Goodbye, Whitney Houston...

The world lost an amazing voice yesterday. Despite all of her hardship and struggles, Whitney Houston defined the 1980s and 1990s with her strong, soulful, and pure vocal talent. She will forever be missed.

Let's take a second to remember one of her greatest hits, I Will Always Love You from The Bodyguard.

Cover Songs Done Well: Lisa Scinta

Have you ever heard of Lisa Scinta? She's an undiscovered singer with numerous videos on Youtube, in which she performs acoustic versions of popular songs (mostly in her bathroom!). Her voice is absolutely amazing and it's only a matter of time before some big record producer catches on to her talent and signs her as a professional recording artist.

Here is one of my all-time favorite covers of Lisa's - Lisa performing Eminem and Rihanna's Love the Way You Lie.

Google Search vs. Delicious Seach

Admittedly, whenever I need to search for new articles, pictures, current events, etc., my fingers automatically type in the same six same letters: G-O-O-G-L-E.

Google has been my standby search engine for as long as I can remember. Its popularity has even made it into a cool new verb (i.e. "Let's google it!"). Can you imagine doing the same for an alternative search engine such as Delicious,which consists of social bookmarking sites. "Let's delicious it!" just does not have the same kind of feeling.

Let's compare the two. Say we were searching for sites and articles related to Madonna's performance at the Superbowl. We would thus enter Madonna AND Superbowl into each respective search engine. This is what we would find.

- Google returned a total of 437,000,00 results.

- Delicious returned a total of 125 results.

- Comparing the results on the first page of each search engine, none of them were identical.

- I would argue that, in this case, the results that Google returned seemed to be more reliable and more useful. Google returned a variety of results including news articles, videos, and reviews. Delicious, on the other hand, returned more opinionated types of results including blogs, Twitter tweets, and photos.

-I would also argue that, in this case, Google's results seemed to be more current (at least on the first couple of pages which included timely news articles). Google also allows its users to search by date or category. Delicious' bookmarks seemed fairly random and in no particular order.

Uploading Images to a Blog

There are two wonderful options for displaying an image on a blog. The first option is to upload the image directly to Blogger by clicking on the "insert image" link, browsing your computer for the file you wish to upload, and saving it to Blogger. The main advantage of this approach is that it is the fastest way to upload a image to one's blog. The main disadvantage is that it may "eat" up a lot of bandwidth or space on one's blog, depending upon the amount and size of the pictures used.

The second option is to upload an image to Flickr, edit it using Flickr tools, obtain the HTML code for the image from the Flickr site, and then embed it into the HTML text box of one's blog. The main advantage of this approach is that Flickr provides users with photo editing and resizing tools and allows users to organize their images by creating tags and descriptions. The main disadvantage is that this process is generally slower than simply uploading an image directly to Blogger. In addition, the correct visual display of the image depends on Flickr's site status.

Below is an example of a photo of singer/song writer Kris Allen embedded from my Flickr:

Really...Madonna?

Am I the only person not excited about Madonna's upcoming "come back" performance at the Superbowl Halftime Show? That's really the best producers could do?

What about the network's new commitment to limit racy or controversial material following the Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson debacle. Is Madonna really the way to go? Nothing controversial there!

Better than I Know Myself: Adam Lambert's New Video

Those of you who know me already know about my appreciation for the vocal talents of Adam Lambert, the runner up on American Idol season eight and the international singer known for his vocal range and cutting-edge persona. Lambert is following up his successful debut album For Your Entertainment with his sophomore album, Trespassing, to be released in March. His first single off the new album, Better than I Know Myself, is an infectious mixture of electronic and pop music with a catchy chorus guaranteed to get stuck in your head.

Check out his music video for the song below and let me know what you think!

Corporate Wiki Success Story: Morgan Stanley

TWiki Success Story of Morgan Stanley

Most Internet users are familiar with Wikis: collaborative Web sites that allow users to create, modify, and delete content related to a specific topic or resource. Wikis are information-gathering and knowledge-sharing tools that allow for numerous contributions from a variety of users in an effort to expand knowledge and better organize information.

TWikis are designed specifically with corporations in mind. They allow companies to combine open-source platforms (Wikis) with Web 2.0 applications as they build their TWiki sites. TWikis are structured Wikis that companies utilize to enhance project management, document sharing, and corporate knowledge. They improve the flow of communication between different departments within a business and enhance productivity and efficiency. TWikis appear similar to typical Web sites, but include an edit function that allows users to create, edit, and remove information contained on the pages.

The financial company Morgan Stanley has utilized TWikis since 2004. Most often, TWikis are used within the company to house operation materials and hardware and software manuals, and to share information within a specific team. Some departments also use them to share meeting minutes and reports with their colleagues. Thus, Morgan Stanley's use of TWikis has enabled the firm to better enhance its communication and collaborative techniques, while ensuring that all of its employees (around the world) have immediate and reliable access to important documents, manuals, reports, and policies related to their job duties.