Brian Gongol
The WHO Radio Wise Guys airs on WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa on 1040 AM or streaming online at WHORadio.com. The show airs from 1 to 2 pm Central Time on Saturday afternoons. A podcast of show highlights is also available. Leave comments and questions on the Wise Guys Facebook page or e-mail them to wiseguys@whoradio.com.
Segment 1: Apple's stock is selling at record highs right now, and a lot of people are saying it's the "most valuable company in the world" right now. That's not quite right. It's the company with the largest market capitalization -- in other words, the highest total amount for shares times market price. But the most valuable company in the world may be a totally different one -- depending on what they're going to do over the coming years. Technology stocks are a dangerous investment; just one or two false moves can totally destroy all of the value in the company. So it's a smart move for Eric Schmidt to sell an estimated $1.5 billion in his Google stock. There's no guarantee Google will succeed over the next ten years like it has in the past ten. In fact, I'd wager that it won't come anywhere close. When presented with an opportunity to do so, the smart person will usually sell out.
Segment 2: The recent mess over at Valley High School, where a student put up a spoof Twitter account to mock the principal, is a reminder that it's important to control your online reputation if there's any chance you'll fall in the public eye. It doesn't take a lot of work -- just a few accounts, on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus, and your own domain name, are often enough to ensure that the first thing that comes up when people search for your name online...is you.
Segment 3: I can never remember things I read from a screen. Now it turns out that there's scientific evidence it's a problem we all share. You remember about 30% better when you read things off paper than when you read them from a screen. So for all those people who insist that every page of paper you print is going to destroy the planet...I'm only printing stuff so I can understand.
Segment 4: A caller wanted to know about the point of using hashtags on Twitter. That's like when Charlie Sheen was writing "#winning" after every post, or when CBS puts a little note on the screen saying "#HIMYM" during "How I Met Your Mother". They're a tool for helping people search through the site and get in on big "conversations" with other people posting about the same topic. But they're widely abused and often make Twitter posts hard to read. By the way, I've been answering questions like this one in my series of Tech Tips, heard Sunday mornings on WHO.