With the recent acquisition of The Weather Channel by NBC, I am hoping there are some positive changes coming to Weather.com. The site, given its domain name, is the dominant website for checking the weather. Yet, the site presents a poor user experience, hides the good content and absent-mindedly focuses on unneeded services. Below I’ll highlight what bugs me the most and suggest some improvements.

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I first heard the title of this post when Paul wore a t-shirt sporting this phrase to Startup Riot. I began using Twitter a few months ago, and have become addicted. My tech friends immediately understand. My non-tech friends are still confused as to what this service is or why I would bother with it. Below is a good video summarizing what Twitter is and how it was founded.

I would only add that the people I follow in my community and beyond provide much information only on Twitter. I’ve learned about new products (Dash), services (FriendFeed), and events (Startup Riot) only because of my Twitter feeds. I’m on Twitter because it gives me much more information and helps me keep up on what’s going on. It’s become an essential service to stay connected and informed in the digital age.

Two malls in the UK have installed monitoring devices that track people by monitoring their cellphones. By picking up the signals from their phones, the devices can track which stores people enter and how long they stay.

Although these statistics could prove useful for the mall and it’s retailers, it is an obvious privacy concern. It will be interesting to see if the technology spreads or is imported to the states.

So Lance Weatherby turned me on to this guy, Paul Stamatiou. He’s 21 years-old and has been blogging for a few years now. He’s a CS student at Georgia Tech. He blogs about web technologies and posts gadget and technology reviews. He’s built a solid following and was even in the Technorati top 100 for a while.

Basically, he blogs about cool stuff he’s interested in and he does it very well. His blog is insightful and well written and has established him as a voice in the web startup community. Marketing and ad agencies now contact him to promote their clients’ products. He was even featured in a Nike+ ad.

It’s a testament that anyone who has something good to say can establish themselves online. My favorite posts of his:

• Thoughts on Startups
• A Realistic Back to School Guide for College Students
  
• The Next Level

Merry Christmas! Here’s my gift to you all. Mozilla Labs has released a new Firefox plugin, Personas, that allows you to add lightweight, custom themes. The collection of themes available right now isn’t great, but they have easy instructions on how to create your own. I created one with my nifty logo in the top right and a little lighter shading. I must say I’m enjoying the new look.

Update: Mozilla now has a decent sized collection of themes for you to choose from.

Firstborn Multimedia, one of the best interactive agencies in the world, redesigned its site. The new site is slick and fluid and provides easy access to the catalog of great work Firstborn has done since its inception in 1997. While some may not see this site as being that great, I’ve glossed over the code and this was no simple redesign. Firstborn devoted some serious time and talent to create this new site. It’s very organized and built in a smooth, professional manner. Well done.