Gavin Baker

One of the things I love about smartphone technology is apps that make life better.  Yep, apps that make life better.  Recently I rode the Megabus overnight from Knoxville, TN to Washington, DC, and I woke up a few minutes from the end of the trip.  I had some vague instructions from a friend to metro to his apartment, but I quickly realized I had no idea on the metro schedule, the lines or even where the closest station was to the bus stop.

A quick search in the Android app market yielded -  DC Metro Transit Free, an AMAZING travel app that quickly told me the closest station was a few blocks away and I had 23 minutes until my train left.  Additionally it also had a trip planner to help me figure out the best route to get from station A to station B.  Other features included real time updates, and it estimated fares which helped me figure out to put on my metro card.  (more…)

Over the weekend I had pleasure of speaking at the East Tennessee Preservation conference in historic Rugby, TN.  I’ve posted a recap of panel on using social media for historic and preservation tourism with slides and video over on the New Streak, where I blog for Moxley Carmichael.  Check it out.

Related articles

• Social media training specific to the tourism industry (drewsmarketingminute.com)
• Tourism meets social media at BlogWorld Expo (smallbizsurvival.com)
• Social media’s impact on tourism (news.bbc.co.uk)

Happy to be in the running for East Tennessee’s Best Tweeter with a couple others from the team at Moxley Carmichael, including Scott Bird and Cynthia Moxley.  (Cynthia’s also nominated for best blogger for The Blue Streak!)  Thanks for the nomination and your votes.

Please vote! Ends tonight Aug. 20!

Vote for Best Tweeter

Vote for Best Blogger

Samasource might be my favorite new non-profit.  Why?  Because they bring together the scrapiness of a startup with the social effects of a non-profit.  Like charity:water they operate under the model that their “return” is about bringing an American commodity to the global poor.  So what is Samasource?  It’s pure and (not) so simple social entrepreneurship, using technology for social good with the powerful tagline of “Give Work.”

It was founded by Leila Chirayath Janah who is currently the CEO (and about my age) and she shares her vision in the video below at TEDxSV.  There is also a great write up here if you’d prefer to read than watch.

Leila Chirayath Janah: Ending Poverty in the Digital Age from TEDx Silicon Valley on Vimeo.

You can use them for the tasks below:

• Basic data services – business listings verification, data scraping, image and text tagging, content moderation, and data entry
• Advanced data services – subjective tasks including image- and text-based judgments
• Language services – audio and video transcription, video captioning, and translation
• Call center services – outbound services

So Give Work if you can.  I know I will.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Leila Chirayath Janah: The Virtual Assembly Line (huffingtonpost.com)
• Expedia launches new charity program (bizjournals.com)
• How Samasource Helps The World, And A Secret Tattoo Unveiled (Video) (techcrunch.com)

Silence is what I got when I went up to Look Rock to catch sunrise Saturday morning.  If your life is like mine, it is filled with all kinds of devices like mine that chirp, beep, and buzz.   It was glorious to step out of my car into the pre-dawn morning and hear absolutely nothing.  It was so glorious it was stunning – and with a short walk across Foothills Parkway the sweet smell of pines from the Smokies quickly overtook me mingled with the earthy smell of forest.

Best word to describe it: rejuvenating.

Smoky Mountain National Park view from Foothills Parkway