The world according to Dan

So, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 18 months you’re undoubtably aware about how social networking is revolutionising the way we digest our news, messages and other online information.

Twitter lists, developing realtime search functionality, facebook funnels of data – everyone is trying to make sense of this massive amount of data and put it together in a format that gives us all relevant, realtime, authoritive information.

The first company to do it well will dominate the space. Most of us don’t particularly care about trending topics such as “goodnight” and “it should be illegal”. We want info we care about and is relevant to our needs and interests. We need to filter out the noise, and sift through the junk. A lot of work for someone….. they’re all trying….. let’s see who gets there first!

So, like myself you may have been depriving yourself of all quality sleep for the last couple of weeks hoping that Cadel Evans might be able to go one better than last year and bring home cyclings greatest prize. Night, after night we’ve been waiting for him to make a move, waiting for him to get out in front and challenge the mighty Astana team….. finally the outside chance is over. He’s gone. No chance of even making the podium. What a let down!

Whether he’s out of form, or whether it’s because he doesn’t have the team mates around him to get him to the top….. who knows? All that we know for sure is that we can now stop worrying about Cadel and start to focus more on the action up front.

Can anyone catch Contador? Will Andy Schleck make a move and bridge the gap? Will Armstrong put in another superhuman effort and rewrite the history books.

I’m so disappointed as an Aussie that Cadel couldn’t do some damage this year, but the battle up front and the action to follow on the way to Paris is more than making up for it!

So this post is a little late, but I have been living in a bubble without web access quicker than dial-up for the last week.

As many of you know, the 31st annual Melbourne Marathon was run and won last Sunday throughout the streets of Melbourne bayside and city proper.

Not exactly the greatest day for running, it was quite hot and the wind was blowing. I was rapt with how it all turned out. 4:42 – this is 31 minutes better than last years effort (my first). Things were on track for a 4:15 until I started cramping up at about the 34km mark. The last 8 kms were a mix of walking, jogging & hobbling – so to cross the finish line was a fantastic feeling in itself.

Thanks to everyone for their well wishes on the phone and on facebook. I’ll be back again next year to hopefully knock off another 31 minutes!!

My domain – www.premierleaguetipping.com is for sale.

Tell your premier league loving friends!!

I’ll happily pay a spotters fee to anyone who puts me in contact with a buyer for the domain.

Check it out on SEDO

This is lol funny

Homer tries to vote for Obama

So you must have been living under a rock for the last month or so if you haven’t heard about the global financial crisis that is destined to destroy the world as we all know it. Well it might be getting out of control in the USA, but on home shores here in Australia we have no need to panic at the moment.

The Australian economy is more intrinsically linked to Asian markets these days, and whilst we still have exposure to the lending crisis that is threatening to throw the USA into a recession, or even a depression we don’t have to worry about losing our jobs yet.

The best advice is not to panic. Don’t start shifting your Superannuation investments in haste. We all know Super is a long term investment and as such will be subject to many peaks and troughs along the way. If you are approaching retirement, your super should already be in more conservative structures anyway, and if you’re young then your investments will have plenty of time to rebound and recover to still show good returns over the long time.

Reckless spending is something else also to keep in check. Now is a great time to honestly look at your spending and make sure that you are living well within your means. Our banks and lenders will be tighter with the way they hand out money. Finance will be even more difficult to come across so don’t get in over your head. Tighten the belt a little bit, pay off credit card debts and get on top of things.

For risk takers, now might be a good time for some smart investments in the markets. Most analysts predict that some form of a bailout package in the USA will be approved in the coming week which will have a flow on effect across world markets. Get some financial advice and try and identify the market sectors that have been unjustly undervalued over the last couple of weeks and you might just find a niche to exploit and get some good returns when the market inevitably corrects itself. The risk is that it is hard to tell when this correction will occur and have we bottomed out, or is there more pain to come. My gut feeling is there is money to be made for those willing to take a calculated risk. Just don’t expect a guaranteed return – you could just as easily lose your cash.

Anways, again that was a bit all over the place, but hopefully in some shape or form it makes a little sense.

Ok, so some of us get quotes and other stuff from Runner’s World, usually they’re half interesting, but today’s has been the best by a mile. You don’t know how true it is until you get out there and start battling the voices.

“It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants to quit” – GEORGE SHEEHAN

Speaking of running…. I’ve got two and a half weeks until the Melbourne Marathon and have been holed up in bed with a chest infection for the last 5 days. I think there will be many, many, many voices on the day!

Yes, so Google has rolled out it’s latest world-conquering app – the Google Chrome browser. It’s been out a couple of days now and so far I’m really liking what I see. It’s a beta release, but don’t let that stop you from trying it out – trust me, you’ll be better off.

There are heaps of blogs, reviews, press releases and the likes floating around the place breaking it all down and weighing up the pros v cons of Chrome, but he is my no-nonsense take of Google’s newest play toy.

1. It’s cool. You don’t have to be a tech-head cyber guru to get a kick out of this. Forget how it works (I’ll get to that), it just looks so cool. It’s slimline, it’s minimal and it doesn’t even look like a browser – it’s all about the pages baby!
2. It works. Well, pretty bloody good for a beta release, it’s more of a beta 2.0. The new take of tabs operating fully independently is very clever. This means that if one nasty webpage is crashing out, then it won’t take down the other 43 tabs that you have open watching eBay auctions closing in 2 minutes.
3. It remembers stuff. Top 9 pages you visit, your recent closed tabs and more without having to tell it to – how thoughtful.
4. It spies on you – hardcore. Well at least I’d imagine it would. Google knows you better than you probably know yourself. Hey, I don’t really mind – I trust Google and I’d rather be target marketed than bombarded with crap. So people might take issue with Google’s impending world domination, but not me – I’m all for it and will be cheering them on all the way!

Anyways, there’s heaps more to say, but that’s just a little snippet of what’s going on upstairs.

Speaking of Google….they’ve been kind enough to provide some though-provoking content that should be appearing about 5mm due south of here….