanks to Engadget for making me aware of Microsoft’s stance.

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My readers are really the best. A long time print and online reader sent along the link to the site “Open for Design” which was built by MSN, a Microsoft company. If this site were a person it would wear sunglasses at night, as part of the uber-cool group. It clearly took the idea of being “open for design” and tried to improve on it.

I think it failed in many ways, but because they are subtle failures it could almost be seen as successful.When you arrive, you don’t really know much about why you are there. The pretty flash interface has some real nice lines, and a design that pulls you in. With five simple large boxes that are buttons you roll your mouse around and explore.

But then it gets confusing. You quickly notice an “Issuse No. 7: Light”. Curious? I was. Why would a website have an “issue number”. Looking further you see the various boxes had titles and subjects. A “Light” goes on! This must be some sort of e-zine (electronic magazine.)

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