In my second blast to the past, I revisit one of my favorite social networking posts which is indicative of the explosive growth of social networks. I have personally worked on some neat social networking projects (Web 2.0 posts), but last Fall I was amazed to learn via the MIT Technology Review that dogs had joined the revolution. Here is an excerpt from that post:

Dog Tags for Virtual Sniffing: Believe it or not, dogs wearing a tag from Snif Labs, exchange ID codes when they meet.  When their owners get home, they can then download the data and learn information about the dogs, and the owner! View a Snif Labs Animated Demo.

Spot (my dog – already a techie) … meet Rover! In addition, in the spirit of this post, anyone who emails me a digital photo of their dog, I will post that photo here!

Every so often a web site comes along which really excites me, VideoLectures.Net is such a portal. I can't stress to highly that you must visit this web service (doesn't mean you have to ignore my other posts!). VideoLectures.Net is sponsored by some of Europe's leading technology societies, and the wealth of free engineering lectures is dumbfounding. Here are just a few examples … which also demonstrate some of the content categories:

• Conferences (all): The International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media
• Lectures (all): Machine Learning from Cambridge University
• Interviews (all): Tim Berners Lee
  (or)
• Tutorials (all): Fuzzy Logic Tutorial from the Konstanz University

It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyhow!) that this content has been added to the Engineering Learning Wiki Lecture Section and its embedded custom Google Co-op Search Engine. As I spend more time on the site I will integrate it with more sections of the wiki.

Did I mention you will find nary an advertisement on VideoLectures.Net! This service truly is promoted the concept that knowledge should be free. As a final aside, even if you are not a technologist, link on over and you'll find sections ranging from Business to Philosophy. However, the primary focus of the site is technology based content.

In my first "Blast to the Past", I return to my November 21, 2006 posting, The Living Past. We often like to fool ourselves that the life of yesteryear was more genteel. As we enter a new presidential campaign season and gear ourselves up for the muck raking commercials that both major parties will fling at each other, watch some past campaign commercials. It wasn't much better … from the 1964 Johnson / Goldwater election:

• We Will Bury You | Campaign Commerical Video
  (The Republicans link our fear of Nakita Khruschchev to LBJ)

And LBJ responds with a "peace" commercial … rather funny given how he took us into Vietnam.

• Peace Little Girl – Daisies | Campaign Commerical Video
  (Beware the atom bomb and by implication, Barry Goldwater)

I chose this content for Blast # 7 as it is indicative of how the web has exploded with phenomenal material which both support formal education at all levels (Engineering Learning Wiki), or for the eternal student in all of us. Both of these commecials are from the web site: The Living Room Candidate.

The 1964 election was the first campaign that I can remember. Visit my earlier post to learn some of my recollections as an eight year old boy!

In August of 2006 I moved this blog from MSN to Typepad. Earlier today I topped 100,000 lifetime page views for this blog while hosted on Typepad. Those of you who have been with me throughout this entire journey have read 602 posts on categories ranging from Legos to Web 2.0. You've also had the opportunity to learn a little about Rich Hoeg, the individual, via posts like Loppets for LingYun and Pheasant … Not Just for Breakfast Anymore.

In addition to your direct visits, another 450 individuals visit every day via RSS. Finally, my relatively new entry, the Engineering Learning Wiki, now experiences over 100 page views per day.

Thus, over the next seven days I will bring back some of my favorite posts … a blast to the past.

Thank You! Expand any image for a clearer view of my stats!

Everyone wants to grow their organization. It is often felt that an organization must "grow or die". Obviously, it is easier said than done. While I don't have the answers, Patrick Viguerie and Sven Smit who are both directors at McKinsey and Company recently published a new book, The Granularity of Growth. While purchasing the book is always a good option, here are two good sources to better understand the author's theme:

• Book Review: 1-800-CEO-Read: The Granularity of Growth
• Podcast: McKinsey on Finance (scroll down to Summer 2007)