Saturday, August 29, 2009

Morning Offering

I think it is important to start every day with a good attitude. Something that helps me is to be consistent in praying a morning offering. It's something that is easy to forget, but also easy to do. The key is to find something you do every day (in the morning), and connect that to saying your morning offering (e.g. shower, shave, breakfast, etc...) It also helps to focus, especially in the morning, to say it out loud.

The main point of a morning offering is to offer your day to God. To help symbolize that my whole day is a prayer to God, I make the sign of the Cross at the beginning of my morning offering, but do not make the sign of the Cross at the end. This reminds me that I have not finished my prayer, and that everything I do today is part of that prayer.

Over the years my morning offering has evolved. At one point it took over 10 minutes, nowadays it's shortened back down to about 5 minutes. Here is most of it:
O my God, I offer everything I do today in reparation for Thy Sacred Heart and in union with all the Masses offered throughout the world and especially so that I do not commit any sins of [insert any fault you are trying to overcome]. For my parents, for my brothers and sisters, for all my relatives and friends. For the Pope, for all the Bishops, for all the priests and seminarians, especially those familiar to me. For school, so that I succeed in it for the Greater Glory of God, for work, so that I succeed in it for the Greater Glory of God, for home, so that I succeed in it for the Greater Glory of God. For [and particular projects I'm currently working on]. For [any sick people I know]. For [any other special intentions]. For all my Godchildren. For [each sibling and their families].

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Is Google dying?

Google did one thing, and they did it well. Sell advertising. What, you thought I was going to say search? Search is one vehicle through which they can market their advertising. That vehicle, however, is quietly becoming obsolete. Google search, in its time, was one of the best ways of finding static information on the web. Wikipedia has been quietly overtaken Google in that area.

This is interesting considering that Yahoo and other web indexes previously had tried human powered collecting of information. We have to wonder, why did they fail when Wikipedia succeeded? I think that it was their dependence on a centralized approach whereas Wikipedia utilizes a more distributed approach. Yet indexes were distributed with regard to the content, but they were centralized with regard to the controls. The next thing that destroys Wikipedia will be both decentralized information and decentralized control---but yet, still indexed, still useful.

I've heard that there are three webs: 1. The static web, 2. The realtime web, and 3. The hyper-local web.
Google has controlled the static web, but this seems to be slowly shifting to Wikipedia. Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, and others have been the leaders in the realtime web. As for the hyper-local, I think I would rather call it the social-web, and we know Facebook leads there.

What is going to be the next big breakthrough? We are going to again distribute. I think that if companies such as Reddit, Digg, and yes, even Google, want to survive, they need to once again give up control. They need to be able to easily integrate with other platforms. The content is going to be distributed. The comments, feedback, etc will be distributed. The next big thing is going to seamlessly broadcast to other web media as well as seamlessly receive feedback from a variety of sources (and of course, in realtime ;).