"Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds." Remy de Gourmont

"Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good." Friedrich Nietzsche

"Clear your mind of can't." Samuel Johnson

Today's image: Seashore Afterglow dusk June 2008 by courtneyplatt. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing.

Five reasons you need to be on FriendFeed

1. Deep dive. It's the best free lunch in social media. You'll encounter life streaming in what is practically real-time. Put yourself into the conversation and enjoy it without risk.

2. Application immersion. Become aware of the apps of the moment. The ones you know are there (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Pandora, last.fm, delicious, LinkedIn) and a great variety of some you may not be as familiar with including vimeo, plurk, twirl, ping.fm, bookmarklet, tumblr, disque, toluu, pownce, identi.ca, jaiku, yelp, diigo, seesmic, mixx and brightkite. Become aware of them, test drive those that interest you, get involved with the ones that matter to you.

3. Betaland. Subscribe to the "invites" room and check out those inside the inside beta offers. FF is a leading edge community and as such invites to the A list betas are often found on offer, yours for the taking.

4. Discovery. While there are certainly a great many sites worth your bandwidth, the ROI on FF is without equal. The right mix of friends will help you to discover a wealth of wonderful things. Focus on getting your subscriptions in harmony with your interests. You love photography? Thomas Hawk is a must-subscribe. Enjoy being on the cutting edge of PR? Steve Rubel is your guy. There is a group of friends for every possible interest. As a hardcore autodidact, I find FF to be a firehose of data that has proven to be well worth the parse. If you are serious about learning FF is an app you should be using daily.

5. Connect. As readers here are aware, this is the summer of FriendFeed for me. The experiment was to get deep into FriendFeed and find out what was really happening with social media. In that process I have made new friends, discovered an amazing number of new things and become connected with leading edge folks from all over the world. My sense is this is a connection with what is happening now, what is going on at the leading edge of social media, this is a preview, a peak into things to come, an early work in progress. One you cannot afford, should just not allow, to pass you by.

That's the quick sketch.

Now, the option is yours.

Do you jump in and sign-up? Get started, get engaged, come and play, be a part of this cool new adventure?

Or

Would you rather just read about it? Hear about it? Jump in later when everyone else is telling you it's cool? Wait to sign up when those you know are getting involved?

Leader or fast follower - which best describes you?

Yeah, thought so. If you are still reading this, let's dance. Sign up here. Subscribe to me dmartin and I'll subscribe to you.

And the hits just keep on coming: Oasis. The Shock of the Lightning. Thanks, Mark. Clearly, the men of Manchester are back. "I wanted to write music that had a groove, not songs that followed the traditional pattern of verse, chorus and middle eight" Noel Gallagher [via Song Blog, thanks to Ashley]. Congrats & cheers to Chris Moyles who broke the tune earlier today on BBC Radio 1 with Noel along side.

Bonus: Face Your Manga. All the cool kids are doing it so I had to face mine.



Regular readers of this blog will have seen the following video and they will want to watch it again. For those of you never having heard of Sir Ken Robinson, well you're in for a special treat. Prepare to be wrong!



Have a great weekend. See you next week in a brand new show.