The Blogpost of Awesome

 A book recently became a best seller on the New York Times infamous list, by stating some well-known truths, of what we in the Western World consider to be “Awesome”.   Everyday things that just rock, from the smell of a camp fire, to passing through a door just as it’s closing, just all round wicked to be alive type things.

With that in mind, there is a growing list of things that connected culture has also contributed to the species of wickedus-awesomus.

Being safe – Guardly

I’ve never called 911. Ever.  I grew up thinking that pressing those three buttons on the phone was insanely scary, and would probably lead to me getting grounded.  As a suburbanite, my experience with the police in my teen years involved getting traffic tickets, and being told to “go home, the party’s been shut down.”  As a result, I never built up a trust factor with the boys in blue.  When things went bad, I always have, and to this day, rely on my personal network of family, friends and colleagues to deal with things.   Enter Guardly, an app that does this for you, but also includes the pros, and does it faster than you can type “ help, I’m lost at wonderland and I think the Cookie Monster has his eye on me”.  The power of leveraging your network for safety, well that’s awesome.

Knowing how your doing – Rypple

We grew up playing collecting coins and saving princesses with Mario, scoring goals and winning titles in NHL on Sega, and collecting manna or whatever it is they do on World of Warcraft…my point is, we like the gratification of receiving rewards for good performance.   Yet, we enter the professional world, and we get an annual review.  Once a year, do we get a chance to know if we’re stomping goomba’s or if we should let Luigi get a turn.   Enter Rypple, a performance management company that allows employees to earn rewards based on performance in real time.   Knowing your goals, and having the incentives to hit them on a micro level appeals to that gamer in all of us, and is, in a word – awesome.

Seeing how you’re connected  - inMaps

“ I know a guy”.  Ya, we all do.   Being able to refer someone you trust, or finding out that you actually know the person who possesses the skill your looking for is a huge bonus.  But actually being able to tap into who you know that is unique from others’ networks can be a difficult task.  Enter inMaps, a tool within linked in that makes it clear as day as to what your network looks like.   While at first glance it looks like one of those super weak Spirographs, its taking your Rolodex, brain and professional experience and putting it into a visually immersed and accessible display.   So in the words of the Jersey Shore it’s Aue-sum.